Lord Timothy Dexter’s Visitor: 

A Mysterious Letter in the Museum of Old Newbury

by Vaughn Scribner, writer, researcher, and Associate Professor of History, University of Central Arkansas

The Museum of Old Newbury is full of treasures, and I’m happy to say that I recently helped identify one more.

Last August, I visited Newburyport to complete research on my next book, a biography of the famously-infamous “Lord” Timothy Dexter (1747-1806). The Museum of Old Newbury was my first stop on the trip. I just had to see Dexter’s wooden statue of William Pitt (recently permanently-acquired by the museum, see the January 4, 2025 newsletter!).

The experience did not disappoint...



Read the title story following event announcements.

Upcoming Museum Events

Researching Your Historic House – What the Pros Know!

Thursday, February 20 at 7 p.m.

Have you come to a dead end in your online house history research? Museum of Old Newbury director Bethany Groff Dorau will share resources available at the Museum of Old Newbury, while researchers Barb and Ellie Bailey will share some of their tips and tricks of the trade as they research houses for the Newburyport Preservation Trust: Historic House Plaque Program.

Free for Museum of Old Newbury and Newburyport Preservation Trust Members, $10 for all others.

Members: Stay tuned for more information on additional Newburyport's Road to Revolution events, coming soon!

Newburyport's Road to Revolution Part I: Roots of Rebellion

Thursday, February 27 at 7 p.m.

Firehouse Center for the Arts

Join historian and author Alexander Cain for a captivating lecture exploring the roots of the American Revolution, focusing on Newburyport, the Merrimack Valley, and Essex County.

Free for Museum of Old Newbury, CHMM, and Firehouse Center for the Arts, $10 for all others. 

Funded, in part, by the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism

Newburyport’s Road to Revolution Part II: Nbpt Braces from Attack by Sea

Thursday, March 20, 7:00 p.m.

Custom House Maritime Museum

In the face of constant threat, Newburyport’s harbor became a safe haven for vessels of all kinds on the eve of Revolution, thanks to an elaborate web of defenses including sunken piers, floating batteries, and artillery at Salisbury Point.

Join Graham McKay, executive director of Lowell’s Boat Shop, and Bethany Groff Dorau as we explore how Newburyport prevented attack by sea and became a refuge for rebels at sea.

Free for Museum of Old Newbury, CHMM, and Lowell's Boat Shop, $10 for all others. 

Funded, in part, by the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism

Lord Timothy Dexter’s Visitor: 

A Mysterious Letter in the Museum of Old Newbury

by Vaughn Scribner, writer, researcher, and Associate Professor of History, University of Central Arkansas

The Museum of Old Newbury is full of treasures, and I’m happy to say that I recently helped identify one more.

Last August, I visited Newburyport to complete research on my next book, a biography of the famously-infamous “Lord” Timothy Dexter (1747-1806). The Museum of Old Newbury was my first stop on the trip. I just had to see Dexter’s wooden statue of William Pitt (recently permanently-acquired by the museum, see the January 4, 2025 newsletter!).

The experience did not disappoint.

As I prepared to leave the museum after hours of (happy) sensory overload, Executive Director Bethany Groff Dorau mentioned that something interesting had just come through their venerable doors: a never-before-utilized letter detailing a Lord Timothy Dexter encounter in 1802.

This is a huge development in the multi-century milieu of Dexter studies. I have uncovered practically every (known) record of Dexter, but have only identified four other verified accounts from contemporaries who met Dexter.

To say that I was excited as Bethany presented the yellowed letter is an understatement. The contents were filled with exciting details regarding Dexter and his High Street mansion in June 1802. But, as my eyes found the signature, excitement rather rapidly gave way to panic.

I could not make out the author’s name. Neither could Bethany or Sierra, the Museum’s Collections Assistant. But maybe I just needed more time?

A few days later, I scoured a digital copy of the letter that Bethany provided me. I could read the contents fine—the author was writing to his (I assumed) wife, who lived in Salem where (I assumed) he also lived. He was currently on a trip back south from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and en route he had stopped at the venerable Newburyport home of the inveterate Newburyport celebrity, Lord Timothy Dexter. So far so good.

Then, once again, came the signature: 

I was absolutely, positively stumped.

As a historian of the eighteenth-century British Empire, I have uncovered plenty of illegible handwriting. But I usually know the author because of archival records, and can reckon the general meaning of the prose. We didn’t have records in this case, as the donor had no idea who had written the letter.

And this name looked like none other I had seen from the period. All I could identify were what seemed like two “e’s” after the first letter of the last name, which seemed like either an “L” or an “S”:

I first tried word-searching throughout 1802 newspapers, but simply didn’t have enough data to narrow anything down. So I went big. I gained access to the 1810 census of Salem, which I assumed would have the names of anyone at least related to the letter writer. From there, I could look for names with “ee” after the first letter of the last name.

After hours of scrolling, I came out with a few possibilities: “Leecomb?” “Leecombe?” “Leesomb?” “Seecomb?” “Seecombe?” “Seesombe?”

I was getting somewhere, but not fast.

I once again tried to compare every letter in the signature to other examples in the same document. How did they write a “b,” or an “o,” or an “i?” Was this even worth my time?!

Then came the breakthrough. Two lines above the writer’s signature is the word “Seen.” I realized that the “See” in “Seen” matched the first three letters of the last name perfectly. This was no coincidence. I also knew that the author had signed their first name with the initial “E”:

So, “E. See.” This matched with two names on my list: “Seecomb” and “Seecombe”

I scoured hundreds of back-issues of Massachusetts newspapers between 1800 and 1810 before finally finding an advertisement for “rheumatic pills” in the May 11, 1801 issue of the Salem Impartial Register, signed “E. Secomb.”

Not two “ee’s,” but there were no other names even close to this one in the records. I kept pushing.

More searching eventually led me to a Salem apothecary named “Ebenezer Secomb” in the Salem Gazette (March 18, 1806).

I had him. 

Further research has confirmed the identity of Ebenezer Secomb (1778-1835), who happened to sign his name “E. Seecombe,” despite officially recording his name “Secomb.”

It wasn’t uncommon at the time to have multiple spellings of one’s last name. But still, ugh.

Nevertheless, I figured it out: Seecombe=Secomb

Ebenezer Secomb (alias “E. Seecombe”) wrote this letter to his wife, Mary (Marston) Secomb (1783-1824), on June 9, 1802, during what I imagine was a journey north to purchase goods for his store on Federal Street “near the North-Bridge.”[1] Because Dexter was such a celebrity by 1802, Secomb made it a point to visit him.

Though the twenty-four-year-old graduate of Brown University (then Rhode Island College) was only just establishing himself in Salem in 1802, over the next three decades “Dr. Secomb” became a bedrock of entrepreneurship and expansion in the town, investing in churches, banks, mineral springs, and even representing Essex County in U.S. Congress. A biography of Secomb and his large family could easily merit its own blog post, but I should note that one of Dexter’s only other contemporary chroniclers, Reverend William Bentley of Salem, also detailed Secomb’s business ventures in his extensive diary.[2]

I can’t wait to use this exciting discovery in my future research and writing and also can’t thank Bethany and Sierra enough for their kindness and help, both during my visit to the museum and since.

I’m sure I’ll be back to Newburyport soon. And I’m sure plenty more mysteries await, just waiting to be solved. 

[1] Salem Impartial Register, May 11, 1801

[2] William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley, D.D., Volume 4: January, 1811-December, 1819 (Salem: The Essex Institute, 1914), 514, 564-65.



Vaughn Scribner is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of three books, Under Alien Skies: Environment, Suffering, and the Defeat of the British Military in Revolutionary America (UNC Press, 2024), Merpeople: A Human History (Reaktion Books, 2020), and Inn Civility: Urban Taverns and Early American Civil Society (NYU Press, 2019). He is currently hard at work on the first biography of Lord Timothy Dexter in more than half a century.

Captain Morgan of the Slaver Orion in the Newburyport Jail

by Bethany Groff Dorau

HMS Pluto captures the Orion in this April, 1860 image from The Illustrated London News.

It was Christmas Eve, 1862. The editor of the Daily Herald, George J. L. Colby, was having a slow news day. Despite news of the ongoing horrors of the Civil War, or perhaps because of it, Colby or one of his reporters (the story has no byline), decided to take a lighthearted ramble to the Newburyport Jail. Even then, the 1825 granite jail was a tourist attraction, situated with its companion Jailkeeper's House and stables behind. The story begins with a picturesque description of the beautiful vista that the inhabitants of the jail enjoy, and then touches on the kindly jailkeeper and his sainted wife. The inhabitants of the jail are the chief concern of the writer, however, who describes them in Dickensian terms. There is Luther French, whose "head is white as the new fallen snow, and his face nearly the same color." No mention is made of French's having stabbed a minister.

And across the hall from Luther French is an equally picturesque character, a "small, active man", with "dark hair and a long, flowing beard, well-dressed and remarkably neat". The writer continues, "he has a sharp flashing eye, is intelligent and very sprightly and cheerful of spirit. Indeed, he seemed as happy as a bird who has the whole heavens to fly in and the whole earth to rest and feed upon. His name is Thomas Morgan, for three years now in close confinement for being engaged in the slave trade."

I will admit that I was enjoying the lighthearted tone of this column, and I was wholly unprepared for this bombshell. Like most researchers, the first thing I did was question my sources. And the next thing I found confounded me even more.

On March 12, 1863, President Lincoln ordered the release of Captain Morgan from the Newburyport Jail. Spoiler alert - I still can't wrap my head around how a man whose crime was so vile that the judge who convicted him told him he was fortunate to have escaped hanging received clemency from the president who ensured the only execution of a slave trader in American history, Nathaniel Gordon of Portland, Maine, just one year earlier. Indeed, Lincoln famously said, "I believe I am kindly enough in nature, and can be moved to pity and to pardon the perpetrator of almost the worst crime that the mind of man can conceive or the arm of man can execute; but any man, who, for paltry gain and stimulated only by avarice, can rob Africa of her children to sell into interminable bondage, I never will pardon."

And yet, he ordered the release of Captain Morgan. Publicly, Lincoln's rationale was that Morgan had served his time - two years being the maximum sentence possible for those convicted of participating in the slave trade. The fine he was sentenced to pay, two thousand dollars, was imposed to lengthen his sentence indefinitely, as he would have no means to pay it. He had been in prison for three years when released, and so, technically, had completed his sentence. It is still a hard fact to face upon a close examination of the case against him.

To make matters worse, this was not the first time Thomas Morgan had been arrested on the high seas for engaging in the slave trade. The Orion had been boarded by the U.S.S Mystic just one month prior, with all the accoutrements of a ship whose purpose was the capture and transport of human beings. Without actual captives on board, however, the Mystic was forced to let her go.

And then, on November 30, 1859 at dawn, she was chased and captured by the HMS Pluto, who found 874 enslaved Africans on board. Twenty-six of her captives had already died, and 146 more would die on the long voyage to St. Helena, and nineteen more died while the vessel was waiting to be condemned and its crew sent back to the United States for trial.

Join us in the next newsletter as we examine the case in detail.

Can You Read This Letter? The National Archives Wants YOU!

Above is the full letter from E. Seecombe to his wife, describing his visit with Timothy Dexter in 1802. If you can read this and want to help with a citizen archivist project, the National Archive is looking for volunteers to transcribe the pensions of veterans of the Revolutionary War.

To find out more, visit this page at the Natitonal Archives and sign up in the right-hand column. To check your decoding skills, the transcript of the letter is provided below.

Wednesday morning

Pepperelborough

June 9, 1802

My Dear,

I had a verry plesant journey as far as Portsmouth which I found to be a very plesent Town. I called on Hariot Brooks. I know her and the family well. She sends a great deal of love to all her aquaintances. Tell Nancy King that she expects her verry soon, --- coming through Newbury Port in the afternoon of Sunday I called on Timothy Dexter. I spent two hours with him. I never was more politely treated & better entertained in my life. He carried me from the celler to the cupaoloa of his house, into his garden & tomb & I observed to him that I should suppose the sight of his coffin would strike a dread upon him. O! no says he that would be beneath a Lord & Philosopher. The coffin is in a summer house directly over the tomb where he says he sometimes goes in to drink Punch, --all the way beyond Portsmouth I found the way extremely bad & felt almost sick a riding. I got here yesterday morning & got my self quite rested & now feal in good health & spirits. I am in hopes to get the Bussiness settled so as to get to Salem on Saturday. I intend to see Portland before I return. 

I have this moment seen J. C. Page---

Stage is waiting so good by

Yours E. Seecombe

Something Is Always Cooking...

Cinnamon Roll Blondies

My husband James and I have an ongoing debate about blondies. He wants his brownies to be brown, and his cookies to be round, and never the twain shall meet. My friend Amanda brought these to a gathering this week, and they were wildly popular. I brought them home for James to try, hoping to sway him. No dice. He stands firm. Everyone else on earth will love these, however, so I will be making them frequently, and hoping he comes around!

-Bethany Groff Dorau

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk, at room temperature

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 cup white sugar

For the icing

1 tablespoon cream cheese

1 tablespoon heavy cream

3/4 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch of salt

Directions

• Preheat your oven to 350°F. Line an 8 x 8-inch pan with parchment paper and set aside.
• In a large mixing bowl whisk together butter and brown sugar. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla extract and mix well.
• In a separate bowl stir together baking powder, salt, and flour. Add the wet ingredients into the dry and fold together until just mixed and no clumps of flour remain.
• Pour the batter into your prepared pan. Combine white sugar and cinnamon. Drop large spoonfuls of cinnamon sugar on top of the blondie batter. Use a butter knife to create big swirls.
• Bake for 30 to 40 minutes or until the brownies are golden brown and set on the edges and have puffed up. The middle will still be doughy.
• While the cinnamon roll blondies cool, make the cream cheese icing. In a small sauce pan over medium low heat, combine the cream cheese, heavy cream, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt, whisking constantly until melted and combined. Take off the heat and allow to cool.
• Once the blondies are cool, drizzle with the cream cheese glaze. Cut into squares.

Enjoy!

Puzzle Me This...

Click the image to do the puzzle

"Penning a Letter" by George Goodwin Kilburne (1839-1924).