Chapter 1 “The Pride of New England”

“IN THIS LAND of bustling am I safe arrived, among the most social, polite and sensible people under heaven,—to strangers, friendly and kind,—to Englishmen, most generously so,” wrote a traveler to Boston in 1774. “This is fine country, for everything that can gratify the man or please the fancy.”1

In the mid-­eighteenth century, Boston was a small yet clamoring town surrounded by salt marshes and seawater, and punctuated by small hills and wild-­rose gardens. The misshapen peninsula comprising the burgeoning town was connected to the mainland by a small isthmus known as Boston Neck, which during periods of flooding or unseasonable weather temporarily washed out, converting Boston into an island in Massachusetts Bay.

The roughly seventeen thousand inhabitants of the densely settled community, almost all English,² lived in a warren of narrow, winding, and busy avenues. Church steeples and stone chimneys marked the Boston skyline, and countless wharfs, such as Rowe’s, Long, and Hancock’s, beckoned to the Atlantic with outstretched arms that provided the town with the seafaring industry from which all other commerce sprang.

On any given day, young ship hands dashed about the weather-­beaten docks securing hawsers and taking on or offloading cargo, while grizzled fishermen prepared their catch of cod, lobster, and oysters for market. The pungent odors of receding tides and decaying fish permeated the brackish air and joined a rising cacophony of shipbells, seabirds, and excited voices.

Just beyond the cluttered seafront of Boston, the markets churned with trade, and the taverns warmed wary shipwrights, merchants, and artisans. Boston “was not only the metropolis of Massachusetts and the pride of New England,” boasted one historian, “but it was the commercial emporium of the colonies.”³

Into this world Paul Revere was born on December 21, 1734. The first surviving son of Apollos Rivoire and Deborah Hichborn, Paul would carry his father’s French Huguenot thirst for freedom and his mother’s provincial fortitude.⁴

Revere’s father, Apollos, was born in 1702 and, at the age of thirteen, left his boyhood home just east of Bordeaux, France, at the insistence of his parents in order to elude possible French persecution of the Huguenots, and he immigrated to the Island of Guernsey in the English Channel, where his uncle Simon Rivoire resided. Recognizing the growing opportunities of the British colonies in North America, Simon soon dispatched his nephew to join a small but growing Huguenot population in Boston, where an apprenticeship under respected goldsmith John Coney had been arranged.

Learning the ancient mechanical art under Coney’s watchful eye, young Apollos settled well in his new home, and eventually he became adept at forming gold and silver vessels and ornaments for his Boston patrons. In time, he changed his name to the more appropriately “English” Paul Revere, “on account the Bumpkins should pronounce it easier,”⁵ and with Coney’s death in 1722, he purchased the indenture of his remaining apprenticeship and ultimately set up his own goldsmith shop in town.

Emerging as an established and religiously devout citizen of Boston, the elder Revere joined the New Brick Church on Hanover Street—the Cockerel, as it came to be known for the brass weathercock set upon its spire—and in 1729, at the age of twenty-­six, he married Deborah Hichborn, the twenty-­five-­year-­old daughter of a prominent Boston entrepreneur and landowner. The Hichborns were a lively and well-­descended Yankee family of merchants, seamen, and artisans, and it was Deborah who would provide her son with the rich New England legacy that would one day become synonymous with his name.

Young Paul Revere was part of an ever-­expanding family. Twelve children would be born to the marriage from 1730 to 1745, though only seven would survive beyond infancy. Revere learned to manage within the cramped quarters of his parents’ North End dwelling.

From an early age it became apparent that he would join his father in the goldsmith trade. He was thought to be properly suited for the mechanical arts, and he appeared to have little interest in a more “gentlemanly” education, as had been afforded to his cousin Benjamin Hichborn and others in Boston who displayed an aptitude for a more highbrow vocation. Though the typical eighteenth-­century American artisan was respected in the community as the provider of a required service, he was, nonetheless, thought of as a tradesman—one who relied on physical rather than intellectual capabilities. In sharp contrast to the powdered wigs and imported clothing of the colonial gentleman, the artisan’s plain unadorned shirts and breeches were adapted more for utility than appearance, and his home generally would be simple in style and furnishings. He was, as a rule, less erudite and less inclined to engage in the deep political or philosophical ponderings of the upper classes, and he rarely extended his education beyond grammar school. The artisan, or “mechanic” as he was often called, served the affluent of his community, and though he may have attained a level of wealth and success, he seldom joined their social rank.6

As a boy, Paul Revere attended North Writing School, where he learned to read and write, but by the age of thirteen he joined his father’s business as an apprentice goldsmith, as would surely have been expected of him. He would come to recognize the undeniable eighteenth-­century distinction between artisan and gentleman, and though he did not continue his formal education as others in his extended family had, he developed a love for books and reading that would inform and challenge him far into his life.

By his mid-­teenage years, Revere began to display a bold penchant for individualism. The nonconformist views of the Calvinist-­leaning Huguenots conflicted with the pious doctrines of Catholicism, which required ordination of priests in “apostolic succession” rather than the communal election of ministers. According to Huguenot belief, the Anglican Church was simply an adjunct of Catholic dogma.⁷ Confronting his father’s edicts of religious propriety, Revere entered into a pact along with six of his friends to ring the bells of Christ Church, also known as North Church, an Anglican congregation—an act that angered the elder Revere, who had a clear preference for a Puritan-­leaning church.8 True proclivity for independent thought—and, perhaps, the birth of his political awareness—came, however, when Revere began frequenting the congregation of the radically preaching Reverend Doctor Jonathan Mayhew at West Church on Lynde Street. To the bitter consternation of his father, Revere listened with rising interest to Mayhew’s fiery brand of civil disobedience and hostility to tyrannical authority, and he developed, perhaps, the first spark of the transformation that was destined to propel him into America’s quest for independence.⁹

Though mildly defiant in the realm of religion, Revere was a dedicated and faithful student of his father’s trade. As an apprentice, he displayed a vibrant talent for art and design and became proficient in the skill of engraving. As his abilities developed, his reputation for fine craftsmanship grew in Boston, and he serviced his father’s customers with his own brand of artistic creativity. He learned to fashion spoons, bowls, tankards, ewers, buckles, and every sort of button and ornament from precious metals, and he often adorned his creations with detailed engravings that personalized and enhanced his work. Thus his chosen trade was the seamless marriage of art and mechanics, tightly woven within the world of business.

In 1754 Revere’s father died, leaving his nineteen-­year-­old son in charge of a grieving family and a goldsmith business that, ironically, he was not legally authorized to conduct. Local regulations at the time prevented anyone who had not attained the age of twenty-­one and completed a seven-­year apprenticeship from conducting a trade in the Town of Boston,¹⁰ but they did allow the widow of the tradesman to continue in his name.¹¹ It is probable that, in the face of losing the family breadwinner, Deborah Revere assumed the mantle of proprietor, with her son Paul employed as the skilled hand. The family thus endured, and Revere grew in stature and professional standing.

As Paul Revere labored at the family business, the long-­simmering conflict between the French and the English in North America finally erupted again into war. Since the early part of the century, the vital interests of trade and territory had resulted in competing claims to the rich lands of the Ohio Valley and the Appalachian country to the west of the British colonies. An ever-­increasing British population had expanded the reach of the Crown into these disputed areas and, in response, the French began construction of a series of forts along the major rivers of the region as well as at Lake Champlain between Vermont and New York. Soon the British erected several garrisons of their own and encouraged trade and migration into the region, further heightening tensions on the continent. The imperial strength of each country clearly depended upon these lands for settlement and resources, and in 1756 the bloody and prolonged conflict that would become known as the French and Indian War was declared. Merely the North American theater of a worldwide struggle called the Seven Years’ War, the Ohio Valley front would provide many New Englanders with their first taste of formal military conflict and sow the seeds of the American Revolution to come.

With the looming threat of ambush from the north constantly endangering the families of New England during this time, a call to arms among the men of Massachusetts was enthusiastically answered. At the age of twenty-­one, Revere joined His Majesty’s forces, receiving a commission from Governor William Shirley to serve as second lieutenant for the train of artillery led by Richard Gridley in the campaign to dislodge the French from Crown Point on Lake Champlain under the overall command of General John Winslow.12 Leaving the family goldsmith duties to his younger brother Thomas while in military service, Revere assumed a post at Fort William Henry on Lake George from May through November of 1756. Though bold in its initiative, the expedition was plagued immediately with political wrangling over status and organization, as well as social prejudices between British soldiers and provincial troops—a harbinger of trouble to come. With colonial volunteers scorned by the British as craven, inept, and untrustworthy, the alliance would prove testy and quarrelsome. While internal conflicts ensued, the French gained successive clandestine victories with the Battle of Fort Bull, the capture of Fort Oswego, and later the siege of Fort William Henry, and British morale crumbled. Revere would endure the hardships and privations of war during that summer and fall, but was afforded little if any opportunity to distinguish himself in battle.

In the previous year, a similar expedition had been launched against Crown Point that had ended in failure. Now, with the fall of Fort Oswego and the French construction of Fort Carillon (later called Fort Ticonderoga), the British force again was compelled to retreat and ultimately abandon its mission.13 Revere would return to Boston in late 1756 with little more military experience than when he had left his goldsmith shop in the North End of town seven months earlier.

Serving with the men of Massachusetts on the Crown Point expedition, however, was a young first lieutenant from Weymouth by the name of Solomon Lovell, who would later play a pivotal role in the darkest chapter of Paul Revere’s military life.¹⁴

As the Seven Years’ War droned on without him, Paul Revere focused his attention once again on business and family pursuits. By the summer of 1757 he had fallen in love with a young Bostonian woman by the name of Sara Orne, and the couple was married in August of that year. Crammed into his mother’s house on Fish Street near Clark’s Wharf, which had been rented by the family since 1743, Revere and his bride began life amid the tumult of extended family and the racket of an active goldsmith’s shop attached to the property. On April 3, 1758, Sara gave birth to their first child, a girl whom they named Deborah. During the next fourteen years, seven more children would be born to the Reveres.¹⁵

With the burdens of a growing family, Revere constantly endeavored to widen his trade skills and increase the array of customers that he served. In the coming years, his willingness to explore new methods of design, including the chic French-­influenced rococo style of ornamentation, enhanced his reputation for creativity and artistic mastery.

Revere’s list of patrons ranged from extended family members to the wealthiest merchants and mariners in town, and though his political leanings proved consistently faithful to the Patriot cause, he certainly was not averse to doing business with Tory Loyalists or British officers when profit was at stake as tensions with Great Britain escalated.¹⁶ On many occasions he would provide specialized engraving or fashioning services on a subcontractor basis to other Boston goldsmiths who did not, perhaps, possess the same level of skill or proficiency as he did. Ever the businessman, Revere maintained careful records of every transaction in a Waste and Memoranda Book, in which he even recorded the monthly receipts of board paid to him by his mother after she took up residence at his North Square home upon its purchase in 1770, as well as a detailed accounting of goods supplied by her and monies expended on her behalf.17

Above all else, Paul Revere was an entrepreneur. The ever-­inventive goldsmith capably expanded his interests and trade beyond his chosen profession and, in years to come, would engage in such pursuits as currency printing, copperplate engraving, powder mill designing, bell and cannon foundering—and even dentistry. Indeed, Revere would advertise his unique dental services in the Boston Gazette and Country Journal in 1768:

WHEREAS, many Persons are so unfortunate as to lose their Fore-­Teeth by Accident, and otherways, to their great Detriment, not only in Looks, but speaking both in Public and Private:—This is to inform all such, that they may have them re-­placed with artificial Ones, that looks as well as the Natural & answers the End of Speaking to all Intents, by PAUL REVERE, Goldsmith near the head of Dr. Clarke’s Wharf, Boston.¹⁸

And in a later advertisement, Revere would boast that he “continues the Business of a Dentist, and flatters himself that from the Experience he has had these Two years (in which time he has fixt some Hundreds of Teeth) that he can fix them as well as any Surgeon-­Dentist who ever came from London.”¹⁹

As Revere developed his professional endeavors, he also matured socially. His growing relationships with fellow mechanics and artisans would provide a welcome respite from the toils of daily trade and serve to mold his early political views. In the many social clubs, caucuses, and taverns of Boston, local tradesmen would gather over a mug of grog or ale, and the banter of business and politics would fill the air. Revere was a frequent patron at the Salutation Tavern and the Green Dragon near his home in the north part of town, and here, amid the raucous fellowship of workmen, tobacco, and brew, many of Revere’s early beliefs and associations took root and flourished.

And here too, in the alehouses and taverns of Boston, another, more structured, social organization would thrive—the Masons. On September 9, 1760, Revere was inducted into St. Andrew’s Lodge of Freemasons as an entered apprentice, and through the next several months, he would rise through the ranks to the respected position of master Mason. In the coming years, he would become actively involved with several other Masonic lodges, including the Rising States Lodge and the Massachusetts Grand Lodge, and would hold high and respected offices in each. For the remainder of his professional life, Freemasonry would provide Revere with the social standing and intellectual foundation that rose above the everyday interactions of Boston’s North End. It would forever inculcate the man with aspirations of brotherhood, honor, and humanity, and it would serve to expand his personal perspective and view of the world.20

Freemasonry in Paul Revere’s America had evolved from a fourteenth-­century stoneworker’s guild in Europe. A rigid hierarchy of master Masons, fellows, and apprentices joined in the construction of ornate buildings in accordance with the jealously guarded secrets of their Middles Ages craft and passed along these tenets through an intricate maze of Masonic ceremonies and rituals open only to the chosen few of the trade.

By the early seventeenth century, Freemasonry in England had broadened its scope and had begun admitting men of other professions to the organization. Masonic lodges gradually transitioned from trade guilds where the main focus was one of detail to craft, to more of a social or philanthropic function. Moral character and social values became the hallmark of these clubs, and members increased status and standing through a variety of elected offices.

The Grand Lodge of England, the formalization of the modern Freemasonic movement, was created in 1717 and, within fifteen years, its first American charter was officially sanctioned in Boston and named St. John’s Lodge. Though various lodges would take root in the colonies, their diverse membership often produced dissent and dissatisfaction over rituals and precepts and consequently the splintering of chapters. St. Andrew’s Lodge, which Paul Revere joined in 1760, was chartered by the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1756 and had been born out of a dispute with the Grand Lodge of England over the interpretation of ancient Masonic principles. Its members, mostly comprised of artisans and tradesmen, considered themselves “Ancient Masons” because of their strict adherence to the traditional ideologies of original Freemasonry and condemned their English counterparts as “Modern Masons” who had corrupted the original precepts of the institution. For its part, St. John’s Lodge labeled the members of St. Andrew’s as “Irregular Masons,” and antagonism between the two groups persisted until April of 1766, when St. John’s conceded that its failure to recognize and admit members of the competing lodge was “directly Subversive of the Principles of Masonry.”21

In 1792 a Masonic committee in Boston, of which Revere was a member, compiled its constitution and rituals and described the unified purpose of Freemasonry as “an institution for the promotion of the most extensive philanthropy, the most diffusive and disinterested benevolence and universal virtue.”²² Though perhaps limited by his own lack of formal education, Revere nonetheless was able to demonstrate the transcendent attributes of integrity and leadership that would allow him to rise to the highest levels of the Masonic order. Membership in the Freemasons not only strengthened Revere’s bonds with his artisan brothers, but also allowed him to expand his personal and political affiliations with some of Boston’s most educated and influential leaders of the day. It was through St. Andrew’s that Revere befriended Dr. Joseph Warren and others who would shape the political world of Boston in the years to come, and it was in the back rooms and halls of Masonic gatherings that enlightened philosophies of liberty and organized dissent took hold. As whispers of rebellion filtered from elites, such as Otis, Adams, and Hancock, down through the town’s working classes, Paul Revere would be seen as a fitting liaison between statesman and tradesman.²³

Freemasonry allowed Revere to slice through the social strata of Boston. His professional and community standing greatly benefited from the wide diversity of newly developed relationships acquired through St. Andrew’s Lodge, and his adaptive personality allowed him to interact comfortably with both the elite gentlemen of Boston and the more earthy patrons of the Green Dragon. Revere’s Masonic dealings also led to the growth of his goldsmith business. Many of his lodge brothers sought him out for the purchase or repair of items such as belt buckles, rings, buttons, and the like, and he was often engaged by the lodges themselves to create Masonic jewels and to engrave certificates and notices of ­meetings.

Though he aspired to the high tenets of Freemasonry, Revere also wrestled with a level of feisty truculence that could, on occasion, demand the settling of a personal score. In May of 1761, he found himself in such a dispute with a hatter by the name of Thomas Fosdick, who was married to one of Revere’s Hichborn cousins. The quarrel escalated into a physical brawl, and Fosdick filed criminal charges against Revere in the courts of Suffolk County, for “assaulting & beating ye complainant.” Revere denied the charge and filed a plea of not guilty, but after a full hearing on the matter, Judge Richard Dana ruled, “[I]t appears he is guilty.” The defendant was fined for his transgression and ordered “to keep ye peace & be of good behavior.”24

As Paul Revere advanced in status and reputation (notwithstanding the Fosdick incident), larger events began to take shape around him.

By the early 1760s, for the first time in years, Parliament began to impose measures to prevent blatant violations of the Navigation Acts. These trade regulations, aimed at limiting colonial imports exclusively to British-­made products shipped on British-­made and manned vessels, and conversely limiting the export of certain raw materials from the colonies exclusively to England, remained relatively dormant for decades and violations were mildly tolerated.²⁵ Other than the duty on molasses passed in 1733, these measures did not unreasonably restrict natural market forces already in place and were largely followed. “The purpose of the acts was to promote the economic welfare of the empire in general and of the mother country in particular,” wrote one historian.²⁶

Beginning in 1760, however, a renewed effort to curtail smuggling, mostly of Dutch products, took hold in the colonies; and Francis Bernard, governor of Massachusetts from 1760 to 1771 and a loyal defender of the Crown, became the point man in the endeavor. With wide popular sympathy for and acceptance of Dutch smuggling in Boston, local inhabitants had made it difficult for local customs officials to gather evidence successfully in such cases, and accordingly it became clear that other measures of enforcement would be required.

In November of 1760, the head of Boston customs, Charles Paxton, applied to the Massachusetts superior court for the issuance of writs of assistance to aid in the enforcement of the Navigation Acts. In essence, the writs were broad, open-­ended, unlimited, and perpetual search warrants that enabled British officials to search, by force or otherwise, private homes and businesses without specific duration or restraint.27

At about the same time, Governor Bernard filled a vacancy in the seat of chief justice of the superior court with the much-­maligned Thomas Hutchinson, who already held multiple government titles in and around Boston, several of which presented clear conflicts of interest with the position of chief justice. The appointment, clearly intended as a measure to ensure approval of the writs by the court, inflamed the populace and particularly angered the feisty Boston lawyer James Otis, whose father had been given long-­standing assurances that the position was his.²⁸ When a group of local merchants who had brought suit challenging the writs approached Otis to represent them in their cause, he was only too happy to accept the case.

The trial took place in the council chamber of the Old Town House in Boston before five judges including Hutchinson, each adorned in flowing white wigs and crimson robes. In the packed chamber, Otis delivered a protracted and impassioned exposition on the rights of man and the fundamental principles of law and liberty. “Otis was a flame of fire,” wrote the young lawyer John Adams, who intently watched the oration from the gallery.²⁹

Otis condemned the writs as “slavery” and “villany” and proclaimed that it would be “impossible to devise a more outrageous and unlimited instrument of tyranny, than this.” His narrow eyes focused on Hutchinson’s. “A man’s house is his castle,” he charged. “[W]hilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded as a prince in his castle. This writ, if it should be declared legal, would totally annihilate this privilege.”30

The court would ultimately uphold the writs of assistance—and Boston would never be the same. Years later, John Adams wrote: “Then and there, was the first scene of the first act of opposition, to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there, the child Independence was born.”³¹

In 1763 England’s prolonged war with the French finally came to an end with the Treaty of Paris. With the victory, Great Britain had expanded its influence through the Mediterranean, India, and North America—but the celebration was short-­lived. The American colonies had prospered during the wartime economy through a succession of subsidies and advantageous military contracts for shipbuilding and the provision of British soldiers, but with the end of hostilities came a marked reduction in commerce and a tightening of mercantile credit. In England, the British government was dealing with economic problems of its own. The national debt had skyrocketed during the war, and now, with the acquisition of the vast lands of Canada, the military cost of defending that land would add to the burden.³² The cash-­strapped Crown naturally turned to the colonies for assistance. The era of salutary neglect had come to an abrupt end.

The regulatory posture of Parliament toward the colonies now shifted from the regulation of trade and the prohibition of smuggling to the raising of revenue. In April of 1764, the Sugar Act was passed, which extended and imposed duties on a variety of goods such as sugar, molasses, and lumber and placed strict burdens of accountability on shipping interests, in order to ensure that tariffs flowed to Great Britain. With the stated purpose of raising revenue openly stated in its preamble,³³ the act curtailed colonial trade at a time when the economy was already sagging.³⁴ In addition, the Currency Act, which regulated the use of undervalued colonial paper currency, was enacted as a means to protect British creditors and commercial interests by forcing the colonies to use British currency, as opposed to the rapidly fluctuating and inconsistently regulated colonial notes.³⁵

Though the measures were relatively modest in extent, they had the immediate effect of galvanizing public opinion. Forecasts of grave injury to the rum trade in particular and of economic disaster in general spread throughout the region. “Our trade,” wrote Samuel Adams, “has for a long time laboured under great discouragements; and it is with the deepest concern that we see further difficulties coming upon it, as will reduce it to the lowest ebb, if not totally obstruct and ruin it.”36 Though the initially spirited dissent of the Massachusetts assembly would be somewhat tempered at the request of Lieutenant-­Governor Thomas Hutchinson, its members formally endorsed the united protest of the colonies against the measures as advocated by James Otis in his “memorial,” Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved.³⁷

The conclusion of the Seven Years’ War had signaled an economic decline in the colonies, and the introduction of confiscatory tax measures, it was feared, would only worsen the situation. Activist voices began debating the broader philosophical implications of the measures—and soon the heated rallying cry of Boston promised an end to the villainous scourge of “taxation without representation.” This notion was premised on Reverend Jonathan Mayhew’s fiery sermon of January 30, 1750, before the West Church in Boston and was echoed by James Otis as early as September of 1762 in his pamphlet entitled A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.³⁸ Now, in his instructions to Boston’s newly chosen representatives, Samuel Adams wrote, “If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves?”³⁹

With questions of liberty and economic freedom uppermost in the minds of his more eloquent and educated acquaintances, Paul Revere appears to have been focused more on business, family, and Masonic brotherhood during this period. His talents as a goldsmith and copperplate engraver continued to evolve, and his remarkable flair for artistic elegance and range was clearly appreciated by his growing customer base. Respect and admiration for Revere also expanded among his lodge brothers, and in December of 1761, he was elected to the office of junior deacon. By November of 1763 he would hold the post of junior warden.

With the end of the war against France, however, Revere’s business began to decline as the overall colonial economy weakened—and worse, by the close of 1763 an epidemic of smallpox struck the Town of Boston. At the time a crude form of inoculation that had been introduced during the outbreak of 1722 by the prominent Puritan minister and author Cotton Mather had been generally accepted by both clergy and physicians and put into limited use; however, fever and death stalked the sullen community, and houses were marked by flags where quarantined families languished in sickness.

In February, Revere’s growing family was struck by the disease. As required by local law, he informed Boston selectmen that one of his daughters was suffering from fever and open skin blisters. The illness had progressed to the point where the officials ordered the child to be placed in one of the town’s “pesthouses.” Revere objected. He was not going to allow any of his children to be taken from the nurturing arms of their mother, who herself again was expecting. After an extensive argument with the officials, they agreed that the child would be allowed to remain in the house with the entire family under quarantine flag and posted guard.

In the coming months Revere’s daughter bravely fought her illness and slowly recovered. Gradually the blight of smallpox eased its grip on the town and normalcy slowly returned. Sara delivered the couple’s third daughter, and Revere’s business began to show signs of improvement.

Boston’s economic and political troubles, however, were just beginning.