Dr. Thomas Young, the Forgotten Revolutionary, with Scott Nadler (episode 179)

Transcript

Music

Jake Intro-Outro:
[0:05] Welcome To Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe.
This is Episode 1 79 Dr Thomas Young, The Forgotten revolutionary. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week, I’m going to be joined by Scott Nadler to tell us about the life of Forgotten Revolutionary.
Dr. Thomas Young Young was a native of New York’s Hudson Valley, and he seemed to be present at all of Boston’s revolutionary events, from the creation of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Massacre to the Tea Party.
He was an early and influential friend of Ethan Allen and a critic of established religious practice at the time.
Though he died fairly early in the Revolutionary War, he was instrumental to the revolutionary movements in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
Scott was scheduled to present about Thomas Young history Camp Boston on March 14th bought the Covid 19. Crisis has forced the postponement.
But before we talk about Thomas Young, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

[1:11] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is an article that ran in The Boston Globe this past week under the title You don’t understand, Captain, He has a gun.
It recaps the 50th anniversary of the hijacking of Eastern Airways Flight 13 20 on ST Patrick’s Day in 1970,
This commuter flight from Newark to Boston was beginning its final approach to Logan Airport when a scruffy looking passenger pulled out a 38 caliber revolver and demanded access to the cockpit.
The article points out that after a series of hijackings in the 19 sixties, they’re considered routine, almost a fun adventure for passengers and crew.
Ah, political radical would demand passage to Cuba. The crew would give the passengers unlimited free drinks to keep them calm.
And then everyone would dine out on the stories for years after they returned home safely.
This time, it was different.
Not long after the hijacker got access to the cockpit, shots rang out.
Within moments, the copilot was dead, the pilot was badly wounded, and the hijacker had been shot, beaten and subdued.
It was the first time in American flight had been hijacked with deadly results.
The injured pilot managed to turn the plane toward Boston call for help and land the plane safely. At Logan, this piece reveals what happened in the air and after the fateful flight landed in Boston.
It also profiles everyone from the flight attendants to the pilot and first officer to the investigating police officers to a number of passengers.

[2:41] Despite our recent episode about the crash landing of World Flight 30 this story had completely escaped my attention.
I hope you find it as interesting as I did,
and for our upcoming event this week, I have to local organizations with online virtual events.
First up, the USS Constitution Museum is conducting virtual tours of the ship at 1 p.m. Every day.
They had to close the museum doors to the pandemic on March 14th but in the meantime, you may see even more of the ship than usual by following the active duty sailors to give tours on Facebook live every week, day at 1 p.m.
The museum explains by saying the active duty sailor stationed aboard USS Constitution normally provide free tours, an offer public visitation of more than 600,000 people each year as they support the ship’s mission of promoting the Navy’s history,
maritime heritage and raising awareness of the importance of a sustained naval presence.
The ship’s active duty sailors will take viewers through the ship to include several areas normally closed to the public and provide an opportunity to ask live questions.
The ship’s commanding officer, commander John Benda, ads. Our mission is to represent and promote the U. S. Navy USS Constitution, inter nations rich maritime history, and through this crisis, we’ll use our digital presence to continue that mission.

[4:04] And next up we have an event organized to Plymouth Plantation.
If you’ve visited the plantation, you know that along with the English settlement, there’s also a recreated Wampanoag Village.
When I’ve been there in recent years, I’ve enjoyed the Wampanoag homesite more than the plantation itself.
That it took me a while to realize why the Pilgrim’s are all reenacting 17th century settlers, only speaking as their characters would have and pretending not to know anything about modern events and inventions.
The Wampanoag, on the other hand, take a different approach, has described on the plantation website.
Unlike the people you’ll meet in the 17th century English Village, the staff in the Wampanoag homesite are not role players.
They’re all native people either Wampanoag or from other native nations, and they’ll be dressed in historically accurate clothing, mostly made of deerskin.
They speak from a modern perspective about Wampanoag history and culture.
They’re happy to see you, and we’ll invite you into a way to or tell you what they’re growing in the garden.
We’ll show you how to play hubbub, a traditional game still enjoyed by many Wampanoag today.
The staff in the Wampanoag homesite are very proud of their native heritage and knowledgeable of the traditions, stories, technology, pastimes, music and dance of the people who have lived in this region for more than 10,000 years.

[5:25] This ability to bring a modern perspective to traditional folk ways is much more helpful to me when I try to understand the past, then the forced ignorance of the English reenactors.
Now the Wampanoag interpreters are bringing their knowledge to a series of virtual tours.
On Monday, April 6th and April 13th you can sign up for a session called History at Home.
People of the Dawn. Here’s how they describe it.
Learn about the daily life of the Wampanoag people in the 17th century.
In this one hour program, students will explore the connection the Wampanoag and other native people have to their seasonal way of life, their respect for all living beings and the ways that continue to carry on the traditions.
Today, each virtual tour is $10 requires advanced registration.
Willing to the details for both events in the show notes this week at hub history dot com slash 179.

[6:21] Before moving on with the show. I just want to pause and thank everyone who supports Hub history on Patreon part of me thought that we’d see a huge surge of new listeners during this pandemic, but instead the opposites been true.
We’ve seen much lower download numbers than usual.
When I think about it may make sense. I personally haven’t been commuting.
I haven’t been going to the gym, and that really cuts into my own podcast.
Listening time during this slowdown were especially grateful for our most loyal supporters, who help us pay for Web security and hosting podcast media hosting transcription and audio processing tools.
If you’d like to be among them, just goto patri on dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support link.
And now it’s time for this week’s main topic. Scott Nadler is a Santa Fe based consultant in strategy and sustainability, with a background in government, industry and academia.
He’s had a lifelong interest in the life and brought influence of Dr Thomas Young, and he had been scheduled to speak at History Camp Boston on March 14.

Jake:
[7:28] Right. So, Scott Adler, welcome to the show. You are the first of what I would call our history Camp refugees the first person to come and join us after history camp Boston got postponed from March to July, due to our current pandemic.
And you’re gonna come all the way from Santa Fe to present on Thomas Young, who’s a figure from the revolutionary era.
Can you start us out just by telling us a little bit about who Thomas Young was and why he was worth flying all the way across the country to present about him?

Scott Nadler:
[7:58] Tragic. Thomas Young was one of these. To me, interesting figures who was involved in everything may have been really a true agent in some ways, and we never hear from him except his in footnotes.
He’s someone that I stumbled into back in my student days became fascinated by him, actually, when I was a student in Boston and the more I’ve studied, the more interesting he’s been as a.
He’s a man of contradictions. He’s an outsider who managed to play the inside game.
He was really native, nowhere in the colonies. It seemed to be effective everywhere.
He was probably pretty abrasive and a bit of a divider personally. Yet he connected people across geography and across social class.
And his life is just a good story.

Jake:
[8:46] Now he is present at a lot of seminal events in Boston in the years leading up to the Revolution, but he started out in the Hudson Valley of New York. How does he get from there to Boston?

Scott Nadler:
[8:59] In a roundabout way, but with with real political motivation. He was born in 17 31 in the Hudson Valley.
He was the poor relation of the relatively wealthy and powerful Clinton clan that produced governors and generals and later DeWitt Clinton.
He became a doctor through study, an apprenticeship in effect.
He quickly moved away from Clinton’s to a smaller, even more remote Hudson Valley town.
Um married the daughter of the town’s patriarch with poetry, speculated and landed what later became her month, befriended and mentored a local thug named Ethan Allen.
They got arrested together for blasphemy along the way when he gave the town its name, which is Amenia Bastardize Latin.
In 17 64 he moved to Albany, mostly to become more political is for us, we can tell immediately became involved in the Stamp Act,
controversy quickly, even though an outsider became a prominent member of the Senate of Liberty,
became very active, and by 17 66 Stamp Act is more less calm.
He’s there in Albany and, well, everybody else up and down the Colonies is pretty much laying back from politics.
He’s trying to get more involved, and he goes from Albany to Boston in 17 66 deliberately to become more involved in politics and, as far as we can tell, kind of stalking Sam Adams.

Jake:
[10:29] That was something that really struck me as I was trying to do a little background reading to be ready for this conversation.
It seemed like he moved to Boston for no other reason except basically the propaganda that he’d seen Sam Adams put out and wanted to be closer to that.

Scott Nadler:
[10:45] Yes, it’s pretty clear that the politics was a big motivator, and because maybe he had become so involved in the committee of correspondence from the Sons of Liberty, he’d already built a little bit of a virtual network.
Now there’s, ah, one quote and with no real context from Thomas Young’s brother that says that he may have had to leave town from Albany.
Um, not a lot of detail. He certainly was active both as a doctor and as an agitator so he could have.
He could have had a lot of reasons why he had to leave, but clearly the reason why he went if he had to leave Albany, the reason why he went to Boston was politics, organizing and in particular.
Likely, he had Sam Adams in his targets. As he went.

Jake:
[11:31] Now it seems like for him to be so focused on Santa Sam Adams writing, he must have already been fairly radicalized by that point. So does that date from his years in Albany from his years in Amenia. When do you think that started?

Scott Nadler:
[11:46] It started, at least in Amenia, and I don’t want to get into too much pop psychology, but possibly earlier, back in his days with it with the Clintons is the poor relation in Amenia.
He did get involved in some of the Hudson Valley’s very fertile landlord tenant politics, and his first published writing, other than some some very bad poetry,
was a tract about the century set of government doesn’t protect tenants than why do you need to protect the landlords?

[12:17] Another thing that made a very popular as you could imagine. So he had been radicalized to, at least by that point.
But and this is speculation on my part.
I think that there really were, and maybe it’s projection on my point part, who knows?
But it seems like there may well have been some, at least, if not resentment toward the hierarchy in toward power.
At least some healthy skepticism.
The Clintons Thomas Young’s family came over.
His mother came over on a ship chartered by the Clintons to come over from from Arlen.
The Clintons had been an Anglo Irish family of some note, Uh, and some wells they came over.
He was on the maternal line and was had some of the Irish blood in him, so he clearly was not in a favorite part of the family.

[13:13] One of the early stories about how bright he is is that, um, he got to go to the library in the big house, the Clinton house, and how he just poured through all the books there.
Well, that tells you something about not having access to the same books himself.
In fact, his Clinton cousins, who were within a year two of his age, two of them became surgeons and they were sent to New York to study Thomas Young.
Study Under basically was an autodidact studied under a local doctor that I have visions of an old West town drunk doctor Practically is not a lot of positive said about the guy he studied under.
So from even before Amenia, my guess is he was pretty aware of this distinction between the haves and have nots, and he knew which side he was on.

Jake:
[14:00] And, of course, in retrospect, is close. Friendship with Ethan Allen seems very important, very pretentious, because of where they each ended up young being central to so many activities in revolutionary Boston and then Ethan Allen,
eventually in Vermont.
I don’t have a clear picture of whether their relationship at the time was politically motivated or was just strictly to bright young guys who met in the wilds of New York.
They got arrested together. They I think they wrote a book together. I have no sense of what that relationship was really like.

Scott Nadler:
[14:37] It’s a really interesting and fairly complex one. Thomas Young was was a little bit older, and while most of it was self educated, was in fact pretty educated. He was good with languages. When he moved to what became a media, he married the daughter of the town.
Elder was a German Marais V in town, and Thomas Young picked up German while he was there, and his Latin was apparently pretty good.
Ethan Allen was truly a thug, and he and his brothers took their father’s decaying business and built it into a pretty strong business empire,
with a very clear history of everything from physical fights to court fights to intimidation.
And they really cornered their market for their mill through some pretty aggressive business practices, to put it gently.

Jake:
[15:22] And what kind of business was that? Was that timber?

Scott Nadler:
[15:25] If you believe there was timber and I think there is an early there was some metal work there as well, um, I have to go back back into the files on that one, is he?

Jake:
[15:33] Uh huh.

Scott Nadler:
[15:36] And it seems like there was definitely a mentor mentee kind of relationship. Thomas Young was clearly the leader.
He introduced, uh, introducing Ethan Allen to some of the deiced concepts the and he introduced.
We think he introduced Ethan Allen to the whole concept of what became for a month.
Thomas Young was involved with a very, very shady character named Lydia CE in speculating on Property.
And it was all caused by the fact that you had about seven different conflicting royal grants for Vermont and New York claimed it, and Massachusetts claimed it and New Hampshire claimed it.

[16:16] And so Lydia’s came in and said, Well, since nobody’s Grant is valid, I’ll make up my own title.
Thomas Young was part of that process, and as early 17 61 there some reports to say Thomas Young was this innocent knife victim.
But I found his own in his own hand reports and surveys.
He was there in 17 61. He saw the property himself. He knew what was going on, and it may have been part of his political radicalisation. He didn’t think anybody had a right to just claim property to Royal Charter compared to people who went in and work the land.
So he probably introduced Ethan Allen to the whole potential up in that area.
Oh, the book they wrote together is interesting because analysis suggested it was probably written more by Young. He was far better educated.
Um, Tom had nothing. Nothing had happened with the book.
After Thomas Young died and his widow and his largely itinerant, her impoverished families moved back to Amenia.

[17:17] Ethan Allen, after he gets out of British captivity on his way back up to Vermont, stops off, sees the widow, picks up the manuscript, takes it to Vermont and, seven years later, publishes it under his own name without mentioning Thomas Young.
Now it’s a dubious distinction because the book got a lot of criticism and I’ll be honest. I have tried to read it. I find it utterly unreadable that may say more about me than the book. I don’t know.

Jake:
[17:44] This is basically a day ist tracked, right?

Scott Nadler:
[17:46] Absolute. It’s Ah, it’s a long ranting religious tract is essentially saying all the things that are wrong with organized religion.

Jake:
[17:53] Right. Which is what landed them in trouble back in 17. 50 six or seven when they face their blasphemy charges.

Scott Nadler:
[18:00] That’s what they also were in trouble for having essentially self vaccinated, which was also against the law.
So but the blast was the big issue. So the relationship is very much come on again, off again.
But it becomes critical to the final chapter of Thomas Young’s life, because in after the Boston days we can We can come back and go through the Boston days.

Jake:
[18:25] Oh, of course, yeah.

Scott Nadler:
[18:26] But after the Boston days, Um, Thomason has to leave Boston because the British have him on the hit list.
He’s beaten up by British. She’s attacked by British soldiers. He escapes to Newport, the British try and bring him back from Newport. He escapes to Philadelphia.
Of course, being Thomas Young escapes to Philadelphia and timeto walk injustice, Congress is reconvening in 17 75.
Um, he’s already got a reputation as a is a, uh, fairly despicable activists to the conservative Philadelphia crowd.
Um, and so he comes in. Philadelphia gets very involved in local politics.
There has a key role in the revolution in Pennsylvania that overthrew the state government and led to the Declaration of Independence.
Passing goes into the service. A surgeon in the Army Hospital in the meantime, he’s continuing to agitate with Ethan Allen.
Four. Vermont to become its own state on there. A lot of state records in Vermont that acknowledge that the name Vermont came from Ethan Allen. He’s the one who I’m sorry from Thomas Young.
Thomas Young is the one who came up with the name Vermont, and he gets credit for it in the state archives in Vermont.

Jake:
[19:40] I think I also saw a reference to him naming several of several towns in Vermont too. I thought.

Scott Nadler:
[19:46] I wouldn’t be surprised. He was pretty, uh, pretty, pretty free with the creative Latin ISMs and of horrid, a blank spot on the map. It’s for us, I can tell.

Jake:
[19:51] All right.

[19:55] Ah, right.

Scott Nadler:
[19:57] But he there. The critical moment came in June of 17 77 because,
Thomas Young had urged Ethan Ellen and urged Vermont, which just formally took the Vermont name and in June of that year, to declare its own.
Independence is estate because his logic waas If New York could declare independence from England, then for Mom could declare independence from New York on the same grounds.
What’s your problem? It all makes sense to him.
So he’s sending letters to Vermont and saying, Just bring this up in Congress.
I’m sure they’ll go for New York in particular goes preserved.
And New York in June of 77 literally put in a a resolution in Congress that says, We need to investigate this.
For those who think congressional investigations came later, this is 17 77 and they resolved to be to meet as a committee of the whole to consider the Vermont issue,
right in the middle of this in June of 17 77 while serving in the Revolutionary Hospital.
Thomas Young dies of a fever that he probably picked up in the hospital.

[21:16] Six days later and about two blocks away after he died.
CONGRESS PRINTS where Congress approves a report from the committee of the whole that essentially centrist Thomas Young by name.
You know, the the vote with Congress approved said.
That said printed paper signed Thomas Young is a false, scandalous and malicious libel calculated to foment a spirit of jealousy and distrust between the Congress in the state of New York and to deceive and mislead the people to whom it is addressed.
Resolved that the contents of the said paper highly injurious to the honor and dignity of Congress.
That’s about a guy who died a week before in and serving in Army Hospital two blocks away.

Jake:
[22:02] Right. So that’s Thomas Young’s later life in fellow Philadelphia.
But, like you said, he is very central in a critical sort of eight year period between the Stamp Act crisis and the Massachusetts government Act here in Boston.
So we have this country doctor who’s a religious radical.
He’s a medical nonconformist, at least inoculating folks against the legal authority.
And he’s becoming more and more political, politically radical.
So he follows Sam Adams teachings here to Boston.
How did you start to get involved in the first few years in the wig movement here in Boston?

Scott Nadler:
[22:47] It looks like Sam Adams realized very quickly that here he had somebody who could bridge the gap.
And this goes back to why I was attracted to Thomas M. To begin with, because you have Sam Adams orchestrating a policy along with others, but clearly was behind a lot of it that really operated on two tracks.
You had all the letters, petitions, meetings, formal votes.
And then you had the mob and the mob.
As we all know from this period, the mob is a really interesting institution because the mob occasionally gets out of control and burns the house. They shouldn’t over and break the window.
But by and large as mobs goes, thes guys air pretty orderly.
You want them to show up a two o’clock at this one of the customs officers houses, they show up, You often make a ruckus, they make a ruckus. You want them to then leave. They leave.
Mobs don’t do that, and they certainly don’t do it spontaneously.
Somebody’s organizing them. And with all due respect to John Hancock and John Adams, those guys aren’t doing the organizing.

[23:54] What appears is it? Very quickly. Sam Adams realized that in Thomas Young.
He had an organizer who could connect up those two tracks.
So the two of the things that he has the same Adams has. Thomas Young, doing very quickly by 17 67 is working in the committees of correspondence and working directly with the north end of the South End gangs.
There’s some rumors that in 17 67 the you had a seminal event in.
Prior to That You had Pope’s Day celebrations on Guy Fawkes Day.
And traditionally it was the North End and the South and gangs, each having their own competing parades that turn into essentially a big brawl between the two.

Jake:
[24:38] Henry Knox famously took Barton in those roles, I say it’s Hamas. A lot of familiar Patriot names.

Scott Nadler:
[24:42] Exactly and part of Sam Adams strategy, which it appears Thomas Young helped him implement,
was to get the two gangs to agree that starting in 17 67 under the aegis of the Sons of Liberty, the Pope’s Day would be a more political event aimed at the British rather than aimed at each other.

Jake:
[25:01] So the first time you’d see effigies of political leaders instead of effigies of the pope, right?

Scott Nadler:
[25:06] Exactly, exactly. And by 70 68 Adams is sending Thomas Young riding around the colony, setting up the committees of correspondence,
that you need with each township to reduce the dependence on the state Legislature, which the governor controls and skin essentially dissolved.
He can’t dissolve the town meetings in the same way.
And so Thomas Young is out riding around the colony, going from town to town in a way, that again, Sam Adams, John Hancock.
The others are by 17 69 there’s, Ah, seminal event, a huge Sons of Liberty Dinner and Dorchester.

Jake:
[25:43] Yeah, I know. John Adams wrote about that event in his In his diaries. He said he dined. I think we said, with 500 Patriots, the Sons, Sons of Liberty in Dorchester, which I will find a link to.

Scott Nadler:
[25:55] There’s a great list of everybody who was there and there You’ve got John Adams and Sam Adams and John Hancock, James Otis, Paul Revere, Joseph Orin and Thomas Young.
Um, you also get this interesting. You mentioned the two different roles later that year when James Otis was infamously attacked in the coffeehouse brawl.
Most of us who obsess about this period know about James Otis being being struck down by the keen in Boston coffeehouse a few of us have ever noticed.
Where did he go to be treated? What doctor? To go to Thomas Young.

Jake:
[26:30] Oh, interesting.

Scott Nadler:
[26:32] Um, by the time you get to the 17 70 in the Boston Massacre year, Um, he Thomas ing is clearly radically is quoted as saying. It’s high time for the people to take the government into their own hands.
But does you use two roles that you talked about Jake are evident during the massacre itself.
There are there’s a very clear, firsthand report of Thomas Young standing in Royal Exchange Lane, telling people that that there’s a rumpus, but they should go back. But he’s got a sword in his hand.
So there’s a clear mixed message there, but one of the five civilians killed was James Caldwell.

Jake:
[27:02] Next message. Yeah.

Scott Nadler:
[27:09] Where did who’d again treated Caldwell? Caldwell was carried to Thomas Young’s house Re died,
Um, but by July he’s He’s John Rowe is mentioning him in his diary is somebody who’s, you know, proceeding that he’s running, who’s leading marches through the town and the next You’re Hutchinson referred Governor Hutchinson first.
Him is one of our incendiaries of the lower order, which Thomas and would probably have considered a compliment exactly.

Jake:
[27:35] Badge of honor? Probably.

Scott Nadler:
[27:38] And by 17 71 and March, there’s an interesting event, which is the first annual oration Commemorating the Boston massacre,
and people have written PhD dissertations about who got that honor during the 1st 5 10 15 years.
The very first annual oration was delivered by Thomas Young.

Jake:
[27:59] It’s interesting. I tried to look into Young’s role in the first orations, getting ready for this this conversation, and it seems almost like he was, Ah, a counterweight to some of the more official commemorations.
I think James Lovell maybe gets credit in the official records is having given the town’s oration. But then, days before are actually weeks before Young has already given an oration at the manufacturing house.

Scott Nadler:
[28:25] Exactly, and the manufacturer house, obviously being symbolic for it.

Jake:
[28:29] Ah.

Scott Nadler:
[28:29] It’s earlier role. So the yeah, that was the he was.
That was the that was the revolutionary anniversary.

Jake:
[28:38] And just two. For listeners who might not be familiar, the manufacturing house was essentially, ah, a standoff between the town and the British soldiers during the occupation, the beginning of the occupation that was one essentially by the talent.
So it it’s a symbol of some sort of resistance to the British troops.

Scott Nadler:
[28:57] And what’s interesting is that it I mentioned earlier than that. Thomas Young is the outsider who kind of becomes insider by that point.
The North, the North and caucuses, one of the organizing bastions.
He’s not just a member, but he’s a member of the He’s one of the 11 member executive committee members, so he’s become pretty much inside, huh?
17 72 If you open up the records of the Committee of Correspondence from your online digitally, every few pages, his name crops up.
He’s in every meeting. He’s He’s so active that in 17 72 he bought a new house that was just to be closer to Federal Hall.

Jake:
[29:36] And his role in the committee of correspondence. He’s alongside Sam Adams, Josiah Quincy Joseph Warren, James Otis, William Mullen. Ooh, uh, Benjamin Church. A lot of very familiar names in Boston history.

Scott Nadler:
[29:48] Exactly exactly with the exception, maybe of moment of most of those are names that we all know we all have known. They all had.
They were esteemed roles that they played later on.
They’re all respected for it. Molyneaux is more of the the Sons of Liberty, veterans of dubious distinction that, uh.

Jake:
[30:06] Right? Right. If you lived longer, he might have had a chance to craft a different public memory.

Scott Nadler:
[30:13] Right, though he probably would have been out of favor as an anti federalist. But and that’s that.

Jake:
[30:18] Right?

Scott Nadler:
[30:20] Then comes the crowning glory in some ways of Thomas sings Boston career, which is the tea party.
Um, obviously, a lot of people are credited with having come up with the idea. He’s one of them.
I don’t have any basis for thinking that he was the one, but he certainly was one of those, Um, he was busy in his doctor role,
writing a love, the sarcastic articles about how t was a poison, how during a lot of the the media wars,
and he apparently that as the Tea Party was taking place, he was speaking at the federal home and reportedly had the crowd in stitches with all of his off color doctor jokes about tea and all the devil on Tundras.
And there’s Ah, a bit of a minor controversy in the literature is to whether his speech was,
to provide, cover and distract everyone so that the perpetrators could sneak out and do their deed, or whether it was to give him an alibi, because he was so openly,
associated with it with the rebellious streak and he had an alibi, he was in front of a couple of 100 people.

Jake:
[31:27] Little from COLUMN A a little from column B.

Scott Nadler:
[31:28] Exactly whatever the whatever the process. The result was that he was so visible to the British.
Is it? Um, as I said he was on the hit list.
There was a reporter was a broadside that was circulated, Um, in Boston that had some very It was very subtle.
It said, The friend of your king and country and of America hope and expect it from you soldiers.
The instant rebellion happens that you will put the above persons immediately to the sword, destroy their houses and plunder their effect.
It is just that they should be the first victims to the mistress that have brought upon us. Thomas Young was on that.
Maybe somebody jumped the gun. Hard to say, but in 17 74 things were obviously tense and by August and September, the port is closed.
You have the powder alarm. You have Congress meeting 1st 7 Philadelphia The assembly has to move to Salem. It’s not, but they can’t get us out of Boston.
Somewhere along the line, two British officers attacked Thomason in the street. They knocked him down.
Um, it’s guessed that they thought they killed him. He was carried home covered with blood, and he later said that if he hadn’t seen the blow coming and moved his head, he probably would have been killed by.

[32:53] And it was definitely time to get out of Dodge. And so he went on to Newport and from there under Philadelphia.
And so that was his Boston career, started with anonymity and ended as essentially a known enemy of the King to be hunted down in the street.
So I guess you consider that as progress, depending on your perspective.

Jake:
[33:13] Right. If you’re going for radicalism, that would be a success.

Scott Nadler:
[33:17] Absolutely. He made he made the list.

Jake:
[33:20] And he only lives about three more years after leaving Boston. But he still has this really outsized effect on two or maybe three colonies at that point.

Scott Nadler:
[33:32] Absolutely. In fact, the the Revolution in Pennsylvania is a whole other story of its own.
There is actually a, ah, wonderful book by what I’m haugland that essentially spends the entire book talking about this couple of weeks in in May of 17 66.
But the impact on Pennsylvania is profound because in order to get the conservative Pennsylvania delegation to reverse the position of the conservative Pennsylvania Legislature and vote for independence and really tip the balance,
the only way they were referendums tried.
There were all kinds of things tried. And finally, um, what the Radicals agreed was, There’s no way around this. We’ve gotta basically stage a coup.

Jake:
[34:16] So alongside Young, who were the other radicals in Pennsylvania in that faction.

Scott Nadler:
[34:21] The key people were what was interesting because there were 22 very local people, Timothy Matlack and James Cannon, who were very involved.
Sam Adams was in town, and most of the plotting apparently took place in his rooms. He was deeply involved.
Um, James Cannon was a teacher who had come from Edinburgh. Timothy Matlack was a failed Quaker, um, who had been in debtor’s prison and had a beer business and was pretty much, you know, Ethan Allen writ large.
Um, but another one of the key group was Thomas Paine, and that group met and plotted, um, and planned essentially a revolution in Pennsylvania within the course of two or three weeks.

[35:08] That part of the key was bringing the Germans what we think of as the Pennsylvania Dutch bring them in.
And Thomas Young, who had learned German from his wife’s family all those years back road the circuit out in Pennsylvania Dutch country, getting the German immigrants on the side of the Radicals Day.
I won’t go into all the machinations, but it’s fascinating, but it is incredibly detailed, but they succeeded in overthrowing the legitimate government of Pennsylvania,
having essentially a totally illegitimate new convention, get adopted, a new constitution and elected in your legislature.
And, uh, the Constitution that they wrote, which then became the model for Vermont, was much more of a democratic constitution.
And as John Adams is quoted as saying that there was the convention in Pennsylvania had adopted a government in one represented assembly.

[36:05] And John Adams noted that when Franklin then went to France, he carried with him a printed copy. That Constitution and his name’s put it so dryly it was immediately propagated through France.
The passive voice, not who said it. It was immediately propagated through France.
But it was the plan of government of Mr Franklin, in truth, and this is John Adams.
In truth, it was not Franklin, but Timothy Matlack, James Kenan, Thomas M. And Thomas Paine, who were the authors of it.
So you had this. This person is this outsider,
who only lives, Um, yeah only only lived into his his forties,
and help shape Massachusetts politics helped create Vermont politics, help overturn Pennsylvania politics,
to a large extent through all that had a seminal role in the Revolution.
And the ultimate Boston reminder for me is I once went to where that house was that Thomas Young bought to be close to Faneuil Hall.
If you go through all the maps you confined, it’s a lovely location. It’s now the sidewalk outside the warm and fuzzy Government Center complex.

[37:19] And if you stand on the sidewalk and where as close as I could come to you without being too severe to exactly where his house was, the changes that were buildings in between.
Now, thanks to the road, you can stand right where his house was, and you can see Federal Hall.
You can look over there and see fell hall and right in front of it, right in your line of sight.
There’s a statue, and it’s a statue that says, Here we have someone who is the organizer of the Revolution.
And, of course, the statue is same. Adam’s not Thomas.
And as you stand there where Thomas Young live looking past Samuel Adams statue at Faneuil Hall, you realize that in this whole picture, Thomas Young has disappeared.

Jake:
[38:05] It’s really remarkable when you look at the both in Pennsylvania well in New York and Pennsylvania and in Massachusetts, all the famous names who is associated with throughout his life. Sam and John Adams.
Ethan Allen. Back in New York, you have world famous Thomas Paine in Pennsylvania.
Why is it that we don’t remember Thomas Young as well?

Scott Nadler:
[38:28] Great question. I think there are both some very specific issues, and some are general ones.
Specifically, the fact that he did die in 17 77.
There is no later story the fact that New York centered him, uh, his family.
If you think about how whether it’s Hamilton’s wife or Adams’s generations is, there were families to carry on and build up those reputations and bring them into the 19th century mythmaking.
Thomas Young’s family stumbled back to Armenia. Dead broke, sold his books.
He’s an Allen took the manuscript. I found a scrap of paper burned, scrapping a file where Thomas Young son who all speaking to Dr Applied to the governor of New York and in 17 82,
for a government position, is a doctor Who did he have to appear?
Apply to that then governor, one of the Clinton cousins.
I can’t find that he ever got an answer.
Later on, Ethan Allen tried to get the state of Vermont to provide land grant to Thomas Young’s family because of everything you’ve done.
The Legislature never acted, To be honest, Ethan Allen never gave them any of his huge property holdings, either.
But there you’ve got a family that just disappears. You’ve got a man that disappears. Physically. You’ve got a family that disappears economically and politically.
That’s one piece of the other piece is when you think about it.

[39:53] Really, Our these two cohorts there are the the aristocrats of the day, the hierarchy, who really are known for the revolutionary days because of what they did his builders afterward.
You know, the Washington of the at Washington and Jefferson, those guys because of if they hadn’t done something afterward, would they still be is known?
And the ones we know almost all went to college, Harvard or College of New Jersey that became Princeton or William and Mary.
They had a profession. They were practicing lawyers or established planters.
Almost all of them, including same Adams had government jobs before the revolution, whether elected or patronage, Who were the people that Thomas Young associated with you mentioned William Elena and I.
We talked about the the interesting characters in Philadelphia, and if you think back, you go through evidence, your Macintosh and some of the other sons of liberty.
None of those people had offices before. None of them had established professions they were. They were merchants, really, where they were privateers, liquor dealers, things like that.

[41:04] They didn’t have college degrees. They didn’t have jobs afterward. They didn’t know some of them didn’t survive.
Some of them were so anti federalists that they didn’t wanna have anything to do with the jobs afterward.
But they certainly they were. There’s a distinction between the disruptors and the builders, and we study and revere the builders.
It’s much less comfortable to study and revere the disruptors, but without the disruptors clearing the land, would there have been the opportunity for the builders to build?

Jake:
[41:38] What do you think made Thomas Young uniquely are nearly uniquely able to bridge that gap between the builders and the brawlers.
What do you think drew him alongside brawlers like Ethan Allen and William Molano to be able to bridge the gap to the folks who would later become known as the Founding Fathers?

Scott Nadler:
[41:58] It’s a great question, and I’m sure you could come up with. There’s probably a psychological answer. There’s probably a Marxist historian answer there, a couple of different versions.
I think when it really comes down to and again, this is huge projection on my part. I freely admit, is this is somebody who started out caught between two worlds.
He started out as extent. He was one of the Clinton cousins, but he wasn’t one of the Clintons.
He was a smarter smarter than them, but he didn’t get the same education, but he knew he was one of the smart guys.
He knew that he had insight. He knew that he was facile with language, and so he had a foot in both camps.
He could speak to either side.
He grew up in a sentence in both worlds, But I also think geography matters as well.
The fact that he chose to wander because he didn’t quite feel like you fit in gave him, I think, a bit of perspective that others didn’t have. If you grew up in Boston, the lines were drawn. It would never occur to you.
With the possible exception of Paul Revere, it would never occur to you to cross over those lines.
You grew up in Philadelphia. It would never occur to you to cross those lines because Thomas Young was the outsider.

[43:18] I don’t think he felt quite is constrained. He felt like, Hey, I can talk to whoever is going to be useful to what I’m trying to accomplish and I can talk to them in their language.
And if you look at it that treatise treatise that that he wrote with Ethan Allen, you know that’s not the same language that was used in going to the Pennsylvania Dutch townships outside Philadelphia.
You know, this guy was on a much smaller scale.
There’s a bit of the Barack Obama of I can speak with authenticity two different audiences because I come from more than one of them myself.

Jake:
[43:53] Now you mentioned that he spent his last months in a Continental Army hospital in her near Philadelphia and that he passed away from essentially a camp fever there. I don’t I don’t know that we have any more specific cause of death than Ah, fever.

Scott Nadler:
[44:07] No, not that I’ve ever found, and it is a referred to is in the hospital. So there seems to be at least some implication there.

Jake:
[44:12] Uh, and is he buried in Philadelphia?

Scott Nadler:
[44:16] I’ve never been able to find a great, and I’ve walked through the cemetery in Amenia, where his most of his wife’s family and some of it is, I believe his wife is buried there and have to go back to check.
But I’ve walked through that cemetery looking at every headstone.
I’ve gone through All the databases I confined. I can’t find any record of where he was buried.
One speculation is that he was essentially dumped in a pit with lime.
Like a number off fever victims in the number of army hospitals through a number of wars.

Jake:
[44:52] Right? Sure. Always a possibility in a mass casualty situation like that, I suppose.

Scott Nadler:
[44:56] Yeah.

Jake:
[44:57] Makes me not want to consider what might be coming up in present day before I wrap up.

Scott Nadler:
[45:00] Yeah, Let’s not go there. Let’s not go there.

Jake:
[45:05] I’m just curious how you personally how you develop this intense interest in the life in this radical career of Thomas Young.

Scott Nadler:
[45:14] That’s a Boston story in itself. When I was going to college, I was at Harvard studying government,
and I would have days where I spent my morning listening to Bernard Baylin deliver fascinating lectures about Harbottle Door and all the other great characters of the Revolution.
And in the afternoon, I was doing work that had me in political circles, and I would literally be the fly on the wall, the guy in the back of the room,
on a second storey office and off of Washington Street when was still the garment district in a window that was literally smoke filled because I’m old enough that you could still smoking all those rooms,
and watch a bunch of liberal Democrats trying to figure out,
how to carve out a black state Senate district and whether the whose ox is gored with the seat come from,
the Jewish Democratic seat from Houston from Newton, or the Irish Democratic seat from the South End or the Italian Democratic see from North End.
The guy running the meeting was this kind of unknown, um, state, ripped by the name of something like Barney Frank.

Jake:
[46:20] Hey. Yeah, Somebody nobody start of these days.

Scott Nadler:
[46:22] And right, and when you have, when you spend your morning with Bernard Baylin and your afternoon with Barney Frank,
you start to wonder.
Well, who was Barney Frank then?
Because given the mobs that Bernard balance talking about in Harbottle doors is documenting somebody. As I said earlier, somebody is organizing those mobs and it John Adams ain’t burning, Frank.
No one could argue that Barney Frank isn’t John Adams either. But you’d be the first to say that.
Um and so that got the thinking.
And as I began to just do reading on my own, um, did more political organizing my own.
I spent time organizing Jewish voters for a George McGovern front in the George Wallace County.
I saw the realities of street organizing, and the disconnect became more and more clear.
I began doing reading, and I had a list of used to call My dirty doesn’t There were three or four in Boston, three or four in New York.
I stumbled on some early work by Pauline Maier. That includes a chapter on Thomas Young.
So I thought, that’s interesting. And as I went through and pulled up, who were the people in New York who were the people in Boston Who were the people in Philadelphia who were the people in Charleston?
I kept tripping over this one name and to put it in technical economic terms sooner later, I had to say to myself, Who the hell is this guy?

Jake:
[47:47] Uh huh. And why does he keep show showing up in every colony I look at?

Scott Nadler:
[47:48] And that’s where started.
At first I thought this was L ick, You know that I thought was the Woody Allen character who showed up in your forest Gump was Photoshopped in.
And then I realized another that to put it into current hideous jargon, to think of him that way was to deny his agency because he wasn’t just a spectator who stumbled in a CZ.
We said he left all the need to go dive into the middle of it at a time that George Washington was worried about how to make money off a Martha Custis is land, and John Adams is worried about whether to hire a clerk.
This guy is relocating to a different province where he knows nobody to get into the fight.
So how could I resist.

Jake:
[48:32] Well, if people want to hear more about Thomas Young and they’d like to hear more about Thomas Young from you how can they go about doing that?

Scott Nadler:
[48:40] The best way is to hope and pray that we get through what we’re going through now so that the history camp in Boston that was originally scheduled for this month in March can go on a scheduled in July.

Jake:
[48:53] It

Scott Nadler:
[48:53] I’ve presented on Thomas Human History Camp in Colorado last year, which was the first time that I spoke about this in public and to my family’s really found somebody else to listen to this.
I was looking forward with some trepidation. It took me a while to get up the nerve to say I’ll come to Boston and talk about this there where half the people in the audience probably know more about it than I do and can tell me everything.
I’m getting wrong but decided that that would be half the fun.
History camp was postponed because of the pandemic. It’s tentatively rescheduled for July.
I’ve got that on my calendar. I’m looking forward to going there to present.

Jake:
[49:30] And bonus for anybody who does decide to attend in July. I believe I will still be on a panel that I was supposed to be on in March. And as far as I know, all the Panelists are planning to come in July. So two for one foryou, listeners.
Well, Scott Adler, I just want to say thank you very much for joining us today.

Scott Nadler:
[49:50] My pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity to talk about something that I’ve obsessed about for a long time.

Jake:
[49:54] Absolutely.

Jake Intro-Outro:
[49:56] Toe. Learn more about for gotten revolutionary. Dr Thomas Young. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 179 We’ll have links to the notes of the Boston town Meeting with the Committee of Correspondence was created.
John Adams notes from the Boston Massacre trial mentioning Young’s presence and a 17 72 letter to New York schoolmaster Hugh Hughes proclaiming Bostonians the saviors of America.
We’ll also linked in 1976 Profiles of Thomas Young, by Bruce Henry and Pauline Maier. Plus we’ll have a link to History Camp Boston, with the assumption that more tickets will become available as the rescheduled date in July gets closer.
And, of course, we’ll have links to information about our upcoming events and the 50th anniversary recap of the hijacking of Eastern Airlines Flight 13 20 this week’s Boston Book Club pick.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast of hub history dot com.
Were hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Or you can go toe hub history dot com and click on the Contact US link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing a sip reefer view. If you do, drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history stickers, a token of appreciation, that’s all for now.

Music

Jake Intro-Outro:
[51:19] Stay safe out there, listeners.