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The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919

On Jan. 15, 1919, an enormous molasses storage tank burst in Boston’s North End, and a 25-foot-high molasses flood surged through the streets at 35 miles per hour.

The molasses flood covered one of the densest commercial sections of Boston, with a busy port and a railway terminal.

In the end, the sugary tsunami killed 21 people, including 17 workers, and injured 150. It took months to clean up and recover all the victims. The molasses disaster also resulted in a lawsuit that set the stage for increased government regulation of corporations.

The Boston elevated twisted into new shapes after the molasses flood. Unknown author, Public Domain.

Molasses Flood

The tank, 50 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, contained 2.3 million gallons of molasses originally destined for use in a munitions plant.

The tank, though only a few years old, seemed shaky. People who lived and worked in the North End said the tank shuddered and groaned when the company filled it.

Shortly after noon, the tank collapsed with a thunderous roar. The ground shook, and witnesses said the rivets popping out of the tank sounded like machine gun fire.

The deadly ooze damaged the Boston Elevated Railway on Atlantic Avenue. It then tipped over a rail car and knocked buildings off their foundations. The molasses surge picked up a truck and threw it into Boston Harbor.

A small boy named Anthony di Stasio got caught in the molasses flood. According to a 1983 article in Smithsonian,

Anthony di Stasio, walking homeward with his sisters from the Michelangelo School, was picked up by the wave and carried, tumbling on its crest, almost as though he were surfing. Then he grounded and the molasses rolled him like a pebble as the wave diminished. He heard his mother call his name and couldn’t answer, his throat was so clogged with the smothering goo. He passed out, then opened his eyes to find three of his four sisters staring at him.

Inside the Boston and Worcester freight terminal, the river of molasses poured through the doors and windows. It killed workers like trapped animals.

While outside, the wall of goo trapped some unlucky victims, hurled some into the air, flung some against freight cars and smothered still others.

Rescue and Recovery

The molasses was waist deep in the streets, and covered struggling forms trying to escape the sticky mass. People couldn’t tell the difference between men, women, children or horses. The more they struggled, the more the molasses ensnared them.

Over a hundred cadets from the training ship USS Nantucket, docked nearby, ran to the scene to rescue victims and keep onlookers away from danger. Then the Boston police, US Army soldiers and Red Cross personnel arrived and tried to make their way through the syrup to help those caught in it. Doctors and nurses set up a makeshift hospital in a nearby building. Rescuers spent the next four days searching for victims. Finally, they gave up.

Months later, casualties of the molasses disaster washed up from Boston Harbor.

Hundreds of people helped the cleanup effort, and they tracked molasses all over the city. For months it seemed that anything a Bostonian touched was sticky: pay phones, T seats, sidewalks and subway platforms. The molasses even made its way into private homes, and some said it got tracked as far as Worcester. The harbor didn’t lose its brown tinge until summer.

Section of tank after molasses disaster explosion. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Wet Brown Hell

The Boston Evening Globe reported the boiling sludge buried scores of people inside ruined buildings, killing some and badly injuring others.

Fragments of the great tank were thrown into the air, buildings in the neighborhood began to crumple up as though the underpinnings had been pulled away from under them…

The explosion came without the slightest warning. The workmen were at their noontime meal, some eating in the building or just outside, and many of the men in the Department of Public Works Buildings and stables, which are close by, and where many were injured badly, were away at lunch.

The Globe then reported no one had a chance to escape once they heard the low, rumbling sound. Buildings seemed to crinkle as though made of pasteboard.

In the aftermath, local residents filed a class-action suit against the company, Purity Distilling Company. Purity claimed anarchists blew up the tank, but investigators found it was poorly constructed and never tested for safety. When filled, it leaked molasses. So the company painted it brown to hide the leaks. Neighborhood children brought pails to the tank and filled them with leaking molasses.

Cutting the tank with acetylene torch 3 days after the disaster. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Cutting the tank with acetylene torch 3 days after the molasses flood. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The lawsuit resulted in Purity paying $628,000 in damages, including $7,000 each to the families of victims. The trial set a precedent for expert witnesses, as engineers, metallurgists and architects testified. The molasses disaster also improved the government’s oversight of corporations. According to Stephen Puleo, author of Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 2019 :

All the things we now take for granted in the business, that architects need to show their work, that engineers need to sign and seal their plans, that building inspectors need to come out and look at a project — all of that comes about as a result of the great Boston molasses flood case.

What Caused the Molasses Flood?

Nearly 100 years later, a new study found the cause of the molasses disaster: steel too thin and brittle to withstand the pressure of 2.3 million gallons of molasses. Ronald Mayville, a structural and metallurgical engineer, wrote in Civil and Structural Engineer Magazine that the steel was 50 percent too thin. Engineers should have known that in 1919, he wrote.

They didn’t know then that the steel didn’t contain enough manganese, which made it more likely to crack. The Titanic also used the same kind of steel.

For many years, North End residents said they smelled molasses on hot summer days.

And in 2016, Harvard University scientists concluded the molasses disaster would have killed fewer people had it happened in the summer. They figured the winter air cooled and then thickened the goo, making it harder to rescue victims.

With thanks to Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo. This story about the Boston molasses flood was updated in 2026. Featured image colorized by Chat GPT. Image of the tank before it ruptured: By The Bostonian Society – Acorns and Molasses, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45094389.

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How the Great Colchester Molasses Shortage Nearly Ruined Thanksgiving

Molasses played such a starring role in the colonial New England Thanksgiving that a shortage of it in 1705 forced Colchester, Conn., to postpone the holiday for a week.

That first Thanksgiving

The weather turned unusually frigid for the Connecticut Valley town that fall. In mid-October a terrible cold snap lasted for three days, followed by mild weather, and then a blast of even colder weather.

The river froze, a frigid wind blew and a storm blanketed Colchester under three feet of snow. Because the river rarely froze so early, the settlers hadn’t laid in winter provisions usually shipped from Norwich and New London.

Colchester then had only a handful of families. Founded in 1698 on land purchased from the Mohegan tribe, it was the northernmost town in the colony of New London. The settlers had only established the parish two years before that cold autumn, and they wouldn’t lay out streets until the next year.

Colchester relied on boats to deliver supplies along a tributary of the Connecticut River, 10 miles away.

Early Thanksgiving

In early New England, the Puritans replaced Roman Catholic feast days like Christmas and Easter with secular holidays like Training Day and Commencement Day. Thanksgiving days and Fast days had a religious purpose: to come together as a community for meditation and communing with God.

New England’s theocratic governments called for public days of fasting or thanksgiving in response to political or natural events. They could happen several times a year. And they were often local affairs.

In 1705, November 4 had been proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving. But as the day approached, Colchester had almost no molasses. Worse, nothing could be delivered on the frozen river to the settlement.

Why Molasses?

New England colonists used molasses imported from the West Indies because it didn’t cost as much as sugar. A byproduct of sugar refining, colonists used it in baked beans, brown bread and pumpkin pie. By 1750, colonists consumed an average of three quarts of molasses a year.

Blackstrap molasses

The English colonists had learned from the Native Americans about the pumpkin, called pompion, and adapted it to their own cuisine.

The pumpkin pie came to symbolize the New World bounty celebrated by Thanksgiving. By the time Colchester discovered its molasses shortage in 1705, pumpkin pie had been a well-established dessert for half a century.

Congregational Church, Colchester, Conn.

Pumpkins played such an important role in any feast that some 17^th-century Puritan ministers denounced them from the pulpit. They preached that Thanksgivings should be renamed ‘St. Pompion’s Day’ because of the gluttony they inspired.

But without molasses, the townsfolk of Colchester couldn’t make pumpkin pie. Nor could they have baked beans, molasses cake or sweetener for rum. The bottom line: No molasses, no Thanksgiving.

A Food Legend

And so Colchester’s town fathers postponed Thanksgiving because they couldn’t hold it “with convenience” on November 4. The Colchester town records describe how they came to solve the problem:

At a legal town-meeting held in Colchester, October 29, 1705, It was voted that WHEREAS there was a Thanksgiving appointed to be held on the first Thursday n November, and our present circumstances being such that it cannot with convenience be attended on that day, it is therefore voted and agreed by the inhabitants as aforesaid (concluding the thing will not be otherwise than well resented) that the second Thursday of November aforesaid shall be set aside for that service.

The tale of the Great Colchester Molasses Shortage became a food legend. Two centuries later, Rose Mills Powers wrote a poem about it for the July 1908 edition of Good Housekeeping Magazine:

Colchester housewives are glum and sad—
Colchester housewives who should be glad—
Baking and brewing for Thanksgiving day.
What is the trouble up Colchester way?
Answer the housewives with streaming eyes,
“No molasses for pumpkin pies!”
The sloop that fetches the precious freight,
Thanksgiving molasses, is late, is late,
And how can Colchester celebrate!

Colchester housewives are gay and glad—
Colchester housewives bake like mad.
No feast decreed by the governor, this,
But Colchester colonists shall not miss
Their dinner, though late by a week and a day—
The sloop’s in the harbor—Hurray! Hurray!
Thanksgiving molasses for all the town,
For pies of pumpkin so rich and brown;
Colchester folk at last sit down.

* * *

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society. Available as an ebook or in paperback from Amazon (click here).

This story was updated in 2025.

Image: Blackstrap molasses by By Badagnani – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4129522. Featured image of woman created by ChatGPT.

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Seven Fun Facts About New England Schooners, the Forgotten Workhorses of the Sea

When Andrew Robinson in 1713 sailed his new boat around Gloucester, Mass., someone watching exclaimed, “There she scoons!” It’s a Scottish word meaning to skip lightly across the water, as a pebble, and it gave the name to the iconic New England sailing vessel, the schooner.

Though Robinson’s schooner may not have been the first-ever schooner, it was the first of Gloucester’s famous fishing fleet. The light, sturdy vessels that moved like scalded cats originated in New England in the early part of the 1700s. They evolved from the large ketches used by the Dutch a century or two earlier. Shipbuilders started adding topsails and making the aft mast taller — hence, the schooner.

Ships, Riding Low at Anchor, byt the Dutch painter Willem van de Velde the Younger, ca. 1670s

The schooner was that rare commodity that met the criteria “fast, cheap and good.” Schooners were seaworthy, durable and relatively cheap to build. They required only a dozen or so crew and could be adapted to many uses. Offshore fishermen depended on schooners, as did West Indies traders, Civil War blockade runners, pirates of the Caribbean, lumber and coal merchants, slavers evading the law and the Continental Navy.

The Schooner as Workhorse

With their iconic silhouette — sweeping masts, graceful lines and billowing sails — schooners were masterpieces of shipbuilding. Sailors of the Age of Sail often called them ‘the most beautiful thing ever made by man,’ a testament to their marriage of form and function.

But above all, they worked. Schooners were the 18-wheelers of their age—the salt-freight carriers of global commerce. They hauled the raw materials of an industrializing world: coal from Pennsylvania, spruce and pine from Maine, guano from Peru.

Schooners carried granite for East Coast roads and bridges, coffee from Brazil, African mahogany for fine furniture. They brought molasses north for rum, ice south for tropical cocktails and even entire pre-cut houses to the West Indies.

Specialized schooners emerged like tradesmen — white-painted ‘fruit schooners’ racing bananas from the Caribbean, clipper ships moving prospectors and gold rush supplies to California, fishing schooners without bowsprits for the fishermen’s safety.

Most were made in New England. Their stories could fill volumes, but here is a taste — seven fun facts about the New England schooner.

1. The schooner Wyoming was the largest wooden ship ever built.

The Wyoming put paid to the notion that bigger is always better. She was a giant, a football field-and-a-quarter long with six masts.

Built in 1909, its massive size and wooden hull proved troublesome. But she was too long for her bones. The sea twisted her planks apart and sailors had to pump out the seawater that constantly leaked in.

The Wyoming met her tragic end in March, 1924, when she anchored off Chatham, Mass., to weather a nor’easter. The ship, loaded with coal, sank east of the Pollock Rip Lightship, and all 13 crew members lost their lives.

Schooner Wyoming, 1917

The wreck remained undiscovered until 2003, when the American Underwater Search and Survey Company of Cataumet, Mass., found her. The Wyoming had shattered amidship, leading investigators to believe she struck the seabed and broke apart. Out of respect for the sailors lost, the exact location of the wreck has not been publicly disclosed.

Today there is a sculpture representing the Wyoming at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, site of the Percy & Small shipyard where the ship was built.

2. There were a lot of them.

No one seems to have come up with a count of how many schooners plied the seas in their heyday. But some random numbers provide a sense of their ubiquity:

Before the American Revolution, 500 schooners sailed from Connecticut to the West Indies. Most would have been built in Essex and the lower Connecticut River Valley — in Deep River, Chester, Old Saybrook, Lyme and Old Lyme. Stately old homes in those towns testifies to the wealth created by shipbuilding and trade.

Schooners crowded on a wharf in Boston Harbor

Between 1789 and 1936, over 4,000 schooners were registered in Connecticut Customs Districts.
Gloucester’s fishing fleet alone had more than 400 schooners by the 1880s. As many as 500 schooners showed up in the harbor during that time. From 1830 to 1900, the golden age of the Gloucester schooner, 3,800 Gloucester fishermen and 670 schooners were lost at sea.

3. Essex, Mass., and Maine dominated New England’s schooner business.

Though shipyards produced wooden boats throughout New England, two places made most of them: Essex, Mass., and Maine.

Essex built more schooners than any other city or town – 4,000 of them. Located just west of Gloucester, its shipyards filled the fishing fleet’s insatiable need for schooners.

Up north in Maine, shipyards built more than 4,000 schooners. Of all the vessels built on the East Coast between 1870 and 1899, half of the three-masted schooners came from Maine. Maine shipyards made another 71 percent of the four-masted schooners, 95 percent of the five-masted schooners and 90 percent of the six-mast schooners.

Today, shipbuilding in Maine happens at the Bath Iron Works.

4. The most famous American schooner was the America.

America defeated 15 British yachts in a race around the Isle of Wight on Aug. 22, 1851. That started the oldest international sailing competition, named after the winner.

She was very much an upstart. Rich New York yachtsmen built her to win races. Her revolutionary design influenced yacht racing for decades.

According to Sailing World, she was low to the water and widest far forward of other racing yachts. She had at most four sails, which let a small crew execute maneuvers quickly. Her masts were raked dramatically, her sails were made of tightly woven duck and her lead ballast was molded to the shape of the hull. For racing, her crew could fit her out with a tiller, more responsive than a wheel.

America

Her owners sold her immediately after winning the race. She changed hands several times until her owner abandoned her in a mudflat at Cowes, a seaport on the Isle of Wight. A shipwright restored her and sold her to a mystery buyer, who apparently gave it to the Confederate Navy during the Civil War. The Union captured her and used her in blockades. A controversial Massachusetts politicians named Benjamin Bulter then bought her in 1873 and restored her again. When Butler died in 1893, a group of Boston yachtsmen bought her and moved her to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Neglected, the once-proud America’s Cup winner ended up in the Annapolis city dump.

5. When steam eclipsed sail, schooners became windjammers.

In the 1930s, a man named Frank Swift of Bucksport, Maine, came up with an idea: Why not turn aging cargo schooners into dude schooners for tourists?

He began chartering schooners for summer sailing trips with campers. Then he chartered a small schooner called Mabel and took out ads for “Vacations under sail” in urban newspapers. By 1938 he had a fleet of three dude schooners, renamed windjammers. He sailed out of Camden, Maine, giving the town bragging rights as “the Windjammer Capital of the World.”

Victory Chimes

In 1954, Maine investors bought the Edwin and Maude, a schooner that had hauled cargo in the Chesapeake Bay. They renamed her Victory Chimes and repurposed her as a windjammer.

In 1984, Thomas Monaghan of Domino’s Pizza bought her and called her Domino Effect. In 1988, he refitted – and saved – her, using original techniques. She returned to Maine in 1989 and got her old name back.

Today, Victory Chimes appears as the windjammer on the back of the Maine state quarter.

6. The best schooner sailors come from Deer Isle, Maine.

Fishermen on Deer Isle today learn boathandling skills at an early age, and it isn’t unusual for a 10-year-old to have a boat. Back in the day, it was said, anyone who showed up at the New York Yacht Club and said he was from Deer Isle had a job crewing on a yacht.

Deer Isle seamen didn’t fish, though. The “Deer Isle Boys” went under sail to all parts of the world as professional mariners. Their reputation led to the New York Yacht Club recruiting crews from Deer Isle for America’s Cup races.

Lewis R. French

7. Many continued well into the 20^th century.

Schooners hauled commodities like wood, coal, fertilizer and grain until World War II.

During the war, the U.S. Navy bought the schooner Metha Nelson from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which used it for filming. The Navy had her converted and placed her into service in September 1943. Her job: to identify all ships trafficking in and out of Los Angeles.

In Gloucester, some fishermen still worked under sail power until 1960.

The Lewis R. French, launched in 1871 in Bristol Cove, Maine, hauled coal and lumber to her homeport of Vinalhaven, Maine. Then she hauled canning supplies to the sardine factories along coastal Maine – until 1972, still with no engine.

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Read about how New England’s wild weather affected the course of history in New England Weather by the New England Historical Society. Click here to order your copy today.

Image of Lewis R. French: By Raphodon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7424995

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The Story of Unfortunate Hannah Robinson

This story about Unfortunate Hannah Robinson is an excerpt from the New England Historical Society’s book, “Love Stories From History.”

In the years just before the American Revolution, Rowland Robinson could be seen galloping on his black stallion across his vast estate in Saunderstown, Rhode Island Colony. Tall, good-looking and an excellent horseman, Rowland often rode out to check on his property. He owned several flocks of sheep, dozens of Narragansett Pacers, grainfields, a herd of cattle, cheese houses, barns and slave quarters.

Detail from mural in Wakefield, R.I., “South County Life in the Days of the Narragansett Planters”

Rowland had a violent temper, an impulsive nature and some decided peculiarities. He liked to count his prized blanket cows, pure white from shoulder to hip. He wanted exactly one hundred of them in his herd, and he took pains to raise or buy exactly that number. Rowland always managed to keep ninety-nine. But once they reached a hundred, one would die or wander off, leaving him in constant pursuit of his hundredth cow.

One of the Eleven

He was a Narragansett planter, one of The Eleven. They were eleven wealthy families who owned vast Rhode Island slave plantations more like Virgina than New England. They were Updikes, Hazards, Babcocks, Gardiners. And they often married each other. Rowland himself had wed a Gardiner, Anistis.

He inherited the plantation from his father, William, the deputy governor of the colony. He had improved on it for his own children. Rowland wanted the best for them. They ate on silver porringers, sat on mahogany chairs and dressed in brocades and silks. He sent his daughters, Hannah and Mary, to Madame Osborne’s school in Newport. Madame Osborne would prepare them for balls and assemblies and, ultimately, a worthy husband.

Rowland’s oldest daughter, Hannah, was considered one of the great beauties of her age. Her loveliness was celebrated across the Atlantic and wherever New England ship captains sailed. She was tall and graceful, with a Grecian profile, a flawless complexion, hazel eyes and dark auburn hair that fell in luxurious ringlets. She could marry anyone—anyone Rowland wanted her. to marry.

Unfortunately, Hannah fell in love with a suitor Rowland hated. Her romance would drive a wedge between father and daughter and end in tragedy.

Wonderfully Beautiful Hannah Robinson

One day an old Quaker preacher saw Hannah and blurted out “Friend, thou art wonderfully beautiful.”

But Hannah wasn’t just beautiful; she was pleasant to people and kind to animals. A skilled horsewoman, she loved to ride her Narragansett Pacer. Sometimes she’d stop to sit on a rock overlooking the bay and watch the sails skimming along in the distance. She could see the forest of masts rising from Newport Harbor, the ships carrying her father’s cheeses to Boston and his horses and oats to the West Indies. Ships would arrive with molasses from the Sugar Islands and leave for Europe with good Rhode Island rum.

View of Newport Harbor, 1730. Courtesy Library of Congress

Sometimes Hannah was joined on the rock by a young man who taught dancing and French at Madame Osborne’s. His name was Peter Simons. Hannah had fallen deeply, madly in love with him. Sitting by the rock he would pick a little yellow wildflower called Everlasting Life. “They should call it Everlasting Love,” Peter said as he handed the flower to her.

His real name was Pierre Simonds. He came from an old Huguenot family that fled persecution in France. He had little money but exquisite manners, and he lived with his father in a house in Newport. Hannah knew her father would hate him. She feared Rowland’s rash temper, and she knew he never changed his mind once he made it up.

Crazy Harry Falls in Love

Rowland would have preferred as a son-in-law William Bowen, a young Providence doctor who had graduated from Yale. He was infatuated with Hannah. But when William asked Hannah to marry him, she let him down gently, confiding she was engaged to someone else.

Rowland once asked the military hero Colonel Harry Babcock to spend the night at his home. “So you want me to see Hannah, that I’ve heard so much of, do you?” replied Babcock. “Well, I will go, but don’t expect me to fall in love with her, as so many fools have done.”

The colonel was nicknamed Crazy Harry. As he and Rowland entered the sitting room, the colonel said loudly that he looked forward to seeing the prettiest woman in Rhode Island.

Hannah was in the room sewing. She stood to welcome her father and his guest. Her father introduced Babcock, and she extended her hand. He gently took it, gazed into her face and fell to his knee. Softly the colonel said, “Permit, dear madam, the lips that have kissed unrebuked those of the proudest queen of earth, to press, for a moment, the hand of an angel from heaven.”

Crazy Harry had no more luck with Hannah than William Bowen had.

Rowland began to grow suspicious. He didn’t understand why his daughter rejected so many suitors. Everyone else knew, but they wouldn’t tell him.

Courtship

In Newport, Hannah and Peter had many opportunities to spend time in each other’s company. But the time came for Hannah to leave Madame Osborne’s, return home and find a husband.

The lovers then had a stroke of luck. Hannah’s uncle, William Gardiner, hired Peter to tutor his children. The Gardiner plantation adjoined the Robinson farm, and their manor houses stood just two miles from each other. Hannah began to find reasons to call on her cousins. Hannah’s uncle sympathized with his niece, and he didn’t tell Rowland about her visits. He even encouraged them.

Hannah’s mother, Anstis, noticed her daughter’s frequent visits to her brother’s house. She asked Hannah about them. Hannah admitted she was seeing Peter. Anstis didn’t approve, and she tried for months to discourage her daughter’s relationship with him. But she finally realized Hannah was as stubborn as Rowland, so she reluctantly consented to the match.

Peter began to visit Hannah secretly at the Robinsons’ imposing manor house. It measured more than a hundred feet from end to end, with a massive center chimney and a steep gambrel roof. The Robinsons entertained often, and the dining room could accommodate a crowd. Hannah’s large bedchamber was above the dining room. In the evenings she put a signal light in her window, and Peter hid in the lilac bushes below. The lovers would then talk to each other and exchange messages.

The stratagem worked so well that Peter dared to come into the house. Up the stairway he crept and into Hannah’s room. But every night, Rowland came to her bedchamber to bid her goodnight. When the lovers heard his tread in the hallway, Peter hid in a large cupboard built into the wall.

Wretched Dancing Master

One night, Rowland Robinson unexpectedly stepped out of the front door. He was surprised to see a white paper flutter from Hannah’s window down onto the lilacs. He went over to the bush and raised his blackthorn stick. Peter jumped out of the bushes and ran away in the night. But Rowland recognized the young music teacher who worked for his brother-in-law.

Rowland was livid. He stormed into his daughter’s room and upbraided her for throwing herself away on a wretched French dancing master. Couldn’t she see the scoundrel was a fortune-seeker who only wanted her money? he thundered. He railed and ranted at his daughter, but she didn’t say a word.

From then on Rowland kept Hannah under close surveillance. He never let her go anywhere alone. If she walked, she was watched. If she rode her horse, a servant accompanied her. And if she thought about calling on a neighbor, Rowland immediately grew suspicious and forbade her to go, or else he followed her and brought her home. One day she left to visit an aunt in New London. Rowland saw a vessel leaving Newport heading in that direction. He suspected the wretched French dancing master was aboard, intending to rendezvous with Hannah. He rushed off to New London himself, arriving only a few hours after Hannah did. Rowland then forced her to come home immediately.

Hannah’s family and neighbors couldn’t help but notice her misery. Sympathetic to her plight, they helped the lovers by carrying their letters to each other.

Soon after the incident with Rowland in the lilac bush, Peter left the Gardiners. He found a new position farther away in Narragansett. Sometimes months went by without the two lovers seeing each other. Hannah grew thin and her complexion lost its rosy tint.

Finally, Hannah concluded the only solution was to elope with Peter. She had a helpful new ally who could help her escape her father’s scrutiny: Her friend from Hartford, Miss Belden, had come to stay with the Gardiners. She and Hannah’s uncle agreed to help.

Hannah Robinson Elopes

The Narragansett planters entertained on a lavish scale, and it wasn’t unusual for them to send party invitations to Boston, Newport and Providence. One day, Hannah’s mother’s sister, Mrs. Lodowick Updike, invited the Robinsons to a ball at their home, known as Smith’s Castle. The Updikes were only one town away in North Kingstown, and they would have felt snubbed if no member of the Robinson family attended their ball.

Smith’s Castle

Reluctantly, Rowland agreed to let Hannah and her sister go, but under the watchful eye of his servant Prince. The sisters would ride horseback the eight miles to their aunt’s house and spend the night.

Miss Belden and Uncle William sent a message to Peter, and they laid plans for the elopement.

Anstis knew of the plan but did nothing to stop it. Hannah’s sister, Mary, was kept in the dark.

On the morning Hannah left, she bid goodbye to her cook and to her maid. She asked them to care for her little dog, Marcus, and her cat, Felis. Then she hugged her mother and said goodbye, sobbing. She knew she might never see her again.

Fortunately, Rowland had left the house an hour earlier, called away unexpectedly on business.

Mary, Hannah and Prince mounted their horses and headed toward North Kingstown. In a dense wood along the way, they met up with a closed carriage. Peter jumped out and helped Hannah into the carriage. Mary cried and begged her not to go. Prince pleaded with her, too, knowing how Rowland would punish him for letting Hannah escape.

Hannah asked Prince to take good care of her horse, and the carriage rumbled off to Providence.

Hannah Robinson in Newport

Peter had a sister who sent along some clothes for Hannah. They arrived in the city hours later and were married by an Episcopal minister visiting from London. Local ministers would not have risked Rowland’s wrath.

When Rowland learned of Hannah’s elopement, he was incandescent with rage. He was angry with Hannah, furious with Peter and seething toward their accomplices. He offered a large reward to anyone who told him who helped them elope. And he announced he would not give Hannah so much as a halfpenny.

The newlyweds moved in with Peter’s father in a fine old two-story house on Bridge Street in Newport. Hannah and Peter lived there for several months until Peter found a job in Providence. They then moved to a modest house in that city.

Father Knew Best

Unfortunately, Rowland Robinson was right about Peter Simons. He had just wanted Hannah for her money after all.

Once Rowland disinherited his daughter, Peter began to neglect her. He took up gambling, and he didn’t come home at night. Then he started to disappear for weeks.

Anstis sent Hannah’s brother, William, to Providence to check on her. William brought her clothes and her little dog, Marcus.

Heartbroken, neglected and poor, Hannah began to waste away. William told his mother about Hannah’s decline. One day he said Hannah was so sick she couldn’t leave her bed.

Anstis then persuaded Rowland to let her send Hannah’s maid to her. She also pleaded with him to relent and to go see his daughter. He refused. Anstis noticed, though, that he would come home and wander abstractedly through the house until he saw Felis, Hannah’s cat. He would sit quietly in the room with the creature. Once Anstis saw him holding Felis to his chest and sobbing.

Prince noticed Rowland visiting the stable more often than he used to. He always patted Hannah’s horse as he left.

An Unexpected Visitor

Finally, Rowland softened. He told Anstis if Hannah agreed to disclose the names of the people who helped her elope, she could come home. Informed of his offer, Hannah wrote him an affectionate letter but refused to reveal her conspirators.

Then one day Rowland jumped up from dinner and rode his horse thirty-five miles to Providence, stopping overnight at Lodowick Updike’s. He found Hannah’s little house and banged his cane against the door. Her maid answered.

Hannah was too sick to leave her bed, the maid said. Rowland told the maid to ask Hannah who had helped her elope. The maid returned with the message that Hannah wouldn’t tell. Rowland turned around and rode home.

Several days later he mounted his horse and rode to Providence. Again he knocked on the door, again he demanded to know who had helped Hannah elope. Again Hannah refused to tell.

At home, Anstis took ill. Rowland was distraught. He rode again to Providence and rapped his cane on the door. When the maid answered it, he asked, “How’s Hannah?” Informed of her condition, he turned around and rode home.

His visits continued for several weeks. Then Miss Belden and William Gardiner learned about Rowland’s demands and Hannah’s condition. Miss Belden wrote to Hannah and begged her to reveal her name. William Gardiner rode to Providence to visit Hannah, and he said he would tell her father of his role in her elopement.

Free To Tell the Story

Released from her vow of secrecy, Hannah wrote to her father, offering to tell him the whole story. As soon as he got her letter, Rowland left for Providence.

When Hannah’s maid admitted Rowland to the house, he rushed to Hannah’s bedside. Shocked by her wasted appearance, he broke down in sobs. He knelt by her bed, held her hand and wept until he could regain his composure. Then Rowland rose, reached into his pocket and gave Hannah’s maid several gold coins. He told her to buy whatever Hannah needed, whatever would make her comfortable, and to prepare her for her journey home. Rowland never even asked who had helped her elope.

Rowland rode home and immediately arranged for Hannah’s rescue. The roads were rough, too rough to carry her in a carriage. Rowland had a litter at the manor, though, which wealthy people used to transport the sick. When he arrived home, he told his head farmer to select his four strongest servants. They were to take the litter on board his fastest sloop and to go to Providence as quickly as possible, by sail or by oar.

Tired and dirty, Rowland mounted a fresh horse the next morning. He took Prince with him and a horse for Hannah’s maid. Then they rode back to his daughter’s house in Providence to bring her home for the last time.

Hannah Robinson Goes Home

The sloop arrived at the wharf. Rowland and the servants spent the night in a tavern. The next morning, they went to Hannah’s house. They gently placed Hannah in the litter with her little dog at her feet. Then they began the long walk home. At nightfall they rested at Lodowick Updike’s house.

The Roger Mowry Tavern in P rovidence

The next day the sun rose on a perfect Indian summer morning. The entourage resumed its journey, eventually reaching the wooded spot where Hannah had abandoned Mary and Prince for Peter. Hannah began to cry.

On they plodded. When they reached the rock where Hannah used to sit and watch the bay, she asked them to stop. She sat and watched the ocean as she had as a girl. She spotted a yellow wildflower—Everlasting Life—and asked her maid to pick a sprig and pin it to her dress.

The view of Narragansett Bay today

The sun was setting, and they could hear in the distance cows lowing, an ax chopping wood and fishermen singing a roundelay. They were a mile from home, and Rowland told Hannah they should resume their journey or else the evening air would do her harm. But Hannah insisted on staying until the evening gun from Fort George boomed.

The party reached the Robinson manor house by moonlight. Hannah held a sad reunion with her sick mother. Rowland carried her to her bedchamber, where her family and servants surrounded her. A high fever and delirium set in, and they heard the cry of the whippoorwill, a sign of death. Hannah called to her mother, “Do you hear the death angel mother? He is out in the lilac.”

Unfortunate Hannah Robinson died the next morning, October 30, 1773.

Alone in His Grandeur

Peter Simons came once to the Robinson estate to pay his respects. In honor of his daughter’s wishes, Rowland treated him cordially. Simons then left for Europe and never returned to America.

Anstis Robinson died a month after her oldest daughter passed away. Mary died four years later. William got married and died at age forty-six. Rowland outlived them all, dying at the age of eighty-seven.

A woman who knew him well wrote in her diary, “Rowland Robinson was thus left alone in his grandeur, a man of violent passions, which was characteristic of the Robinsons, but of a noble, benevolent nature.”

In 1938, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a new watch tower at the site where Hannah Robinson watched Narragansett Bay. The rock and the tower, called the Hannah Robinson Tower, are now owned by Preserve Rhode Island and managed by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

Hannah Robinson Tower

The Robinson manor still stands, though part of it has been torn down. The Lodowick Updike house also stands, known popularly as Smith’s Castle.

The tale of Unfortunate Hannah Robinson was one of the great scandals of colonial New England.

* * *

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Images: Hannah Robinson Tower By Raime – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7604720. Smith’s Castle By Mlanni98 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77139260.

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Cohasset Punch, the Potent Cocktail that Found a Home Away from its Home

For many years the most popular adult beverage in Chicago was a cocktail created in and named after a town on Boston’s South Shore: Cohasset Punch.

The drink combined rum, wine and several secret ingredients served in a chilled champagne glass over a brandy-soaked peach. It made its debut at a summer soiree in Cohasset, Mass., then quickly caught on in Gilded Age Chicago. Swanky restaurants and opulent railroad dining cars served it throughout the 1940s.

In 1934, a huge neon sign featuring Minot’s Ledge Light and the motto “Home of Cohasset Punch” went up in front of a West Loop saloon. Tens of thousands of commuters passed under the sign every weekday, and more than a few stopped in for a quick one before taking the train home.

Then in 1986, a wrecking ball took down the building and the landmark sign. For nearly four decades, Cohasset Punch disappeared from the cocktail scene.

And now it’s back.

Origins of Cohasset Punch

The actor William H. Crane played long runs in Chicago’s Hooley Theatre and at the opera house. He often patronized Williams & Newman, a posh saloon in the heart of the city’s theater district. Williams & Newman served fancy cocktails and sold liquor wholesale.

View from the Yacht Club in Cohasset, Mass.

Owners Lewis Williams, the business brain, and Tom Newman, the mixologist, were both well-dressed, sophisticated gentlemen. In the late 1890s, Crane invited Williams to his home in Cohasset, a summer resort for wealthy Bostonians and popular with actors and yachtsmen.

At a soiree, Williams heard the guests discuss the superiority of New England rum cocktails. He wired his partner, asking him to come up with a rum drink to wow Crane’s guests. It should “surpass anything ever before imbibed by any living soul,” he wrote. Newman sent a cask of Cohasset Punch by railcar within 24-hours. The drink was a hit and a legend was born. When Newman sent a telegram asking what to call the new drink, Williams replied with one word: “Cohasset.”

Williams and Newman served Cohasset Punch at their Chicago saloon. Then in 1899 they began selling it in bottles. They put an image of Minot’s Ledge Light, just outside Cohasset, on the label. It remained popular for decades. Chicagoans drank so much of it that a trade journal wrote, “what the mint julep is to the South, Cohasset Punch is to Chicago.”

Cohasset Punch Gets a New Home

Williams and Newman retired in 1916, but they sold the recipe for Cohasset Punch to Carl Ladner. Ladner, a German-born saloonkeeper, opened Ladner Bros. saloon on West Madison Street in the Loop. He served Cohasset Punch by the glass, and with his brother, Frank, he distributed it wholesale in bottles. It closed during Prohibition. Then Carl’s son, John, reopened the bar after Prohibition and put up the huge neon “Home of Cohasset Punch” sign–with Minot’s Ledge Light.

Minots Ledge Light

It was the kind of place that had singing canaries behind the bar and a pennant for every Major League Baseball team. It sold fried lake perch and cans of dehydrated water with instructions to “just add water.”

In 1938, a letter appeared in the Chicago Tribune describing the feeling one has after three or four glasses of Cohasset Punch. “[A] pleasant mellowness steals over you, your imagination glows, you discover humor you never possessed. Then suddenly you push your chair back to stand up, and lo, your legs are merely attached to your body for appearance’s sake!”

When Tommy Ohman bought the tavern in 1975, he continued to sell Cohasset Punch in bottles and by the glass. But in 1986, a developer tore down the building to make way for a 125-story “sky needle” that never got built.

Four decades passed. In 2024, G.R. Shutters, L.L.C. reintroduced Cohasset Punch in bottles. It’s available in Illinoiis and through online retailer Seelbach’s.

The modern label shows Crane’s catboat Chloe by the lighthouse, and Crane’s steam yacht The Senator, named for one of his best-known plays.

A modern bottle of Cohasset Punch

William H. Crane

Crane achieved celebrity in the early 20^th century on stage and, at the end of his career, on screen. He was born in Leicester, Mass., in 1845 and educated in Boston private schools. He made his stage debut at the age of 18, singing “The Daughter of the Regiment” for a traveling stage troupe. For 12 years he performed as part of the immensely popular Robson & Crane comedy duo.

William H. Crane, actor and godfather to Cohasset Punch

He then achieved stardom on his own, playing bluff and hearty characters in comic roles. His stature went beyond the theater. At his farewell dinner, attendees who attended in his honor included Gen. Leonard Wood, newspaper publisher Melville Stone and university president Nicholas Murray Butler.

New England Rum

Newman made that first batch of Cohasset Punch with rum made in Medford, Mass. Medford was one of many New England port towns where merchant ships brought molasses from the West Indies and distilleries sprang up.

Rum-making became the largest and most lucrative industry in colonial New England. Before the American Revolution, every man, woman and child in New England drank an average of 3.6 gallons of rum every year.

Bottle of Cohasset Punch from the 1980s

Many Puritans had stills in their homes to make rum for medicinal purposes and to offer to guests. By the middle of the 17th century, Rhode Island had more than two dozen distilleries and Massachusetts more than 60.

By the 19^th century, New England’s rum business went into decline. The British cut off access to cheap molasses. Once the westward migration got going, the U.S. interior produced a huge source of grain, used to make whiskey. Most New England distilleries closed.

You can still get New England rum, though. Use it to make something akin to Cohasset Punch. Here’s the recipe:

1.5 ounces of dark or New England rum

1 ounce of vermouth (sweet or dry)

Half a lemon

1-2 dash orange bitters

One Del Monte canned peach half

Place the canned peach in a flat champagne glass and fill half full with shaved ice. Pour in rum, vermouth, lemon juice, and bitters, stir. Pour in a half ounce of syrup from the can of peaches.

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Image of “Home of Cohasset Punch” sign courtesy of the Chicago History Museum [I-027840]. Photo by Glenn E. Dahlby, March 29, 1957. 1980s bottle of Cohasset Punch By Grshutters – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148567193. Modern bottle of Cohasset Punch By Grshutters – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148525391

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Aaron Lopez, Colonial Newport’s Preeminent Merchant

Aaron Lopez (1731-1782), a Sephardic Jew, became the wealthiest merchant in colonial Newport, R.I. Unfortunately, the

American Revolution devastated his domestic and foreign business. While returning to Newport in the hope of restoring his financial affairs, he suffered a fatal accident.

After a small number of Jewish settlers arrived as early as 1658 in Newport – known for its religious tolerance – Jewish families began arriving in larger numbers after 1750 from Spain, Portugal and other countries. Many of them became well-known merchants in this prominent seaport, including Aaron Lopez.

Aaron Lopez

Aaron Lopez Comes To Newport

Lopez arrived in Newport on Oct. 13, 1752 with his wife, Anna, daughter Catherine, and his brother David. He became a merchant through the guidance of his half-brother Moses, who had arrived in Newport about 10 years earlier. He began his

career as a local shopkeeper and then became a wholesaler through agents in Providence, Boston, New York City and other ports.

In 1756 he opened a candle factory in Newport that relied on spermaceti — a waxy substance extracted from whale oil. As the price of whale oil skyrocketed, Lopez joined a trust — the United Company of Spermaceti Chandlers — in 1761 in an attempt to control its price and distribution among its members.

Anna Lopez and her son, Joshua, by Gilbert Stuart

The British Naturalization Act of 1740 declared that aliens could not legally trade in the colonies. When Lopez applied to become a naturalized citizen in March 1762, his application was denied, supposedly because the colonies had enough residents. However, the real reason appeared to be antisemitism.

On Oct. 15, 1762 he became a naturalized citizen in Swansea, Mass. He was the first Jew granted this certificate in that colony.

Trading Success

By 1765 Lopez had expanded his trading activity by sending five ships to Bristol, England, his first international venture. He hoped to export mainly lumber and whale oil in exchange for dry goods and hardware. The effort, however, financially failed in a depressed market. Further voyages to Bristol, Africa, and the Caribbean between 1766 and 1768 also proved unsuccessful.

A sample of solid raw spermaceti, a spermaceti wax candle and a bottle of sperm oil.

Around 1769, with improving trading conditions, Lopez expanded trade with Europe, the West Indies and South America. For example, fish, rum, wheat and other goods were exchanged for wines, salt and other items in European markets. Factors (middlemen who connected buyers and sellers of cargo and provided other services) greatly facilitated these trading

arrangements.

Trade especially improved with the West Indies, where Lopez obtained molasses and then made it into rum in Newport. Most of the rum was bought by Americans, with the rest sent to Africa in exchange for slaves. Although only a small part of his mercantile business, Lopez engaged in the slave trade between 1761 and 1774.

As his trading activity thrived up to the American Revolution, he had full or part ownership of more than 30 sailing vessels of varying kinds. Thus, Lopez became the wealthiest merchant in Newport, as evidenced by his tax assessments. Meanwhile, the success of Lopez and other merchants had made Newport — along with Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Charles Town (Charleston in1783) — one of the leading colonial ports on the eve of the American Revolution.

Newport, 1730. Courtesy New York Public Library.

Aaron Lopez, Philanthropist

Using his considerable wealth, the “Merchant Prince of New England” bought books for the Redwood Library and Athenaeum in Newport, opened in March 1750; became a notable founder of Touro Synagogue, dedicated in 1763, also in Newport; contributed 5,000 feet of lumber for constructing the College of Rhode Island in Warren in 1764, which moved to Providence in 1770 and later became Brown University; and donated land for Leicester Academy in Leicester, Mass.

Touro Synagogue. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

By 1775 at the onset of the Revolutionary War, both the British navy and American privateers had begun seizing his ships. The resulting British occupation of Newport in 1776 forced Lopez and his family to relocate to Leicester. Needing to earn a living, he opened a retail and wholesale venture that he used to help finance the American cause. Despite legal victories that awarded him some of his vessels seized by American privateers, he never succeeded in restoring his financial affairs.

After several years of living in Leicester, Lopez and his family began a journey back to Newport. Unfortunately, on May 28, 1782 Lopez drowned when his horse and carriage swerved into Scott’s Pond in Smithfield, R.I. He was subsequently buried in the Jewish cemetery in Newport.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena University near Albany, N.Y.

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Images: Aaron Lopez, By Unknown – Original publication: unknownImmediate source: http://findingaids.cjh.org/AaronLopez.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39560756. Colonial-era buildings: By Daniel Case, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3969830. Spermaceti and candle By Genevieve Anderson – http://www.marinebio.net/marinescience/06future/wham.htm, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24183274.

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