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Kingston NH

Josiah Bartlett, Founding Father, Gets Used to Wrongness

Dr. Josiah Bartlett saved his own life in the same spirit he signed the Declaration of Independence: by questioning authority.

He was the first to vote for independence during the Continental Congress in 1775. He was the second to sign the Declaration of Independence. His fictional descendent starred as the fictional president of the television series, West Wing. He himself was briefly president – of New Hampshire.

Bartlett was a dedicated physician and a true citizen-legislator in the mold of Gen. John Stark. Both left their homes and affairs when their country needed them but returned as soon as they could.

Throughout his life, he depended on his own judgment rather than accepted wisdom.

“Just be wrong,” he wrote. “Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong, and get used to it.”

Josiah Bartlett

Bartlett from an early age wanted to be a doctor.

He was born Nov. 21, 1729, on a farm in Amesbury, Mass., to a strict Puritan family. According to his biographer, from his youth he questioned Puritan doctrine and believed in the ‘free agency and moral accountability’ of mankind.

Josiah apprenticed to a local doctor and by 21 moved to the frontier town of Kingston, N.H., where he set up his medical practice.

Two years later in 1753 he developed a high fever that would have killed him had he followed the medical wisdom of the day.

His doctor ordered a ‘warm and stimulating regimen,’ but as Bartlett got worse the doctor said he would die. But Bartlett asked two young men who watched him to pour a quart of cider and give it to him in small doses. They at first refused, afraid it would kill him, but Bartlett prevailed. Throughout the night, they gave him half-teacups full of cider. The cider caused him to sweat and broke the fever.

In 1754, an epidemic of throat distemper struck Kingston. It was a serious and often fatal disease among children. Bartlett experimented with different drugs. He discovered Peruvian bark, which contains quinine, relieved the symptoms long enough to allow recovery.

His practice flourished. He was friendly and smart and interested in political affairs.

Revolutionary

Josiah Bartlett won election to the New Hampshire Legislature in 1765, but he quickly grew disillusioned with the greed of the royal governor, Benning Wentworth.

Wentworth granted a number of charters, reserving large tracts of land for himself and the Church of England. His nephew John Wentworth succeeded him as governor and continued the practice. Bartlett began to oppose Gov. John Wentworth’s policies.

Wentworth tried to coopt Bartlett by appointing him justice of the peace and a colonel in the militia. In 1775, Wentworth was run out of New Hampshire, but not before he fired Bartlett from his appointed posts.

Around then Bartlett lost his home to fire, presumably set by Tories. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1775-76, the first to vote for independence. When the tally was counted, Bartlett ‘made the rafters echo with his approval.’

Detail from John Trumbull’s ‘The Declaration of Independence. Arrow points to Bartlett.

He signed the Declaration of Independence right after John Hancock; like the other signers he could have been hanged for it. He returned to New Hampshire, but when duty called he accompanied John Stark to the Battle of Bennington and tended to wounded soldiers. In 1778 he went back to the congress and worked on drafting the Articles of Confederation, but then begged off and went home.

Governor Bartlett

Though Bartlett wasn’t a lawyer, he was appointed a judge and rose to chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. When New Hampshire ratified the U.S. Constitution he was elected U.S. senator, but he declined the post. Instead he became president of New Hampshire and then its first governor. Soon after retiring he died at home in Kingston, age 65.

“Unlike many others, he had no family, or party connections, to raise him to influence in society;” wrote the Rev. Charles Goodrich in 1829. “But standing on his own merits, he passed through a succession of offices which he sustained with uncommon honour to himself, and the duties of which he discharged not only to the satisfaction of his fellow citizens. but with the highest benefit to his country.”

His home in Kingston, built in 1774, is still in the Bartlett family. His descendants used to give tours throughout the year, but in 2014 the house was put on the market.

The gastropub, J. Bartlett’s Public House, located inside of the Whole Foods Market grocery store in Nashua, is also named after him. So is the town of Bartlett, N.H.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Great Throat Distemper of 1735

In 1735, a young child in Kingston, N.H., came down with a cold and all of New England got sick. The Great Throat Distemper of 1735 to 1740 was one of the greatest epidemics ever to terrify New England.

Satirical painting by James Gillray mocking quack medicine.

The disease, which modern physicians recognize as diphtheria, first showed up in in the spring of 1735. The symptoms started out looking like a cold that produced a very sore throat. But they then escalated to lost appetite and fever. The bacteria then attacked the throat, nose and lungs – poisoning the tissue and killing it off. The coating of dead tissue eventually interfered with breathing and killed the sufferer.

The Throat Distemper

Travel patterns in New England made it relatively simple for epidemiologists to track the spread of the throat distemper. Ernest Caulfield described its path in his The “Throat Distemper” of 1735-1740.

Most of the old towns between Casco Bay and Boston were connected by a road which ran roughly parallel to the coast and far enough inland to avoid the many small inlets, marsh lands, and sandy dunes. A few weeks after the Kingston outbreak the disease invaded Kittery and Hampton Falls, two important trading centers along this road. From Kittery the infection was carried northward into Maine and from Hampton Falls southward across disputed territory into the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Amesbury and Salisbury were soon involved, and by September the epidemic had crossed the Merrimac River and like an invading army concentrated its forces at Newbury before it started down the old Bay Path towards Boston.

The throat distemper – which mostly affected children and killed often within three days – sparked fear as it spread.

In Ipswich, all eight children in the household of Mark and Hephzibah How died during the month of November 1735. A neighbor family also reported losing all eight children. As many as four children were buried in a single grave, a fact that was noted in newspapers as far away as New York.

Early Baptism

Church records showed parents pressed ministers into performing many early baptisms. They did it “By Reason of Dangerous Sickness” to stay ahead of the undertakers.

Rowley, Mass., would lose one-eighth of its population to the throat distemper. Nearby Byfield would lose one-seventh.

In Newbury, Dr. John Fitch actively tried to stop the disease. He contracted it and died. The march of the throat distemper continued through Beverly, Marblehead, Lynn and into Boston as doctors and towns searched for cures.

They also quarantined victims of the throat distemper. The town of Exeter, N.H., seized the house where a young man had died of the disease and quarantined his brother until he, too, died.

No Diagnosis

Physicians had trouble agreeing on a diagnosis for the disease, calling it cynanche, angina, canker, bladders, rattles or throat distemper. Scarlet fever was also present during 1735, and children were dying of both. More commonly the illness was called “the strangling angel of children.”

In 1735, a vaccine for diphtheria was more than a hundred years in the future. Treatment of the disease was crude and painful. When the throat distemper raged in Boston, a notice in the Boston Gazette offered treatment advice:

First be sure that a vein be opened under the tongue, and if that can’t be done, open a vein in the arm, which must be first done, as all other means will be ineffectual. Then take borax or honey to bathe or annoint the mouth and throat, and lay on the Throat a plaister Vngiuntum Dialthae. To drink a decoction of Devil’s bitt or Robbin’s Plantain, with some Sal Prunelle dissolved therein, as often as the patient will drink. If the body be costive use a clyster agreeable to the nature of the Distemper. … But be sure and let blood, and that under the tongue. We have many times made Blisters under the arms, but that has proved sometimes dangerous.

Boston vs. New Hampshire

In Boston, it seemed, patients responded better to treatment. In other towns, treatment rarely succeeded. Whole families of children – six and seven or more at a time – died. Caulfield suggests that Boston, in fact, first experienced a rarely mild epidemic of scarlet fever, which was susceptible to treatment. Other towns, however, were experiencing the diphtheria invading from New Hampshire.

In Newbury, Mass., people theorized that the disease was connected to an explosion in the population of caterpillars in the summer of 1735. The noxious caterpillars covered the roads and houses. They could even float across streams. They crackled when carriage wheels crushed them and caused the wheels to grow slippery.

A prayer and sermon seemed to extinguish the caterpillars, but doubts persisted that they also caused the throat distemper.

In Haverhill, Mass., a pamphlet explained that children’s wailing and coughing showed God or supernatural beings spoke through them. In 1738 the throat distemper epidemic entered its third year and a 17-page poem about it appeared in pamphlet form. AWAKENING CALLS TO EARLY PIETY suggested the disease resulted from impious behavior.

Carved cherub from The Burying Point, Salem

Piety and Throat Distemper

A second pamphlet, Early Piety Encouraged, tried to tamp down fears of catching the disease from sick neighbors or friends: Let me tell you, it is an inordinate and sinful Fear that you have of the Distemper, if it keep you from going nigh your Neighbors, to tend up them, to watch with them, or in any other Respect to be helpful to them.

Gradually the disease progressed into Connecticut and sporadically to Western Massachusetts. Death counts were not as well documented, but throat distemper is noted in some towns. Coventry, Conn., then with 800 people, lost 54 to the disease in 1737. East Haven, Conn., lost 26 from a population of 200.

The outbreak of 1735, which lasted until 1740, was probably not the first case of diphtheria in the New England colonies. But it was the most contagious. Residents of Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the throat distemper was known to exist earlier, suffered lower mortality rates as they had some resistance to the disease.

Maine and New Hampshire, on the other hand, were easier targets. The outbreak coincided with outbreaks of diphtheria across the world.

Across New England some 5,000 people died of diphtheria between 1735 and 1740. More than 75 percent were children. Overall, it killed 22 of every 1,000 people. In New Hampshire, where it struck first and worst, 75 out of every 1,000 people died of it.

Thanks to the wonderfully thorough The “Throat Distemper” of 1735-1740 by Ernest Caulfield, Parts one and two. Well worth a read. This story about the Great Throat Distemper was updated in 2022.

Image: Carved cherub By Robert Linsdell from St. Andrews, Canada – File:The Burying Point, Salem (493768) (11362885626).jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89213439.

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When Paul Revere Rode to New Hampshire

On Dec. 13, 1774, Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth, N.H., to warn the redcoats were coming. It was a much less famous ride than the one he made four months later, but it did have consequences.

Hundreds of New Hampshire patriots would respond to Revere’s message by storming the colony’s only fort, William and Mary in New Castle. The conflict had elements of farce, since only six of the King’s men defended the fort. But the patriots crossed the bright line of treason when they took what belonged to the King.

Would phone spying have identified Paul Revere?

Paul Revere, 6 years before he rode to Portsmouth. Photo courtesy Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Rebellion Looms

In December 1774, the Revolutionary War approached. Because King George feared an armed rebellion, in October he issued a confidential Order in Council forbidding the export of arms and ammunition to the American colonies.

Secretary of State Lord Dartmouth followed up the order with a letter to all the royal governors. It ordered them to seal every port against the import of munitions that could aid a rebellion.

The American patriots feared the British would seize their gunpowder and munitions – again. On Sept. 1, 1774, British troops had removed gunpowder from the powder house in Charlestown, Mass. (now Powder House Square in Somerville).

As a result, the patriots moved arms inland from Newport, R.I., Providence and New London, Conn. Then a rumor spread in Boston that redcoats were on their way to seize powder from Fort William and Mary.

The stone fort stood at the mouth of the Piscataqua River guarding access to the Portsmouth harbor and to Kittery, Maine, then part of Massachusetts. The six men who would try to hold the fort reported to the royal governor, John Wentworth.

Paul Revere Rode to NH

Fort William and Mary

Paul Revere and his network of patriots caught wind of the new policy. They knew the lightly guarded fort in New Castle was vulnerable to attack. So Boston’s Committee of Correspondence told him to warn the people of New Hampshire about the British plans for Fort William and Mary.

Early on the morning of Dec. 13, Paul Revere rode the 66 miles to Portsmouth. Frozen slush filled the rutted roads and a stiff west wind pierced his clothing. As he neared Portsmouth, dusk turned to dark. He headed for Market Square looking for someone he knew. He recognized William Torrey, and asked him where he could find Samuel Cutts, a patriot merchant. Torrey found Cutts for Revere.

Samuel Cutts

Cutts quickly convened the town’s committee of correspondence so Revere could report the news: British troops were on their way to Fort William and Mary. The patriots sort of got it right. British naval vessels had headed from Boston, but to make sure no one brought guns and powder into the northern ports.

A Loyalist townsman — it isn’t clear who — told Wentworth of Revere’s arrival. Wentworth sent a rider to Boston to ask for help from Gov. Thomas Gage. Gage ordered a small vessel to sail to Portsmouth with a detachment of marines and a 20-gun frigate to follow. They arrived too late.

The Raid

Early the next morning, a fife and drummer marched through the streets of Portsmouth summoning men to raid the fort. Four hundred men mustered by noon, and a fleet of small boats formed.

As a snowstorm began at 3 pm, some of the men paddled down the Piscataqua River while some marched overland.

The raiders approached the fort and demanded the six soldiers inside surrender. Capt. John Cochran told them ‘on their peril not to enter.’

The New Hampshire men then rushed the fort as Cochran and his five men tried to fend them off with cannon fire, shot and hand-to-hand fighting. Finally Cochran offered to surrender his sword, but the raiders let him keep it.

Then Alexander Scammell, a Harvard-trained lawyer from Durham, pulled down the British flag flying over the fort. Cochran drew his sword and the raiders pinioned his arms. Another soldier tried to stop them and a raider knocked him down with the butt of his pistol. The raiders confined Cochran and his soldiers.

The patriots then broke open the powder house. They took 100 barrels of gunpowder subsequently used in the Siege of Boston.

Start Spreading the News

Couriers fanned out across the countryside spreading the news. John Giddinge, an Exeter doctor who participated in the raid, wrote to Josiah Bartlett, then serving on the committee of correspondence from Kingston.

Giddinge wrote that Exeter was ‘happily furnished’ with 72 barrels of gunpowder. He suggested storing some with the Sons of Liberty in Kingstown. Giddinge also thought it would be ‘necessary and pleasant’ if some of the Sons came to Exeter as well.

John Sullivan by A. Tenney

Bartlett in turn wrote a letter to the citizens of Sandown, N.H. — one of the many that circulated after the raid.

Bartlett wrote that an express rider brought him a letter late the night before. It told him the British would try to seize the powder and that men from Exeter were ready to go to help Portsmouth. Kingstown citizens were also meeting to ‘consult upon the occasion,’ and Bartlett advised Sandown to do the same.

The Second Raid

Bartlett’s letter arrived too late. At daybreak on Dec. 15, a thousand armed men from across New Hampshire and Maine began to appear in Portsmouth.

John Sullivan led them to the parade in front of the colonial State House, where Wentworth and the General Court were meeting in emergency session. The patriots stood outside and demanded to know whether Royal troops were on the way to protect the fort. Wentworth said they weren’t.

Sullivan and the men gathered at Jacob Tilton’s tavern, the Marquis of Rockingham, to await nightfall. Wentworth ordered another tavern keeper, James Stoodley, to round up 30 men to guard the fort.

Stoodley and a drummer walked the Portsmouth streets trying to enlist supporters. Unlike the patriots’ experience the day before, not one person volunteered.

New Hampshire Gov John Wentworth by John Singleton Copley.

After dark, Sullivan led his men on a second assault of the fort. Without being fired upon they took the rest of the powder, muskets, bayonets, cartouche boxes and 16 cannon.

The patriots shipped the gunpowder to Durham by boat and then carted it inland so they could hide it. Some was stored in the homes of patriots. The militiamen released the prisoners and returned home unpunished. For the most part, they remained anonymous.

Aftermath

less famous ride of paul revere statehouse

New Hampshire Statehouse

Furious British authorities knew who provoked the people of New Hampshire. Wentworth wrote the trouble started when Paul Revere rode to Portsmouth with a dispatch.

Before then, wrote Wentworth, all was perfectly quiet and peaceable in the place.

The raid was deemed high treason. It was also the first — and last — Revolutionary War battle in New Hampshire.

In New Hampshire Fort William and Mary, now Fort Constitution, is part of a state park on the National Register of Historic Places. The public may visit.

With thanks to On the Road North of Boston: New Hampshire Taverns and Turnpikes 1700-1900 by Donna-Belle Garvin and James L. Garvin and Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hackett Fischer. This story about the time Paul Revere rode to New Hampshire was updated in 2021. If you enjoyed it, you may also want to read about Isaac Bissell, Connecticut’s Paul Revere, here.

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