Ebenezer Richardson was an officer of the Customs in Boston. On the 22 Feb., 1770, he was assailed by a mob who chased him to his home, bricks and stones were thrown at the windows. Richardson, provoked, fired at random into the mob, dangerously wounding one of them, Samuel Gore, and mortally wounding another, Christopher Snider, a poor German boy, who died the next morning.
The excitement was intense, the funeral of the boy was attended by the revolutionists, and the event taken advantage of to fire the passions of the people. On the 20th of April, Richardson was tried for his life and brought in guilty of murder. Chief Justice Hutchinson viewed the guilt of Richardson, as everybody would now, a clear case of justifiable homicide, and consequently refused to sign a warrant for his execution, and after lying in prison two years, was, on application to the King, pardoned and set at liberty.[249] To reward Richardson for what he had suffered, he was appointed in 1773 as an officer of the Customs of Philadelphia.
Historians have treated Richardson very unfairly, and caused his memory to be execrated. He was a Custom House officer, and the duties of his office caused him to seize smuggled goods, as any custom house officer would at the present time, previous to that he belonged to the secret service division for the detection of illicit traders, on this account he has always been contemptuously called an "informer". He was not any worse than hundreds of secret service agents employed at the present time by the United States Government, to detect law-breakers. They are of course detested by the criminal classes, and the mountaineer moonshiners of Kentucky consider it no crime to kill them, when the opportunity offers. After Richardson's release, he went to Philadelphia to reside, so as to escape mob violence; the malignity of the revolutionists, however, followed him, and a scurrilous effusion was published there entitled "The Life and Humble Confession of Richardson the Informer."
The broadside was embellished with a rude wood cut of Richardson firing into the mob, and the killing of the boy Snider. The same has been recently republished, and the author states "Whatever facts it may contain, are doubtless expanded beyond the limits of the actual truth."[250]
COMMODORE JOSHUA LORING.[251]
Thomas Loring came from Axminster in Devonshire, England, to Dorchester with his wife, Jane, whose maiden name was Newton, in the year 1634, they removed to Hingham, and finally settled and died at Hull in 1661, leaving many descendants, who still reside in Hull, and Hingham.
Commodore Joshua Loring was descended from Thomas Loring. He was born at Boston, Aug. 3, 1716. He was apprenticed to Mr. Mears, a tanner of Roxbury. When he was of age he went to sea. About 1740 he married Mary, daughter of Samuel Curtice, of Roxbury. In 1744 he was master of a Brigantine Privateer of Boston, and while cruising near Louisburg, was taken by two French Men of War.
He purchased an estate in 1752, on Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, of Joshua Cheever, on which he erected what has since been known as the Greenough mansion. It is said to have been framed in England and was one of the finest residences in Roxbury. It was situated opposite the intersection of Center and South streets, opposite the soldiers' monument.
On December 19, 1757, He was commissioned captain in the British Navy, was Commodore of the naval forces on Lakes Champlain and Ontario, and participated in the capture of Quebec under Wolfe, and in the conquest of Canada in the succeeding campaign of Amherst. He was severely wounded in the leg while in command on Lake Ontario, and at the close of the war he retired on half pay, at which time he settled down at Jamaica Plain, Roxbury. He was one of the five Commissioners of the revenue, and General Gage by writ of mandamus appointed him a member of his Council, and he was sworn in Aug. 17, 1774. This immediately subjected him to the strictest surveillance by the revolutionists, and the greatest pressure was brought to bear upon him to throw up the obnoxious office. A diarist, under date of Aug. 29, speaking of a Roxbury town meeting recently held says, "Late in the evening a member visited Commodore Loring, and in a friendly way advised him to follow the example of his townman Isaac Winslow, (who had already resigned). He desired time to consider it. They granted it, but acquainted him if he did not comply he must expect to be waited on by a large number, actuated by a different spirit. (Tarred and feathered and rode on a rail). On the morning of the Lexington battle, after passing most of the previous night in consultation with Deacon Joseph Brewer, his neighbor and intimate friend, upon the step he was about to take, he mounted his horse, left his home and everything belonging to it, never to return again, and pistol in hand, rode at full speed to Boston, stopping on the way only to answer an old friend, who asked 'Are you going, Commodore?' 'Yes,' he replied. 'I have always eaten the king's bread, and always intend to.'" The sacrifice must have been especially painful to him, for he was held in high esteem by his friends and neighbors, but he could not spurn the hand that had fed him, and rather than do a dishonorable act, he would sacrifice all he possessed, even the land of his birth. At the evacuation he went to England. He received a pension from the crown until his decease at Highgate, in October, 1781, at the age of sixty-five. Joshua Loring was proscribed, banished and his large estate confiscated. His mansion house was in May, 1775, headquarters of General Nathaniel Greene, and afterwards for a brief period, a hospital for American soldiers, many of whom were buried on the adjacent grounds. Later Captain Isaac Sears bought the property of the State, and lived there for several years.