Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 4
I recd. your letter Yesterday Just before sunset. This morning at 10 O’Clock the sessions sits, when I must attend, as I have a report to make there, being one of a comttee. for that purpose. Immediately after court, I must attend upon a tryal at my own office. At your request I have sent by Fredk. Reed, five counterfeit Bills which I took from Dr. Peter Emmerson of Townsend on the 12th. July 1780, he did not utter them, or offer them to any body, that I know of, I Suspected him by his company, & order’d him to be search’d for Counterfeit money, & found the above upon him; I then folded them, Inclos’d them & wrote upon them as you see & have had them in my possession every since. I now seal them & send them, I know no more of the matter, and cannot possibly attend in person for the reasons aforemention’d. Mr. Edes is an evidence agt. Tufton & first took him, Mr. Green is an evidence agt. Sampson & Emmerson & took the bills from both. They come volunarily as Witnesses and I hope you will see their expences paid.1
180Mr. Edes will be the bearer of this.
No charges were brought against Emerson or Sampson, but Thomas Sackville Tufton, a trader of Groton, was indicted on three separate counts of uttering false currency (Supreme Judicial Court Minute Books, Middlesex County, Dec. 1782. Massachusetts Judicial Archives, Boston, Mass.). The case was continued to the Apr. 1783 session at Concord, but Tufton did not appear and was declared an outlaw. The public notice to that effect was published by Sheriff Loammi Baldwin in the Independent Chronicle, Feb. 13, 1783. The case was not continued in subsequent courts, but Tufton was still listed as a resident of Groton when his estate was probated in 1788.
The Estates of Seth Perry, Thos. Perry,1
Ephraim Ellis Jr. & Thos. Bumpus2 Absentees late of Sandwich—are all Confessed insolvent & will not pay more than 10 or 15/. on the pound. Myself with others are a committee for selling such Estates in this County.
By the Tenor of the Acts & resolves I am not Clear that we can sell before Confiscation. I wish you to think of the matter & if you find I can write me by the bearer—if not pray you to direct Mr. Bourn to fill complaints &c. at our Decr. Court, & inclose it me.
Your answer by the bearer will much oblige yr. most obedt. Humble Servt.
The Massachusetts Banishment Act of 1778 lists Seth Perry as a mariner and Thomas as a yeoman, both of Sandwich. Seth was imprisoned there before he and Thomas, as well as three other Perrys, absconded to British lines in Rhode Island. Thomas continued on to New York and thence, with family in tow, to Shelburne, N.S., where he received a land grant. Seth eventually returned to Massachusetts, where he received rights of citizenship in 1788 due to an act of legislature (James Henry Stark, The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution [Boston, 1910], 139; Sabine, Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American Revolution, 2:565).
Ephraim Ellis, Jr., and Thomas Bumpus, both yeomen of Sandwich, were among those proscribed and banished in 1778.