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John Billington Gets Lost: A Window to Plymouth Colony’s Early History

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In the summer of 1621, the Plymouth colonists finally had reason for optimism — until 16-year-old John Billington wandered off and got lost in the woods.

While we commemorate 1620 as the year of the Mayflower, in 1621 many of the key events occurred that led to the survival and success of Plymouth Colony. It was the “make or break” year in modern parlance. In March, the colonists made a peace agreement with Massasoit, the sachem and leader of the Wampanoag confederation. Then in June, colonists Edward Winslow and Stephen Hopkins traveled to Pokanoket to solidify the agreement. The harsh winter that had claimed the lives of one-half of the Mayflower passengers had also ended. Work was also well underway to plant crops and build the settlement at Plymouth.

Landing of the Pilgrims by Currier & Ives

 

Then, the unexpected occurred. At some point in June or July (the primary sources differ on the date), young John Billington got lost.

John Billington, Jr.

Billington wandered for five days before stumbling into the Wampanoag sachemship of Manomet, just south of Plymouth. The sachem Canacum delivered the boy to Aspinet, the sachem at Nauset on the elbow of Cape Cod. Then he notified Massasoit, who notified Gov. William Bradford of John’s whereabouts. Bradford then directed a party of 10 colonists (about one-half of the colony’s adult male population at the time) to travel by boat to Nauset to recover the boy. Squanto joined them as a guide and interpreter. Tokamahamom, who Winslow described as a special friend, came along, too.

After a stop at Cummaquid (present day Barnstable), the recovery party arrived in Nauset. Nauset warriors presented them with the boy “behung with beads.” They returned to Plymouth, mission accomplished.

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Edward Winslow

More Than Meets The Eye

The story stands by itself as a tale of the recovery of a lost boy. However, a deeper look reveals several threads of historical significance. Those threads shed considerable light on the events of 1621 so critical to the survival of Plymouth Colony.

When the Pilgrims learned that John had been sent to Nauset, it must have given them great pause. There the Nausets had attacked a Mayflower exploratory party on a beach in present-day Eastham about seven months earlier. Furthermore, Samoset, an emissary sent by Massasoit, advised them of the Nausets’ great animosity toward the English.

The nefarious deeds of Capt, Thomas Hunt in 1614 caused their antipathy. He had kidnapped seven Indians from Nauset along with 20 from Patuxet (Squanto among them) to sell into slavery in Spain. If that weren’t enough, the Pilgrims would have known, or strongly suspected, that their earlier theft of corn had been detected. The recovery party must have felt great trepidation when it set out in the shallop for Nauset.

After departing Plymouth, the recovery party sailed into present day Barnstable Harbor to escape a storm.  The next morning, they saw two natives on the beach looking for shellfish. The party sent its two native interpreters ashore to inquire as to the status of the boy, and were told that he was well and at Nauset. The Cummaquid natives then invited the party ashore. They took them to their sachem Iyanough, who they found very friendly and agreeable. In fact, Iyanough joined the recovery party and travelled with them to Nauset to assist.  

Statue of Iyanough in Hyannis

History Comes Back to Haunt

While at Cummaquid, the Pilgrims received a poignant reminder of the deep wounds that Capt. Thomas Hunt inflicted with his 1614 kidnappings. In the words of Edward Winslow in Mourt’s Relation:

One thing was very grievous unto us at this place. There was an old woman, whom we judged to be no less than a hundred years old, which came to see us because she never saw English, yet could not behold us without breaking forth into great passion, weeping and crying excessively. We demanding the reason of it, they told us that she had three sons who, when Master Hunt was in these parts, went abroad his ship to trade with him, and he carried them captives into Spain by which means she was deprived of the comfort of her children in her old age.

We told them we were sorry that any Englishman should give them that offense, that Hunt was a bad man, and that all the English that had heard of it condemned him for the same; but for us, we would not offer them any such injury though it would gain us all the skins in the country. So we gave her some small trifles, which somewhat appeased her.

While the receptiveness and hospitality of Iyanough and his tribe was reassuring, this reminder from the old woman of the animosity of the Nausets must have heightened the Pilgrims’ anxiety as they continued on their mission.

Map of Southern New England, 1620-22

John Billington Recovered

Upon their arrival at Nauset, Iyanough and Squanto went ashore to inform Aspinet of the reason for their visit. Then the Indians came to the shore. In Winslow’s words, they were “very thick amongst us, and were earnest with us to bring in our boat.” The Pilgrims hesitated. According to Winslow, “because we had least cause to trust them, being they only had formerly made an assault upon us in the same place, in time of our winter discovery for habitation.”

When their boat came aground on the tidal flats, a large group of Indians approached. The Pilgrims allowed two to board. One was the man who owned the corn that the Pilgrims had taken during their explorations of Cape Cod. The Pilgrims agreed to repay the debt, which ameliorated the Nausets’ animosity over the theft..  Thus, the recovery of John Billington resolved a major point of contention between the Nausets and the colonists.

After sunset, Aspinet appeared with a party of about 100 warriors through the water.  One bore the Billington boy “behung with beads.” Aspinet and about half of his party, unarmed, approached the shallop while the remainder stood by with bows ready. John was returned to the Pilgrims, and a peace agreement was made with Aspinet, thus extending the agreement made with Massasoit in March. Notably, relations between the Pilgrims and the Cape Cod tribes remained peaceful, even throughout King Philip’s War later on.

Questions About The Episode

Like many episodes in history, this one has some loose ends. While the story resonates with positive and improving relations between the Wampanoags and the Plymouth colonists, there is also some potentially conflicting evidence. When Billington came into the Indian village at Manomet, why didn’t the sachem Canacum return him directly to Plymouth, or at least to Massasoit? Why send him to Nauset, the site of much animosity toward the colonists? Historians have wrestled with this question.

Perhaps Massasoit’s leadership was not quite as dominant as he had led the Pilgrims to believe. His decision to pursue peaceful relations with the new settlers did not sit well with all of the tribes. The Billington incident may reflect this. Moreover, the great plague had dramatically altered the balance of power among the tribes. The Nausets appear to have survived that ordeal with far fewer losses. The 100 warriors who accompanied Aspinet to greet the recovery party at Nauset was larger than Massasoit’s 60 warriors at Pokanoket. Canacum’s decision to send the boy to the Nausets may have been a deferral to a more powerful neighbor.

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Statue of Massasoit in Plymouth

Silence on John Billington

The historical record is silent on the kinds of communications, if any, took place between the various tribes on this matter, as well as on the motivations of the various actors. The Indians did not have a written language, and the English accounts that have survived were written from their perspective and from the limited knowledge that they had. Notwithstanding this, it can be reasonably concluded that the end result of this story represents a net positive result on the relations between the Wampanoags and the colonists, particularly on Cape Cod.

No account of the Billington recovery would be complete without some background on the infamous Billington family. Young John travelled on the Mayflower with his father, John Sr., his mother Ellen, and his younger brother Francis. They were not members of the separatist Leiden congregation, but were among the “strangers” placed on the voyage by the backers of the voyage to help insure the financial viability of the endeavor. The family was problematic from the start.

mayflower-compact

Signing the Mayflower Compact 1620 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

A Troublesome Family

It has been proposed that John Billington, Sr., was one of the “mutinous voices” that Bradford described which led to the Mayflower Compact. In March of 1621, Billington Sr. was tried and convicted for refusing a lawful order from Captain Standish to perform sentry duty. In 1630, he was hanged for murdering a fellow colonist in Plymouth’s first execution. Bradford wrote of him in a 1625 private letter “he is a knave, and will so live and die.”

Bradford also described the Billingtons as “one of the profanest families among them; they came from London and I know not by what friends shuffled into their company.” Young Francis contributed his share to the family’s reputation when he almost ended the Mayflower story before anyone came ashore. He fired a musket in the passenger quarters of the ship, very near the location that the ship’s supply of gunpowder was stored.

Some historians speculate that John Billington, Jr., did not wander off and get lost in the summer of 1621. They suggest he deliberately ran away to escape his family, his father in particular. Instead, he chose to cast his lot with the Indians. While this theory is plausible given what is known, there is no factual support for it in the historical record. Bradford’s account indicates that John, Jr., “lost himself.”  As a postscript, John Billington, Jr., died sometime between 1627 and 1630 in his mid-twenties, cause of death unknown.

Thus, the recovery of a lost boy tested the commitment of both sides to the peace treaty that Massasoit and Gov. John Carver agreed on a few months before. In addition, the Pilgrims paid the corn debt. They also addressed the practice of kidnapping American natives by English explorers.

Sometimes, a seemingly small story stands at the crossroads of history.

End Notes

The author of this story, Ron Petersen, is the chair of the Orleans Massachusetts Historical Commission. He has also served on the Orleans Community Preservation Committee, as chair of both the Orleans Historical Markers Committee and the 1918 Attack on Orleans Committee. He is a former board member and officer of the Orleans Historical Society, and is a board member and historian for the Orleans Firebirds of the Cape Cod Baseball League.  Ron has written numerous published articles on regional history, and has lectured throughout Cape Cod on various historical topics.


Images: Map of Southern New England By AnthroMimus – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56851919. Statue of Iyanough in Hyannis By Kerowyn – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17797930. Landing of the Pilgrims N. Currier. Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth 11th De. Plymouth Massachusetts, None. [New york: lith. & pub. by n. currier, 2 spruce st., between 1838 and 1856] [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/95503144/.

Bibliography

Bradford, William, Of Plymouth Plantation, (Morison ed.), New York: The Modern Library, 1657, 1952.

Bunker, Nick, Making Haste from Babylon, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010.

Goodwin, John A., The Pilgrim Republic, Boston, Ticknor and Company 1888

Johnson, Caleb H. The Mayflower and Her Passengers, Xlibris Corp. 2006.

Mack, Jonathan, A Stranger Among Saints, Chicago, Chicago Review Press, 2020.

Morison, Samuel Eliot, The Story of the Old Colony of New Plymouth, New York: Alfred A Knoph,1956

Morton, Nathaniel, The New-England Memorial, Plymouth, MA, Forgotten Books, 1669

Prince, Thomas, A Chronological History of New England, Boston: Cummings, Hilliard, and Company, 1736

Silverman, David, This Land is Their Land, New York, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Stratton, Eugene Aubrey, Plymouth Colony, Its History and People, Salt Lake City: Ancestry Publishing Company, 1986

Vaughn, Alden T. New England Frontier, Puritans and Indians 1620-1675, University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

Winslow, Edward and Bradford, William, Mourt’s Relation, 1622

 

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The Four Women Who Cooked the First Thanksgiving

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The four women who cooked that first Thanksgiving probably didn’t feel all that thankful when their husbands invited 90 guests, all Wampanoag men, to eat with them.

They were the only women left after the first deadly winter that killed half of Plymouth Colony. They died of exhaustion, starvation, pneumonia, scurvy and cold. By springtime, 14 women had perished. Remarkably, the four women left managed to feed 143 people without kitchens, ovens, wheat, spices or butter.

This 1899 painting, The First Thanksgiving 1621 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris has a number of inaccuracies. It shows the four women who cooked the first Thanksgiving with smiling faces.

Their dinner guests may have shown up unexpectedly, as the Native people had a tendency to appear when food was served. Or perhaps their menfolk had invited them to seal a peace deal. The meal itself – or rather meals, because they stayed for three days – served as more of a harvest celebration than a Thanksgiving.

The Four Women Who Cooked the First Thanksgiving

The women faced another challenge: getting along with each other. Cooking for so m any people required cooperation among the four, who had different backgrounds and aspirations. They included a Saint, a Goodwife, a Traveler and a Troublemaker.

The colonists referred to themselves as “Saints” and “Strangers” or “Travelers.” The devout Saints wanted to separate from the Church of England and crossed the Atlantic for religious freedom. Strangers came for adventure and opportunity. That both Saints and Strangers signed the Mayflower Compact shows the inclusiveness of the colonists.

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Signing the Mayflower Companct 1620 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

That first Thanksgiving was cooked by two Saints, Mary Brewster and Susanna Winslow, and two Strangers, Elizabeth Hopkins and Eleanor Billington.

But they probably all deserved sainthood for cooking all that food. The men just “feasted and entertained,” according to one of their husbands.

Goodwife Susanna Winslow

That husband, Edward Winslow, had married Susanna White in May, about five months earlier. He would serve as Plymouth’s governor and diplomat, and together they would prosper.

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Edward Winslow, husband of one of the four women who cooked the first Thanksgiving

So at 29, Susanna Winslow was a rising figure in the little colony, a goodwife who would grow into a mistress.

Historians can’t tell for sure whether Susanna arrived as a Saint or a Stranger. Her first husband had a common name, and women didn’t leave much of a record. So no one seems to really know which Englishman named William White boarded the Mayflower.

Susanna and William brought their young son, Resolved, about five years old. Susanna was pregnant, and gave birth to their second son, Peregrine, below decks on the Mayflower as it lay at anchor in Massachusetts Bay. Odd as “Resolved” and “Peregrine” may seem, their names were typical of the Puritans. They suggest Susanna was a Saint.

William died in February and Elizabeth Winslow in March. Forty-eight days after Elizabeth died, Edward married Susanna. He brought to the union a daughter, Margaret, about three years old.

Edward and Susanna had practical and emotional reasons for marrying so soon after their spouses died. As Martyn Whittock points out in Mayflower Lives, “Shared faith, shared history, mutual respect, and, no doubt, physical as well as emotional attraction drew them together. And there is plenty of evidence for loving physical union enhancing partnership in the godly marriages.”

A portrait of Edward Winslow suggests a happy marriage. In his hand he holds a letter. The last three lines read, “From your loving wife, Susanna.” The portrait was painted in 1651, 30 years after their wedding.

Mary Brewster, Saint

Puritans believed in social hierarchy, so one can easily guess who took charge of the cooking operation:

52-year-old Mary Brewster, wife of the Saints’ spiritual leader, William Brewster.

William Brewster

Mary probably wished she had the help of her two daughters, Patience, 21, and Fear, 15, to cook for all those people. But the Brewsters left their daughters behind. They believed, like many of the colonists, that the weaker sex might not survive the journey. That explains why so few women cooked the first Thanksgiving.

That Mary joined her husband tells us something about her grit, her courage and her deep religious faith.

The Brewsters did bring their two boys with them, Love and Wrestling, about 11 and 7 at the first Thanksgiving. They would have helped prepare the meal, along with little Resolved White and Margaret Winslow. Richard More, their seven-year-old servant, would have helped, too.

Richard had come with three siblings, all dead by the time of the first Thanksgiving. Known as one of the Mayflower Love Children, Richard’s legal father had sent the children to America when he discovered he was not their biological father.

Patience and Fear arrived in Plymouth a few years later, along with older brother Jonathan.

Fear married another saint, Isaac Allerton. Her great-great-great-grandson, Zachary Taylor, served as the 12th president of the United States.

Elizabeth Hopkins, Traveler

Two years before boarding the Mayflower, Elizabeth Hopkins, married one of the most interesting Plymouth colonists, Stephen Hopkins. She was 33, he a 36-year-old widower with three children. He had already survived a shipwreck in the Caribbean and taken part in the settlement of Jamestown before returning to England. His adventure as a castaway on a Caribbean island probably inspired Shakespeare to create the character Stephano in The Tempest.

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Calilban, Stephano and Trinculo from the painting The Tempest by Johann Heinrich Ramberg

Stephen, a rough-and-ready sort, planned to return to Virginia with his family. His family included Constance, 14, and Giles, 12, the two surviving children from his first marriage. Little Damaris, about three, may have been conceived before the marriage. Elizabeth was pregnant at the outset of the voyage.

She probably hoped to have her baby on land, but crosswinds and storms extended the unpleasant Mayflower voyage. She gave birth to Oceanus in a dark, cramped berth below the decks of the gyrating vessel.

Stephen, though a Traveler, held a position of importance in the colony. Because of his time in Jamestown, he could hunt and he knew about Native Americans. When the English-speaking Native American Samoset came to Plymouth, Elizabeth and Stephen put him up that night in their tiny house (the 1749 Court House Museum in downtown Plymouth stands on the site).

The house had at the very most three rooms, cramped quarters four adults, three children and the Hopkins’ two servants, Edward Doty and Edward Leister. The crowding probably didn’t help anyone’s temper. The two servants had fought and wounded each other in a sword-and-dagger duel a few months before that Thanksgiving.

Stephen was not the godly sort, and we can imagine Elizabeth wasn’t, either. They would have five more children, run a tavern and occasionally get into trouble with the authorities. Stephen had to pay fines for allowing drinking and shuffleboard on Sunday, for overserving and for overcharging customers.

But theirs seems to have been a successful partnership. When Stephen died in 1644 his will directed he be buried as close as possible to Elizabeth.

Eleanor Billington, Troublemaker

Eleanor Billington, on the other hand, was a troublemaker from a troublemaking family. The younger of her two sons, Francis, nearly burned down the Mayflower as it lay anchored in Plymouth Harrbor in December of 1620. He’d set off some homemade fireworks with his father’s gunpowder.

Eleanor had a hard time controlling her sons, if she even tried. Both tended to wander off unsupervised. In one case her older son John roamed into a camp of Nausets, who had clashed with the colonists upon their first arrival.

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William Bradford

Gov. William Bradford described Eleanor’s husband, John Billington, as “a knave.” Billington contemptuously challenged Capt. Myles Standish’s orders during a militia drill in March 1621.Had he not begged forgiveness, the Plymouth authorities would have punished him. In 1630, he did get punished – hanged for murdering a neighbor.

Bradford then described the Billingtons as one of the “profanest families among them.” He could not understand how the Pilgrims had allowed them to join them from London.

Eleanor Billington also caused trouble. In 1636, she went to the stocks and received a whipping for slandering another Plymouth citizen, John Doane.

But troublemakers have to eat, too, and Eleanor Billington undoubtedly pitched in to make that giant feast.

The Others

Five teenaged girls survived the winter, and they would have worked alongside the four Thanksgiving cooks. Mary Chilton was 14 when she came ashore from the Mayflower, the first woman to set foot on Plymouth soil.

The oldest, Priscilla Mullins, at 19 had lost her mother, father and brother during the winter. She would soon marry John Alden after a courtship immortalized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, their descendant. Other descendants include John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Marilyn Monroe and Calvin Coolidge.

Illustration of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins

Constance Hopkins (13 or 14), Elizabeth Tilley (14 or 15) and Dorothy, an unnamed maidservant, perhaps 18 or 19, would have helped prepare the meal as well.

They probably also had to keep an eye on the children, who included Bartholomew, Mary and Remember Allerton, Humility Cooper, Samuel Eaton and Desire Minter. The older ones would have helped.

Perhaps they minded fires, turned spits, carried water, plucked wildfowl or shucked shellfish. Maybe the lucky ones got the easy job of setting the tables – rough boards covered with cloth. They had just knives and spoons, as the first fork wouldn’t arrive in America until 1633. Tableware would have included pewter or wooden trenchers, tankards and lots and lots of napkins. Since they ate roast meat with their hands, napkins were a must.

Football, But No Pumpkin Pie

While the women cooked, the men entertained their guests. They showed off their military drills for the Wampanoags. And they probably played a version of football on the beach with the Natives, using a deerskin ball stuffed with deer hair.

At least they’d brought food. Bradford ordered four (probably including Stephen Hopkins) to shoot wildfowl. They blasted their muskets for the benefit of the Wampanoags, who outnumbered them.

first-thanksgiving-not

The first Thanksgiving — the preferred version for many.

They may have shot some turkey, but they most likely got duck, geese, swans and maybe even carrier pigeon. The women would have plucked, trimmed and trussed them, then spit-roasted the small birds and boiled the larger ones.

They may have stuffed the birds with onions and herbs from their garden, and maybe chestnuts from the woodss. The next day, they would have taken the leftover meat and made a broth or a potage in their Dutch ovens.

The Wampanoags killed five deer and brought them as gifts. The women would have also cooked them on spits outdoors. Vegetables like corn, turnips, cabbages and carrots went into Dutch ovens on the hearths.

They would have eaten lobster, mussels and clams without butter, because cows didn’t arrive until later. Cod, bass and eels likely appeared on the tables.

They probably also served native fruit—cranberries, wild plums, melons and grapes – as well as walnuts, beechnuts and chestnuts.

Pumpkin, called pompion, undoubtedly would have appeared on the menu. The early colonists ate vast quantities of the stuff. In fact, the first American folk song is a lament about how much pumpkin they ate.

The four women who cooked the first Thanksgiving most certainly did not make pumpkin pie. With no flour, sugar or baking ovens, they probably just stewed it.

But at least they had football.

 

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s Historic Thanksgiving Foods. Available from Amazon (click here).

With thanks to Mayflower Lives: Pilgrims in a New World and the Early American Experience by Martyn Whittock. This story was updated in 2022.

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Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam

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What happened in Surinam during the 18th century stayed in Surinam, until a painting called Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam surfaced in 1948. It drew back the curtain from the decadent, debauched goings-on in Paramaribo, the trading capital of the Dutch colony. The painting also exposed some of Rhode Island’s most respected citizens as having, well, a more playful side.

The colony of Surinam served as an important entrepot for merchant sea captains from New England. They came in vessels loaded with flour, fish, meat and horses — often Narragansett Pacers. In exchange, they bought molasses, cotton duck, coffee, cacao – and people.

In 1761, for example, the Brown brothers of Rhode Island sent a letter to one of their ship captains in Surinam. It told him to use the proceeds of the sale of his cargo to buy molasses, cotton duck, bills of exchange and six “Young male Slaves from twelve years and upwards.”

Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam

Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam included some of the Brown brothers’ ship captains partaking in a bacchanalia. The artist, John Greenwood, painted them in a scene of drunken abandon that included card-rigging, dancing, smoking and passing out. As a sea captain identified as a future Rhode Island governor slept, one prankster poured rum over his head while another vomited into his pocket – even as his pants caught on fire.

Greenwood may also have intended a sly comment on the price some people paid for the sea captains’ fun and prosperity. He painted into the scene four dark-skinned servants, in all likelihood enslaved.

Sea Captains Carousing

Culturally, Surinam was a Caribbean colony, and like other Caribbean colonies, it generated great wealth mostly from its sugar plantations. The planters depended on the forced labor of hundreds of thousands of Africans.  Slavers competed in the Surinam market to buy and sell men, women and children.

Of the 4,478 ships that arrived in the capital, Paramaribo, in the 18th century, 90 percent sailed from New England. The average layover for a New England ship lasted 10 weeks. Perhaps it took the sea captains that long to get sober.

While laying over in Paramaribo, the sea captains could enjoy the city’s exuberant luxury.  Wealthy merchants and planters lived in elegantly furnished houses, ate from silver and china plates and wore magnificent clothing of imported silk and velvet accented with diamonds and gold. They also had plenty of slaves.

John Greenwood

John Greenwood arrived in Surinam in December 1752 at the age of 25. He was born in Boston on Dec. 7, 1727, the son of a prosperous sea captain, in Boston.  John Singleton Copley, the most famous American painter of his era, was a boyhood friend. Much later in life, while living in Europe, Greenwood commissioned Copley to paint a portrait of his mother because he wanted to see ‘the good lady’s face.’ Copley sent it to him, but he never saw his mother alive again.

Mrs. Humphrey Devereaux by John Singleton Copley

Greenwood’s father died insolvent in 1747, and his son worked as an apprentice for a while. Then he left his apprenticeship to pursue portraiture.

Like the itinerant folk artists who roamed Connecticut and western Massachusetts in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Greenwood traveled along trade routes painting portraits of sea captains and wealthy merchants. They could afford to buy portraits and wanted to show off their wealth, just as the bourgeois farmers and tradesmen inland did.

Greenwood spent five years in Paramaribo. While there, he observed shipping networks and local events while painting 113 portraits along with Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam.

John Greenwood

In October 1757 he described two Dutch sea captains up all night drinking.[I]  “saw ’em at 1 o’clock as I came from the watch. Dinker was very Drunk & told me that a very holy & Religious dispute had kept ’em together all night & that was not yet settled–that is they were to Have another drinking match.”

Between 1755 and 1758, he painted Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, believed commissioned by John Jenckes, a Providence sea captain. The painting remained in the Jenckes family until they sold it to the St. Louis Art Museum.

The Partygoers

According to a note penned by a family member and dated June 6, 1878, 10 sea captains could be identified in “The Old Jenckes Picture.” Though engaged in slaving and privateering in the 1750s, many went on to political or military prominence in the American Revolution.

In 1977, historian Robert W. Kenny tried to figure out who really attended that drunken night of revelry in Surinam.

Kenny, for example, finds it plausible that John Jenckes stands in the background to the right holding a candle while John Greenwood vomits. Greenwood, of course, was in Surinam. Jenckes and his father Daniel may well have laid over in Surinam, possibly after a voyage to Antigua. The man with his back to the table is Daniel Jenckes.

In the right foreground, Nicholas Power supposedly gives a dancing lesson to young Godfrey Malbone. Both the Powers and the Malbones were prominent seafaring families from Rhode Island.  But Malbone, a privateer and slaver, had many years on Power, then only around 16. Kenny concludes Malbone gives the dancing lesson to Power.

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Nicholas Cooke and Esek Hopkins

Esek Hopkins and Nicholas Cooke

The man at the back of the table wearing a black hat is Esek Hopkins, the first commander-in-chief of the U.S. Navy. Appointed to command the navy’s eight ships in the American Revolution, he didn’t last long in the job.

Hopkins had made a fortune as a privateer and as a merchant. In In 1764, the Brown brothers — Nicholas, John, Joseph and Moses — sent Esek Hopkins in the brigantine Sally to Africa to buy slaves. Hopkins acquired 196, but during the ignominious voyage home, 109 died by suicide, starvation, disease or in a failed mutiny.

Hopkins sits next to Nicholas Cooke, in a gray Quaker hat smoking a long pipe. In 1766, when Cooke was near 50 and well-established as a leading Providence merchant, the board of Rhode Island College (now Brown University) chose him to join them. Some board members objected, saying he wasn’t a good enough Baptist. Cooke protested, presented his bona fides and got the seat.

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Another side of Nicholas Cooke

Clearly the board hadn’t seen the painting of Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam. Or maybe they had, and that was the real reason they thought he had shortcomings as a Baptist.

Cooke won election as deputy governor of Rhode Island under Joseph Wanton, Jr.  The General Assembly in 1775 deposed Wanton for his alleged Loyalist sympathies, and Cooke assumed the governorship.

Sea Captains Carousing – Not

Some people think the passed-out middle-aged target of vomit and punch is Joseph Wanton, Jr.—treated much the same way the General Assembly treated the then-governor.

hopkins-wanton

Stephen Hopkins supposedly to the left and Joseph Wanton Jr. supposedly to the right.

However, Kenny believes the figure in the painting too old for the governor. Instead, he surmises it’s his father, a prosperous West Indies merchant. The sea captain vomiting into his pocket, Ambrose Page, later won election to the General Assembly. He was also John Jenckes’ brother-in-law.

History treated Stephen Hopkins with more kindness than it did his brother, Esek. In 1776, with a palsied hand, Stephen Hopkins signed the Declaration of Independence by holding his right hand with his left. As he signed, he said, “My hand trembles, but my heart does not.”

That noble sentiment is missing from Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam, if, as people believe, the man passed out next to Esek Hopkins is indeed Stephen Hopkins.

However, Kenny pointed out that Stephen Hopkins probably wasn’t in Surinam when Greenwood was there. He believes it more likely that Greenwood depicted another Hopkins brother, William.

With thanks to The Eighteenth Centuries Global Networks of Enlightenment by Cynthia Wall and Sea Captains Carousing in Surinam by Robert Kenny in Rhode Island History, published by the Rhode Island Historical Society in November 1977.

This story last updated in 2023.

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The Providence Tea Party: On Dry Land, in Daylight and Thrown By Women

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Rhode Island patriots had no more love for tea than did their allies in Boston, and on March 2, 1775, they threw the Providence Tea Party in Market Square.

Rhode Island had already hosted one militant protest against Parliament’s customs policies. On June 9, 1772, Rhode Island’s Sons of Liberty captured the crew of a British customs schooner and burned the vessel to the waterline. Rhode Island has since celebrated the Gaspee Affair as its own version of the Boston Tea Party.

Though not the only Tea Party, the Boston affair happened first, and gained the most notoriety. It also inspired similar action from Charleston, S.C., to York, Maine. In some places, patriots threw tea overboard as they had in Boston. In others, they burned the tea as they did in Providence.

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Provience’s Market Square, 1840s

Boston Tea Party Starts It All

Contrary to popular belief, the Tea Act didn’t increase the tax on tea. Rather, it lowered the price of tea – for one giant British company that had too much of the stuff. By enacting the Tea Act, Parliament gave a bailout in the form of a duty-free monopoly to the troubled British East India Company.

The cheap British East India tea threatened small merchants in North America – as well as the Dutch smugglers who sold it to them.

In 1765, eight years before the Boston Tea Party, the Rhode Island General Assemble opposed the Stamp Act with a resolution denying ‘the right of any power but itself to levy taxes in the colony.’

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The Boston Tea Party

Word of the Boston Tea Party spread fast through the colonies. In January 1774, Rhode Island patriots held meetings in Newport and Providence to address ‘so interesting and alarming an occasion.’ And they agreed that if they didn’t express the ‘firmest resolution to vindicate our rights,’ it might be ‘construed as a cession of them into the hands of those who have wantonly evaded them in this instance.’

Walking the Walk

In addition to talking about their rights, Rhode Islanders had walked the walk. In the summer of 1774, the General Assembly sent Stephen Hopkins and Daniel Ward to the Continental Congress. The Assembly also created the Providence Light Infantry.

By winter, the General Assembly had chartered more companies in Providence, Newport and East Greenwich, the Train of Artillery, the Scituate Hunters, the Providence Artillery, the Providence Fusiliers and the North Providence Rangers.

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Stephen Hopkins

The Providence Tea Party

Then in early 1775 Rhode Islanders held the Providence Tea Party.

In 1923, Providence Magazine gave one of the few accounts of the burning of the tea in Market Square. The magazine reported that on March 2, 1775, the Town Crier announced:

“At four of the Clock this Afternoon a Quantity of India Tea will be burnt in the Market Place. All true friends of the Country, Lovers of Freedom and Haters of Shackles and Hand-cuffs, are hereby invited to testify their good Disposition, by bringing in and casting into the Fire a needless Herb, which for a long time hath been highly detrimental to our Liberty, Interest and Health.”

As planned, patriots started a fire in the middle of Market Square and women fed 300 pounds of tea into it.

The Gazette on March 4, 1775, reported:

“At the appointed hour a fire was started in Market square, a barrel of tar was placed upon it, and copies of Lord North’s speech, and other obnoxious English papers were burned, while to the flames were added 300 pounds of tea, fed to the fire by the women of the town.”

“While the tea was burning a spirited Son of Liberty went along the streets with his brush and lampblack, and obliterated or unpainted the word TEA on the shop signs,” reported the Gazette.

More Tea Parties

Today, a plaque on the side of the Market House provides a rare reminder of the Providence Tea Party. It reads, “Near this spot the men and women of Providence showed their resistance to unjust taxation by burning British-taxed tea on the night of March 2, 1775. Erected by the Rhode Island Societies of the Sons of the American Revolution and Daughters of the American Revolution 1894.”

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The Market House today

Providence patriots had plenty of company in the tea-destruction department. On the Christmas Day after the Boston Tea Party, the British ship Polly sailed up the Delaware River and put in at Chester, Pa., with 698 chests of tea. Philadelphian patriots met with the captain, escorted him upriver and suggested he return to London. Perhaps they showed him broadsides threatening to tar and feather him. He did.

Then in January 1774, Princeton College students broke into a storeroom, took all the tea and burned a dozen pounds of tea on the campus.

On April 22, 1774, a ship captain named Chambers tried to smuggle 18 chests of tea into New York. The Sons of Liberty got word of it, searched the ships, found the tea, dumped it overboard and burned the chests in the streets. Earlier that month, New York’s Sons of Liberty turned back the Nancy, which carried 698 chests of tea into Sandy Hook.

On May 24, 1774, patriots in Chestertown, Md., dumped tea from a brig into the Chester River. Chestertown still celebrates the event.

From Maine to South Carolina

In York, Maine, on Sept. 15, 1774, 150 pounds of tea came from Newfoundland on the sloop Cynthia. The Sons of Liberty seized the tea and stashed it in a storeroom. Then some ‘Pickwacket Indians’ made off with the tea. Somehow the tea returned mysteriously two days later.

In October 1774, patriots burned the Peggy Stewart, which had carried tea and indentured servants to Annapolis, Md. (The servants got off the ship beforehand.)

On Nov. 3, 1774, seven chests of tea were landed in Charleston, S.C., but local officials ordered the merchants who received it to dump it into the Cooper River. Fearing what the mobs might do if they didn’t, they dumped it.

On December 22, 1774, patriots in Greenwich, N.J., burned tea, six days after the Boston Tea party.

This story was updated in 2021. Image of the Providence Market House By Filetime – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98763110.

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May 4, 1776: Rhode Island Independence Day

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Rhode Island declared its independence two months before the other 12 colonies got around to formally breaking ties with King George III.

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Stephen Hopkins, father of Rhode Island independence.

On May 4, 1776, the General Assembly of the Colony of Rhode Island declared its absolute independence from Great Britain. The members voted nearly unanimously, thus making Rhode Island the first independent sovereign state in the western world.

The colony drew on its traditions of radical religious dissent and protection of its commercial interests. Newport and Providence, both prosperous centers of transatlantic trade, sheltered pirates and smugglers. Britain wanted that stopped. Rhode Island merchants chafed at the mother country’s attempts to tighten control over commercial shipping in Narragansett Bay.

Insult and Injury

Many Rhode Island merchants engaged in the triangle trade. They sold rum to Africa in exchange for slaves. Then they sold slaves to West Indian sugar plantations in exchange for molasses, an ingredient in rum.

Parliament passed the Sugar Act of 1764, raising the tariff on molasses.  That provoked Rhode Islanders into attacking the customs ship HMS St. John that year. In 1769, Rhode Islanders burned another customs ship, HMS Liberty, in Newport Harbor.

In 1772, the British customs ship HMS Gaspee grounded near Warwick.  Abraham Whipple and John Brown led the Sons of Liberty in attacking, looting, boarding and burning the vessel. A Royal Commission of Inquiry charged the men with treason, and the prospect of Americans going to England for trial sent an alarm through the colonies. Ultimately the Commission dropped the matter.

Rhode Island Independence

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The Burning of the Gaspee by Charles deWolf Brownell, c1892

Fast forward to 1776, when Rhode Island was in the thick of the American Revolution. The colony’s long coastline had little protection from British naval forces, which harassed the islands and mainland. Eventually, the British occupied Newport.

That is why Rhode Island independence happened two months before the rest of the colonies got around to it.

On May 4, 1776, the General Assembly met in Providence to perform the last official act in colonial Rhode Island. Jonathan Arnold drew up the bill that repealed an act of allegiance to the king. It enacted an oath of allegiance to the state. It also decreed that all court proceedings should be performed in the name of the state, not of the king. The bill replaced “God save the King” with the phrase “God save the United Colonies.”

Engraving of William Ellery by Henry Bryan Hall

The General Assembly also gave instructions to William Ellery and Stephen Hopkins, Rhode Island representatives to the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia.

Nicholas Cooke

Two days later, Gov. Nicholas Cooke wrote a letter to Gen. George Washington, saying, “I also enclose a copy of an Act discharging the inhabitants of this Colony from allegiance to the King of Great Britain, which was carried in the House of Deputies, after a debate, with but six dissentient voices, there being upwards of sixty members present.”

On July 4, 1776 in Philadelphia, Stephen Hopkins picked up a pen and supported his shaking right hand with his left as he signed the Declaration of Independence.

The Rhode Islander famously remarked:

My hand trembles, but my heart does not.

This story about Rhode Island independence was updated in 2023.

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