Growing Up in Colonial America
Before his Midnight Ride, before working with silver or other metals, and before beginning his apprenticeship, Paul Revere came of age in colonial Boston, a child of French and English descent. Born in December 1734 to silversmith Apollos Rivoire, a first-generation French immigrant, and Deborah Hitchborn, a daughter of a fairly well-off New England family, the relationships within and between the two sides of his family offered him an early understanding of social classes and privileges.
Revere’s mother’s branch of the family tree dated back to the beginning of colonial settlements. The Hitchborns migrated from England to America in 1641 and by the eighteenth century owned and lived on a small wharf in Boston’s North End, too small to even warrant inclusion on contemporary maps. This wharf housed various Hitchborn-owned businesses, including boat repairs, cargo loading, liquor sales, and possibly shipbuilding. Wharf and shop ownership placed the Hitchborns in the upper tiers of colonial society but well below the larger merchants whose wealth and influence truly drove Boston’s economy and culture. Deborah Hitchborn was born into this established New England family in 1704, but received few financial benefits from her well-off relations after she married. Following the standard practice of the times, Deborah’s oldest brother Thomas inherited the bulk of the Hitchborn property and his ten children, Paul Revere’s cousins, entered various professions. Oldest son Thomas eventually inherited the Hitchborn wharf and the lion’s share of the family wealth, and probably employed several of his younger brothers, who received training in relevant fields such as shipbuilding and sailmaking. Benjamin, the second youngest Hitchborn son, received a gentleman’s education at Harvard and became a prominent lawyer and member of the Boston upper class. Samuel, the youngest Hitchborn son, became a silversmith, possibly an apprentice to Paul Revere.3 The Hitchborn family illustrates the male-centered nature of early businesses, the importance of kin networks, and the porosity of the home and work boundary. Living on their wharf and training sons to take on different branches of the family’s endeavors, the Hitchborns worked hard to increase their influence and holdings. The Hitchborn family had a profound lifelong influence upon Revere, who had many children of his own and involved several sons in his own enterprises. Many of Revere’s children and nearly all of his siblings received first names commemorating Hitchborn relations; his uncles and cousins purchased silver from him and loaned him money at critical points during his career; and Thomas’s example constantly showcased the advantages of property and social standing that Revere relentlessly strove to attain.
Revere’s father, Apollos Rivoire, was born in 1702 in the Bordeaux region of southwest France. The Huguenot (Calvinist Protestant) majority of this region had a long history of religious and political strife with the Catholic kings of France, causing hundreds of thousands of Huguenots to leave France beginning in the late seventeenth century. Only a few thousand, including Apollos Rivoire, immigrated to British North America. Rivoire traveled to Boston in late 1715 or early 1716 and became an apprentice to John Coney, the finest American silversmith of his day. Coney serves as almost a professional grandfather to Revere: even though the two never met, the techniques, mannerisms, and beliefs of Coney greatly influenced Apollos, who passed these lessons on to his son. Apollos established his own silversmith shop in the 1720s in Dock Square near the center of Boston and anglicized his name to Paul Rivoire, and eventually to Paul Revere, “merely on account the Bumpkins should pronounce it easier.”4 Apollos died young, in 1754, cutting short Revere’s own apprenticeship and thrusting a family’s worth of responsibility upon his shoulders at the age of 19. We will return to the details of this silverworking heritage—to the great reputation and artistic strengths of John Coney, to Apollos’s curtailed but still promising career, and to the training that Apollos proudly bestowed upon his oldest son—in the silverworking section below. Despite his early death, Apollos Rivoire had a far greater impact on his son than the entire Hitchborn family. Paul Revere literally followed in his father’s footsteps, serving as an apprentice under his watchful eye, mimicking his techniques, practicing with his tools, and patiently awaiting the day when he would work alongside his father as a fellow master craftsman.
While Revere’s formal education began in a classroom and continued in his father’s silver shop, his broadest learning experiences took place in countless conversations and interactions in many locations across Boston’s North End, a marine-centered working- and middle-class neighborhood. Boston resembled an English market town, with its dark and narrow winding cobblestone streets, numerous shops, and large artisan population.5 Revere frequently encountered his father’s employees, clients, and colleagues; his family intermingled with practitioners of many other trades, such as shopkeepers, teachers, and members of the clergy; and he could not fail to notice the less fortunate individuals, ranging from the poorest laborers to those dependent on town support for housing, firewood, medical treatment, or other expenses. Through ongoing contact with his Hitchborn grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, as well as less frequent encounters with merchants, lawyers, doctors, and government officials, he received a tantalizing introduction to a different Boston, a luxury-filled intellectual world promising greater economic and political power. Revere’s personal and professional interactions constantly highlighted his city’s close connection to England, the source of soldiers, government policies, artistic styles, and all sorts of imported goods. These projections of the far-off mother country had a more visible impact on Paul’s life than the local farms and fisheries that provided his food.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, the British Empire stood on top of the world. Great Britain had gradually increased its military, economic, and industrial power over the course of several centuries, culminating in its victory in the Seven Years’ War that added Canada to its extensive colonial possessions. A series of early eighteenth-century agricultural improvements often referred to as the “agricultural revolution,” combined with an increasing number of productive overseas colonies, brought great surpluses of food to England and thereby enabled more of the population to switch to non-food-producing pursuits such as manufacturing.6 Britain’s industrial revolution went hand in hand with the agricultural boom, and vast increases in textile production, iron manufacturing, and steam engine efficiency catapulted England, and eventually the rest of the world, into the industrial age. Britain’s power was most explicitly embodied in its large and well-equipped navy, feared throughout the world, as well as its enviable array of high-quality manufactured goods. The impacts of the industrial revolution reverberated throughout the British Empire, even in far-off America, and although these impacts became far more profound by the mid-nineteenth century, industry’s shadow lay over the colonial period as well.
As colonial citizens of the empire, eighteenth-century Americans reaped the benefits of their imperial membership and appreciated them . . . some of the time. All Americans of this day and age were either recent immigrants or descendents of immigrants drawn to the possibility of enjoying the untamed continent’s freedom and opportunity while benefiting from the economic and military security offered by a powerful mother country. Colonists naturally favored laws and policies that offered protection and support, and resisted anything that limited their actions.
The British Empire’s predominantly mercantilist policy placed England at the hub of a powerful wheel of commerce and production, often to the detriment of its colonies. According to mercantilist theory, the home country is the proper site of manufacturing and the appropriate repository for the accumulation of capital. Nations developed extensive trade networks to carry food, raw materials, and other resources from their colonies into the home country, where skilled and unskilled laborers converted them into finished goods for sale elsewhere. The American colonies found themselves placed in the position of raw material providers and markets for English-manufactured items. Some theorists portrayed this relationship as one of mutu
al support and dependence, recognizing the important role played by colonial raw materials and markets. But American discontent, peaking in the years leading to the Revolution, reflects the growing dissatisfaction along the fringes of the empire.7
Colonists benefited from Great Britain’s mercantile policies whenever they purchased cheap and high-quality British goods, but chafed when they attempted to produce and sell their own goods. New England, and Boston in particular, experienced recurring currency, capital, and credit problems during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Some New Englanders attempted to correct these limitations by importing forge, millstone, and spinning wheel equipment to augment their income and build manufacturing expertise. Fortunately for them, the thriving and loosely regulated nature of the colonial economy allowed these activities to prosper even if they defied the spirit of mercantilism.8 As a silversmith who later entered other metalworking fields, Revere spent much of his career competing with inexpensive British goods while benefiting from precision equipment, materials, and even re-sellable items that he could import from abroad. The patriotic fervor of many Americans, artisans and others originated as a response to restrictive British policies, and ironically, these same Americans had an easier time implementing their patriotic agendas thanks to the economic and political rewards accrued from their association with the empire.
Although Revere identified himself as a craftsman and silversmith, he never referred to himself as what we in the twenty-first century term a businessman or entrepreneur. Colonists often neglected and downplayed the business and managerial aspects of most trades in spite of their obvious role in the success or failure of so many endeavors. A closer look at the world of eighteenth-century business clarifies the role Revere filled as an artisan and silversmith by highlighting the vital nontechnical aspects of his work. Most citizens in eighteenth-century America fell into four broad societal positions: farmers or other food producers; artisans and other producers of nonfood goods and services; merchants and shopkeepers who bought and sold goods; and workers who either hired out their labor to others or who worked against their will as slaves.9 Individuals generally understood how their social position related to that of others, and the vibrant economy offered many opportunities for intensive interactions spanning different trades and social classes.
The growing eighteenth-century market economy fostered a dynamic form of capitalism that added fuel to America’s spreading entrepreneurial flames. A capitalist approach to business includes calculation, risk taking, and profit maximization, traits closely related to the concept of entrepreneurship since entrepreneurs know how to identify opportunities and create new ventures, happily risking their capital and labor in order to accumulate wealth. With few exceptions, all society members dating back to the first colonists reflected entrepreneurial market and capitalist values. Many British emigrants had already lived in a market economy and undertook the risky voyage to America in search of cash crops that would provide opportunities to purchase more land, hire additional labor, and expand their holdings. Farmers and non-farmers exhibited many capitalist and entrepreneurial tendencies: they increased and diversified their production; engaged in complex exchanges of goods, services, cash, and debts; decreased their leisure time to allow more time for work; shifted production from consumable to marketable goods; and adopted accounting and recordkeeping practices that quantified the value of their property and time.10
Paul Revere epitomized the capitalist mindset, ahead of his time though not radically so. Revere’s entrepreneurial inclinations visibly shaped his decision making throughout his entire life, and he adopted practices such as double entry accounting, wage labor, and diversification into new business endeavors before most of his contemporaries. However, as an artisan living in one of the three largest colonial urban centers, Revere already belonged to the most dynamic and forward-looking component of his society, distinct from the rural agrarian majority. The very existence of urban artisans testifies to the power of the market economy, because such workers can thrive only if others grow and sell surplus food and use the proceeds to purchase professionally made goods. Revere did not use terms such as markets, capitalism, or entrepreneurial, but he experienced their impact wherever he looked.
Paul Revere: Artisan
Revere’s early education as a silverworking apprentice focused upon countless technical and artistic details inherent in the production of beautiful items. But in a larger sense he received an education in the artisan tradition, inherited from his father, who learned from John Coney, whose own educational lineage extended to England. By working at his father’s side, witnessing the daily rhythm and routine of the shop, interacting with workers and clients, carousing with fellow artisans after hours, and seeing the many ways that his trade connected to others in the thriving town of Boston, Revere duplicated the experience of countless apprentices and internalized the practices and attitudes of his craft.
The term artisan (often used interchangeably with craftsman or, in later years, mechanic) typically describes all skilled technical craft practitioners in preindustrial and some postindustrial societies who make a living by producing the nonfood necessities and luxuries used in daily life. Vast social and economic differences separated artisans in different crafts, places, and times. Given the diversity of status, experience, and education that separated silversmiths, printers, shoemakers, blacksmiths, coopers, and other craftsmen, we cannot generalize too much about the viewpoint or goals of a typical artisan at any point: the typical artisan simply does not exist. And yet common traditions and attitudes separated all artisans from farmers, laborers, and members of the gentry. Artisans do more than merely manufacture, and it took more than productive output to make someone an artisan. “Artisan” not only defined what a person did or made, but rather, offered a way for craft practitioners to define themselves and be defined by others on an individual and societal level. “Artisan” is, more than anything else, an identity.11
Artisans’ camaraderie and mutual heritage added meaning to their careers. Most artisans shared similar experiences, such as an apprenticeship education, functional dress, residence in workers’ neighborhoods, membership in fraternal societies and social clubs, participation in public rituals and processions, and a unified political identity. Members of the same trade often clustered their shops and homes on a single street or in one section of the “artisan quarter” of town. This proximity enabled consumers to compare prices and services and encouraged the artisans to learn from each other’s practices. Artisan neighborhoods also facilitated social and business interactions between neighbors and the continued development of a common identity. Technical and social networks grow in parallel, and people who exchange ideas also develop personal connections.12
In an urban center such as Boston, Revere realized, even as a child, that he had more in common with the children of other artisans than with the children of laborers or gentlemen. As he learned to work silver he also learned to perpetuate artisan traditions by training and providing for apprentices, interacting with customers and other silversmiths, and participating in the activities of his community. Even at the end of his life, when he no longer worked with silver or considered himself a skilled craft practitioner, his words and actions echoed the values of the artisan heritage.
Artisans have existed since antiquity, and some of the earliest written documents call attention to their skills and products. Homer’s Iliad, for example, brims with descriptions of crafty or cunning Vulcan, the blacksmith of the gods, not to mention longer and surprisingly detailed descriptions of specific items, accompanied by tributes to their makers:
Quickly Sarpedon swung his shield before him—
balanced and handsome beaten bronze a bronzesmith
hammered out with layer on layer of hide inside
and stitched with golden rivets round the rim.13
Many characteristics of the English and American artisan traditions of Revere’s time existed in ancient civili
zations. For example, the Greek and Roman empires created a perpetual demand for skilled workers that led to an apprenticeship training system, specialized craft workshops in large urban centers, small operations that often employed fewer than a dozen workmen, and the gendering of craft labor that led to the exclusion of women and de-emphasis of their skills.14
Nearly all artisans in Europe, Britain, and America were men. Women had limited formal craft and guild opportunities in medieval times but found themselves increasingly excluded from the status of artisans, while their own contributions to the manufacturing or administrative aspects of running a shop became increasingly marginalized. Common doctrine in Europe and England modeled the ideal form of a well-ordered society upon the family, with an adult male at its head in a fatherly role. Societal norms expected women, apprentices, and employees to accept their subservient position in the larger hierarchy and show proper deference to the master of the house. But as Revere’s example illustrates, societal attempts to marginalize or downplay the role of women does not change the reality of their contributions. The male-dominated demographics of the artisan field led to a highly masculine style of work and socialization, featuring hard drinking on and off the job, fraternal societies drawing their membership from one or more trades, and public brawls between artisans or apprentices from different professions.15
Midnight Ride, Industrial Dawn Page 3