Today we have an entire explanation so we didnt need a small one this time. Not only do we have a whole exhibition that features the speakers this evening so if you didnt see shes on one of the video monitors upstairs and is also very generous with her ti time. We certainly couldnt have done the exhibition without her help so we owe her a bit of gratitude. Serena zabin professor of Early American History and director of the program of american studies at carleton college. Received her undergraduate from those in college and phd from rutgers university. Her new book, we will let people get settled in here. I guess we got started a little early. Her new book goes deeply into boston 1770. Looking at how the soldiers that have been stationed here since the fall of 1768 were not just a seen as an Occupying Force but the neighbors and customers and competitors or in other words as people. And often repeated narrative of increasing tensions that reached a boiling point on march 5. Some soldiers traveled with their lives into boston residents became the appearance of the children and others married women from the community which not all interactions are negative. Professor serena zabin did research for her book. [laughter] is that a little bit better . Professor serena zabin did research for her book and we make close to 14 million management cases. There is a lot of feedback here. [inaudible] fort valley and available to all the researchers free of charge and such is the current show and hosts programs for public and academic audiences. If you enjoy access to all these resources i hope that they will consider joining and supporting our work. Thank you and please join me in welcoming professor serena zabin. [applause] hello. Can people hear me . I know you dont know who i am. The feedback is bad. [inaudible] how is this. Excellent. Thank you all for coming. Im used to sitting in this room where i spent many hours with about four other people. So this is a little shocking to me, but it is a pleasure. People came out to hear about my new book and at the boston massacre itself, so tonight im going to talk a little bit and read a little bit so that in the end the you can see why i called about it as a Family History. And i want to say in case you are worried, this isnt actually my Family History. [laughter] just want you to know. So, many of you are here i know because you are fans of history, and i think many of us have come to the history because it is full of stories about people who are in a lot of ways not like us. One of the important ways for storytelling is setting the scene. So, as gavin told us, we are on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the boston massacre for chat and not that far from here but if you look upstairs where we are right now presently underwater 250 years ago here in the back bay, but we should think about boston that was just about a square mile, pretty much a peninsula with an entrance to charleston and was a tiny town of about 16,000 people. So, not a big place. And i want to start with a story that we have to unlearn in order to move forward. The very basic story, the little bit that we actually feel sure absolutely about what happened ahappenedmarch 51770 is this. In the center of boston in front of the old state house was a building that was being used for the officials. So, there is a century standing there keeping guard. It is in the year before global warming, so there was snow on the groun ground, ground come ut ground come us know if it had melted somewhat and refrozen in the way that marched yesterday for those of you that remember. [laughter] so it is hard and nasty. And not a pleasant evening, cold. A group start as frequently happened when there are guys standing in a box and people walking by. Essentially he gets anxious and calls for backup switch comes in a handful of soldiers led by a single pathogen. They come and surrounded the century. More bostonians come. We dont know how many. And the captain asks them all to go home and they dont. When they are all dispersed, at some point, we dont know who, yelled fire. Nobody can see anything. Boston doesnt have streetlights at this point, so there may be some candlelight coming out of the windows were doorways kind of squinting off of the dirty snow but its quite dark. No one knows who yelled fire but they yelled fire and when the smoke clears, but they find our for people bleeding out on the snow to assist dying of his a fs wounds and several others injured. That is the moment we come to know these events as the boston massacre. Most people have viewed this because of this picture forward here is famous in this massacre. We see they are being molded down by disciplined soldiers that are urged on by their captain. You can see a lot of gore. Thertheres one woman right and center and her presence to the viewer is a hint that she is surrounded by a group of respectable bostonians and of course we shouldnt ignore the dog who is looking very lost in the. The picture is clearly meant to be propaganda. At the hall they proclaim and you can see from the era o arros obvious that this picture is meant to blame the army and the administration for what happened and somehow if you commit to this in the picture, let me attempt to read to you in all of its glory the poem to try to do some justice. But with murderous rinkerbased rich their bloody hands like pierce bavarians grinning over their prey in the carnage and enjoy the day. So, with poetry like that and these kind of indications, the obvious bias of this image is obvious to all of us to dismiss, but there is a different part of the story we have to unlearn and its so obvious i think we dont even see it anymore. Its what we might call the story of the two sides. So, if you look the very center of this image is a thick white wine of gunsmoke. It separates the soldiers from the terrified civilians that they are slaughtering. The smoke starts to split between the inhabitants on the ones fighting soldiers on the other and this picture of the two opposing sides americans and british seems so obvious no one before really got to question this part of the story. The truth of the matter is civilians and soldiers were not on opposite sides either actually or figuratively. Once we stop letting him go us what we can see, once we start seeing all of boston, not just the little bit, but there is a whole different story of boston just laying there in plain sight. So, to get to this whole different story, i want to back up to the beginning of the book and to a different beginning so i just want to read a few paragraphs from the beginning, chapter one. June 7, 1765. A young irish woman made her way through the crowded streets to the harbor following her husband to talk, approaching a man in uniform gave her name. He let her pass. The name of her husband had also been checked off the list at the man didnt bother to note the name of the couples child. At last after weeks of waiting, along with their child they boarded that they joined matthew and the british armys 29th regiment of foot. Three days later, they set sail for america. It may seem strange to begin an account of the boston massacre was a woman in ireland and yet she and women like her are the thread to tie together the people and complexity of the forces that led to that dramatic moment. The complete story of the death of bostonians at the hands of the british troops is more than the political upheaval that followed the shooting. It is also the story of personal connection between men and women, civilians and soldiers. Over time with women and Children Associated with the british army had been forgotten. And the american imagination must have been reduced to anonymous truths rather than considered as individuals. James chambers was not and is not. We know neither when she was born nor what year she married. Could she read or write . Was Matthew Chambers her first love and that she dreamed of a life beyond ireland. The sources are silent obvious questions but other parts of her life including the choices she made have left traces. The life of an ordinary woman with become part of an extraordinary moment. So, when they are boarding its part of a peacetime deployments so for those of you that are a little rusty on your history, im going to give you a few summaries. I probably have a student in the crowd rolling his eyes. Very quickly, 1763 britain had won the sevenyear war in north america it had been caused primarily against the french and native allies. Three is another British Crown have to figure out how to manage the new empire including these people who are not their allies in how to pay for the war. Among the many policies the British Parliament person after 1763 for several decentralized the administration of this huge empire and to raise money on imported goods and could pretty mildly they were unpopular at least in north america. Actually they are kind of unpopular everywhere so in boston there were riots. He needs some troops. Its known as the Standing Army the general idea is that the government shouldnt have an army that could turn in fact britain did have a peacetime for it although everyone was very clear it was subject to civilian authority which brings me to my second point. They tried to import taxes. And magistrates try to catch them. Its the same year they asked for troops in 1768 and the man in charge of disturbing the regiment around the entire complaint so many asked for troops to support Customs Officials and suppress riots but he was running out of the regiments to hand out around england so its important to realize no one is really singling out of boston for the behavior. Then there is the third thing. They were institutions that traveled with women and children so we can see in this watercolor at the end of Matthew Chambers, hundreds of military numbers flooded into boston in 6 68 and their presence has an enormous impact so when the governor of massachusetts said he needed troops to support the work, they say okay thats fine. In the fall of 1768, what we see our troops marching into the heart of boston. In fact, this is only kind of what happened because when they come to Boston Harbor, the governor and council are squabbling about where all these troops are going to live. With me remind you a little bit about what Boston Harbor looked like at the time. There is a beautifully refurbished set of derricks. Massachusetts raised a lot of money during the boer to update the derricks and they thought they should be used but more than that, it actually was pretty clear that if there are available barracks troops have to go first. If there are not available barracks then they should be put in public houses which are as we think of as pubs or bars and if those places are not available they could be in private houses. So they say they should go there. This is not what the governor had in mind at all. You can see from this line that you may know especially before the fall gets filled in and you control to the island below 3 miles on the narrow Little Channel to get into boston and that was not attractive. So this is boston in 1769. And here it is stretched over if you want to have a little sense of where we are. What the governor wanted was to have troops in the middle of boston said he isnt willing to put them out if you insist on putting them in homes we will bring you up to hear all these officers. So the compromise they come up with is that they are going to rent space, not repositioned a friend of the space so they end up renting as many as they can find that it is not nearly enough so then they get peoples extra houses and spare rooms and shed and they are putting people everywhere. If you take a look at this map, the blue squares are warehouse is rich even those we can see are being scattered all over the town and places where i feel completely positive there were soldiers living and you can see also that they are scattered throughout the entire town. Theres a minimum of 500 women and children and probably more than that. They will find each other a little annoying. Not a surprise. Then they definitely saw the presence of troops so the clerk in the town meeting starts complaining and he and other men looking for boston awalking thrt really annoyed. Their complaints are not the only way we can think about the presence of the troops in boston. Instead i would like us to think about a different place when we think about the term i think we should all take a minute to recall jame austens pride and prejudice. Think of the excitement it created for that family. Add the regimental encampment she saw all the glories and uniformity of lines and to complete the view working with six officers at once. They joined at the napoleonic ts and were not so different. Pride and prejudice. Note the arrival of troops in 1768 was pretty exciting for the local women. The arrival of policeman som the of the baseball and steady income could not help but attract the attention of young men especially when actually women outnumber men in boston at this moment for so many frequenting the taverns dropping by and maybe even when living in her familys spare room, who knew doing laundry could be so much fun. [laughter] some men found it impossible in the face of so many redcoats. So, let me read to you one of my favorite stories because i think that it will give you a view of what it was like to live in boston over these years and partly because this is from the beginning of chapter five. Its available for purchase with whips delete the subscription in the 90 in announcing the latin tag i cannot please everyone. Presumably clark acquired in a subscriptions for the play to sell it with a paper cutter simply no copies remained for us to read it today. Shame. Russell may not have printed many. It fell apart and then lik unliy cheaply printed pamphlets, they used toilet paper. Such a state migh statement hasn particularly appealing. In the winter of 1769 dot many residents were likely eager to read about the soldiers humor. They seem to have a flair for drama off the page as well. In may of 1769 he had a shouting match and when stoppe then stope street he threatened to burn down boston with it. As they brought him to the local it took him only a month to stage an even melodramatic scene with boston locals. The soldier declined to leave. He had every right to sleep with mary, clark asserted them after all, she was his wife, he said and he was going nowhere without her. Clark may have been stretching the truth a bit. Mary said they had been married one person i someone dressed as a priest. In fact they were not married until four months after being caught. But married the they were much to the distress of her parents. So devastated they were that the news of the affairs injured their health. After the marriage marry his father had a showdown and clark shoved a loaded pistol into his chest. He found himself in jail until he could pay for the fine. William clarks marriage was more than family scandal. It became political fodder. In fact the story was reported in newspapers sympathetic to the party. The sense of propriety or the press for personal names and stories but bostonians obviously knew something of the clarke story before it was printed. He carefully annotated the article regarding the young woman in question was mary and her grandfather and i have to say the originals are here. The newspapers accounted for the details on. They used the story to point out the political implications of this marriage urging their readers to reflect on the inevitable impact of troops on the family. It must fall on those officials whove been the authors of the scenes of public and private distress. The old man strugglin strugglins favoritfavorite granddaughter wy the prefac purpose to the primay protest. The cornering of the Standing Army of peace. The author argued public and private affairs of the heart were one in the same. Now, it seems unlikely that clark thought of it in terms of politics because he spent his time in prison imagining his next literary work. In august of 1770 he took out another advertisement this one the first new memoir. A true narrative of the loved injurieloveinjuries that the aum clark an at the 29th regiment of foot and this is only the beginning of a very expensive title. Clarks glove exposed in 18th century soap opera compared with soap opera cameos and british officers ranging from prison to veterans. He clearly meant the narrative to be a tellall and perhaps also targeting his inlaws because unlike the journal and other newspapers, clark named names. The long title of the memoir concludes it is given a faithful account of the courtship, marriage and betting with the daughter of more than boston for the description of how much he suffered in case anybody wondered exactly who they were talking about. The memoir has not survived. So, we can only imagine how clark may have told his version. We can assume from the title and emphasis that his version would depart in the journal. His fatherinlaw called out by name and have an impact on their town and instead, his was the ageold story of young lovers and disapproving parents. So, clark is only one example of the many families that were created when the troops came to boston so not only do we have people sleeping together and creating children outside of the bonds of marriage and you can see some of the examples of stairs in the churches is between civilians and soldiers and in many examples of what a family is asking their neighbors when they baptize their children in the churches and they also create a bombing in boston and the communities in boston itself, but outside of boston as well. And the most surprising piece of my research had to do with the assertion which wasnt a place i thought i would find evidence particularly of the families created as the troops come but i found it shocking singlemember disappearing from the army in boston. They deserted at Something Like three times the rate men usually desert the army in 18th century. So, for example, during the sevenyear war, the british army in north america lost about 3 of its forces every year to desertion. In the first year and a half however, they lost a full 10 . So, they were not just fleeing the unpleasantness bar where they drawn to the beauty of massachusetts as charming as it is, they need to do homes and when they came back to communities turned out to protect them. The Commanding Officers were obviously frustrated by this and at one point a colonel in charge decided he was going to look for the deserters. He was quite successful. He wasnt very good at getting them to come back in part because they put down roots so just the one story over the New Hampshire border to he had lived there all winter and was now married to and they were starting a family. He was easily recognizable because he frequently wears his regimental jacket. [laughter] he continues to wear his jacket, but he never returned to the army. He decides hes leaving New Hampshire and he made a home there. With William Clark to desertion rate to show the soldiers and civilians were more closely entwined than we had realized before. So, that brings us back to mar march. When the bostonians into the soldiers were on the streets, they knew each other. Often quite well. Of course they didnt waste like each other. When they were getting hassled, you know, it isnt surprising that he does get anxious and calls for backup. The people who come actually know many of the people in the street. So, one of them in is a soldier who was recently married to a boston born woman. Another is named Edward Montgomery whos irish wife isabella had come to boston on the same ship the first to halifax but traveled with jane. They didnt get along particularly very well. Earlier that night montgomery shouted loudly enough for people to hear the town was too proud and many would be laid low by morning. The bostonians she was talking to shot back i hope your husband will be killed. But not all bostonians wished death on the montgomerys. On th the street that night wasa carpenter named wilkinson. For a few months they rented a house and had become friendly. In the 18th century equivalent to running to a neighbor for a cup of sugar, they send his kids for cold to start a fire. So, when walkins involve as he asked his neighbor what was happening. He wasnt afraid of him. Of course what was happening that night is the big question. Theres only a few points to the eyewitnesses agreed. When they came to support this entry to captain does order them to disperse. All he knows when the smoke cleared there were people dead and dying and we know when people looked around, they knew that the soldiers and they knew the civilians on the street. At the time the event was a shocking. Everyone was horrified to see them believing out in the snow in front of the governmental power. But absolutely no one thought that this was the beginning of an evolution. Boston women continued to marry british soldiers. Of course the two juries acquitted most of the soldiers. So the importance is i send the shooting itself but how i became transformed into the boston massacre. The people that supported the governor and those that opposed him scramble to tell their sto story. Both want to claim innocent and put the blame on the other side. They do this through pamphlets you can see they are telling different stories. One is an unhappy disturbance and another is a catastrophe. Most of all, to the trial of the soldiers had attacked him. And i dont have time looking at the clock to talk about the details of the trial. Id be happy to bring questions. But in summary i would say what theyll do in the same way is the race women and children and neighbors from the story. We have already seen it with riviere and then we see it in the trial that erases any connections were links between the civilians and soldiers. So, both sides found it necessary to big more Family History of the boston massacre. Now, after the shooting, the troops are deployed so a couple months after they are moved to new jersey and redeployed themselves to the war zone in the andes. Its worth thinking about who is getting redeployed so we have these families. When the troops are moved, families are ripped apart and their faces choices so they can decide that theyre going to stay. They sometimes often remarry. But they decide to stay. And sometimes of course they married soldiers and decide to go with them. They become part of the army also. Ripping apart families i think is the most significant impact. Let me conclude with a short passage of the epilogue. We inherit the story from a far wider range of people and far more complicated set of connections than we ever acknowledge. Those who call the revolution and civil war portrayed the conflict as a struggle over the definition of a new country but it would be no less accurate to call the revolution a war. It played out in the upheaval of the families formed in th and displayed by the same military occupation. Every family wrestled with the conflict in its own way and every family was forced to make changes as difficult as they were inevitable. More peacekeeping together civilians, men and women, children and godparents throughout the british empire. They sometimes tore them apart as they moved around the atlantic rim. In the 18th century angloamerican world there was family and government closely connected notion it marked the beginning of the American Revolution but the breakdown of the family prior to 1772 the language had long saturated the british political discourse. But in the context of military families it on new and personal meanings. We think of the American Revolution as a political event. But it was much more like a bad divorce. The Family History that reminds us of the human bonds as well as the political ones that were broken at the beginning of the American Revolution. Thank you. [applause] [inaudible] she wondered how i found Jane Chambers and her family. So, i started actually on this question of military families. I can go back to the short narrative which is owned and replicated in many places of which Many High School textbooks and the he happened to own a coy for several years before i read it and in the very first deposition, somebody talks about being in a bostonians house and hearing a soldiers wife and be focused on the threats and at the 15th time i read it i thought i didnt even know soldiers had fired this. So i started pulling on things and i came here and found the records and then i started trying to figure out where did they come from and how do we know the ones who came to boston with the army as opposed to those that married him. So the great thing about working on the army as they kept records so every person who travels is on the list and they are sitting there in london. So, i think through and created an enormous database of every single man. If you look at the buck, a shout out a number of students that worked with me on this for a long time and i matched them up with all of the women i could find also on these ships. And then i looked at the receipts from the army that they still had for the number of rations that they were paying out so there they mandated to. E that is an excellent question a locaand shedecides to stay wh, who is going to its har they r taking carand when thepeople arw they are going to pay for all of there iwrittenthenamdohiredthe e finds a lot of them right afte. If the soldiers leave you and you dont go this is a legal statement but a sort of say it officially, but th and they uset precisely for this, so on whats called the provincial account. So, massachusetts wil. When men try to leave quickly as they possibly can. That may have been a longe frome or were they from boston . That is also a great question. The four regiments that come to boston actually are mostl and al about why somebody that was wonderful. I want to follow you a little bit. I wondered about other families beyond. Ireland, england, what kind of situations. I wonder also about the age obviously these were young men but how many have had wives elsewhere, and i wonder about that but yet there were other connections into the final thing i also wondered about class. Who married whom and what doctors were available and i assume there were some other clashes. Finally, i kept thinking about how much the family paradigm or model fits with brothers fighting brothers and families. Would you address that . I can try. Absolutely there is both but the soldiers, too. It makes it possible to marry a man who marries elsewhere. It is true that at various moments, the ability of people to be able to compel the army to bring their families with them changes and a lot depends on the Commanding Officer. One of them has a Commanding Officer like lets take everybody even though they are not supposed to into the army putand the armyputs a strict lik forgiveness later and then he spends another ten months arguing that those. Some people work like that and other people know the rules are the rules and say 60 women per regiment and that is all that will take and we are sorry if some of you your wife doesnt get to come, sorry. And before anybody fleeing troops, the people in charge of the release in court and other places are so freaked out by how much it is costing them to maintain these families that have been left behind at the next tier when they are preparing to leave, they go and ask the Commanding Officers to please plead with the war office to allow them to bring more families with them so these Home Communities wont be stuck with them. Its a question of money, it doesnt have to be tend to be n but that petition the Commanding Officers are asking say it will make them more loyal, less likely to desert and feel happier about going into the army of their wives can come. There is a recognition of what it might feel like. Officers if they pay for their own lives to come so the army doesnt paarmydoesnt pay for t. There are no limitations on it and in fact there is no limitation on who can pay for their wives to come. Theres very little cross class marriage happening in boston. Officers tend to be courting and more workingclass families tend to be very private so that isnt the particular clash. But there are plenty of other ones. I just had a question about other times of the massacre like the john adams line up of the map. I wondered if you also learned through this work more about the civilians either the relationshirelationship tothe sn terms of some of those. Yeah, i mean that particular line that is so famous i will probably mangled the quote, maybe somebody else has it that it was sort of crowd made up and people of color into sailors and apprentices. He does that to prevent this to try to get his clients often as hes trying to make the argument for selfdefense to say they are afraid of something because hes already got an account and also he cant see the captain gave the order. At the same time he is there to try to defend boston so hes trying to say these are not bostonians that are part of this group. Cities like these are outsiders, real bostonians look like a revered picture. Real bostonians are no single woman would be afraid to be in the crowd with them. These are, you know, this is some external. So i dont think they are real people. Of course we know that they were there and kill him but there were prejudices there. Its not that there were no people of those categories. But the ones in particular i think that he was using rhetorically. Do you have any sense of whether the officers children and possibly the soldiers children were sent to the Public Schools and whether that connection also existed . I wanted to find that so badly. I found time reading the reports of people that knew boston and a lot and hopefully they would know someone that was there but i actually that did escape me. The question of how children were being educated. There are ways they are part of the town but i couldnt find them if i wanted to. Great question. One more. We can talk document those that were in the thick of things. Do you think that there were any other women there . I think that probably not. I dont think that there are a lot of women wandering the street at night honestly. Not coming out to see whats going on. The groups i feel pretty confident showing that are primarily coming out of bars. So theres not a lot of people coming out of other social situations. I dont think so. I think that they are watching, but why are you bringing your sword with you. They are watching people walk out the door but i dont actually think that. I have no evidence. [applause]. It was such a pleasure to read your book in such an honor for me. Thank you. As i read your new book what came to mind is