Moose on the Loose

Joseph Newell is making a fair number of breeches, and many are generically labeled as "leather", others are deerskin, lambskin, sheepskin, and "moos".  There is also one entry for:

"pare of lambskin and making a pare of drawers and finding thread" at a cost of 4 shillings.

It would appear that drawers were being made of leather as well as linen.  And Mr. Newell is also making gloves for both men and women. He even mentions a pair of leather mittens.

Examining advertisements in period newspapers confirm that there are a wide variety of skins available for a breeches maker and glover to use.

Boston Post Boy - March 7, 1774

We can also, specifically, document the availability of moose.

But were these skins from local moose? 

Well here's yet another example of how research can lead you down side streets.  I was searching the newspapers for any mention of Brookfield (not necessarily relating to moose), and found the following items.

Boston Evening Post

Essex Gazette September 26, 1969

Apparently a moose sighting in the Worcester area was as unusual then as it is today. Enough so, that it made the newspapers both times it happened. And according to the earlier article, moose hadn't frequented Brookfield for 40 years when there was a moose on the loose two years earlier.

They also appear to be that much of an oddity that Bostonians could pay to see one according to this ad:

Boston Chronicle October 17, 1768

And if you hadn't ever had the chance to see a moose up close and personal, a description of them could be found in this article on exotic creatures.

So are you now wondering, as I am, if the skins of the two moose that wandered into Brookfield in 1767 and 1769 ended up on Joseph Newell's workbench??? ....and who got to dine on the moose lips?

..........and is anyone thinking about making "moos" breeches this Hive season?

Sex, Intrigue, Murder, and Knit Breeches

You never know where research might lead you.  Who knew that the investigation of one of Joseph Newell's customers would turn up a tale of sex, intrigue, murder and knit breeches. 

On March 1, 1778, Joshua Spooner of Brookfield, MA (one of Joseph Newell's customers), was murdered by three men at the directive of his wife, Bathsheba Ruggles Spooner.  All four were tried, found guilty and subsequently hanged.

Bathsheba, the daughter of wealthy Tory, General Timothy Ruggles, married Joshua Spooner before things got politically difficult for her father, when in 1775 he pulled up stakes and shipped off to Nova Scotia.

Timothy Ruggles

Unhappy in her marriage, Bathsheba had an affair with a teenage soldier, Ezra Ross, who she and her husband had taken in.  She somehow convinced her lover (who had got her pregnant) and two British army deserters, William Brooks and James Buchanan, to kill her husband. The unfortunate Mr. Spooner ended up bludgeoned to death and his body thrown into a well.

A quick google search for Joshua Spooner lead to this story of his untimely death.  But while digging deeper, I discovered some other things that were interesting from a clothing standpoint - and that was the original point of this exercise.  In a book written in 1844 by Peleg W. Chandler (a member of the American Antiquarian Society and Bostonian Society) entitled, "American Criminal Trials Volume 2", Chandler retells this sordid tale, based on the transcripts from the trial along with period newspaper accounts.  (By the way, it's a great read and also contains several other legal cases, including the trial of Major Andre.)

According to witness testimony, William Brooks, one of the British soldiers who murdered Mr. Spooner, was seen wearing "a pair of black knit breeches and a cloth jacket with metal buttons" when apprehended. A woman staying at the Spooner's house told the court that the night of the murder, she was asked by Mrs. Spooner to go upstairs and get "a pair of black knit breeches".  And a witness named Charles Simson, testified that he recognized the jacket Brooks was wearing, as one he had altered for Mr. Spooner.  (Guess Mr. Spooner had to find a new tailor since Joseph Newell had just joined the army.)  Another witness sees Ezra Ross (Bethsheba's lover) putting on some of Mr. Spooner's clothes and Bathsheba throwing Mr. Ross's blood covered breeches into the fire.

It's no wonder these four were convicted!

Continental Journal April 30, 1778

Returning to the clothing aspect for the moment, we have now seen knit breeches being made and worn in New England, from as early as the 1760's to 1778, and might argue that we, as living history interpreters, need to figure out how to reproduce what appears to be a relatively common item of clothing - knit breeches. But that's a discussion for another day. In the meantime, you may want to read "Mr. Mann's" post on the subject.


From 1760-1771, Joseph Newell makes the following entries in his ledger. I'm sure he never could have imagined that just after he would march off with the Continental Army, his long standing customer, Joshua Spooner, would be found dead in a well at hands of three soldiers, one American, the other two British deserters, according to a plan masterminded by the wife he had married in 1766.

Who was Joseph Newell?

So we're officially down the rabbit hole...

My first stop was the Vital Records of Brookfield, MA for some genealogical information. (Turns out that New Braintree was not incorporated until 1751) I found out that Joseph Newell was born on July 2, 1747 to Daniel & Miriam. He married Ruth Wright on September 14, 1780, had a pile of kids, and died on December 26, 1831 at the ripe old age of 84.

Now this all started with the question of the missing years in Joseph's account book.  Well, it appears that he did go off to war in 1778. According to the Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, Volume 11 there is a listing for a Joseph Newell.

"Joseph Newell, Brookfield - Return of men raise to serve in the Continental Army from Captain Nathan Hamilton's (1st) co, Col Converse (4th Worcester Co.) regt., Sworn to at Brookfield Feb 18, 1778. Residence Brookfield; engaged for town of Brookfield (also given Western) Joined Capt Haywood's co., Col Nixon's regiment"

I guess we'll need to return to the account book to see if the 1779 entries were made in a different hand or if we misread the dates, which was entirely possible since the writing near the edges of the pages was very difficult to read.

It would appear that prior to the war, Joseph Newell was an active member of his community. In The History of North Brookfield by Josiah Howard Temple & Charles Adams published in 1887, there is a mention that, on March 14, 1774, Town Officers were elected, and Joseph Newell, along with "Benjamin Gilbert, Benjamin Lynde, Solo. Banister, John Barrows, Amos Adams" were appointed, "hog reeves".  Seems that hog reeve is a fancy title for those responsible for ensuring that the town's porcine residents remained in their pens. During that same year Gad Williston was elected as a "warden". Who is Gad Williston? Why one of Joseph's customers.......

Gad Williston	1768	December	For mending close	0	1	0	0
			For making your self a coat	0	8	0	0
			For making Caleb a jacet 2/8	0	2	8	0
			For mending yourself a pare of breeches	0	0	6	2
			For mending a great coat for you	0	0	4	0
			For making Caleb a coat and jacket	0	12	8	0
	1770	27-Jul	For making your self a pare of breeches	0	4	9	2
			For mending a pare of breeches	0	1	0	0
			For mending a coat and jacet	0	1	0	0
		28-Jul	For mending yourself a pair of breeches and for seting on butens in your great coat and *streat"	0	0	9	0
			For making your self a cloak and ?	0	0	8	0
			for two yards of camlet and a quarter	0	6	5	0
		21-Jun	ditto for making a jacket	0	9	0	0
				2	9	5	0
		11-Jun	For making a pair of leather breaches and finding trimming for the same	0	8	0	0
			To pare of a lambskin and making a pare of drawers and finding thread	0	4	0	0
			To leather for a glove	0	3	7	0
			To 8 pence in money but if overpaid in borrowed money	0	7	0	0
			to making your boy a pair of breeches and finding leather	0	1	5	0

I wonder if the "Caleb" mentioned in these entries was a servant, as there is no listing for a son named Caleb born to Gad and his wife, Lucy. And is "your boy" a reference a slave or a son? Gad's first son was born in 1773, and unfortunately, we don't have a year noted for that entry.

Just for fun, I searched for both Joseph Newell and Gad Williston in the Historical Newspapers. It appears that Gad Williston had an apprentice that ran away.  Maybe he took the leather breeches that Joseph Newell made.  And was Gad Williston a hatter? (Appropriate that we might run into a hatter)

Now we know a little more about Joseph Newell -- That he went off to war at 31, married on his return and had children.  I'm sure there is more out there on him and will probably check in with Brookfield Historical to see if they have anything.  I suspect you see a pattern here. The more you discover, the more questions pop up, begging to be answered. So what if we do some checking on Mr. Newell's other customers?

Our next adventure down the rabbit hole gets really interesting, and leads to sex, murder, intrigue, a well-known Tory father-in-law, and a famous execution! Stay tuned.....

Research - The Rabbit Hole!

This morning, I was going to try to figure out how much Joseph Newell charged to make leather breeches versus how much the leather cost.  Unlike James Gould from Newport, who consistently charged the same amount, over and over again, for a pair of breeches, it is difficult to discern at first glance, when Mr. Newell included the materials because his prices are all over the map.  Then I started to look at the dates and noticed something....

His entries pretty much petered out by 1776 and resumed again around 1783.  There are a few entries in between, but it would appear that most of his customers and/or he went off to war.  There are a few entries from 1776-1783, but I didn't notice, for example, if these wartime entries were made in a different hand or then again, he might have only served a few years or we may have misread these entries, as the dates in the left hand columns were sometimes tough to make out.

So here's why doing research is like Alice in Wonderland's rabbit hole - it sucks you in, you don't know where it will take you but, oh, what interesting things you find out on the way! 

The primary exercise of seeking out account books was to explore another form of primary source in order to learn more about period clothing, what it cost and what it was made of, etc. And look at the can of worms this opened.  What about the missing years in Mr Newell's account books?  What if we explored Joseph Newell's genealogy - check out if there are any military records on him? We could go to the Massachusetts archives to see if there are any probate records connected to him.  Did he own property?  Maybe contact the New Braintree Historical Society. And what about his customers? What can we find out about them? Two words: MORE RESEARCH.

Oh no! I think I'm about to fall down the rabbit hole.