Bunker Hill

account of the Tea Party depends largely on Benjamin Carp’s
Defiance of the Patriots
, pp. 118–40, and Benjamin Labaree’s
The Boston Tea Party
, pp. 140–45. According to Edward Byers in
Nation of Nantucket
, whale oil exports constituted almost 53 percent of all pounds sterling earned by New England’s exports to Great Britain in the years prior to the Revolution (p. 144). On Hancock’s attempts to corner the whale oil market, see Eric Jay Dolin’s
Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
, pp. 132–35; see also W. T. Baxter’s
The House of Hancock
, especially pp. 243–46, on Hancock’s final disastrous 1766 campaign to corner the market, which resulted in the loss of 3,600 pounds sterling and effectively ended Hancock’s attempts to compete with the Nantucketers. Also adding to the anti-Nantucket feeling among the Boston patriots was the fact that one of the leading customs officials in Boston, Nathaniel Coffin Sr., came from a family with deep island connections, a point made by James Grieder in “The Boston Tea Party Unmasked: Nantucket’s Real Role in the Start of the American Revolution,”
Historic Nantucket
, vol. 62, no. 1,
p. 12.
    Joyce Junior’s broadsides and other announcements appeared in the January 17 and 31, March 28, and April 4, 1774, issues of the
Boston Gazette
; an advertisement for John Winthrop Junior’s latest shipment of “Baltimore Flour” also appears in the April 4 issue. My description of Joyce Junior’s back history is based in part on two articles by Albert Matthews, “Joyce Junior” and “Joyce Junior Once More.” The identity of Joyce was revealed by a loyalist commentator in a listing of various patriot leaders from 1775 in the James Bowdoin papers at the MHS; see MHS
Proceedings
, 2nd ser., 12 (1897–8): 139–42. A physical description of Joyce Junior appeared in the November 9, 1821,
Boston Daily Advertiser
: “A man used to ride on an ass, with immense jack boots, and his face covered with a horrible mask, and was called Joyce, Jr. His office was to assemble men and boys in mob style, and ride in the middle of them, and in such company to terrify adherents to royal government, before the Revolution. The tumults which resulted in the massacre, 1770, was excited by such means. Joyce Junior was said to have a particular whistle, which brought his adherents, etc. whenever they were wanted.” Esther Forbes writes insightfully about the hazy genealogy of Joyce Junior and its connection to Pope Night in
Paul Revere
, pp. 96, 127, 189, 211, 326–29, 471–72. On Pope Night, see J. L. Bell, “Du Simitiere’s Sketches of Pope Day in Boston 1767.” Alfred Young describes Joyce Junior as “an all-powerful figure who would mobilize the people against their enemies but would not countenance mob action,” in the chapter “Tar and Feathers and the Ghost of Oliver Cromwell,” in
Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution
, p. 164; elsewhere Young speaks of the “conservative backlash” that followed the Tea Party in the spring of 1774, p. 121. A version of Joyce Junior appears in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “My Kinsman, Major Molineux.” On John Winthrop Jr. see Clifford Shipton’s biographical essay in
SHG
, 16:294–95.
    My account of Boston in 1774 is based largely on Nathaniel Shurtleff,
A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston
; Shurtleff refers to the Nathaniel Hawthorne short story collection,
Legends of Province House
, that talks about how the Indian atop Province House appeared to be aiming at the weathercock of the Old South Meetinghouse, p. 601; see also Walter Muir Whitehill’s
Boston: A Topographical History
. On the Liberty Tree at the corner of Essex and Newbury streets, see Arthur Schlesinger, “The Liberty Tree: A Genealogy.” Richard Frothingham in
History of the Siege of Boston
(
HSOB
)
writes of the flagstaff that rose out of the top of the Liberty Tree, p. 27. See
Deacon Tudor’s Diary
for an account of the deep snow in Boston in late January; on January 31 he wrote: “Still cold, fine sledding for 200 miles to the westward as travelers tell us and snow in general 3 feet deep. This January for the most part has been very cold” (p. 45). My description of the tarring and feathering of John Malcom is based largely on Frank Hersey’s “Tar and Feathers: The Adventures of Captain John Malcom,” which reprints accounts of the incident that appeared in Boston newspapers, as well as