History – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Revolutionary War stories, part 3

Continuing a series of Memorial Day posts — part one — part two

I started out this series by saying that sometimes the stories of Revolutionary War heroes and heroines have been partially forgotten, or details have been obscured. In this follow-up post, I’ll tell a little about how I researched the stories of Persis and Allen Lincoln, and the story of Briton Nichols. Maybe this will inspire other people to do some research into ordinary Revolutionary War veterans — a worthwhile thing to do as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution.

One place to start researching an individual is by looking through the local history of a given town or city. During the middle part of the 19th century, many municipalities from the 13 original colonies had local histories written. And in most cases, whoever wrote that local history would be sure to record any local traditions about those who served in the Revolution. So, for example, for the town of Cohasset where I live, Victor Bigelow wrote a history of the town in 1898, and he provided lists of those who served and told many stories of the town’s participation in the Revolution.

That being said, local histories may contain local traditions that have gotten muddled over time, and most local histories contain lots of small errors of fact. So the next step is to see if you can find corroborating evidence from other sources. Which can be a huge job. Cohasset is a small town, but there were more than 125 men from the town who did military service during the Revolution. Volunteer local historians like me don’t have time to research all 125+ individuals who served in the Revolution. You have to narrow your focus to research a few individuals in depth.

But how do you narrow your focus? Here are some strategies:

(1) Research a college graduate, who would be far more likely to appear in the written record than non-college graduates. For example, you can find brief biographies of Harvard graduates in the series Sibley’s Harvard Graduates.

(2) Research famous or semi-famous persons, or persons who are part of prominent families. For example, if you were researching persons from Braintree or Quincy, you could start with anyone related to John Adams; there are lots of published genealogies and published histories of the Adamses.

(3) To research ordinary people, start with unusual person names (such as Briton Nichols) and unusual place names (such as Cohasset). Those will be easiest to find information on.

(4) As you’re researching one person, you might run into a lead from someone else altogether (e.g., when researching Briton Nichols, I discovered Ambrose Bates kept a war diary). Keep note of those other leads so you can follow up later.

Next, here are some research strategies:

(A) Use the power of internet search. More and more 18th century documents are being digitized, making information easily available online. This works best with Search using several different search tools — I start with DuckDuckGo, first with the person’s name and place name along, then adding the following to the search string: site:.archive.org (which searches through the many books digitized by the Internet Archive) and site:.loc.gov (which searches the Library of Congress website). Next, I’ll search Google Books. Finally, I’ll try regular Google search (Google seems to turn up a lot of crap these days, which is why I leave it till last).

(B) Search genealogy sites. I use FamilySearch.org, which is free, although it does require you to set up a free account. Paid genealogy sites may give you more information, but FamilySearch.org is a good place to look for Revolutionary War military service records. Additionally, amateur genealogists may have done additional research on some individuals — but be cautious about trusting the work of amateur genealogists. Always click through to look at the sources they cite, and then click through and look at the actual digitized images for those sources (which is how I found out that Persis Lincoln and Allen Lincoln were married by Rev. John Browne of Cohasset).

(C) Don’t forget your local library. Many local libraries have local history sections. If there’s a librarian who has responsibility for the local history section, get to know that person, and ask for help when you need it.

EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT: For each little tidbit of information you find, make sure you record where you found it, including full bibliographic information. Footnote everything! You want other people to be able to review your research. You want citations for every single fact. If you don’t have citations for everything, others will assume you’re a sloppy researcher, and discount your work accordingly.

That’s a very brief overview of how you might begin to research individual people to find out their stories. Good luck — and don’t forget to share your research, so others can appreciate it, and correct any errors you might make, and generally help further our knowledge of Revolutionary War veterans.

Revolutionary War stories

A post in honor of Memorial Day.

The American Revolution began 250 years ago, as of April 19 this year. This significant anniversary is a good time to reflect on the sacrifices that were made by Revolutionary War-era soldiers and sailors.

And it turns out that we don’t know as much as we think we know about the soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution. We don’t have very good records of exactly which soldiers and sailors died during the Revolutionary War; there simply weren’t full and accurate records of military service,(1) and we don’t even have accurate figures for how many military deaths there were in the Revolution.(2) Yet by digging in to the historical record, historians have been able to recover some remarkable stories that had been forgotten or mis-remembered.

I went looking for stories about people from Cohasset who served in the American Revolution. (My interest was partially selfish — since First Parish, where I serve, was the only church in town during the Revolution, then if I found a Cohasset resident who served in the Revolutionary War, they would have been part of First Parish.) I found two super interesting stories that had been partially forgotten or obscured — but thanks to the efforts of twenty-first century historians, we have now recovered many lost details.

Persis Tower Lincoln, Revolutionary War Heroine

Victor Bigelow, town historian and author of A Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), tells the story of Persis Tower Lincoln. During the occupation of Boston, which lasted from spring of 1775 into 1776, Persis was married to Allen Lincoln, a seaman; Persis was then 16 years old, and Allen was 20; John Browne, minister of First Parish, officiated at their wedding. Allen then left Persis for military service. While he was away, Persis sailed a small boat across Massachusetts Bay to Gloucester to get supplies through the British blockade, so we remember her as a heroine of the American Revolution. Meanwhile — so the traditional story goes — Allen’s ship was captured by the British, and according to local tradition he was taken to Dartmoor prison in England where he died.(3)

Persis’s story appears to be true. Unfortunately, Allen’s story has been remembered incorrectly. Dartmoor Prison wasn’t completed until 1809, so he couldn’t have been imprisoned there during the Revolution. Then too, Allen and Persis had daughter together, and their daughter Sally was born in 1778.(4) Finally, military records show that Allen Lincoln of Cohasset served in the Continental Army after his purported death, in 1776, 1777, and again in 1778.(5)

A more accurate history of Allen Lincoln appears to be something like this: After serving in the military for several months in both 1776 and 1777, Allen re-enlisted in the Continental Navy with the rank of Seaman. Then on March 17, 1778 he was taken prisoner by the British; he was captured about a month after his daughter Sally was born, and was initially imprisoned at Rhode Island.(6) Subsequently, he was apparently taken to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he died in 1778.(7) It’s not surprising that he died while he was a prisoner of war; the mortality rate was notoriously high among prisoners of war held by the British, and more Revolutionary War soldiers and sailors died in prison camps than died in battle. Allen died at age 22, leaving behind an 18 year old wife and an infant daughter whom he probably only saw for the first few weeks of her life.

Allen Lincoln’s story is worth remembering on its own merits. But it’s also a reminder of how much has been forgotten or mis-remembered about the sailors and soldiers who died during military service in the Revolution. Indeed, historians aren’t even sure how many prisoners of war died while being held captive by the British; it may have been as many 19,000 men.(8) At a local level, it seems that we’re not even sure of how many people from First Parish served in the Revolution. It should be simple to generate such an honor roll of military service — First Parish was the only church in Cohasset, everyone in town belonged to the church, so all we’d need is a list of Cohasset residents who served. However, the only such list I found lists almost certainly includes men from other towns who were recruited by Cohasset to help fill the town’s quota.(9) Given the incomplete records that remain, we may never know exactly how many people from Cohasset served in American Revolution — nor how many of those soldiers and sailors gave their lives in military service.

Yet even though the historical record has gotten a bit muddled over the past two and a half centuries, what’s remarkable is how much we still remember. We still remember Allen Lincoln and Persis Tower, and we still tell their stories when we talk about the history of First Parish. Even if some of the details of the story have been confused or forgotten, we still remember this young couple from First Parish who can be counted among the heroes and heroines of the American Revolution.

Part two: the story of Briton Nichols.

Notes

(1) Historian mark Edward Lender states that “…most combat was local and took place without major British or Continental forces on the scene”; in other words, many soldiers served in militia units. Lender, Citizen Soldiers or Regulars? The Revolutionary Militia Reconsidered,” in Jim Piecuch, ed., Seven Myths of American Revolution (Hackett Publishing, 2003) p. 59. Militia units did not necessarily keep accurate records, and even where good records were kept they may not have survived or may be hidden in local archives.

(2) According to historian Howard Peckham, who carefully reviewed military records kept by the original thirteen colonies, 5,992 soldiers were killed in military engagements, and 832 sailors were killed in naval engagements, for a total of 6,824 battle casualties. In addition, Peckham estimated that 10,00 soldiers died in camp from diseases such as dysentery, and 8,500 soldier and sailors died in British prisoner-of-war camps. Thus, Peckham estimated the total number of probable deaths in service at over 25,000. Source: Howard Peckham, The Toll of Independence : Engagements & Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1974), “Summations and Implications.” However, other historians feel that Peckham underestimated the number of deaths among prisoners of war, see e.g., Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (Basic Books, 2008), p. 317 n. 12; Burrows places the total number of prisoners of war who died at 19,000, giving a total death toll that is closer to 35,000. (Burrows cites the total number of Americans who took up arms during the war as 200,000.)

(3) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 290. The marriage record showing that John Browne officiated at the wedding may be found here: Entry for Allen Lincoln and Persis Tower, 23 Nov 1775, “Massachusetts, State Vital Records, 1638-1927,” archived on FamilySearch website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FHQY-G2B accessed 23 May 2025.

(4) According to the Massachusetts State Census of 1855, Sally was born in 1778; so this was not a matter of a christening that was delayed for three years. According to Cohasset Vital Records, she was christened on 18 Oct. 1778.

(5) A search for military records for Allen Lincoln on genealogy website FamilySearch.org turned up two records for military service of Allen or Allyn Lincoln from Cohasset: First, as one of the soldiers who mustered at Hull on June 14, 1776, to serve in the military: Entry for Allyn Lincoln, 14 Jun 1776, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783″, FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-LHBT accessed 22 May 2025. Second, as serving in “the Northern Dept.” in 1777: Entry for Allen Lincoln, 24 Aug 1777, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-9CH6 accessed 22 May 2025.

(6) Entry for Allyn Lyncoln, 17 Mar 1778, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q2RC-2NLM accessed 22 May 2025.

(7) The FamilySearch.org entry for Allen Lincoln lists his date of death as 1778, and place of death as Halifax, Nova Scotia, unfortunately with no documentation. See person entry for “Allen Lincoln” FamilySearch.org website https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/LCZP-2JH accessed 22 May 2025.

(8) See e.g. Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (Basic Books, 2008), p. 317 n. 12.

Jump Billy

In November, British singer-songwriter Angeline Morrison released a new song titled “Jump Billy.” I got interested in the song because it tells the story of someone born in America who left during the American Revolution. If you dive into local history, you’re constantly running up against stories of the Tories who left America during the Revolution. But you rarely hear the rest of the story — where they went, and how they fared.

Here’s a link to Morrison’s studio recording of “Jump Billy” — which she has made freely available on an educational webpage about the life of William Waters.

So why did Morrison write this song? She has long loved the traditional music of the British Isles. As the daughter of a Black Jamaican woman and a White man from the Outer Hebrides, she began to search for traditional songs about Black people like her. By some estimates, circa 1800 there were 20,000 Black people living in London alone — but where were the songs about them?

Morrison did record one traditional English song, “The Brown Girl,” which she imagined might actually be a song about a woman with brown skin (as opposed to a mere poetic description). Then, in the tradition of generations of folk musicians, she decided to write her own songs in the idiom of traditional music, featuring non-White Britishers. In 2022, after having written a number of new songs, she released an album of those songs.

(A side note: if Morrison were working in the U.S. today, she would be accused of violating the recent presidential executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Don’t get me started on how that executive order tells lies about history.)

She is still mining this vein of material, and in her latest song is about the Black sailor William “Billy” Waters. I don’t know if Morrison saw the new book by Mary L. Shannon, Billy Waters is Dancing: Or, How a Black Sailor Found Fame in Regency Britain (Yale University Press, 2024) or if she did her own research (or both). In any case, Morrison’s song tells the same basic story that’s told in the book, which goes something like this:

William Waters was born in New York City (probably) around 1775. His family (probably) left New York when the British troops evacuated in 1783; little Billy would have been about eight years old. In 1811, he signed on as an able seaman in the British Royal Navy. Since he signed on as an able seaman, not an ordinary seaman, he (probably) had had previous experience as a sailor. Little else is known about his early life.

In 1812, the captain’s log reports that Waters fell from the from the main spar, broke both legs, and had to have one leg amputated. Waters was invalided out of the Navy with an inadequate pension, as was all too typical at the time. To earn enough money to live on, he turned to busking. He gained fame as a frequent performer outside London’s fashionable Adelphi Theatre. As many buskers did at the time, he adopted a distinctive dress: for Waters, this included his naval coat and a tricorn hat decorated with showy feathers. In his act, he not only sang and played fiddle, but he also danced with great dexterity; this last was considered remarkable due to his wooden leg.

Drawing of a street scene showing a man with a wooden leg dancing and playing fiddle. — Billy Waters, a one legged busker, in a crowded London street. Coloured aquatint, 1822.
Image courtesy: Wellcome Trust Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 .

Waters married and had two children. In spite of his fame, he and his family lived in St. Giles rookery, notorious as one of the worst slums in London. He died in 1823, aged approx. 60. At the time of his death, he was living in the St. Giles workhouse, an institution for indigent people. Presumably, by that time he was no longer able to earn his living busking. So much for his fame —sic transit gloria mundi.

As an able seaman, Waters would have had as good a life as could be expected for a working class man — and he could live in freedom, whereas slavery persisted in New York until well after his death. After he had his leg amputated, the Royal Navy didn’t treat him especially well. Yet in spite of his disability, he was able to earn enough money to allow him to provide for a family.

— And this is just one story telling how the American Revolution played out in the lives of ordinary people. We hear over and over again stories of how the Revolution affected prominent people like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. I like to hear those old stories about those wealthy and prominent people who remained in America. But I also want to hear how the Revolution affected ordinary people, including the ones who left America. It’s hearing all those stories that makes history come alive for me.

(N.B.: Morrison’s song is so new, I couldn’t find lyrics to it anywhere online. I’ll post my own transcription of the lyrics after the jump.)

Reading list: more on Asian history

Brief notices of other histories of East Asian and Southeast Asian countries that I’ve been reading

Tuttle Publishing’s “Brief History of…” series

Tuttle Publishing says that its core mission is “to publish best-in-class books informing the English-speaking world about the countries and peoples of Asia.” Founded in Rutland, Vermont, back in 1832, they now have offices in Vermont, Tokyo, and Singapore. Their “Brief History” series provides popular one-volume histories of various countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Current titles in this series cover the following countries: China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea (including North and South Korea), Singapore and Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. An although Bali is part of Indonesia, there’s also a separate book on Bali in this series.

I’ve read all these titles except the ones on Bali and Japan. I can affirm that each book I’ve read gives exactly what they promise: a brief introduction to the history of each country. Each one is competently written and entertaining, and each one generally relies on secondary (and tertiary) sources rather than primary sources. If you want something more than a Wikipedia article, but something less than a dry scholarly history, these are the perfect books to read. While the quality of the books is consistently high, I’ll offer brief comments on the relative strengths of each volume. Then I’ll discuss two other books published by Tuttle that offer more in-depth accounts of two polities.

Nine books on Asian history arranged in a grid.

Reading list: Southeast Asia

For some reason, I got interested in the history of Southeast Asia a year or so ago. Mostly I was interested in learning more about a part of the world that was completely neglected in my schooling. Below are brief summaries of three of the books I’ve been reading.

Singing in 18th C. congregational churches

Nym Cooke, well-known scholar of early American music, will be offering a webinar on “The Sounds of New England Congregationalism in the 18th C.” under the auspices of the Congregational Library and Archives. Info about how to register may be found here. And to whet your appetite, here’s the first sentence of the description:

“The ‘sound of Congregationalism’ — the musical sound, at any rate — changed markedly several times during the hundred years from?1720-1820, as musical philosophies shifted between two sets of poles: ritual and art, and worship and performance….”

I signed up as soon as I heard about it. I’m fascinated by the soundscapes of New England congregational-polity churches, so I’ve already been using Nym Cooke’s website “Early American Sacred Music.” I can’t wait to hear more from this top-notch scholar.

Thanks to Erin Fulton for passing this along!

History resource

Our congregation — as is true, I suspect, of many older congregations — is in the process of researching our past relationship with non-White people. Some of the questions we’re currently wondering about:

Was slave labor used to build our 1747 meetinghouse? (Almost assuredly yes, but we can’t document it yet.)
What was the social status of non-White people? (People of African and Native descent could not sit on the main floor in the 18th C.; we believe this was also true of indentured White servants, but we can’t yet document that.)
Did the congregation have non-White members in the 18th or 19th centuries? (A couple in the first half of the 18th century, both Native, then apparently none until the 20th century.)

These questions are difficult to research. So I was grateful to learn about the Atlantic Black Box website. The subtitle of the website sums up their efforts: “Researching and Reckoning with New England’s Role in Colonization and Enslavement.” I’ve been finding lots of resources for doing local history research on non-White people. Their short essay on “Researching Slavery and Black Life in Early New England” alone has already proved to be quite helpful to me.

If you’re part of an older congregation in New England — definitely worth checking this out.

Update, 23 April: Of related interest: Congregational Library’s “Black and Indigenous Research Guide” for New England Congregational churches, whichincludes a number of digitized 18th C. documents.

Happy Patriots’ Day

Massachusetts had a state holiday two days ago, on Monday. No, this state holiday is not the Boston Marathon. No, this holiday is not the holiday which recognizes an obscure Revolutionary War event that just happens to fall on the same date as St. Patrick’s Day. No, this state holiday has nothing to do with — and predates by many years — the federal holiday called “Patriot Day” which commemorates the attacks on 9/11/2001.

Patriots’ Day commemorates the beginning of the Revolutionary War, a.k.a. the War of American Indepence. It is the date on which the first colonist blood of the war was shed — in the town of Lincoln, just after midnight, when one of His Majesty’s troops cut a Lincoln militiaman with his sword. It is the date on which the first colonists in regular military formation received fire from His Majesty’s troops — in the town of Lexington, when the Redcoats fired at an interracial company of militiamen, killing eight and wounding several more. And it is the date of “the shot heard ’round the world” when His Majesty’s troops were first forcibly turned back by the combined forces of several towns at the North Bridge in Concord. (Having grown up and lived most of my life in Concord, of course I think what happened in Concord was most important. My cousins who grew up in Lexington beg to differ.)

And today is the actual anniversary of these events. (Not the state holiday, which always falls on a Monday.) These momentous events happened 248 years ago today. I’ve always felt this is the date which commemorates the beginning of our democracy here in the United States. The militiamen and Minute Men who fought on April 19 were duly authorized by their towns, and by the Provincial Congress. They were under the authority of democratically elected, non-military officials. And they followed a course of action that had been determined by democratic process.

As a pacifist, I’d prefer it if our democracy had had a non-violent beginning. And there’s no doubt the democratic tradition in Massachusetts went back more than a century and a half before this date in 1775. But April 19, 1775, turned out to be the date that people looked back on and said, That’s when it began. So this is my favorite day for waving the American flag and being a patriot. This is also the day each year when I recommit myself to continuing to pursue the still-unfinished democratic project of our country.

And by the way — it’s now just two years to the big blowout party on April 19, 2025. It’s not too soon to start planning your participation in the 250th birthday of our American democracy.

Noted without comment

Historian David Hackett Fisher’s latest book is titled African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideas (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2022) In his discussion of the eighteenth century in French Louisiana, Fisher says:

“The French know it well and say it best: plus la diversité, plus l’unité. In the age of the Enlightenment, David Hume and James Madison were were both quick to understand the uses of that idea. They helped to invent a new science of politics, and inspired the design of the early American republic, which was grounded in the uses of diversity as keys to liberty and freedom. In a later era, some of us have forgotten what they had learned.” [p.486]

Three books on Transcendentalism

Three recent books provide new insights into the nineteenth century Transcendentalist movement.

The Transcendentalists and Their World by Robert A. Gross (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021).

Robert Gross is perhaps best known for his brilliant use of social history techniques in his 1976 book, The Minutemen and Their World. Social history was a mid-twentieth century intellectual movement that, rather than focusing on elite powerful figures, focused on the mass of people in a given historical era. In The Minutemen and Their World Gross and his research assistants pored through historical documents like voting records, deeds, tax rolls, and the like. Using both quantitative techniques, like statistical analysis, and qualitative techniques, he was able to tell a much richer story about the Minutemen of Concord, Massachusetts, and why they decided to take up arms against His Majesty’s troops.

After completing that book, Gross extended his research into nineteenth century Concord. He wanted to figure out why such a small town became the home of both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, two major Transcendentalist figures. He also wanted to find out more about the social and cultural milieu of Emerson and Thoreau, as a way to better understand their intellectual accomplishments.