Excerpt from the “Diary of Dorothy Dudley” for
“Today he formally took command under one of the grand old
elms on the Common. It was a magnificent
sight. The majestic figure of the
General mounted upon his horse, beneath the wide-spreading branches of the
patriarch tree; the multitude thronging the plain around, and the houses filled
with interested spectators of the scene, while the air rung with shouts of
enthusiastic welcome as he drew his sword and thus declared himself the
Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.”
This
“diary” soon proved to be a forgery was first published in 1876 in: Theatrum majorum : the Cambridge of 1776,
wherein is set forth an account of the town, and of the events it witnessed :
with which is incorporated the diary of Dorothy Dudley, now first publish'd :
together with an historicall sketch, severall appropriate poems, numerous
anecdotes / done by divers eminent hands, and ed. for the Ladies Centennial
Committee by A. G. [i.e. A. Gilman].
The
real author of this “diary” was named Mary Williams Greely and was not born
until 1848.
Samuel
Batchelder explains why it must be a forgery: “Its whole phraseology is
obviously modern, and it is full of small inaccuracies. In this passage, for example, the only house
nearby was the Moore house, built around 1750, where the Shepherd Church now
stands: as Cambridge had been virtually deserted by its inhabitants there could
have been no thronging multitude of spectators: and the army was not then the
Continental Army but the Army of the United Colonies. (Samuel Francis Batchelder, “The Washington
Elm Traditon” in Bits of Cambridge
History, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1938, p. 241).
On fictional creations of women’s sources in the 19th century,
see Mary Beth Norton, “Hetty Shepard, Dorothy Dudley, and Other Fictional
Colonial Women I Have Come to Know Altogether Too Well” Journal of Women’s History Volume 10, No. 3
Fall 1998,
page. 141-