How Transnational Research Changed One Site’s Interpretive History

By Catherine Matthews and Erin Wederbrook Yuskaitis
Co-Directors of Education, Old North Church & Historic Site

Merchant. Mariner. Chocolate maker. Smuggler. Slave trader. One historically unimportant man encompassed all of these professions in a complicated web of commodity, human trafficking, murder, and Old North Church.Owner of pew 13 and father of three children baptized at Old North, Captain Newark Jackson’s life seemed to tell a generic tale that united the stories of the seafaring community, the Triangle Trade, and the business of small merchants in the colonial era. 

However, years of research in archives around the world revealed, layer by layer, that Jackson’s life was far more sordid than it originally seemed. Early research concluded that Jackson owned three enslaved individuals: two men (Boston and Warham) and one woman (Siller). Still more research uncovered an association between Jackson and a ring of wealthy men affiliated with Old North who smuggled commodities within and from the tropics. They also traded in enslaved Africans, trafficking human beings in their ships’ holds alongside goods such as textiles and cacao. 

A recreation of the newspaper ad Jackson took out.

Jackson’s life ended violently and abruptly in 1743 when he was murdered during a mutiny aboard the Rising Sun, a ship tied to the smuggling ring connected to Old North. Examination of the cargo lists revealed that Jackson was transporting thirteen enslaved children and two enslaved men on his final voyage. We do not know what happened to these people. 

The Rising Sun ship’s manifest indicating (in Dutch) that 13 children were included in the cargo.

As a result of a two-year, transnational research project – which drew from archives in Massachusetts, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, and the Netherlands – into  Captain Newark Jackson, Old North Church & Historic Site will embark on an ambitious educational initiative to investigate and present its connections and entanglement with slavery through the cacao trade. Further, the education department will incorporate these stories - of the enslaved peoples whose lives intertwined with the church's history along with the stories of the congregants of color who attended services freely or through bondage - to deepen the on-site interpretation and to challenge and enhance the visitor's understanding of Old North's role in the founding of our nation and our nation's changing identity.

Once we secure further funding, it will support the completion of research on Newark Jackson, George Ledain, and the Rising Sun; further research on Old North and its connection to slavery, chocolate, and the chocolate trade, providing a parallel investigation into Old North’s place and role in the commodification of cacao and captive Africans in Boston, New England, and the British Empire; and finally, research on congregants of color at Old North, focusing specifically on the lived experiences of these congregants, exploring issues such as church membership, their role in church services, and their place in the church as an institution. Moreover, we will create a fully conceived, articulate, and compelling interpretive plan for Old North that interweaves slavery and the cacao trade with the site’s overarching theme of active citizenship to help the visitor more fully understand the complicated, complex history of the site, the city, and the region. 

The story of Newark Jackson may not be the story it initially seemed to be, but it demonstrates how research can deepen and broaden our understanding of the past, change our perceptions, and lead to more questions. This project of Old North proves that history is an active profession, and our interpretation changes as we unearth documents and resources previously undiscovered. 

"Taxation without representation is tyranny!"

Sound familiar?

Perhaps no other sentiment better captures the spirit and intention of Boston’s 19th century revolutionaries in the fight for women’s suffrage. In pursuit of full enfranchisement, the suffragists of Boston were not the first to call back to the ideals of the American Revolution. In commemoration of the Boston Tea Party centennial in December 1873, prominent speakers and advocates of women’s suffrage met at Faneuil Hall to call out the contradictions of the American ideal, including Julia Ward Howe, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips and more. In the wake of the Civil War, emerging leaders, who had honed their activism in the abolitionist movement, linked abolitionism and women’s suffrage as steps towards full citizenship for all Americans. In the minds of these American radicals, universal suffrage and the end of slavery were crucial components in a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

Admission Ticket, Woman’s Tea Party, 1873. Courtesy of Boston Athenaeum.

Lucy Stone, an organizer and speaker at the Woman’s Tea Party meeting, championed the cause of universal suffrage. Along with allies, she believed that the restriction of the ballot to one group on the basis of gender or race constituted one of the great injustices of the 19th century. Stone underscored the significance of the cause by saying, “If we can make it keenly felt, and clearly understood, here and now, that the taxation of women without representation, is as great an injustice as was that done to men in the olden time, this day will be worthy to be held in grateful remembrance by our children’s children forever.” 

Woman's Journal. 1873. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

2020 marks the Centennial of the 19th Amendment’s ratification in 1920. Over the next year, the National Parks of Boston will continue to share stories of perseverance, agency and courage throughout the suffrage movement and highlight Massachusetts leaders from the 19th and 20th centuries. Follow us on Instagram @boafnps and @boston_nhp to learn about these stories through #SuffrageSaturdays and to be notified of upcoming centennial commemorations, women's history programming and emerging research at the National Parks of Boston.

Happy Birthday, Paul Revere!

Do you like to celebrate your birthday, or do you like to ignore that birthdays even happen at all? At the Paul Revere House, we were limited to mentioning Paul’s birthday taking place sometime in December of 1734. We know a lot about Revere and his life, but his specific birth date always alluded us.

That’s until the summer of 2019 when we acquired an exciting new collections item – a Revere family bible! More specifically, a Baskerville Bible printed in Birmingham, England, between 1769-72. This heirloom has been passed down in the Revere family, from Paul to his daughter Harriet, and eventually to the museum. In the bible, Paul records his birth date as December 21, 1734. The bible also includes other family members and their dates of birth, marriage, and death.

When you’re busy in the classroom, it can be easy to fall back on information or facts that are long established, but it’s important to remember that history can change as new facts come to light. For historians, revelations as simple as someone’s birthday are very exciting because they help to build out a more robust picture of the past.  

As a museum, our work doesn’t stop when we add an object to the collection. We also have a responsibility to preserve, protect, and disseminate the knowledge gleaned from our collections. Once we became official owners of the Revere bible, we sent it away to be conserved by experts. When it returns to our care, we will incorporate it into our interpretation of Revere, his life, and his home in Boston’s North End.

 We’re happy to share! The Revere House and all the Place Based Boston sites have wonderful documents and objects that may not always be on view to the public. If you have a question you think we might know the answer to, reach out and ask! It may be another case of “we don’t know” or it may give a museum educator the chance to share new and exciting information to you and your students!

The page where Paul Revere wrote his own birthday, as well as family members’ birth and death dates.

First page of biblical text, where we can find notation that Paul Revere gifted this bible to his daughter Harriet.