A 2” x 7” manuscript document signed by the Quartermaster General of the Continental Army Timothy Pickering was sold as Lot 35034 in the June 2009 Heritage Historical Manuscripts Auction #6026. Dated 7 May 1784 at Philadelphia, the document reads in part, “Received . . . of John Barry Twenty Seven pounds four Shillings, & two pence being in full for Prize Money due to Woodward Abraham A seaman belonging to the Frigate Alliance in vesture of his Power of Attorny.” It seems interestingly odd that Pickering would represent a common seaman as his personal attorney in such a matter but several circumstances might have been brought to bear. A Harvard grad, Salem, MA native Timothy Pickering always championed the welfare of the common soldier and had little patience for those he believed were unconcerned or inattentive to their needs. He termed the Quartermaster General’s position he inherited from Nathaniel Greene in May 1777 as “an office so burdensome and a service so ungrateful.” Pickering resigned the post in 1785. He would later serve as George Washington’s Postmaster General from 1791 through 1795 when he was appointed the President’s second Secretary of War. Timothy Pickering may have also been persuaded by Woodward Abraham’s Salem ties, as it appears the seaman’s earlier service on a Salem privateer may have put his life on a trajectory which carried him to the Alliance and Philadelphia. Research into the Timothy Pickering Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society may shed further light on the relationship between the two as the publication “Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society” (1896) indicates the collection includes a 26 June 1784 document associated with “Money received for Woodward Abraham, and others.”
Continental Navy seaman Woodward Abraham is listed among the 481 officers and men who were recorded as serving on the frigate Alliance during the twenty months between August 1781 and May 1783 in the Payroll and Ledger records of the frigate Alliance held in the Barry-Hayes Collection of the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia and made available online by Villanova University Digital Library. According to his pension application #S32,623; Woodward Abraham entered service for one year on board the Continental Navy frigate on or about 20 January 1782 at L’Orient, France. The vessel’s payroll notes his entry as 19 January 1782 and his wages at eight dollars per month. This timing places the seaman on the ship just days after she made port conveying supercargo Marquis de Lafayette on Captain John Barry’s second cruise on the Alliance, having left Boston on 23 December 1781. Lafayette was returning home after the surrender of Cornwallis’ army at Yorktown the previous October. Soon after his enlistment, Abraham went to sea on the Alliance for a short unsuccessful cruise to the Bay of Biscay in February where he likely lost his hat to a winter wind. The frigate’s ledger indicates the sailor was issued a “hatt”, hose and a knife on 9 February and another “hatt” almost a month later on 2 March 1782 just two weeks before sailing for home. The Alliance took no prizes on the homeward voyage with eight men dying at sea within six weeks. On 10 May 1782, the Alliance encountered and then eluded a sixty-four gun British warship off Cape Henlopen three days before her arrival at New London on 13 May 1782. The large number of crew who died at sea were followed by ten additional deaths during the two months immediately following.
The frigate Alliance remained at New London until she departed on her long third cruise under Captain Barry on 4 August 1782 with Woodward Abraham continuing onboard. Almost immediately after leaving, Alliance recaptured the prize RI brigantine Adventure and sent her in to New London. Using the memoirs of Alliance master mate John Kessler as his source, William Bell Clark in “Gallant John Barry” (1938) describes the event. “In little more than an hour, he had a prize. True, she was nothing of great moment a brigantine laden with lumber and fish but a good augury for the future none the less. He took her off the point of Plumb Island, and found that, but two days before, she had been American property the Adventure, owned in Rhode Island and cut out of Narragansett bay by a British privateer. Her late captor was visible off to the eastward, which expedited the manner in which she was manned by Midshipman Thomas Foster and “three Indifferent hands” and ordered for New London. “The Cargo is not very valuable,” wrote Barry to John Brown, “but it is making a Beginning.” The subsequent pursuit of the privateer, while carrying them well beyond the mouth of the sound, was unavailing. The Captain soon abandoned the chase and ordered the frigate’s course to the southward.” While it is possible, it is not likely that prize master Thomas Foster and his “hands” were returned to the Alliance after delivering the brig Adventure into New London only to be placed on another prize shortly thereafter, as after her capture Captain Barry “proceeded as fast as possible off Bermudas”. The schooner Polly was taken along the way on 10 August 1782 and sent in to Boston. On 25 August 1782, the Alliance retook the Connecticut sloop Fortune. The Continental Navy frigate then sailed to the banks of Newfoundland where she took the Nantucket whaling brig Somerset in early September. A prize crew was put on board to sail the ship into Boston and several days later on 18 September 1782, Alliance captured a damaged brigantine from Jamaica which was also sent to Boston. If Midshipman Thomas Foster did not somehow return to service on the Alliance and be again appointed prize master of one of these later captures, then Woodward Abraham most definitely joined him on the prize crew of the Adventure.
Careful examination of Alliance payroll records indicate seaman Woodward Abraham was discharged from the vessel on 17 October 1782. This roughly concurs with the pension testimony of shipmate and sailmaker Nathaniel Service or Servis who stated Abraham was “put on board a prize Brig to bring into port in the month of October A.D. 1782” adding that “he rec’d his pay till April or May 1783 & belonged to the ship at that time.” In a sworn 1819 statement, former gunner’s mate Captain Jonathan Merry of Boston affirmed Service’s testimony concerning Abraham. Although his date of discharge is over ten weeks after the taking of the brig, there is no indication that either Woodward Abraham or acting midshipman Thomas Foster were ever reunited with the Alliance after being placed on the “prize Brig” fresh out of New London. Payroll records indicate that like Abraham, midshipman Foster was discharged on 17 October 1782 along with; former midshipman George Goudy, seamen John Williams, Peter Jennings, Thomas Mitchell, Renal Glutton, ordinary James Magness and landsmen Thomas Collier and Daniel Chubb. None of these ten crew members are included among the 237 Alliance men who received prize money associated with the later capture and sale of the Kingston, Britannia, Anna and Commerce found in a ledger in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Britannia and Anna and their cargos of coffee, logwood, sugar and rum were taken by the frigate Alliance under Captain John Barry during her transatlantic cruise on 24 September 1782. The snow Commerce was taken three days later on 27 September and the following day Alliance captured the dismasted Kingston. All four prizes made sail with Alliance to France, reaching Groix Roads on 17 October 1782- the date noted in payroll records as Woodward Abraham’s discharge. Alliance departed L’Orient hurriedly on 8 December 1782 on her return cruise via Martinique, St. Eustatius, Havana and Newport; eventually arriving at Providence, RI in late March. There the officers and men were paid off and discharged as noted in the payroll records in which the last recorded date appears to be 1 May 1783. It is not known if Abraham traveled from New London where his prize ship made port and where his mail was listed as waiting at the post office in the 25 January 1783 edition of the Connecticut Gazette to Providence to receive his pay in person. Deducting for “slops” charges, Woodward Abraham’s pay for nine months and two days service on the Alliance was just over sixty-nine dollars.
How did seaman Woodward Abraham come to be in L’Orient, France in mid-January 1782 looking for passage home to America when he enlisted on board the frigate Alliance? Much of that question can be answered by the Thursday 23 May 1782 addition of the newspaper Pennsylvania Packet and its “LIST of Americans Confined in Mill- Prison in England, since the Commencement of the present War” which reads in part- “Sloop HAWK, taken in the West- Indies, April 13th, 1778, Crew committed, October 16, 1778. John Foye, dead, Boston; John Pickworth, escaped; John Haynes, entered on board a man-of-war; English Thomas; Woodward Abraham, exchanged; John Deadman- Salem. This same list as it appears in The New England Historical & Genealogical Register and Antiquarian Journal, Volume 19 (1865) reads: “Sloop HAWK, taken in West Indies, April 13, 1778, crew committed Oct. 16.- John Pickworth, escaped; John Haynes, escaped; John Dedham, Salem, remains: Thomas English, John Foye, Boston, died; Woodward Abraham, Charlestown, New England,
exchanged.” Charles Herbert of Newburyport in “A Relic of the Revolution” (1847) records the prisoners as, “Sloop Hawke’s Prize, taken April 13th, 1778. Committed in October 1778. John Picknall [Pickworth], Salem; John Haynes, Salem; John Deadman, Salem; John Foy, Salem; Wood Abrahams, Salem; English Thomas, Boston.” Later versions indicate that English Thomas is actually Thomas English and that John Haynes eventually escaped. However, Herbert clearly identifies Woodward Abraham’s vessel as the sloop Hawk’s unnamed prize. A number of writers over the years have incorrectly associated the sloop Hawk’s prize with Captain Jeremiah Hibbert’s schooner Hawke’s prize whose crew was also represented at Old Mill Prison, although that ship’s men hailed from Manchester and Marblehead instead. Hibbert of Marblehead was commissioned to command the 10-gun 75-ton privateer schooner Hawke and her compliment of sixty men on 18 June 1777. According to the “History of Essex County, MA, Volume 2, Part 1” (1888), “except the Surgeon all the officers were from Manchester” as were many of the crew. Woodward Abraham was likely entered on the rolls as one of the twenty-five man crew of the sloop Hawk under the command of Samuel Waters in December 1777. Most of those associated with the vessel were from Salem, including the owner and bonder Captain John Fisk. Just prior to the 10 December 1777 commissioning of the Hawk, Captain Fisk had completed a cruise in command of the brigantine Massachusetts which had sailed to Europe in company with his former command, the Tyrannicide. Interestingly, according to “Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War, Volume 1” (1896), seaman Woodward Abraham previously served on Fisk’s Massachusetts from 22 February 1777 until 16 October 1777.
The postscript to Woodward Abraham’s shipmates of sloop Hawk’s prize crew confined in Old Mill Prison at Plymouth, England is the story of escapee John Pickworth. We glimpse a bit of his tale from two letters between John Dalton, representing himself and five others former prisoners of war, and Benjamin Franklin dated 11 November and 9 December 1779. While Pickworth belonged to the Sloop Hawk’s Prize, Dalton and William Neal were from the prize crew of the Ship Alliance’s Prize committed on 22 March 1779 and Christopher Bubier was attached to the Brig Phoenix committed on 10 May 1779, the vessels of the other two Francis Messervy and Israel Matthews remain yet unidentified. The six write Franklin from a French prison in Normandy seeking release after their escape from England. One reads “we are Worse hear then We Was In Mill Prison amonge our Enemies. As for the Boat We Stole at tinmouth [Plymouth] the 7th of November at 10 at Night and Came a way in her With an 8 Penney Loaf and twenty Apples and No Watter And We Went on board of a Brig Lying in the Harbour and Stoale a Compass and made The Best of our Way for france, the 9th of November at Eight at Night We Run a Shore Upon the Beach, Being Weake We Was Obliged To Leave her thoar, the Surfe Runing So high that Night, She Stove to peices. We are very Sorry for our Mistake in the Town Name Before.” The other more literate letter reads, “This Comes to Inform you that A Number of us Americans on the 3d of this Instant broke out of Mill Prison in England and Six of us had the good fortune to Take a boat and Crossed the Channel of England to France and arrived the 8th Instant and now we are taken up upon Suspicion of being Englishmen and put into Jail and we humbly beg that you may Relieve us out of this Place and Grant us a Pass to Go to Brest to get on Board Some American Vessel as we have neither money nor Cloaths to Support us here there is two of us that belongs to the allience Frigate Capt Peter Landy Commandr and was taken in Prise.” Interestingly one of Woodward Abraham’s former prison mates at Old Mill, Thomas Collier of Marblehead who was taken with American’s Prize on 19 November 1778 and committed to the prison on 22 March 1779, entered on the roll of the Alliance as landsman just four days after Abraham. Perhaps exchanged at the same time, both would serve together for almost nine months before they were placed together on Alliance’s “prize Brig.”
Woodward Abraham’s pension records indicate he resided at Charlestown, MA and was sixty-five years old at the time of his 1819 application. The son of William Abram (1722-1771) and Elizabeth Renough (1726-1762), Woodward Abram or Abraham was born on 21 July 1754. He was married to Mary Myers at Salem on 28 November 1777, just prior to sailing on the Sloop Hawk. The couple bore one son, John Woodward Abrahams (1787-1886) and likely several daughters as the 1790 Salem census reveals the two males are living in a household with four females. Abraham’s 1819 pension application suggests his wife is dead and children no longer a source of support as his guardian Moses Hall (1750-1826) testifies that the old mariner has “no estate”, is “without any income”, a “pauper, supported at the expense of the town of Charlestown” and “having lost a leg is unable to work.” Moses Hall appears to be a tradesman involved in the dyeing and polishing of Morocco leather, a deacon of the Universalist Church and a trustee with oversight of Charlestown Poor’s Fund. Woodward Abraham was placed on the pension rolls retroactively to 1 April 1818 as an invalid at eight dollars per month, the precise wage he was paid thirty-eight years earlier as a seaman on the frigate Alliance. Pension certificate #11259 dated 22 September 1820 was posted to the sixty-six year old sailor through Abraham Bigelow (1762-1832) a well known Harvard graduate practicing law in Cambridge. The Continental Navy pensioner died on 13 October 1832 at the age of seventy-eight, his mortuary notice appearing in the Columbian Centennial of 24 October 1832. The empty estate of Woodward Abrams “late of Charlestown, mariner” was probated on 8 January 1833. Alliance’s Woodward Abraham should not be confused with another contemporary Marblehead mariner of the same name whose family also had roots in Charlestown and Salem. Born on 14 July 1762, Woodward Abraham, Jr. was the son of Marblehead merchant and gentleman who served as custom house officer and later Postmaster. The junior Abraham, just four feet eight inches tall, reputedly served as a mariner on board the brigantine Terrible under Captain John Conway in 1778 and on the ship Rambler under Captain Benjamin Lovett in 1779 or 1780. He later commanded the schooner John in 1790 before serving as Town Clerk and following his father as Postmaster prior to his death in 1813.