June 17th, 1775, Charlestown is burned.  This battle was at first called The Battle of Charlestown Heights then was later known as The Battle of Bunker Hill.  British warships opened fire with heated cannonballs on the abandoned town of Charlestown which was set aflame to flush out the American snipers. 

This scene is showing how it may have appeared from Union Street as the flames of Charlestown are reflected in the mill pond.  A unit of British soldiers are moving north from the commons which would be behind the viewer.

 

 

The development of this painting took many turns. It was to depict Charlestown while engulfed in flames resulting from the bombardment by the British warships on June 17, 1775. 

The view would have been the perspective as if the viewer had been standing on Union Street looking toward Charlestown across the mill pond. 

Designing the Painting.

Although Isaiah Thomas had already left Boston for Worcester by the time the events portrayed in this painting took place, this scene is still in part relevant to him since the scene shows the location where he had his printing offices just a few months prior to that time. 

According to Isaiah Thomas’s book The History of Printing in America, his print shop was on the first floor and his private quarters aka “sanctum Santorum”, as was named by Hon. James Otis, was on the third floor.  The address of the Massachusetts Spy at this time was located at the “south corner of Marshall Lane leading from the mill bridge into Union Street” as it is written in his newspaper. In November of 1771 he moved his printing office to this location from “Union Street near the Market”. 

While working out the design elements and composition of this painting, I visited many libraries, museums and historical societies, etc. throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire in order to learn as much as possible about the area.  I even spent a number of hours in the Boston hall of deeds to research who was living on Union Street and Marshal Lane in 1775, and what the various residence and inhabitants were doing at the time, in order to enable me to envision for example, what the signs in front of their houses or establishments might appear like. One business was called at the sign of the Blue Ball, another establishment was the Green Dragon Tavern, which was in a different location at that time then it is today.  In 1775 it was in a building on the northwest corner of Hanover and Union Streets. It is depicted in the painting.

Detail showing "At the Sign of the Blue Ball" and the Green Dragon Tavern.

The Green Dragon Tavern, from an 18th century engraving.

Today the building located on Union Street at the south corner of Marshall Street is the Union Oyster House restaurant.  It is today a well-known theory and folklore that Isaiah Thomas had his printing shop in that building, rightly so, simply because that location corresponds to the address of his printing office.  At that point of time, 1996 when the painting was still in the very early stages of development, I had only a small number of photos of the oyster house building from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and bits and pieces of history available to develop the painting with. With what little information I had, I started the painting.

 

To aid in visualizing the the scene, I created a crude model from cardboard around 12 feet in length that would give me an idea on how to lay out the street and understand the perspective and how it related to Charlestown.  Using the British maps and deed information I obtained of the various businesses in the area, I began to reconstruct the area.

Close up of the British map showing the scene with the location of the Union Oyster House. 

The start of this painting, with a view of my studio.

An early version of the painting 

The painting at a nearly completed stage.

And then there was Hopestill Capen. 

The great conundrum.
His name came up in my research as a prior owner of the building known today as the Union Oyster House.  Before it became the Union Oyster House, it was Atwood Oyster House and before that it was ‘At the Sign of the Cornfields’, an establishment which sold dry goods owned by a man named Hopestill Capen.  In fact, the building was previously called the Old Capen House prior to the Union Oyster House.  He had his shop and residence there from 1742 through 1807, when he died. 

He was a British loyalist and a sergeant in the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company.  After the war he was even jailed for being a loyalist.  This seriously complicated things for me while trying to depict the printing shop of The Massachusetts Spy, simply because Isaiah Thomas was a publisher strongly promoting the revolution against the British authority and was by no means a supporter of the King. 

The massive elephant in the room is; how is it possible that Hopestill Capen and Isaiah Thomas would be sharing the same space?  It seemed more than inconceivable that John Hancock, Paul Revere, James Otis and other architects of the revolution would be holding their highly charged meetings in the dry goods shop called The Sign of the Cornfields.  At first, I was thinking (hoping) that perhaps Capen may have moved out of his shop in 1771 when Thomas moved to that area, but that clearly didn’t happen since in the November, 7, 14th, 22nd, 28th, 1771 issues of the Massachusetts Spy I found an ad for The Sign of the Cornfields. 

(The text is from the November 7th, 1771 issue of The Massachusetts Spy)

HOPESTILL CAPEN,

Informs his customers and others, that he has just received from London, by the Captains Darby, Cales, and Bryant, A Further Supply of Goods, suitable for the season, among which are a very fine assortment of middling and low- prized Broad Clothes, which he determines to sell by Wholesale or Retail, at the very lowest prices, at his shop at the sign of the Cornfields, in Union-Street, Boston.

One of the Panels I created for the Union Oyster House in 1996, detailing Hopestill Capen.

Also, according to the 1789 city directory detailed above right, Capen’s shop is listed on Union Street with no mention of Marshall Lane, leading one to believe that his building was not on Marshall Lane at all at that time. 

As well, a description by Isaiah Thomas’s print office as was in his own words describes a three story structure where he had his printing office/house: “… Mr. Otis, who was then under the influence of his disorder, called at my house one evening, and desired to have a private conference with me in what he called ‘my sanctum sanctorum;’ meaning a private apartment, adjoining the printing rooms, up two pair of stairs. The workmen had retired and we ascended to the place he mentioned;” (History of Printing in America, pg. 271)

The only logical explanation that I could think of was that Isaiah Thomas simply had his printing office in another building at the south corner of Marshall Lane (now "Street").  This was perhaps a source of confusion since there could actually be two locations on a single corner if that corner is not a 90 degree corner but a shallow angle as was the intersection of Marshall Lane and Union Street.   

While researching Hopestill Capen, I discovered Benjamin Thompson. Thompson was a clerk working for Capen at the Sign of the Cornfields and as the story goes, lived in the attic of that building in 1769.  Later he became a spy for the British.  Then later on in life was a celebrated scientist, among many other things, invented the Rumpford stove. Moved to Europe and changed his name to Count Rumpford.

My research of him led me to the New Hampshire Historical Society where I was told there were papers and letters of his.  In August, 1996, I discovered a small, leather bound booklet that was owned by Benjamin Thompson himself.  It seemed to be his actual diary.  It appeared to be from around the time that he was living in the attic of the Capen house, which was around 1769-70 as there was a date (1769) on one of the pages.

Within his diary were about 35 drawings.  One could have been the person Thompson was working for, either Mr. Appleton or Hopestill Capen himself.  I assumed it was Capen since Thompson was living in the attic of the shop at the time.  There was also a faded drawing in pencil of a building which I thought could have been where he was living, the shop itself.  That seemed like an obvious concept.  If that was the case, that most likely would have been the Union Oyster House building, itself. There was an open, blackened window in the attic, a highlight, so to speak which I assumed was the attic where Thompson was living at the time. 

A few days later, on August 20, I returned to the library with my computer and scanner to scan and document each page. Below are some of the pages I scanned:

Now that I found a drawing of the house, which logically could have been the house Thompson was living in while clerking at the Sign of the Cornfields, it now appeared that the building, which was today, the Union Oyster House may actually have been dramatically changed since 1769, whereas, it seemed that it could have been two floors then rather than three as it is today. 

I made a comparative study of the façade of Thompson’s drawing by over laying it on top of a contemporary photo I took of the oyster house in 1996.  It was in the same perspective as the drawing and that would correspond to the direction the viewer of the painting would be looking in the painting. The Thompson drawing seemed to nicely fit over the photo of the oyster house façade, and appeared to be a match. 

I only wished I found that drawing before I nearly completed the painting with the more contemporary façade of that building, but never mind, with that information, I felt confident with the drawing by Thompson to make the necessary modification to the painting in order to maintain the historical accuracy, as much as possible.

Image I presumed to be the Capen house drawn by Benjamin Thompson c.1769-1770.  This image appeared in his diary from that time . Thompson was staying in a room (possibly in the attic) around 1769-70 in the shop of Hopestill Capen as his apprentice or clerk in his dry goods store.
Map drawn by the British Army in 1775 shows the viewpoint of the image from the Thompson diary. The red square represents the Capen house, his residence at that time and the blue square represents possibly the residence and printing office of Isaiah Thomas, publisher of the Massachusetts Spy Newspaper between 1770 and 1775. Both buildings seem to be represented by Thompson. 
 
 
A close-up view of the British map I used for the layout of the painting modified with the new information using the Thompson drawing.

 

 

The panel of Benjamin Thompson created for the Union Oyster House in 1996.

The common knowledge of the location of Isaiah Thomas’s printing office and residence is that they were in the Capen house, now the Union Oyster House, as is suggested in the Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston (1925, pg. 62), though it doesn’t specify that fact exactly, it is merely implies that was location of his shop.  “This corner is also interesting in connection with the Massachusetts Spy, which from 1771 to 1775 was printed by Isaiah Thomas at the south comer of Marshall Lane.”  Probably, because of this assertion, it is assumed that Thomas shared the building with Hopestill Capen, thus, placing his print shop, offices and residence in the building of the Union Oyster House. 

With the elements I had at hand at the time, those were my conclusions for the painting and how I would proceed to depict the Capen House.  I changed the painting and felt confident that the scene worked.

The start of the painting prior to the research of Capen and Thompson.

The nearly completed painting showing the Union Oyster House building (on the right), prior to the discovery of the Benjamin Thompson drawing.

The completed painting incorporating the alleged Capen House from the Benjamin Thomas drawing.

However,

In 2021, 25 years after I completed this painting, while building this web page, I decided to review the information, and further research (for the heck of it) records and documents regarding the Blackstone Block, the area where the Union Oyster House exists.  I always felt something was not completely solid with the way I depicted that scene.  I came across a document that was created by the United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, which states the Union Oyster House in 2001 was registered as a historic landmark. This called into question many details which affected my depictions of the scene.

That notion of the Union Street address not being the domain and work space of Isaiah Thomas was further reinforced because, at the time when Capen had his shop, the building did not have that angled cut of the left two bays, which followed Marshall Lane, as it has today.  The angled cut to the left side of the Oyster House building, now puts it on both Union Street and Marshall Lane, at the same time, as opposed to just Union Street as it was in 1769.  The chopped angle to the façade only occurred in 1851, when Marshall Lane was widened and probably then became Marshall Street, as it is presently known .   This is the mention in the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form for the Union Oyster House: See page 8, paragraph 5 and foot note 8.

Since this angle to the building’s façade changed the address and puts it squarely on Union Street, one can now assume that the address of Thomas’s printing shop having been at the south corner of Marshall Lane leading to the mill bridge, might not actually be in the same building on Union Street, as is the folklore today.

Also, the most damning evidence that the Thompson diary drawing is NOT the Capen house is that the document mentioned that the building in the deed from 1737-1742, had five bays not three as is shown in the Thompson drawing and was 36 feet in length which is the length of the oyster house building today.  If one were to use the door in the Thompson sketch as a unit of measure, the façade in his drawing would not most likely be 36 feet long, it could be more like 20 feet, if the door is a typical three foot width (see pg. 4, paragraph 3, and foot note 1:

“While the two bays located on Marshall Street are visible from the front, it is suggested that these ornamental features were eliminated as a cost saving measure. These five bays correspond to the 36-foot length noted in the 1737-1742 deeds. However, the most compelling evidence is the interior framing in which all the second floor joists run at right angles from the summer beams despite the angle of the Marshall Street side. This suggests that the angled two-bay section was not built as an addition but at the same time as the Union Street three-bay section. The exposed beams and joists in the cellar, second, third, and attic levels appear to be eighteenth century, although the joists on the 1

      -(foot note 1)   A team consisting of Ralph Eshelrnan, Arthur Krim, Ann Grady and Matthew Kieffer, visited the site on April 9, 2001. It appears that the entire structure was probably built at the same time. This is based in part on consistent floor levels, window size and roof line as well as the existence of an end chimney on the north end of the five-bay structure and no chimney between the north two-bay and south three-bay portions of the building, suggesting that the original structure was a center hall plan with end chimneys.”

It was recently brought to my attention that the author, J. L Bell of the web blog: (https://boston1775.blogspot.com/search/label/Hopestill%20Capen) referred to two books that spoke about the house drawn by Benjamin Thompson. 

So now it seems, according to one of the books, that the house drawn by Benjamin Thompson may actually NOT have been the Capen house after all.  Contrary to what I speculated when I discovered the drawing.  In the book, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumpford by Sandborn C. Brown, the author corroborates my suspicions that it was and specifically said the drawing IS the Capen house, which gave me a sense of false vindication.  However, in the book Memoir Sir Benjamin Thompson by George E. Ellis, Ellis suggests that the drawing could be either a shop owned by a Mr. John Appleton or that owned by Hopestill Capen.  Appleton owned a shop in Salem where Thompson worked in 1766. 

So, is it the Appleton or the Capen shop in the drawing? I vote the Appleton shop as the subject of the drawing. 

This would make more sense since the house in the drawing does not at all fit the description found in the study made by the National Register of Historic Places about the Union Oyster House.  Unless of course the study of the Union Oyster House was inaccurate.  We may never know.

Question is… do I try to correct the painting?  Or do I just leave it and cringe every time I look at it.   

Detail sketch of the house in Benjamin Thomas's drawing.

House in the painting representing Isaiah Thomas's house and printing office.

The studio (2nd floor) I rented from 1995 through 1999 in Sudbury, Massachusetts where I painted these paintings.