Gerry’s 1775 letter may only be start for Marblehead historians

MARBLEHEAD – Marblehead patriot and former Vice President Elbridge Gerry is making a comeback, thanks to the Historical Commission.Commission members met Tuesday morning to take a look at their latest rediscovered treasure from the wealth of files in the Marion Gosling Collection: a September 1775 letter to the then-Board of Selectmen, expressing appreciation for being named to the Continental Congress.Gerry – the name is pronounced with a hard "g" like "Governor" – signed the Declaration of Independence, served in the Continental Congress from 1775-1780, served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, refused to sign the Constitution because the Bill of Rights was not included in it, served as Governor of Massachusetts from 1810-1811 and vice president under James Madison until his death in November, 1814, his 20th month in office and four months after his 70th birthday.With all that on his resume – and a handsome bust that faces the selectmen in their meeting room at Abbot Hall – it seems a shame that his name is most frequently recalled as part of the word gerrymander, a mythical creature drawn to look like a Massachusetts redistricting plan that he signed while serving as governor.The letter is temporarily changing that.In brown ink, the brief bread-and-butter note states, "I cannot but express a sense of obligation for (the Town’s) confidence at this critical Season, I will endeavor to retaliate it by discharging the Trust to the utmost of my abilities."That brief note marks the beginning of a distinguished state and national political career. Commission Chairman Wayne Butler pointed out to the commissioners that it was written after the battles of Lexington and Concord, at a time of frequent skirmishes between British soldiers and colonists, and Gerry earned the honor by speaking out in favor of independence.The note turned up as Butler and Commission member Paul "Chris" Johnston were cataloguing more than 100,000 town records from the 1700s and early 1800s, paper work that was culled from other places in Abbot Hall and stored in files in a small brick basement room that is due for renovation.News of the discovery has made its way from local newspapers to national outlets and it has generated some excitement. The commissioners are discussing an appropriate display for the letter, or a copy. The deed to the town occupies the place of honor beneath Gerry’s bust but there is other wall space available.And the Gerry letter may just be the tip of the iceberg. Butler and Johnston are trying to interest other commission members in joining them in the ongoing cataloguing project. The late Marion Gosling, a longtime commission member who died in 2004, organized the papers by subject and date and filed them away in cabinets. The system she left behind was somewhat general – the two commissioners found 21 folders containing 3,309 paper records dealing with highways from 1780-1820 – and now the commission is trying to get more specific."We’re trying to get organized and get a feel for what we’ve got," Butler said.The files will have to move upstairs when the renovation begins, and eventually these records will be moved to archival file folders, once the cataloguing is done, but the cataloguing – the discovery period – will come first.