Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 9.djvu/57

Rh he rivaled Abijah Willard, having increased a generous inheritance by the profits of very extensive manufacture and export of pearlash and potash: an industry which he and his brother Caleb were the first to introduce into America. He was now nearly seventy years of age, and died in the second year of the war.

Joseph House, at the evacuation of Boston, went with the army to Halifax. He was a householder, but possessed no considerable estate in Lancaster. In 1778, his name appears among the proscribed and banished.

The Lancaster committee of correspondence, July 17, 1775, published Nahum Houghton as "an unwearied pedlar of that baneful herb tea," and warned all patriots "to entirely shun his company and have no manner of dealings or connections with him except acts of common humanity." A special town meeting was called on June 30, 1777, chiefly "to act on a Resolve of the General Assembly Respecting and Securing this and the other United States against the Danger to which thay are Exposed by the Internal Enemies Thereof, and to Elect some proper person to Collect such evidence against such Persons as shall be demed by athority as Dangerous persons to this and the other United States of Amarica." At this meeting Colonel Asa Whitcomb was chosen to collect evidence against suspected loyalists, and Moses Gerrish, Daniel Allen, Ezra Houghton, Joseph Moor, and Solomon Houghton, were voted "as Dangerous Persons and Internal Enemies to this State." On September 13 of the same year, apparently upon a report from Colonel Asa Whitcomb, it was voted that Thomas Grant, James Carter, and the Reverend Timothy Harrington, "Stand on the Black List," It was also ordered that the selectmen Return a List of these Dangerous Persons to the Clerk, and he to the Justice of the Quorum as soon as may be." This action of the extremists seems to have aroused the more conservative citizens, and another meeting was called, on September 23, for the purpose of reconsidering this ill-advised and arbitrary proscription, at which meeting the clerk was instructed not to return the names of James Carter and the Reverend Timothy Harrington before the regular town meeting in November.

Thomas Grant was an old soldier, having served in the French and Indian War, and, if a loyalist, probably condoned the offence by enlisting in the patriot army; his name is on the muster-roll of the Rhode Island expedition in 1777, and in 1781 he was mustered into the service for three years. He was about fifty years of age, and a poor man, for the town paid bills presented "for providing for Tom Grant's Family."

Moses Gerrish was graduated at Harvard College in 1762, and reputed a man of considerable ability. Enoch Gerrish, perhaps a brother of Moses, was a farmer in Lancaster who left his home, was arrested and imprisoned in York County, and thence removed for trial to Worcester by order of the council, May 29, 1778. The following letter uncomplimentary to these two loyalists is found in Massachusetts Archives (cxcix, 278).

Sir. The two Gerrishes Moses & Enoch that ware sometime since apprehended by warrant from the Council are now set at Libberty by reason of that Laws Expiring on which they were taken up. I would move to your Honʳˢ a new warrant might Isue, Directed to Docʳ. Silas Hoges to apprehend & confine them as I look