Fraunces Tavern

Part III: The Critical Period

Listen here:

Of all New York’s revolutionary landmarks, few witnessed so many distinctive moments as the old “Queen’s Head,” Fraunces Tavern. Most famously, it was here that Gen. Washington bid farewell to officers of the Continental Army, an event that came to symbolize his commitment to a republic, elaborated in his widely disseminated “Circular Letter to the States.” It was a fitting end. Ever since losing the city, Washington had been committed to — at times obsessed with — recapturing New York. From 1778 to 1783, he staged his army outside the British headquarters, gathering intelligence and waiting for the opportunity to attack.

Fraunces Tavern

  • Washington’s triumphal return in 1783 marked the conclusion of his oldest military goal. Among those present was Maj. Gen. Alexander McDougall, whose broadside set in motion the Battle of Golden Hill, the Boston Massacre, and events beyond. Over the next seven years, while New York served as the first US capital, Fraunces took on new roles, including becoming part of the “first White House.”

    But the pub hosted another far less-known and momentous expression of freedom at the end of the war, the Birch Trials. These deliberations took place after nearly two years in which slaveowners had flocked to New York from around the colonies in search of their property. The weekly meetings determined the fate of runaway slaves during the Revolution, often bringing enslavers face-to-face with fugitives seeking British protection.

    Gen. Birch and his committee provided thousands of the formerly enslaved, including some of Washington’s slaves, with liberty and passage throughout the Empire: 1,336 men, 914 women, and 740 children in all. While modest in number, not until the Civil War would so many gain their freedom at once.

    Many of these people would join the 649 families who established the new colony of Birchtown, in Canada, and then later Freetown, in today’s Sierra Leone. Their fate carried twists of fate not unlike those of the Loyalists who founded New Brunswick, another settlement in Nova Scotia — and one that was modeled directly on New York, 10,000 of its former residents establishing the new city. Here we explore both those histories.

Boston King

As independence seemed assured, slaveowners flocked to New York from around the colonies in search of “runaways.” Boston King, one of those fugitives, later described the “inexpressible anguish and terror” among Blacks in the city. A rumor circulated that 2,000 “were to be delivered up to their masters.”

And bounty hunters, former owners, and speculators were kidnapping people “in the streets of New York, [] even dragging them out of their beds,” sometimes with high-level warrant (Gen. Washington giving a list to an officer supervising the disembarkments that included some of his own runaways). King later wrote in a memoir, “the thought of returning home with them embittered Life to us. For some days we lost our appetite for food, and sleep departed from our eyes.”

King himself had twice escaped capture and re-enslavement, from rebels and loyals alike. Born to a man sold from Africa, he fled a cruel master in 1780, when the British took Charleston. He then worked as a master carpenter for the army, eventually becoming a soldier and distinguishing himself by carrying an important dispatch through enemy lines at Nelson’s Ferry, saving the lives of 250 men.

  • But he was forced to escape slavery by a deserting Loyalist who sought to make him a prize. And he was then nearly enslaved again by the US Navy, which captured him and transported him to New Jersey. Wading over the Raritan River at low tide, he stole a boat to find refuge in New York, where he found love, married, and worked as a servant, laborer, and whaleboat privateer for years.

    He was one of the refugees named in the Book of Negroes, earning a “Birch certificate” at Fraunces Tavern. Joining 3,000 others, he became a leader of Birchtown, a colony established for Black Loyalists in Nova Scotia, where he became a Methodist circuit preacher in Black settlements from Shelburne to Halifax. With 1,300 survivors, he then co-founded the abolitionist colony of Freetown in Sierra Leone. There he became a convert of the fiery blind preacher “Old Daddy” Moses Wilkinson, another refugee New Yorker, and served as the first missionary in the area, evangelizing among the Sherbo until his death. 

In yet another case of historical irony, Fraunces Tavern began as the DeLanceys’ mansion, before it was sold, renamed the Queen’s Head, and became the regular meeting-place of the colonial economic, political, and military elite. But here at this city landmark and national historic site, rebels also plotted New York’s tea party, British cannon sent the roof collapsing on young Alexander Hamilton while Isaac Sears dragged cannon from the Fort, and the first revolutionary government met. The tavern’s owner, “Black Sam” Fraunces (a Caribbean merchant supposed to be of mixed racial heritage), served the cause, too, as P.O.W., spy, and personal friend of Gen. Washington. The restaurant is now part-museum.

Historian Graham Russell Hodges discusses the Black wartime experience in greater New York and the Birch Trials