How can a place that is so proud of its antislavery past reconcile the fact that plenty of slaves once lived there?
That is one of the toughest questions for any Bostonian. The city, in the mid-nineteenth century, would do many fine things for the cause of abolition, but the Puritan town, in the early eighteenth century, floated partly on the labor of black slaves. Bostonians are proud, and they are quick to point out that the first anti-slavery pamphlet was printed by one of their own. Once more, Sam Sewall plays a leading role.
When he watched the court trial of Adam, a black slave of John Saffin, Sewall was moved to pen The Selling of Joseph, a pamphlet printed in Boston in 1700. Sewall did not come right out and say that slavery was evil, but he called for greater racial understanding and he certainly pointed in the direction of eventual emancipation.
How can one person—Sam Sewall—be involved in so many aspects of the life of one town?
Anyone that studies Sam Sewall’s life story comes away amazed by the variety of his activities. He was a member of the governor’s council, a judge at the Salem Witch Trials, a confidante of Governor Simon Bradstreet, a very successful man of business, a good husband, and father to fifteen children, many of whom did not make it to adulthood. A close examination of Sewall’s life suggests that Boston—with its eight or nine thousand people—may have been precisely the right size for someone like Sewall, who came to know most of the townspeople by sight and name. He was the first of the great Boston diarists, and though many others would later come, none of them would know the place as intimately as he did.
Was Boston involved in any more military campaigns against French Canada?
It was inevitable that Boston would play a leading role in Queen Anne’s War, which began in 1702. Soon after learning that war was declared between England and France, Bostonians learned that the little town of Deerfield in western Massachusetts was conquered and sacked, and that more than one hundred people were taken to Canada as captives. Governor Joseph Dudley played a major role in ransoming many of these captives, who were returned to Boston by ship. Upon arriving safely at Boston, Deerfield pastor Reverend John Williams gave an inspired sermon that later became the title of his best-selling book, The Redeemed Captive, Returning to Zion. Captivity narratives became one of the most popular of all publications in eighteenth-century Boston. Beyond this, however, Boston also became involved in a major attempt to conquer Québec City.
We sometimes hear of the Four American Kings and wonder who they were. Did they come to Boston?
In 1710 four Native American sachems—three of them Mohawk and one Mahican—came first to Boston and then to London, where they appeared before Queen Anne. These Indians went to ask the English queen to help in the reduction of Canada, which, they claimed, would benefit everyone involved. The immediate connection between the four sachems and Boston has to do with the military campaign of 1711, but it’s also possible—though not proven—that the popularity of the four “American Kings” was linked to the eventual use of Mohawk clothing at the Boston Tea Party.
Duly impressed by the chiefs, Queen Anne sent a major British task force, which arrived in Boston Harbor in July 1711. Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker already had five British regiments, but he took on nearly one thousand Massachusetts militiamen, and the entire fleet sailed for Canada. Seven of the ships came to grief on the shoals near the entrance of the St. Lawrence River, and nearly seven hundred men were drowned. Rather than continue, Admiral Walker called it quits. He sailed to England, where the final tragedy occurred when his flagship blew up in Portsmouth Harbor, shortly after arrival. Bostonians long remembered the disastrous summer of 1711, and it lowered their opinion of the British military.
Queen Anne was the monarch of Great Britain and Ireland at the time of the War of the Spanish Succession, which was sometimes referred to as Queen Anne’s War.
What were conditions like as Queen Anne’s War came to an end?
In 1712 Bostonians learned that the second of the so-called French and Indian Wars was over, and that England had gained title to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Bostonians, and their country cousins, did not see any immediate profit, or improvement in their lives, however, and there was some sourness in British-American relations. Queen Anne was, at least, a native-born English queen, and when she was succeeded by her German—and German-speaking—brother, King George I, many colonists wrote off the English motherland (at least privately).
Boston had plenty of issues and concerns of its own. In 1721 the town was visited by its third major epidemic of smallpox, and this one was much worse than the previous. More than a thousand Bostonians died of the disease, and many others picked up and left town, never to return. It was during this, the great smallpox epidemic of 1721, that Boston implemented its first attempts to control disease.
Is Boylston Street named for Dr. Boylston?
There have been so many Boylstons in the history of Boston that it is difficult to say, but one can argue that Boylston Street should be named for Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, who undertook the first inoculations for smallpox. In 1722, Boylston joined forces with Reverend Cotton Mather. Together, they attempted to persuade Bostonians of all social classes to receive inoculation, which meant inserting some of the pus into a section of the forearm or shoulder. For his pains, Cotton Mather received a handmade bomb, or grenade, thrown through his window. The inoculations were a remarkable success, however; only one-fifth as many people who had the inoculation contracted smallpox, and those that did had a much greater chance of survival. Bostonians of this period were deeply conservative, and it took another two generations for inoculation to become the rule rather than the exception.
How did the Bostonians get around?
They used nearly all the devices and means we associate with that period: on foot, on horseback in carriages and wagons. Boats of all shapes and sizes were perhaps the most important means of transport, however. It was easier to cross the Charles River by longboat and then walk to Harvard College than to go around. And the first stable bridge across the Charles River had not been built. We see, therefore, the interesting career of Reverend Increase Mather. He was pastor of Boston’s Old North Church—in the North End—but he was also president of Harvard College. In his contract, it was written that a ferry should be continually at his disposal so he would not have to go on horseback.
Did the early Bostonians enjoy life?
They certainly did. The work hours of a summer and spring day were long by our standards, but almost everyone relaxed a bit in winter, working shorter hours, and spending more leisure time indoors. From Samuel Sewall’s diary we learn that many upper-class Bostonians enjoyed beer and ale, and the chances are that their working-class contemporaries did the same. One holiday that the Bostonians did not celebrate was Christmas. Believing it a Popish invention, they chose to treat December 25 as any other day in the calendar. And while we are on the subject of the Pope, it’s worth discussing what Pope’s Day meant to the Bostonians.
The English celebrated November 5 as Guy Fawkes Day, the celebration of a failed Catholic attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Bostonians celebrated it as Pope’s Day, meaning one long extravagant festival to ridicule the Pope and Roman Catholicism. On a typical Pope’s Day, the gangs of the Old North End and Old South End met each other in mock combat, while gunpowder was exploded in the streets. The Pope was often carried about in effigy. Of course, these celebrations sometimes went too far, and in 1764 one gang member was killed.
An Italian religious house
