250 and Counting

Tag: 1776 births

  • Elias Boudinot Caldwell–April 3, 1776

    Cover art for April 3, 1776: cropped portrait of Elias Boudinot Caldwell by William Ogden Wheeler, ca 1855. via WIkimedia.

    I mentioned briefly that Elias Boudinot Caldwell was a member of the Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America (to the extent that anyone can say that briefly), and I though I’d get a little deeper into that organization here.

    The group was founded in 1816 by Robert Finley, along with Caldwell and Francis Scott Key, to encourage and support the repatriation of freeborn people of color and emancipated slaves to sub-Saharan Africa. Their feeling was that free people of color could not integrate into American society. It was also thought that free Blacks running around would incite still-enslaved Blacks to escape or rebel. So…why not relocate them?

    The group, which later became known as the American Colonization Society, thought they’d be preventing a civil war from breaking out. In fact, some historians think they may have hastened its onset. What’s more, only a few thousand African Americans out of millions, eventually made the trip to (what would become) Liberia. Worse still, they were kind of bad at it. Transporting people to Liberia was very costly, and close to half the people who arrived died from tropical diseases.

    And for all that, the ACS didn’t officially dissolve until 1964.

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  • John Frederick Frelinghuysen–March 21, 1776

    Cover art for March 21, 1776: John Frelinghuyser's gravestone in the Old Somerville Cemetery. via WIkimedia Commons.

    John Frelinghuysen was born on this day in 1776 (hey! Cake and Candles for this man!) and died in 1833. Like many people of the time, he never permanently left the area where he was born. Born there, lived and worked there, died there.

    He probably went to Trenton on business a few times, and he was stationed at Sandy Hook while in the Army, but that appears to be about all as far as travel.

    John Frelinghuysen married Louisa Mercer in 1797, and they had two daughters: Gertrude and Mary Ann. Louisa died around 1809 and John married Elizabeth Mercereau Van Vechten on November 13, 1811. They had eight children: Louisa, Theodore, Frederick J., Catharine, Sallie, Sophia, and Elizabeth LaGrange Frelinghuysen.

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  • Innis Green–February 26, 1776

    Cover art for February 26, 1776: Detail of Innis Green's headstone in Dauphin Cemetery, Dauphin County, PA. Via findagrave.com.

    Innis Green served as a Jacksonian Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 20th (1827–1829) and 21st (1829–1831) Congresses, essentially holding the party’s populist line.

    But he did deviate from party alignment on May 26, 1830, when Green voted nay on H.R. 287, the Indian Removal Act. Despite this, the bill passed narrowly, 102-97. This stance positioned him among Pennsylvania Jacksonians influenced by local Quaker and moral opposition to forced tribal relocations, contrasting with southern and western Democrats who prioritized land acquisition for white settlement.

     Green’s vote highlighted intraparty tensions over executive-driven policies, though it did not derail his Jacksonian credentials amid broader support for Jackson’s anti-bank rhetoric and vetoes of federal internal improvements like the Maysville Road in 1830.

    The short version of all that is, while Green was a fairly reliable guy when it came to upholding Jacksonian politics, he often acted with his actual constituents in mind: if it wasn’t going to poorly affect the people in his district, he could get behind it. Otherwise, he would be willing to vote against it.

    Perhaps he didn’t make a huge splash politically, but there are some behavior lessons in there.

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  • William Scarbrough–February 18, 1776

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    Cover art for February 18, 1776: A US postage stamp from 1944, commemorating the USS Savannah's 125th anniversary.

    William Scarbrough, who was the owner of the USS Savannah more than he was anything else, purchased the ship when it was still on the slipway. It was purchased with the aim of converting it to an auxiliary steamship and give his company the distinction of offering the world’s first transatlantic steamship service.

    The Savannah had multiple sources of propulsion, though. The steam engine could drive the side paddlewheels on either side which were retractable when the engine wasn’t in use. But it also had rigging that allowed it to be used as a sailing ships. So when it made the crossing in 1819, the trip took the better part of a month because poor weather forced them to use the sails more than the steam engine, a ratio of about 89% to 11%.

    The ship wound up being more of a novelty than anything else, and unfortunately she ran aground off the south shore of Long Island and broke up. When Tropical Storm Ian passed through in 2022, some wreckage washed up on Fire Island that was thought to be part of the Savannah. You can visit those parts at the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society‘s museum exhibit.

  • Nicholas Ware–February 16, 1776

    Cover art for February 16, 1776: portrait of Nicholas Ware. Date and artist unknown. Via US Senate Historical Office.

    Mike already tells you about all you need to know about Nicholas Ware in today’s episode, so let me focus on his home, which was derisively nicknamed “Ware’s Folly.”

    The house was completed in 1818 at a total cost of $40,000, which would be well over $12 million today. Part of this derives from the elaborate styling on the outside, and part of it is from the extravagant details on the inside, including a three-story elliptical staircase.

    The house, as Mike noted, is now the home of the Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art, which was founded in 1932 as the Augusta Art Club and later renamed in honor of founder Olivia Herbert’s daughter Gertrude Herbert Dunn.

    By 1936 the Art Club was in need of classroom and gallery space, and the house had been neglected for many years and was facing demolition. Olivia Herbert saved the building and donated the money for renovation. The following year the Institute was established and renamed after Gertrude, who had recently died of spinal meningitis.

    The house acts as the Main Gallery building and Administrative Offices for the Institute, while another house directly behind it was expanded, renovated and converted into classrooms in 2001.

    If you’re in Augusta, the Institute could make for an interesting diversion.

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  • William Montgomery Crane–February 1, 1776

    Cover art for February 1, 1776: Portrait of William Montgomery Crane. By Unknown author - The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume XII, 1904, page 422, via Wikimedia Commons.
    Portrait of William Montgomery Crane. By Unknown author – The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume XII, 1904, page 422, via Wikimedia Commons.

    If you’re going to have a kid in 1776, you’re probably going to be feeling a little patriotism when you do so. Such was the case with William Montgomery Crane, who got his middle name from General Richard Montgomery, under whom his father served around this point in the Revolutionary War.

    Crane’s father was General William Crane, but at that time he was a lieutenant in the expedition to Quebec, and was part of the New Years Eve assault on that city. Crane was badly wounded in the ankle, an injury that bothered him for decades and eventually led to the foot being amputated, and his eventual death in 1814.

    As far as his son William is concerned, we had to gloss over this, but Crane spent a few years in the Mediterranean during the Barbary War, working on protecting ships from piracy. After the Revolution, American ships naturally lost protection from the British Navy and were vulnerable to pirate attacks when they refused to pay protection. President Thomas Jefferson relied on a strategy of using the US Navy to put together blockades, patrols and even direct assaults on the pirate ships. Eventually the tactic worked and Crane was recognized for his efforts when his gunboat endured heavy fire to destroy a battery’s walls in Tripoli in just a couple of hours.

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  • Jean-Guillaume Hyde–January 24, 1776

    Cover art for January 24, 1776: Detail of an 1830 lithograph by Ducarme after a portrait by Legrand.
    Detail of an 1830 lithograph by Ducarme after a portrait by Legrand.

    While the United States has had its share of international mishaps, not all of them have been created by Americans. Jean-Guillaume Hyde, more properly known as “Jean-Guillaume, baron Hyde de Neuville”, would be an early example of this.

    Hyde was probably a textbook case of failing upward, as he appears to have suffered multiple setbacks and still managed to come out ahead later on. As early as 1793, when he was 17, Hyde liked to work behind the scenes, trying to nudge people into saying and doing things that would benefit France, and oftentimes failing. This eventually led to his being made to move to the United States in 1800. In 1814 when the Bourbons returned to power in France, he was allowed to return.

    That’s where his diplomatic career began, and he spent six years as the ambassador to the US, where he was rather universally despised. From there he went to Portugal, where he was again a disaster as a diplomat. This time it only took about three years to kick him out.

    In 1828 Hyde became Minister of the Navy and the Colonies where he did appear to have some luck improving the way the French Colonial Empire was organized and run, but he eventually resigned from the position as a symbol of protest.

    Hyde was involved with the internal discussions to decide whether a new commercial treaty with the US was a worthy idea, though we don’t think he did any of the actual negotiating with America.

    Hyde died in Paris in 1857 and the book of his “memoirs” is actually a collection of letters and notes compiled by his nieces.

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  • Elisha Haley–January 21, 1776

    Cover art for January 21, 1776: Portrait of Elisha Haley, artist unknown, created approximately 1860.
    Portrait of Elisha Haley, artist unknown, created approximately 1860.

    Elisha Haley wasn’t necessarily a lawmaker at either the State or the Federal level who made such a huge mark that he’s become a kind of household name, but he appears to have been solid enough that he could get elected multiple times at both levels.

    I did discover, after recording the episode, that Haley is not, in fact, buried in Crary Cemetery but rather in the Wightman Cemetery, which is also in Groton. His wife and four of his children are also buried there.

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