USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > The story of the Irish in Boston, together with biographical sketches of representative men and noted women > Part 5
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This occurrence was of itself important, as showing the strength of public sentiment backing Malcom in his resistance to the obnox- ious revenue laws ; but it was made still more so by the attitude taken by the Crown officials. The governor of the province summoned
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DANIEL MALCOM AND THE REVENUE ACTS.
before him in council the sheriff, the deputy collector, and the comp- troller of customs, with other citizens, and took their depositions in writing in regard to the raid. It reached the ears of the people that these depositions contained matter that if transmitted home, without a fuller and more impartial account, would greatly prejudice the interests of the colony. The testimony so taken was not recorded, nor open to inspection of any of the town's representatives. Under these circumstances the town-meeting appointed a committee of eight of the foremost citizens, including Otis, Hancock, and Adams, to ask the Governor for copies of the testimony, so that the town might be able to rectify mistakes, " and counterwork the designs of any who would represent them in a disadvantageous light." The committee was successful, and the suspicions of the town were confirmed when the depositions were read to them. At their bidding, the committee drew up a long letter of instructions 1 to their agent in London, Mr. Denis Deberdt, referring to the Stamp riots of the previous year, and giving a full, but not too highly colored, account of the "late occurrances in this town which is the particular occasion of our troubling you with this letter."
The town apprehended that the government depositions " con- tained a partial account of the behavior of the people who from mere curiosity had got together, that they tended to corroborate the de- signs of our enemies," and so enclosed, not only the government depositions, but also a mass of testimony collected on the town's side, together with instructions that the agent should take every measure to prevent false views of the trouble gaining credence with the Ministry. This interesting letter closes by rebuking " a set of men in America who are continually transmitting to the mother country odious and false accounts of the collonys," and with a scath- ing denunciation of " an infamous character whose name is Richard- son," who seems to have made his living as an informer. The agent's replies were received and read at the May meeting of the next year, and with the reading of them the matter rested; but it was not for- gotten, for when the town was asked to grant the use of Faneuil
1 Town Rec., 1766, pp. 191-194.
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THE IRISH IN BOSTON.
Hall for the state dinner of the governor and his council on election day, permission was refused, except with the understanding that the revenue officers "are not to be Invited to dine there on said Day." At the request of the town nearly all the merchants signed an agree- ment not to purchase after the 31st of December any of a list of about thirty different kinds of merchandise, if such merchandise was to be imported from England. Captain Malcom's signature to this list is given in this chapter.
The revenue officers began to complain to England, and bitterly inveighed against the license of the press, the power and stubbornness of the town-meetings, and the "boycott" of imported articles. They asked for a firmer support, and broadly hinted that troops in the town and war-ships in the harbor would be very convenient. They got them. Gage stationed a regiment in Boston; Castle William was prepared for active service ; a frigate, the "Romney," and four other vessels of war were stationed in Boston harbor. The irritation of the people was now further heightened by the arbitrary acts of Captain Comer, commanding this frigate ; she lay at anchor in the harbor, and received valuable additions to her crew from the fishermen of New England. Not enlistments : they were kidnapped by the press-gang, and even substitutes were refused. "Rebel " and "tyrant" were words freely bandied. The excitement finally culminated in the seizure of the sloop "Liberty." This vessel belonged to John Han- cock, who was a large ship-owner. She arrived from Madeira, in June, 1768, and made fast to Hancock's wharf (now Lewis wharf) The cargo was wine, and it is said part of it was consigned to Malcom. Thomas Kirk, the tidewaiter,1 went aboard her on Friday, June 10, and was followed by Captain John Marshall, the commander of Han- cock's London packet-ship, with some others. They fastened Kirk below, and kept him there some hours, while they removed part of the cargo. During the night they went on with the good work, and, though the rumbling of the carts and the wakefulness of those troubled times made concealment impossible, the removal was not interfered with. A guard of thirty or forty strapping fellows bearing clubs
1 Inspector of customs.
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DANIEL MALCOM AND THE REVENUE ACTS.
marched with the loaded carts, and may have had something to do with the forbearance of the officials. The next day Captain Barnard, master of the sloop, made entry of five pipes of wine as his whole cargo; and then there was trouble. The collector, Joseph Harrison, and the comptroller, Benjamin Hallowell, repaired to the wharf with the declared intention of seizing the ship for evasion of the revenue laws. Harrison hesitated, but Hallowell went ahead, made the seizure, marked the vessel with the broad arrow, and signalled to the " Rom- ney " as she lay anchored in the stream. Captain Comer sent his boats to bring her out under the guns of the ship. Meanwhile the streets in the neighborhood were filling with an excited crowd. Wild rumors spread abroad, and the sight of the war-ship bustling her boats out gave color to the idea that another impressment, or some similar act of oppression, was being carried out with the high hand of arbitrary power. Malcom stood at the head of his friends on the wharf and protested against the removal; the vessel, they said, was safe where she was, and no officer nor anybody else had a right to remove her. The boats arrived, and the excitement increased. Malcolm and the other leaders of the populace threatened to go on board and throw the frigate's people into the sea. Suddenly the sloop's moorings were cut, and before anything could be done to prevent it she was gone from the wharf. The customs-officers, who were there in a body, now repented of their hasty action ; for the people before them, only half understanding the affair, knowing the bitterness of the govern- ment party, and suspecting the worst, seeing the vessel of one whom they knew and respected in the hands of the tyrant frigate-captain, and the protests and warnings of their leaders disregarded, became utterly furious. They attacked the officials, broke their swords, and handled them without much mercy. It speaks well for the respect- ability of that excited crowd that no one was killed. They smashed the windows in the houses of Hallowell and of his chief, the inspector- general. They seized the collector's boat, dragged it to the Common, smashed it into fragments, and made a bonfire with it.
The next night was the eve of the Puritan Sabbath, and quiet reigned throughout the city. The widespread disorder of Friday,
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THE IRISH IN BOSTON.
the consciousness that the fire was only smouldering that might at any time break out and wrap the land in the flames of revolution, and, more than all, the sudden death of John Marshall, a universal favorite, the captain of the London packet, threw a cloud of sadness over the staid, church-going town, and brought to its people a just and solemn resolution that carried them in soberness and safety through the trials of the following week.
On Monday there were a few unauthorized attempts to organize the troubled spirit of the time; but the steadier citizens took charge of the affair by calling a meeting at Liberty Hall1 the next morning. Many answered the call, but the weather was threatening, so that they adjourned to Faneuil Hall. Here it was decided to call a town- meeting for the same afternoon, that the acts of the assembled citi- zens might be ensured recognition at the hands of the Crown. So it happened that the first popular assembly after the riot was a legal town-meeting.
"After very cool and deliberate Debates upon the distressed Circumstances of the town," it was unanimously voted to send a com- mittee of twenty-one prominent citizens, of whom were Otis, Hancock, Adams, and our friend Captain Malcom, to wait upon the governor with a petition. This petition recites the fundamental doctrine of representative self-government, recalls the dutiful remonstrances of the colony, and the oppressive and unjust treatment that had followed, and in guarded terms reminds the king's representative that there is a limit to the patience of " this distressed and justly incensed People." They went on to say that, inasmuch as the Board of Customs had retreated to the castle, it was to be hoped they would never reassume their office; and the petitioners "flattered themselves " that the governor would immediately order the "Romney " out of the har- bor till the town was assured of relief from its grievances. The
1 The ground about Liberty Tree was called Liberty Hall. This tree was the largest of a group of majestic elms that stood at the corner of Essex and Washington streets, a spot commemorated by a brown-stone tablet at the present day. It was christened amid much rejoicing at the time of the Stamp riots, and its name, " The Tree of Liberty," stamped on a copper plate, was nailed to it. This tree was cut down by the British in 1775, and in falling slew one of its destroyers.
49
DANIEL MALCOM AND THE REVENUE ACTS.
governor received the committee hospitably, and replied the next day in a conciliatory tone, but disclaimed all authority to do as he was asked by the town. At this meeting Otis spoke of armed resist- ance as the last re- sort, but one for which all should be ready. The town feared a repetition of the governor's tactics 4 in the matter of the Here lies buried in a Stone Grave 10 feet deep Cap DANIEL MAL COM Merch yho .departed this Life october 23% 11769 Aged 44/YearsJ a true son of Liberty a Friend to the Publick an Enemy to opprefsion and one of the foremoft raid on Captain Mal- . com, and appointed the same committee of twenty-one, of which Captain Mal- com was a member, to draw up an ac- count of the "true state of some late Occurrances," to be sent to Mr. Deberdt, jon America' in oppofins the Revenue Acts Dus in London, so that he could protect the 1 colony from slander- ous attacks.
The following Friday a third town- This cut of Captain Malcom's gravestone we owe to the courtesy of Mr. Edward Macdonald, Superintendent of Copp's Hill. The tomb is of brick. (See Shurtleff, p. 209.) meeting formulated instructions to the representatives, and ominously resolved "at all times to assert and vindicate our dear and invaluable Rights and Libertys, at the utmost hazard of our lives and fortunes." The next town-meet- ing was held on the 12th of September. A committee of sixteen, among whom again we find Captain Malcom, was appointed to report on the best course for the town to adopt " in the present emergency."
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THE IRISH IN BOSTON.
With the recording of the report of this committee Captain Malcom passes out of history. He died in October of the following year.
Captain Malcom was an Irishman,1 and at the time of which we write had only recently come to Boston. He was elected a member of the Charitable Irish Society in 1766, elected on the board of managers in 1767, and vice-president the next year,- a position which . he held till his death. It is to be remembered that these offices were not open except to men of Irish blood. He was one of the respon- sible representatives of the Society in money matters. His store, on Fleet street, was the resort of many of the more energetic of the revenue haters, and a constant menace to the peace of the king's officers. Ireland could not have presented to the colony a better man for the times, and if he had lived to hear the guns of Bunker Hill it needs no prophet to say he would have won renown for him- self and his race and shared gloriously in the triumph of his adopted country.
His fellow-citizens appreciated him, and showed their confidence by selecting him as their representative in the troublesome and dan- gerous crises in which he was an actor; but there is every reason to believe that his proper sphere was not diplomacy, but active and aggressive resistance.
His grave is on Copp's Hill, in the oldest of Boston burial- grounds. The stone over it, shown in the accompanying cut, is of hard blue slate, two inches thick, and showing about a yard above the ground. The inscription is a just statement of his merits and reputation ; but an additional wreath is added to his laurels by the vindictive bullet-marks of the British soldiery, who used this stone as a target, and peppered the gravestone of the man who feared nothing less than a British "bloody-back."
1 Drake, p. 737, note.
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THE IMMIGRANT.
CHAPTER V.
THE IMMIGRANT.
T T HE first considerable influx of Irish immigrants began about
1717. Casual mention is made on September 28, 1717, when the selectmen warned James Goodwin to depart the town, that he had arrived from Ireland about two months before with Captain Douglis. In the same year came Captain Robert Temple with a number of Irish Protestants. He commanded a company with credit in campaigns against the Indians, and very soon conquered the esteem of his fellow-citizens. He was the first to live on Noddle's Island (now East Boston), was a member of the Episcopal Church, and was elected to the Charitable Irish Society in 1740. On August 4, 1718, arrived five ships in the harbor bearing Irish immigrants. These settled in different parts of the province, mainly in New Hampshire; among them was Thomas Bell, subsequently a lessee of Noddle's Island. To this company, probably, belonged Thomas Walker, John Rodgers, James, Elizabeth, and Rachel Blare, who were warned to depart October 22, "having arrived from Ireland about two months before." The records of these warnings furnish, in many instances, the only clue we have to the extent and character of immigration. April 17, 1719, Alexander Macgrigory, " who with his family came lately from Ireland into this town," was warned to depart. On June 9, 1719, arrived a colony of Irish, from whom Andrew Pernis, a cooper; John Macannis and wife and four children ; John Henderson, his wife and five children; William Miller, his wife and four children ; John Criton and one maid ; John Severwrit; Fran- cis Gray and wife and three children, -were, on June 13, warned to depart. September 23, Martha Newell is recorded as having arrived from Ireland about seven weeks before, and on December 5, John Walker, wife and three children, as having arrived from Ireland
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THE IRISH IN BOSTON.
about one month before. After this, for a while, either the stream of immigration was almost entirely diverted from Boston to enrich the surrounding territory, or the authorities found reason not to record so many Irish warnings. The fact that the Irish were still coming, and were not very welcome, is seen in the order of the town-meeting, in May, 1723, mentioned in another chapter, which states that " great numbers of Persons have very lately bin Trans- ported from Ireland into this Province," and were driven by the Indian troubles to reside in the town. About the same time Gov- ernor Wentworth was in receipt of friendly warnings that the Irish were settling in the valley of the Merrimack, and that he had better take what precautions seemed best to him under the circumstances for the safety of the community.
At a meeting of the selectmen, September 12, 1724, Captain Philip Bass appeared before them, " and it appearing to them that he had the measels (an Infectious Sickness) among his passengers in his vessel lately come from Ireland into this Harbor," he was or- dered to collect what passengers and goods he had allowed to get ashore, and go down to Spectacle Island till further order.
Two of the most honored of Boston's early families were at- tracted to this city, after making a trial of other parts of America. They have had much influence on the course of events in Massa- chusetts, and especially in Boston. The more prominent of these was the family of John Sullivan, the Limerick schoolmaster, who settled in Berwick, Me., in 1730. From him descended James Sul- livan,1 twice governor of the State; John Sullivan,2 the Revolutionary general; William Sullivan, the lawyer, the interesting chronicler, the genial and accomplished gentleman. The memorial tablet of the last-named is in King's Chapel; it bears a Latin inscription,3 and
1 Autograph in Mem. Hist. Bost., iii., 208.
2 Autograph in Mem. Hist. Bost., iii., 104.
3 GUILIELMO SULLIVAN. JACOBI MASSACHUSETTENSIUM BIS GUBERNATORIS FILIO. JOHANNIS IN BELLO LIBERTATIS VINDICE DUCIS NEPOTI· VIRO SOLERTI BENIGNO INTEGERRIMO. SUMMA DIGNITATE ET COMITATE PRÆDITO* REBUS ET CIVILIBUS ET MILITARIBUS CUM LAUDE VERSATO· JURISCONSULTO PRÆSTANTI CAUSIDICO FACUNDO* SCRIPTORI JUCUNDO SUBTILI* IN SERMONE SUAVISSIMO' OMNIUM QUIBUS HOMO' NOBILIOR HUMANIOR ATQUE BEATIOR FIERI
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THE IMMIGRANT.
the arms, crest, and motto of the O'Sullivan More.1 The family is probably a connection of the Sullivans of Chesterfield; the prefix O' was not dropped by the Irish heads of the family till after the American Revolution.
The Amorys were another important family. The first of the name here, Thomas Amory, went from Limerick to South Carolina, but in 1721 removed to Boston. The family was active on the Tory side at the time of the American Revolution, but have in every way identified themselves with the prosperity of the city since. "The Transfer of Erin," from the pen of Thomas Coffin Amory, in our own generation, shows that the tradition of Irish descent is neither forgotten nor dishonored.
It is to the Irish immigrants of this time that New England owes the introduction of the potato and the old-fashioned spinning- wheel.2 The potato, it is true, is an indigenous American product, and was unknown in Europe before Sir Francis Drake brought it from Virginia, in 1573; but it had been domesticated in Ireland, and from there first came to New England, where it has since been a staple. The other gifts of Ireland to the Yankees- the old- fashioned foot-wheel and hand-loom-came with the Irish spinners and weavers that landed in Boston in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. These acquisitions came in a good time. The town was much worried to provide suitable help for the poor, and to promote industry among the inhabitants. In 1720, when the appropriation for the poor reached eighteen hundred pounds, the town authorized a committee to consider and report on the establishment of a public spinning-school. They reported it expedient either to build or hire a house for the purpose, and to employ " some suitable person that is a weaver, having a wife that can instruct children in spinning flax, the town supplying them with money for a time on good security." Regu-
POSSIT' PERSTUDIOSO' FILIA AMANTISSIMA ET AMICUS PRÆECIPUE DEVINCTUS' UT CONTEMPLATIO VIRTUTUM PERMANEAT. HOC MARMOR LUGENTES POSUERUNT. NATUS XII NOV. MDCCLXXIV. EXCESSIT III SEPT. MDCCCXXXIX.
1 For the arms and crest see " Burke's Landed Gentry," The Sullivans of Wilmington. The motto is " LAMM FOISDIN EACH AN UACHTAR" - (What we gain by conquest we secure by clemency).
2 Drake, p. 560.
.
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THE IRISH IN BOSTON.
lations for such a school were proposed, and a premium for good results suggested.1 In 1749 a society was established for encour- aging industry and helping the poor by spreading the knowledge of the linen manufacture. This was a revival of the enthusiasm for spinning, and went to much greater lengths. It was probably the basis of the effort to encourage Irish immigration, to which we shall shortly refer. The society was known as the Society for Encouraging Industry, and held an anniversary meeting on the 8th of August each year, where a sermon was preached and a collection made 2 for the benefit of the enterprise. On the Common there was held a public spinning match; the women gathered by hundreds, each with her wheel and distaff, and sat in rows spinning, rich and poor together, vying with each other in dexterity and grace for the ap- proval of a large company of the sterner sex. Weavers also appeared, in garments woven by themselves, working at a loom on a movable stage, carried on men's shoulders, and attended by music. It was due to the efforts of this society that the so-called Manufactory House was erected, which stood, till 1806, in Long Acre street (now Tremont), nearly opposite where Park-street Church now is.
On June 10, 1727, George Steward, of Ireland, was admitted an inhabitant. Five Irishmen were among the refugees from surround- ing towns that were warned out of Boston, July 24 of the same year. September 9, 1730, William Fryland and Francis Clinton, joiners from Ireland, were admitted inhabitants. December II of the same year Dennis Cramy, a wig-maker from Ireland, was admitted. In Au- gust of 1736 appeared the brigantine " Bootle," with nineteen trans- ports, as mentioned in a previous chapter, together with other pas- sengers ; in September of the same year a shoemaker named James White gives notice that he has taken as journeyman into his family one John Wallace, " who was lately imported by Captain Beard, from Ireland, " on this same transport ship.
During the two years 1736-38 ten ships are on record coming to Boston from Ireland, bringing a total of nearly one thousand pas-
1 " £5 for the first piece of linen spun and wove here, provided it be worth 4s. per yd." 2 £453 in 1754.
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THE IMMIGRANT.
sengers. It was on the occasion of this influx of Irishmen that the Charitable Irish Society was organized. Among these vessels were the sloop "Hannah," with thirty-seven pasengers, and the sloop "Two Mollys," with forty-three passengers, which arrived in November, 1736. In September of the next year, came the ship " Sagamore," with the heaviest load of passengers on record. They had been afflicted with measles on the passage, and it was only with great trouble they secured permission to land. The captain and a Mr. Hugh Ramsey, who had chartered the ship, were examined at some length by some of the physicians of the town, whose opinion was, that it would be very dangerous to the inhabitants if the passengers or the ship's company were allowed to land before they had " aired themselves and cleansed the ship." The immigrants were accordingly ordered to Spectacle Island for that purpose. To secure the town against loss, in case any of these immigrants became a public charge, two separate bonds were executed, - one for three hundred and eighty-one passengers, of the penalty of one thousand pounds, and one for twenty-seven pas- sengers, of the penalty of two hundred pounds. On the same day was filed a bond of six hundred pounds, for one hundred and sixty-two passengers imported from Ireland in the snow "Charming Molly," Captain James Finney. A couple of weeks before, a bond1 of five hundred pounds had been filed for passengers (number not given) in the brigantine "Elizabeth," Captain William Mills.
In May of the next year came the ship "Eagle," Captain William Acton, with eighty-two passengers ; and the year after arrived the ship Barwick, Captain Ephraim Jackson, from Ireland, with forty-six passengers. Several other ships are incidentally mentioned; among others the ship "Catharine," Captain Robert Waters, from which, in June, 1737, a transport named Bryan Karrick and a " spinster " named Catharine Driscoll landed and dwelt in the town; the brigantine " Salutation," Captain John Carall (spelled also Carrell), arrived in September, 1737, with passengers, among whom were twelve that the
1 The names of Robert Auchmuty, William Hall, and William Moore, early members of the Charitable Irish Society, appear on these bonds; and Daniel Gibbs, master of the " Sagamore," was one of its orginal members.
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THE IRISH IN BOSTON.
town formally admitted as inhabitants. These twelve were with one exception (Mary Burton, a "single woman ") the families of Irish- men already here, who had sufficiently prospered in their new home to be enabled to send to the old country for their wives, their sisters, and their children. There came also in the same ship George Lucas, his wife and child, and in all probability other passengers who did not happen to be mentioned in the selectmen's records. The time of passage appears in one or two cases : the ship " Sarah Galley," Captain Samuel Waterhouse, that was quarantined in April, 1737, for small-pox, had taken seven weeks to come to Boston from Cork. The three passengers in this vessel came from London. In August of the previous year Captain Benedict Arnold touched at Boston in the " Prudent Hannah," with one hundred and twenty pas- sengers, bound to Philadelphia; and although he promised to take them all on board again, Mr. John Savell took a servant from among them. The passage from Ireland had occupied twelve weeks. The ship "Sally," in 1763, came in fifty-nine days from Kingsgate, Ireland ; this vessel also was brought upon the record by being quarantined for small-pox.
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