“Mary Dalley Eight in 1780”

“Mary Dalley Eight in 1780”

Who boarded with Miss Dalley? What did her boarders share in common?

The evidence is now clear that Samuel Adams lived with Gouverneur Morris and at least six other colleagues at Miss Dalley’s boarding house in 1780. This post, the “Mary Dalley Eight in 1780,” explores recently uncovered tax records which provide exciting new details about Miss Dalley and her boarders. When Miss Dalley operated her boarding house in the Walnut Ward in Philadelphia, her boarders included four members of Congress, two aides-de-camp, Gouverneur Morris (the “penman of the Constitution”) and Doctor John Jones (the “father of American Surgery”).

After summarizing recently uncovered records, this post attempts to imagine conversations around the dinner table by the “Mary Dalley Eight” in 1780. As Congressional delegates cycled through Philadelphia, representatives from Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York boarded with Miss Dalley. This essay concludes by introducing “Henry a free Negro servant” who was employed by Miss Dalley in 1780. The very real and tantalizing possibility that Henry was living with Miss Dalley in 1787 will be discussed in Part 2 – “Regarding Free Henry”. Early American historians, scholars and researchers are invited to join the “What about Henry?” investigation as Statutesandstories.com attempts to better understand the Mary Dalley Eight and their interactions with Henry, who lived and worked at Miss Dalley’s Boarding house in 1780.

As set forth below, a common thread shared by many of Miss Dalley’s boarders was ardent patriotism – embodied by Samuel Adams, along with opposition to the “nefarious institution of slavery” – best represented by Gouverneur Morris. While Morris would become the most outspoken opponent of slavery at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Miss Dalley’s other boarders included several future members of the New York Manumission Society and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, including Alexander Hamilton and Major Matthew Clarkson, the second and third Presidents of the New York Manumission Society. Clarkson would subsequently introduce the bill for the gradual abolition of slavery in New York. The New York statute was modeled after Pennsylvania’s first in the nation law providing for the gradual abolition of slavery, adopted in 1780.

Tax Assessment Ledger for Philadelphia’s Walnut Ward

It has long been known that Mary Dalley operated a boarding house in Philadelphia.  The identities of her boarders and their relationships is now coming into sharper focus as increasing numbers of eighteenth century archives are being digitized through the “OPenn” project at the University of Pennsylvania [1], the Pennsylvania State Archives, and “The Revolutionary City” project by the American Philosophical Society (“APS”), the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (“HSP”), and the Library Company of Philadelphia (“LCP”). Click here for underlying background research about Miss Dalley and her extended family of tavern operators, which is the subject of a forthcoming book from SUNY Press, America’s Founding Hosts: The First Family of Hospitality.

Beginning in 1705 Philadelphia was divided into ten wards.[2] In 1780 Miss Dalley operated her boarding house in a building owned by Thomas Mifflin on the corner of Front and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia’s Walnut Ward.[3] Circa 1782, she relocated to what became her permanent location at 107 Market Street in the North Ward.[4]  From this central location on Market Street, her boarding house was famously used by delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, known to include Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton and Elbridge Gerry. This blog post enquires about the dynamics at her boarding house in 1780 prior to the Constitutional Convention based on two recently uncovered documents which help piece together an amazing untold story which is only now beginning to come to light.

The Tax Assessment pictured below unambiguously establishes that Miss Dalley’s boarders in 1780 included: Massachusetts delegate Samuel Adams, Massachusetts delegate General (Artemas) Ward, Massachusetts delegate James Lovell, New York delegate General (Alexander) McDougall, (Doctor) John Jones, Gouverneur Morris, Major (Matthew) Clarkson and Major (Richard) Platt. At the time, four older boarders were married and four were single. Platt was an aide-de-camp to General McDougall. Clarkson was an aide-de-camp to General Benjamin Lincoln.[5]

The Tax Assessment Ledger pictured above was prepared during the summer of 1780. The purpose of the assessment was to help underwrite the cost of the Revolutionary War.  When located at Yorktown in 1778, Congress passed a resolve seeking “requisitions” from the states to raise their proportionate share of the $5 million annually sought by Congress. Pennsylvania’s quota was $620,000.[6] The first page of the Tax Assessment Ledger quotes from the 1780 “Act for Funding and Redeeming Bills of Credit of the USA and for Providing Means to Bring the Present War to a Happy Conclusion.” This Tax Assessment Ledger was only one of multiple attempts to raise revenue during the war, using property taxes, supply taxes, “18-penny taxes,”[7] liquor taxes, carriage and billiard table taxes, among others.

1780 Constable Returns

Pictured below is a portion of page 107 of the Constable Return to the Tax Assessors of Philadelphia (the “Constable Return”) for the year 1780. In its day, the Constable Return effectively served as a quasi-census for the tax collectors of the State of Pennsylvania.[8] Philadelphia’s Constable Returns were extremely detailed, containing more data than the subsequent federal census which began in 1790. Unfortunately for researchers, the Philadelphia Constable Returns were only created sporadically from 1762 to 1780.

The 1780 Constable Return lists the following information for each Philadelphia residence: the resident’s name (“householder), occupation, number of children, tenants (“inmates”), hired servants, owner (“house landlord”), rent, indentured servants (“bound servants”), and the number and age of enslaved people (“negroes”). As one might expect, the 1780 Constable Return contains a wealth of information about Miss Dalley.

The 1780 Constable Return fills in details not reported in the 1780 Tax Assessment Ledger, which identified the eight boarders in Miss Dalley’s boarding house during the second half of 1780. The following additional information flows from the top row of page 107 of the 1780 Constable Return (the verso/back side of the folio):

  • Miss Dalley’s maternal family name, Gifford, is unambiguously confirmed by the first column (“householders”). [9]
  • The second column (“trades or occupation”) confirms that Miss Dalley “keeps lodgers” for the property owner, Thomas Mifflin.
  • The third column indicates that there were no children under age 21 living on the premises.
  • The fourth column (“freemen & inmates”) elaborates that “Six members of Congress from Massachusetts and New Hampshire lodge with her.”
  • The fifth column (“hired servants and sojourners”) contains the exciting new discovery about Henry which will be discussed in Part 2 – “Regarding Free Henry” (under construction). It is hoped that this previously overlooked page 107 of the 1780 Constable Return will place “Henry a free Negro servant” front and center on the radar of future researchers and scholars.

Pictured below is the right side (recto), page 108, which further elaborates about Miss Dalley’s boarding house:

  • Thomas Mifflin’s name is repeated as the “house landlord”
  • The house rent was listed as £80 sterling
  • The two final columns confirm that Miss Dalley did not have any indentured servants (“bound servants”) or slaves (“negroes”) in her household. This is consistent with the 1790, 1800 and 1810 federal census which never suggest that Miss Dalley owned a slave.

Although the precise dates that the 1780 Constable Return for the Walnut Ward was prepared is not specified, it is likely that the data was collected in late 1779. This inference is supported by the November and December 1779 dates provided at the end of the Constable Returns for several other Philadelphia wards. This conclusion is also supported by the dates of delegate attendance at Congress. It is noteworthy that the 1780 Constable Return mentions that Miss Dalley had boarders from Massachusetts and New Hampshire, while the 1780 Tax Assessment Ledger only identifies Massachusetts, not New Hampshire delegates.[10]

Dinner at Miss Dalley’s [11]

Knowing the identities of Miss Dalley’s boarders begs the question of what they were doing when they weren’t attending Congress. While the exact conversations taking place among Congressional delegates at Miss Dalley’s will likely never be known, it is not unreasonable to speculate about discussions at Miss Dalley’s dinner table based on the following events in 1780:

After spending a year back home in Massachusetts, Samuel Adams returned to Philadelphia to attend Congress in late June of 1780 with Elbridge Gerry. During the past year in Boston, Adams helped draft the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, which Adams successfully shepherded through the ratification process.[12] His first committee appointment on returning to Philadelphia was “to take proper measures for a public celebration of the anniversary of Independence.”[13] It is hard to image that those celebrating American independence, particularly those from Boston, did not comprehend the hypocrisy of slavery at a time when America was fighting for its independence from Britain.

Indeed, the Independence day celebrations in Philadelphia in 1780 were particularly noteworthy, as Pennsylvania became the first state to enact a law to gradually abolish slavery on March 1, 1780. [14] Click here for a link to Pennsylvania’s Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. The first paragraph of the Act, written by Thomas Paine, recognized the incompatibility of slavery with the “manifold blessings” of freedom from Britain.

When we contemplate our Abhorence of that Condition to which the Arms and Tyranny of Great Britain were exerted to reduce us, when we look back on the Variety of Dangers to which we have been exposed, and how miraculously our Wants in many Instances have been supplied and our Deliverances wrought, when even Hope and human fortitude have become unequal to the Conflict; we are unavoidably led to a serious and grateful Sense of the manifold Blessings which we have undeservedly received from the hand of that Being from whom every good and perfect Gift cometh. Impressed with these Ideas we conceive that it is our duty, and we rejoice that it is in our Power, to extend a Portion of that freedom to others, which hath been extended to us; and a Release from that State of Thraldom, to which we ourselves were tyrannically doomed, and from which we have now every Prospect of being delivered.

Gouverneur Morris lost his seat in Congress in late 1779. At the time he was representing his home state of New York. Rather than returning to New York, Morris remained in Pennsylvania working as a lawyer/merchant.[15] While living in Philadelphia he lost his leg in a carriage accident on May 14, 1780. Click here for a discussion about Morris’ amputation and medical care. At the time of the accident, Morris was twenty-eight years old. Despite his youth, Morris was one of the authors of the New York Constitution (1777) and the youngest signatory to the Articles of Confederation (1778). In 1781 he became the Assistant Superintendent of Finance, serving under Robert Morris. While very little is known about Henry, it is conceivable that he provided assistance to Morris during his convalescence and recovery following his carriage accident.

Anti-slavery activism by members of the “Mary Dalley Eight”

While discussions that might have taken place at Miss Dalley’s boarding house are purely conjectural, the public positions and anti-slavery advocacy of several of her boarders are not. As illustrated below, at least five members of the “Mary Dalley Eight in 1780” were strong opponents of slavery. Is it possible that discussions or interactions with Henry may have helped shape the views of the following residents of Miss Dalley’s boarding house?

  • Gouverneur Morris: When drafting the New York Constitution in 1777 with John Jay, Gouverneur Morris proposed a clause abolishing domestic slavery in New York, but Morris’ motion failed. Morris is widely acknowledged as the most outspoken opponent of slavery at the Constitutional Convention [16], calling it a “nefarious institution,” “the curse of heaven in the states where it prevailed.” Morris indicated that “[h]e would sooner submit himself to a tax for paying for all the negroes in the U. States, than saddle posterity with such a Constitution.” Morris opposed the 3/5ths compromise, argued that representation should be based on the number of “free inhabitants” in a state, and arguably delivered what historian David O. Stewart calls the “first abolitionist speech in modern political life.” [17] Among other things, receipts and other archival records establish that Morris boarded with Miss Dalley in 1780, 1781, 1786 and 1787.[18]
  • Samuel Adams: In May of 1766, Samuel Adams and colleagues on Boston’s General Court proposed a law against buying and selling slaves in Massachusetts. While the Massachusetts colonial legislature agreed to ban the importation of slaves, British officials vetoed the law. Samuel Adams objected when he received a slave, Surrey, as a wedding gift from his mother-in-law.  “A slave cannot live in my house. If she comes she must be free.” Adams freed Surrey, who remained as a beloved member of his household for almost fifty years. Years later, at the Massachusetts Ratification Convention in 1788, Adams described slavery as an “odious, abhorrent practice.” [19] Unlike Pennsylvania which gradually abolished slavery legislatively, in Massachusetts abolition was the result of three court cases interpreting the Massachusetts Constitution. Samuel Adams was a principal author of the Massachusetts Constitution.[20] Receipts and other archival records establish that Adams boarded with Miss Dalley as early as 1778. When Adams returned to Congress in June of 1780 he also boarded with Miss Dalley.
  • Matthew Clarkson: Clarkson was a member of both the New York Manumission Society (NYMS) and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS). After serving as Vice President of the NYMS, he was elected as the third President of the NYMS in February of 1791.[21] In addition to introducing the law gradually abolishing slavery before the New York Assembly, Clarkson helped found the Free African School in New York City and served on its first board of directors.[22]  The 1780 Tax Assessment Ledger pictured above demonstrates that Clarkson boarded with Miss Dalley in 1780.
  • Richard Platt:  Platt joined the New York Manumission Society in February of 1787.[23] The 1780 Tax Assessment Ledger demonstrates that Platt boarded with Miss Dalley in 1780.
  • Alexander McDougall: General McDougall was a founding member of the NYMS in 1785 with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. McDougal was a leading radical in New York before the Revolution. During the war he became a brigadier and major general in the Continental Army. He served in the Continental and Confederation Congresses in 1781–82, 1784–85. He was elected president of the New York chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati from its founding until his passing. The 1780 Tax Assessment Ledger  demonstrates that McDougall boarded with Miss Dalley in 1780.[24]

Other boarders with Miss Dalley (and/or her sister Miss Clark) beginning in the late 1770s  include Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry, New Hampshire delegate William Whipple, and New York delegates James Duane and Alexander Hamilton. Evidence of their public positions on slavery are set forth below:

  • Alexander Hamilton: A founding member of the NYMS in 1785, Hamilton was elected the second President of the NYMS in February of 1790.[25] As evidenced by letters from Elbridge Gerry to his wife, Hamilton boarded with Miss Dalley in August of 1787. Research is ongoing into the question of where Hamilton boarded during his other visits to Philadelphia. According to Manasseh Cutler’s journal, Hamilton may have boarded at the Indian Queen during a brief visit to Philadelphia in July of 1787.
  • James Duane: Another founding member of the NYMS in 1785, James Duane would become New York’s first mayor post independence.[26]
  • Elbridge Gerry: During the Constitutional Convention Elbridge Gerry asked why slaves “who were property in the South” should be entitled to any more representation “than the cattle & horses of the North”? Gerry expressed his hostility to slavery during a debate over the slave trade. Recognizing the intransigence of South Carolina and Georgia over slavery, Gerry asserted, we “ought to be careful not to give any sanction to it.”  Gerry boarded with Miss Dalley beginning in 1778 and continued boarding with Miss Dalley during subsequent terms in Congress. Gerry also boarded with Miss Dalley during the Constitutional Convention and may have boarded with her during the early days of the first Federal Congress in Philadelphia. [27]
  • William Whipple: While William Whipple was a slave owner and likely engaged in the slave trade as a merchant and ship captain prior to the Revolutionary War, he famously freed his slave Prince Whipple in 1784 after the Revolutionary War. Whipple boarded with Miss Dalley beginning in November of 1778, after his return to Congress following the battle of Saratoga. Is it possible that earlier discussions at Miss Dalley’s boarding house might have influenced Whipple when he eventually decided to free Prince Whipple? [28]

It is noteworthy that two of the most outspoken opponents of slavery at the Constitutional Convention – Gouverneur Morris and Elbridge Gerry – were long term boarders of Miss Dalley. Gouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton, as members of the Committee on Style and Arrangement, deleted the word “justly” from the fugitive slave clause. By doing so they “removed the possible implication that there was justice in slavery.” [29]

Was it mere happenstance that these outspoken opponents of slavery boarded with Miss Dalley? Bartholomew Wistar, the owner of the building where Miss Dalley operated her boarding house in 1787, joined the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1787. When I discussed this topic with Professor John Kaminski he replied that “it is not surprising that birds of a feather flock together.”[30]

Admittedly, definitive answers are expected to prove elusive. It is certainly possible that the politics of Miss Dalley’s boarders was merely coincidental. Alternatively, the shared vision of her boarders might help shed light on Miss Dalley and her “free negro servant, Henry”? 

This post continues in Part 2 (the “Regarding Free Henry Hypothesis” )with a discussion of Henry, a “free negro servant,” who was employed by Miss Dalley in 1780. Statutesandstories.com invites researchers and scholars to assist with the “What about Henry?” investigation to better understand the “Mary Dalley Eight in 1780” and their interactions with Henry. Based on diligent archival research, we have begun to tell Miss Dalley’s story. It is now time to attempt to do the same for Henry.

Footnotes:

[1] Statutesandstories.com gratefully acknowledges the assistance of J. M. Duffin, Assistant University Archivist at the University of Pennsylvania. Moreover, Duffin’s free mapping tools at the “Mapping West Philadelphia: Landowners in October 1777” website proved to be invaluable with the larger Miss Dalley marker project in Philadelphia.

[2] The original ten wards were the Mulberry Ward, North Ward, Upper and Lower Delaware Wards, Chestnut Ward, Walnut Ward, High Street Ward, South Ward, Middle Ward, Dock Ward.

[3] Thomas Mifflin was a wealthy Philadelphia merchant who was an aide-de-camp to General Washington and became Quartermaster General for the Continental Army. He served in the First Continental Congress, returned to Congress in 1782, and was elected President of Congress in 1783. From 1785-1787 he served as Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and became Governor of Pennsylvania following Benjamin Franklin’s retirement. Both Mifflin and Franklin were “founding fathers” and signatories to the Constitution.

[4] Market Street is also known as High Street. It is believed that she would also operate a tea shop from this location beginning in 1789.

[5] Nor surprisingly, the four married boarders were delegates to Congress, whereas the unmarried boarders were aides-de-camp. As General Lincoln was from Massachusetts it made sense that Clarkson would board with the Massachusetts delegates at Miss Dalley’s. Samuel Adams wrote a letter of introduction on behalf of Clarkson from Philadelphia in 1780. Paul H. Smith, ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 14:653 n.1

[6] https://allthingsliberty.com/2023/04/how-pennsylvania-counties-paid-their-taxes-to-congress/ 

[7] The “18-penny tax” included both a poll tax on freemen and various property taxes assessed to support the issuance of paper money. Many of the tax records are collected in Ancestry.com’s “Pennsylvania, U.S., Tax and Exoneration, 1768-1801” database. https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/2497/  This database contains exoneration returns and diverse tax lists from Revolutionary-era Pennsylvania. These include documents for supply taxes, 18-penny taxes, liquor taxes, carriage and billiard table taxes, and others. Supply taxes were levied to help pay debts from the Revolutionary War, while the 18-penny tax included both a poll tax on freemen and property taxes assessed to back issuances of paper money.

[8] Unfortunately, the 1780 Constable Return was the last Constable Return until the 1790 federal census.

[9] Miss Dalley’s siblings included Gifford Dalley who operated Philadelphia’s City Tavern beginning in 1778, Catherine Gifford Simmons (who operated Simmons’ Tavern in New York with her husband John Simmons), and Elizabeth Gifford Fraunces (who operated Fraunces’ Tavern with her husband Samuel Fraunces).

[10] For example Samuel Adams returned to Congress on 29 June 1780. Similarly, General Ward arrived at Congress on 14 June 1780. Likewise, New Hampshire delegates Nathaniel Peabody, Woodbury Langdon and Nathaniel Folsom were in Philadelphia in late 1779. Paul H. Smith, ed., Letters of Delegates to Congress, 14:xix-xxi, 15:xviii-xix (Library of Congress, 1987-1988).

[11] The idea for “Dinner of Miss Dalley’s” was lifted from Peter Hoffer’s book, For Ourselves and Our Posterity. I highly recommend Hoffer’s work, which takes a deep dive into the Preamble, which is universally credited to the pen of Gouverneur Morris.

[12] Ira Stoll, Samuel Adams: A Life (New York: Free Press, 2008), 206. While Samuel’s younger cousin John Adams is recognized as the primary author of the Massachusetts Constitution, Samuel was one of three members appointed to the drafting committee along with John Adams and James Bowdoin. Stoll, 208. The job of navigating the Constitution through the ratification process fell to Samuel Adams when John left for Europe in November of 1779.

[13] Stoll, 216-217.

[14] Although Pennsylvania’s Act was the first law of its kind, it did not immediately free many slaves. It would also prove to be relatively conservative compared to subsequent emancipation laws adopted in other northern states.

[15] Richard Brookhiser, Gentleman Revolutionary: Gouverneur Morris – The Rake Who Wrote the Constitution (New York: Free Press, 2003), 58.

[16] Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography (Random House, 2005), 89 (listing Morris, Gerry, Rufus King, William Paterson and Jonathon Dayton as slavery’s biggest critics at the Convention); David O. Stewart, The Summer of 1787 (Simon & Schuster, 2007), 192.

[17] Farrand, II:221. Stewart, 192.

[18] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-04-02-0013#JNJY-01-04-02-0013-fn-0003-ptr (note 3 – Morris attempted to outlaw slavery in 1777). Click here for a discussion of tax records evidencing Morris’ residency with Miss Dalley.

[19] At the time, approximately twenty percent of the population in Adams’ town owned one or more slaves. Stacy Schiff, The Revolutionary Samuel Adams (Little Brown, 2022), 74. Stoll, 234.

[20] According to David McCullough, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 is “one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution.” John Adams (Simon & Schuster, 2001), 225. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held in the Quock Walker cases that slavery was incompatible with the 1780 Constitution’s declaration that “all men are born free and equal, and have. . . the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties.” Walker v. Jennison (1781), Jennison v. Caldwell (1781), and Commonwealth v. Jennison (1783); David Thomas Koning, “The End of Slavery in Massachusetts,” in Historic U.S. Court Cases: An Encyclopedia ed. John W. Johnson (New York: Routledge, 2001), 2:583-586.

[21] Minutes of the New York Manumission Society, 15 February 1791. List of members of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society: https://archive.org/details/actofincorporati00penn_1/page/16/mode/1up?view=theater 

[22] https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jay/01-05-02-0080 Clarkson was a leading member of the NYMS when the African Free School was founded and served on its first board of directors. Charles C. Andrews, The History of the New-York African Free-Schools, From Their Establishment in 1787 to the Present Time (New York, Mahlon Day, 1830), 14.

[23] Minutes of the NYMS, 15 February 1787 (evidencing Platt’s election to the NYMS) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-22-02-0056-0001 (note 9 – Platt is described as an aide-de-camp to McDougall)

[24]  https://nyheritage.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15052coll5/id/30577  (McDougall membership in the NYMS); https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-04-02-0002-0012  (McDougall bio)

[25] Minutes of the New York Manumission Society, 4 February 1785, 18 February 1790. (Hamilton elected president of NYMS)

[26] Minutes of the New York Manumission Society, 4 February 1785 (listing Duane as a NYMS member)

[27] Farrand, 1:201 (June 11), Farrand 2:372 (Aug. 22).

[28] Mark J. Sammons & Valerie Cunningham, Black Portsmouth: Three Centuries of African-American Heritage (Durham, University of New Hampshire Press, 2004), 68.

[29] Sean Wilentz, No Property in Man: Slavery and Anti-Slavery at the Nation’s Founding (Harvard Univ. Press, 2018), 111.

[30] Admittedly, Miss Dalley’s boarders identified thus far were exclusively from the northern states of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York.

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