Today we have the entire exhibition we did not need one this time that there are speaker this evening if you didnt see it is on one of the video monitors upstairs and very generous with her time also to give an interview we cannot do that without her help or a debt of gratitude. Professor of Early American History received her undergraduate degree in her phd from rutgers. Her new book i guess that started a little early. [laughter] goes deeply into boston 1770 stationed here since the fall of 1768 but neighbors and customers or as people and increasing tensions that reached on marc march 5th boston residents and other soldiers married women from the community so not all interactions were negative. And extending the research for her book. [laughter] she did Excessive Research for her book and those such as the current show and the academic if you enjoy access to all of these resources. [applause] and people hear me . I know you dont know who i am. Can you hear me . Thank you all for coming and where i spent many hours and years around the table. You can see why the boston massacre. And they are all like us. One of the most important things so we are on the eve of the 250th anniversary one anniversary of the boston massacre which happened to not that far from here if you looked up from where we are right now presently underwater 250 years ago, we should think about the boston that was just 1 mile, one square mile or a peninsula with the instruments to charles ten charleston it was the town not a city but a town of 16000 people. So not a big place. And i want to start that we have to unlearn to move forward so the little bit on what happened on the night of mh 1770. So right in front and so there is a century and the night of march 5th and to keep guard in the years before Global Warming the snow had melted so what somewhat in the way that you use to remember. And a group of bostonians there is a guy standing in a little box. And essentially to call for backup which comes in the form of a handful of soldiers led by a single captain with more bostonians come, they really dont know how many and the captain asks them to go home and they dont. And when they disperse, someone yells fire. Nobody can see anything. So there may be some candlelight that are glinting off the dirty snow but it is quite dark. Nobody knows who yells fire. But they fire and when the smoke clears they find four people bleeding on the snow dead a fifth dying of wounds and several others injured. And that is the moment we come to know the event as the boston massacre. So most people largely because of this picture paul revere extraordinarily famous regarding the boston massacre so on one side we see half of bostonians being mowed down by soldiers urged by the captain. And then one woman presents is the hand she is surrounded by a group of respectable bostonians and the symbol of royalty that is looking very lost indeed. The picture is clearly meant to be propaganda as they claim it is obvious this picture is meant to blame the army and the administration for what happene happened. And somehow if you miss this picture for me to reach and the glory trying to do it and for those walks in with the savage with murderous rancor. Like fierce bobby on barbarians over there pray approve the carnage and enjoy the day. So with poetry like that the obvious bias and for all of us to dismiss. But there is a different part of the story embedded that we have to unlearn and it is so obvious we dont even see it anymore. Its what i call the story of the two sides. If you look the very center of the image is a white line of gunsmoke this separates those soldiers from the crowd of civilians they are slaughtering. But that is the split between inhabitants on the one side and on the other and this picture of two opposing sides, american and british has teamed so obvious that nobody has thought to question that part of the story. But the truth of the matter is civilians and soldiers were not on out the sides of the street at all. Actually or figuratively. When once we stop leading revere tell us what we can see and we see all of boston, not just a little bit that revere shows us but a whole different story just laying there in plain sight. So to get to a whole different story, want to back up to the beginning of my book into a different beginning and read a few paragraphs from chapter one. June 7, 1765, a young irish woman made her way to the harbor. Approaching the man in uniform and gave him her name. To her relief he let her pass the image of her husband had also been checked off the list that he did not bother to note the name of their child. After weeks of waiting they boarded where they joined the british army 29th regiment three days later they set sail for america. It may seem strange with a woman in ireland but yet she and women like her that tie together the range of people and the complexity of the forces that led to that dramatic moment the complete story of bostonians at the hands are british troops is more than the upheaval that followed the shooting and also of personal connections between men and women and civilians and soldiers and overtime the women and Children Associated with the british army have been forgotten in the american imagination most used to anonymous troops as they considered as individuals she is not famous her early life is lost. We dont know when she was born nor in what year she married could she read or write . Matthew chambers her first love did she ever dream of a life beyond ireland . Other parts of her life including the choices that she made and they did leave traces. The everyday life of an ordinary woman would become part of an extraordinary moment. So when jane and Matthew Chambers are part of a piece time deployment so with the mid 18 century history have at least one former student here but two years earlier britain won the seven years war and north america is primarily against the french and their native allies. The french withdrew all the claims including the whole area we know as canada and surprisingly did not so now the British Crown how to figure how to manage the new empire and how to pay for the war. Among those policies that one the pursuit to centralize the administration of the huge empire and to raise money on imported goods. And these were unpopular at least in north america. So in boston there were riots and those who are supposed to collect so after the enormous protest the Massachusetts Governor decided he needed backup essentially and then to keep order in boston because there is no police fourchette people are using troops as a police force and thats one of the three things i would like to tell you about the 18 century british army. That the whole idea that there should even be an army and piece time seemed wrong the general idea that the government should have an army but in fact it did have a piece time force but it was subject to civilian authority which brings me to my second point governors and magistrates often use the war office to send troops to use for police. This is true in england as it is in the colony. All over they are trying to invade it with import taxes theres a lot of smuggling so the same that the Massachusetts Governor was in charge of distributing regiments around the empire with the quartermaster general complaining that so many magistrates asked for troops to support Customs Officials and suppressed riots but he was running out of regiments to hand out. s was important to realize nobody is singling out boston for this rebellious behavior there are some things that could be happening but having troops come and then there is the third thing thats the most important about the 18th century army we often think as not that different from a contemporary art of one army those that are going toward the war zone but in fact it is significantly different 18th century army with women and children to some of the and. How did the military family flight into boston and their presence have an enormous impact on future events. So when the governor of massachusetts said he needed troops to support the work for the government, the war office says okay. That is fine. But it creates other problems. So when the first two regiments sail into Boston Harbor in the fall of 1768, we see troops marching into the heart of boston which is his only kind of what happened because when they come to Boston Harbor the governor and the council are where all the troops are going to live. s let me remind you of what Boston Harbor look like at the time. Heres an 18th century map of Boston Harbor. They thought the troops should go to the island as you can see has a beautifully refurbished barracks paying a lot of money during the seven years war and they thought they should be used but more than that with the 18th century actually it was pretty clear that if there are available beds troops have to go there first if there are not barracks than they should be put in public houses which are public and only then of those two places are not available could they be put into private housing. So they are barracks and they should go there. This is not what the governor had in mind at all you can see it as you may know through that narrow Little Channel to get into boston and that was not attractive. So this is boston 1769. And here it is drenched one stretched over contemporary boston. But what the governor wanted was to have troops right in the middle of boston. So he wasnt willing to put out into the harbor and to say if you insist and putting them in homes in boston and the harbor, we will bring new on the lawn and shoot use what they come up with is that they will requisition but rent space from bostonians. So they end up renting as many empty warehouses as they can find which is a nearly enough so then they read those extra houses they also rent their spare rooms and sheds and put people everywhere. If you take a look at the map the blue squares are warehouses even though they are used as a barracks they are scattered all over the town and then we were just completely positive soldiers were living and you could also see they are scattered throughout the entire town. So then what happens is bostonians becomes a landlords and landladys for those soldiers and families. You can imagine 2000 troops alone plus a minimum of 500 million on women and children move into a city of 16000 people. Thats not a surprise. But then part of the sons of liberty have the troops as the military occupation but then they complain boston is a garrison town and he and other get really annoyed with soldiers and patrols and the constables who are complaining about these officers. So those men are all fairly and happy but i think their complaints are not the only way we should think about the presence of troops in boston. Instead we should think of another place in the term of a garrison town but to recall in pride and prejudice. So think of the excitement that having a regiment quartered a few miles away created for that family. Fathers might be anxious but young women were delighted. So imagining herself in that encampment, she saw all the glories of the camp with the beauty and uniformity of lines and then to complete the view found herself flirting with at least six officers at once. [laughter] and then during the napoleonic wars were not so different from those red coated men from bostons young men during that revolution so that the arrival of troops from 1768 is pretty exciting for local women. The arrival of 2000 men all of them with the study and small income could not help attract the attention of young men especially when women outnumber men but so many young men driving by the neighbors kitchen and the unmarried woman might be able to find a husband maybe even living in her spare room who knew doing laundry could be so much fun. [laughter] so mr. Bennett found it impossible to control the females. So let me read to you one of my favorite stories because ill show you what it was like to live in boston over the years because it is so fabulous. This is entitled love your neighbor. So in the 29th regiment camping on the Boston Common or reading the new note neighbors and spending his time with literature two months later the miser which was the humor was available for purchase by subscription. Announcing that subscription included the omnibus. Presumably clark acquired enough subscriptions to purchase the place of the following february they advertised in all the boston papers with the blue paper cover sadly no copies remain for us today. That is a shame. They may not have printed many but intel it sell apart until many cheaply printed pamphlets they used for the paper that may have been appealing to some bostonians not many residents were likely eager to read about the soldiers humor. Clark seem to have a flair for drama off the page as well. May 1769 he had a shouting match and then to burn down the town and all of boston with it. And then bring them to the local lock up to have his revenge on the entire town. It took only a month and more melodramatic and 75 yearold was shocked to enter the mary daughters house to find clark in bed with a 20 yearold granddaughter. And then the soldier declined to leave. That he said he had every right to sleep with her after all she was his wife. Was going nowhere without her. Mary said they had been married one evening by a person who was dressed but in fact they were not married until four months after being caught but mary they were much to the distress of marys payments on parents and then the news of the affair injured their health two weeks after the marriage marys father had a showdown with his new soninlaw. He shot a loaded pistol into his chest and he pressed charges and then april 1770 he found himself in jail until he could pay the 40 showing fine. William clarks marriage was more than family scandal it became political fodder for the sons of liberty those finding clark and his granddaughters bed was reported in newspapers. Not only the sense of propriety the press usually reap replace the names with fascist but those bostonians read something of the story before it was printed and the shopkeeper recounts he recorded the young woman in question but the newspapers rarely printed the sexual scandal for the salacious details alone because they were likely to turn up in fiction but the journal at the time user stories to point out the political implication urging readers to reflect on the inevitable impact of troops that the most tender connections must be broken and violated also the official who were the authors of public and private distress stumbling in on his favorite granddaughter was only a part of the primary protest of the Standing Army in times of peace the author argued it occupied boston public and private affairs of the heart were one of the same. Now it seems unlikely clark survive that seduction because he spent his time in prison imagining his next literary work. August 1770 he took out his first new memoir a faithful narrative of the love and intrigue of the authors soldier and his majesty and this is only the beginning of a very extensive title. [laughter] his love intrigue exposed 18th century with cameo appearances with British Army Officers from prisons to bedrooms clearly meant that page of narrative to be a tell all and then revenge targeting the inlaws because now he names names the long title concludes and watch is a faithful account of his courtship and marriage and wedding with the north and boston of how much that he was upset in case anybody wondered what they were talking about. The memoir did not survive. We can only imagine talked about his grandfather we can assume from the title that they would depart from the narrative with the sons of Liberty Journal the story is his fatherinlaw the man was not troubled by the politics of the British Empire instead his was an ageold story of young lovers and parents. So clark is only one example of the many many families that were created when troops came to boston. So not only do we have people sleeping together and creating children but some of the examples you can see upstairs that were recorded in the church is the marriages between civilians and soldiers the many examples of military families asking local neighbors to act as god parents when they baptize the children. And they are also creating families not only in boston itself but outside of boston as well. But the most surprising piece of research has to do with desertion and thats not a place i thought i would find evidence of the families that are created as the troops come but i found it shocking the way that men and single men were disappearing from the army they were deserting three times of the rate from the british army so during the seven years war they came to america brought lost 3 percent of the forces every year to desertion the first year and a half the 29th regiment was in boston they lost a full 10 percent of their men. So they were not just fleeing the unpleasantness of army life they were just drawn to the beauty of massachusetts as charming as it is but when the army try to come and take back the deserters the new communities would protect them the officers were deeply frustrated by the rate of desertion so at one point they determined they would hire a spy to drive around and look for those deserters and is not very good at getting them to come back because they put down roots so the one story to go to the New Hampshire border they found a deserter who lived there all winter now married to a woman named sarah the landlords daughter and they are 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 and made a home there are so it really shows us social soldiers and civilians were a lot more entwined than we thought before so that we go back to march when bostonians and soldiers saw each other on the street they knew each other often quite well so when they are getting hassled, its not surprising what he calls for backup and the people who come actually know many of the people in the street. So one of the men words recently married to a boston born woman another named Edward Montgomery who comes to boston on the same ship is chambers and then traveled with the jane. They get along well earlier that night montgomery shouted wildly enough for those surrounding areas to hear but they were too proud and many they would be lay low by morning. The bostonian that shes talking to live next door it was clearly tired of both isabella and her husband shot back i hope your husband will be killed. But not all bostonians wish death in the street that night was a carpenter named Thomas Wilkinson and then they had become friendly in the 18th century equivalent he would send his kids to start their own fire so when wilkinson saw montgomery marching out he walks straight over to his neighbor to ask him what was happening. And was not afraid of him but what was happening the night of march 5th is the big question there is only a few points with montgomery and the other soldiers came to support the captain does order the soviets to disperse and that much we know but we dont know who yells fire we just know that when the smoke clears people are dead and dying that when people looked around they knew the soldiers in the civilians on the street at the time the event was shocking everyone was horrified to see bostonians bleeding out in the snow due to governmental power. How could they not be shocked . That absolutely no one thought this was the beginning of a revolution. Women continue to marry british soldiers john adams took on the defense and now two juries have acquitted most of the soldiers so in march 1770 not the shooting itself and how it transformed into the boston massacre those that supported the governor and those that opposed him scrambled to tell their version of the story. So both sides want to put blame on the other side. That you can see from the title they are telling very different stories. And through images. Most of all through the trial of the soldiers and the captain. So i dont have to on time to talk about the trial but in summary at the trial what i would say they all do in the same way with women and children and neighbors we have already seen and weve seen and the trials with any links between civilians and soldiers so both sides found it necessary to ignore the history of the boston massacre. So after the shooting the troops are redeployed a couple of months after the shooting the 29th regiment is moved to new jersey they redeployed themselves to a war zone in the west indies. But it is worth thinking about them being deployed so with the families and the barracks when the troops are moved the families are ripped apart so boston women and local women marrying soldiers they dont want to travel with the army they want to stay with their family so they would self divorce sometimes remarry here. But they decide to stay sometimes they decide to stay with them and that is when they desert and those who married soldiers that are part of the army also. So the shards are embedded in the british army these pieces are close by broken. That is the most Significant Impact of the boston massacre so let me just conclude with a short passage that is the epilogue. We inherit the story of the American Revolution from afar wider range of people as uncomplicated set of those a call it a civil war portray it as a struggle over the definition of a new country but it would be no less accurate to call the revolution a sibling war that played out in the other people with the same military occupation and with that conflict in its own way and every family was forced to make choices as difficult as they were inevitable. So that brought together civilians and soldiers and men and women throughout the British Empire sometimes they tore them apart in the 18th century angloamerican world the family and government were closely connected that the shooting in boston marks not the beginning of the American Revolution but the breakdown of a family. Prior to 1772 they had long saturated political discourse but in the context of military families to take on a new impersonal meeting. But it was much more like a bad divorce. The Family History that reminds us of the human bond as well as the political ones that were broken at the beginning of the American Revolution. Thank you. [applause] so to highlight ms. Chambers and her family i started on this question when i read a short narrative that was replicated in many many places and they happen to all a copy several years before i read it and in a very first deposition somebody talks about being in a bostonians house to hear their wife and after the 15th time i read it i said with that i came here and found the marriage records which was the incredible moment and then i started to try to figure out how do i know the ones that came to boston . So the great thing about working on the british army is that they kept records so every person who travels in the 18th century is on a list and they are sitting there in london so i created the enormous database of every single man on every role so there are the students at work with me on the book for a long time and those are all the women that i could find and then i looked at the receipts of the army because they still had the number of rations they were paying out so i could see how many women they were actually bringing in. But they decide they wish to remain in boston . So for a local woman marries a soldier and she decides to stay when he leaves then who will be responsible . And this is the question that local officials are very very worried about because its very hard because they tried because when a woman marries an 18th century that covers her right to poor relief from where she was born normally you are entitled to poor relief but it moves to her husbands place through that settlement. So the army is supposed to become the entity to take care of this woman but when the army goes, it goes. So people are incredibly anxious how they will pay for this when people leave. So there is a wonderful book written with extensive records by salinger that that essentially the town of boston walks around and says to people a lot of these lies are just want to tell you boston is not responsible for your relief this is not our problem. So actually this is legal with the attempt to cover the liability that they say that officially but what actually happened the promise of massachusetts that they use precisely so women who end up because they cannot support themselves are paid on the provincial account so massachusetts will pay for them. Women try to go as quickly as they can they jump the fence but it is something. Were all the soldiers from britain or were some from bosto boston . A great question. Three out of the four regiments that come to boston are actually raised in ireland there mostly from northern ireland. So they are not catholic at this moment it says they cannot enlist in the british army. And then one regiment will come from england and a few people but they discourage that because they are worried about desertion and thats a standard rule everywhere. Thank you. So many questions. So just a little comment on the family, i wonder beyond the boston family ireland and england obviously these are young men so i just wonder about that because they are stationed in boston because of their connection and here is the final thing about families also worried about class so who marries whom and what daughters were available to whom and i assume there were other clashes around that not just paternity but then i kept thinking about how much that paradigm of the simple war. Can you address that quick. I can try. [laughter] first of all absolutely there is a trove like my wife at every port and of course it does make it possible for them to marry and then marry again elsewhere. So when it is true that the ability of people, especially private to pray paid to bring the families with them changes and even if they are the Commanding Officers or even of those regiments they wouldnt take everybody even though they are not supposed to because it was pretty strict and then to ask forgiveness later and then spend ten months to alter the bills other people would say the rules are the rules 60 women per regiment per 500 men that is all be will take we are sorry if your wives dont get to come, sorry. They do that in ireland a year before and the people in terms of the poor relief are so freaked out by how much it is costing them to maintain to leave them behind the next year when the 29 prepares to leave they go and ask the Commanding Officer to plead with the war office to allow them to bring more families with them so the communities are not stuck with them. Its a question of money so there is some recognition of what that might feel like because officers pay for their own the army doesnt pay for that but there is no limitations on what could come theres very little lowerclass marriage happening in boston they tend to be courting elites and small workingclass families tend to be private so thats not a big clash but there are plenty of others. That is wonderful the narrative of the civilians but those civilians is that the own composition . Yes. Where adam says this was a crowd made up of irishmen and people of color and apprentices and he does that to thread the needle to get the argument for selfdefense it is something so the captain gives the order. At the same time he is really there to try to defend boston. To say these are non bostonians who are a part of the group. The czar outsiders. Real bostonians look like this picture. No single woman would be afraid. This is external rabblerousers. I dont think they are real people. Of course we know the apprentices they are. Its not that there are not people of any other category but in particular he is using rhetorically. Do you have any sense of your officers children or possibly the soldiers children were sent to Public Schools . I wanted to find that so badly. I wanted those to inspect hoping that they would name a kid that was actually there. But they dont. But that really did escape me how children were being educated. Often they are and doctors records so clearly they are part of the town but i cannot find them in the school. Thats a great question. I could only the document to women based on testimony where there any other women . I think probably not. I dont think there a lot of women wandering the streets at night honestly. Not coming out to see what is going on those that i feel that are confident are showing up are coming out of the bars. So not a lot of people are coming out of other social situations. I think they are watching. Precisely that piece why do you bring your sword with you . They are watching people walk out the door and are standing in the doorways. But i dont think but i dont know if there is more than what we saw. [applause]. Next benjamin on his book kingdom of nauvoo. Fromhe