250 and Counting: January 14, 1775

Cover art for January 14, 1775: portratt of Lord Dartmouth

William Legge was the Second Earl of Dartmouth and, just before the hostilities between the Colonists and the British started in earnest, was also the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the First Lord of Trade.

Lord Dartmouth noticed that people throughout the Colonies appeared to be preparing for all-out war, so he sent a letter to the colonial governors, essentially ordering them to embargo imports of weapons or ammunition. In doing this, he was basically fulfilling his duty to the Crown.

Simultaneously, however, he was trying to employ backdoor diplomacy tactics to negotiate a peace. Benjamin Franklin was among the people with whom he communicated. But it’s tough to argue for peace when your troops are occupying Boston, and his actions ultimately led to the Gunpowder Plot, and the war heating up for good at Lexington and Concord just a few months later.

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250 and Counting: January 13, 1775

At one time there were rumors that Benjamin Franklin had lots and lots of children born out of wedlock. (Insert your favorite “lightning rod” joke here.) As usual, the real story is more complicated than that.

Franklin courted a woman named Deborah Reed. At the time, he was 17 and she was 15, so her mother forbade the marriage. Deborah later married another man who fled the country. Sometime after this, Franklin re-entered the picture, but because the status of her marriage was unclear, they simply lived together as common-law spouses. They had two children together, so technically they were “born out of wedlock.” Francis Folger Franklin died of smallpox at the age of four, and Sarah Folger Franklin was also politically active until her death at the age of 68. Meanwhile, Franklin had another “illegitimate” son whose mother is not known (and was also probably Deborah), but he acknowledged his own parentage and together they raised him. This was William Franklin, the future Royal Governor of New Jersey.

That’s it. That’s all of Benjamin Franklin’s kids. But we’re focused on William today.

William was appointed the Royal Governor of New Jersey largely because he was known to have Loyalist leanings. And while he was pretty good at being governor, there did come a point where New Jersey said “Enough of this” and imprisoned him locally for six months before moving him to Connecticut for two years. (This is an event alluded to in the play 1776, but by that point Franklin really had to know that his son had been removed from office. He probably didn’t know yet that William had just been moved to Connecticut, so by early July that would have been news to him.)

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250 and Counting: January 12, 1775

Cover art for January 12, 1775: the gravestone of Joseph Gist

Joseph Gist wasn’t an especially distinguished person, but you don’t have to be distinguised to get noticed on 250 and Counting.

Gist was born in Union County, SC and while he moved to Charleston in his teen and college years, he moved to Pinckneyville to practice law. Pinckneyville was part of the Ninety-Six District, which we discussed in yesterday’s episode.

Although the district court at Pinckneyville was abolished not long after he settled there, it was still a fabulous place to practice law, and he was in enough demand that he’d be pursued for representation by both parties in many suits. Later on he was elected to Congress and served in the House for six years, leaving of his own accord.

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250 and Counting: January 11, 1775

Francis Salvador was a man who is in the history books for two notable things: the day he was elected to public office, and the day he died in the Revoluationary War.

That doesn’t ordinarily make a person notable, but Salvador had the distinction of being the first person of his faith to achieve these two things.

And for our money, the place where it happened may also be notable.

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250 and Counting: January 10, 1775

Cover art for January 10, 1775: Portrait of James Sweall Morsell

James Sewall Morsell was a lawyer and then a judge in Maryland and Washington DC for the better part of his career.

Perhaps most notable about his long tenure is that he handled freedom petitions for many Black Americans during the slavery era as the families’ representative, something that many other attorneys were not willing to do, especially in Maryland, which was a slave state during the war but occupied by Union forces for the duration.

When the Court to which he was assigned was abolished, he retired from practice and lived with his daughter and son-in-law in Prince Georges County. The town of Bowie, Maryland is named after that son-in-law’s family.

Happy 250th Birthday to James Sewall Morsell!

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250 and Counting: January 9, 1775

Cover art for January 9, 1775: A portrait of Daniel Leonard, a British Loyalist who wrote under the pen name "Massachusettensis."

Daniel Leonard was the son of a prominent family in the ironworks industry. He lived in Taunton, Massachusetts until shortly after he accepted a position working for the Royal Governor of the state, at which point he became unpopular enough that he was forced to move to Boston, which was under British occupation at the time.

It makes sense, then, that Leonard put pen to paper and wrote essays to be published in the Boston Gazette under the pen name “Massachusettensis.” (What doesn’t make sense, 250 years later, is why he chose such a peculiar name. At least, not to us.) He began writing these pieces in December 1774 but it was the one published on this day in 1775 that finally set John Adams to writing replies under a pen name of his own. This back-and-forth continued for about three months, until a major event escalated the tensions between the Crown and the Colonies to the point where the exchange of essays became moot.

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250 and Counting: January 8, 1775

Cover art for January 8, 1775: "The defense of Baltimore, assembling of the troops, September 12, 1814" by Thomas Ruckle

It’s Cake and Candles today for Brigadier General John Harrison, born this day in 1775 in Pennsylvania.

Harrison became a local official in his home county until the War of 1812, when he enlisted and his company was sent to defend Baltimore against the British in one of the war’s biggest victories for the American side.

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250 and Counting: January 7, 1775

Cover art for January 7, 1775: “Lady Howe Checkmating Benjamin Franklin,” by Edward Harrison May.

By all accounts, Ben Franklin was a charming guy. And while he has a reputation today for being the sort of ladies’ man who left behind lots of children with single moms, that wasn’t really the case (as you’ll discover in a future episode).

But part of his charm came from his diplomacy skills, which he knew how to use to the fullest. And part of those skills included learning what friends he could make who had a great deal of social capital he could use.

One such person was Lady Caroline Howe, who first met Franklin in 1774 as part of a shadow diplomacy tactic. Although this didn’t go far, Howe and Franklin maintained a relationship over the years and frequently visited one another for conversation and games of chess. (Ben Franklin was quite the avid chess player, often playing several times a week in multi-hour sessions.) Today’s episode discusses some of this, and their efforts to get together to play a match.

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Guest voice in this episode: Serena Gaylord

250 and Counting: January 6, 1775

Cover art for January 6, 1775: A map of the New York area from that year

The impression that most people have of John Adams, it seems, comes from one of two places. It’s either William Daniels’ portrayal of him in the play and film 1776 (and we’re big fans of that particular bit of cinema), or it’s Paul Giamatti’s portrayal in the seven-part miniseries on cable TV. Both stories had their charms, and both took some liberties with the facts. (Oddly, both of them showed Benjamin Franklin being carried in to the Second Continental Congress, but that didn’t happen until the Constitutional Conventions eleven years later.) The bottom line is that Adams was a complex man and a very smart one who had the ability to see the bigger picture, as they say.

George Washington was also a well-rounded person, as you no doubt discovered in the January 1 episode. Early in 1775 Washington wore multiple hats. He was a delegate to the First Continental Congress, he was responsible for training militiamen in Virginia, and he was unofficially the Commander-in-Chief of the army, except there wasn’t one quite yet.

Today we’re looking at some correspondence from Adams to Washington, and we’ll learn in a future episode just how seriously Washington took his warnings.

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250 and Counting: January 5, 1775

Cover art for Janaury 5, 1775: The USRC Benjamin Rush

Daniel Dobbins was born this day in 1775. We’re pretty sure that’s the date; listen in and find out why.

Dobbins spent most of his time on the waters of Lake Erie. He—and most of the people in the Lower Peninsula of modern-day Michigan—didn’t even know that the War of 1812 was going on until he and his ship were captured by the British.

He managed to escape and an interesting coincidence saved his life. Eventually he became a Sailing Master in the US Navy and redesigned the gunboats so they’d handle better in the Great Lakes. After the war his career took some interesting turns that had literally nothing to do with him.

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