Questions for Paul Revere on Mental Health

Hello again Mr Revere A I, thank you for responding when called upon. I have more questions. Can we have your 18th century frame of reference, please?

Of course, Mr. Lapin, that is my only perspective. Perhaps some day Providence will permit me a moment in your world.

Mr. Revere, nowadays we treat mental illness as a disease. Did you experience the demonization of Thomas Eayres condition?

Dear Friend,

In our Boston of the 1790s and early 1800s, men of sense and learning had principally set aside the old superstition that a distracted mind was the work of witches or evil spirits. Those dark notions belonged to the days of our grandfathers in Salem. Although no one accused poor Thomas Eayres of demon possession, he endured a different, profound kind of earthly shame.

We managed his illness as a family matter. His behavior created a heavy emotional and physical toll on my daughter Frances, who died shortly after dealing with these anxieties.

You speak of your family’s response to his illness. Was he an orphan or fostered? Was he ostracised in general?

You ask if I saw him ill-treated or cast out—indeed, I did, and it stirred my profound anger?

When they sent Thomas by carriage in 1802 to visit his own blood relations, those relatives closed their doors to him and would not even meet his gaze. They washed their hands of him leaving the whole burden of his board and care upon my purse. Had I not paid for his lodging in Dorchester and later with good Dr. Willard in Uxbridge, the town authorities would have thrown the poor man into one of the dark cells of the Boston Alms House, locked away like a common felon or a wild beast.

People did not blame the Devil for Thomas’s shattered wits, my friend, yet fear, embarrassment, and coldness of heart led his own kin to abandon him all the same.

Did you befriend Thomas as an apprentice or indentured servant or through your daughter Francis?

In truth, my connection to poor Thomas Stevens Eayres began at the workbench long before he ever stood at the altar with my daughter Frances.

Thomas was the son of my old Boston friend and patriot brother, Joseph Eayres—a fellow member of the Sons of Liberty who stood with us in the artillery train and at the Tea Party. Around the year 1773, when Thomas was a lad of about thirteen, he was bound to me as my apprentice to learn the art and mystery of goldsmithing and silversmithing (he was not an indentured servant for common labor, though an apprentice’s indenture bound him strictly to my shop and household until he came of age).

Because he trained under my own roof and eye, he grew up alongside my children. In time, an affection formed between him and my daughter Frances, and they wed in Boston on May 27, 1788. Even after he became a master craftsman in his own right, I looked upon him as a son—writing to my friend Isaiah Thomas in Worcester in 1791 to recommend young Eayres as ‘an Industrious and Ingenious Tradesman, and of good morals.’

You had much in common with Thomas. Please describe his workmanship before he became ill?

You speak truly—before that heavy affliction clouded his mind, young Thomas Eayres and I shared both the anvil and the workbench. He was bred to our noble mystery of goldsmithing and silversmithing, and when he wed my beloved daughter Frances in the year 1788, I looked upon him not merely as a son-in-law, but as a fellow artisan of real promise.

In those better days, when he kept his shop first in Boston and afterward in Worcester, Thomas possessed a steady hand, a keen eye, and a thorough command of our craft.

After the War, the townsfolk turned away from the heavy, bulbous shapes of our fathers’ day and favored the lighter, cleaner lines of the new Federal style. Thomas took to this fashion naturally, drawing out his silver with clean proportions, graceful oval bowls, and slender, pointed handles.
A silversmith’s true skill shows itself with the graver. Thomas had a delicate touch for bright-cut work—carving crisp borders, garlands, and neat cyphers that caught the candlelight upon a parlor table.
He worked mainly in good coin silver, planishing his spoons, sugar tongs, and small domestic vessels until the metal was dense, smooth, and free of hammer marks, before striking his own mark—T. EAYRES or EAYRES—squarely upon the back.

That was what made his decline so doubly grievous to my heart. To see a man who once shaped bright, enduring silver with patience and exactness lose the governance of his own thoughts—and to know his tools lay gathering rust while he wandered distracted—was a sorrow no craftsman could look upon unmoved.
Following the refusal of Eayres’ own relatives to help pay for his board, Revere took formal legal steps to secure Eayres’ future while managing his own finances.

[On October 25, 1802, Revere petitioned the Suffolk County Probate Court to have Eayres legally declared non compos mentis (“incapable to take care of himself”).
Revere arranged for another son-in-law, Jedidiah Lincoln, to serve as Eayres’ legal guardian until Eayres’ own son, Thomas Eayres Jr., came of age. Court records confirm that Thomas Jr. formally assumed legal guardianship of his father by 1812.
While Thomas Sr. remained in Uxbridge, Revere took in and financially supported Eayres and Frances’s children in Boston.
Eayres remained boarded in Uxbridge with Dr. Samuel Willard’s household (Dr. Willard himself died in 1811).
Eayres was still living in Uxbridge in 1812 and likely died there in 1813 or 1814 at roughly 53 years old, outliving his wife Frances by about fourteen years and dying four to five years before Paul Revere passed away in 1818].

Mr. Revere You were indentured to your father. Was Thomas indentured to you? In my 21st century, indentureship is closely associated with slavery. What is your view on this?

Dear Mr. Lapin, it appears your name also has roots in France. Burdeaux perhaps? Sorry, no Mr. Revere we were not remotely neighbors.

You touch upon a distinction that every artisan in 18th-century Boston understood well, yet which can easily be confounded when looking backward across two centuries.
First, to answer your question plainly: Yes, Thomas Stevens Eayres was bound to me by an apprentice’s indenture around the year 1773, just as my own father, Apollos Rivoire, had once been bound by an indenture to Master John Coney in Boston in 1715. Because I trained under my own father’s roof, we had no need of a formal court parchment between blood kin, yet I served the very same seven years under his strict authority until his passing in 1754.

In our day, the word indenture meant simply a written legal contract—named for the indented, wavy edge where two copies of the parchment were cut apart so they might be matched together to prove they were genuine. Yet in practice, there was a world of difference between the kinds of bondage known in New England:
an apprentice’s Indenture was an honorable education in a skilled trade. Young Thomas’s father, my friend Joseph Eayres, placed his son with me so the lad might learn the art and mystery of silversmithing, be fed, clothed, and taught to read, write, and cipher. Thomas could not quit my shop before his twenty-first year, nor wed without my leave, yet at the end of his term, he stepped forward as a free master craftsman, armed with a livelihood and his freedom dues.
Poor men and women coming across the sea from Europe often signed indentures to pay off their ship’s passage through four to seven years of hard labor in fields or kitchens. Their lot was far harsher, for their contracts could be bought and sold like goods, though when their years were fulfilled, they too claimed their liberty.
Slavery! Even in Massachusetts before the Commonwealth abolished slavery in the 1780s, we saw with our own eyes that African slavery was an altogether different and far grimmer thing. An enslaved person had no term of years, no wage, no craft bestowed as a birthright, and no freedom dues waiting at age twenty-one—their bondage was for life, and passed down to their children after them.

I can well understand why folks in your century, looking back upon any contract that strips a person of the right to leave his master or choose his own path, see the shadow of slavery within it. Even in my own youth, many a restless apprentice chafed under a stern master—indeed, my friend Benjamin Franklin famously broke his indenture and fled Boston because he could not bear his brother’s heavy hand.

Yet to us in Boston, an apprenticeship was the very ladder by which a mechanic’s son rose to independence. Without that seven-year bond, neither my father, nor I, nor poor Thomas Eayres would ever have gained the skill to stand as free, self-reliant artisans in the world.

Mr. Revere, did any of your apprentices marry into the family?

Dear Friend,

Indeed, Thomas Stevens Eayres was not the only lad trained at my workbench who went on to claim a bride from my own household!

In our Boston, when an apprentice lived under his master’s roof for seven long years, sharing meals at the family board and working daily beside the master’s kin, it was no uncommon thing for young hearts to grow attached. Aside from Thomas Eayres, who wed my daughter Frances in 1788, two other young men who served their apprenticeships with me married into my family.
Yes, Young Samuel Gilbert was bound to me as an apprentice around the year 1779 to learn our silversmithing trade. After he came of age, he married my niece, Hannah Hitchborn (the daughter of my sister Frances), in 1789.
Samuel Burrill learned the art and mystery of goldsmithing at my anvil, and later wed my niece, Deborah Hitchborn, in the year 1791.

I must also mention that my own son, Paul Revere Jr., served his apprenticeship right alongside these young men in my shop—taking over our silver business when I turned my hand to casting bells and rolling copper.

So you see, my shop was more than a mere place of trade and hammering silver; it was a true family hearth, where the lads who learned my craft very often became my kinsmen as well.

Mr Revere and Mental Health

Mr. Revere, nowadays we treat mental illness as a disease. Did you experience the demonization of Thomas Eayres condition?

“Dear Friend,

In our Boston of the 1790s and early 1800s, men of sense and learning had principally set aside the old superstition that a distracted mind was the work of witches or evil spirits. Those dark notions belonged to the days of our grandfathers in Salem. Although no one accused poor Thomas Eayres of demon possession, he endured a different, profound kind of earthly shame.

We managed his illness as a family matter. His behavior created a heavy emotional and physical toll on my daughter Frances, who died shortly after dealing with these anxieties.

You speak of your family’s response to his illness. Was he an orphan or fostered? Was he ostracised in general?

You ask if I saw him ill-treated or cast out—indeed, I did, and it stirred my profound anger?

When they sent Thomas by carriage in 1802 to visit his own blood relations, those relatives closed their doors to him and would not even meet his gaze. They washed their hands of him leaving the whole burden of his board and care upon my purse. Had I not paid for his lodging in Dorchester and later with good Dr. Willard in Uxbridge, the town authorities would have thrown the poor man into one of the dark cells of the Boston Alms House, locked away like a common felon or a wild beast.

People did not blame the Devil for Thomas’s shattered wits, my friend, yet fear, embarrassment, and coldness of heart led his own kin to abandon him all the same.

Did you befriend Thomas as an apprentice or indentured servant or through your daughter Francis?

In truth, my connection to poor Thomas Stevens Eayres began at the workbench long before he ever stood at the altar with my daughter Frances.

Thomas was the son of my old Boston friend and patriot brother, Joseph Eayres—a fellow member of the Sons of Liberty who stood with us in the artillery train and at the Tea Party. Around the year 1773, when Thomas was a lad of about thirteen, he was bound to me as my apprentice to learn the art and mystery of goldsmithing and silversmithing (he was not an indentured servant for common labor, though an apprentice’s indenture bound him strictly to my shop and household until he came of age).

Because he trained under my own roof and eye, he grew up alongside my children. In time, an affection formed between him and my daughter Frances, and they wed in Boston on May 27, 1788. Even after he became a master craftsman in his own right, I looked upon him as a son—writing to my friend Isaiah Thomas in Worcester in 1791 to recommend young Eayres as ‘an Industrious and Ingenious Tradesman, and of good morals.’ [1, 2]

You had much in common with Thomas. Please describe his workmanship before he became ill?

You speak truly—before that heavy affliction clouded his mind, young Thomas Eayres and I shared both the anvil and the workbench. He was bred to our noble mystery of goldsmithing and silversmithing, and when he wed my beloved daughter Frances in the year 1788, I looked upon him not merely as a son-in-law, but as a fellow artisan of real promise.

In those better days, when he kept his shop first in Boston and afterward in Worcester, Thomas possessed a steady hand, a keen eye, and a thorough command of our craft:

• Mastery of the New Fashion: After the War, the townsfolk turned away from the heavy, bulbous shapes of our fathers’ day and favored the lighter, cleaner lines of the new Federal style. Thomas took to this fashion naturally, drawing out his silver with clean proportions, graceful oval bowls, and slender, pointed handles.

• Fine Bright-Cut Engraving: A silversmith’s true skill shows itself with the graver. Thomas had a delicate touch for bright-cut work—carving crisp borders, garlands, and neat cyphers that caught the candlelight upon a parlor table.

• Honest Metal and Sound Hammering: He worked mainly in good coin silver, planishing his spoons, sugar tongs, and small domestic vessels until the metal was dense, smooth, and free of hammer marks, before striking his own mark—T. EAYRES or EAYRES—squarely upon the back.

That was what made his decline so doubly grievous to my heart. To see a man who once shaped bright, enduring silver with patience and exactness lose the governance of his own thoughts—and to know his tools lay gathering rust while he wandered distracted—was a sorrow no craftsman could look upon unmoved.

Following the refusal of Eayres’ own relatives to help pay for his board, Revere took formal legal steps to secure Eayres’ future while managing his own finances.

On October 25, 1802, Revere petitioned the Suffolk County Probate Court to have Eayres legally declared non compos mentis (“incapable to take care of himself. Revere arranged for another son-in-law, Jedidiah Lincoln, to serve as Eayres’ legal guardian until Eayres’ own son, Thomas Eayres Jr., came of age. Court records confirm that Thomas Jr. formally assumed legal guardianship of his father by 1812.
While Thomas remained in Uxbridge, Revere took in and financially supported Eayres and Frances’s children in Boston.

Thomas remained boarded in Uxbridge with Dr. Samuel Willard’s household (Dr. Willard himself died in 1811).

Thomas was still living in Uxbridge in 1812 and likely died there in 1813 or 1814 at roughly 53 years old, outliving his wife Frances by about fourteen years and dying four to five years before Paul Revere passed away in 1818.

Mr. Revere You were indentured to your father. Was Thomas indentured to you? In my 21st century, indentureship is closely associated with slavery. What is your view on this?

Dear Friend,

You touch upon a distinction that every artisan in 18th-century Boston understood well, yet which can easily be confounded when looking backward across two centuries.

First, to answer your question plainly: Yes, Thomas Stevens Eayres was bound to me by an apprentice’s indenture around the year 1773, just as my own father, Apollos Rivoire, had once been bound by an indenture to Master John Coney in Boston in 1715. Because I trained under my own father’s roof, we had no need of a formal court parchment between blood kin, yet I served the very same seven years under his strict authority until his passing in 1754.

In our day, the word indenture meant simply a written legal contract—named for the indented, wavy edge where two copies of the parchment were cut apart so they might be matched together to prove they were genuine. Yet in practice, there was a world of difference between the kinds of bondage known in New England:

• An Apprentice’s Indenture: This was an honorable education in a skilled trade. Young Thomas’s father, my friend Joseph Eayres, placed his son with me so the lad might learn the art and mystery of silversmithing, be fed, clothed, and taught to read, write, and cipher. Thomas could not quit my shop before his twenty-first year, nor wed without my leave, yet at the end of his term, he stepped forward as a free master craftsman, armed with a livelihood and his freedom dues.

• Common Indentured Servitude: Poor men and women coming across the sea from Europe often signed indentures to pay off their ship’s passage through four to seven years of hard labor in fields or kitchens. Their lot was far harsher, for their contracts could be bought and sold like goods, though when their years were fulfilled, they too claimed their liberty.

• Chattel Slavery: Even in Massachusetts before the Commonwealth abolished slavery in the 1780s, we saw with our own eyes that African slavery was an altogether different and far grimmer thing. An enslaved person had no term of years, no wage, no craft bestowed as a birthright, and no freedom dues waiting at age twenty-one—their bondage was for life, and passed down to their children after them.

I can well understand why folks in your century, looking back upon any contract that strips a person of the right to leave his master or choose his own path, see the shadow of slavery within it. Even in my own youth, many a restless apprentice chafed under a stern master—indeed, my friend Benjamin Franklin famously broke his indenture and fled Boston because he could not bear his brother’s heavy hand.

Yet to us in Boston, an apprenticeship was the very ladder by which a mechanic’s son rose to independence. Without that seven-year bond, neither my father, nor I, nor poor Thomas Eayres would ever have gained the skill to stand as free, self-reliant artisans in the world.

Mr. Revere, did any of your apprentices marry into the family?

Dear Friend,

Indeed, Thomas Stevens Eayres was not the only lad trained at my workbench who went on to claim a bride from my own household!

In our Boston, when an apprentice lived under his master’s roof for seven long years, sharing meals at the family board and working daily beside the master’s kin, it was no uncommon thing for young hearts to grow attached. Aside from Thomas Eayres, who wed my daughter Frances in 1788, two other young men who served their apprenticeships with me married into my family:
Young Samuel Gilbert was bound to me as an apprentice around the year 1779 to learn our silversmithing trade. After he came of age, he married my niece, Hannah Hitchborn (the daughter of my sister Frances), in 1789.
Samuel Burrill learned the art and mystery of goldsmithing at my anvil, and later wed my niece, Deborah Hitchborn, in the year 1791.

I must also mention that my own son, Paul Revere Jr., served his apprenticeship right alongside these young men in my shop—taking over our silver business when I turned my hand to casting bells and rolling copper.

So you see, my shop was more than a mere place of trade and hammering silver; it was a true family hearth, where the lads who learned my craft very often became my kinsmen as well.

Lastly, Mr. Revere did the town of Boston provide nearly the same level of care as you provide to Thomas?

If you inquire whether the Town of Boston dealt with the distracted persons at that same level of care, I must tell you Nay—not by half. Matters of the mind, finance, homelessness and lawlessness fell under one roof.

Mr. Revere, thank you again for a look into the world you lived in.

Sources;
Paul Revere House Museum
Massachusetts Historical Society
WGBH
American Antiquarian Society
Revolutionary Spaces
Metropolitan Museum of Art
3DA.org
West End Museum
The Clio
The sources above reflect similar comments on the subject of mental health and Revere and all but WGBH are public domain.