How did Stoneham’s second minister become one of the Revolutionary War’s first spies?

Join us in welcoming historian and author John Bell to speak on on spies, moles, infiltrators, leaks and other espionage in and around Boston at the beginning of the Revolutionary War –  including a figure who would have been well known in Stoneham – the Rev. John Carnes.

Twelve days after arriving in Massachusetts as the new commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, George Washington paid a man to go into Boston and secretly report on British “movements & designs.” For two centuries that person’s name remained hidden. Recent research reveals that he was John Carnes, a grocer with an unusual past: he had started his career in the 1750s as Stoneham’s minister. This talk uncovers Carnes’s background, his role in the first Continental spy network, and what happened to him when the British commander had his own spy among the Massachusetts Patriots.

The talk is free and open to the public (donations welcome).  Doors open at 6:45 for museum viewing before the talk, with a brief business meeting at 7:15 and the speaker at 7:30 pm.

About the speaker:  J.L. Bell is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War and a book-length study of Gen. George Washington’s work in Cambridge for the National Park Service. He maintains the Boston1775 website, sharing history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about Revolutionary New England. In 2024 he spoke to the Stoneham Historical Society about another Revolutionary figure from the region, “the rank, bloody, and as yet unhanged Ebenezer Richardson.”