Tag Archives: American Revolution

January 5, 2025

2025: the Anniversary Year

By daseger

I like to look ahead to the coming historical anniversaries at the beginning of every year, and in 2025 it’s pretty clear that two wars are going to dominate the commemoration calendar: the beginning of the American Revolution and the end of World War II. The Fall of Saigon occurred in 1975, so you could add a third. Here in Massachusetts, we’ve been gearing up for revolutionary remembrance for quite some time, under the aegis of a coalition called Revolution 250. Even the City of Salem, pretty passive when it comes to matters of heritage and seemingly oblivious to our City’s key pre-revolutionary and revolutionary roles, is getting in on the action by jumping on board the 250th anniversary of “Leslie’s Retreat” in late February. A Revolution Ball at Hamilton Hall—the successor to the pre-Covid Resistance Ball— will also be held in the midst of a very busy commemorative weekend in Salem. The commemorations of the battles of Lexington and Concord in April and Bunker Hill in June promise to be huge, even though the latter will be “fought” in Gloucester rather than Charlestown. Then the focus will shift to Cambridge, where Washington formed the Continental Army: I don’t think it was quite as orderly a process as the Currier & Ives lithograph below presents!

Revolutionary remembrance in Salem and Massachusetts: a view of “Leslie’s Retreat,” when a Salem crowd and dialogue convinced British Lt. Colonel Alexander Leslie and his soldiers to retreat while cannon were carried away, 1955 Emma Crafts Earley Map Salem Massachusettes With History, Phillips Library. This event is widely heralded in Salem as the “first armed resistance by the Colonies to British Authority,” which is just not true, but I think I can accept “the first armed resistance to British in 1775.” The Revolution Ball will be held on February 22: more information here. The Battle of Lexington, Bettman Archive; “An Exact View of the Late Battle at Charlestown, June 17, 1775.” and “Washington Taking Command of the American Army,” Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

While most of the Revolutionary commemoration will likely be exuberant, remembering the end of World War II will be much more nuanced, marking victory and liberation but also loss and destruction. The 80th anniversary of VE Day (May 8) could be “a shared moment of celebration” but obviously Holocaust remembrance will be more solemn, as will the anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I probably shouldn’t even reference these atrocities in a post on history anniversaries as their remembrance is quite appropriately ongoing and perpetual, but the eighty-year mark is noted everywhere. A major exhibition, Portraits of the Hibakusha | 80 Years Remembered, featuring a series of 52 lenticular portraits of the survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has already opened and will travel to museums and galleries around the world. Eighty years ago this very month (on January 27), Auschwitz was liberated by soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army: here is more information about the observances scheduled for this site on this particular International Holocaust Remembrance Day, from which Russia has been excluded for the third straight year.

It seems to me that in terms of public remembrance, we tend to remember bad things more than good, ostensibly because we do not want to repeat the bad. Ultimately (I think!) war remembrance is a hopeful process rather than a macabre one, but it is wearing and wearying. I teach a European history survey pretty much every semester and I always get wary when we approach the twentieth century, but there were two very consequential conflicts from my own period that will also be commemorated in 2025: King Philip’s War (1675-76) and the German Peasants War of 1525, both bloody conflicts between desperate insurgents and established regimes—well, perhaps the colonists of southern New England were not that established when an indigenous coalition under the leadership of Wampanoag chief Metacom, later known as King Philip, attacked English settlements over a 14-month period. Several Salem men, including Nathaniel Hawthorne’s first American ancestor William Hathorne, fought in this conflict, which left hundreds of colonists and thousands of Native Americans dead. Northeastern University Emeritus Professor of Public History Martin Blatt has called for more commemoration of King Philip’s War, but I don’t see any big event on the 2025 calendar. There is, however, some amazing scholarship on the War and its remembrance in New England over the centuries. The German Peasants’ War was the biggest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution, extending to much of the Holy Roman Empire. It was notable for being not just a large peasant revolt but one in which an expansive “working class” (a term we don’t usually use before the Industrial Revolution), including miners and urban workers, rose up against serfdom and its remnants, brandishing a document callled The Twelve Articles which justified their demands in scripture. It’s the first sign of the potentially radical impact of the Reformation, and Martin Luther was so horrified by the rebels’ confusion of spiritual and secular “freedom” that he called for the “murderous theiving hordes of peasants” to be cut down. And so they were.

Because of its early expression of “class consciousness,” East Germany commemorated the 45oth anniversary of the Peasants War in 1975 with this stamp and other events. For the 500th anniversary in 2025, the Thuringian state has organized a traveling exhibition.

Lightening up quite a bit. Jane Austen was born in that consequential year of 1775, and given her popularity over these past few decades, I have no doubt that the 250th anniversary of her birth will be commemorated in a big way in Britian—and no doubt elsewhere. Just a few clicks and I realized that the events that constitute Jane Austen 250 make the very busy Revolution 250 calendar look quiet! In Bath, and Winchester, and throughout Hampshire there will be festivals and costume balls and dress-up days and parades. At Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, each book will get its own festival starting with Pride and Prejudice this very month and there will be a special year-long exhibition called Austenmania. Bath has been on the Austen bandwagon for quite some time so there’s a lot going on there but in Winchester, the city where Jane spent her last years and was laid to rest, there’s a bit of a controversy about a new statue to be installed on the Cathedral grounds. There are concerns about overtourism in general and the sanctity of its proposed location in particular, with one critic opining that “I don’t think we want to turn it into Disneyland-on-Itchen. I don’t think the Inner Close is the place to attract a lot of lovely American tourists to come and have a selfie with Jane Austen.” (sounds vaguely familiar) They’ve spent quite a bit of money on the statue, so I think it’s a go, but Winchester is clearly the only place in the region where there are any clouds on the horizon: everywhere and everyone else seems geared up for an enthusiastic Austen year.

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December 16, 2024

They Came Back for the Cannon

By daseger

This has been such a “revolutionary” year for me; I had to cap it off by an actual event: the reenactment of the raids on Fort William and Mary in New Castle, New Hampshire on December 14 and 15, 1774 this past weekend. There were two raids on this under-manned fort: first they came for the gunpowder, then for the cannon. From September of 1774 New England had been in a constant state of alarm: these December actions were the first overt revolutionary actions: if the Fort had actually been manned, I do believe the American Revolution would have begun in December of 1774 rather than April of 1775. “What if” history is generally pointless, but still, this particular episode has everything: a mid-day ride by Paul Revere warning the people of Portsmouth of the imminent arrival of warships, two raids on successive days, removing the “peoples’s” gunpowder and cannon from the “king’s” fort, a trampled British flag.

I was early for the December 15 reenactment, so I walked around a nearly people-less New Castle with bells ringing on Sunday morning: despite the calm, it was kind of exciting!

You can read that I am using the language from the official marker: “overt”. It was overt! It was open treason after Revere arrived in Portsmouth in the late afternoon of December 13. One of the town’s wealthiest and most influential residents, John Langdon (Continental Congress member and later President pro tempore of the US Senate and Governor of New Hampshire), recruited Patriot raiders on the streets with fife and drum, and eventually a force of nearly 400 militiamen assaulted the Fort on the next day. Inside were a mere five men under the command of Captain John Cochran, who gave this account to the Royal Governor John Wentworth:  About three o’ clock the Fort was besieged on all sides by upwards of four hundred men. I told them on their peril not to enter; they replied they would; I immediately ordered three four-pounders to be fired on them, and then the small arms, and before we could be ready to fire again, we were stormed on all quarters, and they immediately secured both me, and my men, and kept us prisoners about one hour and a half, during which time they broke open the Powder House, and took all the Powder away except one barrel, and having put it into boats and sent it off, they released me from my confinement. Despite the fire, there were no injuries, except for the Fort’s flag, which was pulled down and trampled upon. About 100 barrels of gunpowder were dispensed to nearby towns for safekeeping.

Howard Pyle’s illustration of the Surrender of Fort William and Mary, December 14, 1774, New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

And on the next day they came back for the cannon. Even more men, from both sides of the Piscataqua (the Maine side was then Massachusetts), under the command of Continental Congress member John Sullivan (another Continental Congress representative and future NH governor), raided the surrendered fort and carried away 16 cannon, 60 muskets and additional military stores. Sullivan had formerly been close friends with Governor Wentworth, but their relationship was severed by the latter’s Loyalism and lies to his countrymen, a point that was played up by the reenacting Sullivan in his speech to his troops and audience. I think they were planning to return to the pillaged port again but were preventing from doing so by the arrival of two British ships, the Canceaux and the Scarborough in the following week.

After a rousing speech by Sullivan (2024), off to the Fort!

Reenactors (and reenectment attendees) often endure extreme heat and cold waiting for reenactments to occur! It was a cold morning, but as you can see by this charming reenactor’s smile, also a pleasurable one. I was so whipped up by Sullivan’s (2024) speech that I felt that I had to visit Governor Wentworth’s nearby house, as if expecting to find him there to counter his former friend’s accusations. I will give him not the last word but a last word, as I think we need some more contemporary accounts: the letter from Portsmouth below was featured in all the American newspapers in the last week of December, and then Governor Wentworth’s proclamation followed in early January of 1775. The separation seems severe.

Essex Gazette, January 10, 1775.

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October 1, 2024

Salem 1774: Tea, Fire and a new Congress

By daseger

I just want to wrap up Salem’s long hot Revolutionary summer of 1774 with a finale first week of October and then I’ll be turning to Salem’s intense Halloween—I am not escaping this year because I’m working at the Phillips House and both my husband and I are so busy we can’t really handle the commute to Maine. So I’ll be going to various “attractions” and writing about them; it should be……….interesting. But today, a “tea party,” a “great fire,” and the convening of a brand new autonomous Provincial Assembly for Massachusetts, all right here in Salem in the first week of October 1774. After reading about the pre-Revolution all summer long I now subscribe completely to super-historian Mary Beth Norton’s assessment of the importance of 1774: here in Massachusetts, maybe even here in Salem, the Revolution began.

The Massachusetts Spy piece gives you a sense of what the late summer and early fall was like in Massachusetts: a ship arrived with 30 chests of tea, its purchaser confronted and cargo sent off to Halifax. Local and county meetings continue, as do congregations to prevent the royal courts to convene. Legal officials who are appointees of the Governor/King “recant and confess.” Boston is ever more fortified by Royal troops and Benjamin Franklin is America bound! You can feel it coming (but of course hindsight is 20/20). Salem remains the official port of entry (with Marblehead) and colonial capital, all the elected representatives to the General Court called by General Gage for October 5 received instructions from their communities throughout the month of September to resist royal encroachments on their liberty and call for a return to the William and Mary charter from nearly a century before. And then Gage called off the big assembly!

Boston Evening-Post, 3 October 1774.

Too much tumult! There would be no royally-convened General Court assembly at Salem on October 5: it was postponed by Governor Gage to some “distant day”.  Ultimately a more representative body will convene, but before everyone that Salem happening there were two fires in town: one very little, the other, “great.” The little one was a PUBLIC burning of tea conveyed to Salem in a cask which was loaded onto a wagon belonging to Benjamin Jackson in Boston. I find this whole story so interesting because several weeks before 30 chests of tea had arrived in Salem but people seem more upset by this little cask! An unfortunate and anonymous African-American man, “belonging to, or employed by Mrs. Sheaffe of Boston,” had requested the cask be conveyed to Salem, and it was, and he was identified as offering it for sale rather than his owner/employer: “it was taken from him and publicly burnt,” upon its arrival, “and the Fellow obliged immediately to leave town” on October 3. Some chroniclers have labeled this a “Salem Tea Party,” but I’ve read too much about tea resistance in Salem in the revolutionary Summer of 1774 so it seems like a minor affair to me.

Several days later, the long suffering Tory Justice of the Peace Peter Frye, whose statement is above, had his house and commercial buildings destroyed in the “Great Fire” of 1774, which devoured a block of buildings in central Salem. Frye had tried to find his way back to “friendship” with his Salem neighbors, but they had never been able to forget his commercial and judicial dealings contrary to Patriot proclamations. He would leave Salem for Ipswich shortly after the fire, and cross over to Britain in the next year. Salem had a bit of a reputation as a Tory town before 1774, but it had certainly lost that identity by this time.

While the fire was still simmering and smoking, representatives from across Massachusetts converged on Salem for the meeting of the General Court, even though they all knew it had been canceled by Governor Gage the week before. They wanted to meet. They made a show of waiting around for the Governor, and then met on their own, in a completely autonomous assembly, a new Provincial Congress. This body, with John Hancock as its chair, became the de facto of Massachusetts, strengthening its resolve and powers with successive meetings in Concord (October 11-14) and Cambridge. But it started in Salem.

John Hancock drawn by William Sharp.

 

Two events in commemoration of the formation of the Provincial Congress:

In Salem, October 7: 250th Anniversary of the First Provincial Congress: https://essexheritage.org/event/250th-anniversary-of-the-first-massachusetts-provincial-congress.

In Concord, October 11: Exploring Our Democracy— Our Rights and Responsibilities: https://www.wrighttavern.org/programs/#october11.

 

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September 2, 2024

Revolutionary Remembrance

By daseger

Even more so than usual, this Labor Day weekend seemed like the end of summer to me. Actually, not just the end, but the finale. This was quite a productive summer, even though I didn’t really produce anything: there were more edits on Salem’s Centuries and the new experience of working as a guide at Historic New England’s Phillips House, but what I was really focused on was Salem’s experience of the American Revolution. I read really widely on this topic, and learned a lot: I honestly don’t think I’ve read as much history since graduate school. It actually felt like graduate school, but without the pressure. As I say all the time on this blog, I’m not an American historian, so to truly understand historical forces at work at any time in Salem’s history, I have to get up to speed by going through both the classic texts as well as more recent studies. For a topic as big as the AMERICAN REVOLUTION, “background” is going to involve reading a lot of books, and so I did. At the beginning of the summer, all I wanted was to understand Salem’s role as provincial capital during the summer of 1774, but I couldn’t really grasp that without some understanding of the forces (and people!) at play in British America in general and Massachusetts in particular during the period between the close of the Seven Years’ War and the Boston Tea Pary. I would finish one book on this era with the realization that I had to read two or three or four more. I had questions which led to more questions. And it was all so PERSONAL: I had to figure out all the networks as well. My “revolutionary Salem summer” reading project was also personal, but it had public validation: Massachusetts has been in revolution-commemoration mode for a while thanks to the efforts and organzation of Revolution250  so there were regional events all summer long and this is also the bicentennial year of the (General) Marquis de Lafayette’s triumphant return tour of the United States, an anniversary marked by a succession of reenactments in the towns and cities which he visited originally, including Salem this very weekend. For an early modern European historian, this kind of synchronicity seldom happens!

Waiting for the General/ Marquis at a Red, White, and Blue Picnic in Chestnut Street Park—in this last photo, a very chill cat on a leash captured everyone’s attention, especially this regency toddler!

Lafeyette arrived in Salem around 2:00 pm, there were formal welcomes and speeches and a few photo ops, and then he was on his way. This was a busy day for the Marquis/General: it started in Chelsea, and then he visited Marblehead, Salem, Beverly and ended up in Ipswich—just like August 31, 1824. This was a very enjoyable event, co-sponsored by nearly all of the non-witchy nonprofits of Salem: Hamilton Hall, The Salem Athenaeum, The Phillips House, and the Pickering House, as well as Essex Heritage and the Creative Collective, and the colorful assistance of the Danvers Alarm List Company. The 1824 tour of “the Nation’s Guest” was marked by a spirited public exuberance which sustained and even rekindled memories of the American Revolution; let’s hope this Bicentennial tour can do the same! If it does, it will be in large part due to the efforts of the American Friends of Lafayette, an organization which has been cultivating the General’s character and contributions since 1932. Even though it was just one pitstop on a long day for Lafayette in 1824, the preparations in Salem were detailed and complex: you can see John Remond’s catering accounts at the Phillips Library and read all about the lengthy cavalcade here. And Salem was not alone: for comparison’s sake (and to get inspired for this weekend), I went to see the Lexington Historical Society’s small exhibition, “The President and the General,” last week. While some of the exhibits clearly belonged to another time, others clearly have resonance in our own, like the banner that boldly states LIBERTY.

Couldn’t quite capture the T & the Y! An allegorical image of Lafayette returning to France with founding-father protectors; ribbon/sash, invitation, banners from the 1824 tour, Lexington Historical Society.

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August 19, 2024

Quick About Their Business

By daseger

So I’m going back to the revolutionary summer of 1774, when Salem served as provincial capital and (with Marblehead) port of entry, Boston’s punishment for its Tea Party. Salem had a strong Tory contingent, but I think the Whigs were stronger: they prevented the new royal governor, General Thomas Gage, from even residing in the new capital. He was compelled to find housing in nearby Danvers, from where he issued a succession of proclamations, including one which prohibited “illegal combinations”. Once the Massachusetts Government Act came into effect on August 1, his power was increased dramatically: councillors previously chosen by election were now appointed by him, and town meetings could only occur with his call. Bristling under this royal representative, the most illegal of combinations, the various committees of correspondence across Massachusetts, called for county conventions to be held in September, and (illegal) town meetings to elect representatives to said conventions. This is the background to an incredible meeting that was held in Salem on August 24, right under General Gage’s watch. This notice from the Essex Gazette of August 16 represents the tensions in town: the 59th regiment were camped out at Salem Neck ready to defend Gage and royal prerogatives, and Salem’s Patriots were referring to those men who accepted appointments to the new Royal Council as “Sworn Enemies to the Sacred Rights of the good People of this Province.”

As you see, the view of the Patriots was that Lord North’s new assemblies were “unconstitutional,” and thus they went about forming their own. Shortly after the “Sacred Rights” piece was published, handbills appeared in public places in Salem, published under the auspices of the town’s Committee of Correspondence, asking the “merchants, freemen, and other inhabitants of Salem” to meet at the Town House Chamber on August 24 for the purpose of appointing deputies to the upcoming Ipswich Convention “to consider of and determine on such  as the late Acts of Parliament and our grievances render necessary.” Governor Gage issued a responsive proclamation on August 23. Thereby forbidden to meet, Salem’s Patriots met anyway, and were clearly ready to meet with any “ill consequences.”

On the next day, members of the Committee of Correspondence were summoned to a meeting with Governor Gage at 9:00 in the morning, but the town meeting had already assembled an hour before. Gage (whose office seems to have been literally two doors down from the Town House) ordered them to call it off, but it had already begun, and was essentially concluding while the conversation next door continued (despite Gage’s assertion that he was “not going to enter into a Conversation on the matter; I came to execute the Laws not dispute them”). The town meeting elected Richard Derby Jr., John Pickering, Jonathan Ropes, Timothy Pickering, Jonathan Gardner, and Richard Manning Jr. to represent the town at the Ipswich Convention in September and promptly adjourned. And thus a well-run meeting—and time management–had prevented a potential conflict, as two companies of the 59th Regiment of Foot encamped at Salem Neck were marching towards downtown Salem that very morning.

Gage ordered the 59th to return to camp, but on the following day the Governor had apparently resolved that this resistance required a response and so ordered Peter Frye, a well-known Loyalist and county Judge, to arrest the leaders of the Committee of Correspondence on charges of “unlawfully and seditiously causing the People to assemble without leave from the Governor, etc..” Two men posted bail upon their arrest, but the remaining five refused to recognize the legality of their arrests and threatened Gage with consequences of their own. This was no longer a local matter; given the rationale for the unprecedented town meeting, it really never was, but these particular proceedings brought forth “upwards of three thousand men” who converged on Salem from surrounding Essex County, “with full determination to rescue the Committee if they should be sent to prison, even if they were oblig’d to repel force with force, being sufficiently provided for such a purpose.” Both the Judge and the Governor backed down: “His Excellency has suspended the matter at Salem by dropping the prosecution. Seeing them resolute and the people so determinate, he was willing to give up a point rather than push matters to extremities” wrote Boston Merchant John Andrews to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. The Governor could abandon rebellious Salem, and he did by the end of the month, but Peter Frye could not: his property and family were fully vested in a town that seemed to resent him fiercely. Despite his public apology and expressed “hope to be restored to that Friendship and Regard with my Fellow-Citizens and Countrymen which I heretofore enjoyed,” Andrews reported that “Colonel Frye, of Salem … has resigned all his posts of honor and profit. Indeed necessity obliged him to, as he and his family were in danger of starving; for the country people would not sell him any provisions, and the inhabitants……. dare not procure him any” in early September. And a month later, when another “illegal” assembly was convening in Salem, Frye’s Essex Street properties were torched, igniting the Great Salem Fire of 1774. Salem was a tinderbox, to be sure.

Peter Frye, one of Salem’s most conspicuous Tories (Portraits in the Essex Institute) and the consequences he suffered.

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June 17, 2024

Revolutionary Summer, Part II: Heating Up

By daseger

Today, part two of my occasional summer series on Salem’s role as provincial capital in the summer of 1774, illustrated by reenactors of the Encampment Weekend at Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Of course, there were no soldiers encamped along Derby Wharf in 1774: this was a busy, busy port, especially since the enforcement of the Boston Port Act. But they were a welcome sight (for those of us in Salem who believe that “history” happened in more years than 1692) in June of 2024, along with various townspeople, deputies to the resident General Court (including John Adams) and busy cooking and crafting women. Congratulation to Salem Maritime on a great event!

So now that we have the setting established, let’s return to the timeline. In Part I, I covered the background to Salem’s new revolutionary role and brought Governer Gage to town. He was followed by representatives from across Massachusetts to the General Court, which had its first Salem meeting on June 7. This session lasted ten days, and it did not go well from the British perspective for several reasons. The Boston Port Act had incited the majority of the representatives, and the dictates of the Massachusetts Government Act (published in the Boston Gazette on June 6) even more so: Governor Gage knew that he would soon be in a position of even more control over the government of Massachusetts, so he was completely reluctant to negotiate on anything: why they were all in Salem, first and foremost. From a local perspective, the Governor’s reactions to two very different addresses he had received upon his arrival in Salem, from the majority the majority Patriots and solid minority Loyalists, represent his point of view quite well. The former, along with their fellow Patriots in Boston and elsewhere in Massachusetts, were quite bolstered by the support from communities up and down the British Atlantic, and focused more on planning for participation in a Continental Congress than doing Gage’s bidding. When a special subcommittee submitted its plans for the Congress to the full assembly on June 17, the doors were locked to prevent any gubernatorial interruptions. Gage dissolved the General Court the same day, but it had already approved sending five delegates to the Congress, as well as a boycott on the purchase and consumption of tea and other imports from Great Britain and the East Indies. And so we move on.

Appendix: a cautionary tale!

 

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June 3, 2024

Revolutionary Summer

By daseger

Revolution 250, the initiative to commemorate the 25oth anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution in our region, has been gearing up for some time, and now we’ve come to Salem’s time to shine: when General Thomas Gage arrived in Boston on May 13, 1774 he brought with him his credentials as the newly-appointed royal governor, and instructions to displace the city as both the chief port of New England and capital of colonial Massachusetts. Everyone knew about the Boston Port Act, a retaliatory measure in response to the Tea Party which mandated that “Marblehead in Salem Harbor” should become the official port of entry, but the Massachusetts Government Act was a more recent Parliamentary passage. These “Intolerable” acts (not a word that was really in use at the time) had the cumulative effect of uniting most of the colonies against Great Britain: donations pored into Boston from far and near, including Salem. While there were those in Salem who expressed some measure of cheer at the city’s elevated status, most (or at least most of the expressions) voiced displeasure: I am particularly interested in the change of tone from May 17 onwards regarding General (Governor) Gage’s residence. At first there is reference to a house in the “upper part of town” (I think this was William Browne’s stately house) and then he is banished to the “King” Hooper mansion in Danvers, presumably by the declaration of certain inhabitants of Salem “that they will not sell, or let an house or lodgings, to any person that will remove (t)hither, in consequence of the passing of the Boston Port Act, they being determined to show their distressed brethren in the capital city, every possible mark of their sincere sympathy.”

Can you imagine the charged atmosphere of those days, 250 years ago? Timothy Pickering was charged by his fellow patriots to relay the sentiments above to Governor Gage, while the town Tories gave him a welcoming address in which they expressed their regard for “his Majesty’s paternal Care and affection for this Province, in the appointment of a person of your Excellency’s Experience, Wisdom and Moderation in these troublesome and difficult times.” They rejoiced that Salem had been “distinguished for that Spirit, Loyalty and Reverence for the laws, which is equally our Glory and Happiness.” Following this warm welcome on June 2, a grand ball was organized for the King’s birthday, two days later! (King George was big on birthday celebrations for both himself and his Queen, Charlotte). I’m trying to imagine the revolutionary spaces, but the problem is that all of the buildings in which these “negotiations” played out are no longer there. Some deliberations were held at the Court/Schoolhouse at the head of Washington (then School) Street (demolished for Salem’s first train tunnel in the 1830s) and others at the royal Town House just down the street, which was summarily destroyed at the end of the Revolution. Gage’s House in Danvers, then called the Hooper Mansion and later the Lindens, was moved to Washington DC in the 1930s, and its interiors ended up at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. But everything was in relatively close proximity and it must have been one hot summer: Governor Gage set the first meeting of the General Court for June 7, and then they were off!

The Salem Courthouse from Massachusetts Magazine, 1790 and Smithsonian Library Collections; I dropped “General Gage” into his drawing room at the Hooper Mansion, photograph from the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

More on Revolutionary Salem all summer long! And next weekend, the British are coming to Salem (again) with an “Encampment Weekend” on June 15 at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. More information here.

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March 13, 2024

The Road to Mount Vernon

By daseger

We have spring break this week, so I’m on one of my road trips, loosely following the footsteps of George Washington. I always feel like I need a theme beyond “interesting old houses” but often I find one along the way which replaces my original intention. Not this year though: George has been pretty present! I started out in northern New Jersey, where I visited a house that I’d long wanted to see because I love Gothic Revival architecture and it looked like the ultimate GR cottage, but it turned out to be much older with a Washington connection: the Hermitage in Ho-Ho-Kus. General Washington was headquartered here following the Battle of Monmouth and during the court martial of General Charles Lee in the summer of 1778, in the company of his aide Alexander Hamilton and the Marquis de Lafayette. Aaron Burr was there too, and a secret romance was initiated between the future Vice-President/duelist and the lady of the house, Theodosia Prevost, who happened to be married to a British officer. At the close of the war and after the death of Theodosia’s husband, the two were married. Decades later this very strategic house was “gothicized” and acquired its present appearance.

Not too far away is a house where Washington and his men spent much more time: the Dey Mansion in Wayne, New Jersey, which served as the General’s headquarters for several months in 1780. This is a beautiful property, maintained and interpreted by Passaic County, which acquired the house in 1934 after which it underwent an extensive restoration. A very knowledgeable guide took me all around the house, even into the atttic, which was absolutely necessary as I couldn’t understand how so many people could have lived in this house during the General’s residence: the Dey family did not vacate! You’re not going to see the house’s gambrel-esque roof that accomodates all this space because I didn’t have a drone with me, but check out the website. It’s a stately house for sure, but the spacious attic made everything clear. Washington, of course, was given the two best rooms, a large parlor/office on the first floor and a bedroom just above, by the master of the house, Colonel Theunis Dey.

The Dey Mansion: the first photos above—all the way down to the blue parlor—are rooms used by George Washington and his aides, including Alexander Hamilton. Then there’s the semi-detached restoration kitchen, and the spacious attic.

So at this point and place, if you really want to do the Washington tour, you should probably drive to Morristown, Trenton, Princeton, east to the Monmouth Battlefield, west to Valley Forge. But I’ve been to all those places several times, so I drove to the General’s last Jersey and last period headquarters in Franklin Township, a rather isolated farmhouse called Rockingham. No Pennsylvania for me; I headed south into Maryland to Annapolis, where Washington resigned his commission at the beautiful State House (obviously my chronology is all over the place, but these two stops did dovetail). I just really wanted to go to Annapolis in any case; George was just an excuse.

Rockingham: Washington’s last headquarters—and on to Annapolis.

A bronze George in the old Senate Chambers of the Maryland State House (Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are just across the way); Hammond-Harwood, Shiplap and row houses in Annapolis.

On to Alexandria, where Washington touchstones abound, given its proximity to Mount Vernon. Like Annapolis, but MORE, Alexandria is full of beautiful townhouses: I started in the center of the Old Town and made my Washington stops—his church, his townhouse (actually a reproduction thereof) his pub—and then walked the streets taking photographs of doorways and wreaths, myriad details, spite and skinny houses. A bright sunshiney day: you almost can’t see this bronze Washington, sitting on a bench outside Duvall’s Tavern, where he was feted after his great victory.

From my parking place on North Washington Street, I drove straight out to Alexandria to Mount Vernon, mere miles away, along the George Washington Memorial Parkway. It definitely felt kind of like a pilgrimage at this point! I have been to Mount Vernon before, but have no vivid memories—an obligatory school trip, I think. It’s one of those houses that looks much bigger on the outside than the inside: it feels quite intimate within, especially as one side was closed off for renovations. I signed up for the “in-depth” tour so I could get some interpretation–and up into the third floor. While the mansion is a must-see, I think you can actually learn more about Washington from the many outbuildings on the estate: he was “Farmer George” and for all of his heroism he was also a slaveowner who seemed to have no regrets in that capacity. There are a lot of Washington contradictions, and there are a lot of Mount Vernon contradictions: while the subject of slavery is addressed up front the overall impression—reinforced especially at the museum adjacent to the orientation center—is of a “great man.” It was a bit too ra-ra for me, but I’m still headed to Yorktown for the last leg of my trip.

Mount Vernon: a house with 10 bedrooms and no bathrooms: the white-canopied bed is in the bedroom where Washington died. The presidential desk, parlor and dining room, key to the Bastille (a gift from Lafayette), greenhouse and garden, and view of the Potomac from the porch.

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February 6, 2024

History by Hancock

By daseger

I’m always attracted to mid-century messaging; advertising seems to explode around that time and much of it reflects contemporary society, for better or worse. I came across some “historical” ads by John Hancock Insurance a couple of years ago, and since then have been assembling a small “collection.” These full-page ads ran in national magazines from the 1940s to the early 1960s, and while they start with the traditional founding fathers they also include a range of historical figures representing technology and innovation (first and foremost), sports and entertainment, industry and agriculture, literature, medicine, explorers, presidents. Most of the ads feature real people, but there are also some fictional representatives of certain essential services: roadbuilders, nurses, small shopowners, judges and juries, ministers, teachers, “John Smith,” the minuteman who answered Paul Revere’s call, the oil men who “freed black sunshine from an ancient dungeon,” fallen soldiers and reporters. We can easily ascertain what’s important in terms of values and accomplishments by those featured and their captioned roles, past and present. It’s unfortunate that there are very few women (Clara Barton, Amelia Earhart, an anonymous teacher and nurse), and NO minorities that I could find. Some of the men featured are new-to-me and seem a bit obscure from my perspective. Elizur Wright, Massachusetts insurance commissioner, really? (close to home for the John Hancock, I guess). The captions and stories seem to indicate that all of these people saved democracy in their very different ways: we need them now!

P.S. There are a couple of Salem-related ads: Hawthorne in an early black-and-white variation, Alexander Graham Bell (above) and Nathaniel Bowditch, who is not featured as himself but rather as a salty sea captain who is in debt to him. 

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January 30, 2024

Glover Squad

By daseger

With my February 1 deadline constantly in mind, I worked intently on the Salem book all weekend with the exception of Saturday afternoon and early evening, when my husband and I drove over to Marblehead for a tribute to Revolutionary War Brigadier General John Glover. Well, two tributes really: the revelation of the acquisition of a letter to Glover signed by General Washington by the Marblehead Museum, and then a walk from the Old Town to Burial Hill following Glover’s Regiment to mark the anniversary of the General’s death (which is actually today). Glover was a native son of Salem, but you’ll never hear boo about him here, and I knew the Marblehead commemoration would be poignant. And it was. The link between the big reveal and the cemetery commemoration is Glover’s Marblehead Regiment, a reenactment unit which takes its role as “custodian” of Glover’s revolutionary role and life in and out of Marblehead very seriously: its members funded the acquisition of the Washington letter and led us up the hill. I’ve been thinking about Glover for the last few months, ever since the beginning of a campaign in adjoining Swampscott to save the eighteenth-century house to which he retired after the war. They take their history seriously there too. Huzzah to all of the historians and preservationists and “pastkeepers” in Marblehead and Swampscott and to General Glover!

Our hero: Brig. General John Glover. It’s hard to overestimate his heroism. He and his regiments performed essential and  exemplary service both ferrying and fighting. I like this account of his military career, which illustrates why Washington didn’t want to let him go (as stated in the newly-aquired letter).

The events of the day and night in Marblehead, and things that caught my eye along the way.

Marblehead Museum Executive Director Lauren McCormack with members of Glover’s Marblehead Regiment; the letter; more members of the Regiment.

Glover’s “town” house in Glover Square; a great plaque, the March to Burial Hill and back to Glover’s house for another tribute.

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