 It appears to be quiet now, sometime it appears that every couple of hours or so a group of citizens run through the streets shouting down with taxes, no importers, no quartering lobster backs in Boston. Boston is changing by the day. The citizens are tired and on edge, with so many British soldiers still quartered in our midst I fear there's great trouble ahead. On February 26, the town beheld an awesome spectacle, the funeral for a young boy killed by a British customs agent. I must write to my best and only friend Obar in Newport to tell her about what's going on in Boston. Dear Obar, it is I, Phyllis, your humble and obedient servant. I write this letter today with a sad heart for the Snyder family and for the citizens of this town. Obar, Boston is changing. The citizens are frustrated, always in a fury and almost to a riotous state. I fear the worst will come soon, just the other day, February 22, an 11-year-old boy was shot by a custom office informant. The boy's name was Christopher Snyder. The people were protesting. Import duties and a customs agent fired a shot from his balcony into the crowd. It struck that 11-year-old boy who instantly became a martyr to the cause of liberty. The crowd was then in a full state of riot and after the shooting it took all the church members, constables and civic leaders to calm the crowd. If I only feel half of what the poor family is feeling, they must be in deep sorrow. Their hearts must pang with sympathy. I am saddened here just thinking about it. It is said Mr. Samuel Adams of Boston, along with the Sons of Liberty, saw to it that the boy had a grand funeral, possibly the grandest ever seen in Boston. Four days after the boy's death, thousands came out to learn the streets as the Paul draped casket made its way to Snyder's final rest. I do hope the angels escorted his soul to heaven, though now his little body lies in the cold earth of the granary burying grounds. I have written the poem and shall enclose a copy for you. I will also have it printed in the papers. It is called On the Death of Mr. Snyder, Murdered by Richardson. In heaven's eternal court it was decreed how the first martyr for the cause should bleed. To clear the country of the hated brood, he wets his courage for the common good. Long hid before a vile infernal here, prevents Achilles in his mid career. Wherever his fury darts his poisonous breath, all are endangered to the shafts of death. The generous sires beheld the fatal wound, saw their young champion gasping on the ground. They raised him up, but to each present ear, what martial glory did his tongue declare? The wretch, a Paul no longer can despise, but from the striking victim turns his eyes. When this young martial genius did appear, the Tory chiefs no longer could forbear. Right before destruction, see the wretched doom. He waits the curses of the age to come. In vain he flies, by justice swiftly chased. With unexpected infamy disgraced, be Richardson forever banished here. The grand new surplus, bravely vaunted air. We bring the body from the watery bower to logic where it shall remove no more. Snyder behold with what majestic love, the illustrious retinue begins to move. With secret rage, fair freedoms foes beneath. See in thy course even majesty in death. I hope that this poem will bring some type of solace to the family. Let me know if you approve the wording. Let me know how things are in Newport. Write as soon as time permits, your humble and obedient servant Phyllis. On the death of Mr. Snyder murdered by Richardson. Another beautiful poem, Miss Wheatley. My husband will be honored to set it to type for you. Why, all his name was Snyder, but some say Snyder. I'll leave it as you pen to dear. Such a sad business. The family are German immigrants, they say. Living on the edge of town on Frolg Lane and their boy Christopher worked as a houseboy for the widow Athorpe. Oh, she has a beautiful home on Tremont Street. She was most put out by having soldiers camped on the common, practically a front yard. She even had paid for grazing rights on the common, but because it is such a confusing state with the soldiers using it for quarters and mustard training. Snyder family, parents barely spoke English, came here for a better life, and now look, they're faced with the worst heartbreak. That boy murdered in front of an importer shop on Middle Street and by such a cat is Ebenezer Richardson. The awfulest lily, the importer, tried to say he is neutral in the matter of the crown's authority to manage the American colonies, but just a few weeks before this whole mess, he published an opinion in that loyalist rag, the Boston Chronicle, his views on what he considers unfair treatment by the forces of liberty and their ability to make laws that he personally didn't consent to. Well, I don't know where to find the king in Parliament, but I do know where the sons of liberty are, right here in the colonies, freeboard and raised. Though I considered it the hand of mercy to have been taken into service by the Wheatley family, I am not now free. Even so, I still believe in the cause of liberty for Americans. Yes, Negro Americans also. Oh, I do feel for your state, dear. I seem to always forget your condition of service, for you are so very well read and accomplished. My state is only moderately comparable. I'm constantly aware that as a wife, I own nothing, not even the 10 children that I bore to my husband Benjamin are considered mine by these archaic laws under which we live. But times do change. I'll be a tooth slowly. And I pray your realized liberty will come with the liberty of our country of New England. But we have to get the red coats out of this town first. There are many among the enslaved who think that to cast a lot with the British would be a quick road to emancipation. But I don't know if the red coats can be trusted. The Wheatleys have been so generous to me. I'm not ready to cast my lot with the army. Besides the British don't want a woman for it. They only want more men, men of any color, including black men, to throw at their cause of subjugation to the colonies and drive all the liberty boys to the devil. But by trying to incite insurrection, the red coats are encouraging Godfrey and men to do harm to others. Would that same officer be there to help the Negro if he was captured and tried for trying to harm a white subject, American or British? I'm skeptical. I only can see that this avarice would surely harm my Negro brother in the eyes of the great creator, the eventual and glorious emancipation of eternal salvation of the soul is of a much greater importance. Isn't that the truth? I don't believe the red coats are much concerned with salvation. On meeting day, instead of worshiping the Lord, they continue to drill and train not only on the common but throughout the streets of Boston. I hear some have even carried the smallpox into our city. Good heavens. Numbers of passengers, soldiers and civilians from a ship from Cork, Ireland had been seen walking the streets after crossing the ocean on that ship which was suspected of carrying this distemper. Wasn't it enough that Boston's maidens and matrons should spell fear many soldiers in our midst that we should get the pox too? I do hear that some of the ladies have made the boldest statements for American liberty. Tea tables and other foreign superfluities have given place to spinning wheels, looms. On the anniversary of George III's ascension day, the British officers intended a grand ball, but the ladies could not be persuaded to indulge themselves in music and dance with those gentlemen. Of course, there are always those that are smitten with the man in uniforms. For the past three years, since they started sending them here in droves, every week the journal reported women accosted in the streets. And those were the ones that were brave enough to come forward and tell their stories. They should have stayed in barracks on Castle Island. Then there would be no opportunities for drunken soldiers to accost maids and wives. And no opportunity for trials of courts martial. I still remember the day that poor private was executed for desertion. Instead of scattering the red coats all about the public houses and manufactured buildings of Boston, if he were barracked on Castle Island, I am convinced Private Richard Arne's mother would not be warning the execution of her son. They never needed to be here in the first place. There were the new colonies that actually wanted the security of the King's army. But pulling those troops from places like West Florida, Bermuda, and the frontier lands in Canada cost so much fear for the settlers there. I remember my husband printing a story. It was two years ago in 68. A group of refugees from Nova Scotia left their settlements in the colony of St. John's, and were traveling here to Massachusetts where they were cast away on the salvages near Cape Am. Not one of those people was saved. If the soldiers initially sent to provide security for their settlement had not been pulled out unnecessarily and sent to places like Boston or New York, those families would never have been lost to a watery grave. New York has been fighting the quartering mandates for years. I heard about some scuttlebutt. What happened in New York? I've read something about a fifth Liberty Pole? It's been pretty quiet since the skirmish at Golden Hill, or the Battle of Golden Hill, as it has of late been called. The wigs of New York have opposed quartering expenses for years, but in late December their legislature voted to fully provision his Majesty's troops. All this at the expense of the people who neither want nor need soldiers in their midst. Now here in Boston, we had Castle Island to barric the troops, but New York City had no such place, and the soldiers were barriced on both the southern and northern reaches of the city, thus hemming the Patriots in. In celebration of the repeal of the Stamp Act, the Sons of Liberty in New York put up a Liberty Pole as a marker and a public meeting place. The British hated this pole and chopped it down. Another pole was put up and that one was quickly cut down. A third pole went up and stayed up for about a year before that too was taken down by the British. The fourth pole was secured with iron bands. It stayed up until just last month when the British blew it up, cut it into pieces, and left the remains in front of montains. Oh, then a few days later, temper is already so hot over the destruction of the fourth Liberty Pole. On January 19th, some redcoats were putting up handbills that were critical of the Sons of Liberty, calling them the real enemies of society who thought their freedom depended on a piece of wood. Those soldiers were quickly outnumbered by the town folk who were trying to push the soldiers back to the southern barracks. Well, they all reached a spot called Golden Hill, and there the redcoats found reinforcements. They loosed their bayonets on the town people. Some officers broke up the skirmish before it got too out of hand. There were several injuries, but none mortal. Now, I hear Isaac Sears and the Sons of Liberty are to build a fifth pole. 46 feet long, embedded 12 feet deep and bound with iron bars and hoops. I wonder how long that one will last. If they continue to quarter more troops in our cities, I don't give it very long at all. I have to be getting back now. It's not safe in the streets alone anymore. Thank you, Mrs. Eads and your husband, too, in advance for the printing. Don't think anything of it. It's not trouble at all. My husband, Ben, often says to me, Patsy, if, as it is said, the temper of the people may be surely learned from this infamous paper, then Johnny Gill and I have a responsibility to print material in the Boston Gazette that will enable it to live up to such a reputation. Then he reminds me of the power of free press and that a free press is essential to the liberty of mankind. Maybe all enjoy that spirit within our lifetimes. Good day to you, Mrs. Eads. And to you, Ms. Whitley, please go carefully in the streets. I was born on Christmas Addicts, but if you be looking for any self-manulated men from Framingham of about my age and complexion, you can call me Michael Johnson. Well, I got back up this away on a Bermuda packet not too long ago. Ever since that cider boy was murdered, they've been scuffed up with the British lobster bags. Boston is a powder keg lit to blow. There's just too many troops here. Now, I take work when I can get it, usually on the docks and the rope walks, but with 4,000 regulars in this town, it's getting real hard to go about any business. They ain't vint them all on the Castle Island and they got them in the sugar house, the dark warehouses, the common, anywhere. And for what? To keep the peace? To protect import duties is more like it. I mean, I don't much care about taxes. I don't own anything. I ain't living in one place long enough to pay taxes. And I sure don't buy anything much, let alone any imported stuff. What do I need with lead, fruit, glass, paper? All I need is work, a bed to sleep in and money for board. But work is getting hard to find now. It ain't bad enough they're here in our city, staying in our buildings on the public chilling, but then they can take the jobs from the men that live here? If they're in Boston to be soldiers, why do they have to take the work on the docks and the rope walks? How's a Boston man going to feed his family? If they got that kind of free time, they don't need to be here. Send them back home or to the new colonies where folks actually need them. A couple of days ago, a private showed up looking for work at John Gray's World War. Robon Megan Woolley Green told that red coat to go clean my outhouse. Well, I had to clean that up for public company. Eventually, some 40 records spared up against us stevedores, rope makers, and sons of liberty. I ain't saying I was there, but if I was, I might've got a good covering in on a couple of them. Now, I got a few days left before I take duties on the ship down for South Carolina, if it ever gets clearance to leave Boston, and I'll be gone from this mess for a while. I'll also be further away from Framingham and Old Deacon Brown. I wonder if he's still looking for me. Hey, the bells are ringing near the customs house. Last I knew some soldier was standing guard, basically useless, doing nothing, and some apprentice accused him of skipping out on the barber's bill. Hmm, probably going to be another scuffle. I think I'll go see what's doing. Good day to you, Mr. Revere. My husband will have this printed up in a few days' time. The bloody massacre perpetrated in King Street, Boston on March 5th, 1770, by a party of the 29th Regiment. The unhappy sufferers were Monsieur Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, Crispus Atux, and Patrick Carr killed. Six wounded, Christopher Monk, and John Clark, mortally. May the Lord accept them into heaven and deliver Boston from this blight upon her peace.