John Hancock's Uneasy Afterlife

It's Patriots' Day here in Massachusetts, which means the Boston Marathon, battle reenactments and a Red Sox game at Fenway. In the spirit of the holiday I'm devoting this week's post to a local patriot: John Hancock.

John Hancock is most famous for his dramatic signature on the Declaration of Independence but his life was notable for many other reasons. Hancock, who was born in Braintree in 1736, was extraordinarily wealthy, hung around with radicals like Sam Adams, and became the first governor of Massachusetts when it became independent from the British.

As befits such an important patriot, Hancock's grave is marked with a large monument in Boston's Granary Burying Ground. There's just one catch though - he might not be in it.

He was definitely interred in the Granary Burying Ground when he died in 1793. The large monument was erected in the 19th century; he was initially buried in a brick tomb marked with a white marble slab.

It's too bad he didn't get the bigger monument right away, though, because it might have deterred the grave robbers. According to legend John Hancock was buried with large rings on both hands. Grave robbers came one night to steal them but had trouble prying them off the corpse's stiff fingers. Afraid of being discovered the robbers quickly cut off his hands and escaped into the night. Poor John Hancock's hands were never found. We can assume the robbers sold the rings.

That's pretty gruesome, but things got even worse for Hancock's body when his tomb was destroyed in 1860s during construction on a Park Street basement. The bricks and marble were carted away with the debris and his coffin, which allegedly was made of lead, was melted down to make pipes. His body simply disappeared.

I wish I could say that John Hancock's ghost haunts Tremont and Park Streets looking for his hands, but it doesn't. He devoted his life to the nation so I guess he doesn't care what happened to his body.

I also wish I could definitively say these stories are true, but I can't. I found references to these stories many places on the web but couldn't find any verification in print. The two Hancock biographies I found at the library end with his death, and don't cover the history of his tomb. A guidebook to the the Granary Burying Ground had disappeared from the reference section. If anyone knows anything about these stories please let me know!

Like so many events associated with our nation's founding I'll have to be satisfied with a mix of legend and history. At least it's interesting!

Patriotic Ladies in Drag

This Monday is Patriots' Day, which has been celebrated since 1969 in Massachusetts and Maine to commemorate the Battles of Lexington and Concord. I'm sure there will be a big crowd in those towns this weekend to watch the historical re-enactors do battle. It's a fun thing for tourists to do, and I'm sure the reenactors enjoy pretending to be someone else for a day. It's their day in the spotlight!

If we were able to travel back in time to the Revolutionary War, and if we looked closely, we'd see that some people in the American Continental army were also pretending to be something other than they really were.

I'm talking, of course, about women who disguised themselves as men to join the army.

I don't know how many there were across the thirteen colonies, but there were at least two cross-dressing patriots from New England. The first, Ann Bailey, was a Massachusetts native who enlisted in August of 1777. Ann served under Brigadier General John Patterson in the Boston Regiment under the name Samuel Gay. Her pseudonym seems very appropriate to a modern reader, but stop that giggling - gay didn't acquire it's current meaning until the 20th century.

Unfortunately, Ann's gay time in the army didn't last very long. Her femininity was discovered, and she was arrested. For attempting to serve the young nation she was sentenced to two months in jail and fined sixteen pounds plus court costs. (Interestingly, there is another more famous Anne Bailey from Virginia who wore men's clothing and joined the army.)

Deborah Sampson, 1760 - 1827

A different Massachusetts woman had a more successful military career. In 1782, Deborah Sampson joined the army under the name Robert Shurtleff. She fought admirably in several battles, and even treated her own wounds to avoid being discovered. Deborah eventually came down with a fever that she couldn't treat and was forced to seek help from a doctor. Surprisingly, he didn't reveal her secret and Deborah served until she was honorably discharged in 1787. Her true identity of course eventually came to light, but she still received pensions from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States, thanks to advocacy from Paul Revere.

What motivated these two ladies to cross-dress and join the army? Patriotism? Poverty? A need for adventure? And how do we fit them into modern categories like gay, straight, or transgendered?

Those are tough questions that I can't answer. Deborah Sampson did marry a man and have three children, but may have dallied with other women while she was disguised as a man. Herman Mann, the author of her 1797 biography, wrote the following:

To mention the intercourse of our Heroine with her sex, would, like others more dangerous, require an apology I know not how to make. It must be supposed, she acted more from necessity, than a voluntary impulse of passion.

I guess even then the official policy was don't ask, don't tell!

I got most of this information from the History Project's Improper Bostonians. Lesbian and Gay History from the Puritans to Playland. As always, the Web provides a wealth of information.

Concord's Haunted Inn

In late March Tony and I took a trip to Concord, Massachusetts. It's the quaintest town I've ever been in! Tony took plenty of photos.

There's plenty there to see, like Nathaniel Hawthorne's grave in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Hawthorne included lots of folklore in books like The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables. While in Sleepy Hollow, we also saw three of my favorite animals: a groundhog, crows, and a garter snake.


We stopped by Walden Pond, and saw the site of Thoreau's famous cabin in the woods. The pile of stones has been placed there, one rock at a time, in tribute by visitors.


Parts of the Minuteman National Park are also in Concord. It was late March when we were there, and the Concord River had flooded over its banks in a big way.


Concord is historic, well-maintained and very pretty. But, as a long-time fan of Stephen King, I know every little New England town has some spooky secret. For Concord, it's the ghost that haunts the Concord Inn.



The Concord Inn's original structure was built in 1716 by John Minot, and was expanded by subsequent owners. It opened as a hotel in 1899.

Room 24, which is in the oldest part of the inn, is reportedly haunted. A man in 18th century clothing has been seen repeatedly in that room. He never harms anyone or speaks, but simply walks towards the fireplace and disappears. According to Thomas D'Agostino in Haunted Massachusetts, in 2005 a group of ghost hunters investigating the Inn saw the man, and had a book thrown at them.

A well-known story about the Inn goes something like this. Many years ago, a pair of newlyweds were honeymooning in Room 24. The bridge awoke in the middle of the night, feeling uneasy. At the foot of her bed she saw, glowing faintly, a man in antiquated clothing! He disappeared into the fireplace. The terrified bride shook her husband awake, and explained what she had seen. "We need to leave at once!", she said.

"But darling", her husband replied, "the ghost comes with the price of the room."

The owners of the Concord Inn don't hide the fact they have a ghost. After all, it's probably good for business. They have more information about the ghost on their Web site.

Happy Patriots Day!