by Dr. John Concannon
Webmaster, Gaspee Virtual Archives

The Gaspee Days Committee at www.gaspee.COM is a civic-minded nonprofit organization that operates many community events in and around Pawtuxet Village, including the famous Gaspee Days Parade each June. These events are all designed to commemorate the 1772 burning of the hated British revenue schooner, HMS Gaspee, by Rhode Island patriots as America's 'First Blow for Freedom' ^TM.  Our historical research center, the Gaspee Virtual Archives at www.gaspee.ORG , has presented these research notes as an attempt to gather further information on one who has been suspected of being associated with the the burning of the Gaspee. Please e-mail your comments or further questions to webmaster@gaspee.org.

Dr. Mawney would have been about 21 years old at the time of the Gaspee Affair.  He was supposedly trained as a physician, but was never known to have practiced much medicine as a profession.  He is not known to be listed in any directory of notable doctors of the time². It is probably accurate that in 1772 he was considered a medical student, rather than a surgeon. He did indeed at one time claim to be a "practitioner in surgery", but this was in relation to the placement of a rather bizarre newspaper ad advising the public that his field of corn was being guarded by two pit-bulls, but he would attend to anyone bitten, free of charge. (Providence Gazette, 12 June 1773, p3).  It is possible that he practiced medicine in the Hopkinton, MA area between 1778 and 1788 where he had moved for some time and had married the daughter of a another local doctor.

It can be surmised from historical accounts of the Gaspee incident, however, that 'Doctor' Mawney gave fairly competent care to the wounded Lt. Dudingston.  He removed the bullet from the wound site above the groin. The 'scrapping of lint' was likely an attempt to promote clotting of the wound, and to prevent abcess formation by keeping the wound open to granulate  Remember, there were no antibiotics available at the time.  He then applied what appears to be a pressure bandage over the site and was able to adequately stem the hemorrhage. Given the location of the wound and the lack of antibiotics or of definitive surgical closing of the musket ball wound, it is truly wondrous that Dudingston survived the attack at all. In fact, Dudingston's wound to the groin was not to the testicles, but just off to the side, nearby on the leg.  He is known to have fathered four children by 1806. On the other hand, Dudingston, in his December 1772 petition for relief to King George III claims that the musket ball was still embedded in his groin, and may have traveled down to his knee,  If true, the ball might have split, and Mawney only removed a portion of it. 

In either event, Dr. Mawney was wise to have declined the invitation of one Dr. Henry Sterling to visit with the recovering Lt. Dudingston.  Had Dudingston recognized him, Mawney might have been hung as a traitor to the Crown.

Service records of the Revolutionary period cite that Mawney in 1774 was appointed quartermaster for the Providence Troop of Horse,  in 1775 was a charter member of Captain General's Cavaliers, and that he was Captain of a sloop, Gaspee, "as one of the most conspicuous actors in this remarkable event."³   While this may be a misinterpretation of some confusion by other historians, it is interesting to postulate about the American Continental Navy having a ship named after the Gaspee attack.  In 1781 Mawney was appointed surgeon of the 3rd Company of Providence, in 1785 was a Lieutenant., and between 1789 to 1792 was Lieutenant Colonel, Commanding, of the First Regiment of Providence County.  That honor may have been largely ceremonial as the Revolution had been over for 10 years. Unfortunately, because he died in 1830, we can find no application for pension based on any service in the Revolutionary War.

Dr. Mawney became known as a literary scholar who circulated among the elite society of Rhode Island. John married Nancy Wilson in 1775, daughter of a Dr. Wilson; and then later was known to have married Elizabeth P. Clarke, fourteen years his junior. An obituary for Elizabeth appeared in the 23April1803 Providence Gazette listing her age of 39 (born c1764). We also note that in May of 1827 he held a funeral at his Cranston house for a Phoebe Clifford, 72 (born c1755).  John had three children that we know of; John, Mary, and Susan⁵. In the 2July1829 Rhode Island Republican is a legislative notice granting the petition of John Mawney to legitimize one Susan Ware. We're not quite sure what this means.  His daughter Elizabeth Ware had married into that name and was a widow by 1816 according to sources below.  But according to colonial records Mawney, "suffered greatly in the public esteem on account of his bold and unblushing irreverence and infidelity."⁴ 

Dr. John Mawney's large home lot appears on the map of 1770 List of Providence Taxpayers in a prominent location on the East side of North Main Street, directly across the street from Deputy Governor Darius Sessions.  Interestingly, he is listed as Dr. John Mawney, even though he would only have been 19 years old at that time when the survey was conducted.  We assume he was assigned the title of 'doctor', if he ever did earn it, by the map maker, Henry Chace, based on later knowledge by 1914. But the fact remains that he had title to a choice piece of land at a relatively very young age. The original house c1763 (pictured at left) still stands at 135 Benefit Street, and was the setting for H. P. Lovecraft's famous 1927 horror tale, The Shunned House.  (Lovecraft himself indicates the first owner was a William Harris and his wife Rhoby Dexter Harris, all dying of a mysterious poison-like death.)  According to Wayne Tillinghast⁷, a fifty foot lot on Benefit Street was transferred from John Mawney to his brother-in-law, Stephen Harris (husband of Mawney's sister, Hannah) in January 1784.  After 1794 Mawney removed from Providence to his inherited farmland in neighboring Cranston. Mawney's later estate comprised a large portion of what is now known as the Elmwood neighborhood in the West End of Providence. We are told tales of how he rode in a carriage during the 50th Anniversary Gaspee Parade of 1822, and often in the 4th of July Parades with Ephraim Bowen et al to be ceremoniously honored as part of the crew that burned the Gaspee⁶.

Sometime around 1778 he resided in just over the northerly RI-MA border in Hopkinton, MA where both his first and seocnd wive's families were from.  In 1788 John Mawney was among those listed in the Providence Gazette as Justices of the Peace for Providence, and in 1792 as both a Town Auditor and a Clerk of the Market.  In 1792, ads in the Gazette listed him a sheriff (as was his late father), often chasing horse thieves.. He was elected as Representative to the General Assembly several time between 1796 and 1801, and frequently served on the Cranston town council between 1797 and 1817. In 1798, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Cranston.  Between 1801 and 1803, John Mawney was listed as Sheriff for Providence County.  In 1791 he was listed as a member of the Providence Society for the Abolition of Slavery  A notice of 1805 lists him as a member of the Providence, Cranston, and Johnston Detecting Society, and in 1809 he was president of that society.

In the summer of 1802 he was advertizing in the Providence Phoenix land for lease off of Pleasant Street, and in June of 1815 he was advertizing for lease or sale both his estates in Cranston and in  Providence.  He may have been overpriced; he ran the ad for over three years, and the Providence estate was sold at auction in March 1825.  According to The Records of the Original Proceedings of the Ohio Company : Ohio Company Series (Marietta, Ohio: Marietta Historical Commission, 1917, 564 pgs) a Colonel John Mawney was an active stakeholder in Ohio land development in the 1790s, as was Gaspee raid leader Abraham Whipple., and in fact we find an ad taken out by John Mawney in the 2April1796 Providence Gazette regarding a stakeholder meeting in Providence of the Ohio Purchase Company. 

Dr. Mawney died at the age of 80 at his Cranston estate. John's obituary appeared on March 2, 1830 in the Providence Phenix.  His grave stone states that Dr. Mawney achieved the rank of Colonel in the Rhode Island Militia. He is buried in the Old North Burial Ground at Providence, as is his father, and not far from his fellow Gaspee raider, Joseph Bucklin.

For further facts on the Mawney family, see A Mawney Line of Descent, by Stanley W. Arnold, Jr., Rhode Island Genealogical Register, Vol 11 ( 1988) at 202 et seq.¹

Notes:

THE MAWNEY FAMILY:

John Mawney (1718 - 1754), son of Col. Peter Mawney (1689 - 1754) and Mary Tillinghast (1694 - 1726), died just before his father, and his will is recorded in Providence. He married, October 29, 1745, Amey Gibbs (1725 - 1805), daughter of Robert Gibbs (1697 - 1769), who is described on his tombstone in the North Burial Ground, as descended from the family of Sir Henry Gibbs (1593 - 1667), of Dorsetshire, England. Amey Whipple Gibbs (c1700 - 1757), wife of Robert Gibbs, was daughter of Col. Joseph Whipple (c1662 - 1746), and widow of (???most logically, John [c1694 - 1719]???) Crawford. The five children of John Mawney and Amey Gibbs Mawney were:

1. Mary (c1746 - 1757), died aged eleven years.

2. Nancy or Anne (1747 - 1765) died aged seventeen years. Married by Joseph Potter, Justice.  Obituary in Providence Gazette of 9March1765 names her as "Miss Anne Mawney"

3. Pardon, born at Providence, December 27, 1748; died August 6, 1831 on the homestead, in East Greenwich, given him by his grandfather's will. He married Experience Gardiner (1751-1815), daughter of Caleb Gardiner (c1710-___), of South Kingstown and had 15 children (see http://www.whipple.org. One offspring of this marriage was Amey Mawney (1777-1864) who married William Earle Tillinghast  (c1777/8 - 25 Apr 1817), who happened to be the son of Gaspee raider Captain Joseph Tillinghast, Dr. John Mawney's best friend. Joe Tillinghast and John Mawney lived together around the time of the Gaspee Affair in 1772. Another offspring of Pardon and Experience Mawney was a John G. Mawney b 1770, not our guy, but a source of potential confusion.

4. Dr. John Mawney (c1751-1830), a physician, sometime sheriff of Providence county, and was in the expedition that burnt the Gaspee. He died in Cranston, on 3 March 1830, in his 80th year, and was buried in the North Burial Ground, as are many fellow Gaspee raiders. He married, first, Nancy Wilson (dau. of Dr. Wilson of Hopkinton, MA) on 2 Dec 1775; married second, Elizabeth Prentice Clarke (1765-1803), married 5 APR 1784 in Hopkinton, MA. We can't find a trace on Nancy. Curiously, neither of his wives are listed separately as being buried with him, or even appear with the last name Mawney in the RI Historical Cemeteries Database. For that matter, neither does his mother, Amey (Gibbs) Mawney. Children:

a. John W., married Ruth, daughter of John Gladding, and left one child, Elizabeth, who married William A. Cole, and resided in Shakapee, Minnesota. Note: this John may have been son of Dr. John Mawney and his first wife, Nancy Wilson.

b. Mary C. (c1786-1864), daughter of John and Elizabeth, married Henry Valentine (1786 - 1847) of Hopkinton, MA in 1807. Their children were, first, Maria A.; second, Edward H.; third, John M.; fourth, Elizabeth; fifth, Horatio; sixth, Harriet A.; seventh, Alfred A., lived in New York City. Mrs. Mary Valentine died in Brooklyn, NY.

c. Susan, born January 5, 1788; married Benjamin Pond. Ware, 1812. He died in 1816. She died October, 1869. Of the children, Albert P. Ware, born August 3, 1813,  lived in Andover, Massachusetts, and Charles M. Ware, born August 23, 1815,  lived in Norwich, Connecticut.