By the time the Times of Hardship were over, everyone in Boston was united against the British. Dock workers, businessmen, shippers, the man in the street: they hated the British occupying soldiers. Boston became the Cradle of the Revolution. No town was more united in spirit than Boston.
I had three relatives, one an ancestor, who lived through them; they had grown up in the city. The Times of Hardship were actually a period of time in which England occupied Boston with troops who were rude, uncouth, and disrespectful. The troops would beat up or kill locals in gangs and get away with it. They were also allowed to compete for jobs on the docks that were already scarce. And they did this obviously because they weren't being paid enough. They showed great disrespect to the dock workers, beat them up regularly, and said whatever they wanted about who started it or whose fault it was.
The dockworkers were a rough and tumble bunch who had started out burning effigies of the Pope or of Guy Fawkes, but soon turned into anti-British mobs who would gather in gangs and attack British-oowned enterprises; such was the Tea Party, though it didn't come until later. Let's just say that the dockworker culture became visibly and violently anti-British and it was for very good reason. All through the colonies, people were generally ok with being British, ok with being a colony, until it became economically punishing to be aligned with them, so the business class, which was much more numerous and prosperous, was slowly joining the rebel cause as the various taxes took their toll. For his part, the King was arrogant and liked to use the taxes to punish the rebels. You attack our ships, we raise your tariffs that much more. You don't like this, screw you, give me your money. It seemed like robbery to people who were used to a well-ordered system of trade values.
John Leverett, an ancestor of mine, had an import business that he'd set up back in the days when British goods were really popular. It was in the old Town Dock in the heart of Boston's business district, and it sold things for women who made their own dresses: buttons, hems, lace, that kind of thing. He sold the newest of what came off the ships from England, and he'd done this for years, and made a lot of money. He lived right downtown behind the First Church, where Hudson had once lived, because as the oldest son of Knight the metalsmith he inherited it. He had his kids baptised in the church and was proud that his line could be traced up to John the Governor of the Colony in the 1670s. He was so entrenched in his business that he couldn't do much when the Times of Hardship snuck up on everyone and turned the city virulently anti-British.
So it was that a mob burned and destroyed his entire store one night. Some people have said that it was British soldiers who did it in revenge for anti-British mobs, but the more I study the event, the more I believe it was just anti-British mobs destroying everything that had any connection to Britain and looting everything they could. I'll admit I don't know who did it, but it doesn't matter; his store, his livelihood, his identity were all gone in a single night. He became an Overseer of the Poor.
Overseers of the Poor were like social workers tasked to make sure that widows and single mothers, and their children, didn't starve in hard times. Most of them had come from the business community and, like John, had enough money themselves. The community would give them a territory and then give them surplus food or money to spend to feed the people who were starving in it.
The problem was that the Times of Hardship included an economic blockade that was so bad that that money and those supplies had dwindled to nothing. It became practice for Boston children to be sent out to the countryside to be adopted by farm families who at least had food to eat, as even the adults in Boston proper were starving and whoever could do it was sneaking out to the countryside to get food and smuggle it back. Of course soldiers would stop them and harass them on the roads in and out of Boston: show me your papers, give me that food or I'll beat you up, this kind of thing. It was ugly. Everyone hated the Times of Hardship.
John's oldest son John was growing up and due to go to Harvard in 1773. By that time the whole city was aligned very strongly against the British. There were a few Loyalists, but it was getting so if you were a Loyalist you'd better just shut up or go back to Britain quick while you had time.
John had a brother Thomas, who was a printer, and whose son Thomas was also due to go to Harvard in 1773. John Jr. and Thomas Jr. had in essence grown up together, baptised in the same church, cousins the same age, both oldest boy in the family. Thomas the printer had made a fortune too, printing grammar books for people in the countryside and printing just about everything that needed printing. Printing was a lucrative business at that time though it involved importing paper and put one in the crosshairs of a freedom of speech fight that was getting pretty nasty. Thomas had done well financially and had an estate in Medford or somewhere north of Boston.
When it came time for the boys to go to Harvard, they did. They were the same age, were cousins, and were inseperable in their Harvard years. But in their senior year, Harvard moved itself off to Concord so that the rebel troops could house themselves in the Harvard buildings. By that time it was war time and people contributed whatever they could to the cause.
There was another Leverett who appeared to live in the shadows; this one was my ancestor. I'm still not sure exactly where he came from or what his timeline was. At the time John Jr. and thomas Jr. were at Harvard and in Concord, he had moved out of town and established himself in Needham on a small piece of land. He had possibly grown up in Thomas' estate in Medford, being a relative but not a son of Thomas the printer, and was a little older than John Jr. and Thomas Jr. The first of his children were born in Boston but then they began being born and recorded in Needham.
The Times of Hardship had a very strong effect on Boston and on the political climate. The Boston Massacre happened on docks that were once part of the Leverett estate, though that whole downtown estate had to be sold when John Leverett the President of Harvard died, having been starved into debt by Puritans who wanted him to give up making Harvard a secular school back in the early 1700s. The original estate, which went from what is today the Sears Building down Congress Street to the harbor (what was known as Leverett Lane, then Quaker Lane), was also the home of the Tea Party and is today where the Tea Party museum stands. It was called Gray's dock back then, and the Grays married into the Leverett family (Thomas the printer's wife) and were very prominent and important people at the time. There were a lot of land transfers between the sale of the estate and the Revolution, so I can't prove any of this, but it's well known that both the Massacre and the Tea Party happened roughly at Gray's dock so I'll stand by my claims for the moment.
Thomas the printer died during the revolution; John the Overseer of the Poor got sick and his son John Jr. moved with him and his wife to Connecticut. Both John Jr. and Thomas Jr. graduated from Harvard, in Concord; Thomas became a surgeon, but was drafted and captured on a boat, and spent years imprisoned by the British in Brooklyn Harbor, on a boat that they made a movie out of, because conditions were so horrible that people died left and right. To the colonists the conditions on that prison boat somewhat represented the contempt that Britain had for the rebels from the start, that raised everyone's ire and made them that much more patriotic to split off from a country that there was otherwise no reason to be so angry about. Why, you might ask, would the colonies need to fight and kill to be free of their British heritage? Well, put yourself in the Times of Hardship and you'll see why.
John Jr. was busy taking care of his father and mother in Connecticut, but joined the Army at one point; his service was short and late in the war. Thomas Jr. died early from his experience in Brooklyn Harbor. William, the guy in Needham, was recruited to be an officer, and fought in the Battle of MOnmouth (I believe) and the Battle of Rhode Island, but officers weren't being paid very well, and this created an issue for his family back home in Needham. It was rough times and everyone was in pretty bad health but somehow one of his sons survived, and through him apparently my line sprung up. Somehow the memory of the Times of Hardship is still in our bones. The right to free speech, the right to protest, the right to associate with whomever you want, the right to not be kidnapped and beat up randomly, the right to have whatever religion you want, or no religion at all, the right to carry arms and fight back against armed thugs, the right to keep and eat the food you grow, these are rights that we had written into the Constitution the minute we got the chance to write it. And when we did, John Hancock, first of the big ship-owners and businessmen, was the first to sign it, or maybe just signed it the biggest. Everyone was against the armed thugs by that time, there wasn't anyone who actually still wanted to see them around, taking everyone's food and beating them up at will. That had gone on for years, too many years. To be free of that was a joyous occasion, worthy of a shout out.
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