Sep 17, 2015 - Sale 2391

Sale 2391 - Lot 35

Price Realized: $ 5,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 6,000 - $ 9,000
THE COMMITTEE OF SAFETY CRACKS DOWN ON LOYALISTS (AMERICAN REVOLUTION--1776.) At a Convention of the Committee of Safety of the Towns of Hutchinson, Templeton, Athol and Petersham. 2 manuscript pages, 12 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches, on one sheet, signed by Ephraim Doolittle; minor wear at folds including a 1/4-inch hole in the text area. Petersham, MA, 12 July 1776
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This meeting was called to discuss how Tories would be treated in these central Massachusetts towns. They resolved that Tories "should deliver all their arms and emplements of war immediately into the hands of the select men of Petersham, and that they should not go out of the town of Petersham without a pass" and "that no more than two should assemble together at any place except public worship, legal town meetings, or funerals."
If any Tories "should presume to violate any such restrictions . . . at such a crittical day as the present that this body will use their utmost influence that they . . . shall be commited to close confinement and there be continnued until our polittical troubles are at an end." In particular, the Rev. Aaron Whitney, an outspoken Loyalist, was called out for punishment after having "publickly declared that he will keep open doars for the assembling of such persons."
The minutes go on to trace the reasons for these restrictions, including a 1775 "riotous assembling" of several Tories who had "entered into a combination or covenant utterly subversive of our natural and charter'd rights and tending to strengthen and assist the enemies of our constitution." A list of 24 restricted men follows.
Ephraim Doolittle, who signed and possibly wrote up these minutes, had served as a colonel of Massachusetts minutemen in 1775. This meeting was held just eight days after the Declaration of Independence. The first copies of the Dunlap broadside of the Declaration arrived in Boston on 13 July, and the first Massachusetts printings were the same day, so it seems unlikely that the news had reached rural Petersham by 12 July. Provenance: purchased from Paul C. Richards.