On this day 250 years ago fifty miles east of Cape Ann, Nova Scotia, the British ship Elizabeth was captured by the American ship Hancock and two other privateers after a brief fight.  In addition to the ship and its captain and crew, the privateers captured 13 British soldiers, 46 Loyalists, four people who were enslaved by the Loyalists, and the Elizabeth’s cargo. From the privateers’ perspective the most valuable part of the capture was a large store of rum, but the cargo also included eighteen full barrels of flour and essentially all the cloth and linen in Boston.

As part of his departure plans, General Howe had ordered that cloth and linen be seized from Boston merchants so they would not be used for uniforms for the Continental Army. In the days prior to their departure from Boston, Crean Brush and four other Loyalists on board the Elizabeth, had with the backing of British troops seized: from merchant Samuel Dashwood, nine large trunks and two large chests of silks and cloth “with great force and violence” and at “terror of myself and family” from their threat that “if any person should presume to interrupt . . . they would thrust their bayonets into such a person”; “the Value of Twenty Two hundred & Sixty Pounds Sterling . . . in Linens, Checks & Woolens”; from merchant John Rowe; and additional clothing goods from merchants Samuel Austin, Cyrus Baldwin, John Barrett, Samuel Partridge, and John Scollay. Crean Brush was already wanted in both Vermont and New York for outrages against Patriots and he would end up imprisoned for almost two years years for stealing these goods and other crimes.

Source: Eric Wiser, “Hell’s Half-Acre: The Fall of Loyalist Crean Bush”, Journal of the American Revolution (Jan. 19. 2022) accessed at

Hell’s Half-Acre: The Fall of Loyalist Crean Brush

On this day 250 years ago, in one of his final acts at his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, General Washington issued orders to most of his command to march the New York as the expected next target of the British fleet that departed Boston. He left only “four or five regiments” behind under the command of Major General Artemas Ward to guard against a return of the British to Boston or elsewhere in New England.

Sources: “George Washington to Major General Artemas Ward, 29 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-03-02-0422. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 3, 1 January 1776 – 31 March 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988, p. 561.]; “Orders and Instructions for Major General Israel Putnam, 29 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-03-02-0421. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 3, 1 January 1776 – 31 March 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988, pp. 560–561.]; “General Orders, 29 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-03-02-0420. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 3, 1 January 1776 – 31 March 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988, pp. 559–560.]

Also on that day in Philadelphia, John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail Adams of the death of his friend and Delegate from Rhode Island, Samuel Ward:

We have this Week lost a very valuable Friend of the Colonies, in Governor Ward of Rhode Island, by the small Pox in the natural Way. He never would hearken to his Friends who have been constantly advising him to be inoculated ever since the first Congress began. But he would not be perswaded. Numbers, who have been inoculated, have gone through the Distemper, without any Danger, or even Confinement, but nothing would do.—He must take it in the natural Way and die.

I hope that Americans today will join John Adams in remembering Samuel Ward as “a stedfast Friend to his Country upon very pure Principles.” But unlike Ward, I hope that they will be persuaded by Adams’ advice to be vaccinated rather than risk contracting “the small Pox . . . in the natural Way and die.”

Source: “John Adams to Abigail Adams, 29 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-01-02-0238. [Original source: The Adams Papers, Adams Family Correspondence, vol. 1, December 1761 – May 1776, ed. Lyman H. Butterfield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 366.]