Great [Liberty] Trees and elms, etc.

Tue Mar 9 17:09:26 UTC 2010

On Mon, Mar 8, 2010 at 10:02 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> Victor Steinbok wrote:
>>This is great coverage. However, sometimes one needs to cast the net
>>a bit wider, especially when dealing with only a partial historical record.
>
> His wider net (not included below due to limits on ADS-L message
> lengths) seems to be mostly history, not American dialect.

I was concerned with the identification of the Great Tree(s)--which
(or one of which) would later become the Liberty Tree. Separating the
history of language from history is fraught with risks of creating a
fictional record of a "dialect" that never was.

> However --
> The Liberty Tree was located  in Deacon Jacob Elliott's "grove of old
> elm trees."  Fischer, Liberty and Freedom, p. 19.  His footnote 1
> cites "The Writings of Samuel Adams", ed. Harry A. Cushing.

I tried to confine myself to contemporaneous materials up to 1773,
with a few exceptions that used documents of the same period. I am
significantly more skeptical of post-factum accounts and
recollections, especially where details of naming objects and places
are concerned and where a difference of a couple of days may be
significant. Memoirs are notoriously unreliable for such details and
history books are worse--they are filled with legends and myths far
more than facts.

> Victor noted a "Mr. /John Eliot/ Stationer [perhaps a relative of the
> Deacon; don't worry about the different spelling], living near the
> great Trees."  In the days before street numbers, advertisements
> (especially) gave locations with reference to known and notable
> landmarks -- the Town-House, a tavern or coffee-house, etc.  Likely
> by the 1760s the elms' location had become so well-known that it was
> given the honor of the capital G -- particularly if the
> increasingly-resistant Bostonians had already become accustomed to
> gathering for seditious conversation in the shade of Deacon Elliott's grove.

This is objectively correct, except for the detail that I "noted" "a
Mr. /John Eliot/ Stationer". In fact, I merely conveyed the text of
the advertisement that contained his name, without comment.

> The advertisement from "John Haskins, Farmer" is certainly
> satirical.  Although I don't know what underlies the reference to
> Essex County, I'm sure "farmer" has the doubled meaning of "tax
> collector, " especially one who receives a cut from the proceeds --
> as the colonial Stamp Masters did.

There is no dispute that the ad was satirical--in fact, it was clearly
a part of the rhetorical exchange on the subject on the pages of
newspapers of the period on the subject of the Stamp Act. As for John
Haskins, he is a noteworthy figure. According to later accounts
(couldn't be done otherwise), Haskins was a Lieutenant of the Boston
Regiment, but he joined it in 1768. He is the grandfather of Ralph
Waldo Emerson and David Greene Haskins. The former wrote a poem on the
occasion of his death while the latter wrote a brief biography both as
a separate article and as a part of his book about Emerson's ancestry.
DGH had described Haskins as one of the original "Sons of Liberty" in
1765, but later becoming a "moderate royalist". He attended the King's
Chapel, which was later notorious as being associated with royalists
and which was closed with the British retreat in 1776. Haskins,
however, remained in Boston and continued to run his business into the
early 19th century. He died in 1814.

DGH notes that John Haskins acquired a "significant tract of land"
between 1764-69, located between what are now Harrison and Washington
Streets. He build a three story mansion on the Harrison Street
side--DGH claims it was in 1765, but the ad I cited earlier seems to
suggest it was in 1764.

Yes, I know, this is all history. However, my goal is to look at the
historical context of the naming of the Liberty Tree and, among other
suggestions, it appears that Haskins is of the first /recorded/
persons to have referred to the tree as The Tree of Liberty.

> "Caricatura" in 1765 had not seemed remarkable to me.  It appears to
> be sense 2.b, for which see "caricature", 2. "A portrait or other
> artistic representation, in which the characteristic features of the
> original are exaggerated with ludicrous effect.' and [2]b. "transf.
> of literary or ideal representation."  For this sense of the form
> "caricatura," the OED already has 3 citations between 1732 and 1783.

All of this is fair and indeed the appearance of "caricatura" in this
time period is unremarkable. My parenthetical comment to the OED was
in jest. But I disagree with the identification. It is clearly /not/
2.b. because it is not meant as an idealized or stereotypical
representation. In fact, the word here is used to mean something like
a "cartoon" (as in a "political cartoon"--of the type that one would
later find in Punch), in which case the meaning is closer to 2., not
2.b., but also may well be something that does not match any of the
OED definitions (I'll let the OED people figure it out).

> This well-known image originated in Britain, not America, as an
> engraving published in London in March, 1765 -- shortly after the
> passage of the Stamp Act, but before the Liberty Tree.  Its
> description at the following link corresponds with the Boston
> newspaper article cited by Victor.  http://tinyurl.com/yfswf44   John
> Singleton Copley based his 1765 etching, published (as the newspaper
> says) on Nov. 1, on this.  See "Made in America: Printmaking,
> 1760-1860," by Stefanie A. Munsing, pp.3-4, at http://tinyurl.com/ya64plw

Am I reading this right? The image in the "caricatura" originated in
London in March of 1765 and was well known in Boston /prior/ to events
of the Liberty Tree--or contemporaneous with them. Since the image
included specifically a tree labeled Liberty, would it not suggest
that it may well have prompted the colonists to name /their/ tree "the
Tree of Liberty"? This seems to confirm, not contradict, the point
I've been making all along.

> On March 6 (Saturday) I had reported many of the instances of "Sons
> Of Liberty" that Victor later sent us again (see below).  For some
> unknown reason I had not seen the 1764 instance until yesterday, and
> had not reported it here yet.

By no means am I claiming primacy in any of this! I simply cataloged a
list of citations, regardless of who found them and when. This is not
an adversarial process and by no means am I trying to steal Mr.
Berson's thunder. In fact, I am happy to give him full credit for the
discovery of /all/ instances of Sons of Liberty, whether he noted them
on this list or not. My only concern is with establishing a hypothesis
for the naming of the Liberty Tree (and prompting the OED to change
its definition of both Liberty Tree and Tree of Liberty).

VS-)

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