Printed Material

Obadiah Foote Requests Deerfield to Raise a Regulator Company

About this artifact

This letter would have been sent to the Town Clerk of Deerfield. It askOn December 9, 1786, Regulator leaders met and appointed a committee of seventeen men to oversee the organization of military companies and regiments "in the present movement of the people." Each member of the committee was assigned a regiment and ordered to write a letter to towns requesting them to meet and organize their men into companies. Obadiah Foot of Greenfield accordingly wrote this letter to the Town Clerk of Deerfield requesting the town "to assemble your companies to chuse a Captain and other officers necessary, and make return of the person so chosen to me as soon as may be." Deerfield did not comply with Foot's request as very few residents actively supported the Regulation. Foot's letter may have been sent to the Hampshire Gazette to promote anti-Regulator sentiments among those alarmed by these preparations for a violent contest with the Massachusetts government. William Butler, the publisher of the Gazette's, disapproved of the methods of the Regulators and their cause. He lost no opportunity to publish news and commentary that might discredit them in the eyes of the public. s that officers call their companies together and get them organized. Obadiah Foot requests that the town forward the name of the man chosen as Captain to him immediately. Deerfield was not in favor of the Regulators, and it is probable that this letter was sent to the Hampshire Gazette to promote anti-Regulator sentiment. William Butler began publication of the Hampshire Gazette on September 6, 1786, in Northampton, Massachusetts. The mission of the newspaper was to inform the public about the issues pertaining to the ongoing conflicts. Butler was decidedly on the government side of the issues.