Old North and the Sea (episode 255)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] 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 2 55.
Old North and the Sea. Hi, I’m jake.
This week I’ll be turning over the show to our friends at the Old North historic site.
You may remember that we aired their discussion about David walker back in january and they were kind enough to let us do it again this week as part of their digital speaker series.
Independent researcher TJ Todd recently gave a presentation about Old North Church in the sea.

[0:40] TJ’s talk focuses on two notable sea captains, both of whom long time listeners will remember from past episodes of hub history.

[0:48] Captain Samuel Nicholson was the first somewhat hapless captain of the USs constitution and captain thomas Gruchy was the privateer who captured the carved cherubs. To keep watch over the old north sanctuary.

[1:02] Exploring the lives of these two famous captains will reveal what life was like for the ordinary sailors and dockworkers who made up a significant portion of Boston’s population in the 18th and 19th centuries,
as well as drawing connections to other incidents from Boston’s maritime past, including many that we’ve discussed in past episodes.

[1:20] Thanks to our friends at the Old North Foundation for allowing us to share this talk with you.

[1:26] But before we do it’s time to pause and thank our patreon sponsors for making hub history possible When we started this show almost six years ago.
Now. I never dreamed that a time would come when over 3000 people would tune in every couple of weeks to hear me talk about Boston history.

[1:43] If you would have told me then that we’d win a preservation achievement award at about the same time that we got our millionth download. I wouldn’t have believed you.
I never thought we’d make it this far. And at first I didn’t think about what it would take to do. So As our expenses for things like podcast, media hosting, audio processing and transcription have grown over the years.
The sponsors who support the show with $2, or even $10 every month have allowed us to keep pace.

[2:12] If you’re already a sponsor, thank you.
And if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, just go to patreon dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com.
And click on the support us link and thanks again to all our new and returning sponsors.

[2:31] Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:34] It’s a theme I come back to time and time again on the podcast, but for most of the past 400 years, boston was an important port city, first for Britain and then for the United States,
as one of the two main anglican churches in boston, old North was a magnet for the wealthy and socially connected and for those who desperately wanted to be.

[2:57] Ships masters, captain’s financiers and merchants made up an important part of the elite congregation in Old North’s early days, and the church was influenced by those congregants relationship with maritime trade and the wider atlantic world.

[3:12] As T. J. Todd explores the world that Captain Nicholson of the USS, Constitution and privateer Captain Crewe she lived in.
I hope that long time listeners will listen for the deep web of connections that tie these men and the church they attended to the subjects of many of our past episodes.

[3:30] From my interview with Jared Ross Hardisty about the dark nexus of church chocolate and enslaved Children,
to our episode, exploring the myths and realities of the tunnels under the North End,
to the free black sailors who carried David walker’s radical abolitionist tracts to southern ports at great personal risk to the story of the Well On Long Wharf,
TJ’s talk highlights the importance of boston’s ports and the connections between seafaring, the local economy and the social elites of 18th and 19th century boston.

[4:01] I’ll turn the mic over now to Katherine Matthews, education director at Old North, to introduce TJ Todd.

Catherine:
[4:07] I am absolutely delighted to introduce TJ. Todd.
TJ is an Old North alumnus. He was the education manager at the site for several years and then took on the role of researcher TJ.
Maybe familiar to some of you from his work on the video series, 99% Sure, which takes a sometimes quizzical, often rye and always interesting. Look at some of the topics and questions that are of interest to Old North’s visitors.
So now teaching, it’s all yours.

T.J.:
[4:40] Thank you. Um I like the often rise how I’m gonna start describing myself.
Um so yeah, thank you again for the really, really nice introduction.
My name is T. J. Todd and uh I worked,
for a little over three years and uh,
during my time there, I became really intrigued with a number of stories that had that that seemed kind of outwardly relatively simple and straightforward but had incredibly complex and interesting history behind them.
But these were stories we really had the time to to go into in detail with the visitors there.
And I’m hoping to offer a bit of a kind of deep dive into Old North’s Interconnections with these larger events and place a few of the Old North stories into a bit of a wider context in the process.
So tonight we’re gonna talk about Old North’s connection to the atlantic world,
In Boston was a city that relied upon the sea and virtually every way in the 1700s and given old North’s prominence in the city, it was inevitable that the sea would play a large role in shaping this church’s history as well.

[5:56] And it it was actually the other day and it dawned on me that, you know, the C is actually embedded,
in the event that made Old North famous, you know, that being the story of the signal lanterns during paul revere’s ride, I’m referring to of course, you know, that the phrase one if by land and two if by sea.
So, you know, figuratively and kind of poetically, the sea is a core part of Old North’s identity and fame, but in a very literal sense as well.
Old North has a strong connection to the sea. So I’m gonna use that that connection as a launching point to tell a couple of stories about Old North’s history beyond the confines of just what happened in the building itself.
And interestingly the congregation found itself involved in some major worldwide events beyond, you know, of course the american Revolution.
So I’ll start with a little about Old North in general, but I’ll mostly be focusing on two main stories throughout the night and I hope this talk, you know, is kind of designed to be sort of like a specialty or,
a focus tour on these, these two main stories and their connection to Old North.

[7:08] So let’s start with, you know, boston in the 17 hundreds in general and make our way to Old North Specifically.
I’m gonna share my screen. I have just a couple of slides that I’ll go to every now and then.

[7:24] And Okay, so I think Katherine can give me a thumbs up if that’s reasonable.
Okay, great, thank you. Um so boston has a pretty well established connection to the atlantic Katherine already alluded to that a little bit in the intro and, and with the map here, you know, obviously it’s located right up against the ocean.
It’s almost more of an island than anything in the 17 hundreds.
Um there’s a narrow strip of land, the boston neck that connected it, but it’s surrounded by water on all sides and all the little countless protrusions that you see sticking out along the edge of the map here.
Um Those are the wharves and docks um in boston, just countless wharves dotting the landscape there,
In the 1690s at least, Boston was actually the second largest shipbuilding port in the British Empire, an empire that itself was built around the sea.
So the British empire is using the ocean to connect its territory that spanned much of the planet at this point.

[8:29] Um the long sort of in the bottom right corner where the little drawings of the ships are, that’s long wharf, um That was the longest wharf in the world.
It was about a third of a mile into the ocean there In Boston, with all these dwarves and ships coming in and out.
That was a busy Port City, you had trade routes and cargo types, etc going all across the planet and the sea is how Boston stayed connected to the rest of the British Empire.
Um the ocean is providing these sort of interstate highways of the 1700s.
The population of the city is growing, but it’s still pretty small, about 15,000 people throughout the 17 hundreds, sometimes less.
Um, however, almost all of those people are working either directly or indirectly with the see that’s the obvious things like ship captains and sailors and the less obvious as well like shopkeepers and farmers.
You know, farmer produces going all across the british empire.
Shopkeepers are bringing in goods from across the empire to sell to.
Um, so, and that doesn’t even include all the auxiliary trades that were used to build a ship. Things like coopers and blacksmiths.
I read somewhere is like 30 something like 30 trades were needed to build a single ship.
So even if your blacksmith in Boston, a lot of your work is revolving around the Atlantic uh, world as well.

[9:57] So, um, a little bit about old north in general and its connections to the sea and then we’ll get into those, those specific stories that I mentioned.
So old north is the church of England at this time or Anglican.
It was built in 1723 and its location in the north end helps explain this strong connection to the sea. Many of the residents of the North End, our ship captains and merchants and sailors.
So old North’s congregation is naturally going to include a lot of those professions as well. This is just a handful of the name plaques on the pews in old north that have the name or the title captain in them.
Just a few that I kind of happened to take along the way, um.

[10:41] So Old North is part of an anglican, you know, religious and social networks that are interconnected via the atlantic.
Um, even the building of Old North itself was a bit of an atlantic endeavor at the bottom of this plaque, which is posted in Old North today, you can see that funds to build the church came from king George.
The second came from south Carolina, antigua and Barbados.
Additionally, in the 17 forties, thirties and forties funds to finish the iconic steeple came from english in log wood cutters working out of Belize.
So old North made a connection to them via the captains and merchants who worshiped at the church.
So Old North’s most iconic feature, the steeple exists.
Banks in part at least to the sea.
And the atlantic comes intersecting with Old North in a lot of other ways than just this. But the point is, the sea was a feature just as central to Old North as it was to boston itself.
And there’s uh, an important fact, I think that can be gleaned from all this for people at Old North and boston in general.
Um, the atlantic represented a lot of opportunity.
Connections could be made money and wealth could be, had jobs revolved around it.

[12:03] And well, you know, much of the opportunity for things like wealth and prestige was going to be limited to the white population of boston for black Bostonians, the sea was an important source of opportunity as well.
Um, If enslaved ports, cities were a primary avenue of escape back then.
Um, that’s, if one could manage to get on board a ship.
Um, so there’s opportunity there and the sea was also a major opportunity for work to being a sailor was one of the few jobs somewhat open to black Bostonians back then.
So the sea offered a way to try and get by in life.

[12:45] An Old North’s Alderman cranky offers an example of this.
He was a free black sailor, is a member of Old North as well and we know about him largely due to the fact that he wrote a last will and testament shortly before a sea voyage in 17 41.
This is a somewhat rare opportunity for, for black Bostonians back then and he ended up leaving his possessions to his wife in the event of his death and one of the witnesses to this will was actually a sea captain.
So maybe cranky these connections as a sailor, they may have actually offered him the chance to, to write this will with one of those witnesses potentially even being the captain of the ship that he worked at.
It’s hard to tell, but I think cranky story also tells us something else.
And while opportunities existed at sea extremely high risk did as well.
He was writing his will after all.
And while cranky didn’t die on that upcoming voyage, he did pass away about five years later.
I don’t think his cause of death was recorded, but it would not have been surprising if it was related to his work somehow, given the inherent dangers involved.

[14:00] So a lot of opportunity, but a lot of risk as well.
And that’s just sort of the general background information here.
But now I want to dive into these specific stories about how these c affected the lives of some of the North’s congregates for better or for worse.
You know, history is complicated. The end results aren’t always clear.
So I’m going to stop screen sharing here and go into a little bit of story mode instead.
So Our first story is of a particular captain at old north.
And this one story gives us insight into so many larger histories.
It’s a wider look at 18th century European warfare.
You know, the confusing nature of private hearing as well.
Uh this captain also made a lasting effect on how old north looks today.
So his story gives us a sense of the opportunities and risks that I mentioned.

[14:58] So we’re hopping back in time to the 17 forties Old North was now well established and flourishing in boston,
and at this time in steps of a rather mysterious figure, Captain thomas James Grucci, a guy we have very limited information on,
in fact there’s ambiguity just in his name and the pronunciation of it.
There’s different spellings throughout the records. Sometimes Grucci, sometimes Grucci, sometimes Grucci, a uh there’s one or two instances of Grouchy as well.
Um So even his name is a bit mysterious. Grucci seemed to spell it that way the most often. So that’s kind of what I’m going with.
But even his name is a bit up in the air.
He was born in the isle of Jersey in 17 19.
So that’s um, the isle of Jersey, not New Jersey.
Um, so in the, the british uh channel between England and France,
And in 1741, uh, he buys Pew 25 at old north back then you had to buy a pew to worship at old north or at least to be a voting member and member of the congregation.

[16:12] So for individuals like Grucci, often these pew records and scattered legal documents and a few references here and there are our only leads.
Um, so we know he’s in Boston by 1741, maybe a little bit earlier than that.
Not much is known about his earlier life though it seems evident that his career was tied to the sea. He had a family connection to that.

[16:35] And there’s an appeal to Old North for Gucci, you know, other than the religious aspects of course, which is first and foremost, but there’s, you know, the possibility of opening business connections as well too.
For a captain joining a congregation where there’s other captains and sailors and merchants, it’s a way to, to make some connections along the way. So Old North would have had an appeal to a captain like Grucci.

[17:00] And the importance of being a well connected captain.
And the opportunities that that would open up became evident during his time at Old North because in 17 44 Grucci went together with numerous investors, many of whom were fellow congregants.
He socialized with an old North and Gucci became part owner and captain of a ship called the Queen of Hungary.
Uh, this ship is a, it’s called a brigand teen.
I’m gonna share my screen here again. There are no images of Grucci that have been found, no images of the Queen of Hungary either.
But I thought, you know, this gives you a general idea of what a Bergen teen would look like.
A relatively smaller ship. Um, It’s hard for most people back then to outright buy a ship.
So pooling their money together with four other members of Old North and others outside of Old North as well, gave him the opportunity to buy this ship. The Queen of Hungary.

[18:00] And as I mentioned, broken tines are relatively small. I’m no, you know, ship expert.
Um my understanding is that the difference is that it depends on the type of rigging that is used if that’s, you know, meaningful for people.
Um it’s the point is though, it’s relatively small. Gruccis ship has about 20 cannon on it.
But gruccis man interests are not overwhelming power. His interests are speed and maneuverability.
Um, and that’s what brigand teens are really prized for at this time.
I’ll get into why he wanted those attributes in a, in a moment here. Uh, so again, this is a business venture.
These connections, you can form an old North were important by pooling their money together.
You’re basically creating a little mini stock market here, investors are putting in certain amounts and they would expect to receive a reciprocal percentage of any profits that result,
pulling your money together also minimizes the risks involved.

[19:03] So I’m gonna end here, the slide here again and I’m going to get into another tangent and I promise we’ll get back to old North and Grucci in the moment.
But context is really under important for understanding what is happening with Grucci hair in 17 40 for the year Grucci bought the Queen of Hungary, the british empire was at war once again.
Now this is a remarkably complicated series of wars.
I’m gonna try to summarize it in one sentence or maybe two.
Uh, in 1739, England went to war with Spain in what was called, in my opinion, maybe the most interesting name for war in history, the war of Jenkins’s ear.
Um, and then in, after a few years, France becomes involved in England is at war them, uh, in a war called King George’s War.
And then both of these kind of separate conflicts are basically wrapped up into a very wide overarching conflict called the war for Austrian succession.

[20:09] Um, I am, it’s a very complicated era of history. This is the era of, you know, confusing though certainly uniquely named wars uh, of different alliances and claims to Thrones.
I’m not gonna go into too much detail on that.
But the, the important thing here is that boston and Old North,
as part of the british empire are getting pulled into these wider world events and for our purposes, much of these wars are fought at sea as far as the british involvement is concerned.

[20:43] And for these members at old North, there was an opportunity here for a little practice called private hearing.
Uh, this explains Greece’s interest in a brigantine privateers needed to be fast and maneuverable to capture other ships.
So a little bit about private tearing and then we’ll get back to Grucci again.
Um, so a privateer. These are ships that are focused on attacking mostly enemy shipping during wartime,
as encouragement to captains, any ships that are captured could be auctioned off for profit, as well as the cargo that happened to be on board those ships.
And these are privately owned ships. That’s actually where the name privateer comes from.
Um, they’re privately owned and privately outfitted and they’re not part of the official navy.
So the best way I’ve ever heard of describing this system is that it’s kind of like a naval militia.
You have a land based army that could be supplemented by civilian militia and so could the Navy in a sense as well.

[21:50] Now the focus on shipping, there was some attacking of military ships as well too, but the real focus is on the enemy shipping.
That kind of seems like piracy. Um and it used similar tactics. In fact, the name of Grucci ship, the brigand team or a brigand team is the origin of the word brigand.
Um So brigand teens were used pretty commonly by pirates at that time.
Um But while it seems kind of similar, they differ in some interesting ways as well.
So for one, a pirate does not have any legal basis and holds allegiance to no one.
They might even attack their own nation ships. They don’t care they’re in it just for looting and plunder.

[22:34] Um privateers on the other hand, could only legally operate during war and only attack ships that your country is at war with most nations at the time.
Used privateers, including the US, the United States.
In fact during the Revolutionary War, they viewed it at the time as a strategy for winning the war by hurting the enemy’s economy, hurting public support for the war and boosting your own country’s finances in the process.
And back then there was a surprising amount of focus on the legality.
You know, what was and what was not fair game captured ships by a privateer had to be brought back to an admiralty court to make sure that the captured ship was a legal target,
courts could actually be pretty lenient to enemy ships as well.
Um, jumping ahead in in history. I I remember reading this,
event in the war of 1812 where the first two captured British ships in the war of 1812 were actually released by us courts because the British captains hadn’t been informed yet that a war had even begun.
So there’s a bit of kind of gentlemanly nous to this, I guess, you might say.

[23:45] And I’m not trying to be, you know, a privateer apologist or something, but I think understanding a little bit of this context helps us understand Grucci and his actions a little bit more.
A lot of privateers thought they were very much patriots helping their country in war time.
I’ll also add to, there’s a lot of complexities and changes over time to this system. So it’s well worth reading more into.
You also get into instances where privateers did not do what they were legally supposed to do. So you get a little, a lot of gray area along the way.

[24:16] So going back to Old North, it’s unclear how many captains or sailors came out of Old North’s ranks.
But I would rager that Grucci was not alone at this time.
Perhaps even Alderman cranky, the sailor we talked about earlier was involved.
Um, it’s pure speculation, but he did die in this time period during King George’s war.
Um, so maybe he was aboard a privateer. Maybe he was on a merchant ship that was attacked by a privateer from France.
Um, pure speculation, but the timing is interesting there.
And privateers, I think epitomized the high risk and high reward relationship with the sea back then.
Uh, for one you might never find another ship to capture. There was a high risk of failure with this, with this venture.
If so, all the investors have kind of wasted their money at this point.
Also, your own ship could be captured or sunk or lost at sea in any number of ways.
But on the other hand, there was a lot of money to be made if you were successful.
And it was also, as I mentioned, a way back then, of supporting your country at, at wartime.

[25:26] So Grucci and his ship, the Queen of Hungary show us just how rewarding it could be.
He seemed to do quite well for himself in King George’s war in 1745, there were a number of successful engagements off the coast of New York.
Three French ships were taken. During this, this year, 50 men were captured.
A substantial cargo of, of sugar and indigo was captured as well.
There was another ship. It’s unclear from the records whether this is one of the three or even 1/4 ship that Gucci captured,
but it’s called the valiant and it was noteworthy enough to uh, the capture of the ship was not worthy enough to be mentioned in the pennsylvania gazette.
So Gruccis making a name for himself throughout the colonies at this time and he really hit the jackpot.
Not all privateers were successful at this time.

[26:18] And that jackpot was the enormous load of sugar that was on board by auctioning the sugar off Grucci was catapulted from middling prosperity to extreme wealth, virtually overnight.
Sugar and the ships themselves were auctioned off for enormous profits.
There’s no real details on the fight itself. There’s no blow by blow of the battle, but it seems like kind of a typical naval engagement from the time period.
Um, the goal for most engagements was not to sink the other ship and kill all the crew or anything like that, but to capture the enemy ship and its crew.
Um, and because of that cruise, on privateers were actually extremely large.
Uh Grucci packed something like 70 men on his small ship.
Uh, and the goal again is to overwhelm the other ship and take them prisoner.

[27:12] And Old North was involved in this story, not only for being the starting point for this venture, with the different investors involved, but Old North was also gifted a key portion of the cargo from one of these ships.
And the cargo was these Angels.

[27:36] So these angels decorate the sanctuary of Old North today.
And based on the style, they definitely predate,
Old North and likely even predate the city of boston itself on the next slide here, it’s a little dark, but I didn’t, I didn’t want to use a flash on my camera when I took this picture, but,
we get a rare chance to see the angels up close.

[28:00] Um, they were judged by, you know, art experts to be from the early 1600s from modern, from the area we now call Belgium.
Back then. Belgium was part of French territory and they may have been on their way to a French church or religious site in Canada.
It seems maybe they were since they were captured off the coast of New York. But it’s it’s unclear where exactly they were headed.
And the reason why Grucci got to keep them. Uh, these angels were not the target, but they were a part of the cargo.
And the rule of privateers back then was that the cargo would be divvied up amongst the crew.
So as captain of the ship, perhaps Grucci staked a claim to the angels and some of the other, you know, peripheral items on board.

[28:48] And they’re interesting in their own right. But to me, the angels are a really great launching point for this whole unique history.
That Old North was a part of and why did the angels end up at all north instead of, you know, maybe groceries home or something like that.
Well, for one, you know, probably out of a show of devotion to the church, but also there may have been a practical reason as well. You know, things can be not necessarily one or the other, but and as well.
Um and the practical thing would have been the the social prestige he could have had by having these very fancy decorations in a very prominent church in boston, tied forever more to his name. They’re called Gruccis Angels today.

[29:33] Any other cargo that would have been captured would have been divided between the crew and investors as was the law back then.
And you know, keep in mind that this was a state of war.
It’s not just, you know, rating and pirating. You know, these angels are kind of more like collateral damage in this larger fight.

[29:53] So rounding out Gruccis stories. So he has his success in 17 45.
And during his private earing time, he actually buys a giant home in the North End.
Privateer ng had made him quite wealthy. This home is actually a former governor’s mansion.
It had the nickname, the Pride of the North End.
Eventually he’s elected to the vestry of Old North, which is a sign of rising up in, in the social ranks. The best trees sort of like the governing board of the church.
They’re, they’re settling business matters and voting on, you know, church business.
Um, so he has a very real place of power in the community now stemming from his wealth and prestige.
I included the picture here from one of the account books in old norse records.
Just to give you, you know, it shows Gruccis signature at the bottom there just to kind of make, you know, this figure feel a little more real and concrete.
Um, but also it shows just how involved he was in church affairs. He’s taking care of literally church business at this point.

[30:57] Uh, and yet throughout the following years, Grucci finds himself increasingly in deaths and increasingly brought to courts.
It seems that he had a number of other business ventures that maybe weren’t as successful after his private earing time.

[31:14] And there also seemed to have been maybe some issues on how the cargo was. Divvied up. It seems like some of his sailors were bringing him to court semi frequently.
I’m not a legal scholar. I don’t know if they were valid claims or not, but he keeps finding himself in court and keeps finding himself increasingly in debt as well.
Um, he’s eventually not re elected to the vestry in 17 52.
So just a few years after he first makes it into the vestry, his mansion is eventually sold and later torn down in the 18 hundreds.
And in 17 59 the vestry reassigned his pew to Captain Daniel Malcolm.
The captain Daniel Malcolm of capsule fame. In fact, the one who had his gravestone shot by british soldiers, another connection of old North to the sea.
Um, you know, reassigning pews was something the church only did as a last resort when someone fell behind on their, their pew taxes. So maybe a sign of the truly hard times Grucci had fallen into.
And in the end, it seems like Gruccis success at sea was somewhat easy. Come easy go.
The source of his wealth and prestige was in the sea, but it was also the source of some of his struggles as well.

[32:30] Uh, and he sort of fades out of the records afterwards. It seems like he may have moved back to the isle of Jersey after this and he just kind of disappears from the record.

[32:43] So the story of this one member of Old North offers insight into much wider topics of world history.
You know, lives and fortunes that were tied to the sea.
You know, the role of private hearing and just how interconnected history can really be with events in boston being shaped by events as far away as disputes over a throne in Austria.
And the facts around Gruccis life are incredibly incomplete.
But Richie’s story does offer an opportunity to explore these larger topics that he was a part of.

[33:19] So that’s our, our first story here. Um I just wanted to check in. I mean I know most questions will say for the end, were there any pressing questions that was like that thing you said three minutes and 30 seconds ago? What did you mean by that?

[33:35] This would be a moment to pop that into the chat. And if not, we’ll just continue with another interesting character.
Yeah. If there’s something, if we move on and, and you do have something specific, I’ll do my best to try and remember where I was at that point.
Um, So, uh, never gonna skip ahead a number of decades from the 1740s and 50s, we’re gonna go past Paul Revere’s ride and into the early federal period of American history.
This is after the revolution in the 1790s and early 1800s.
And it’s another member of old north that in his own small way tied the church’s history to yet another historical conflict through his experiences on the sea.
And his story allows us to explore yet another largely forgotten moment of american history.

[34:29] Now, this particular member of Old North was named Captain Samuel Nicholson and he owned a pew 11 in the church.
If you visit the church next time, when you first walk in through the big doors, it’s the far corner pew on the right hand aisle when you walk in.
So one of the first things you see when you walk into the church And a little bit of background on Nicholson.
He’s actually born in Maryland in the 1743 again, to a sailing family that tradition ran strong in a lot of these families and Samuel captained a number of merchant men before the revolutionary war.

[35:05] And then the Revolutionary War breaks out and there’s an opportunity for captains like Nicholson,
to reach positions far higher than they might have ever,
hoped for otherwise in say, you know, the Royal Navy at that time, that’s not to undercut,
any, you know, patriotic feelings he has, but there’s a real opportunity for people that were sort of middling status to, to climb up and Nicholson joins the Continental Navy.
He had brief commands with smaller military ships.
Eventually he traveled to France to take command of a smaller ship called the Dolphin.
Uh, it was being outfitted in France and uh, Nilsson’s basically private tearing at this point.
He’s trying to disrupt british trade, uh, using these, these smaller, faster ships as a minor side as well to um, this is just one example of how the sea is an important part of american identity as well.
You know, supplies were coming from France and other parts of europe that helps the United States win the war.
Uh, there’s, you know, private hearing on the open seas that’s helping to try and win the war.
Um, ships like Nicholson’s are being outfitted and sometimes completely built by the french empire as well too.
Um, so in short, the atlantic played a really important role in, in literally, um, you know, the, the creation of the United States essentially.

[36:35] Back to Nicholson though. Um, he’s actually part of a three ship operation in the irish sea with a number of successful attacks on british shipping there.
And after these successes, he’s promoted captain of the frigate, the USs Dean, which is about as large as it gets in the Continental Army at this time.
They never really made those big battleships in the Continental Navy.
A frigate is kind of like a mid sized ship, had about 32 guns on, on the Dean.
Uh, and also the Dean was completely built in France as well. Another indication of how important they were.
Uh, even with this larger ship though, he’s still focusing on attacking british shipping at this point, the U.
S. Just really couldn’t go toe to toe with these british, you know, um, or the US couldn’t go to toe to toe with these british ships of the line at that point.
Um, he eventually ran into some trouble with his subordinates for alleged poor leadership at this time, but he’s actually cleared after a court marshal.
So it’s unclear whether maybe he made some mistakes,
or whether, you know, american sailors that had, you know, a tradition of some, um, insubordination, uh, maybe maybe false accusations, but either way, um, he’s cleared by a court martial that looks into it.

[37:54] After the war, the Navy’s actually suspended and sort of dissolves.
It was expensive. And this is a government at that point in the 1780s that can’t even collect taxes.
So the Navy Navy just kind of dissolves and Nicholson goes into basically retirement at this point.

[38:12] So going back to a couple images here, it seems that at around this time Nicholson settled in boston.
He actually moved to Denham earlier in, in, in life, but eventually settled in boston and became a member of Old North.
Um, so there’s a number of reasons that would be Old North would again be appealing to someone like Nicholson going beyond the religious reasons.
Again, of course, old North still had a reputation of being a very prominent church in boston and Nicholson himself is fairly prominent. He had a lot of prestige from the war.
Uh, he’s actually eventually elected to the vestry himself.
I included this picture here again to make these figures a little more real. I need to see their names in writing.
Um, but also, uh, but I should mention this is actually a kind of like a photo negative of the original there.
Um, so it’s inverted that the handwriting stands out a little more easily.
Um, but this just happened to be one random record I stumbled on one day at all North, not necessarily the most indicative of his time there,
but I think it’s nice to kind of see see these figures, uh, as well, and as you can clearly clearly see, he’s a member of the vestry pretty early on in this time in Old North.

[39:35] Uh now in 1794 you have a sudden resumption of,
shipbuilding in the US officials, I should say naval shipbuilding official, Navy ships for one, you have a new federal government that had the taxes to pay for a navy.
But context is important here too because around this time there were problems arising on the open sea due to the french revolution and barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean.
Eventually this led to outright naval conflict with France. It’s a very overlooked moment in american history.
Um War was never actually declared between France and the United States,
but for all intents and purposes, this was a war and the confusing nature of this sort of war sort of not explains the war’s name, which is the quasi war or the quasi war.

[40:31] Um Now uh once again, I know probably sick of hearing this, but a brief tangent as to how the war plays out and then back to old north again.
Um So the why of the score Britain and France were at war again after the french revolution.
And France was interfering with us shipping at this time France for one was outraged that the US refused to pay the Revolutionary war debts.
The US used a bit of what I’ll call clever arguing a clever logic to claim that after the french revolution there is a new government.
So all the debts were owed the king of France, not the french republic. So the US said, we’re not going to pay our debts anymore.

[41:16] Um uh You might say the french disagreed.
Um And because of that. And also the fact that the U.
S. Is still openly trading with England who France is at war with France, decided that they’re going to take payment out of us shipping instead and they start stopping ships at sea.
Confiscating cargoes, confiscating ships.
Um So again, we see the necessity of context here for understanding, you know, what’s happening?
Why is Nicholson doing what he’s doing as well? Uh President Adams after this, these raids that c ordered the navy to protect us shipping and release any american vessels that were captured by the french that they could find.
And the Department of the Navy is established for the first time in 17 98.
And from 17 98 to 1800 you have this undeclared war.
Um something like thousands of ships are captured on both sides or sunk.
Um And you have casualties in the fighting, people dying and being wounded in this this fighting, these are mostly ship, you know, ship duels, what they call these one on one fights. So, you don’t have any true major naval battles during the quasi war.

[42:29] Um and the conflict only ended in 1800 when France started losing more and more ships.
The British Navy was taking a heavy toll on them as well at this point.
And of all people, it’s actually Napoleon who steps stops this belligerent policy of confiscating us shipping. So another ironic moment in history there.

[42:50] Um my apologies. Standing napoleon fans out there.
I’m gonna share my screen again here.

[42:58] So, um, that’s the quasi war in a nutshell.
And this is all the context of how Nicholson returns to the stage. You can see an engraving of him on the left.
Um, in the 17 nineties, the US build six new frigates. Again, these are kind of your mid sized battleships back then with a brand new design.
And this picture on the right might look familiar to any fans of naval history out there. The most famous of these six frigates was built in boston at Hearts shipyard in the north end and it’s the U. S. S. Constitution.
And in 17 98 Nicholson returns from retirement and he’s assigned the first captain of the USS Constitution, which is later nicknamed Old Ironsides though, gets that nickname in the war of 18 12.
So after Nicholson’s time here and today it’s the oldest still commissioned warship afloat in the entire world, is still considered technically a part of the U. S. Navy.

[44:00] So a little bit of you know, details on the constitution and its mission.
It had 44 or more guns. It was actually hard for Nicholson to find enough cannon.
He had to borrow some cannon from Castle Island. Um to complete the, the outfitting here and had a crew of about 450. So this is a pretty big position to hold in the U.
In the new U. S. Navy. It had about three years of a build time and was finally finished in 17 97.
Uh As a minor aside, that’s actually why private tears were so popular throughout history.
The build time to make a ship um was extremely long.
So it’s a lot easier to refit existing private ships And it is, you know when war is declared to build a brand new navy from scratch And Nicholson was sent to patrol the coast of North America in July of 1798.

[44:56] So despite its celebrated future, the ship had an ironically rough start to begin.
It’s a brand new design and a brand new ship.
So there’s a learning curve to how it’s gonna handle that. See there’s also a series of storms that caused repeated need for repairs early on.

[45:15] But Nicholson is gonna have a rough go of it as well. Um adding to the early difficulties of the ship.
And in part, it’s the difficulty of the quasi war.
It’s a challenging word to fight when it isn’t quite a war In August of 1798. You can see the challenge of this war here.
When Nicholson captured a privateer near North Carolina and he brought its and its French speaking crew back to the US and my phrasing there.
Um French speaking is a little bit of foreshadowing because it might seem on the surface to be a great success. He’s captured a French privateer pretty early on in his mission.
So great success for Nick Nicholson and this brand new ship, But actually it turned out to be a scandal.
These were French royalists who were actually fighting for the British Empire against the French Republic.
Um so they’re actually a British ship with French royalists born.
And so basically Nicholson has captured a British ship, not a French one.
And when he takes it back to the court, it costs the United States when they eventually determined it was not a legal target, it costs the us $11,000 in reparations in money back then.
So a significant amount of money.

[46:37] So as that was being settled in the courts, Nicholson was sent out again and he had another success again. On the surface he captured the spencer.
Uh but it’s a confused situation. Once again, it’s another french crew, but it seemed to Nicholson like a british ship.
I mean the name alone. The spencer kind of made it a bit confusing. It seemed very much like a british ship.
So finding himself in a similar situation, knowing that his first capture is a bit dubious at this point, Nicholson decided to play it safe and,
released the ship the next day, not realizing that while this was at one time a british ship, it had been captured by a french privateer and was being sent to a french ports at that time that he found it,
so Nicholson accidentally lets the enemy go at this point.

[47:29] Afterwards, there’s two more ships that are captured successfully, but Secretary of the Navy stoddard eventually relieved him from command after the spencer incident.

[47:42] So in 17 99 Nicholson’s relieved of command, but he’s actually not out of the Navy yet because in 1800 there’s the brand new Charlestown Navy Yard.
It was built to maintain this new Federal Navy that had been created just a few years earlier.
And Nicholson’s actually appointed the first superintendent of the Charlestown Navy Yard.
It’s not a bad retirement. Um fairly prestigious position in this brand new U. S. Navy.
And as for Old North, Nicholson’s post is very near his home congregation as well.
So he maintained his membership here at Old North and.

[48:22] Eventually passed away december 28th 18 11, right before the war of 18 12 when his former ship would really become the national icon that it is today.
And he was not just a congregant at Old North, We have the plaque here talking about his service.
Um that’s on the left, but then the, the plaque on the right um is, he was buried at Old North Ultimately as well.
Um So um a prominent member of the community by the time of his death and he got one of those prestigious spots in in the crypt of Old North.
It’s a highlight of the trip tours today, talking about Nicholson’s tombstone.
So through Nicholson, there’s actually a continuation at Old North of this connection to the sea.
Even today, naval officers still regularly come to pay their respects and sometimes leave a coin on top as a token of respect. And you can kind of see those coins stacked up there now.
Um, And the Navy’s also the ones, they’re the ones who actually installed this grave marker that you see.
Nicholson originally did not have a grave marker, but a couple of decades ago they installed on that one there.

[49:36] So Nicholson’s experience opened up insights into more chapters of american history often overlooked today as well.
You know, the individual stories of the congregation beyond what happens in the church itself tell us so much more about american history?
Uh, Nicholson tells us about the quasi war careers made lost and then made again at sea.
And even a little bit about, you know, really diplomatic history as well too in the United States.

[50:06] So to wrap up, you know, the whole talk here, there’s, there’s a couple of larger overarching points,
that stood out to me during, you know, looking into these topics for one Grucci and Nicholson, their stories show just how interconnected history can be and the importance of historical context as well.
You know, who would have thought that exploring old north history would connect us to the french revolution or royal disputes over a throne in Austria and and more,
events are not happening in a bubble, even in the colonial era America was involved in and being affected by larger world events and I think that’s a story old North tells really well in a lot of its history.

[50:53] I think, you know, another thing that comes out is this idea of the opportunity provided by the sea, which I think is a core part of, you know, what we might call the american identity.
Right? This, this notion or narrative of, of being a country of opportunity?
I think stories like this fit into that, but they also challenge us to view history a bit more complexly as well.
What does it mean that Gruccis opportunity came at the expense of others, you know, from conflict?
How does Alderman cranky story complicate our notions of opportunity?
I think stories like these can help push us to dig a little deeper and to at least ask these important questions along the way.
And then lastly, I just want to point out how much there is left to learn.
There’s still very little about Grucci or Nicholson, that’s easily accessible and even less about about cranky.

[51:55] And I think Old North is showing the rewards of continuing research, even on topics that we think we know simply with the amount of detail they’ve been able to add to these individuals just over the last few years.
In fact, um during this sort of reinvigoration into research that Old North is doing.
And you know, this talk could be wildly different in a few years if we keep, you know,
this, keep this process going and keep pushing the boundaries of of what we know and and re exploring these topics and not, you know, see content with with what we know.
And I think it shows the importance of that continuing research.
So all these events that branch out have have rich, interesting histories of their own.
And my hope is that if nothing else these events that weave in and out of Old North story at least raise your curiosity to learn a little bit more.

Jake:
[52:50] To learn more about Old North Church in the sea. Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 255.

[52:59] I’ll include links to several past episodes of hub history that connected TJ’s talkin obvious or surprising ways.

[53:06] I’ll also link to the roster of upcoming talks via the digital speaker series at Old North so you can sign up for their upcoming events.

[53:14] I’m particularly excited for a talk on October 26 by Tad Baker, Professor of History at Salem State and Author of the Book Storm of Witchcraft.
I’ve heard him speak many times at history camp and other venues and I’m hoping he’ll be a guest on the show when his next book is done for the digital speaker series.
Tad will examine the Salem witchcraft hysteria as a failure of leadership by the ministers, judges and governor Sir William Phipps who presided over a miscarriage of justice.
So catastrophic that its name is still synonymous with murderous persecution. 330 years later.

[53:51] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email podcast at hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on twitter facebook and instagram, although I’m most active on twitter.

[54:03] You can also go to 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 us a brief review.
If you do drop me a line and I’ll send you a hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[54:23] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.