BOSTON TRIP TO SEE GOV SHIRLEY and THE MICROCOSM
BOSTON TRIP TO SEE GOV SHIRLEY
On the way, in NYC is The Microcosm
February 16 The Boston Trip – The Microcosm in NYC
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Compiled, written by Jim Moyer 1/21/2017, 8/16/2019, 2/2/2020, 2/15/2020
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Colonel Washington is on his way to personally talk to Governor Shirley, who was given the command of all North American forces.
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The issue to be resolved is chain of command.
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Maryland’s Captain Dagworthy insisted his old, expired British commission, entitled him to rank over any colonial Colonel ( such as Washington) or Lt Colonel (such as Adam Stephen).
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On the way to Boston, Colonel George Washington takes some ladies to see The Microcosm in New York City.
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Destroyed
The author in this article contends The Microcosm was destroyed in Paris during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. The Microcosm was criticized for pretending the great universe could be made small and understandable. But for the masses, did the preaching aspect of The Microcosm, become another pretension of the elite?
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See description
of The Microcosm
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From an article on the website Revolvy:
A very detailed story and this picture can be found in this link.
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Microcosm was a unique clock made by Henry Bridges of Waltham Abbey, England.
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It stood 10–12 feet high, and six across the base.
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It toured Great Britain, North America and possibly Europe as a visual and musical entertainment as well as demonstrating astronomical movements.[1]
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It was first advertised for exhibition in 1733, but it is also claimed that Sir Isaac Newton, who died in 1727, checked the mechanism. Several prints survive of Microcosm including one of 1734 showing Newton and Bridges.
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When Henry Bridges died in 1754 he left the clock to his three youngest children to be sold. It is unclear when the clock left the Bridges family but it continued touring until 1775 when it vanished. The astronomical clock was found in Paris in 1929 and is now in the British Museum.
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A very detailed story and this picture can be found in this link. This link also claims this piece was recovered in Paris in 1920 (instead of 1929) and that this piece was part of a whole Microcosm which disappeared in 1775.
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When on tour, the entrance fee was 1s, which was high for the time. Souvenir pamphlets were also sold. It had 4 parts,[2] from the top:
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1. Three scenes which alternated: 9 muses playing musical instruments, Orpheus in the forest, and a grove with birds flying and singing
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3. Beneath a grand arch were 2 astronomical clocks, one showing the Ptolemaic system, the other Copernican.
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5. Two planetariums, one showing the solar system, showing 10 months move in 10 minutes.
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7. Another showing Jupiter and its 4 satellites, and on the front face was a seascape with ships sailing and in the foreground, horse-drawn carriages galloping and a gunpowdermill and a windmill turning, swans swimming
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9. In the pedestal was a working carpenters’ yard
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The machine played mechanical music but the organ could also be played by hand. The music was mostly new, some composed especially for it.
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This advertisement can be found in this link, Touch or Click to Enlarge.
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John R Milburn stated: ‘There were other broadly similar though less comprehensive devices in existence in the first half of the eighteenth century… The importance of Bridges’ ‘Microcosm’, however, lies in the nature of its displays (combining automated pictures to attract the multitude with educational astronomical models) and the widespread publicity that accompanied it on its travels’.[3]
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It was viewed by George Washington, and by members of the Lunar Society; Richard L Edgeworth left an account of seeing it at Chester in his biography, so links it with the notions of child-centred education promoted by Rousseau.
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The mechanism was constantly being updated, so was part of the circuit of travelling science shows of the early to mid 18th century, providing education to the public who could afford it.
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Sources:
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5. John R Milburne, ‘the Meandering Microcosm, A Chronological Account of the Travels of this “Matcheless Pile of Art” in England, Scotland, Ireland and America 1733-1775, Aylesbury, UK, 1995
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February 16, 1756
The Microcosm in NYC
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“16 Feb New York … ‘To be seen at the New-Exchange – closed 23 Mar as ‘proprietors’ unable to extend let on room. George Washington took several ladies to see it – he records it in his accounts but does not describe it.”
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The Story
of The Microcosm
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The device described above, referred to by its creator as the “Modern Microcosm,” had a long and wide-ranging career. Between its completion in 1733 and its mysterious disappearance some time after 1775, it was displayed in London, Ireland, Scotland, Paris, the American colonies, and Jamaica.22 [p. 8] As a natural-philosophical wonder on public display, the microcosm was part of a raucous London show-scene that included waxwork anatomy lessons with nude female models, awe-inspiring fireworks demonstrations, and strong-men who used hidden levers to accomplish remarkable feats of strength.13, 31, 37
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The “Modern Microcosm” was one artisan’s attempt to entertain audiences with a faithfully recreated Newtonian universe. Originally intended for James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos, the great patron’s failure to purchase the device resulted in it being repurposed as a public attraction (Figure 2).28 The Microcosm thus fell into an unlikely career as a “middle-brow” wonder – an entertaining show that made cutting-edge ideas relevant to the general viewer. By examining the advertisements and pamphlets that recorded the Microcosm’s promotion, this essay traces how the Newtonian universe was interpreted by artisans, showmen, and the general public during the eighteenth century.14, 29, 30a The Microcosm was designed to please the elite, but it ultimately proved very dangerous to the social order it purported to glorify.
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Source
The Cosmos in a Cabinet: Performance, Politics, and Mechanical Philosophy in Henry Bridges’ ‘Microcosm’ by Paul E.Sampson
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Is this Criticism or Analysis
or Both?
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Poem Made by a Gentleman on seeing that celebrated piece the MICROCOSM; at College Green,” George Faulkner Daily Journal (Dublin), April 29, 1746, 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers:
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In solemn counsel, of the God above,
In piteous strains; thus spoke complaining Jove,
In vain I rule o’er earth, o’er sea, o’er sky,
Since mortals can create as well as I,
See my old world, in silence moves along,
Not smoothly dancing to harmonious song,
And can the British artist make one new,
To favorite tunes, move fashionably true;
Farewell my heaven, I’ll seek the Stygian coast,
no more a God, but now a pineing ghost,
greiv’d that my world, hath with amazement seen,
itself outrival’d in a small machine.
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From this link:
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Analysis of Poem
The intention of this poem is unclear. The reference to “Jove,” or Jupiter, distinguishes the subject of the poem from the Christian God. So is the author playfully imagining divine disappointment as a means of celebrating a new attraction? Or is he satirizing the Microcosm as a noisy and pretentious device that to “favorite tunes” moves “fashionably true”? The tone of the four final lines strike a note of discontentment, as God is “griev’d” and transformed into a “pineing ghost” with humanity left to fend for themselves in a universe that could be accurately represented by “a small machine.”
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Whether this Irish poet’s despair was sincere or satirical, he did put his finger directly on a striking impiety built into the Microcosm. The issue was not just that the device represented God’s universe as mechanical, but that it made it appear small. In contemporary literature, such metaphorical miniaturization was a commonly-employed means of satirizing the great and powerful. For example, in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, the heroic military feats of Sir Roger de Coverly were rendered ludicrous when represented in miniature as a lawn feature.18
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Smallness was associated with some of the same negative traits as the mechanical. In Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, the stupid and fractious Lilliputians were characterized by a technocratic and mathematical social organization – smallness in stature could be equivocated with smallness in virtue.27, 32
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This device was asking its viewers to believe that the basic order of God’s universe could be replicated by an artisan and understood by the general public. In a social order that depended upon a divinely-instituted hierarchy, this was a disenchanting and potentially subversive message.
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By the late eighteenth century, elite natural philosophers had begun to pick up on the dangerous potential of public wonders. Electrical demonstrations and Mesmerism were especially worrisome since they claimed to work directly on the bodies of participants and short-circuited trained reason and sensibility. The risk to the social order seemed clear, as elites began to imagine excitable crowds who would object to the “rational” ordering of society.16, 17k
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In England, these fears were spurred by the political and social unrest that followed in the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War. Machine-breaking broke out in the textile industry and seemed to confirm the excitability of workers against reason and profit. One particularly bad incident in Lancashire drove Wedgwood partner Thomas Bentley to write of his “concern and astonishment” that workers had been “so far led astray, as to be excited to make war upon the chief instruments of their support.” Bentley blamed a lack of understanding among “working people,” who “in their blind rage…often mistake the nature of things.”3
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More on the Microcosm
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Part of it still survives in British Museum
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More Pictures of The Microcosm
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More on The Microcosm:
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Who accompanied Col Washington
on this trip?
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Captains George Mercer and Robert Stewart
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“George Mercer and Robert Stewart accompanied GW to New York and Boston in the spring of 1756, and while in New York they had undoubtedly been entertained at Beverley Robinson’s house along with GW.”
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2 White Servants went
John Alton and Thomas Bishop
Washington by no means restricted himself to slave servitors. Early in life he took into his service John Alton at thirteen pounds per annum, and this white man served as his body-servant in the Braddock campaign, and Washington found in the march that “A most serious inconvenience attended me in my sickness, and that was the losing the use of my servant, for poor John Alton was taken about the same time that I was, and with nearly the same disorder, and was confined as long; so that we did not see each other for several days.” As elsewhere noticed, Washington succeeded to the services of Braddock’s body-servant, Thomas Bishop, on the death of the general, paying the man ten pounds a year.
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These two were his servants
in his trip to Boston in 1756,
and in preparation for that journey Washington ordered his English agent to send him “2 complete livery suits for servants; with a spare cloak and all other necessary trimmings for two suits more. I would have you choose the livery by our arms, only as the field of the arms is white, I think the clothes had better not be quite so, but nearly like the inclosed. The trimmings and facings of scarlet, and a scarlet waist coat. If livery lace is not quite disused, I should be glad to have the cloaks laced. I like that fashion best, and two silver laced hats for the above servants.”
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“Last night Jno Alton an Overseer of mine in the Neck—an old & faithful Servant who has lived with me 30 odd years died—and this evening the wife of Thos. Bishop, another old Servant who had lived with me an equal number of years also died.”
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Both were remembered in his will by a clause giving “To Sarah Green daughter of the deceased Thomas Bishop, and to Ann Walker, daughter of John Alton, also deceased I give each one hundred dollars, in consideration of the attachment of their father[s] to me, each of whom having lived nearly forty years in my family.”
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Of Washington’s general treatment of the serving class a few facts can be gleaned. He told one of his overseers, in reference to the sub-overseers, that “to treat them civilly is no more than what all men are entitled to, but my advice to you is, to keep them at a proper distance; for they will grow upon familiarity, in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not.” To a housekeeper he promised “a warm, decent and comfortable room to herself, to lodge in, and will eat of the victuals of our Table, but not set at it, or at any time with us be her appearance what it may; for if this was once admitted no line satisfactory to either party, perhaps could be drawn thereafter.”
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Timeline of the whole Boston Trip
(still being compiled)
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January 10 – 12m 1756
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Founders Online Footnote 6. GW was in Winchester on 10 Jan. and had arrived in Alexandria on 12 Jan.
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February 2, 1756
Starts trip to Boston
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Founders Online footnote 4. In his letter to Thomas Walker of this date, GW wrote that he would “set out on monday next,” which was the following day, 2 Feb. He was in Philadelphia probably by 7 Feb. with his two servants and captains George Mercer and Robert Stewart of the Virginia Regiment.
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2 Servants went
Washington by no means restricted himself to slave servitors. Early in life he took into his service John Alton at thirteen pounds per annum, and this white man served as his body-servant in the Braddock campaign, and Washington found in the march that “A most serious inconvenience attended me in my sickness, and that was the losing the use of my servant, for poor John Alton was taken about the same time that I was, and with nearly the same disorder, and was confined as long; so that we did not see each other for several days.” As elsewhere noticed, Washington succeeded to the services of Braddock’s body-servant, Thomas Bishop, on the death of the general, paying the man ten pounds a year.
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These two were his servants
in his trip to Boston in 1756,
and in preparation for that journey Washington ordered his English agent to send him “2 complete livery suits for servants; with a spare cloak and all other necessary trimmings for two suits more. I would have you choose the livery by our arms, only as the field of the arms is white, I think the clothes had better not be quite so, but nearly like the inclosed. The trimmings and facings of scarlet, and a scarlet waist coat. If livery lace is not quite disused, I should be glad to have the cloaks laced. I like that fashion best, and two silver laced hats for the above servants.”
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“Last night Jno Alton an Overseer of mine in the Neck—an old & faithful Servant who has lived with me 30 odd years died—and this evening the wife of Thos. Bishop, another old Servant who had lived with me an equal number of years also died.”
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Both were remembered in his will by a clause giving “To Sarah Green daughter of the deceased Thomas Bishop, and to Ann Walker, daughter of John Alton, also deceased I give each one hundred dollars, in consideration of the attachment of their father[s] to me, each of whom having lived nearly forty years in my family.”
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Of Washington’s general treatment of the serving class a few facts can be gleaned. He told one of his overseers, in reference to the sub-overseers, that “to treat them civilly is no more than what all men are entitled to, but my advice to you is, to keep them at a proper distance; for they will grow upon familiarity, in proportion as you will sink in authority if you do not.” To a housekeeper he promised “a warm, decent and comfortable room to herself, to lodge in, and will eat of the victuals of our Table, but not set at it, or at any time with us be her appearance what it may; for if this was once admitted no line satisfactory to either party, perhaps could be drawn thereafter.”
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Source
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February 7, 1756
In Philadelphia
He was in Philadelphia probably by 7 Feb. with his two servants and captains George Mercer and Robert Stewart of the Virginia Regiment.
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February 12, 1756
Where is GW and his fellow travelers?
While they are in Philadelphia, there are problems at Watkins Ferry. This is the area of the depot at Conococheague and of Fort Maidstone and of a lively troublesome tippling house.
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Where is Capt Robt Stewart?
Founders Online footnote 1 — This footnote raises into question if Captain Robert Stewart is with Colonel George Washington in Philadelphia: “. . . if Blagg should find Capt. Robert Stewart still in Winchester he was to go on to Watkins’s ferry to assume command of Deane’s detachment . . .”
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Here is a letter William Hughes at Watkins Ferry to Robert Stewart who is with Colonel George Washington, dated “Febury the 12th 1756.”
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As one would guess from Stewart’s letter of 20 June, Rollins and his “little tippling house” at Maidstone was to be a source of great trouble to those in charge of the troops at Maidstone.
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February 16, 1756
The Microcosm in NYC
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“16 Feb New York … ‘To be seen at the New-Exchange – closed 23 Mar as ‘proprietors’ unable to extend let on room. George Washington took several ladies to see it – he records it in his accounts but does not describe it.”
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Source
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Source:
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“George Mercer and Robert Stewart accompanied GW to New York and Boston in the spring of 1756, and while in New York they had undoubtedly been entertained at Beverley Robinson’s house along with GW.”
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Source:
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More on the Microcosm
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Part of it still survives in British Museum
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More Pictures of The Microcosm
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Detailed story of The Microcosm
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The device described above, referred to by its creator as the “Modern Microcosm,” had a long and wide-ranging career. Between its completion in 1733 and its mysterious disappearance some time after 1775, it was displayed in London, Ireland, Scotland, Paris, the American colonies, and Jamaica.22 [p. 8] As a natural-philosophical wonder on public display, the microcosm was part of a raucous London show-scene that included waxwork anatomy lessons with nude female models, awe-inspiring fireworks demonstrations, and strong-men who used hidden levers to accomplish remarkable feats of strength.13, 31, 37
.
The “Modern Microcosm” was one artisan’s attempt to entertain audiences with a faithfully recreated Newtonian universe. Originally intended for James Brydges, the Duke of Chandos, the great patron’s failure to purchase the device resulted in it being repurposed as a public attraction (Figure 2).28 The Microcosm thus fell into an unlikely career as a “middle-brow” wonder – an entertaining show that made cutting-edge ideas relevant to the general viewer. By examining the advertisements and pamphlets that recorded the Microcosm’s promotion, this essay traces how the Newtonian universe was interpreted by artisans, showmen, and the general public during the eighteenth century.14, 29, 30a The Microcosm was designed to please the elite, but it ultimately proved very dangerous to the social order it purported to glorify.
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Source
The Cosmos in a Cabinet: Performance, Politics, and Mechanical Philosophy in Henry Bridges’ ‘Microcosm’ by Paul E.Sampson
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February 20, 1756
Leaving NYC for New London
2. Beverley Robinson (1722–1792) was the brother of John Robinson, treasurer of the colony of Virginia and speaker of its House of Burgesses. He settled in the city of New York in the 1740s and married the heiress Susannah Philipse of Philipseburg Manor. GW saw a great deal of Robinson, Mrs. Robinson, and her sister Mary Eliza Philipse, called Polly, during his stay in New York before leaving on 20 Feb. for New London.
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February 21, 1756
In Rhode Island
“According to a plaque at what is now 8 Willard Ave. [South Kingstown, Rhode Island], a young Colonel Washington spent the night of Feb. 21, 1756, a full 20 years before the Revolutionary War, in what was then known as the Willard Hazard House. ‘
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Source:
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Navigate Google Car
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February 26, 156
No letters written to GW or from GW since Feb 4.
Carter Landon sends a letter to GW recommending a John Lawson who later takes over as Ensign when Denis McCarty resigns his Ensign commission October 1756.
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February 27, 1756
Reaches Boston
1. GW was on his way from New York to Boston to see Gov. William Shirley when he and his companions, George Mercer and Robert Stewart, both captains in the Virginia Regiment, stopped at Joseph Chew’s. GW apparently traveled from New London by water and arrived with his party in Boston on 27 Feb.
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Who went with GW?
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from letter Beverly Robinson to GW on 2 September 1756
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4. George Mercer and Robert Stewart accompanied GW to New York and Boston in the spring of 1756, and while in New York they had undoubtedly been entertained at Beverley Robinson’s house along with GW.
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Part of this trip was by Sea
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GW travelled by Long Island Sound and on up through the waters of Rhode Island to Boston.
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As the story goes, a young George Washington was on his way to Boston in 1756 to argue that he should command British troops against the French and Indians. he stayed the night in Wakefield and traveled through Newport during the trip.
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SOUTH KINGSTOWN — George Washington was honored with a three-musket salute in Wakefield 261 years and a day after he may have spent the night there.
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According to a plaque at what is now 8 Willard Ave. [South Kingston Rhode Island], a young Colonel Washington spent the night of Feb. 21, 1756, a full 20 years before the Revolutionary War, in what was then known as the Willard Hazard House.
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The 24-year-old colonel in the Virginia militia was working for the British, and he had already seen combat, surviving a disastrous British loss near what is now Pittsburgh. He was on his way to Boston to argue that he should command British troops against the French and Indians.
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About 25 people gathered Wednesday at the marker in a ceremony organized by amateur historian Helen Allen, 81, who lives nearby. With her was Liz Mauran of Providence, Rhode Island’s vice-regent to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the group that owns and operates Washington’s home. Mauran said that on Monday, Presidents Day, 22,000 people visited Mount Vernon.
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Years later
he traveled Long Island Sound on the water to Rhode Island again.
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Post Office closing in Winchester?
compiled by Jim Moyer 8/16/2019
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Washington meets Ben Franklin on this Boston trip.
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1. None of these three letters from GW to Franklin has been found.
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Franklin was in Williamsburg on post office business when GW arrived there on 30 March.
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GW stopped in Philadelphia on his return from Boston in March and overtook Franklin en route to Virginia on the twenty-second.
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“After parting with Col. Washington” on that day at Fredericktown, Cecil County, Md., Franklin sailed to Hampton while GW proceeded overland to Williamsburg (Franklin to Deborah Franklin, [25? Mar. 1756], in Labaree and Willcox, Franklin Papers, 6:427–28).
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James Balfour (d. 1775), a merchant associated with John Hunter of Hampton and a planter in Elizabeth City County, seems at this time to have traveled often between Philadelphia and Virginia; he accompanied Franklin down the Chesapeake Bay and returned to Philadelphia before Franklin did in late April.
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Founders Online Footnote:
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The End of the Boston Trip
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Compiled and written by Jim Moyer in 2015, update 12/20/2016
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1. After arriving in Williamsburg on 30 Mar. upon his return from a trip to Boston (see William Shirley to GW, 5 Mar. 1756, n.1, in Papers, Colonial Series, 2:323–24), GW shortly got word of new raids by the French and Indians in Frederick and Hampshire counties. He immediately set out to rejoin the main body of his regiment at Fort Cumberland up the Potomac beyond Winchester, in Maryland, and got as far as Winchester on 6 April.
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THE following is a LONG sentence, but try it on for size. Then re-read it.
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After a long trip started in February 1, 1756 to Boston to see Governor William Shirley of Massachussetts, who was also Commander in Chief of all NorthAmerican forces, to settle the issue of Capt Dagworthy not submitting to Washington’s command at Fort Cumberland, Washington finally arrives BACK IN WINCHESTER April 6, 1756 to find the frontier in turmoil, and a report about a dead Frenchman, Sieur Douville, who had plans to destroy the depot near Williamsport MD on the Potomac …in the heart of many settler’s forts and homesteads.
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Why did George Washington choose
to make such a long trip
knowing Springtime is going to get HIT, really HIT ?
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GW knew the highway
they just built
for the failed Braddock Expedition
was a two way street.
The enemy was going to use it.
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And they will be coming.
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So, shouldn’t GW stick around to ensure defensive measures are devised and implemented? Or, can he do that remotely by email ?
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Still GW wants to resolve that Dagworthy problem.
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And to be fair to GW, this issue of command ought to be settled. And you know why – if ever you were in battle.
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Monsieur Douville’s Scalp
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George Washington has a busy day today here in Winchester VA on April 7, 1756 writing letters.
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A Frenchman’s scalp is sent by Robert Pearis whose home was a fort 4 miles from center of Winchester VA.
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The Frenchman’s scalp is sent by Robert Pearis by way of Jenkins to Williamsburg to collect a bounty payment.
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George Washington arrives in Winchester VA on April 6 from a long trip to Boston. GW writes Lt Gov Dinwiddie:
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“Since writing the above, Mr. Paris, who commanded a Party, as per enclosed list, is returned;
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who relates that, upon the North-River he fell in with a small body of Indians which he engaged,
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and after a dispute of half an hour, put them to flight—
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Monsieur Donville, commander of the party, was killed and scalped, and his Instructions found about him; which I enclose.5
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We had one man killed, and two wounded—Mr Paris sends the Scalp by Jenkins; and I hope, although it is not an Indians, they will meet with an adequate reward, at least, as the Monsieurs is of much more consequence.”
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“The whole party jointly claim the reward; no person pretending solely to assume the merit.”
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“Your Honor may in some measure penetrate into the daring designs of the French by their Instructions; where Orders are given to burn, if possible, our Magazine at Conogochieg, [across from present day Williamsport MD on the Potomac – what was also known as Fort Maidstone] a place that is in the midst of a thick settled Country.”
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About Robert and Richard Pearis
George Washington in letter quoted above refers to a Paris. This is probably Robert Pearis according to the Maryland Gazette.
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4. “This was, according to a report in the 6 May 1756 Maryland Gazette (Annapolis), Capt. Robert Pearis, who was an officer in the Frederick County militia. It may, however, have been Richard Pearis, frontier scout and trader, who had recently returned from Maj. Andrew Lewis’s Sandy Creek expedition in which he served as captain of a company of Cherokee.”
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Robert Pearis is the one who “forted up.” His fort is just less than 4 miles north west of Handley Library in Winchester on the appropriately named Indian Hollow Road.
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Richard Pearis is the more well known brother. He just came off the failed Sandy Creek Expedition led by Major Andrew Lewis.
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NOTES
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TO GEORGE WASHINGTON FROM JOHN ROBINSON, 27 JANUARY 1756
FROM JOHN ROBINSON
Janry 27. 1756
Dear Sir
I recd your Letter by Capt. Mercer and
as the Sum he mentioned was more than I cared to issue without the direction of the Com. I went the next day to Wmsburgh and summoned a Com. tho. I could not get one to meet before friday, when they directed me to send you £3000—which I have now done by Capt. Mercer, I could not possibly dispatch him sooner, as there were no large Bills ready for me [to] sign, but I hope his delay will be of no prejudice to you.1
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I am very sorry to hear of the very odd situation you are at present in,
and tho’ I have at present very little Interest at Court,
I waited on the Govr the night I got to Town
to acquaint him of your desire
to wait upon the General to sollicit the Affair in person,
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he told me he had recd a Letter from you to the same Purpose,
and as there would be a Council the next day
he would take their Advice upon it,
and I have heard that it was agreed you should go,
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of which I suppose he will inform you himself,
tho’ I am afraid your Journey
wont answer your Expectation,
as the Govr said he had received a Letter from the Genl
wherein he acquainted him
that he had left the Matter to be settled by Mr Sharpe,
and he further in discourse
let fall some Expressions
as if Govr Sharpe would have the Command of the Forces,
however I heartily wish my Fears may be groundless,
and that you may in this and every other undertaking meet with the desired Success.2
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I mentioned to the Com. what you said about the Officers being paid what was due to them from the Men that were dead killed or deserted out of the Arrears that were due to them,
but they were of Opinion
that the Officers ought to lay their Accts before them
, and indeed seemed to think
that as the Officers had received full pay for their Companies when they were seldom compleat,
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they would be made amends by it for any loss they had sustained by the others,
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Mr Finney producd an Acct to the Committee
for some pay advanced to several of the men,
but was to⟨ld⟩ and directed
to send their Receipts
that it might be stoped out of the Arrears
of such that are in the Service,
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as to any other Matters that were agreed on
Capt. Mercer can acquaint you with them
and therefore I shall not trouble you any further about them.
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I have inclosed a letter for my Bror in New York3
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which I hope you will take the trouble of delivering yourself, I am with my unfeigned Wishes for your health and Prosperity Dr Sir Your Sincere Freind & Servt
John Robinson
ALS, DLC:GW.
1. GW’s letter to Robinson, probably written on 13 or 14 Jan., has not been found. GW sent his aide, Capt. George Mercer, to Treasurer Robinson at his place, Mount Pleasant, on the Mattaponi River to give an accounting of how GW’s military chest of £10,000 had been spent and to get more money for the Virginia Regiment. See GW to Dinwiddie, 13 Jan. 1756. Robinson was chairman of the committee appointed in Aug. 1755 to supervise the expenditure of £40,000 for defense.
2. The minutes of the meeting of the colonial council on 24 Jan., or shortly before, in which Dinwiddie and his council discussed Gen. William Shirley’s letter of 30 Dec. 1755 and GW’s request for permission to go to Boston to see Shirley, have been lost. Shirley enclosed in his letters of 30 Dec. to Dinwiddie and to other colonial governors a plan for dealing with the southern Indians (“Measures Proposed by William Shirley for the Western Governments,” in Lincoln, Shirley Correspondence, 2:364–66) and the minutes of the council of war held in New York, 12–13 Dec. 1755 (Md. Archives, 31:92). It seems that Shirley alluded to the Dagworthy “situation” in the letter to Dinwiddie of 30 Dec. as well as in his preceding letter to Dinwiddie of 4 Dec. 1755. In reference to the earlier letter, Dinwiddie observed that “you [Shirley] say Govr Sharpe is to write Capt. Dagworth to remove the Difficulties now subsistg between Washington & him in respect to Rank” (2 Jan. 1756, ViHi: Dinwiddie Papers). For the allusion to Dagworthy in the second letter, see Shirley to Horatio Sharpe, 30 Dec. 1755, n.1, in Lincoln, Shirley Correspondence, 2:370–72. That Shirley did instruct Sharpe to settle the Dagworthy matter is confirmed in his letter to Sharpe on 5 Mar. 1756 (in which he enclosed the extract of Dinwiddie’s letter of 24 Jan. that GW had brought to him): “You [Sharpe] was pleased to assure me at New York [in Dec. 1755] that you would send such Orders to Capt Dagworthy as would put an end to this dispute and afterwards that you had actually done it” (Browne, Sharpe Correspondence, 1:347–48).
3. GW saw Beverley Robinson in New York both on his way up to Boston in February and on his way back from there in March, and he may have stayed in Robinson’s house on both occasions.
PERMALINK What’s this?
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1. Neither letter has been found. The one “from Quantico” of 25 Mar. was written when GW was on his way from Boston to Williamsburg. The only letters found from GW to Adam Stephen written after GW left Virginia for Boston in February 1756 and before his letter of 18 May are two short ones, the first dated 7 April and the other 26 April.
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From George Washington to Adam Stephen, 1 February 1756 To Adam Stephen
[Alexandria, 1 February 1756
6. GW was in Winchester on 10 Jan. and had arrived in Alexandria on 12 Jan.
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Looking upon our Affairs
at this critical juncture to be of such importance;
and having a personal acquaintance with General Shirley;
which I thought might add some weight to the strength of our Memorial:
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I solicited leave, which is obtained, to visit him in person:
and accordingly set out in two days for Boston;4
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having procured Letters, &c. from the Governour;
which was the result of a Council for that purpose called.5
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You may depend upon it,
I shall leave no stone unturned
for this salutary end; a
nd I think if Reason, Justice, and every other equitable right can claim attention, we deserve to be heard.
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As I have taken the fatigue, &c. of this tedious journey upon myself (which I never thought of until I had left Winchester)6
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I hope you will conduct every thing in my absence for the Interest and Honor of the Service. And I must exhort you in the most earnest manner to strict Discipline, and due exercise of arms.
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Washington and the Theatre: By Paul Leicester Ford 1899
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and the microcosm
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