John Hughson, who had come to New…
March 1741 CE
John Hughson, who had come to New York from Yonkers in the mid-1730s with his wife, daughter, and mother-in-law as a poor, illiterate cobbler was unable to find work and had opened a tavern, offending his neighbors because he sold to unsavory clients.
Hughson had opened a new tavern in 1738 when he moved to the Hudson River waterfront, near the Trinity Churchyard.
It had soon become a rendezvous point for slaves, poor whites, free blacks, and soldiers.
The elite are nervous about such lower class-types socializing together.
Hughson’s place also is a center of trade in stolen property.
Though the constables watch his place constantly, they fail to catch Hughson for thievery.
Hughson had been arrested in February, two weeks before the year’s first suspicious fire in the city, for receiving stolen goods from slaves Caesar and Prince, who were also jailed.
Caesar, Prince, and Cuffee are considered part of the "Geneva Club", named after an incident in which they stole some "Geneva", or Dutch gin.
They are black Freemasons. (The slaves are punished by whipping.)
Daniel Horsmanden, the city recorder and one of three justices on the provincial supreme court, had been involved in the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger.
Horsmanden has set up a grand jury and pressured a sixteen-year-old indentured servant, Mary Burton, to testify against her master Hughson on theft charges.
While a grand jury hears this case, the first of thirteen suspicious fires breaks out.
With frame buildings and wood-burning fireplaces and stoves, fire is always a risk in the city.
Chimney fires are frequent.
The house of Governor George Clarke catches fire on March 18, 1741, and soon the church connected to his house is ablaze too.
People try to save it, but the fire soon grows beyond control.
The fire threatens to spread to another building, where all the city documents are kept.
The governor orders the windows smashed and documents thrown out to save them.
The later practice will be to keep them in the City.
Soon afterward, the fort at the Battery also burns down.
Another fire breaks out a week later but is extinguished quickly.
The same thing happens the next week at a warehouse.
A fire breaks out three days later in a cow stable.
On the next day, a person walking past a wealthy neighborhood sees coals by the hay in a stable and puts them out, saving the neighborhood.
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