Books and Manuscripts: Rare Americana

Very Rare Province of the Massachusetts Bay Bond Signed by Boston Patriot Samuel Adams

Massachusetts, August 9, 1773. One sheet, 7 3/4 x 8 in. (197 x 203 mm). Partially-printed Province of the Massachusetts Bay bond (N: 4), signed by Founding Father and Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Samuel Adams, as a member of the Massachusetts General Court. Issued by the Province to Mrs. Mary Hubbard for "the Sum of Five hundred pounds for the Use and Service of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay...promise...to repay the said Mary Hubbard or to his Order, the twentieth Day of June A.D. One Thousand seven Hundred and seventy Five...in Spanish mill'd Dollars at six Shillings each, or in the several Species of coined Silver and Gold...with Interest annualy at five per Cent." Signed by Treasurer H(arrison) Gray (1711-94), with cancellation marks, now very faded; counter-signed by Adams (1722-1803), James Pitts (1712-76), and Thomas Cushing (1725-88) of the committee; signed on verso by Hubbard and Boston merchant Thomas Fayerweather (1724-1804), MS. on same, "One Years Interest paid"; embossed seal of the Province, top left corner recto. Creasing from contemporary folds, small separations at edges of same. Not in Anderson.

A very rare Province of the Massachusetts Bay bond, signed by Samuel Adams while serving in the Massachusetts General Court, only four months before the Boston Tea Party.

Mary Hubbard (1702-74) was the wife of Thomas Hubbard, Esq. (1702-1773), a wealthy businessman and shopkeeper from Waltham, Massachusetts, who served as a representative to the Massachusetts General Court, was speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives (1750-59), and was a member of the Governor's Council (1759-1772). Thomas and Mary were both members of Old South Church in Boston. Upon the death of their daughter, Thankful Hubbard (1744-72), a fellow member of the church, the acclaimed African American poet Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784), wrote the poem “To the Hon'ble Thomas Hubbard, Esq.; on the death of Mrs. Thankful Leonard" (1773) in his honor.

Upon Mary's death in 1774, William Blair Townshend, the Hubbards's executor, petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature to make payment on this bond's unpaid principal. According to the The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, on January 13, 1777, the Massachusetts Legislature approved Townshend's petition, and directed Treasurer Henry Gardner to pay Townshend only one year's interest (Wright & Potter, 1918, Chapter 601, p. 235).