HISTORY MATTERS 

NH Mob Protests Wealthy George Meserve

Unquestionably, we are in a nasty money crisis. But I’d rather be Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner in 2009 than George Meserve in 1765. Meserve, a Portsmouth native, was appointed Distributor for New Hampshire by King George. Meserve happened to be visiting England when the Stamp Act was passed. The Meserves were a prosperous family, loyal to the Crown, and George seemed the ideal guy to distribute the stamps and collect the new tax in the boondocks of colonial New England.

Some government appointments are just not worth the hassle. Ask Sen. Judd Greegg who recently nixed joining President Obama’s team of rivals. George Meserve had not gotten off the boat from England early in September 1765 when the bad news arrived. The citizens of Portsmouth sent a message to him aboard ship in Boston. If Meserve didn't resign his new government job, then he could forget about coming home. People in Portsmouth, like people across the colonies, were enraged by the Stamp Act – even more enraged than Americans last week over the bail-out bonuses at AIG.

A taxing decision

In fact, Meserve was unable to get off his ship for two days because a Boston mob thought it contained a cargo of English stamped paper. When Meserve, who was still aboard ship, announced his resignation as stamp agent, the crowd cheered and carried him off to a local tavern.

Why young George wanted to collect the hated tax is unclear. Perhaps while visiting his wealthy friends in England, he didn’t get the memo. New Englanders had been livid over the Sugar Act the year before. The Currency Act, also passed in 1764, forbade colonists from printing paper money. The Quartering Act of 1765 required colonists to lodge British soldiers.

But the Stamp Act -- requiring a tax on newspapers, stationery, and legal documents -- really rubbed Portsmouth the wrong way. Even Benning Wentworth, NH’s fading old governor, thought it was a bad tax. His nephew John Wentworth, who kept up on Portsmouth news even when he was in England, called the Stamp Act "totally obnoxious". Just 28-years old, John advised Lord Rockingham to vote against the heinous tax, fearing it might lead to rebellion here. He was right.

CONTINUED next page

Venting fiscal outrage

On September 12, 1765 a mob of Portsmouth citizens hung George Meserve in effigy. The crowd also hung a figure of the British Prime Minister who approved the Stamp Act, and another depicting the Devil, whom citizens said, created taxes in the first place. The image of the Devil, emerging from a leather boot, appeared to be whispering in the ear of the dummy George Meserve. Above the three effigies a sign read:

"George, my son, you are rich in station,
But I would have you serve this nation."

Meserve was lucky; tax agents in other American colonies were tarred and feathered, a nasty sometimes fatal punishment. Later that night, the rowdy people of Portsmouth dragged the three effigies to Hay Market, where the John Paul Jones House stands today, and set them on fire.

Soon after he was roasted in effigy, the real George Meserve arrived home. Met by an irate crowd, Meserve was forced to stand on the balcony of the Old Statehouse and resign his post for the second time.

For the next few months, Meserve walked on eggshells. His father, shipbuilder Col. Nathaniel Meserve, had been a war hero during the siege at Louisbourg in Canada. George had a nice house on Vaughan Street, but now he was afraid even to conduct business locally for fear of arousing public anger. He slept uneasily, he told a friend, and kept a weapon at his bedside.

A few months later, when the King's official commission arrived from England, George had to publicly resign for the third time. A mob surrounded his house on Vaughan Street, swords drawn, and demanded George give up his commission, which he did without hesitation. The official document was then reportedly stuck on the point of a sword, paraded through town and delivered to a ship captain with instructions to return it to the King. When the stamp tax finally became official in November, nobody was dumb enough to collect it.

Taking it all back

Gov. John Wentworth, who was appointed to replace his uncle Benning in 1766, had a formula for keeping peace in Portsmouth during violent times. Today it sounds hauntingly like President Obama’s promise of "transparency".

"The grand secret of peace," Wentworth wrote, "is to cause men to think before they act, the longer, the better; and to be steady, open, and resolute, without any mystery or intrigue. In this way there will never be great tumults. It is impracticable to raise a dangerous mob if all the business is understood. Men will not be led to broken heads, gaols and gallows, unless they are somehow deceived."

The front page of the April 11, 1766 New Hampshire Gazette included a discussion of "the devilish stamp act". At great risk, the paper openly wondered whether it might be reasonable for the Sons of Liberty to sink ships carrying imported paper bearing the dreaded tax stamps. Most locals, the Gazette included, wanted to abolish the Stamp Act before it led to an American revolution. Being English was fine, the Portsmouth majority believed, as long as they were treated like English citizens.

A week later, on April 18, "Good News" arrived of the repeal of the "most ruinous and never-to-be-forgotten stamp act". Gazette publisher Daniel Fowle, to dramatize the moment, printed the notice in huge letters with daggers pointing toward the words STAMP ACT.

The Liberty Pole at Prescott Park is a memorial to this insurrection. After shipping the Stamp Act commission back to England, locals raised a banner near the former "Swing Bridge" in the Old Puddle Dock area, now Strawbery Banke Museum. The banner read, "Liberty, Property and No Stamp." The Swing Bridge and the Puddle Dock are gone, but a reproduction pole and banner remain on this spot.

CONTINUED

Day late, dollar short

Of course, it wasn’t really over. The natives remained restless. Less than a decade later, Royal Governor John Wentworth found an angry mob at his own doorstep on Pleasant Street. He had, it seems, broken his own transparency rule, and deceived the public. It was a minor matter about secretly loaning a few carpenters to the governor of Massachusetts. But it was enough to send Wentworth and his family to Nova Scotia where he lived out his years.

And what about our boy, George? The Meserve family suffered a reversal of fortune. As the Revolution approached George Meserve found it harder and harder to stay in town, where he was a lightning rod for the growing rebellion. He sometimes slipped off to neighboring towns. Then, like Gov. Wentworth, he felt it was safer to sleep inside fort William and Mary at New Castle, or aboard the British warship anchored there. Eventually he joined the migration of homeless Loyalists to Boston, then to England and Canada -- driven into exile by former neighbors, unable to return under penalty of death.

With other Loyalists, George Meserve petitioned the Crown for his lost wages, home and 100,000 acres of land he had accumulated in the colonies, plus expenses. Yes, he had screwed up, but he wanted to get paid all the same. You might call the Compensation Act an early British "bail-out" package. George discovered, however, that collecting from the British government was as tough as collecting taxes in Portsmouth. 

George Meserve died poor in Hampstead, England in 1788. His son John joined him there, but he never saw his daughters or his wife again. His wife held onto the Portsmouth house until her death. Then, like Gov. Wentworth’s summer home in Wolfeboro, the Meserve House was taken over by the revolutionary government and sold at auction.

In the right place at the wrong time, George Meserve stamped and sealed his fate when he cashed in the family name for a juicy political appointment. It’s a sad story, unless it’s told in April, on a week when income taxes are due.

Copyright © 2009 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.