Henry Pelham, Paul Revere, and Drawing of Boston

Massacre

On March 5, 1770, British soldiers on Boston's King Street (now State Street) fired on a raucous
mob of screaming, taunting civilians, killing five.
Within days of the shooting, Henry Pelham made a sketch of the event, which became known as the

Boston Massacre. Pelham was half-brother of painter John Singleton Copley, who by this time had
acquired international recognition for Boy with a Squirrel, a painting exhibited in London. Henry
was the boy in that painting. Henry, about 21 at the time of the Massacre and 11 years younger than
Copley, had his own artistic aspirations. Certainly he expected to make some money on his drawing
of the Massacre.
Inaccurate and Provocative
Pelham gave silversmith Paul Revere the drawing and Reverewithout giving the Pelham credit or
even getting his permissionmade an engraving based on Pelham's work, then printed it and sold it,
establishing the picture as the defining image of the event. This engraving, inaccurate and
provocative, showed a neat row of soldiers firing in a volley on command into a well-heeled cluster of
townsmen. Later evidence indicated that no officer gave an order to fire and, before any shots were
fired, at least one soldier was attacked by a man with a club.
Pelham put his own print on the market about two weeks after Reveres was put on Clicking here
sale. Pelham also wrote a note of outrage to Revere for his dishonorable Actions. Creating the image
had cost Pelham time and money, and he had hoped to make a good profit from the sale of the
images. Pelham complained that Revere had deprived him not only of any proposed advantage but
even of the expense I have been at, as truly as if You had plundered me on the Highway. We don't
know if the letter was ever delivered to Revere. We do know that, whatever difference Pelham and
Revere had were settled because four years later the two had a business arrangement.
Agreed with Patriots but Opposed Bloodshed
Pelham's drawing proved a valuable propaganda tool for the patriotic side in the emerging crisis
between Americans and British authorities. Pelham himself, however, wound up a Tory. Like his halfbrother Copley, Pelham seems to have been generally sympathetic to the ideas of the patriotsthat
taxation without representation was wrong. But he opposed the violence of the radical patriots and
thought the prospect of war catastrophic for everyone.
Pelham's letters to Copley, who sailed to Europe before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, show
Pelham's anguish over the crisis in Boston. He is dismayed about the appearance of British soldiers
on Boston Common in the summer of 1774. The Commons, wrote Pelham, "glows with warlike Red.
The fireing of Cannon, the Rattling of Drums, the music of the fife, now interrupt the pleasant
silence which once rendered it so peculiarly deligh[t]ful."
Boston Under Siege
After Lexington and Concord, he described the scene in Boston full of British soldiers and under
siege by patriot militia in the countryside: "It is inconceivable the distress and ruin this unnatural
dispute has caused to this town and its inhabitants. Almost every shop and store is shut. No business
of any kind is going on. . . . I am with the multitude rendered very unhappy, the little I collected
entirely lost. The clothes upon my back and a few dollars in my pocket are now the only property
which I have."
In a later letter, Pelham further describes his dire situation: "I cant but think myself very
unfortunate thus to have lost so much of the best part of my Life, to have my Bus[i]ness, upon which
my happyness greatly depends, so abruptly cut short, all my bright prospects anialated, the little
Property I had acquired rendered useless, myself doomed either to stay at home and starve, or leave
my country my Fri[e]nds, forced to give up those flattering expectation of domestic felicity which I

once fon[d]ly hoped to realize: to seek that Bread among strangers which I am thus cruelly deprived
of at Home."
Hopes Destroyed After Tea Party
Pelham also confesses Visit this website about other hopes blasted since the time of the Tea Partythe
fatal Era of the Teas arrival. He wrote that a certain Miss Sally Bromfield was the Object of my
Highest Esteem and Regard, a secret he never told Sally and now he felt he never could because it
would be totally unbecoming a generous mind, under Such circumstances as mine, to disturb a
Ladys repose by soliciting a Return of that Regard and attention which my Present situation forbids
me to expect."

Henry Pelham, broke, broken-hearted, and despairing in Boston after the Battle of Bunker Hill, left
Boston in 1776 and settled in London where he painted portraits and miniatures, worked as an
engraver, and taught astronomy, geography, and perspective. He later moved to Ireland and
married. His wife died after giving birth to twin sons. Pelham died in 1806, age 55 or so, following a
boating mishap as he was directing the construction of military fortification on an island in the River
Kenmare.
Did Henry ever confess to Miss Sarah Bromfield that she was the object of his Highest Esteem and
Regard? We suspect she had an inkling of what he felt. Historians found two volumes of the poetry
of John Milton with the
http://www.express.loan.bad.credit.business.loans.payday-assignment.xyz/BadCreditBusinessLoans
inscriptions: For Miss Sally Bromfield with Mr H. Pelhams Sincere & Affectionate Compliments."
Sources:
Copley, John Singleton and Pelham, Henry. Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry
Pelham, 1739-1776. The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914.
Forbes, Esther. Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999.
Prown, Jules David. John Singleton Copley in America 1738-1774. Cambridge, Massachusetts,
Harvard University Press, 1966.

Slade, Denison Rogers. Henry Pelham, Half-Brother of John Singleton Copley. Transactions. Volume
V, 1897, 1898, Boston, The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1902.
Whitmore, William H. Notes Concerning Peter Pelham, The Earliest Artist Resident in New England,
and His Successors Prior to the Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts, John Wilson and Son, 1867.
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