Notes
Abbreviations Used in Notes
Boston Marriages, BRCR: A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston, Containing Boston Marriages from 1752 to 1809 (vol. 30) (Boston: Municipal Printing Office, 1903)
Boston Selectmenâs Minutes, BRCR: A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston: Containing the Selectmenâs Minutes from 1764 to 1768 (vol. 20) (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1889) and A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston: Containing the Selectmenâs Minutes from 1769 through April 1775 (vol. 23) (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1893)
Boston Town Records, BRCR: A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston Containing the Boston Town Records, 1758â1769 (vol. 16) (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1886) and A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston Containing the Boston Town Records, 1770 through 1777 (vol 18) (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1887)
BPL: Boston Public Library
GP: Gage Papers, American Series, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
MHS: Massachusetts Historical Society
PANS: Public Archives of Nova Scotia
PRONI: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
SF: Suffolk Files, Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, Boston
TNA: The National Archives (UK)
Prologue
Bending over: For an analysis of the Pelham and Revere prints, see American Antiquarian Society, Paul Revereâs Engravings, rev. ed. (New York: Atheneum, 1969).
Revere: See David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revereâs Ride (New York and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Two hundred and fifty: The most influential twentieth-century interpretation of the event was written by Hiller B. Zobel: The Boston Massacre, 1st ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970). His book is deeply sympathetic to the British government and army. On the Sons of Liberty side, see, most recently, Richard Archer, As If an Enemyâs Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution, Pivotal Moments in American History (New York and Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010). The most neutral (and convincing) interpretation is Eric Hinderaker, Bostonâs Massacre (Cambridge, MA, and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017).
1. Families of Empire, 1765
Jane Chambers: ADM 36/6908, TNA. This muster roll contains the names of all the soldiers and the sixty-four women who traveled on the Thunderer; the report of their departure is in Stamford Mercury, âIreland, Cork, June 10,â June 27, 1765.
The name: Every adult who embarked on a British navy shipâincluding soldiers and soldiersâ wivesâwas recorded on a list known as a âmuster.â See ADM 36, TNA.
It may seem strange: Influential work considering families, sex, and intimacy in the creation of empires includes Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Kathleen Wilson, The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2003).
Women like Jane: Although historians who study the era of the American Revolution have never considered the importance of women in early modern armies to that conflict, military historians have long noted their presence in the British army. The best recent work on women in the eighteenth-century British army is Jennine Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century: âThe Girl I Left Behind Meâ (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014), which focuses primarily on women who lived apart from their enlisted husbands. A careful collection of data for women in the British army during the Revolutionary War itself can be found in Don N. Hagist, âThe Women of the British Army in America,â last modified 2002, http://www.revwar75.com/library/hagist/britwomen.htm. There are a few excellent studies of women in the British army in America during the Seven Yearsâ War, in particular, Paul E. Kopperman, âSoldiersâ Wives.â Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 60, no. 241 (Spring 1982): 14â34; Holly A. Mayer, âFrom Forts to Families: Following the Army into Western Pennsylvania, 1758â1766,â Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography 130, no. 1 (2006): 5â43; and Sarah Fatherly, âTending the Army,â Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 566â99. This newer work effectively refutes an older view, exemplified by Walter Hart Blumenthal, Women Camp Followers of the American Revolution (G. S. MacManus Co., 1952), that most women who traveled with armies were prostitutes. Groundbreaking work on European armies, such as Barton C. Hacker, âWomen and Military Institutions in Early Modern Europe: A Reconnaissance,â Signs 6, no. 4 (1981): 643â71, and John A. Lynn II, Women, Armies, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), focuses largely on the materialâand sexualâsupport that women gave to the army, especially before 1650. The most significant study of women in the Continental army remains Holly A. Mayer, Belonging to the Army: Camp Followers and Community During the American Revolution (Columbia University of South Carolina Press, 1996).
âscum of every countyâ: Campbell Dalrymple, A Military Essay. Containing Reflections on the Raising, Arming, Cloathing, and Discipline of the British Infantry and Cavalry; with Proposals for the Improvement of the Same. By Campbell Dalrymple, Esq; Lieutenant Colonel to the Kingâs Own Regiment of Dragoons. Part the First (London: 1761), 8. For more evidence on the attitudes of officers, see Kopperman, âSoldierâs Wives.â
The army offered: Peter Way, ââThe Scum of Every County, the Refuse of Mankindâ: Recruiting the British Army in the Eighteenth Century,â in Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour, 1500â2000 (The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 291â330; Arthur N. Gilbert, âAn Analysis of Some Eighteenth-Century Army Recruiting Records,â Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 54, no. 217 (1976): 38â47; Richard Middleton, âThe Recruitment of the British Army, 1755â1762,â Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 67, no. 272 (1989): 226â38. As a native of Ulster, a predominantly Protestant region, Matthew would have been a particularly welcome Irish recruit, since British officials greatly feared accidentally recruiting Catholics. Stephen Conway, War, State, and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 209.
âpeople are so full of breadâ: Nathaniel Nisbitt, Lifford, to [Earl of Abercorn], August 10, 1759, D623/A/33/108, PRONI.
âSoldiers in most quartersâ: Roger Lamb, Memoir of His Own Life (Dublin, UK: J. Jones, 1811), 4.
Matthew Chambers: Chambersâs age and birthplace can be found in WO 121/9/284. In the 1760s, nearly half of the enlisted men had been trained in a skilled trade, such as shoemaking, tailoring, or weaving. Another 40 percent had been manual laborers, building roads or chopping wood. See Peter Way, âRebellion of the Regulars: Working Soldiers and the Mutiny of 1763â1764,â The William and Mary Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2000): 769. For marriage, see Hurl-Eamon, Marriage and the British Army in the Long Eighteenth Century, chapter 3.
âin general so abandonedâ: Bennett Cuthbertson, A System for the Compleat Interior Management and Ćconomy of a Battalion of Infantry. By Bennet Cuthbertson, Esq; Captain in His Majestyâs Fifth Regiment of Foot, And Late Adjutant to the Same (Dublin: Boulter Grierson, Printer to the Kingâs Most Excellent Majesty, 1768), 194.
âofficers should frequentlyâ: Ibid., 35.
âthe service suffersâ: General Wolfeâs Instructions to Young Officers: Also His Orders for a Batt...