Tea Sets and Tyranny by Bullock Steven C.;

Author:Bullock, Steven C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Published: 2016-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

PART III

CHALLENGING CONVENTIONS

CHAPTER 5

A Mumper Among the Gentle

Sometime in late spring 1741, a man in clerical attire entered a Princeton, New Jersey, tavern. Magistrate John Stockton immediately recognized the Reverend John Rowland, an important figure in the religious revival then taking place in the region. Stockton hurried over to invite the visiting worthy to his house. To his surprise, the man responded that Stockton was mistaken; his name was not Rowland. Remarking the strong resemblance, the embarrassed Stockton apologized. The visitor, however, had spoken the truth, perhaps the last time he would do so for nearly a week. He was not Rowland, who was on a preaching tour with William Tennent, Jr., a member of the middle colonies’ most prominent clerical family. Stockton did not realize it, but he had met an even greater celebrity—the famous confidence man Tom Bell.1

Bell’s tavern appearance seems to have been a trial run. The next morning, he hastened to a nearby town to introduce himself to a prosperous farm family as the revivalist. The self-styled Rowland was invited to deliver the Sunday sermon. He lodged with his hosts for the remainder of the week, seemingly preparing his sermon, perhaps even counseling and praying with townspeople and family members. Then, going to church on Sunday with the family, he suddenly claimed to have forgotten his sermon and took the family’s best horse to retrieve it. The congregation never heard “Hell Fire Rowland.” When the family returned home, their guest, their horse, and their valuables were gone.2

The elegant deception (for months afterward residents believed the thefts the work of the real Rowland) was only one of Tom Bell’s more spectacular swindles. Expelled from Harvard in 1733, Bell enjoyed a nearly twenty-year career in crime that took him as far south as Barbados and as far north as New Hampshire. The Pennsylvania Gazette reported in 1743 that he had been to “every Colony on the Continent, and … some Parts of the West-Indies” and that he “knows and talks familiarly of all Person[s] of Note as if they were of his Acquaintance.” Newspapers record the use of eighteen names besides Rowland. In the Carolinas alone, Bell posed as Nathaniel More, Robert Middleton, John Campbell, Nathaniel Butler, and Captain Randall from Havana. In Barbados, he was the son of the late William Burnet, former governor of New York and Massachusetts. As these poses indicate, Bell’s impostures went beyond acting the part of a minister. His frauds, the Pennsylvania Gazette warned, included “personating different People, forging Bills, Letters of Credit, &c. and frequently pretending Distress.”3

Such exploits made Bell not just a common thief but one of the most famous colonial Americans. One hundred stories about Bell appeared in American newspapers from 1738 to 1755—enormous coverage at a time when British America’s few papers focused on international news and published only one issue a week. Even English newspapers noted Bell. This fascination continued after his public career ended. A Boston publisher included Bell’s name on the title page of a humorous pamphlet in 1762, seven years after the last newspaper report of his adventures.

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