Secondary Story: Behind the Exhibition – Jonathan Sayward: Reluctant Loyalist HOLD TEXT

The people who witnessed and participated in the American Revolution are often viewed through a series of binaries: American/British or Patriot/Loyalist, just to name a few. Yet, in eighteenth-century New England—as in the rest of the colonies—such lines were not as neatly drawn. American colonists were British subjects, not only in custom and culture, but in their political identities. Declaring independence and going to war with Britain because of disputes over taxes and governance was, for many New Englanders, a worrisome idea. Yet, as revolutionary sentiments continued to grow among the colonists, those who resided somewhere in the middle of the partisan spectrum were not always able to remain neutral. It was often the case that anyone who registered their opposition to the work of the Sons of Liberty and the Provincial Congress was branded as a Loyalist and had their lives derailed or even destroyed. Almost overnight, a well-respected member of a community could become an enemy of the state.

Such was the case with Jonathan Sayward (1713-1797), a mariner and trader who held prominent political positions in his town of York, Maine, and served as the representative from York to the General Court. Sayward was also a veteran of the Seven Years’ War who took part in the Siege of Louisbourg in 1744. Jonathan Sayward’s diary (held by the American Antiquarian Society) and household furnishings at Historic New England’s Sayward-Wheeler House in York help us tell the story of a successful entrepreneur and respectable government official who lost almost everything because of his political sympathies. His experience of persecution at the hands of his fellow colonists provides a different perspective on the American Revolution.

Sayward first came under fire in 1768 after voting to rescind a letter circulated by his fellow Massachusetts representatives to other colonial legislatures, asking them to join the protest against British Parliament after they began taxing tea and other imports. Massachusetts Governor Bernard threatened to dissolve the General Court if they did not rescind the letter. A vote was taken in June, with ninety-two members voting not to rescind, and seventeen voting yes—Sayward among them.

Sayward had his reasons for voting as he did. According to his diary, “I was much against Resolutions being sent in a Public manner by authority. I then said it would bring the weight of ministerial vengeance on this province. I have lived to see my prediction fulfilled.” Indeed, Bernard dissolved the General Court later that year, sending the colonies into political unrest.

Sayward did not wish for the colonies to draw the ire of Parliament, likely hoping to avoid a potential military conflict (British troops would arrive to occupy Boston the following month), but his actions painted a target on his back. Boston engraver Paul Revere immediately circulated a print condemning the rescinders to “A Warm Place — Hell.” Sayward recorded in his diary: “[we] are hated with all contempt and the printers are full against us.”

In addition to his concerns about Parliament, Sayward was also horrified by the violent actions of the Sons of Liberty, who protested the Stamp Act by pillaging Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s mansion in 1765. In 1773, he recorded that “The men of Belial arose in Boston and took possession of the 2 ships of tea and hoisted all out and turned it into the Dock.” In January 1774, he wrote: “The opposition to parliament will undo us.”

Meanwhile, Sayward faced retaliation from his own community. The town of York did not reelect Sayward to the General Court after he voted to rescind the letter. He recorded being mobbed in public and struggled to fulfill his other public roles, since the Sons of Liberty often created scenes to disrupt judicial proceedings as an act of protest. One member “collected a great crowed. . . inflamed them in a most mad manner put the court in danger.” Sayward was also harassed by the Sons of Liberty for breaking the embargo on tea and importing 150 pounds to his home in York with the intention to sell; local officials seized his stock. In March 1775, Sayward wrote: “threatened the whole of last week by the mob and in danger but not yet destroyed.”

Sayward bemoaned the extremism favored by his fellow colonists: “The judicious are neglected men and fiery counsels are the only men and measures approved,” he wrote in 1775, right after fighting broke out in Lexington and Concord. On top of that, his wife Sarah Sayward died in September 1775. His diary entry for the end of the year recounts a season of misfortune:

I am now arrived to the close of the year though the forbearance of god in hath been a year of extraordinary trials: besides the death of my wife (the greatest of all) which is mentioned and remarked on the 12th Sept., I have lost a new Sloop (ship). . . and suffered the loss of one or more cargoes in West Indies and lonely by the death of one and another but this is but small compared with the hazards I have and a sill in on account of my political sentiments and conduct. I have been confined upon honor not to absent myself from the town and a bonds man Jonathan Moulton Esq. for my compliance often threatened afraid to go abroad. Have not been out of from these nine months through fear though my business greatly required in the loss of trade the scorn of the [abject] slight of friends continually on my guard all my offices as judge of Probate Judge of Court of Common Pleas, Justice of Quorum, Justice of Peace taken from me. Constant danger of being driven from my habitation so much that I have constantly kept 200 pounds lawful in gold and paper currency in my pocket for fear of suddenly being removed from my abode. I have been examined before committee and obliged to lay open my letters from Governor Hutchinson to swear to my private conversations. All the above I have suffered from Principle. I was one of the seventeen in the year 1767 or 8 that that rescinded as a member of the General Coury I were originally against sending out the Circular Letter [inviting] the other governments into a combination as it would bring displeasure on this government and I now apprehend it laid the foundation for our present troubles.

Confined to Sayward-Wheeler House, Sayward watched in disbelief as America declared itself an independent nation: “It’s all beyond my depth, I am lost in wonder,” he wrote in July 1776.

During the American Revolution, Sayward’s world shrunk to confines of his home in York, a space filled with genteel furnishings such as export porcelain from Japan and China and furnishings made in Boston with mahogany extracted from the West Indies. One might understand why this man, who had come from humble beginnings as the son of a debt-ridden millwright, had fought for years to avoid a civil war which threatened to dismantle all the success and prosperity he’d achieved through the global maritime trade.

Sayward’s outlook was pessimistic: “If we succeed it will be many years after I and this generation are gone before we feel any of the comfortable fruits of independence,” he wrote in January 1777.

While he felt strongly that the war was a wasteful endeavor, filled with needless bloodshed, Sayward was also sympathetic to those fighting for independence. He had kinship connections in the Continental Army, among them his nephew Brigadier General Jotham Moulton (1743-1777), who died suddenly in May 1777. Sayward spent a restless night listening to the ticking of his elegant tall-case clock, recording in his diary: “I heard the clock every Hour Last night. Little or no Sleep.”

Sayward also recorded the divided loyalties of his own household. In the early 1780s, two men enslaved by Sayward, Prince and Cato, enlisted in the Continental Army. Cato (dates unknown), purchased his “time” from Sayward in 1781 “and he enlisted in the country’s army for 3 years [in place of Jonathan Carlton of Newbury],” implying that a drafted man named Jonathan Carlton paid for Cato to serve in his stead.

Prince (1749-1789) purchased his freedom from Sayward with support from unknown individuals referred to as “the Friends of Prince Sayward.” Sayward wrote in his diary: “My negro Prince Enlisted and Past muster to go in the army without my consent.” Prince served in the 7th Massachusetts Regiment as a waiter (personal servant) to Major Samuel Darby. After returning to York, Prince died 1789 of consumption. Sayward apparently supported Prince and Dinah through Prince’s sickness and paid for the cost of burying him. He wrote “He had been my servant. The New Constitution made him free.” Dinah successfully petitioned to receive her late husband’s military pension, with support from her neighbors in York.

Sayward died in 1797, having quietly resumed his former status in York society after the end of the war. He was once again appointed to “Various offices, civil, judicial, and ecclesiastical with honor and reputation sustained,” according to his gravestone. Local memory seemed to have forgotten—purposefully or otherwise—the actions that led to his ostracization and house arrest a few decades earlier.

Sayward went to his grave skeptical about the prospects of a free and independent nation. In a letter to an unknown friend written in 1784, Sayward claimed to feel no ill will toward his “unhappy countrymen,” but pondered whether he would live to see they day “when my bitterest persecutors may think, if not say, it would have been happy for America if your sentiments and mind had been adopted & attended to.”

Sayward’s story reveals the complicated entanglements between individuals—men and women, enslaved and free, “rebel” and “loyalist”—affected by the American Revolution and its aftermath.

Written by Erica Lome, Curator of Collections