George Hewes: Recollection of the Boston Massacre

George Robert Twelves Hewes was born in 1742 in Boston, Massachusetts. Hewes did not start off as a Patriot; he first tried to enlist with the British army but was rejected due to his short stature. He instead became a shoemaker. Perhaps this rejection helped steer Hewes to eventually engage in revolutionary activity. Hewes’s first act as a revolutionary came when he participated in the Boston Massacre, perhaps motivated to recover debts that British officers owed to Bostonian apprentices and craftsmen. Later, Hewes took part in the Boston Tea Party and was even one of the men instrumental in demanding keys to the tea chests. Hewes was also involved in the very public incident that resulted in the tarring and feathering of John Malcolm, who worked as a British customs official in Boston. Hewes was a witness to Malcolm threatening a young boy with his walking cane, and when Hewes intervened, Malcolm struck Hewes in the forehead. Later, a mob seized Malcolm, tarred and feathered him, then threatened to hang him. Even though Hewes tried to stop the mob, as a revolutionary he was forced to flee Boston in 1775 when Britain placed Boston under martial law. Hewes’s dreams of military enlistment were realized when he became a privateer and militiaman for the Patriot cause in the Revolutionary War.