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Portsmouth NH

Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, Lawyer, Poet and a Black Man’s Drinking Buddy

When Nancy Hammond bought a house on Gates Street in Portsmouth, N.H., she had no idea it would inspire her to trace the life story of a good and interesting man. Tradition had it that Jonathan Mitchel Sewall had lived in the house during the time of George Washington. Washington, in fact, may have walked right past it on his visit to Portsmouth in 1789.

Hammond wanted to find out more.

Sewall’s house on Gates Street

She learned that Sewall recorded his observations about much of the world around him, from Salem to Spain, from slave to Superior Court chief justice. He felt things deeply, and, often depressed, he wrote popular poems about the world he knew. Hammond’s curiosity about him led her to dig up those old poems as well as fragments of his life.

Then, during the COVID pandemic, she wove them together into The Life and Times of Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, 1748-1808.

“Now I am cherishing him and hoping to make him better-known as best I can,” she wrote in her introduction.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Sewall’s life was his friendship with Primus Fowle, an enslaved printer with whom he probably shared “many a cheerful dram.”

Jonathan Sewall

Sewall was the great-nephew of Judge Samuel Sewall, a Puritan leader, Salem witch trial judge and opponent of slavery.

Samuel Sewall

Born in Salem, Mass., Jonathan was educated at Boston Public Latin School while living with his uncle Stephen Sewall, chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature. He then studied law with his cousin Jonathan Sewall, Massachusetts attorney general, before he moved to Portsmouth, N.H There he became a well-known and well-loved local character who wrote poetry and the New Hampshire Bill of Rights. He spoke at every local celebration during the rest of his life, and most likely helped the enslaved people of Portsmouth with their Black Petition of 1779.

Self Medication

Sewall came from a mercantile family, and he was apprenticed in the merchant business in Salem. Some time before his apprenticeship ended, he came down with a fever. It brought him so low that he decided to take a voyage to a milder climate for his health.

And so he sailed for Spain, probably Bilbao. New Hampshire historian Albert T. Batchellor wrote that the warm climate helped him. “[Y]et the violence of his fever and the strong medicines which the physicians administered to him when sick, afterwards subjected him to exquisite nervous affections and the keenest mental suffering approaching delirium,” Batchellor wrote.

Jonathan’s brother-in-law, William Pynchon, described in his diary on December 21, 1785, his visit to his house in Salem: “Bro. Mitchell comes in Portsmouth stage; a dark cloud over his visage, his eyes wild.“

Jonathan grew prone to hypochondria and nervous problems, which he medicated with “stimulating beverages.”

“But his friends loved him none the less and appear never to have lost respect for him,” wrote historian Charles Bell. “The lady who became his second wife, when remonstrated with on her engagement to a man of his habits, replied, ‘I would rather marry Mr. Sewall drunk than any other man sober’.”

Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, Lawyer

His mercantile career over, Jonathan Mitchel Sewall turned to the law. He studied — and probably lived with — Judge John Pickering. His later work as a Portsmouth lawyer brought him into contact with people in trouble. He often helped them out without charging them.

According to an obituary Hammond found, “The widow, the fatherless, and the stranger, also found in his talents a never-failing resources, for without even the hope of reward, he devoted his great abilities to their service.”

Though no portraits of him exist, a contemporary noticed his striking resemblance to the British statesman, Edmund Burke.

Edmund Burke, from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, oil on canvas, (1767-1769)

Hammond notes Sewall may also have helped draw up an eloquent petition demanding freedom for Portsmouth’s enslaved servants in 1780. The document, known as “the petition of Nero Brewster and others,” failed then to free them. In 2013, New Hampshire’s General Court posthumously granted them their freedom.

Nero Brewster worked for William Brewster, who ran a tavern on Pleasant and Court streets. Sewall may well have medicated himself with stimulating beverages at Brewster’s Tavern .

This map shows the proximity of Judge John Pickering’s house to Fowle’s printing shop.

“With Jonathan’s own propensity for drink, he must have shared quite a few “cheerful” drams with Primus,” wrote Hammond. “Primus may well have been the first enslaved person that Jonathan met in Portsmouth as they probably lived across the street from each other.”

Primus would have printed Jonathan’s poetry. He had come to New Hampshire with his owner, the printer Daniel Fowle. Fowle sometimes printed Jonathan’s public poetry in his weekly newspaper, The New Hampshire Gazette.

Primus

“It has been said that Primus could not read,” wrote Hammond. “If he were the only person working with Fowle it seems unlikely that he would be unable to help with the typesetting.”

His main task, she wrote, “would have been setting the cases of print on to the press, setting the paper, and then inking the letters before the case went into the press. Then the lever was turned to pull the paper and the case of type into it and to press it down to make the print. When this was done, the lever was pulled back to take the case out and then, because the ink was oil based, the printed sheets had to be hung up to dry overnight. The type needed to be cleaned and returned to the letter cases.”

Hammond offers the kind of insight Jonathan Mitchel Sewall revealed in his poetry. She wondered,

“What must it have been like for Primus to print ads for the sale of “Indian, Negro, or Mulatto” people as slaves and information about returning escapees to their enslavers every week?” she wondered. Hammond includes examples, such as “A very likely NEGRO BOY, about 14 years of age, to be Sold, Enquire of the Printer.”

Primus died in 1791, and Jonathan wrote his obituary, which appeared in the newspaper.

Epitaph on the Death of Primus

Under these clods, old Primus lies

At rest and free from noise,

No longer seen by mortal eyes j

Or grieved by roguish boys;

The cheerful dram he lov’d ‘tis true

Which hastened on his end.

But some in paved-street well knew

He was a hearty friend,

And did possess a grateful mind

Though oft borne down with pain,

Yet where he found a neighbour kind

He surely went again;

Too often did the mirth of some

His innocence betray,

By giving larger draughts of rum

Than he could swill away,

But now he’s dead, we sure may say

Of him, as of all men,

That while in silent graves they lay

They’ll not be plagu’d again.

Not Fair

Writes Hammond, “The epitaph reads as though it was given at the graveside as it begins ‘Under these clods.’ It surely gives the impression that Jonathan knew Primus well even to the painfulness of his aging shoulders and knees.”

If Jonathan Mitchel Sewall was sensitive enough to understand that Primus suffered physical pain as well as humiliation, he may also have grasped the unfairness of his enslavement. Hammond noted that Sewall’s son Stephen, probably around 14, apprenticed to a printer, then an elite trade.

“The printing trade was a very good one to be in and a young boy could progress from his seven-year apprenticeship to become a journeyman and then a master printer himself,” Hammond wrote. “As a journeyman he would be able to get a job in almost any city. But at that time these steps would only be possible for a young white boy. Primus’ “apprenticeship” lasted for all of his long life. A printer would not only print the newspaper, but broadsides, pamphlets, books, and many types of forms especially for the state.”

In Silent Graves

Primus Fowle was buried in Portsmouth’s Negro Burying Ground, a segregated cemetery on the outskirts of the town. People eventually forgot about it until 2003, when a road crew unearthed coffins and skeletal remains. Today, a memorial park on the site memorializes those buried there.

Portsmouth African Burial Ground Memorial

Seventeen years later, Jonathan Mitchel Sewall went to his final resting place in Portsmouth’s North Cemetery. His gravestone reads,

Sacred to the Memory of Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, Esq.

Counsellor at Law who died March 29, 1808 Age 60

In vain shall worth or wisdom save

The dying victim from the destin’d grave,

Nor Charity, our helpless nature’s pride,

The friend to him who knows no friend beside,

Nor genius, science, eloquence have pow’r,

One moment to protract the appointed hour.

Could these united have his life repriev’d,

We should not weep for Sewall still had lived.

Portsmouth African Burying Ground Memorial Park By LibSEEE – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91322234.

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Six Iconic Summer Paintings of New England

New England has no shortage of summer paintings. For centuries, artists have fled cities in summer for the cool air by the seashore or in the mountains. Or perhaps they just took a short train ride from New York or Boston.

They first ventured forth to the White Mountains in the early 19^th century. They explored almost as much as they painted. Later their paintings promoted tourism.

Then summer art colonies began burgeoning throughout New England. In addition to the White Mountain painters, New Hampshire had Cornish and Dublin. Connecticut had Cos Cob and Old Lyme. Massachusetts had Provincetown, the Berkshires, Gloucester and the Lynn Beach Art Colony. Maine had Ogunquit, Monhegan and Skowhegan – as well as every other island and coastal community.

Even tiny Rhode Island and Vermont had their own artist colonies. Vermont had the Dorset painters, and painters favored the South Kingstown hamlet of Matunuck.

So here are six summer paintings, one for each New England state.

The Couch on the Porch, Cos Cob

Couch on the Porch by Childe Hassam

Childe Hassam lived in New York during the winter but in summertime he ventured to various artist colonies. Beginning in the 1890s he began visiting the Cos Cob art colony in Greenwich, Conn. Later, he also stayed at Miss Florence Griswold’s Old Lyme art colony.

Hassam, observed the New York Times, was a priest high in the councils of the increasing tribe of American Impressionsts.

Hassam painted The Couch on the Porch in 1914 in Cos Cob. The art colony began when one of the first American Impressionists, John Henry Twachtman, moved to a farmhouse in Greenwich in 1886.

One critic wrote that Cos Cob was to American Impressionism in the 1890s what Argenteuil was to French Impressionism in the 1870s.

Instead of historical scenes or famous people, the impressionsts painted landscapes and scenes of everyday middle-class life. They relied on natural light, quick brush strokes and a bright palette.

A short train ride took Twachtman’s friends from New York City to Greenwich. Some stayed at his home or boarded at the Holley House, now known as the Bush-Holley House. The colonists included such artists as J. Alden Weir, Robert Reid and Theodore Robinson, as well as writers Lincoln Steffens and Willa Cather.

Summer, North Haven

The American Impressionists just loved to paint young women in white dresses outside in bright sunshine. Frank Weston Benson mastered the theme in many of his summer paintings.

Frank Weston Benson, was born in Salem, Mass., and he grew up with a love of the outdoors. As a boy he spent many hours duck hunting in the marshes around Salem.

In 1882, when he turned 21, his parents gave him $2,000 for a trip to Europe. He studied the old masters as well as the work of Claude Monet. When he returned, he established himself as an artist, married and had four chldren, which he frequently painted.

“I follow the light, where it comes from, where it goes,” he once said.

He enjoyed success as an artist, winning many medals for his work. During the summer, Frank Weston Benson painted on the Maine island of North Haven, as well as in the New Hampshire towns of New Castle and Dublin. He painted Summer in 1909 using his wife and three daughters as models.

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/flashback-photos-frank-weston-benson-painter-light/

Eventually, critics derided his paintings as “too pretty,” so he returned to his first love. Benson mastered waterfowl etchings, and even designed the second Federal Duck Stamp.

Cape Cod Morning, Truro

From the time he was 29 in 1912, Edward Hopper spent nearly every summer in New England until his death at 85 in 1967.

He painted the dunes and cottages on Cape Cod, the rolling hills and farms of Vermont, the rocky shore of Maine, the tenements and fishing fleets of Cape Ann.

From 1930 to 1967, Hopper spent most of every summer on Cape Cod, creating a number of summer paintings. He explained why he chose the Cape in 1962:

I chose to live here because it has a longer summer season. I like Maine very much, but it gets so cold in the fall. There’s something soft about Cape Cod that doesn’t appeal to me too much. But there’s a beautiful light there — very luminous – perhaps because it’s so far out to sea; an island almost.

He loved to suggest the inner life of human beings, something he called “a vast realm.” He also once said all he wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.

Cape Cod Morning, painted in 1950, is quintessential Hopper. He captures a feeling of tension and isolation, as well as sunlight on the side of a house.

Saco River, White Mountains

In the 19^th century, hundreds of artists traveled to the White Mountains to paint the splendor of what was then wilderness.

White Mountain art started in 1826, when a widely reported tragedy began to attract people to the region. Nine members of the Willey household perished in a landslide.

Then Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School of painting, found inspiration in the Willey family tragedy. He painted a landscape called Distant View of the Slide that Destroyed the Willey Family. Other painters followed, and prints and paintings of the White Mountains drew more tourists to the region.

Alfred Thompson Bricher, born in 1837 in Portsmouth, N.H., started out as a businessman in Boston. However, he switched to landscape painting full-time, which turned out to be a good career move. A member of the Hudson River School of Art, he specialized in marinescapes. However, he did make painting forays into the White Mountains, including Summer on the Saco (Mount Chocorua).

Second Beach, Newport

There was nothing middle-class about this scene of Second Beach in Newport, R.I. Worthington Whittredge, a late-Hudson River School painter, painted it in 1878-1880. Newport then ruled as a fashionable summer resort for the Gilded Age elite.

Southern planters had begun coming to Newport to escape the summer heat in the mid-19^th century. Northerners then started to arrive and to build lavish summer cottages. When Whittredge painted Second Beach, Newport was still on the way up. The Vanderbilts, for example, had yet to build two of the most opulent “cottages,” the Breakers and Marble House.

This summer painting shows fashionable people dipping their toes in the water and a horse-drawn carriage at the other end of the beach.

Swimming Hole, Arlington

Though born in New York City suburb, Norman Rockwell created the iconography of 20^th century small town New England.

Rockwell’s career followed the Golden Age of Illustration a period of brilliant book and magazine illustration. It ran from the 1880s to the 1920s. Rockwell began his studies at the Art Students League of New York in 1911. Inspired by such Golden Age illustrators as Howard Pyle, Rockwell decided to devote himself to illustration.

For 20 years he worked for Boys Life magazine, living in New Rochelle with his wife and three sons. But by 1938, he needed a restart, so he bought a farmhouse in Arlington. Rural Vermont inspired him to develop into the teller of fictional stories about small town America.

He had no interest in the natural beauty around him. Instead, he sought out diners, dentists offices and schoolhouses.

In 1945, he decided to paint a salesman who takes a dip into a swimming hole on a hot summer day.

Rockwell painted his neighbor George Zimmer, who posed as the salesman. It made the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, one of seven for which Zimmer modeled. Many of Rockwell’s summer paintings appeared on Post covers.

Rockwell paid close attention to details. In Swimming Hole, he tells the story of the salesman making a long drive and stopping at a swimming hole. He parks his car and methodically takes off his shirt and tie, hangs it up, lays his glasses on a newspaper and then his cigar on a shoe.

“George Zimmer, my model,” Rockwell said, “was an awful good sport. He stripped and I poured several buckets of water over his head to get the effect.”

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Richard Potter, Celebrity Black Magician of the 19th Century

Richard Potter, the son of a former slave, won fame and fortune with a bag of magic tricks and a voice that spoke from ladies’ purses and gentlemen’s pockets.

Born during the last year of the American Revolution, he trained as a magician and ventriloquist. He traveled the world entertaining enthusiastic audiences and settled on an estate in New Hampshire. The traces of Richard Potter’s life can still be found in an Andover, N.H., train station, in the pages of the novel Peyton Place and in the magical arts.

John Hodgson, who wrote a biography of Potter, called him the first black celebrity, the first American ventriloquist and the most famous performer in the United States.

Successful, wealthy, well-liked—all those words describe Richard Potter. So does another: tragedy.

Richard Potter

He was born in Hopkinton, Mass., in 1783 to a black mother and a white father. His mother, Dinah, worked as a servant in the estate of Sir Charles Frankland, a descendant of Oliver Cromwell and collector of the Port of Boston. Frankland had fallen in love with Agnes Surriage, a beautiful tavern wench in Marblehead, Mass. He paid for her education and kept her as his mistress. That did not sit well with Boston society, and so Frankland bought land in the distant town of Hopkinton. There he built a showplace mansion.

By the time of Richard’s birth, Sir Charles had died and the estate started to decay. Some people thought Richard’s father was Sir Charles’s son. But it was George Stimson, a randy revolutionary war veteran. Stimson, according to church records, had “made attempts on the chastity of several women.”

One of those women was Dinah. Slavers had captured her on the Guinea coast and sold her on a Boston pier. But in 1769, a slave in Cambridge, Mass., brought suit against his master. He won his freedom and payment for his work. Soon after, Frankland’s estate freed Dinah and her children and paid them for their work.

Youth

Richard Potter spent the first 10 years of his life between the Hopkinton estate and Frankland’s townhouse in Boston. He learned to read at the Hopkinton District School. At the age of 10 he went into service for two years with Isaac Surriage, Agnes’ brother. Then he engaged himself to a Boston merchant. At around age 16, he took a trip to Europe with the merchant’s son-in-law. There Richard, always nimble and quick, picked up skills as a ropedancer and tightrope walker.

A ropedancer

From there the outlines of his life get muddy. He went to work at the New Hampshire Hotel in Portsmouth. An Italian tightrope walker named Signior Manfredi brought his show to that city, and Richard Potter may have joined him then as a minor performer in the troupe.

Somehow, probably in Boston, he met a Scottish magician and ventriloquist named John Rannie. By 1804, he had a job as Rannie’s stage assistant.

19th-century Portsmouth

John Rannie

Rannie swallowed razors, turned a bottle of water into Madeira wine, smashed watches then restored them. He made voices talk from under furniture and gentlemen’s pockets. In one gruesome trick, he cut off a chicken’s head and reattached it. It then ran off unharmed. One of Richard’s jobs was to find two chickens with identical markings.

John Rannie had spent a month in an Inverness jail for his role in a food riot (called “meal mobbing”). Authorities then banished him from Scotland, and so he went on an extended tour of the United States with Richard Potter at his side. They performed from Maine to the West Indies to New Orleans.

The Exchange Coffee House

Rannie retired in Boston, then returned to Europe in 1811. Richard Potter took to the stage on his own with many of Rannie’s tricks, including ventriloquism. He often played Boston at such venues as the Columbian Museum, the Exchange Coffee House, Concert Hall and Julien Hall.

Richard Potter’s Act

“He intends to give an evening’s brush to sweep away dull cares,” proclaimed his handbills. He called himself “Mr. Potter, the Ventriloquist and Comedian, from Saddler’s Wells (London).” Many Bostonians considered the theatre disreputable, but Sadler’s Wells was a respectable house patronized by fashionable Londoners. Richard’s nod to the English theater told people he put on a sophisticated, European-style show.

Sadler’s Wells

In 1808, he married Sally Harris, described as “beautiful and graceful.” They lived on Beacon Hill, a tight African-American community with a meeting house, a school and Underground Railroad stations. In 1811 Potter joined Boston’s African Lodge No. 459, the first black Masonic lodge in America. Another well-known African-American belonged to it: David Walker, who advocated the violent overthrow of slavery in his incendiary pamphlet, An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.

But there was nothing incendiary about Richard Potter. One of the few black performers of his day, he presented himself as well-mannered, modest, charming. He dressed fastidiously in a neat frock coat, cravat and waistcoat with lapels, along with a flowing blue robe adorned with Masonic symbols.

“While other magicians catered to the enlightened and up-to-date, Potter presented a family entertainment,” wrote Paul A. Johnson. He played to children, who he admitted for half price. Those children included Oliver Wendell Holmes and George Hill, who became a comedic actor known as Yankee Hill. Both fondly recalled Potter’s shows later in life.

George Hill

The Magic

Richard Potter promised “100 curious but mysterious experiments” in the broadsheet advertising his show.

He did card tricks, made coins pass through wine glasses, broke eggs into a hat and then turned them into pancakes. One of his most popular acts was the enchanted egg, which magically traveled from one hat to another and then to his shoulder.

Map mmarked with the Columbian Museum, one of Potter’s Boston venues.

He threw his voice into a teapot, mimicked birds and animals, made a child speak from a ladies purse. So strange and startling were his effects they sometimes caused people to faint.

He also acted out scenes from plays like the Wag of Windsor with his wife. They sang comic songs like “Giles Scroggins’ Ghost” and “Barney Leave the Girls Alone.” Sally sang “The Nosegay Girl.”

Playing with Fire

For seven years he played mostly before audiences in New England and the Hudson Valley. He earned as much as $250 a day, worth about $3,000 in today’s money.

By 1819, his act evolved to include knife throwing and playing with fire. He appeared in Providence as the “Anti-Combustible Man Salamander,” bending a red-hot iron bar with his bare feet and drawing it over his tongue. He walked on hot coals in his bare feet, plunged his hand into molten lead and climbed into an oven where meat was roasting—always emerging unscathed.

His reputation grew with his fame, and it was said he could crawl through a solid log. Some believed he and Sally had performed the Hindu Rope Trick—throwing a rope up into the open air, then climbing it and disappearing.

Advertisement for a reproduction of the trick by stage magician Howard Thurston.

In 1820, he embarked on a four-year grand tour that took his show to the South, the West, Europe and the Caribbean.

Discrimination

Surely he knew of the dangers of travel for a black man. Sometimes he wore a turban when performing, suggesting he came from the West Indies or even India.

Once, in Mobile, Ala., Potter got kicked out of a hotel because of his race. He moved to another hotel, played for 12 nights and took in $4,800 in silver, which he carried in a nail cask. Upon his departure he learned highway robbers planned to waylay him. So Richard Potter let it be known he was going one way the next day, then left that night in the opposite direction.

Word of a planned slave uprising preceded his arrival on the eastern seaboard. Dozens of plotters, including Denmark Vesey, were arrested and executed. Richard Potter decided to bypass Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C., lucrative venues but dangerous for a free black man.

He faced discrimination in the North as well.

In a New Haven hotel, the proprietor wouldn’t let him into the dining room because of his skin color. But when the host started to carve the roast pig for dinner, Potter threw his voice so the pig seemed to squeal.

New Hampshire

In 1814, he bought 175 acres in Andover, N.H., a small town on Ragged Mountain. He may have chosen Andover because of his friendship with Benjamin Thompson, a tavern owner who traveled with him as his assistant. The town of 1,800 had only 17 black residents in 1830, but he won the respect and trust of his neighbors. One described him as “public spirited, honorable in business, prompt to pay, a kind neighbor and trusted friend.”

Ragged Mountain

Richard Potter built a large, ornate house on his property and hired laborers to farm it. He only lived there intermittently, until about 1823. The Potters entertained frequently. One night, a guest complained about the alcohol served at dinner. So he broke the bottle and presto! He produced a baby chick—then made it speak.

The house no longer stands, but the neighborhood is still known as Potter Place. Richard and Sally Potter are buried on his former property, and the Andover Historical Society planted a garden where his house once stood.

Family Trouble

At some point, Sally stopped performing with her husband. She begin to drink and spend extravagantly. Richard Potter returned from the road in 1825 to encounter debts and lawsuits caused by his wife. He almost lost his house. The sheriff did seize his livestock, furniture and hay and oats. Potter published a notice saying that only he could buy anything on his account.

Tragedy, however, had already followed Richard Potter. He and Sally had two sons and a daughter. Their son Henry died at age seven in a wagon accident.

Daughter Jeanette was described by a local historian as “a half-idiot, given to uncontrollable lewdness.” She died in 1831 at age 16.

Their son Richard, Jr., took after his mother, turning to drink and squandering money.

Richard, Sr., died on Sept. 20, 1835 at 52, leaving an estate worth $6,000. Richard, Jr., took over the Andover farm and cared for his mother. Sally died a year later, on Oct. 24, 1836. Richard, Jr., ran up debts and auctioned off the farm in 1837. He had his father’s magic kit and knew his act, so he went on the road as “Little Potter.” He failed and returned to Andover only to face lawsuits for unpaid bills. Then he mortgaged the magic kit. When it was seized for nonpayment, Richard, Jr., stole it back and disappeared from the historic record.

Potter Place railroad station

Remembering Richard Potter

He may have been forgotten elsewhere, but New Hampshire remembers Richard Potter. The village in Andover where he had his estate is still known as Potter Place, and a train station bears the name.

In 1965, the Manchester chapter of the International Brotherhood of Magicians officially name themselves the “Black Richard Ring.”

New Hampshire writer Grace Metalious modeled a character after Richard Potter in her novel Peyton Place: Samuel Peyton was a wealthy black man who built a castle on a hill in a small New Hampshire town.

For years, a magician named Robert Olson has re-enacted Richard Potter’s magic show. See it here.

Much of Richard Potter’s early life was an enigma. In 2018, John Hodgson cleared up a lot of the mystery in his 2018 book, Richard Potter: America’s First Black Celebrity. You can help independent bookstores and the New England Historical Society by buying it here.

With thanks also to Playing with Race in the Early Republic: Mr. Potter, the Ventriloquist by Paul E. Johnson, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 89, No. 2 (June 2016), pp. 257-285. Image of Ragged Mountain By Tom Morgan – Self-photographed, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5121853. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Greely Expedition Plants the Flag ‘Farthest North’

Buddy Levy relates an inspiring and harrowing tale in Labyrinth of Ice, his account of the Greely Expedition of 1881-1884.

The expedition was a maritime venture carried out by a ground force, the U.S. Army. In the brief Arctic summer of 1881 a multinational company of soldiers commanded by Lt. Adolphus Greely, a native of Newburyport, Mass., steamed northward from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Lady Franklin Bay, an inlet along the east coast of Ellesmere Island. Ellesmere lies west of northern Greenland across a narrow sea.

Adolphus Greely

There the adventurers constructed Ft. Conger, the northernmost encampment in the world at the time. Their chief goal was scientific research. Commander Greely’s ulterior goal, or personal “grail,” was to plant the U.S. flag “Farthest North,” breaking a centuries-old British record. If possible he wanted to reach the North Pole.

The Greely Expedition

The explorers indeed eclipsed the British record by a few miles. They mapped much of the region for the first time and conducted painstaking scientific observations. They also endured sunless winters lasting over 130 days, fraught with almost unimaginable cold and hardship. During November 1881, for example—before the worst of the long night set in—temperatures averaged -24⁰ F.

The Greely Expedition’s accomplishments and derring-do at Ft. Conger constitute the inspiring part of the story. The back half of the book relates the harrowing part. The summer of 1881 was mild by Arctic standards, permitting the expedition to reach Lady Franklin Bay with little trouble.

But the summers of 1882 and 1883 were unusually severe. Ice kept resupply ships planned for each summer from getting through. In 1882 the lead vessel, Proteus, found itself icebound and crushed—compelling its crew to undertake a hazardous getaway to the south.

Greely opted to evacuate Ft. Conger in 1883 rather than try to wait out another long night. His orders directed him to retreat south that summer, while stores were starting to run low. The party managed to reach a designated rendezvous point at Cape Sabine, far to the south, yet was forced to improvise shelter to await a third relief expedition that might never come.

Salvation

Salvation did come in 1884—for some of Greely’s party. By then 18 soldiers had succumbed to starvation or the elements. Seven survived, including Greely himself. Barely: physicians on scene testified that the rest would have perished within a day or two had ships not anchored off Cape Sabine when they did.

Si survivors of the Greely expedition with their rescuers

Such a nick-of-time rescue would never pass muster in Hollywood.

The survivors received a hero’s welcome in Portsmouth, N.H., where the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic squadron and flagship gathered to greet them. Afterward Greely and fellow survivors heatedly denied speculation that members of the party had cannibalized fallen comrades. While press sensationalism tarnished the expedition’s reputation to a degree, Congress eventually awarded Greely a seldom-seen peacetime Medal of Honor—the U.S. armed forces’ supreme decoration for valor.

Lessons Learned

Levy leaves the lessons from the Greely Expedition mostly implicit, but they stand out for all that. First and foremost, to describe the far north as forbidding operating grounds constitutes an epic understatement. Natural barriers obstruct human movement on a colossal scale. For instance, Greely’s band encountered one ice floe 15 miles long. It took nine hours to pass while drifting southward.

The ill-fated Proteus

The icy north’s fickle dynamism is likewise striking. Ice floes were perpetually in motion. Seafarers watched for “leads,” or narrow sea lanes, to open as bergs jostled against one another. Sometimes a lane would open, then—as with the luckless Proteus—close around a ship like a vise. On one occasion the soldiers confronted a seemingly impassable iceberg, only to discover a fortuitous narrow cleft through the berg and make their getaway. Another Hollywood moment.

Second, Levy’s account arouses historical vertigo. For instance, the late 19th century was not that long ago, yet cartographers speculated that an “open polar sea” lay beyond a rim of ice. The top of the world was a tropical paradise! The Greely Expedition helped dispel such fancies. The book shows that the past is a foreign country, in earth science as in so many disciplines.

Third, logistics, bureaucracy and politics were pivotal and intermingled. The expedition was an army affair, but Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln saw Arctic exploration as a waste. Lincoln dithered constantly, delaying the 1882 and 1883 relief missions while encumbering their prospects for success.

Henrietta Greely

Levy casts Henrietta Greely, Adolphus’ well-connected San Diego wife, as a hero of the story. Working through press and government contacts, Mrs. Greely shamed the U.S. government into mounting a third relief effort—an effort orchestrated by the U.S. Navy when many thought hope for rescuing Greely and his men was forlorn.

Henrietta Greely

Professional mariners took great trouble to outfit ships capable of withstanding pressure from ice floes. And they got moving. The navy flotilla set out in time to reach Cape Sabine early in the summer of 1884, helped by Queen Victoria’s loan of a suitable Royal Navy ship. No more dawdling.

Warming Seas

And lastly, some years ago the U.S. Navy’s chief oceanographer forecast that warming temperatures will cause the polar icepack to advance and recede with the seasons. (For more on Arctic strategy click here.) Warming will open Arctic sea routes to shipping on a more regular basis, but it could accent the geophysical dynamism Buddy Levy documents so vividly, making navigation even more perilous.

Labyrinth of Ice, then, furnishes a historical baseline for seafarers—and New Englanders with a nautical bent—to think about northern operations in the coming years and decades.

Adolphus Greely, safe at home with his family.

James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and the author, coauthor, or coeditor of ten books and hundreds of shorter works. An archive of his works can be found at https://navaldiplomat.com/.

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Six Fun Facts About Paul Revere’s Ride

The poem Paul Revere’s Ride took an obscure patriot of the American Revolution and elevated him to American myth.

In 1860, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first asked his children to listen so they shall hear the midnight ride of Paul Revere. He meant it as legend but people took it as historical fact.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1868

The poem created legions of Paul Revere fans, who solidified his fame after the Civil War. They installed an equestrian statue in Boston’s North End, where he had lived for 30 years. His great grandson then bought his house to save it from demolition. The Paul Revere Memorial Association raised the money to buy and restore it. Paul Revere’s house is now an important stop on Boston’s Freedom Trail.

But the backlash had already started in 1896, when a poet named Helen F. Moore wrote a parody of Paul Revere’s Ride called The Midnight Ride of William Dawes. It read, in part,

‘Tis all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear —
My name was Dawes and his Revere.

1. Paul Revere’s Ride

Paul Revere’s Ride was really about fighting slavery, which Longfellow hated. He gave money to fugitive slaves, bought slaves their freedom and supported African-American churches, schools and newspapers. His close friend, U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner, was such an outspoken abolitionist that a southern colleague, Preston Brooks, beat him within an inch of his life on the Senate floor.

Longfellow published Paul Revere’s Ride in The Atlantic Monthly magazine, which appeared on newsstands the day South Carolina seceded. At the time, people viewed it as a call to arms for the North. More recently, historian Jill Lepore has argued the poem is an allegory about slavery itself. Paul Revere’s Ride is “a poem about waking the dead,” wrote Lepore in The American Scholar. “The dead are Northerners, roused to war. But the dead are also the enslaved, entombed in slavery…”

2. Paul Revere Made Lots of Rides

Paul Revere had made the same ride a week and a half earlier. He made lots of rides, in fact. On Dec. 13, 1774, Revere rode all the way to Portsmouth, N.H., to warn the patriots that the King’s troops were on their way to seize gunpowder from Fort William and Mary in New Castle. The redcoats arrived three days late, and they didn’t intend to take the powder in the first place. But a skirmish did result — between 400 New Hampshire volunteers and six British soldiers defending the fort. The redcoats surrendered. Then, 11 days before his midnight ride, Revere rode to Concord to warn that the redcoats would probably come to seize the large cache of military supplies stored there. The patriots moved the supplies.

3. Longfellow and Revere

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had a family connection to Paul Revere dating to the American Revolution. His grandfather, Peleg Wadsworth, commanded Revere, then a colonel, during the disastrous Penobscot Expedition. Recrimination followed the worst U.S. naval disaster until Pearl Harbor. And investigation revealed Revere had made enemies because of his arrogance. He demanded a court martial, which exonerated him.

Penobscot Expedition by John Thomas Serres

4. Some Birthday Present

Rose Kennedy made all of her children memorize the poem. John F. Kennedy campaigned for U.S. Congress in 1946 at the base of Paul Revere’s statue in the North End. His brother Edward recited the entire poem during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. When in 1975 Rose Kennedy turned 85, she asked each of her 28 grandchildren to memorize a stanza of the poem as a birthday present.

5. Mistakes Were Made

The poem got a lot of facts wrong about Paul Revere’s ride. For example, Revere – not a friend – ordered the lanterns hung in the belfry of Old North Church. He also had help, which Longfellow omits. The aforementioned William Dawes took a parallel route to the south and met in Lexington. There they encountered a third rider, Dr. Samuel Prescott, while”‘returning from a lady friend’s house at the awkward hour of 1 a.m. (Revere’s words).”

Paul Revere by John Singleton Copley

6. Obituary Omission

No one outside of the Boston area knew who Paul Revere was until Longfellow wrote Paul Revere’s Ride. Even during his lifetime, Bostonians knew Revere as a successful businessman who had lots of friends. That’s how his obituary read after he died on May 10, 1818. It didn’t even mention the ride.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The 1635 Perplexing Death of Maid Mary Sholy

In 1635, Mary Sholy had the tragic misfortune of meeting William Schooler. Schooler was not the sort of man the early settlers of Massachusetts wanted in their midst.

The Puritans who came to America were largely escaping intolerance. They wanted to establish a new country where they could practice their religion in peace. However, they also found America appealed to men and women who had other matters to escape. William Schooler was one of these

Schooler lived in London. He made his living selling wine and was married to an upstanding woman. But Schooler was a philanderer and a drunk. He would later admit his adultery. Schooler got into trouble in London when he wounded a man in a duel. He fled (likely to Holland) and from there made the journey to America.

In 1635, English colonists had small settlements under construction in Newbury, Mass. and Portsmouth, N.H. Schooler moved to the outskirts of Newbury and shared a house with another man. Their neighbors viewed them with a jaundiced eye because they lived as atheists.

Mary Sholy Goes Home

View of Ipswich from Castle Hill

Mary Sholy was a maid. She worked for a man in Portsmouth, and she had come to Newbury on personal business. The trip from Newbury to Portsmouth over land would have been a difficult one in 1635, roughly 30 miles on a narrow path, and a traveler would need to cross the Merrimack River.

Mary wanted to go home to Portsmouth, and William Schooler offered to guide her for a fee of 15 shillings. The pair departed Newbury, and it was the last time anyone would see Mary alive.

William returned to Newbury two days after he had left. Because of this unexpectedly quick return, the local authorities suspected something bad had occurred, and so they questioned William.

He told them he had crossed the Merrimack River with Mary, though not where he intended to, and guided Mary toward Portsmouth, then known as Pascataquack. However, she stopped part way and refused to accompany him any farther. He had then left her. He noted ominously that he had encountered a bear shortly after turning back.

Schooler’s neighbors noted that he had a scratch on his nose and blood on his clothing and hat. The blood, he explained, came from a pigeon he had killed to eat. The scratch was from a bramble. The magistrates at Ipswich thought the scratch was too large to be from a bramble. However, lacking any evidence of a crime they released Schooler.

William Schooler Can’t Keep Quiet

About one year later, Indians discovered Mary Sholy’s body in the woods, partially decomposed and undressed. She was about three miles from the Merrimack River.

William Schooler, meanwhile, had been conscripted to serve in the militia. He complained bitterly and loudly about this required service, and word of his complaining reached the governor who issued a warrant to arrest and question him.

When approached by court officers, however, Schooler assumed they planned to accuse him of murdering Mary Sholy, and he began loudly proclaiming his innocence. The protest renewed suspicions that Schooler had not told the truth about Mary Sholy, so he was again questioned.

Jailbreak and Back

This time the judges at Boston concluded he was guilty of a crime, and they sentenced him to death. While he was imprisoned on Powder Horn Hill awaiting execution, Schooler broke out of jail. But he returned and surrendered.

Some in the community, notably some ministers, protested the death sentence. The evidence against Schooler was purely circumstantial. They implored Schooler to confess to save his soul, but he refused. He had lied about certain details, but he had not murdered or harmed Mary Sholy in any way, he said.

John Winthrop

John Winthrop recorded the case in his journal. The clergy demanded that the court rescind the order of execution, but the court declined. Even if he had not actually murdered Mary Sholy, the court concluded, William Schooler had abandoned her in the woods and left her in great peril. And even when he suspected a bear endangered her, he did nothing. He was worthy of hanging for that behavior alone.

He was hanged on Sept. 28, 1637, protesting his innocence to the last.

If you enjoyed this article you might like Divorce, Murder and Madness: The Puritan Tuttles of the New Haven Colony. This story was updated in 2022.

Photo Credit: by John Phelan [CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

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