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In 1774 Joshua Edson Reads About His Death

In October of 1774, Benjamin Edes and John Gill printed a letter that told of a startling sight in Bridgewater in the newspaper they published, the Boston Gazette:

Passing through this town the other day, I observed the at a distance forward the appearance of a person hanging by the neck on a gallows about 15 feet high; upon advancing, I perceived a considerable discoloration of his face, which I suppose was owing to a stagnation of the blood and should have remained ignorant of his person, had I not discovered an inscription over his head, in large capitals, thus, Col. E_s_n. I found he had hung there some time, and was informed that being a traitor to his country, there was no one, (not even his dearly beloved lieutenant colonel) who would vouchsafe for the kindness to cut him down, so that he would in all probability be soon reduced to a skeleton. This ignominious fate its thought will soon be the portion of several others of the same club, and be a solemn warning to everyone who seek to be aggrandized upon their country’s ruin.

Fortunately for Edson the story was a warning not a prophesy. If Edson needed any reminders, here was a warning in black and white about how precarious his position had become. After a 35-year career as judge, church deacon, colonel of the militia and popular elected member of the General Court, it seemed there was at last no more room for him in Bridgewater.

Joshua Edson Joins the Council

East view of the village of North Bridgewater, Mass, 1844. (Boston Public Library)

In the summer of 1774, Britain’s Parliament put Bridgewater’s Joshua Edson in this very tight spot. Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act, which called for the colonial military governor to appoint the members of the Massachusetts Council, one of the colony’s governing bodies. This changed the prior practice of having cities and towns elect their representatives to the council, though the General Court was still elected.

Edson had been elected by popular vote more than ten times to represent Bridgewater in the colonial legislature. So, it may not have seemed a controversial decision when Governor Thomas Gage chose to name Edson to the Massachusetts Council. But it proved otherwise.

These newly appointed councilors gave a focal point to Massachusetts’ struggling patriot movement, and protesters like the Sons of Liberty demanded the councilors resign. Most did, but Edson did not. He is probably best described as a moderate political figure of that time.

Educated at Harvard, he prospered as a farmer and a merchant. Historians suspect he was unhappy with the treatment of Massachusetts by the English parliament, but unconvinced that open rebellion was warranted, or likely to succeed.

A Frost Sets In

Edson’s relations with his neighbors grew frosty. One oft-repeated story tells of the time he tried to lead a hymn in the church where he was a deacon. Traditionally the deacon would read aloud and the congregation sing with him. This time as Edson read the lines, the congregation remained silent.

One night in the early fall of 1774, a crowd gathered outside his home. Members of the crowd accused him of being a traitor, and demanded he resign his position on the new council. Edson managed to quiet the crowd, and it dispersed. But the experience must have convinced him that he could no longer survive in Bridgewater.

Days later Edson saddled his horse and rode out of Bridgewater, headed to Boston where’s Gage’s British troops could offer him protection. When word spread that Edson was leaving, a large group of his neighbors lined the streets to watch him pass, though they let him through unmolested. He left his wife Abigail and son Joshua behind.

Losing it All

By the time war broke out, Edson was safely under the protection of British troops. When the British were driven from Boston in 1776, Edson was among the evacuating Tories who went to Halifax, and from there to British-held Long Island.

The Continental Congress ordered Edson’s estate seized. His house on Bridgewater’s common, known today as the Tory House, was sold.The Congress then included Edson’s name on a list of loyalists who were permanently banished from returning to their homes.

Living now under the protection of the British Army, Edson twice had to appeal to the British government for financial support, as he had lost everything.

Edson would died before the end of the war, most likely in 1778 in Long Island, a one-time respected and prosperous citizen of Bridgewater reduced to living in exile, deprived of even seeing his family for the last five years of his life.

If you enjoyed this story, you might like Jolley Allen Missed Evacuation Day in 1776 and it Cost Him Everything.

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The Rolling Thunder Revue Visits Jack Kerouac’s Gravesite

Bob Dylan returned to some of his most important roots when he came to Massachusetts, particularly Cambridge and Lowell, with his Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975.

Once the king of folk music, he reunited with the queen, Joan Baez, during the rollicking, improvisational concert tour.

Rolling Thunder Revue played Cambridge, where Dylan had once haunted coffeehouses, and Lowell, Mass., so Dylan could visit Jack Kerouac’s grave.

Critics called the Rolling Thunder Revue some of the best live music Dylan ever performed.

Before the Rolling Thunder Revue: Dylan and Baez sing a duet.

Joan Baez

According to the popular legend, Bob Dylan left Hibbing, Minn., at the age of 19 for New York City. He fell in love with Joan Baez, already a star who helped him rocket to fame. But he took an important detour to Massachusetts, where he fell under the influences that shaped his music.

Joan Baez came to Boston when her father, Albert Baez, moved the family there to teach physics at MIT.

(He’s credited with co-inventing the x-ray microscope.) She enrolled in Boston University but got so bored she dropped out after six weeks.

In the late ‘50s, every college town and city seemed to have a coffeehouse scene, where, as writer David Hajdu wrote, ‘coffeehouses modeled upon European cafés emerged with foreign-film festivals and bookstores that sold imports of Henry Miller novels as outposts of intellectual and sensual dissent.’

The folk revival began in such coffeehouses, as did the protest movements of the 1960s.

Cambridge featured coffeehouses like the Club 47 and Tulla’s Coffee Grinder. Across the river, Boston had the Salamander, The Turk’s Head, the Yana, the Unicorn and the Golden Vanity. They featured such young folk musicians as Tom Rush, Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal.

Baez started out at the Club 47 in 1958 and quickly achieved stardom, the first of the iconic young folk singers. Later she brought the boy she was dating – and singing duets with — to Cambridge. Club 47 was so well known for launching careers that Dylan played there for free.

Bob Dylan in Cambridge

In Cambridge, Bob Dylan met Eric von Schmidt, Richard Farina and his wife, Carolyn Hester. Farina would later marry Joan Baez’s younger sister, Mimi.

Von Schmidt exposed him to many traditional folk songs, all of which Dylan remembered when he returned to New York.

The Boulevard at Revere Beach

One summer day, von Schmidt invited Dylan and the Farinas to Revere Beach, just north of Boston. According to Hajdu, they talked about coming up with a new kind of music.

“We should start a whole new genre,” Farina said. “Poetry set to music, but not chamber music or beatnik jazz, man. Music with a beat. Poetry you can dance to. Boogie poetry!”

Dylan, stunned by the comment, did exactly that six months later. He played harmonica on Carolyn Hester’s third album, which gave him an entrée to Columbia Records and to his manager, Albert Grossman.

Eventually he broke up with Baez and married another woman. He famously became known as the ‘voice of his generation,’ something he didn’t want. At the height of his fame in 1966 he had a motorcycle accident and didn’t perform for another seven years.

Dylan and Ginsberg during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. By Elsa Dorfman.

Rolling Thunder Revue

In 1975, Bob Dylan haphazardly recruited musicians like Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and Mick Ronson to play the Rolling Thunder Revue. Playwright Sam Shepard joined the tour, as did Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and actress Ronee Blakley.

They held the first concert at the Plymouth War Memorial Auditorium on Oct. 30-31, then played at Southeastern Massachusetts University in North Dartmouth. Then the Rolling Thunder Revue went on to Lowell, where Dylan wanted to visit Jack Kerouac’s grave.

Twenty years earlier, Kerouac had written a long poem called Mexico City Blues. According to Ginsberg, Dylan told him someone handed him Kerouac’s poem in St. Paul in 1959. “It blew my mind,” he said.

He said it was the first poetry he read that spoke his own American language, and Beat writing influenced his own.

On November 2, 1975, the Rolling Thunder Revue crammed 14,000 into a gym at the University of Lowell, recently formed from the Lowell Technological Institute and Lowell State College.

Dylan ambled onstage and sang about five songs, dedicating A Hard Rain.to Kerouac. Larry Sloman, who documented the tour, wrote that after the intermission,

…the curtain rose to an incredible sight, Bob and Joan, together again after all these years.

They sang Blowin’ in the Wind to a thunderous response. Then more songs, and a finale with everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Dylan’s mother onstage singing This Land Is Your Land.

Ginsberg, who frequently visited Lowell, hung out with Kerouac’s relatives and drinking buddies. He tried to educate the Rolling Thunder Revue about Jack Kerouac.

The next day, Dylan, Ginsberg and various band members visited Kerouac’s gravesite.

Watch it here.

This story was updated in 2022. Image of Dylan and Ginsberg By Elsa Dorfman – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1724930.

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Six Places That Raised a Liberty Pole

Beginning in 1766, the liberty pole symbolized dissent from Great Britain, but over the years it took on different meanings for the people who raised them.

The first liberty pole in America was actually a tree. On Aug. 14, 1765, the Sons of Liberty hanged stamp collector Andrew Oliver in effigy from the boughs of a large elm in Boston. Forever after it’s been known as the Liberty Tree.

When someone raised a red flag – a gift of John Hancock — at the top of the tree, it meant the Sons of Liberty should meet. British soldiers later hacked it down when they occupied Boston.

As tall as 170 feet high, the liberty pole sprang up in towns throughout New England as the British Parliament imposed unpopular taxes and restrictions on the American colonies. Sometimes it stood next to a liberty tree. Sometimes it replaced the tree.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, commenting on symbolic reisistance to Great Britain, wrote, “In this department of silent propaganda no single venture paid richer dividends than the Tree of Liberty.”

“Raising the liberty pole,” 1776 / painted by F.A. Chapman ; engraved by John C. McRae, N.Y.

The Liberty Pole

The Romans erected the first liberty pole after assassinating Julius Caesar. The murder plot’s leaders met at the Roman Forum, where someone placed a Phrygian cap from a freed slave on top of a pole to show the Romans won their freedom from Caesar’s tyranny.

In the British North American colonies, the liberty pole began to spring up in response to specific events. Shutesbury, Mass., for example, erected a liberty pole on Sept. 5, 1774, the day the Continental Congress first met.

When the pole (or tree) was capped with a red Phrygian cap or a flag, it meant the townspeople should assemble and vent their anger with the British government.

The liberty pole reappeared even after the Revolution ended. It showed resistance to the Whiskey Tax and support for the French Revolution. When the Sedition Act passed, the liberty pole reappeared — and disappeared. Federalists who supported the Sedition Act cut them down in Wallingford, Vt., and in Vassalboro, Maine.

By the mid-19^th century, people erected liberty poles as focal points for Fourth of July celebrations or as symbols of loyalty to the United States. Sometimes they stood for symbols of dissent and had nothing to do with patriotism.

The Phyrgian cap survives too — on the official seals of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Army and the state flags of West Virginia, New Jersey and New York.

Here, then, are six places where a liberty pole once stood. If you know of any others, please mention them in the comments section.

Newtown, Conn.

On May 19, 1774, 1,000 residents of Farmington, Conn., erected a liberty pole, burned an effigy of Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and a copy of the Boston Port Act.

By October 1774, Connecticut newspapers reported, “Liberty-poles from 100 to 170 feet high, are erected and erecting in most of the towns of Connecticut.”

Newtown, Conn., put up a liberty pole to commemorate the nation’s centennial in 1876. It wasn’t the town’s first liberty pole, though; a resident remembered one in his childhood, sometime in the 1830s. The wooden pole fell to the weather and the town replaced it several times. Today, Newtown’s flagpole stands as the town’s most prominent landmark.

Old Town, Maine

A disagreement among two factions of the Penobscot Indian tribe resulted in two liberty poles on their reservation.

Sometime between 1848 and 1859, the Indians on the Penobscot Reservation in Old Town, Maine, split into two groups. It started when the old sachem, Atien Swassin, was accused of drunkenness, adultery and corruption. A public council convicted him and removed him from office, but his followers remained loyal to him. They formed the Old Party and erected a liberty pole and flag.

Those loyal to the new sachem formed the New Party and also erected a liberty pole and flag.

The two groups argued and fought until the Old Party sent a messenger to several Indian tribes in Canada, inviting them to participate in a fight on the reservation, also known as Indian Island. The tribes refused, but held a Great Fire Council to try to reconcile the two parties.

The council sent two envoys to the Penobscot Reservation, and they agreed to abolish the parties, cut down the liberty poles and live in peace. But a wily leader of the Old Party persuaded the New Party to cut down its liberty pole first. After they cut it down, three members of the Old Party hugged their liberty pole so now one could cut it down without cutting their arms.

Eventually the three Old Party members repented and apologized, and the two parties managed to get along after that, according to Sprague’s Journal of Maine History in 1917.

Bedford, Mass. (Still Raising a Liberty Pole)

The liberty pole appeared in many Massachusetts towns, including Taunton, Concord, Middleborough, Barnstable, Granville and Vineyard Haven. But as far as we know, only Bedford still commemorates the raising of the liberty pole two Saturdays before Patriots Day.

The tradition began in 1965, a year after the Bedford Minuteman Company of reenactors formed. Now, minutemen reenactors from all over New England gather on the Town Common and march with fife and drum to Wilson Park. There they watch a minuteman shinny up a 25-foot pole and place a red cap on it. Then a British soldier disrupts the celebration.

The Bedford Liberty Pole Capping Parade and Ceremony is one of the opening event for all of the minuteman companies of the region;

Portsmouth, N.H.

A tall flagpole with an eagle, a shield and a carved Phrygian cap marks the spot of Portsmouth’s first liberty pole. It lies between what is now Prescott Park and Strawbery Banke.

During the run-up to the American Revolution, a tidal inlet separated the two places, and a swing bridge connected them.

On Jan 9, 1766, New Hampshire’s Sons of Liberty erected a liberty pole by the bridge to show their opposition to the Stamp Act. They hoisted a banner that read, ‘Liberty, Property and No Stamp.’ They also forced the stamp tax collector, George Meserve, to resign.

From then on, Portsmouth called the bridge Liberty Bridge.

Portsmouth put up a flagpole to honor the original liberty pole on the Fourth of July in 1824, and then replaced it with another in 1899.

At that point, Portsmouth also filled in the inlet, dismantled the Liberty Bridge, tore down dilapidated old buildings and created Prescott Park and the Strawbery Banke house museum.

The flagpole, though, still stands in the original spot.

Newport, R.I.

Newport’s patriots assembled under the liberty tree on a triangular piece of land at the corner of Thames and Farewell streets. William Read had donated the land to William Ellery and other Sons of Liberty shortly after the repeal of the Stamp Act. There, the patriots held mock funerals for liberty and hanged unpopular Loyalists in effigy. They also put up a liberty pole at a distance from the tree and put their colors on both whenever appropriate.

When the British occupied Newport, they cut down the liberty tree. Newport patriots planted an oak tree in its place to commemorate their victory in the American Revolution. It lasted until the Civil War, and another oak was planted in 1876. That one lasted only 21 years. The fourth liberty tree, a leaf beech tree, was planted in 1897 and still stands. In 1919, Henrietta C. Ellery deeded the property and the tree to the city. It is now William Ellery Park, a small pocket park.

Waterford, Vt.

Capt. John Wyman was a belligerent Revolutionary War veteran extremely proud that he had fought at Bunker Hill. After the war he moved to Dummerston, Vt., and said he wanted to be buried on a hill on his farm. He got his wish, at least until the town moved his body to a cemetery. While he rested on his farm, however, townspeople erected a liberty pole next to his grave.

However, we couldn’t figure out where the old revolutionary had been buried, and Dummerston bears no sign of a liberty pole. Nor could we find evidence of liberty poles in Bennington or Wallingford, where Vermonters had erected them. We hit pay dirt, though, in the Lower Waterford section of St. Johnsbury.

The Caledonian Record reported on May 17, 1861, “People of all parties assembled at Lower Waterford to participate in the ceremony of giving to the breeze the American flag … and to declare their devotion to the constitution and the Union.” They formed into a hollow square around the liberty pole, and ‘the flag was brought forth and flung to the breeze…’

Howard Coffin, in his book, Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont, refers to a photo that shows the flagpole in front of the Congregational Church across from the old hotel. Both still stand.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Captain David Perry, 80, Recalls a Simple Revolutionary Soldier’s Life

In 1821, Revolutionary War captain David Perry approached a young Vermont publisher with a request. At age 79 he had little time left. He had written his a memoir to leave behind for posterity, but he had no money to print it. If the publisher would print it, he could have any proceeds from selling it.

Publisher Simeon Ide of Windsor, Vt. agreed and published the short book, Recollections of an Old Soldier, The Life of Captain David Perry.

Battle of Bunker Hill. E. Percy Moran, artist; Photomechanical print, c 1909, Library of Congress

Perry, the book notes, will not go down in history as a great leader of the revolutionary cause. But his book, reprinted many times, gives a glimpse into the thinking of the American citizen soldier of 1776.

Faithful Soldier

“Thousands, no doubt, of the Revolutionary Heroes, might have left a more brilliant specimen of talent and learning,” begins the foreward.

“Many have moved in a higher sphere of action, who have left no record of their toils and privations behind them,” it said. “But we venture to assert, that few have better earned the appellation of a faithful Soldier, than the subject of these memoirs.

“Though his name may not live on the annals of his country, yet his fellow-citizens should never forget, nor act unworthily of the sentiments of gratitude, which a recollection of this important truth should ever inspire, that, had it not been for the prowess and achievements – the fortitude, patience and perseverance of those who, like himself, in the humbler ranks of the common soldier, bared their breasts to the foe, upon the “tented field,” that country had never known a name and a rank among the nations.”

The Boy Soldier

Captain David Perry was born in Rehoboth, Mass. in 1741. His mother died, so he and his siblings scattered to relatives. Perry moved in with an uncle who helped find him training as a cobbler. But the local militia approached Perry at 15 about joining up. Small for his age, he worried that he might not “pass muster.” However, the service accepted him.

In all, Perry served in four campaigns of the French and Indian war from Massachusetts, 1758-1762, and in two campaigns of the American Revolution from Connecticut, 1775-1776.

His soldier’s life was sprinkled with the remarkable and brutal aspects of war. He tells of how one of his fellow soldiers executed an injured French priest by shooting him in the head at the orders of his British commander. How viciously British officers kept their men in line. And the arduous life of the soldiers during the siege of Quebec.

Civilian Life of Captain David Perry

Along the way Perry also sketches in some of the details of the personal life of a soldier. Perry spent his life in Rehoboth and Dighton, Mass., Killingly, Conn., Plainfield, N.H., and Chelsea and Ira, Vt.

He struggled in business, once going deep into debt after a failed partnership. He was in Roxbury during the Battle of Bunker Hill and played a role in the siege of Boston. But he declined an officer’s request to reenlist because of concern for his wife and five children. “I told him a soldier ought not to have any thing to think of at home,” he wrote. However, he later relented when the shortage of soldiers grew worse.

Of his own life, he tells that at the time his mother died he believed he saw her ghost. He had his own fearful near-death experience when, overcome with fever, he felt his soul leave his body.

“This transition (as I firmly believe) from life to death, and from death to life, which took place nearly sixty years ago, is as fresh in my mind now as it was then: and not many days have passed from that time to this, which have not brought the interesting scenes I then witnessed clearly to view in my mind. But I never dared to say any thing about it, for a great many years afterwards, for fear of being ridiculed,” he wrote.

He recalls discovering that he could actually see cannon fire passing through the air. And despite his own poverty, Perry once paid 20 pounds to enlist a soldier in the Revolutionary army.

A Final Thought

At the conclusion of his brief memoir, Perry offers a call for Americans to never forget the spirit upon which the country was founded.

He cautioned people against greed and self-indulgence. “If they are ambitious to ape the follies, extravagance, and luxury of European countries, their freedom can have but a short duration.”

“When we reflect back to our Revolutionary war, and see how much blood and treasure were spent to gain our independence, shall we, after so long an experience of the advantages arising from so good a government, be any more deceived by internal or foreign enemies? Shall we contrast the mildness of our government, and the civil and religious liberty that we enjoy under it, with the bigotry and tyranny which prevails under the monarchies of Europe, and say we are willing to exchange the former for the latter? I dare say not. Then let me conjure my posterity to stand by this government of our choice, and never be deceived by political or ecclesiastical demagogues.”

Captain David Perry died in 1826 at age 84.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Bostonians Practice Their Tea Party on Andrew Belcher in 1710

Sixty-three years before the Boston Tea Party, outraged men launched a nighttime attack on a ship belonging to Andrew Belcher in Boston Harbor. And in a preview of upcoming events, they intended to remove the ship’s cargo.

But it was bread, not tea that enraged the attackers.

Belcher had singlehandedly caused a bread shortage in 1710, and Bostonians decided to take justice into their own hands.

Boston Harbor around 1720

Andrew Belcher

Less than a century after the Puritans landed in a howling wilderness, Boston merchants engaged in international trade – with the West Indies, Newfoundland, Portugal, Spain, England and Ireland. Entrepreneurs sold whatever they could on the international market at the best prices they could, regardless of the welfare of their community.

Andrew Belcher, one such entrepreneur, was born in 1646 in Cambridge, Mass. He married the daughter of a rich Connecticut merchant and established his own successful trading business.

He lived in a mansion, rode around Boston in an elegant carriage and owned many slaves and ships. His son, Jonathan Belcher, would serve as royal governor.

Gov. Jonathan Belcher

In 1703, Massachusetts officials made Andrew Belcher commissary general, though his critics charged he sometimes sold spoiled food.

The working poor of Boston had no use for him either. He hoarded grain in his warehouses during food shortages and then shipped it off to the West Indies.

The 1710 Food Riot

By 1710. Queen Anne’s War had started. Food grew short and bread grew terribly expensive. Andrew Belcher bought up all the wheat in the countryside surrounding Boston. Then he held it until prices went up, and sold it to himself as commissary general for a very nice profit.

He singlehandedly caused a bread shortage in Boston.

One night one of his ships was about to sail away with 6,000 bushels of grain. Under cover of darkness a group of marauders approached the ship and sawed through the rudder, according to Judge Samuel Sewall’s diary.

Samuel Sewall

The next night 50 Bostonians commandeered the ship and tried to force the captain ashore, intending to loot the grain. Authorities arrested some of the attackers.

But their Grain Party was so popular a grand jury refused to indict them.

The incident revealed the transformation of Boston from a Puritanical city on a hill, with an emphasis on the common good, to an ethic of individualism. The Bostonians were “appalled that a leading townsman would put profits ahead of the welfare of the community,” wrote historian Gary Nash. They demanded food at prices they could afford, despite merchants’ insistence on the laws of supply and demand.

Authorities responded by banning the sale of grain abroad during times of shortages, regulating bread prices and establishing a public granary.

The 1713 Food Riot

Three years later, Andrew Belcher tried it again with a similar result. He hoarded grain in his warehouses while prices rose, then tried to sell it in Dutch Curacao in the Caribbean. Two hundred Bostonians attacked his warehouses and emptied them of flour. When the lieutenant governor tried to stop them, they shot him.

Andrew Belcher died Oct. 31, 1717.

If you enjoyed this story about Andrew Belcher, you may also want to read about the female food riots of the American Revolution in Boston here or the 1914 macaroni riots in Providence here.

With thanks to Red White & Black and The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution by Gary Nash.

This story last updated in 2023.

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Notorious Tom Bell – Minister, Teacher, Pirate, Thief . . .

In 1742 Tom Bell was probably the most well known product of Harvard College in America. Everyone knew how he dressed, what he looked like, where he traveled and how he lived. Because he was one of the most wanted criminals in the North American British colonies.

Bell was born in 1713 to a shipowner, Capt. Thomas Bell, and his wife, Joanna. They lived in Boston’s North End. The family sent the precocious Thomas to Boston Latin School, where he received a classical education. He was headed toward Harvard when, in 1729, his father died. The family found itself in debt, but it struggled to pay for Thomas to attend Harvard as planned.

Tom Bell entered the college in the fall of 1730, but by 1733 his college career reached an unceremonious ending. Sanctioned for stealing letters and lying, the final straw came when he stole a chocolate cake from a fellow student. Far behind in his studies, the college had grown tired of his promises to reform and pitched him out in the street.

Colonial engraving, Harvard College

Hearing the news that Harvard expelled Bell, his creditors pounced on him for unpaid bills. They sued him, winning judgments against him for unpaid debts, including 30 pounds to his tailor for silk suits. With his name dragged through the mud, Bell followed in his father’s footsteps and went to sea. He boarded a ship bound for England.

A Stroller is Born

For the next several years Bell would work at sea, returning to America from time to time. He gradually realized his education and exposure to the wealthier classes at Harvard had not gone to waste. Bell could speak Latin and read Greek, which put his education well ahead of most people in the colonies. He could pass himself off as a gentleman, and no one would suspect he wasn’t.

So Tom Bell simply became Francis Partridge Hutchinson or Thomas Wentworth Bell or Gilbert Burnet or John Rowland or William Bowdoin or whatever name suited him as he traveled up and down the colonies from New England to North Carolina. He gained notoriety as the Boston “Stroller” — a con man who strives to stay one step ahead of the law.

He was not terribly successful, however. In 1738 he was sentenced to be whipped in New York City for defrauding a merchant of 50 pounds. The next year in Philadelphia, he was spotted by a man from North Carolina who he had robbed years earlier. That episode landed him in prison. But Bell also gained some expertise in breaking out of jail — a skill that would serve him well.

Travels in Barbados

With his names and description widely circulating in North America, in 1739 Bell left for the Caribbean. In Speightstown, Barbados he undertook one of his more notorious escapades.

He had passed himself off as Gilbert Burnet, son of Massachusetts’ former governor.

A Jewish family invited the well-spoken governor’s son to a family wedding. But when Bell stole some of the wedding gifts, the young men of the family beat him up. This incensed the Christian residents of Speightstown, and they retaliated by destroying the Jewish synagogue and driving out the Jewish families.

Lord Fairfax

Bell nearly escaped Barbados unscathed. However, a merchant came forward and charged Bell with impersonating the brother of Virginia’s Lord Fairfax and running up an extensive tab. Again Bell was sentenced to a public whipping, but the governor of the island suspended a second sentence to brand Bell with an R on each cheek.

Tom Bell Becomes Rev. Rowland

In 1741 Bell returned to America and made his way to Princeton, N.J. Here a local man stopped Bell in the street and inquired if he wasn’t the Rev. John Rowland, a Presbyterian minister arriving from New England to preach. Bell corrected the man, who still insisted he looked exactly like Rev. Rowland. This presented Tom Bell with a golden opportunity. He proceeded to the next town and introduced himself as the Rev. Rowland. A local family invited Bell/Rowland to their home and offered him a horse to accompany them to the nearby church, where he was to preach.

The grateful “minister” accepted the use of the horse. But after traveling a ways toward the church he announced that he had left his notes behind at the house. He would return to collect them, and he asked the family to ride ahead and explain the delay. Naturally, Bell ransacked the house for any valuables and rode off, stealing the family’s horse.

Horse theft was a serious crime in 1741. Unfortunately for the real Rev. John Rowland, he was in Pennsylvania at the time delivering fiery sermons at religious revival meetings. When Rowland crossed into New Jersey he went to jail, accused of horse stealing. Rowland was eventually cleared of the charges, but the case was another prize for Tom Bell’s trophy case.

Tom Bell, Author

By 1742 Bell had returned to New England, this time to Newport, R.I. But by now the list of victims he had duped was a long one. No sooner had he arrived in the city than he got thrown into jail again, accused by a man he had swindled on a previous visit.

Painting of Newport, R.I. in 1818

From jail in Newport, Bell issued a public plea for forgiveness. He pledged to reform and promised to write a memoir to help others avoid his criminal path. It was yet another con. By 1743 he had returned to Philadelphia and was thrown in jail again for theft. By now his name was notorious and newspapers from New Hampshire to Virginia carried warnings that Tom Bell might be traveling again, looking for his next victim.

Bell continued his crimes and his sentences got more severe. A Massachusetts court convicted him of theft and sentenced him to be whipped and sold into servitude. Yet Bell always managed to escape. In one case he joined the militia, probably in lieu of jail, but he soon fled. A New Jersey court convicted him of counterfeiting. And later he was sentenced to death in Massachusetts. But he managed to escape the gallows.

Final Chapters

In between legal scrapes, Bell made a living as a schoolmaster or tutor. In 1752 he again announced, this time in Virginia and South Carolina, that he planned to publish “The Travels and Adventures of the Famous Tom Bell,” but he never did. Instead, Tom Bell returned to the Caribbean and took up piracy.

The final chapter of Bell’s life came in 1771 in Kingston, Jamaica. Bell had served as chief mate on a pirate ship that had attacked a Spanish schooner, robbing it of $14,000. Bell was arrested and convicted, along with the ship’s captain, and sentenced to hang. Tom Bell repented one last time and killed himself before he went to the gallows.

Thanks to Early Americans by Carl Bridenbaugh.

If you enjoyed this article, you might like: Stephen Burroughs Counterfeiter – A Revolutionary Success Story. This story was updated in 2022.

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