Dr. Joseph Warren, who was killed at the battle of Breed’s Hill in June 1775, had no will, therefore there were no written instructions regarding the care of his children in case of his death. Mercy Scollay, his fiancee, claimed Warren had asked her to care for them—Betsy, Josie, Mary and Dickie, ages 10 through 2—but apparently he had also made the same request of Mrs. Charles (Betsey) Miller. Warren’s brother John, serving in the medical corps of the Continental Army, also was concerned about the children, as was his brother Ebenezer and the children’s grandmother. The jockeying among the parties generated considerable ill will. Mercy wrote to John Hancock in May of 1776, to solicit his advice and help.

Will Mr. Hancock permit an obscure Friend to intrude upon him. . . . Shall I give you a little History of myself since I saw you, then ask your advice and solicit your assistance?

About a fortnight after you left Worcester the Doctors brother [Ebenezer], who is the farmer came up in order to take from me the two little boys, I remonstrated against those proceedings, beg’d (as they were so happily placed from danger in the asylum which their Papa had hope for their residence and under the care of those he confided in) that they would permit them to remain with me at least ’till there was more safety nearer Boston. . . . [H]e [Ebenezer] said their grandmother wanted to see them and that very hard they should be kept from her as it was impossible anybody could love them so well as blood relations. I found it was in vain to oppose their measures and with as chearfull an air as I could assume gave up my two little boys, thankfull that they had left me the Dear little girls, and I hoped something would intervene that might countenance my detaining them as they claim’d my fondest attention. —For two months I was actuated by the most anxious hopes and distressing fears, I heard nothing from them all this time and was ignorant of their determination `till the uncle again made his appearance for the purpose of taking from me the other two. Oh! Mr. Hancock my pen here refuses to paint the same and my eyes are surcharged with tears as resolution brings to view the Dear little creatures clinging round my neck, and begging every body not to let uncle Eben take them from Miss Mercy. . . .

They were taken from me in October and I did not see them `till within this week. . . . My wish is this, tell me if I’m right that after the danger from the smallpox and further Invasions from our enemies is at an end the little folks may be brought to Boston, Josey and Dicky placed with some school master where I can often see them and know what progress they make—the two little girls I would wish to have under my care and would exert every talant I’m mistress of for their benefit. They ought to be educated befitting the Noble mind of their Heroic Parent and I fear his affairs are in too perplexed a state to afford them proper supplies at least for some time. No one has administered the Estate and his affects are scattered in a distraught manner. Papa has what of the furniture remain’d in Town under his car[e], but ’tis very trifling—Some is at Worcester and some at Roxbury and Milton. Their uncle John who seems to take the lead is now at New York with the Army must follow it wherever it goes and ’tis uncertain when he will return. All this time, the children are suffering for want of culture. . . .

I have now as far as I am able given you an account how affairs are situated, beg you will write me your sentiments on the matter, there is nothing I should think too hard a task for the service of those dear Children and look on myself religiously bound by the promise I made my friend that in case he fell a victime to the rage of Power I would be Protectress of his little offspring—help me my good friend to perform it and by your influence solicit friend[s] for them.

Mercy Scollay continued to press for government support of Joseph Warren’s children. To no avail. Their uncle, Dr. John Warren, in 1777, adopted the orphans, and Mercy had no further say in their care and upbringing. It is interesting that Benedict Arnold, who had briefly met and befriended Warren, donated five hundred silver dollars via Mercy toward the children’s welfare. In 1780, however, the Continental Congress acted, assigning the half pay of a major general for the benefit of the children, retroactive to their father’s death, until the youngest came of age. Mercy Scollay never married or had any children of her own.

The letter to John Hancock can be found HERE.

At the time of his death in the battle of Breed’s Hill (June 17, 1775), Dr. Joseph Warren was engaged to Mercy Scollay. His wife, Elizabeth Hooten, had died in 1772, leaving him with four children who were now orphans. After the British evacuation of Boston in March 1776, people began to come back to the city. In the following letter to her friend Mrs. Dix, at whose house in Worcester she had been staying, Mercy Scollay describes her feelings upon her return and how difficult it was to deal with the loss of her fiance.

Methinks I hear you say I give you joy Miss Scollay that you are again in the habitation of your parents [in Boston].—thank you my friend for your good wishes but Boston does not yet appear like my home—I go from place to place in the house as if I was searching for something with great eagerness, and then return with a dejected heart and disappointment seated in my brow—I look upon the wreck of my poor friends [Joseph Warren’s] furniture that papa [John Scollay] took into his care, with weeping eyes but check the hasty torrent, as quick as I can least I should be observed, and return to company with a smile on my face, but my heart bleeding—I see every moment faces that I know, but the one I would give the world to behold is not visable among the grope, and I turn from them disatisfyd—I have seen none that beheld the breathless clay [i.e. Joseph Warren’s corpse] and tho’ wondered at still doubt—Pity my weakness my Friend but don’t expose my folly none but you shall know my present thots and when I am confirmed in my hopes or fears you shall know.

The lady in “Lady in the Blue Dress,” by John Singleton Copley, is thought to be Mercy Scollay by Samuel Forman who makes a convincing case for his view in “A Valentine to Miss Mercy Scollay.” The portrait is at the Terra Foundation Museum in Chicago. Forman has written a new biography, Dr. Joseph Warren: The Boston Tea Party, Bunker Hill, and the Birth of American Liberty. The text of the letter at the Cambridge Historical Society can be found HERE.

Hannah Fayerweather Winthrop’s ancestors came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Hannah’s second husband was John Winthrop, a noted astronomer and professor of mathematics and natural history at Harvard College. Hannah frequently wrote to her friends Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren about events in and around Boston. In the following letter she gives vent to her anger about the siege of Boston.

Andover, Aug. 17, 1775Dear Mrs. Warren, the Friend and Sister of my Heart,—
[M]y heart Bleeds for the people of Boston, my Blood boils with resentment at the Treatment they have met with from Gage [British general]. Can anything equal his Barbarity. Turning the poor out of Town without any Support stopd and Searchd, not sufferd to carry anything with them. Can anything equal the distress of parents Seperated from their Children, the tender husband detaind in Cruel Captivity from the Wife of his Bosom, she torn with anxiety in fearfull looking for and expectation of Vengeance from the obdurate heart of a Tyrant supported by wicked advisers. Can Merciful Heaven look on these things and not interpose. Is there not a day of retribution on hand! Should these things continue what a horrid Prospect would a Severe Winter afford and how many must fall a Sacrifice to the unrelenting rigours of Cold and Want. . . .

I now write from the Solitude of Andover and tho reduced to humble life yet by no means is my firm persuasion staggered in the glorious Cause we are Struggling in, the Cause of Virtue truth and justice. Your Faith that the united Efforts will be Blest with Success animates me. I catch a spark of that heavenly Flame which invigorates your breast knowing your Faith has a permanent Foundation and your acquaintance with those in the Cabinet must enable you to form a better Judgment than those who have not those advantages. After I have made an apology for this Scrawl hope you will consent I should finish it with my sincere regards to Coll. Warren. I subscribe your Ever Affectionate,
Hannah Winthrop

The letter is from the Warren-Adams Letters, Vol. I (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917), pages 103-04. Hannah’s portrait is by John Singleton Copley (1773); it is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. See another post by Hannah Winthrop HERE.

Joseph Warren, a medical doctor, was a prominent leader of the American resistance to the British in Boston. As president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress he dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes on their famous ride (April 18, 1775) to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams, as well as residents of Lexington and Concord, of an imminent raid by the British. With Boston under siege, American forces, learning that the British planned to occupy surrounding hills, hurriedly threw up fortifications atop Breed’s Hill near Bunker Hill on the Charlestown peninsula. The British stormed the redoubt on June 17, 1775, and won the day, but at an enormous cost—casualties of more than 50%. Although Dr. Warren had been commissioned as an officer in the state militia, he chose to participate in the battle as an ordinary soldier. He was killed in the British assault; his body was mutilated and thrown into a ditch. It was found some months later by his brothers and identified by Paul Revere by means of an artificial tooth he had implanted in Warren’s jaw.

Mercy Otis Warren, patriot, poet, and dramatist, corresponded with a circle of well placed women friends, one of whom was Abigail Adams. But she also numbered Abigail’s husband among her correspondents. In the following letter to John Adams, she expressed her great distress at the sufferings of the people of Boston during the siege, and of the people in the surrounding countryside as well. She is well informed and knows about, and regrets, the death of Dr. Joseph Warren. The doctor was not a relative of Mercy’s.

Watertown July 5, 1775Dear Sir,—
I shall not attempt to give you a description of the ten fold difficulties that surround us. You have doubtless had it from better hands. Yet I cannot forbear to drop a tear over the inhabitants of our capital, most of them sent naked from the city to seek a retreat in villages, and to cast themselves on the charity of the first hospitable hand that will receive them. Those who are left behind are exposed to the daily insults of a foe lost to that sense of honour, freedom and valour, once the characteristic of Britons, and even of the generosity and humanity which has long been the boast of all civilized nations. And while the plagues of famine, pestilence and tyranny reign within the walls, the sword is lifted without, and the artillery of war continually thundering in our ears.

The seacoasts are kept in constant apprehensions of being made miserable by the depredations of the once formidable navy of Britain, now degraded to a level with the corsairs of Barbary.

At the same time they are piratically plundering the Isles, and pilfering the borders to feed the swarms of veteran slaves shut up in the town. They will not suffer a poor fisherman to cast his hook in the ocean to bring a little relief to the hungry inhabitants without the pitiful bribe of a dollar each. . . .

The venal system of administration appears to the astonishment of every good man in the corruption, duplicity and meanness, which run through every department, and while the faithless Gage will be marked with infamy for breach of promise, by the impartial historian, will not the unhappy Bostonians be reproached with a want of spirit in putting out of their own power to resent repeated injuries by giving these arms into the hand, which would have been better placed in the heart of a tyrant.

And now they are forbidden even to look out from their own house tops when he sends out his ruffians to butcher their brethren, and wrap in flames the neighbouring towns. But I think this advertisement was as great a mark of timidity as the transaction was of a savage ferocity. . . .

But nothing that has taken place is more regretted than the death of your friend, the brave, the humane, the good Dr. Warren. And though he fell covered with laurels and the wing of fame is spread over his monument, we are almost led to enquire why the useful, the virtuous patriot is cut off ere he reaches the meridian of his days. …

The illustration depicting Dr. Warren’s death is a broadside based on John Trumbull’s painting (1786) which is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The letter can be found in the Warren-Adams Letters Vol. I (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1917), pages 71-72. The engraving of Mercy Otis Warren was taken from the portrait by John Singleton Copley (1763); it is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It appeared in Elizabeth Ellet’s book The Women of the American Revolution, Third Edition (New York: Baker and Scribner, 1849).

Jane Mecom kept up a correspondence with her brother Benjamin Franklin throughout her life. In the following excerpt she describes for Franklin, recently returned from Britain, the situation in Boston after the battles of Lexington and Concord. She was so alarmed by developments that she and her granddaughter accepted an invitation from friends to take refuge in Rhode Island. [Mecom’s letter is as she wrote it, replete with her creative spelling, punctuation and captalization. Reading it aloud will help to understand it.]

Warwick 14 May 1775My Ever Dear & Much Hond Brother
God be Praised for bring you saif back to America & soporting you throw such fatuges as I know you have sufered while the minestry have been distresing Poor New England in such a cruil maner. yr last … Advises me to: keep up my curidg & that faul wither does not last all ways in any country. but I beleve you did not then Imagin the Storm would have Arisen so high as for the Generl to have sent out a party to creep out in the night & Slauter our Dear Brethern for Endevering to defend our own Property, but God Apeard for us & drove them back with much Grater Lose than they are willing to own, there countenances as well as confeshon of many of them shew they were much mistaken in the people they had to Deal with, but the distress it has ocationed is Past my discription. the Horror the Town was in when the Batle Aprochd within Hearing Expecting they would Proceed quite in to town, the comotion the Town was in after the batle ceasd by the Parties coming in bringing in there wounded men causd such an Agetation of minde I beleve none had much sleep, since which we could have no quiet, as we under stood our Bretheren without were determined to Disposes the Town of the Regelors, & the Generol shuting up the town not Leting any Pass out but throw such Grate Dificulties as were allmost insoportable, but throw the Goodnes of God I am at last Got Saif Hear & kindly Recved by Mr Green & His wife. …
Affectionat Sister

The excerpts are from In the Words of Women Chapter 1, page 33, and The Letters of Benjamin Franklin and Jane Mecom edited by Carl Van Doren (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), pages 155-56. See other posts by Mecom HERE and HERE and HERE.