Chapter Eight
brAINTREE
Massachusetts Bay Colony
My husband nominated George Washington to be commander in chief of our patriot militias. We needed a seasoned soldier, and
Washington was an experienced officer of the French and Indian War. It was also a good political choice, for a Virginian defending
Massachusetts Bay Colony would remind the British that they couldn’t simply crush us to force other colonies to submit.
Of course, appointing a military commander was a monumental, irreversible step. We had been called rebels before, but now we would rebel in truth. We would not meekly submit and let them kill us. The British had chosen the
sword, but they were not the only ones who could wield one. More battles would follow. Now wives would lose husbands. Children
would lose fathers. Mothers would lose sons. Women and children would fall victim, too. It was ever thus, in war.
And though my husband had done nothing in word or deed to encourage bloodshed at Lexington and Concord, in the congress, he’d
given voice and form to our determination to defend ourselves. It was for that reason that on George Washington’s way to camp
in Cambridge, the celebrated soldier stopped to call upon me.
At the sound of light horse on the dusty summer road, I’d hurried from the garden, my basket filled with herbs—lavender, feverfew,
and chamomile. The general had caught me out in plain brown homespun, dirt from the garden upon my sleeve. So, I’m afraid
I was quite flummoxed in the presence of so tall and poised a soldier wearing a polished uniform of buff and blue.
I was apt to like him, but still I was struck by Washington’s dignity and by the elegance of his person when I invited him inside and he stooped to enter our humble dwelling, his riding boots heavy on our creaky floorboards.
Washington smelled faintly of leather and tobacco when he stooped to kiss my hand in greeting. “Madam, it is my honor to present
my respects to the wife of that fierce patriot leader Mr. Adams. The man everyone listens to in congress.”
Delighted to hear my husband praised in this way, I bobbed a brief curtsey. “The honor is mine, sir, for you are the man everyone trusts to lead us to victory in this war.”
Our new commander in chief towered over every other man in his entourage. With broad shoulders, steely eyes, and a lean military
bearing, he projected a manly aura that inspired confidence. So I added, “I believe we cannot be in better hands. And I wish
you well in this fight.”
Washington smiled, modestly, then took in my spinning wheel with approving eyes. “We cannot win this fight without the patriotism
of our ladies. We rely on your sacrifices, frugality, and industry with homemade wares.”
It charmed me that he understood that. “Speaking for the ladies, we are happy to do our part.”
Washington bowed in appreciation. “Until my wife arrives to lend her feminine graces to camp, I hope you’ll come often to
inspirit the officers, Mrs. Adams.”
“I hope to try and so look forward to meeting your wife.”
But in the meantime, I had many worries . . .
We were short of every sort of commodity at home. The war was creating financial havoc, and we’d need something to trade beside
coin. Something valuable. Something we could easily carry if we needed to flee . . .
I was struck by inspiration on an afternoon in which Nabby, Patty, and I were sewing together.
We were working our needles by the window, dust motes in the air.
Now that Charlie was nearly in breeches, I was trying to cut down one of his old doublets for Tommy.
That’s when I dropped a pin to the floor between the boards.
Nabby scrambled down to help pry it out, and I said, “Don’t lose it.
These days pins are more valuable than gold. ”
“Then we’re doubly rich,” Nabby replied, having found not one pin between the floorboards, but two!
I paused, a thoughtful finger upon my chin. The neighboring ladies all complained that pins had become scarce. If I could
get hold of some, perhaps I could sell them like a hawker.
It might not be dignified—I feared what might be whispered about me at meeting during Reverend Wibird’s sermons—but it’d give
me more than the crops and eggs to keep us fed.
The only trouble was, where to find pins when Boston was occupied?
Well, Boston wasn’t the only port in the colonies. So, by way of Paul Revere when next his rides took him by my house, I sent
a note to John in Philadelphia, begging him to send pins.
He didn’t send them with his next missive, but he did side with me against Mr. Hayden.
First, he commended me for my charity to refugees. Then he told the man who refused to make room for them to pack his bags
and vacate our milk house altogether. John was finished with him as a tenant, and wrote, “I will not endure the least disrespectful
expression to my wife.”
I found this terribly gratifying . . . but where were the pins? In light of the weighty war that took up my husband’s time,
pins must’ve seemed such a trivial matter. But I had a larder to replenish if I were to keep his children alive and feed refugees
besides. My spices were gone, the cornmeal much diminished, and I couldn’t remember the last bite of salt pork we’d had for
our stew.
So I felt no compunction about nagging for pins, insisting that he send them with any passing courier or friend until John sent more than a thousand in all.
Nabby and I counted.
But John had requested a favor in return: “I want to be informed from hour to hour of anything that happens in Boston—how
the Tories subsist, whether the troops are healthy or sickly, and everything which passes in our army.”
To gather that information I’d have to leave the farm.
It meant donning boots, hauling saddle, and taking the horse myself to visit neighbors, the market, and relatives.
It meant conversing with every passing rider on the road.
Gauging loyalties. Testing the logic of the rumors before passing them on.
And most of all, it meant writing letters—even embarrassed by my spelling as I often was.
It would be delicate and time-consuming work added to all my other responsibilities; nevertheless, I threw myself into it.
I had, after all, promised George Washington that we ladies were happy to do our part.
John locked the door of our rented room in Watertown and I flew into his arms like a girl half my age. He swung me up into
those strong arms and carried me to a lumpy straw bed that groaned under our weight, but I didn’t care because we’d been four
months apart.
John rained down kisses upon me with the ardor of youth. T’was a sweet reunion, made sweeter by the anxieties we suffered,
for our legislators had fled here to escape arrest. So we were, in a sense, in hiding. It was exciting. Intoxicating. And
we came together trembling with emotions ranging from love to despair.
Later, our fingers twined in the candlelight, John teased, “Mrs. Delegate, they call you. A title you deserve for becoming my eyes and ears. People have little notion how important you are to me
or to the cause.”
“Perhaps they should know,” I said, weary of the caution with which we now were forced to write to one another. I’d even taken to signing my letters
under a pseudonym—Portia—in case any of our letters were intercepted.
It felt almost like spycraft, but if it was, I refused to feel shame for it. Nestling closer to my husband, I said, “I think
the wives of all the delegates should assume your titles. After all, we give you up our names in marriage and hazard all with
you.”
It was not entirely a jest, for if our husbands were arrested, none of us would be spared of consequence. But John pointed
out I was especially deserving, as unlike any of the other wives of the delegates, I’d gone to meet the officers of our ragtag
army and made recommendations of who ought to be elevated over the others.
Fearing that he was teasing me, I said, “Military command may not be my sphere, but with so many clamoring for your favor, you need disinterested advice and information.”
“Indeed. How did you come by so much information, Mrs. Adorable? Your letters were more useful than reports from scouts in
the field.”
“I made it my business,” I said. “I suffered through so many cups of liberty tea with lady friends that I’m practically pickled
in it. Ladies know more than you realize. Also, gentlemen like to talk to me and often forget what they’re saying in the presence
of a woman, so I paid attention.”
One thing I’d learned this way was that the British General Gage was attempting to repair the lighthouse on Great Brewster
Island to help his forces arrive. To prevent any such repair, our people went to recapture it or burn it to the ground if
necessary. Fighting with more than thirty marines, our side had won the skirmish, but several were killed.
“I attended the funerals,” I told John, gravely. “It seemed right that I should. And in so doing, I met with wounded British
soldiers we’d taken prisoner.”
John’s sleepy eyes came more awake. “And what did they have to say for themselves?”
“I confess that I was still grieving the death of Dr. Warren and approached the prisoners with an altogether too haughty bearing.”
I was angry at what these soldiers were subjecting me to—fear for my children, my husband, our future, and our very lives.
“I was unmindful of their injuries, though some were still bleeding through their bandaged arms. Arms that my own uncle, Dr.
Tufts, had helped tend.”
“But you spoke to them?”
I nodded. “I said, ‘It is very unhappy, gentlemen, that you should be obliged to fight your best friends here in America under
the banner of the Crown.’ To my surprise, they said they were sorry.”
“Not sorry enough to go home,” John grumbled.
“One said he came with no thoughts of fighting but was obliged to obey orders. And that they wished with all their souls that
those who sent them here would do the fighting instead.”
That sentiment my husband could understand, but he turned slightly to the wall as he contemplated it.
“John, they were told if they were taken alive, we’d kill them.”
“There is hope, then, that British soldiers will see how they’re lied to.”
In my experience, people were not easily disabused of lies they had swallowed, but I confessed, “I was affected by their contrition.
It smothered my desire to rain down curses on their heads, and filled me with a hope that decent men might end the fighting.”
But, of course, we could not wait upon it.
So, when the rooster crowed, I rolled out of that lumpy, too-narrow rented bed even as John tried to stop me. “Pray tell,
where do you think you’re going, wife?”
“We must both be about our business early today. While you speak to the legislators, I’ll speak to their wives and sell pins.
We need pins for our sewing—especially now that we have an army to clothe. I’m selling ten per packet. Nabby has tied them
neatly with twine.”
John grimaced and sighed as if he was indulging me in some lunatic idea. He couldn’t afford to turn his nose up at a good
honest trade. But neither could my husband’s vanity be comfortable with his wife as a merchant.
Well, that vanity is going to cost him, I decided. “For every grimace or sigh about my pins, I will deduct some small portion of the profits for myself.”
“By law, everything you own belongs to me,” he teased. “And a small percentage of nothing is nothing.”
That remark was going to cost him, too.
As it happened, I did such a brisk business selling pins for three, four, and even five times what we paid for them—that he
didn’t even begrudge me my pin money, as he called it. And I tucked those coins into the linen pocket tied round my waist, feeling fully entitled to them.
I liked the weight of money. Especially as it felt like the only secure thing I could cling to when John left again for Philadelphia.
For this time, neither of us knew how long he’d be gone.