[Roxbury] Sat. Aug. 5th, 1775.
We dined very agreeably; after dinner Gen'l [John] Thomas one other Gentleman and myself rode to Dorchester Neck and viewed the lines there, which are within point blank shot of the enemy . . . We then returned to Roxbury, viewed the Fort and lines there, which are very strong . . . This day there was a conference between Major [Benjamin] Tupper and the Regulars at their lines on the Neck. They told him they could destroy all our seaports. He told them they would do us a great favor, as it would take off our attention from Trade, and put us on agriculture, for we had a fine fertile country, enough to employ millions of people, a land that produced every necessary of life. He also told them we never would submit so long as a man was alive. I supped with the Gen'l and lodged there, had a very good bed to myself and rested well. Major Tupper brought out a letter from Treasurer Gray2 to his son Allen Oates . . . There was one other letter from Gen'l Brattle3 . . . He also wrote in his letter that he heard the Port of Boston was quite open, and the Custom House kept in Boston as usual, and that a ship on the 4th of this month brought into Boston two thousand and two hundred Barrels of Flour. . . .
1. George Henry Preble, Genealogical Sketch of the First Three Generations of Prebles in America (Boston, 1868), 61, 62. Hereafter cited as Preble, Prebles in America.
2. Harrison Gray, Treasurer of the Colony under the Crown, and an ardent Tory.
3. William Brattle, who began as a Son of Liberty and ended as a rabid Tory.