Boston Transportation Firsts (episode 202)
Sep 13, 2020
Show notes
Co-host emerita Nikki and I are camping this weekend, so instead of a brand new episode, we’re giving you three classic stories about advances in transportation in Boston. First up, we’re going to take a look at a precursor to today’s MBTA. In the late 19th century, a bold entrepreneur built a full sized, working monorail in East Cambridge, but failed to convince the city to adopt it for public transportation. Then, inspired by last week’s show about the World Fliers, our second story will be about the first people to take to the skies in Boston. In the early 19th century, daring aeronauts made a series of increasingly ambitious balloon ascents in Boston. Finally, we’ll turn the clock back to the 1780s, just as the Revolutionary War was concluding. At the time, the town of Boston was on a tiny peninsula, almost completely surrounded by water. The ferry connecting Boston to the mainland struggled to keep up with demand, and Bostonians were looking for a better way… but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/201/ And support the show on Patreon. The Meigs Monorail The diagrams above are taken from this book by Meigs about his monorail system, and the photographs are via Historic New England. The 1885 patent on the Meigs monorail system. The 1887 engineering report prepared by George Stark for the Board of Railroad Commisssioners. Expanded version of Stark’s report. July 1886 Scientific American article (text reproduced here). A Q&A with Joe Meigs about rapid transit. An 1882 article in the Crimson announcing a demonstration by Meigs. JP Morgan takes over. Using the Meigs charter to build elevated lines roughly following today’s Red and Orange lines. Erecting one sad section of track in 1894. The archives at Yale hold the Joe V Meigs papers. Celebrate Boston collected a number of sources related to the Meigs monorail. In this 19th century Photoshop job, see the elevated railway that Bostonians feared would block out the sun. Early Aeronauts A modern crew attempts to recreate Bostonian John Jeffries’ maiden voyage across the English Channel. John Quincy Adams records the difficulties Jeffries encountered. Blanchard’s first flight in the US. An almost certainly fake account of a balloon ascent in Boston in 1790. The first balloon ascent in Boston leads to the first aviation lawsuit in Massachusetts. A newspaper account of Charles Durant’s first ascent from Boston in 1834. Irish actor Tyrone Power describes an ascent by Durant. Durant’s memorable final flight from Boston on September 13, 1834. The oldest surviving aerial photo is taken of Boston in 1860. It’s now in the collection of the Met. Google Earth tips its hat to that 1860 photo. Just for fun, here are a few pictures from the time your hosts went soaring in New Hampshire, including the Boston skyline from somewhere near Salem, NH. Charles River Bridges Charlestown Ferry Documents about Harvard’s financial stake in the Charlestown Ferry. The first bridge over the Neponset. Charles River Bridge A useful history of the early ferries and bridges over the Charles written for the Boston Transit Commission in 1899. Town records related to the debates and first authorization of a bridge. Legislation authorizing the Proprietors of the Charles River Bridge to form a corporation. Lucy Cranch writes to her aunt Abigail Adams about the new Charles River Bridge. John Quincy Adams writes to his mother about the opening of the Charles River Bridge, and shares a little more candidly in his diary. July 4, 1786 oration at Charlestown, using the “phoenix” metaphor that so annoyed JQA. Josiah Bartlett’s description of the Charles River Bridge. West Boston Bridge Advertising shares in the West Boston Bridge. A centennial article about the West Boston Bridge in the Cambridge Tribune. A 2000 masters thesis on the West Boston Bridge. The Bridge, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Warren Bridge Boston Book Club In Episode 80 of the Dispatches podcast from the Journal of the American Revolution, host Brady Crytzer sits down with former White House webmaster and author Jane Hampton Cook to discuss one of our favorite Americans. As the wife of one US President and mother of another, Abigail Adams’ private influence could often be seen in public discourse and policy. For example, John Quincy Adams’ lifelong crusade against slavery was no doubt inspired by the mother who wrote in 1774 that she wished most sincerely that there was not a slave in the province. The correspondence between Abigail Adams and John is one of the most powerful glimpses into our founding era, and from three decades of letters, the most famous words Abigail wrote were “remember the ladies.” In a series of letters written while John was attending the Second Continental Congress in the spring of 1776, Abigail constantly urged him to get Congress to declare an American independency. In one of them, she considered what would come after independence, and suggested a new role for women in the new society. On March 31, 1776, she wrote: By the way, in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex. In his response, John called Abigail “saucy,” and he essentially ignored her suggestion to incorporate rights for women in the new code of laws. It would take nearly 150 more years to pass the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote in America. In the podcast, Cook explores what John’s dismissal of Abigail Adams’ most famous letter tells us about her role in promoting women’s rights in the early republic. Upcoming Events On September 21, Luke Nichter from Texas A&M will be leading an online author talk about his book “The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and the Making of the Cold War.” Here’s how the event sponsors at the Massachusetts Historical Society describe his talk: A key figure in American foreign policy for three decades, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. of Massachusetts, a well-heeled Eastern Establishment Republican, put duty over partisanship to serve as advisor to five presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford and as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Vietnam, West Germany, and the Vatican. Historian Luke A. Nichter gives us a compelling narrative of Lodge’s extraordinary and consequential life and his immense political influence. Tune in at 5:30pm on Monday, September 21 to learn about the oft-overlooked younger Henry Cabot Lodge. Revolutionary Spaces operates both Old South Meeting House and the Old State House, including the site of the Boston Massacre. As part of their commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the massacre this year, the Reflecting Attucks series explores different aspects of the life and times of Crispus Attucks, who has become the most famous victim of the Boston Massacre. Here’s how they describe this installment: “Attucks and the Politics of Liberty & Sovereignty in 18th Century New England” reflects on the political conversations that were taking place around the time of the Boston Massacre among white colonists and the African- and Native-descended communities. The Revolutionary period is most often associated with colonists arguing for their rights as British subjects to tax themselves under a locally elected government, but that is only part of the story. Blacks were also seeking to make the case for liberty to end the practice of slavery, while Native peoples continued to reclaim their sovereignty after more than a century of colonial expansion. That talk will begin at 4pm on Tuesday, September 22. On September 7, 1630, Boston, Dorchester, and Watertown were all officially named, and the anniversary always kicks off a month or more of terrific programming from the Partnership of Historic Bostons. As the name suggests, the partnership celebrates the historical connections between Boston, Massachusetts and Boston, Lincolnshire. Their mission is to educate people about the 17th century history of both Bostons, and their peak season kicks off with Charter Day. Their event on Wednesday, September 23 will be called “Into the Wilderness: Leadership in Early New England,” and it will begin at 7pm. Here’s how the Partnership describes the event. 2 governors. 2 colonies. 4 moments that defined a decade. Join expert staff from Plimoth-Patuxet (formerly Plimoth Plantation) and the Center for 17th-Century Studies at Plimoth for an immersive exploration of the complicated relationship between Plymouth Colony’s William Bradford and Massachusetts Bay Colony’s John Winthrop. Delving into their personal correspondence and published writings from the 1630s, Plimoth brings its unique approach to living history to bear in an exploration of each man’s unique approach to leadership and community in New England’s earliest decades.
The World Fliers in Boston (episode 201)
Sep 06, 2020
Show notes
The early 20th century was a time of aviation firsts, and one of those firsts dropped into Boston for three long, exciting days in 1924. Five months after they started their journey in California, the Army Air Service pilots who made the first flight around the world were expected to touch down on US soil for the first time 96 years ago this week.
Since the main story this week is about the first people to circumnavigate the globe by air, it seems only appropriate to feature the first solo circumnavigation by sea. On September 2, Stuff You Missed in History released an episode about Captain Joshua Slocum, who was the first person to sail around the world alone. Slocum first went to sea 35 years before his attempted circumnavigation, leaving Nova Scotia at the age of 16. Over the years, he met and married an American woman living in Australia, and the pair sailed together for 13 years, raising seven children at sea, four of whom lived to adulthood. After his first wife died in 1884, Slocum remarried and began calling Boston home, while continuing to sail between the US east coast and Brazil regularly.
I had never read about the time in Joshua Slocum’s life before his solo voyage before, and hosts Tracy and Holly do a great job describing this period. You’ll be left wishing that you had met his first wife Ginny, who seemed able to do it all, holding off mutineers at gunpoint with one hand, playing piano with the other, teaching Sunday school with a third hand, and giving birth alone at sea with… well I guess that wasn’t a hand.
All that is to say that Joshua Slocum was a master mariner and experienced navigator, so when he announced in 1895 that he planned to sail a small vessel around the world alone, it didn’t sound as crazy as it would if you or I said it. He bought a small sloop near New Bedford that had been used for oyster fishing and spent more than a year overhauling it and fitting it out for long distance sailing.
In the end, the journey took three years, and after his return, Slocum published a memoir titled Sailing Alone Around the World.
Upcoming Events
Katherine Switzer has been the subject of two past episodes, and on September 15, she’ll be taking part in the BPL’s Contested Perspectives series. Here’s how the library describes it:
In 1967, Katherine Switzer became the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon as a numbered entrant. During her run, race official Jock Semple attempted to stop Switzer and grab her official bib; however, he was shoved to the ground by Switzer’s boyfriend, Thomas Miller, who was running with her, and she completed the race. It was not until 1972 that women were allowed to run the Boston Marathon officially. Fifty years later, Kathrine Switzer successfully ran the Boston Marathon again at age 70.
She’ll join the library’s virtual talk “to discuss these barrier-breaking moments on the racecourse and in life.”
On September 16, past podcast guests Joseph Nevins, Suren Moodliar, and Eleni Macrakis will be giving a virtual author talk via the library. A People’s Guide to Greater Boston is a radical’s travel guide to Boston. If you missed our interview with Joseph and Suren, or if you’re still mad that Eleni got left out, this will be your introduction to the guide.
Also on September 16, Revolutionary Spaces will host an online installment in their “Reflecting Attucks” series, the organization’s year of programming remembering the most famous Boston Massacre victim. This event will start at 4pm, and it’s a panel discussion that features Kerri Greenidge, biographer of William Monroe Trotter past podcast guest. Here’s how Revolutionary Spaces describes this edition of Reflecting Attucks.
Attucks: A Man of Many Worlds unpacks what we know about Attucks’s time and place. He lived in a world where many people were descended from both Native and African peoples that had much in common, including enslavement at the hands of white colonists. With this background, Attucks would have had a deep understanding of British oppression, and how his community fought back. And as a mariner going through the port of Boston, he would have encountered people both Black and white making the case for liberty and freedom in louder and more certain terms.
Join us for a lively discussion about Attucks’s Afro-Indian community and reflect on the experiences he might have had that informed his thinking about resistance and protest and ultimately brought him to King Street on the night of the Boston Massacre
Dr. Rebecca Crumpler, Forgotten No Longer (episode 200)
Aug 30, 2020
Show notes
Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US in 1864, and she spent most of her adult life in Charlestown, Beacon Hill, and the Readville section of Hyde Park. She devoted her career to pediatrics and obstetrics, published the first medical text by an African American author, and made a point of caring for the marginalized, even moving to Virginia to tend to formerly enslaved people at the end of the Civil War. The nation’s first Black female physician lay in an unmarked grave for 125 years, but there have been important developments in the story of Dr. Crumpler while we’ve been in quarantine this year.
The quote about studying too hard damaging a woman’s uterus is from this article on the history of women in medicine
A 1912 map of Hyde Park, showing Sunnyside Ave (now Solaris Road) where the Crumplers resided, directly across the Mother Brook from their graves at Fairview Cemetery
Confused when we talk about the Mother Brook? Check out episode 91.
The New England Female Medical College campus
New England Female Medical College
A course certificate for the New England Female Medical College
Dr Rebecca Crumpler, plot A-90
Arthur Crumpler, plot A-91
Boston Book Club
Remember restaurants? Not takeout, not patio seating, not eating under a tent in a reclaimed parking space, but real restaurants? I do… barely. If you’re having trouble remembering what restaurants were like, check out Dining Out in Boston: A Culinary History. Author James O’Connell analyzes restaurant menus dating back to the early 1800s to show how Boston restaurants helped to develop America’s tastes and expectations in restaurant dining.
Upcoming Event
Longtime listeners know that I’m a big fan of John Adams, and I spend a lot of time in the online Adams papers. At noon on Thursday, September 10, University of Tennessee-Knoxville PhD candidate Yiyun Huang will be presenting on the topic “John Adams and China: Globalizing Early America.”
The talk draws on Yiyun’s dissertation, which is tentatively titled “‘Nothing but large potions of Tea could extinguish it’: Cultural Transfer and the Consumption of Chinese Tea in Early America.” The title is taken from a 1757 diary entry by John Adams, where he notes that only Chinese tea can sooth his chronic heartburn. He was just one of many Americans who relied on tea for its medical benefits prior to December 1770. But why did Adams and his contemporaries believe tea was beneficial? In a description of his doctoral work, Huang says,
I trace the cultural ties that bound Qing-dynasty China and British North America during the eighteenth-century. I argue that British colonists in North America consumed a great deal of Chinese tea before the American Revolution due to a robust global transfer of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs associated with this tea. It took multiple transoceanic networks of physicians, Jesuit missionaries, and merchants to transmit academic and vernacular knowledge of Chinese tea across the globe.
As with most Massachusetts Historical Society talks, this one is free, but advanced registration is required.
The Clipper Ships of East Boston (episode 199)
Aug 23, 2020
Show notes
Kick back and enjoy our interview with Stephen Ujifusa, author of Barons of the Sea, and Their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship, which originally aired in July 2018. Stephen takes us back to an era when the fastest, most elegant ships in the world were built in the East Boston shipyard of Donald McKay. He also describes how they were used to trade for tea in China or gold in California, and how they helped America’s most prominent families amass fortunes through opium smuggling.
We’ve done not one but two episodes about the 1721 smallpox inoculation controversy in Boston without reading Steven Coss’s book The Fever of 1721: The Epidemic That Revolutionized Medicine and American Politics. It promises to weave together three threads in Boston history. In 1721, Boston was wracked by a smallpox epidemic that prompted Cotton Mather and Zabadiel Boylston to begin inoculating residents against the disease using a method they used from Oneismus, who was enslaved by Mather. It was also the year when James Franklin launched a new newspaper called the New-England Courant, the first independent paper in the colonies, where his famous brother Ben would learn the publishing trade. Coss also argues that 1721 was the year when Boston’s sentiments began turning against crown government.
Though it (like the book) was written in 2016, this review in American Scientist has heavy shades of America 2020:
Although the book’s eponymous fever is smallpox—and smallpox does frame the events described in the book—writer and independent scholar Coss maintains that another kind of fever marks 1721 as pivotal in American history. Just as smallpox was beginning to take hold in Boston, James Franklin, elder brother of a more famous Franklin, launched the first independent newspaper in the colonies, The New-England Courant. Its emergence marked the beginning of a nascent nation’s obsession with partisan broadsheets. And thanks to the coincidence of timing, the newspaper’s editorial focus at its launch reflected deep concern with the disease taking hold of the city. Moreover, it provides perhaps the earliest example of an independent press covering a colonial epidemic in ways not officially sanctioned by the government. The tensions between an honest reporting of a disease’s spread and the government’s desire to downplay both the risk and its own culpability in the outbreak are in full view in Coss’s history. Although Boston’s relationship with the Crown had long been tumultuous—a circumstance evident as early as 1689, when Bostonians deposed their royal governor—Coss makes a convincing argument that the introduction of a partisan, independent press in the first half of the 18th century was either a cause or a consequence of an underlying dissatisfaction that led directly to the events of the second half.
Upcoming Events
On Thursday, August 27, History Camp will host a virtual author talk with Dan Gifford about his book The Last Voyage of the Whaling Bark Progress: New Bedford, Chicago and the Twilight of an Industry. I had to pass on interviewing Dan about the book a while back, because Boston didn’t feature heavily enough. If your definition of greater Boston to is broad enough to include Salem and New Bedford, this should talk is for you. Here’s how Dan described the book in an email to me:
My new book recreates the strange story of the whaling bark Progress — a New Bedford whaler transformed into a whaling museum for Chicago’s 1893 world’s fair. Traversing waterways across North America, the whaleship enthralled crowds from Montreal to Racine. Her ultimate fate, however, was to be a failed sideshow of marine curiosities and a metaphor for a dying industry out of step with Gilded Age America. After the fair is over, the whaling artifacts from the Progress end up at the Field Museum and the curators rebel against a whaling exhibit in their brand-new museum. Within a few years everything is packed onto an express train and shipped off to Salem [what’s now the Peabody-Essex Museum] as a gift! This book uses the story of the Progress to detail the rise, fall, and eventual demise of the whaling industry in America. The legacy of this whaling bark can be found throughout New England and Chicago, and invites questions about what it means to transform a dying industry into a museum piece.
History Camp virtual events are conducted on Facebook Live, so just head over to their profile at 8pm on Thursday, August 27 to see the conversation live.
In “Victory at Last? Parades and Pink Slips,” three area Ntional Park Service sites are getting together to host a symposium exploring the rapid economic, social, and political change brought on by the end of World War II in 1945. Speakers from the Boston National Historic Park, Blackstone River Valley NHP, and Lowell NHP will give a series of brief talks titled “Patriotism or Prejudice?: Discrimination at the Charlestown Navy Yard,” “Femmes and Homes: French-Canadian Women in RI and Post-WWII Housing,” “Women at War, at Home: Lowell During World War II,” and “Boston Female Shipbuilders, Post-War.” When the speakers conclude, there will be a panel discussion and time for audience questions. The event begins at 1pm on Saturday, August 29.
When the US Army Invaded South Boston (episode 198)
Aug 16, 2020
Show notes
In the 1940s, Boston was still an industrial city, and when the US entered World War II, that industrial might would be turned to wartime production. With industry comes labor disputes, and a new government agency was given extraordinary powers to resolve them. In other early cases, the National War Labor Board used its authority and the might of the military to break strikes by organized labor. However, in August 1942, they would step in to force an employer to honor their union contract, using the US Army to enforce workers’ rights. That employer was the SA Woods Machine Company of South Boston, and this Wednesday marks the anniversary of the military takeover of their plant, setting up an epic battle of wills between the SA Woods corporation and the US government, and between the company’s cantankerous president and the young major sent to take over his company.
The MPs arrive at SA Woods
Nailing Executive order 9225 to the door
Guarding the front gates
Meet the new management
Lining up to go to work
Checking IDs
Fake labor negotiations
A help wanted ad from the Murray company’s operation of SA Woods
During the 1983 Boston City Council race, WGBH was given extraordinary behind-the-scenes access to one candidate’s campaign, as he ran for office for the first time. The council had just been restructured, introducing a new District Councilor seat. Before this, all nine city councilors were elected at large, meaning that they had to run city-wide. With the restructuring, there would now be four at-large councilors and nine district councilors, who would be elected by the residents of specific neighborhoods. This first time candidate, named Tom Menino, was running to represent Hyde Park and Roslindale in District 5.
There’s a charming segment where the camera goes behind the scenes in the future councilor’s basement, as he rehearses the speech announcing his candidacy over and over again to a small audience of family and friends. His wife Angela gently corrects his pronunciation, then the scene shifts to his parents’ backyard in Hyde Park, where he is delivering the speech for real. As he stumbles over the same word again, the camera cuts to Angela, who stares directly into the camera and gives a little smirk that would make the writers of The Office proud.
For an episode that will be focusing on manufacturing in Boston, it’s interesting to hear future mayor Menino discuss the role that one of the large factories in the Readville section of Hyde Park played in his family and the neighborhood. He describes how his father, three of his aunts, and his neighbors had all worked at Westinghouse making industrial fans. Even young Tommy had worked there for a few summers, though he mentions that the company is having financial difficulties. Of course, the old Westinghouse plant is now condos, and a charter school, and the offices for a few small businesses.
The show closes on election night, as the candidate and his staff count the votes coming in from individual precincts. By now it’s not a spoiler to say that Tommy Menino won that race. He would go on to the Mayor’s office in 1994 and end up as the city’s longest-serving mayor.
Upcoming Event(s)
On August 26, the USS Constitution Museum will be presenting a virtual panel discussion about using naval power to secure commercial shipping around the world, from the time of the Constitution’s campaign against the Barbary pirates to the rising tensions with China over access to the South China Sea. The panelists will include Professor Robert Allison of Suffolk University, Professor James Holmes of the US Naval War College, and Professor Rockford Weitz of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. They will be moderated by the Constitution Museum’s public historian, Carl Herzog.
Here’s how the museum describes the event:
Throughout the first half of the 1800s, USS Constitution was deployed to locations around the globe to protect American maritime commerce and interests. Keeping seaways open and safe for American ships passing through far flung locales was a fundamental goal in the creation of the US Navy and USS Constitution. Today, US Navy ships are still stationed and patrolling waters around the world to protect maritime commerce and freedom of navigation in increasingly volatile regions such as the South China Sea.
In a virtual panel discussion on August 26, the USS Constitution Museum brings together three experts to discuss Constitution’s history protecting maritime commerce and how that legacy is reflected in the deployments of US Navy ships to tense sea lanes around the world today. What lessons does “Old Ironsides” offer us for guidance in understanding overseas naval presence today? How do global issues of maritime security affect commerce coming to and from American shores today and how does that compare to the 19th-century commerce Constitution sought to protect?
Though it’s last minute notice, Old North will present an illustrated talk by Alex Goldfield on Tuesday, August 19. He’ll speak on the topic of Black freedom in early Boston, retracing the lives of free and enslaved African Americans in the first decades of our city. Old North’s description says:
Public historian and local author Alex Goldfeld will give an illustrated presentation on Boston’s African-American community in the 1600s. He will draw on his graduate research in The History of the Streets of Boston’s North End to speak about life for Boston’s earliest black residents. The audience will get glimpses of free Black Bostonians as well as efforts to control them by law throughout Massachusetts.
The Grand Derangement (episode 197)
Aug 09, 2020
Show notes
One morning in August, redcoats fanned out across the province, taking entire families into custody, burning farms and crops, and killing livestock. Falling in the middle of two centuries of intermittent warfare, this grand derangement, or great upheaval, didn’t take place in Boston or even in Massachusetts. But Boston bore responsibility for the acts carried out in its name, and Boston would host the “French Neutrals,” the human byproducts of the purge that we remember as the expulsion of the Acadians who were confined in our city for nearly a decade.
Longfellow’s Evangelineis a book that did more than any other work in English to draw attention to the plight of the Acadians who were removed from their homeland in the Grand Derangement. As the curators of what is now known as the Longfellow House/Washington’s Headquarters National Historic site point out:
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow began writing the “idyl in hexameters” which would become Evangeline in November of 1845, shortly after the birth of his second child. He was a respected professor who had been teaching foreign languages at Harvard for almost ten years, and a published author and translator fluent in many European languages, classical Greek, and Latin. He had recently married his second wife, the wealthy and beautiful Fanny Appleton, and the two were living in the impressive Cambridge mansion known locally as the Craigie House.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie tells the story, in unrhymed verse, of the young and beautiful Evangeline and the noble Gabriel Lajeunesse, childhood friends living in Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia. The two are members of a peaceful farming community that embodies all the values of virtuous rural life held dear by the Victorian audience for whom the poem was written. They are engaged to be married, but are almost immediately separated when their entire community is forced into exile. Following the harrowing scene of their ejection, Evangeline spends the rest of her life traveling throughout North America, hoping to be reunited with her one true love. Only after many years of fruitless searching does Evangeline find Gabriel, on his deathbed. After a moment of mutual recognition, Gabriel dies, held by Evangeline as she thanks God for bringing them together one last time. The poem concludes with the assurance that the two lovers, are buried side by side, together for eternity, with Evangeline’s devotion to be celebrated in the land of their birth forever.
While I personally find it boring and hard to read today, in his own time, Longfellow’s Evangeline was a cultural phenomenon. It went through six printings in the first six months, selling out time and again and putting tens of thousands of copies into print. The poem’s success cemented Longfellow’s reputation and fortune, and it helped reintroduce the saga of the Derangement into American popular history.
Upcoming Event
Two decades after the crisis of loyalty that led to the expulsion of the Acadians, war would break out again. In her talk “Interpreting Neutrality during the American Revolution in the Northeast Borderlands,” Darcy Stevens of the University of Maine will examine what neutrality looked like in the same region that had been wracked so recently by the Grand Derangement. Here’s how the MHS describes her talk:
Rebellion, neutrality and loyalty existed on a spectrum that inhabitants in the Borderlands of Maine and Nova Scotia moved along throughout the war. Likewise, British and American officials’ interpretations and acceptance of neutrality was malleable. Examining neutrals, rebels, loyalists, New England Planters, Wabanaki, and Acadians in the Borderlands reveals factors which impacted personal decisions and official policy about neutrality. Recognizing the complexity of neutrality restores agency to individuals and suggests a new terrain for assessing revolutionary actors as they were buffeted by wartime change.
The virtual event begins at noon on August 20. It’s free, but advanced registration is required to get access to the connection details.
The Gold Gilded Grasshopper (episode 196)
Aug 02, 2020
Show notes
Faneuil Hall’s grasshopper weathervane is 4 feet long, weighs about 80 pounds, and is made out of copper that’s been covered with 23 carat gold. It’s found at the top of an 8 foot spire above Faneuil Hall’s cupola, which is in turn seven stories above ground level. So imagine the surprise that swept Boston on a January day in 1974 when people looked up and realized that the grasshopper was gone.
The Grasshopper
Faneuil Hall from above
The flagpole in Feb 1974
Shem Drowne’s first weathervane
Shem Drowne’s 1740 weathervane at Old North
The Grasshopper
Since Faneuil Hall is at the center of this week’s story, this week’s Boston Book Club selection will give you a broader history of Boston’s premier market. Strictly speaking, Faneuil Hall is the single brick building that opened in 1742 on the former site of Boston’s town dock. But when people say they’re going to Faneuil Hall, they probably mean that they’ll also visit the 19th century granite market building behind Faneuil Hall, and perhaps the former warehouses that flank it on either side. This entire market complex is Quincy Market, named after Boston Mayor Josiah Quincy III. It opened 84 years after the original market site, in 1826.
Quincy’s Market: a Boston Landmark was written by John Quincy, Jr, an eleventh generation descendant of the Quincy family whose name adorns the market complex. Here’s how the publisher describes it:
A bustling commercial center and favorite tourist attraction on Boston’s historic waterfront, Quincy Market, the popular name for Faneuil Hall Marketplace, draws throngs of visitors to the magnificent granite buildings and cobblestone concourses that house the area’s specialty shops, restaurants, boutiques, pushcarts, and food stalls. Yet few are aware of the history of this legendary public place and its importance in the history of Boston and the nation. In this elegantly written and lavishly illustrated work, John Quincy, Jr., tells the absorbing story of the Market’s unique evolution over the centuries. Beginning with John Winthrop’s landing at the Great Cove on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630, Quincy weaves together a remarkable tapestry of the district’s rise, fall, and rebirth.
Upcoming Event
The Gibson House is a unique time capsule of Victorian Boston, as it was built in 1860, only very minimally updated since then, and left completely untouched since its last owner died in 1954. This undiscovered gem of a museum has been getting more attention in recent months, because it was used as a set in the recent Little Women movie.
The last owner of the house was Charles Gibson, Junior, who is the subject of the event. Charlie grew up in the Gibson house, and then moved back in after his father’s death in 1916. He cultivated a persona as the ultimate Boston Brahmin, a throwback to an earlier era. A later profile in the Boston Herald described him as “a Proper Bostonian whose Victorian elegance puts modern manners to shame,” and “a small man…with a nimble, if sometimes cantankerous physique…He strolls around with a sort of swagger stick with a silver tip out of deference to the fact that gold would be too vulgar.” He affected an English accent and was always quick to mention his ties to the elites of Boston, London, and Paris.
Charlie Gibson maintained his eccentric ways right up until the end. Into the 1950s, he kept up a habit of walking to the Ritz Carlton Hotel every night, where he would take his dinner in a full tuxedo and tails, top hat, and a raccoon coat in cold weather. Charlie, who was a lifelong bachelor and wrote an entire book of love poems that never mentioned a woman, has recently reemerged as a sort of gay icon for the LGBTQ history of early 20th century Boston.
Since their special “Charlie Gibson’s Queer Boston” themed tour had to be cut short when the pandemic began, the Gibson House will be offering a virtual version at 6pm on August 4th. Here’s how they describe it:
Explore the Gibson House and the gay subculture of early-twentieth-century Boston through Charlie Gibson’s eyes. The story of the Museum’s founder is one of legacy and family history, of the fading grandeur of Victorian-era Boston, and of Boston’s LGBTQ history.
The suggested donation for this event is $5 – $15, and advanced registration is required to get the Zoom connection details, additional reading materials, and a recipe for the evening’s themed cocktail.
Boston Goes to Bleeding Kansas (episode 195)
Jul 26, 2020
Show notes
Bloody Kansas was a deadly guerrilla war between so-called Border Ruffians from Missouri in support of slavery on one side, and earnest abolitionists from New England on the other. The violence peaked on Kansas prairies in the decade before the US Civil War officially began, fought with guns, newspapers, artillery, and sometimes even broadswords. A Boston-based company that seeded those earnest abolitionists into that prairie and eventually looked the other way as they transformed themselves from farmers to vigilantes and soldiers.
Our header image shows members of the first party of emigrants, who left Boston on July 17, 1854 and founded Lawrence, Kansas on August 1.
Boston Book Club
Cloudsplitter is a 1999 a novel by Russell Banks. It’s a sprawling, 750 page epic of historical fiction, telling the story of John Brown and his family through the eyes of his son Owen. A 1998 review of the book said:
The picture that Owen draws of his father is that of a fierce, self-righteous prophet, a man who “did everything with greater intensity than the rest of us,” a patriarch who “took advice badly but gave it without stint,” an absolutist who divides the world into an “us” and a “them.”
The Old Man, we’re told, uses the Bible to justify everything from his domineering control of his family to his preaching the violent overthrow of slavery. He is a tireless proselytizer, a self-deluding dreamer, an Old Testament vigilante, and, it appears, a manic-depressive given to periods of dark brooding and interludes of equally frenetic activity. He willfully imposes his own obsession with slavery on his entire family, and he exhorts his sons to become coldblooded warriors willing to use any means to achieve their ends… Worse, Owen recounts, his father’s embrace of violence as a tool to wage war against slavery had tragic consequences for his children: some of his sons would become heartless killers, some would become martyrs to his cause.
Banks creates a portrait of the Brown family, full of complex resentments between sons and their father. His fictional approach means that he can describe the events at Pottawatomie or Harpers Ferry with a level of grisly, disturbing detail that isn’t available to historians. It’s not an easy book, but it is rewarding, though be aware that the author pretty flagrantly revises the historical facts to support his narrative.
Upcoming Event(s)
This Wednesday, July 29, a panel will discuss the impact of Covid-19 and past pandemics on indigeonous peoples in New England. Sponsored by Revolutionary Spaces and the Upstander Project, the panel will consist of the Chairwoman of the Native Land Conservancy, the Executive Director of the Tomaquag Museum, and the Learning Director at the Upstander Project. Two of the three panelists and the moderator are members of New England Native American tribes. Here’s how Revolutionary Spaces describes the event:
From smallpox and measles, to cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis, Indigenous peoples have suffered disproportionate loss of life from disease since European settlers began to trade with them and later occupy their land. The novel coronavirus has impacted Indigenous peoples with a familiar ferocity, flagging their perennial lack of good jobs, housing, and healthcare. Join a distinguished panel of experts to learn about the historical and present-day conditions that have made Indigenous people especially vulnerable to disease, and the strategies required to break this pattern of discrimination and social violence.
This event is free, but advanced registration is required.
In almost every way, Boston was a city that relied on the maritime industry. The Old North Church was similarly shaped in many ways by its relationship to the sea. Using the church’s connection to the sea as a launching point, we will examine a narrative that goes beyond the walls of the building: how the sea affected the lives and fortunes of its congregants and even the look of the church itself. Specifically, we’ll dive in to the stories of Captain Samuel Nicholson and Captain Thomas Gruchy in addition to much more.
This event starts at 7pm on Tuesday, and tickets are $15.
The Prisoners of Peddocks Island (episode 194)
Jul 19, 2020
Show notes
You may have heard stories about the Confederate prisoners who were held at Fort Warren on Georges Island during the civil war. In this episode, we’ll explore a different island that housed prisoners during a different war. Our story will start with the only soccer riot in recorded Boston history, which broke out at Carson Beach in South Boston on July 16, 1944. It will end up with Italian war prisoners confined at Fort Andrews on Peddocks Island in Boston Harbor. Along the way, we’ll meet bootleggers, artillerymen, Passamaquoddy seal hunters, opium fiends, and Portuguese-American fishermen. We’ll also be taking a virtual visit to one of my personal favorite places in the Boston area, and one that is on the brink of being sold off to luxury hotel developers. Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/194/ And support the show on Patreon. The Prisoners of Peddocks Island House Committee on Military Affairs report (page 21-22) “Petting with bathing-suited girls outside the wire fence,” Dec 1, 1944 DC Evening Star Attempted escape from Camp McKay, June 10, 1944 Boston Globe A brawl between prisoners and beachgoers, June 14, 1944 Boston Globe A second brawl prevented, June 16, 1944 Boston Globe Second fence added at Camp McKay, June 17, 1944 Boston Globe ISU prisoners moved to Peddocks Island, June 30, 1944 Boston Globe Thomas Morton describes an indigenous attack on French traders at Peddocks Island John Adams writes to Thomas Jefferson asking what “anckies” are. A general description of Fort Andrews Rumors that the military will fortify Peddocks Island, Jan 21, 1898 Topeka State Journal Rumors that the military will fortify Peddocks Island, March 13, 1898 DC Times A description of the cottage community on Peddocks Island, Aug 22, 1909 Boston Globe Passamaquoddy seal hunters, July 19, 1906 New Haven Daily Morning Journal and Courier Passamaquoddy seal hunters, Aug 10, 1907 Marion Daily Mirror Mortar round falls on Nantasket Ave, Aug 1, 1913 Essex County Herald Mortar fire damages Fort Andrews, Nov 28, 1941 DC Evening Star Research paper explaining how Italian POWs’ status changed, where prisoners came from Once Upon an Island, Matilda Silvia ISUs are overly coddled, July 24, 1944 DC Evening Star Plan to evict cottage residents, Nov 17, 1991 Baltimore Sun (via NYT) ISU strike, December 26, 1944 Boston Globe ISU strike near Toledo, July 13 1944 DC Evening Star ISU strike in Utah, June 1, 1945 DC Evening Star ISU strike in England, May 25, 1944 DC Evening Star Camp McKay via past podcast guest Earl Taylor Camp McKay via the National Archives Fort Andrews as it appeared during WWII Live fire exercise in 1941, via the Washington DC Evening Star The real pier at Peddocks Island, with a massive mountain digitally inserted behind it for Shutter Island. Peddocks Island stands in for Shutter Island. Most of these officers’ quarters were demolished in 2011-2013. Arriving on Peddocks Island Welcome to Peddocks Island Fort Andrews enlisted barracks The base chapel where Italian Service Units worshipped The gym and Post Exchange, where Matilda Silvia’s family shopped Battery Frank Whitman “Portuguese Cove” with the Boston Skyline behind An abandoned cottage Sunset behind Boston from Peddocks Island Boston Book Club East of Boston: Notes from the Harbor Islands, by Stephanie Schorow, is equal parts history book and travel guide, serving as a perfect introduction for the Boston Harbor Islands novice. From former Harbor Islands, like World’s End and Castle Island, to popular tourist draws like Georges and Spectacle Islands, to the windswept and little visited Brewsters and Graves, Schorow takes the reader through the entire archipelago of 34 Boston Harbor Islands. In the early 20th century, Peddocks Island became an out-of-sight, out-of-mind home for unsavory activities and businesses like bordellos, speakeasies, and opium parties. There’s also a rich history of baseball being played on Peddocks Island. In East of Boston, Schorow explains that before the blue laws were finally changed in 1929, up to 5000 fans would flock to a long-lost ballpark on a narrow spit of land between two beaches on Peddocks to watch the Boston Braves play. Along with these more edgy topics, the publisher’s description says you will learn about “pirate treasure, elusive foxes, cross-dressing ghosts, flying Santas and a strange era of spontaneously combusting garbage dumps.” While most of the islands will remain closed this summer, ferry service to Spectacle Island has started up and will run through October 12. If you are a frequent visitor to the Harbor Islands, or if you’re considering your first trip, it’s worth picking up East of Boston to help plan your trip, and so you know the many historic events that happened on each island. Upcoming Event On Thursday, July 23, check out Boston in Film: Beyond the Oscars, from the Massachusetts Historical Society, Emerson, and the Brattle Theater. A few weeks ago, we featured a talk focusing on movies that typecast the Hub as a home for mobsters, cops, and other tough-talking Irish characters. This week, Jim Vrabel, author of A People’s History of the New Boston, and Ned Hinckle of the Brattle Film Foundation will be presenting a more lighthearted counterpoint to that session. They will go beyond the grit to present a more well-rounded portrait of Boston. Here’s how the MHS website describes the event: There are a remarkable number of gritty films set in Boston, yet that is not the only way the city is depicted. There are comedies, period pieces, and films that depict the diversity of the city with much greater accuracy. Next Stop Wonderland, Paper Chase and Between the Lines have not received the same attention from the Academy, but they have devout followings and depict a different vision of Boston. Our discussion will look at these other visions of the city and discuss short films and independent productions that offer a wider perspective of our city.
Prescott Townsend, From the First World War to the First Pride Parade, with Megan Linger (episode 193)
Jul 12, 2020
Show notes
Prescott Townsend was one of the most interesting figures in Boston’s LGBTQ history. He was the ultimate Boston Brahmin, coming of age at Harvard in the shadow of Teddy Roosevelt and enlisting in the Navy during World War I. He served time in prison after getting caught in a Beacon Hill tryst back when homosexuality was a crime in Boston, and spent decades as an activist, helping to found the gay liberation movement, and marched at the head of the nation’s first pride parade on the first anniversary of Stonewall. We’re also going to meet a researcher who has uncovered new information about Prescott Townsend as part of an effort to improve how the National Park Service interprets the LGBTQ history of Boston.
Esther Forbes is well known as the author of Johnny Tremain, a beloved novel for young readers. This fictional version of the lead up to war in Boston from mid 1773 to just after the battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775 was published in 1943 and won the next year’s Newberry award. A decade later, Disney made it into a feature film. The year before Esther Forbes published Johnny Tremain, she published a biography of Paul Revere that remains one of the most respected titles on Revere and the historical context of his famous ride. When co-host emerita Nikki started work at Old North Church, she wanted to refresh her knowledge of the events of April 1775, and every historian we asked recommended Paul Revere and the World He Lived In, by Esther Forbes.
In a 1942 review, Revolutionary War historian Frederic Kirkland calls it “a picture of Revolutionary times which is unsurpassable.” It’s little wonder that the book won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 1943, just as Johnny Tremain was being published.
Upcoming Event
Back at the beginning of June, I discussed the criminal career of burglar Levi Ames. However, the most interesting part of the story came after he was hanged in 1773, when medical students who would go on to be the top doctors in the newly independent United States tried desperately to steal his corpse, while a sympathetic minister tried desperately to hide it.
If you liked that tale of graverobbing resurrection men, you might enjoy an upcoming talk, titled “Anatomical Acts: Exploring the Intersections between Popular Anatomy and Popular Theatre in Nineteenth-Century America.” The event is being hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society and led by Mia Levenson, a PhD candidate at Tufts. Her research examines 19th century grave robbing, public performance of science, and the growing popularity of blackface minstrel shows, showing how these seemingly disparate subjects are intertwined. Here’s how the MHS website describes it:
Levenson will contextualize her research as the intersection of three historical threads: the increasing importance of anatomical science to medical education, which contributed to widespread theft of bodies from public (and primarily African American) graves; the rise of a “popular anatomy,” whereby moral reformers sought to uplift the white middle-class through anatomical education; and the popularity of minstrelsy, a theatrical form that created a mockery of Black anatomy while, in some burlesques, simultaneously using the site of the dissection room as a punchline.
The talk will be held at 12pm on Thursday, July 16th. It’s free to the public, but you must register in advance to get the connection details.
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