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King Charles I

Samuel Maverick Writes A Guide to the Wonders of New England – in 1660

Samuel Maverick, as his name suggests, didn’t like to go along with the crowd. The Puritan crowd, that is.

He came to Boston sometime in the 1620s, before the Puritans arrived, and lived on Noddles Island in Boston Harbor. Noddles Island is now East Boston, which has a Maverick Square and a Maverick T stop.

Samuel Maverick, a firm Anglican and staunch royalist, saw amazing changes in New England during the first 30-some years of his residence. When he arrived, several hundred Europeans were scattered over 150 square miles of wilderness. By 1660, Maverick saw 86 towns that fielded militia, vast herds of livestock, an abundance of English fruit, and harbors bustling with many dozens of ships, some as large as 300 tons.

Other changes he didn’t like so much. He chafed under the Puritans’ rigid laws and suffered from their religious intolerance. Another Samuel Maverick – who may have been a descendant – shared his independent spirit in 19^th century Texas. The Maverick name would brand movies and cars and sports teams into the 21^st century.

East Boston, 1841. The large building in the center is the Maverick Hotel.

Samuel Maverick

He was born in England around 1602, the son of the Rev. John Maverick, who later followed him to the New World.

Samuel arrived in Massachusetts when in his twenties. With another colonist named David Thompson he built a house on Noddles Island and fortified it with guns. Thompson died, and Maverick married Thompson’s widow, Amias. They had three children in addition to her son by David Thompson.

When Maverick started out in Massachusetts, fewer than 300 Europeans lived within a radius of 150 miles. Then in 1630, John Winthrop and his band of Puritans arrived and started running the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Things would change dramatically in a few decades.

Maverick Guide to New England

In 1660, Samuel Maverick returned to England with a guide he wrote about New England. He intended to present it to King Charles II, along with his complaints about how the Puritans treated him.

He called the guide A Briefe Discription of New England and the Severall Townes Therein, Together with the Present Government Thereof. In it, he described 86 towns from Damariscotta, Maine, to Greenwich, Conn. Maverick described how New England had once had only a sparse population of scattered colonists. By 1660, however, almost all of those towns could field a militia (“a full Company of Foote and some Horse”).

Changes in the Boston shoreline from 1630-1675

When he first arrived in New England, he wrote, he found nothing but shacks save for three or four decent houses in Plymouth. Boston, which wasn’t even Boston then, was “a swamp and pound.” It grew into a “great Towne” with “two churches, a Gallant Statehouse & more to make it compleate, then can be expected in a place so late a wilderness.”

“Now to behold the handsome Houses & Churches in so many Townes as I have named is a wonder,” wrote Maverick.

Wonders

Farming and husbandry had flourished in every town he mentioned.

In 1626 New England had not a single head of cattle, nor horse, nor sheep, and very few goats or hogs. But less than 40 years later, New Englanders exported livestock to the Caribbean, consumed much of it themselves and provisioned the ships that called at New England ports.

Along with the livestock, “the great abundance of English Fruite, as Apples, Pears, Apricots, Plumbs, Cherries Musk-Mellons, Water-Mellons &c. is not to be beleeved but by those that have seene it,” wrote Maverick.

Massachusetts also had harbors filled with “great Shipps of Burthen” and “many Vessels…of all sorts and seizes,” he wrote. “And I am confident there hath not in any place out of so small a number of People been raised so many able Seamen and Commanders as there hath been.”

In southern New England, he wrote, “it is incredible what hath been done.”

The Puritan by August Saint-Gaudens. Samuel Maverick chafed under their intolerance

Majority Rule

As colonists carved towns out of the wilderness, the Puritans gained power at the expense of the minority Anglicans. They took over Maine, then largely Anglican, and they persecuted Thomas Morton, a free-thinking Anglican in Braintree. They cast out nonconformists, who often ended up in free-thinking Rhode Island.

The Puritans also created and enforced a set of laws that reserved privileges for members of the Puritan church, or freemen. Samuel Maverick was not one of them. As such, he couldn’t hold government office, but he had to pay taxes. He also couldn’t take communion and he couldn’t have his children baptized.

Nevertheless, Samuel Maverick prospered and contributed to the community’s defense. Contemporaries described him as a “whole-souled, generous, hospitable man, of warm impulses and courteous behavior.” He was “a royalist and Episcopalian, living in a strongly fortified residence on Noddle’s Island,” according to A History of East Boston: With Biographical Sketches of Its Early Proprietors, and an Appendix, by William Hylsop Sumner.

Intolerance

Ironically, Maverick owned three slaves. His treatment of them is another story. Suffice it to say he felt he was the one denied civil and religious liberties.

By 1647, Maverick and others began to resent the colony’s rigid laws. He joined several others in a petition to end taxation without representation and to gain basic civil and religious rights.

They complained the colony did not base its laws on the fundamental laws of England. The government also denied them the same civic and religious privileges as the church members, or freemen. They protested they were entitled to those privileges as “freeborn Englishmen of sober lives and conversation.”

Maverick and the other petitioners threatened to take their complaints to England if the Puritans didn’t cave in to their demands.

And so the Puritans sent him to jail for conspiracy and perjury and slapped him with a steep fine. After 12 days he paid the fine and went free.

Successful Complaint, Failed Commission

Maverick wasn’t going to get any satisfaction in England while the English Civil War raged. Nor would he while Oliver Cromwell ruled the country. But when Charles II restored the Crown in 1660, Samuel Maverick headed straight for England to air his complaints about the Puritans to the King.

He brought with him the little book he’d written, outlining the lay of the land. A Briefe Discription of New England and the Severall Townes Therein, Together with the Present Government Thereof received the King’s attention. For centuries it rested in private hands, its existence unknown to but a few. Then in 1875 its owner put the book up for auction and the British Museum bought it.

King Charles II

His little book convinced the king he needed to rein in his independent colonies. Maverick returned to New England in a position of authority as one of four commissioners. The King charged the commissioners with enforcing liberty of conscience and oaths of allegiance as well as forcing local militias to follow the King’s orders.

The commissioners couldn’t exercise their power, though, and Samuel Maverick moved to New York. He is believed to have died sometime around 1670.

Maverick’s Brief Description

Here are excerpts from his descriptions of 20 towns from Maine to Connecticut. (To see all 86, click here.)

Note his disapproval with how the Massachusetts Puritans took over Maine towns, originally settled by Anglicans like himself. And he makes clear his disdain for the poor, weak and Dutch-friendly Plymouth Colony.

Map of New England, 1677

Maine

Pem˜a—Westward from Penobscott (which is the Southermost Fort in Nova Scotia) … is Pem˜aquid…many Families are now settled there… by vertue of [a patent granted by King James I] they hold the Islands of Monahegan and Damerells Coue, and other small ones adjacent Commodious for fishing.
Casco Bay.— In this Casco Bay are many scattering Families settled…[Col.] Alexander Rigby…[held the patent] and under this Goverment the People lived some yeares, till of late the Government of the Massachusits hath made bold to stretch its Jurisdiction to the midle of this Bay, and as lyeing in their way have taken in a dozen of Goverments more.

New Hampshire

Strawberry Bank. The Great House & Isle of Shooles.—Within 2 Myles of the Mouth is Strawberry Banke where are many Families, and a Minister & a Meeting House …This Strawberry Banke is part of 6000 acres granted by Patent about y^eyeare 1620 or 1621, to M^r David Thompson, who with… assistance … went over with a Considerable Company of Servants and built a Strong and Large House, enclosed it with a large and high Palizado and mounted Gunns, and being stored extraordinarly with shot and Ammunition was a Terror to the Indians, who at that time were insulting over the poor weake and unfurnished Planters of Plymouth… all is at this day in the power and at the disposall of the Massachusitts. Two Leagues of lyes the Isle of Shooles one of the best places for ffishing in the land, they have built a Church here and maintaine a Minister.

Massachusetts

Newbury—… the Houses stand at a good distance each from other a feild and Garden between each house, and so on both sides the street for 4 Miles…
Salem—… very commodious for fishing, and many Vessells have been built there and (excep^tBoston) it hath as much Trade as any place in New England.
Marblehead or Foy.—… the greatest Towne for ffishing in New England.
Lynne—… within the bounds of it are the greatest Iron works…
Cambridge—[In] Cambridge … is a Colledge a Master and some Number of Students belonging to it…
The Old State House in Boston
Boston—the Metrapolis of New England lying pleasantly on a plaine and the ascending of a High Mount which lyes about the midle of y^eplaine, …It hath two handsome Churches in it, a handsome market place, and in the midest of it a Statehouse. In the Towne are fouer full companys of ffoote and a Troope of horse…The Towne is full of good shopps well furnished with all kind of Merchandize
Braintree—once called Mount Wolaston, … It subsists by raiseing provisions, and furnishing Boston with wood.
New Plymouth.—… This place was seated about y^eyeare 1620 or 1621 by a company of Brownists, …[They] found this place and there settled liveing extream hardy for some yeares and in great danger of the Indians, and could not Long have subsisted, had not Plymouth Merchants …at Monhegon and Pascattaway … supplyed them…It is a poor small Towne now, The People being removed into Farmes in the Country.
Sandwich—a good Towne … which affords good store of Provisions, and some yeares a quantity of Whalebone made of Whales which drive up dead in that Bay.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island.— It is full of people haveing been a receptacle for people of severall Sorts and Opinions.
Warwick Providence.— I think they still keepe a seeming forme of Goverment but to litle purpose, none submitting to Supream Authority but as they please.

Connecticut

(Pequot Plantation, now Mystic and Stonington—Haveing gone through New Plymouth Goverment we come next to Connecticot Goverment. The first that was under this Goverment was Pequate
Hartford—From Withersfield to Hartford the Metropolis of the Goverment, it is about 3 Miles, it is a gallant Towne, and many rich men in it.
Springfield— This is the Massachusetts bounds. And above Springfeild 8 Miles is another Towne at first Intended but for a tradeing house with the Indians, but the gallant Land about it hath invited men to make it a Toune. This Connecticott River is a great River before y^eTowne[which] is also in the Massachusetts bounds and under its Goverment although 8 Miles from it.
Woodcut of New Haven, 1786
Newhaven—This Towne is the Metropolis of that Goverment, and the Goverment tooke its Name from this Towne; … was the first built in those parts, many stately and costly houses were erected the Streete layd out in a Gallant forme, a very stately Church; but y^eHarbour proveing not Comodious, the land very barren, the Merchants either dead or come away, the rest gotten to their Farmes, The Towne is not so glorious as once it was.
Milford—From Newhaven to Milford it is about 10 Miles, This Towne is gotten into some way of Tradeing to Newfoundland, Barbados, Virginia, So also hath some other Townes in this Goverment.
Greenwich—From Stamford to Greenwich…these two last Townes are under Newhaven Goverment, and there was another place begun and much done in it, but the Dutch came and tooke it by force, and since the people of this Towne call it New Chester…

The Rest of the Story

New England had no shortage of Mavericks, and it’s hard to tell who was the ancestor of the famous Maverick who moved to Texas as a baby. That Maverick, also Samuel, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, served as mayor of San Antonio, owned huge tracts of land and practiced law. He also had a few cows. He didn’t brand his cattle, and, according to lore, those who strayed into another rancher’s herd were called mavericks.

His grandson Maury Maverick coined the term ‘gobbledygook.’

This story was updated in 2022. Image of map of New England: By http://maps.bpl.org – A map of New England, being the first that ever was here cut … places, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27807459.

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New England’s Six Wealthiest Towns (And How They Got That Way)

The wealthiest towns in each New England state all have good schools, beautiful homes and well-preserved historic districts. They are also, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly white.

New England’s wealthiest towns also tend to produce and attract celebrities and highly accomplished people in the arts, sports and business. Some of their residents are hell-bent on keeping the wealthiest towns wealthy. Conservative provocateurs Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter live in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Grover Norquist lives in Weston, Mass.

The Wealthiest Towns Get Started

In many cases, the wealthiest towns started off as sparsely populated farm villages. Then after the railroad came and the Civil War ended, rich people started building country estates on them. Then the estates fell to the income tax and the Great Depression. So when World War II ended, real estate developers pounced on some of these rural enclaves and turned them into suburbs.

In two other cases — New Hampshire and Vermont — the wealthiest towns evolved from historic, well-preserved colonial villages.

Several different statistics can measure a town’s wealth, but we chose per capita income.

Here, then, are the wealthiest towns in each of the six New England states.

New Canaan, Conn.

The famous Glass House was built in one of Connecticut’s wealthiest towns.

Bet you thought it was Old Greenwich, right? But New Canaan has the highest per capita income, $99,016, in the wealthiest county in the wealthiest state in the union. Greenwich at $91,478 and Darien, at $94,376, came in as Connecticut’s second and third wealthiest towns, according to the Connecticut 2014-15 Adjusted Equalized Net Grand List per Capita.

New Canaan started out as a Congregationalist parish in 1731, and didn’t get incorporated until 1801. After the American Revolution, shoemaking took off in the town. Then in 1868, the railroad came to New Canaan, bringing wealthy New Yorkers looking for a country retreat. Lewis Lapham, founder of Texaco, built Waveny House and summered on the estate for many years.

The New Yorkers began to stay year-round, commuting to work in the city. In the 1890s, New Canaan earned the nickname ‘Next Station to Heaven,’ though detractors call it the ‘Next Station to Hell.’ In 1980, The Official Preppy Handbook listed New Canaan as one of the preppiest towns in America.

Like most of New England’s wealthiest towns, New Canaan has preserved some of its colonial buildings. But the town has an unusual concentration of mid-century modern homes, such as Philip Johnson’s Glass House. A group of modern architects known as the Harvard Five lived and worked in New Canaan, all followers of Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius.

Not everyone loved the modern homes. Of the 80 or so built between 1940 and 1960, about 20 have been torn down. The town now tries to preserve them. You can see many of them in the 1997 film The Ice Storm.

Rick Moody, who wrote The Ice Storm, lived in New Canaan. Today, the town’s 20,000-odd residents include quite a few show people, including Martin Mull, Paul Simon, Harry Connick, Jr., Mike Wallace and Brian Williams.

Cape Elizabeth, Maine

A John Calvin Stevens house in Cape Elizabeth, one of Maine’s wealthiest towns. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Cape Elizabeth actually has a lower per capita income than North Oxford, Maine. But North Oxford is technically an unorganized territory and had only 17 residents in 2000, so we’re sticking with the seaside town of Cape Elizabeth.

King Charles I renamed Cape Elizabeth after his sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, when explorer John Smith brought him a list of North American places with native names. Anglican traders and fisherman came to the frontier village, which for decades was embroiled in the French and Indian wars.

In 1765, Cape Elizabeth separated from Falmouth (now Portland).Then in 1895 South Portland separated from Cape Elizabeth. The two towns had diverged in character: Cape Elizabeth remained rural, while South Portland grew with commerce and industry. Then, following the typical pattern, wealthy industrialists found the pretty countryside near the city a perfect place to build their estates. And after World War II, Cape Elizabeth turned into an affluent suburb.

Per capita income in Cape Elizabeth, population about 9,000, was $57,725 in 2016.

You’ve seen pictures of Cape Elizabeth’s most famous landmark, Portland Head Light. The town also has a number of Shingle Style houses designed by John Calvin Stevens. Two film icons lived in town: director John Ford was born there and Bette Davis had a summer home in Cape Elizabeth.

Weston, Mass.

The Henderson House, a private home in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts.

Ever wonder where all those athletes with the astronomical contracts go to live? Try Weston, Mass., the wealthiest town in Massachusetts.

Weston was little more than a field for grazing cattle until its incorporation as a town in 1712. Since the town lies along the Boston Post Road, taverns thrived serving travelers. Two still stand today as historic properties — along with one local historic district, 10 National Register districts, 26 historic areas, and seven houses listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The railroad brought small factories to Weston, and then it brought business moguls who liked the quick train ride from Boston. They began building large estates on land unsuitable for farming.

In 1927, a wool tycoon built Henderson House, the last great summer estate in Weston. About a dozen more huge estates survive, and rich people are building new ones. Hedge fund manager Jim Pallotta in 2007 built a 27,000-square-foot mansion nicknamed ‘the house that ate Weston.’

Weston boomed after World War II. More than half of the town’s increasingly expensive houses were built between 1950 and 1979. By 2017 the population reached 11,389. Today the median home price is about $1.5 million and the per capita income $105,217.

Five of the 50 richest people in Massachusetts live in Weston, and so do some of New England’s most beloved sports heroes: Celtics M.L. Carr, John Havlicek and Robert Parish. Bruins legend Bobby Orr lives in Weston, as do two former Red Sox players, David Ortiz and Jerry Remy.

New Castle, N.H.

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/wealthiest-towns-new-castle-wentworth.jpg

Wentworth-By-The-Sea today presides over one of New Hampshire’s wealthiest towns.

Tiny New Castle, a collection of island on New Hampshire’s seacoast, started out in 1623 as a fishing village. Within the next decade the British built a fort to protect the harbor. The state incorporated New Castle in 1683 and named it after the fort, now a historic landmark known as Fort Constitution.

For many years, the world overlooked the fishing village squeezed onto several small islands covering just .8 miles. That neglect preserved many of New Castle’s colonial-era homes. The town’s residents, 968 in 2010, have restored and preserved many of those houses.

In 1821, bridges connected New Castle to Portsmouth on the mainland. Then in 1874, the town got a huge boost with the construction of the grand hotel, Wentworth-By-The-Sea. The largest structure on New Hampshire’s 18-mile coast, it attracted famous socialites, politicians and business leaders from around the world. At the height of its glory, Wentworth-By-The-Sea accommodated negotiators for the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended war between Japan and Russia in 1905.

Wentworth-By-The-Sea began to decline with the rise of the automobile, but New Castle’s fortunes continued to rise. Per capita income tops the state at $97,601, according to the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.

Local preservationists saved Wentworth-By-The-Sea from the wrecking ball in 1997 by finding a new owner, Ocean Properties. By 2003, the restored hotel opened as a Marriott hotel property.

Barrington, R.I.

A town hall that’s appropriate for one of Rhode Island’s wealthiest towns.

You’d probably guess Newport as the wealthiest town in Rhode Island because of its famous Gilded Age mansions. But you’d be wrong. Barrington, just southeast of Providence, actually has the highest per capita income in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. Per capita income for Barrington was $59,464. Newport wasn’t even second. That honor belongs to Jamestown, just west of Newport.

Congregationalist Separatists founded Barrington in 1717, and for many years it remained a farm community. Then brickmaking companies moved into town, employing many French-Canadians and Italians. After World War II, the flight from the city began to transform Barrington into a bedroom suburb.

The population more than doubled between 1950 and 1960. In 2015, 16,240 people lived in Barrington. Spalding Gray, Sean Spicer and Roger Angell came from Barrington.

Like most of the wealthiest towns in New England, Barrington has preserved its history in nine historic districts and claims to have excellent schools.

Old Bennington, Vt.

The Old First Church of Old Bennington, one of Vermont’s wealthiest towns.

Old Bennington, an incorporated village inside Bennington, is not only the wealthiest town in Vermont, it’s possibly the most historic.

In 2010, Old Bennington’s per capita income topped Vermont’s list at $40,884, putting it ahead of Manchester Village by $33. Only 139 people lived in Old Bennington that year, which means one wealthy resident could have skewed the per-capita income figures upward — or downward.

However, Old Bennington’s many large, expensively restored Revolutionary-era homes, suggest most Old Benningtonians are comfortably fixed.

New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth chartered Bennington (and named it after himself) in 1749, making it one of the oldest as well as wealthiest towns in the state. Vermont law later created the incorporated village, a defined area within a town. Vermont’s incorporated villages can provide some municipal services like drinking water, sewer systems, police, fire, trash collection and building code enforcement.

Its historic district includes 93 buildings and objects, including the Battle of Bennington Monument and the Old First Church, named Vermont’s ‘colonial shrine’ by the Legislature. Robert Frost and his wife Elinor are buried behind the church, along with 75 Revolutionary War soldiers who died in the Battle of Bennington. A stone near the cemetery marks the spot where Ethan Allen’s house once stood.

Images: Glass House, By Staib – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7797606; Peirce-Henderson House in Weston, By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15922502; Old First Church By Nheyob – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16986574. Canaan Main Street By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/gcdougherty/all-towns-and-cities/north_canaan_ct/canaanvillagemainst-3.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74545267.

This story was updated in 2023.

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How Scottish POWS Were Sold as Slave Labor in New England

As many as 400 Scottish POWS captured in the Battles of Worcester and Dunbar were shipped to New England in the 1650s as temporary slaves to work in iron mills, saw mills and farms.

The Great Migration of Puritans had ended, and the colonists badly needed workers. Across the sea, Oliver Cromwell’s new government had the costly and vexing task of managing thousands of Scottish POWs. One solution: deport them to New England, Virginia and Barbados.

Some of the Scottish POWs sent to New England were sold as a group to work in the Saugus Iron Works or the saw mills of Berwick Maine. Others went to York as servants. Still others were sold individually.

The Puritan minister John Cotton defended the practice. He wrote, “The Scots, whom God delivered into your hands at Dunbarre, and whereof sundry were sent hither, we have been desirous (as we could) to make their yoke easy. Such as were sick of scurvy or other diseases have not wanted physick and chyrurgery. They have not been sold for slaves to perpetual servitude, but for 6 or 7 or 8 yeares, as we do our owne [indentured servants] …”

As one historian noted drily, “Cotton’s sanction deadened the New England conscience.”

Cromwell Captures Scottish POWs

Cromwell and his Puritan followers executed King Charles I in January 1649. The Scottish people had largely sided with Cromwell, but they turned on Cromwell and declared Charles’ son king.

In the summer of 1650, Cromwell and his forces invaded Scotland. The Scottish Parliament, in response, conscripted thousands of young Scottish men between the ages of 19 and 25, though some were as young as 12. They clashed at the short, brutal Battle of Dunbar. Within an hour, 12,000 Parliamentarians defeated 11,000 Scots, killing as many as 2,000 while losing only 20 men.

scottish-pows-cromwell-dunbar-andrew-carrick-gow

Cromwell at Dunbar by Andrew Carrick Dow

Cromwell’s army released thousands of sick and wounded Scotts, but marched the Scottish POWs like cattle to Durham, 100 miles away. Many perished of hunger or disease on the march, though some escaped. Some were executed.

In Durham, the English imprisoned the Scottish POWs in the castle and cathedral. About 1600 died of dysentery, disease or starvation. The English had them buried in mass graves, only recently discovered.

The Unity

Two months after the battle, 150 Scottish POWs boarded the Unity and sailed to London, then to Charlestown, Mass. The shipmaster, Augustine Walker, paid five pounds for each man and sold them for 20 to 30 pounds.

Technically they signed contracts agreeing to ‘indentured servitude,’ but in reality most spoke Gaelic and many couldn’t read or write.

About 50 went to the Saugus Iron Works, the first successful iron works in the colonies. It produced much-needed iron bars for tools, building materials and cooking implements. The Scottish POWs worked 12-hour days at hard, dangerous labor. They worked as woodcutters to supply the wood to make charcoal, or as forge hands, as blacksmiths, as miners and farmhands.

Saugus Iron Works

Another 25 Scottish POWs were taken to the Newichwannock River, now the Salmon Falls River in Berwick, Maine. They went with an Englishman named Richard Leader, who got hold of an abandoned mill. Leader put the Scottish laborers to work sawing Maine white pine trees, needed for the British Navy.

Valentine Hill also bought some of the Scottish POWs from the Battle of Dunbar, and worked them in his sawmills at Durham Falls and the Lamprey River in New Hampshire.

Battle of Worcester

Exactly one year after the Battle of Dunbar, Cromwell’s much larger force defeated 16,000 mostly Scottish army at Worcester, England.

It was the last battle of the English Civil War. Three thousand men died in battle, and 10,000 taken prisoner.

The Battle of Worcester.

According to tradition, the English lined up the Scottish POWs in order to shoot every tenth man. A Highlander named Micum McIntyre saw his number would soon be up, broke rank and ran for his life. A horseman chased after him and wounded him, but spared his life.

The English then drove the Scottish POWs like cattle to London.

A witness described them.

…all of them [were] stript, many of them cutt, some without stockings or shoes and scarce so much left upon them as to cover their nakedness, eating peas and handfuls of straw in their hands which they had pulled upon the fields as they passed.

In London, the English confined them outdoors on artillery fields. Again, many died of disease, starvation and exposure while the government debated what to do with them.

John and Sara

About 275 Scottish POWs were sent to Boston about the John and Sara, where Thomas Kemble, a Charlestown merchant, took them on consignment.

Kemble found a ready market among planters and mill owners for the human cargo, as the news spread about the first shipment of Scottish POWs. So when the second shipment arrived, Kemble easily sold the Scottish POWs in the Massachusetts towns of Boston, Charlestown, Cambridge, Dedham, Concord, Hingham, Ipswich, Reading and Salem.

Kemble sold others in Exeter, N.H., and in Durham, where he partnered with Valentine Hill. So many ended up in York, Maine, that for years the town had the nickname ‘Scotland.’

Servitude

Some of the Scottish POWs were sold individually as servants. Alexander Gordon, for example, ‘agreed’ to seven years of slavery under Samuel Stratton of Watertown. Under his contract, he could never leave his master’s premises without his permission and he couldn’t marry. He had to do everything Stratton told him to do, so long as it was legal.

Gordon complained to the court of ill-treatment and petitioned for his freedom, apparently without success. A sawmill owner in Exeter, N.H., named Nicholas Lissen bought him and six other Scottish POWs. His slavery did end, however, and he married the boss’s daughter, Mary Lissen. Alexander Gordon died in Exeter in 1697, and his children had many descendants.

Daniel Blacke, who came over on the John and Sara, probably got sold to the son of the Rev. Zechariah Symmes, one of Charlestown’s most prominent citizens. In 1654, Blacke assaulted and beat up his master, and a court sent him to prison in 1654. Blacke apparently left prison, married and had children. New York Gov. Frank S. Black traced his ancestry to the Scottish POW.

Freedom for Scottish POWs

The Scottish POWs were all still of marriageable age when freed from bondage, and many did marry. Some married Irish housemaids, also brought to the colonies as slaves. Few ever returned home to Scotland.

The lucky ones married the bosses’ daughters, won land grants and appeared on tax rolls.

Seven of Valentine Hill’s Scottish POWs, for example, were listed as taxpayers in Dover, N.H., after their slavery ended.

David Hume, who came over on the John and Sara, settled in Dedham, Mass., where his name morphed into Holmes. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the poet, was sixth in descent from him.

William Furbish (probably Farrabas, which became Forbes in Massachusetts) bought land in Kittery sometime before 1664, but was punished in 1681 for calling the King’s officials, ‘Divills and hell bound.’ Furbish apparently had not forgiven the English for the Battle of Dunbar. He had seven children and many descendants. Micum McIntyre, the Scottish POW who ran for his life, worked in Cocheco Mills and then got a land grant in Kittery, Maine.

2nd Class Citizens

The less lucky Scottish POWs drifted to Boston when their slavery ended, destitute and without jobs. Bostonians viewed them with scorn and classed them with African-Americans and Indians. On Jan. 6, 1657, several Scottish POWs formed the Scots’ Charitable Society for the relief of Scotsmen, the oldest charity in the Western Hemisphere.

By the 19th century, the Scots’ Charitable Society maintained the Scots Temporary Home in Boston and a burial plot in Mt. Auburn Cemetery.

Scots’ Charitable Society burial plot at Mt. Auburn Cemetery

Some of the Scottish POWs like David Hamilton survived Cromwell’s forces only to die at the hands of Indians. Hamilton came over on the John and Sara and got sold to a saw mill owner in Southern New Hampshire. Then he was moved to York, Maine, where he was killed on Sept. 28, 1691.

In 1656, Thomas Kemble spent two hours in the stocks for kissing his wife on Sunday. His daughter, Fanny Kemble Knight, took a famous horseback ride alone along the Boston Post Road.

End Notes

Note: We deliberately chose the words ‘slave,’ ‘slavery’ and ‘slave labor’ because we view any kind of forced labor as slavery. That includes sex trafficking, forced labor, debt bondage, domestic servitude or unlawful recruitment. There are tens of millions of slaves in the world today. If you want to comment that it’s racist to call white indentured servants slaves, we suggest a better use of your time would be to help one of the many anti-slavery organizations in the world today. A list of them can be found here.

Descendants of the Scottish POWs from the Battles of Dunbar and Worcester have a web site. The Saugus Iron Works is now a national historic site.

Images: Saugus Iron Works By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16192079; Mt. Auburn burial plot, By Bill Ilott from Boston, USA – https://www.flickr.com/photos/bostonphotosphere/4185723469/ Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, MA, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10902508. Battle of Worcester By Published by Machell Stace – http://www.learningcurve.gov.uk/civilwar/g5/cs2/s5/, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1943037. This story was updated in 2023.

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John Endecott and the Politics of the First Massachusetts Flag

In 1634, John Endecott and Roger Williams agreed on one thing. The first Massachusetts flag had to be changed.

Endecott, of Salem, was one of the more radical of the early Puritan settlers of Massachusetts. He lost some of his power when John Winthrop arrived from London with a colonial charter.

Winthrop became governor and Endecott became a councilor.

John Endecott Removes the Cross

Part of the flag carried a red St. George’s cross on a white background. But the design offended the Puritan sensibilities of Massachusetts colonists. They felt the red cross had roots in Catholicism. And, at the time, they had questions about King Charles I’s Catholic leanings.

Under goading from the religious radical Roger Williams, soon facing banishment to Rhode Island, John Endecott had the red cross removed from the flag that flew at Salem. The public supported Endecott’s actions. But he was well ahead of his time, a fact that worried the more politically astute members of the colony.

Nearly 10 years would pass before Civil War broke out in England and the English people would gleefully strip the red cross from public symbols. And so the Massachusetts Court of Assistants called on Endecott to answer for his actions.

John Winthrop noted the matter in his journal: “At the court of assistant complaint was made by some of the country that the ensign at Salem was defaced viz: one part of the red cross was taken out… Much matter was made of this fearing it would be taken as a an act of rebellion.”

Massachusetts’ leaders worried that the defacing of the flag would cause trouble in England if the government took offense. They wrote a letter to the colony’s lawyer in London, John Winthrop’s brother-in-law Emanuel Downing. In it they relayed the details of what had happened and noted that they would punish the perpetrators.

Winthrop hoped the letter would quell any anger if the public learned of flag defacing.

Vindication

But the letter wasn’t exactly true. When the Court of Assistants met in January of 1635, feeling against the red cross symbol ran high and the court couldn’t agree about what to do.

In May of 1685, a court was appointed to review Endecott’s actions and it censured him. The court didn’t declare that Endecott was wrong in his reasoning. that indeed the cross was a sign of Catholic beliefs and should be removed from the flag. But Endecott had overstepped his authority.

Winthrop noted: “They found his offense to be great, rash and without discretion, taking on more authority than he had.”

But the court magistrates also noted part of the problem: Endecott had not consulted the general court in his actions. That meant the colony could not have considered altering all the flags. The result gave the appearance, they concluded, that others in Massachusetts supported idolatry in contrast to Salem.

Endecott was banned from leadership positions for a year as a censure, a fairly mild slap on the wrist. But as political opinion in England caught up with Endecott, he rose through the ranks of government. Shortly after the English Civil War broke out, Endecott won appointment as governor of Massachusetts.

Thanks to: How John Endecott Cut the Red Cross from the Flag by Nathan Hawkes. This story last updated in 2022.

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Boston’s John Allen: The Uncool Revolutionary

John Allen was one of the first American churchmen to declare that King George III was so badly managing colonial affairs that he had abdicated his right to govern the American colonies. Not only that, he hinted that if George wasn’t careful, he might wind up like King Charles I – beheaded for treason.

King George III

Allen’s ideas would eventually turn into conventional thought, and propagandists such as Thomas Paine would expound on them. But in 1772, Allen had crawled out on a limb with his ideas, and as it turned out the limb couldn’t hold him.

An obscure minister in a non-mainstream religion, he had financial trouble in England and few friends among Boston’s elite. He made John Adams uneasy. But for one shining moment — the aftermath of the Gaspee Affair — he found his audience.

A passionate and controversial Baptist, Allen delivered his fieriest speech at a Thanksgiving celebration in December of 1772. He turned the speech into a pamphlet: Oration Upon the Beauties of Liberty, or the Essential Rights of Americans. It became one of the best-selling political pamphlets in America before publication of the Declaration of Independence. It passed through seven printings in four cities.

John Allen, Baptist Minister

The Baptist pulpit was an odd place for such radical thinking to spring up. Baptist leaders of the day focused on obtaining parity and equal treatment with other religions in New England. They rarely ventured into the squabbles between the colonies and the mother country. But Allen’ had a much bigger vision. He railed against taxation, parliamentary shenanigans and even took shots directly at the king. He even criticized Britain for allowing slavery in its colonies, though his publisher couldn’t include that issue in the first editions of the Oration. It made it only into later printings.

Allen was born in England and had been driven from the pulpit there because of his radical thinking. Among other issues, he refused to condemn the Sandemanians, a religious sect that preached the Bible gave no basis for granting authority to a central church.

By the time he left England, Allen had also been tarred with allegations that he tried to pass a bogus check. He cleared his name, but the incident called into question his fitness as a minister.

John Davis, pastor of Second Baptist Church in Boston, learned that Allen had departed England and arrived in Boston. In 1772, Davis was dying. He requested that the congregation invite Allen to preach at the church and potentially take over the pulpit.

An Oration, Upon the Beauties of Liberty, Or the Essential Rights of the Americans by John Allen

Bad Reports

The congregation disagreed about letting Allen should speak. Churchman Isaac Backus noted in his journal: “Met with Mr. John Allen a noted writer from England, who has been preaching in Boston lately, but we have some very bad reports about him; how they’ll turn out I know not.”

Meanwhile, Allen had friends among the Sons of Liberty and among American sympathizers in England. With a little back room pressure, he got his chance in the pulpit.

Sons of Liberty pouring hot tea down the throat of the customs commissioner after tarring and feathering him.

Allen chose the 1772 Thanksgiving address – guaranteed to be widely attended and noted – to deliver his Oration. The colonies were in an uproar over the king’s appointment of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the burning of the British ship Gaspee in Rhode Island. The commission planned to send the Rhode Islanders who burned the ship to England for trial, and Allen used that as the springboard for his rant against the English government.

Allen, like all speakers of the day, never declared his disloyalty to the monarchy. But he made his opinion clear. “An arbitrary despotic power in a prince, is the ruin of a nation, of the King, of the crown, and of the subjects; therefore it is to be feared, abhorred, detested and destroyed. . . The King of England has no power to enact, or put in force any law that may oppress (the Americans); his very attempting to do it, at once destroys is right to reign over them.”

Too Radical?

He went on to call for a sort of American parliament to make rules to govern the colonies. He also declared that if the king persisted “in being influenced and dictated by his Ministry,” he might well risk the same fate of his predecessor Charles I, overthrown by revolutionaries.

James Otis by Henry Blackburn

Many people read Allen’s pamphlet, though not everyone found his hostility to their liking. John Adams, in his diary, noted James Otis “reads to large Circles of the common People, Allen’s Oration on the Beauties of Liberty and recommends it as an excellent Production.”

Adams felt such radical ideas as giving voting rights to un-landed citizens took democracy too far. Still, he noted, Otis’ devotion to the rights of Americans was unquestioned.

Allen published his pamphlets under the nom de guerre British Bostonian. He proposed one last pamphlet in 1774, The Patriotic Whisper in the Ears of the King; or the Grand Request of the People of America Made Manifest. Intended as a Chariot of Liberty for the Sons of America. But if it was ever published, it was lost. Allen slipped into obscurity – his position as radical pamphleteer filled by thinkers such as Thomas Paine.

This story was updated in 2022.

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When Cleveland Belonged to Connecticut

The City of Cleveland and nearly all of Northeastern Ohio once belonged to Connecticut. The land, 3.5 million acres of it, was called the Western Reserve.

It’s why a university in Cleveland is called Case Western Reserve. Towns in Northeastern Ohio have Connecticut names like Norwich, Saybrook, New London, Litchfield, Mansfield and Plymouth. Some of those towns even have New England-style commons and white meetinghouses.

Cleveland-area schoolchildren, at least the ones paying attention, know well the story of Connecticut pioneer Moses Cleaveland. He brought 50 men and women to the shores of Lake Erie in 1796. Less well known is how Connecticut got the land in the first place.

Colonial Imperialism

Moses Cleaveland

For a small colony, Connecticut had big ambitions. It wanted to own parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and much of America’s western frontier – all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

So in 1662, Connecticut’s governor John Winthrop the Younger went to England with the draft of a charter extending the colony’s lands and political rights. He intended to present it to King Charles II and ask for his approval and royal signature.

He had a little problem, though. Connecticut’s Puritans had supported Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Cromwell deposed Charles’ father, King Charles I. A panel of 59 commissioners – ‘king killers’ – sat in judgment of Charles and signed his death warrant. He was beheaded in 1649. Eleven years later, Charles II returned to the throne and sought revenge on the men who ordered his father’s execution. He had Cromwell’s body dug up and his head cut off for display outside the palace.

Three king killers fled to America, where they found refuge in New Haven. Because of that, Winthrop knew Charles had attitude about Connecticut.

When Winthrop arrived in England, he got an audience with the King. At the start of the interview, Winthrop showed him ‘a rich, massive gold finger-ring.’ The King’s father had given it to his own father, Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop, ‘as a mark of honor for valuable political services.’ The gesture moved Charle to tears.

So Charles granted Connecticut a charter extending its north and south boundaries to the Pacific Ocean. No one really knew how much land that meant. That was the same charter hidden in the Charter Oak when Gov. Edmund Andros tried to seize it.

Western Reserve

In Ohio, the Western Reserve was a 120-mile strip of land from Lake Erie to a line just south of what is now Akron and Youngstown.

At the western end of the Reserve, 500,000 acres were set aside for people whose homes were burned by British troops during the American Revolution. The land was called the Firelands and the Sufferers’ Lands. Most of the fire victims sold their claims to land speculators. Few ever settled in the Firelands.

After the American Revolution, Connecticut gave up some of its land to the federal government in exchange for its war debt, but it hung on to the Western Reserve.

Map of the Western Reserve

Meanwhile, prominent and wealthy men formed the Connecticut Land Company to buy the Western Reserve and divide it into lots.

Most of them came from the Town of Suffield, which once belonged to Massachusetts. The speculators included:

Peleg Sanford, the grandson of Anne Hutchinson and later governor of the Colony of Rhode Island.
Pierpont Edwards, the son of minister Jonathan Edwards, uncle of Aaron Burr and ancestor of J. P. Morgan.
Aaron Olmsted, a sea captain who made his fortune in the China trade.
Moses Cleaveland, an able and energetic lawyer and surveyor who had served in the American Revolution.

Sometime around 1795, Connecticut sold the Western Reserve to the Connecticut Land Company for $1,200,000. Cleaveland was sent to survey the land into townships and negotiate with the Indians who lived there.

Becoming Cleveland

Cleveland Skyline

Moses Cleaveland brought a surveying party of 50 with him. Some traveled on horseback, some by boats. The arrived at the mouth of Conneaut Creek and Lake Erie on July 4, 1796.

The group then celebrated its arrival in what would become Cleveland with toasts to the president of the United States, the state of New Connecticut and the Connecticut Land Company.

Then they wished the ‘Port of Independence and the 50 sons and daughters who have entered it this day be successful and prosperous.”

“May these 50 sons and daughters multiply in 16 years 16 times 50,” they toasted. And they wished every person ‘have his bowsprit trimmed and ready to enter every port that opens.”

They then gave three cheers, drank several pails of grog and went to bed.

Cleaveland Becomes Cleveland

On July 22, Cleaveland landed at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. He climbed the bank and saw a beautiful plain that looked like a good place for a city. So he paced out a 10-acre town common that is now Public Square. His followers called the place Cleaveland.

Moses Cleaveland then returned to Connecticut and died there some years later. He never returned to the Western Reserve.

There are several stories about how Cleaveland became Cleveland. One says a newspaper editor in 1830 discovered that ‘Cleaveland’ was too long for a headline, so he left out the ‘a.’ Another is that Cleaveland’s surveyors spelled it Cleveland on the original map.

In 1800, Connecticut finally gave up its sovereignty over the Western Reserve. Ohio then became a state in 1803.

Map: CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1290884. Photo of Cleveland: By No machine-readable author provided. Avogadro94~commonswiki 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=1061960