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7 Fun Facts About the Boston Irish

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George Washington famously acknowledged the Boston Irish on March 17, 1776, when he ordered new code words to pass through Continental Army lines. The password, “Boston,” was to be answered with “St. Patrick.” Then, of course, the army trained cannons from Dorchester Heights onto the occupying British, and they left in a hurry.

Boston has had an Irish population since the first four shiploads from Ulster arrived in 1718. But not until the potato crop began to fail in 1845 did the huge influx of Irish immigrants sail into Boston Harbor.

The potato famine wasn’t the only thing that brought the Irish to Massachusetts rather than, say, Virginia or Maine. Hunger and poverty pushed the Irish out of Ireland, but the promise of work pulled them to Boston.

The world’s largest Irish flag at Rowe’s Wharf in Boston.

In the Atlas of Boston History, Robert J. Allison explains that Irish immigrants came for jobs. Jobs in the Merrimack River Valley, the most industrial region in the Western Hemisphere. Jobs in Lowell, the biggest industrial city in the United States. And jobs in Boston, a manufacturing powerhouse that led the nation in distilling and refining.

The Atlas of Boston History isn’t just about the Boston Irish. Edited by historian Nancy Seasholes, it traces the history of Boston from the Ice Age to the present. It includes 57 full-color maps, along with illustrations, graph and text.

Here are seven more facts about the Boston Irish borrowed liberally from the Atlas of Boston History.

1. Coming from County Cork

Some Irish immigrants walked a hundred miles to reach Queenstown (now Cobh), their port of departure. Most came from the southwestern counties of Galway, Kerry, Clare and especially Cork. Many arrived so sick and destitute that people said they came in famine ships.

Where they came from. Courtesy The Atlas of Boston History.

2. Hives of human beings

In 1849, a ship from overseas brought cholera to Boston. Crowded, unsanitary housing caused an epidemic of the disease, from which the Irish suffered the most. Of the 611 people who died of cholera, 500 came from Ireland.

The city physician investigated the living conditions, and included his findings in the Report of the Committee of Internal Health on the Asiatic Cholera. He was especially horrified by the Fort Hill neighborhood (now the Financial District), which had the densest Irish population. He called it a “perfect hive of human beings, without comforts and mostly without common necessaries; In many cases, huddled together like brutes… sometimes wife and husband, brothers and sisters, in the same bed.”

Some dwellings had 100 people living in them with one sink and one toilet. Half Moon Place was the worst, walled in by tall buildings, Fort Hill and 14 overflowing privies. Boston had 586 cellars used as dwellings; they had neither light nor ventilation and as many as 15 people living in them. The average age of Irish life in Boston didn’t exceed 14 years, he wrote.

Neighborhoods to avoid. Courtesy The Atlas of Boston History.

3. Filling in nicely

Back Bay and the South End owe their existence to the Irish, for more than one reason. So many Irish flooded into the city that Boston’s political leaders grew concerned that their taxpaying Yankee political supporters would move to the suburbs. So they built two attractive residential neighborhoods to keep Yankees in the city: Back Bay and the South End.

Irish laborers filled in the mud flats in Back Bay so Yankee homes could be built. Irishmen also filled in South Cove (now Chinatown) and expanded the shoreline and docks in Charlestown and East Boston. They also built a new warehouse and docks along Fort Point Channel.

Back Bay

4. A way to find missing friends

Friends and relatives of Irish immigrants who arrived in Boston placed thousands of “Missing Friends” advertisements in the Boston Pilot, a national Catholic newspaper.

Newcomers to Boston did it to find family who had come over earlier. Sometimes relatives and friends in Ireland placed ads to find immigrants in America they’d lost touch with. Or sometimes they advertised to find another immigrant who moved elsewhere to find work.

The map of Ireland that showed which counties Irish immigrants came from is based on that information.

5. Third Place

Irish immigrants made Boston the third-biggest city in the country in 1850, behind New York and Baltimore. The city had slipped to fifth place in 1840, but the Irish helped it climb into third.

Boston went from having a minority of foreign born residents to having a majority between 1845 and 1855. By then, 42.5 percent of the population of Boston was Irish.

map-boston-irish

Courtesy The Atlas of Boston History

6. Bring on the brawn

Boston Irish offered a vast pool of cheap labor to Yankee businessmen, and they fueled a manufacturing boom. Irish workers churned out steam engines, industrial furnaces, pianos, organs, refined sugar, candy, iron rails and ale and spirits.

Boston Irish laborers

Ready-made clothing makers, centered in and near the heavily Irish North End, challenged New York City, the top garment producer in the United States. And Boston shipyards made the clipper ships and steamers that carried to market New England’s products—especially textiles and shoes. Irish dockworkers and teamsters hauled the fruits of Irish labor into warehouses and onto ships that the Irish helped build.

7. McGinniskin was the first

In 1851, Boston hired the first Irish cop in U.S. history, a quiet and respectable 42-year-old laborer named Barney McGinniskin. Boston’s Yankees objected strenuously, and held meetings (including at Faneuil Hall) to protest his appointment. One alderman complained Boston set a dangerous precedent because the ‘Irish commit most of the crime.’

McGinniskin served for three years until the political winds changed. The anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothings elected a Boston mayor and McGinniskin got fired from his job in 1854.


Images: Largest Irish flags By John Hoey from Framingham, MA, United States – World’s Largest Irish Flag (1), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411665 and https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411658; all maps from The Atlas of Boston History by Nancy Seasholes. Back Bay by By Rick Berk – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rickberk/2848634125/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10986897. This story was updated in 2022.

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bob-fogg-collage

Bob Fogg Brings Aviation and Adventure to New Hampshire

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“The Weirs” on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee, has been a popular summer resort since shortly after the last Ice Age, when the continental ice sheet melted away. It left the state’s largest lake, known as “The Smile of the Great Spirit,” in its wake. The Weirs attracted Native American fishermen, Civil War veterans and 20th century tourists looking for fun and adventure. They found both with Bob Fogg.

Fogg carried over 50,000 eager summer tourists over the lakes and mountains in the biplanes that first brought flying to the Granite State. He operated from the seaplane base, a fixture on the lakeside boardwalk from the early 1920s until shortly after World War II.

Airplanes Arrive

Bob Fogg had flying in his blood from the very beginning. He owned an early Bleriot monoplane by 1915, when aviation was just 12 years old and he was just 18. His father, though, took the engine from it before young Bob could get hurt with his new toy.

Bob also worked on cars and had his radio operator’s license, so clearly he had a fascination for the new technology of the new century.

Technology has come at us so fast during the 20th century that it’s hard for us now to imagine the excitement people felt in the early 20th century when the “flying machine” first appeared. Human beings had dreamed of flight since the dawn of time, and now, suddenly, anyone with the price of a ticket could do it.

Imagine the thrill if you had never seen an airplane fly, and suddenly one day, one landed in the cow pasture next door!

If you have never seen the surface of the earth from a small plane a few hundred feet above the ground, or maneuvered among the clouds, it’s hard to convey the joy and wonder of it. But once done you can’t forget it.  No wonder the early “barnstormers” loved to fly.

bob-fogg-in-flight

Iin-flight view from the Curtiss Canuck flown by Bob Fogg from 1920-23, thought to be in flight over Hampton Beach, NH.

Bob Fogg

Robert Stevens “Bob” Fogg was born in 1897 in Brookline, Mass., just a few years before the Wright brothers first flew in 1903. As a boy he avidly followed the adventures of the early birds of flight. So when the United States entered the Great War in 1917 and the aces of the Western Front began winning fame and glory, Bob was ready to go.

Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Service, he learned to fly at a Texas Army flying field. But the war ended with an Allied victory before he could get to the fighting himself.

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Bob Fogg in his World War I uniform.

When the war to end all wars ended, the United States had hundreds of surplus airplanes, mostly trainers. Anyone with a few hundred dollars could buy one, no training, license, or registration required. Bob Fogg was one of them.

After an adventurous flight from Toronto, using the “I Follow Railroads” method of aerial navigation, he arrived in Concord, N.H., on the Fourth of July, 1920. He then set out to make his fortune hopping passengers.

Making a Living

New Hampshire as yet had no airports, so he flew from the National Guard training field in Concord, on Hampton Beach (at low tide), and various fields and fairgrounds around the state. Like many another wartime aviator, he wanted to use his new skills to keep on flying and also to make a living, if possible.

As the military downsized and no airlines existed, selling thrill rides to a population that had never flown before was the only way to go.

Barnstorming did not turn out to be a get rich quick scheme, but it was the most exciting career choice a young man could make in 1920. Like other early aviators, Bob Fogg said the greatest danger a pilot faced was starvation. Unless, of course, he sold enough rides to put gas in the tank for one more day.

How quickly things once new and exciting become merely ordinary. Bob had the first privately owned airplane in the state in 1920.  But by 1922, as he later wrote, ‘crowds no longer flocked three miles to some hayfield to pay five dollars for a ride in my Hisso Standard.’

“I then decided that if the people would not come to my plane, the next step would be to take a plane to the people.”

ticket

The Weirs

The Weirs, the main tourist stop on Lake Winnipesaukee, fit the bill. Surplus aircraft were still cheap and available, and for $750 Bob purchased a Curtiss Model MF flying boat, known as the Seagull. Brand new, right from the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia, the Seagull came all in pieces on a freight car with some assembly required.

Despite New Hampshire’s lack of airports, its many lakes and ponds made ideal runways. And many had existing summer resorts where Bob could sell airplane rides.

Assembling the Seagull on an old barge near the Weirs Channel, Bob and mechanic Caleb Marston converted the two-seat trainer to a four-place passenger plane, and made their first flight on Aug. 14, 1923. Two men, names lost to history, who had been watching the proceedings, asked for a ride, and for $5.00 each they became the first to “Fly With Fogg.”

Getting used to the feel of the new airplane, Bob Fogg ‘yoyoed up the bay like an airborne porpoise.’ He then arrived safely at the Weirs with the compliments of the two passengers.

On August 15, Bob and Caleb started their first business day on the boardwalk alongside the Weirs Café and the Mount Washington dock. They then flew for over 12 hours, taking up 73 passengers for total receipts of $315.

bob-fogg-and-pilots

Andy Cannon, Bob Fogg, and Floyd Miller, pilots at the Weirs seaplane base

Thrill Rides

Today small private aircraft are a fairly common sight, but in the 1920s and ‘30’s, seeing an airplane fly over was a highlight. Taking a flight was the experience of a lifetime. Bob continued to fly the Seagull at the Weirs through the summer of 1927, on one occasion even charging $50 to a passenger who wanted to fly one mile high. It was a slow process at a rate of climb of approximately 250 feet per minute.

In 1925 he operated the first aeromarine mail service in America. He picked up mail from the Weirs train station and delivered it to ten locations around the lake, all before 8:00 a.m. He dropped off most of the airmail at boy’s summer camps, where plenty of willing volunteers waded out and swapped mail bags. They also helped turned the plane back toward open water for the next takeoff.

Regulation

In 1927 the government finally decided to regulate airplanes and pilots. And so the official inspector came to give Bob Fogg and the Seagull a check ride.

The wind blew offshore from the Weirs, so Bob and Inspector W.A. Brooks had to taxi a long way out in order to take off into the wind and clear Brickyard Mountain. After making a successful takeoff, with the engine roaring at full power to clear the pine trees atop the mountain, a startling bang came from the engine, and it quit cold.

Bob calmly guided the craft to a safe landing in Paugus Bay. Then he turned to the inspector and remarked, “Well! She never did that before!”

The inspector agreed that Bob had demonstrated excellent piloting skills, quickly licensed both plane and pilo, and left town on the next train.

Later, as technology advanced in during the 1920s and ’30s, Bob Fogg replaced the faithful Seagull with larger and more powerful Waco biplanes, a Travel Air 6000 cabin monoplane featuring cabin-enclosed comfort for six passengers. Later he bought a speedy Staggerwing Beechcraft capable of 200 mph, and a 10-passenger Sikorsky amphibian that could land on water or land. Quite an upgrade from the slow and steady old Seagull in just a few short years.

By the time he left the seaplane base in 1938, Bob had safely carried over 50,000 passengers, quite a feat considering that his airplanes only carried between two and eight passengers at a time.

Other Adventures

Bob had other high-flying adventures, including one with the Charles Lindbergh. He hosted the world-famous aviator in Concord during his tour of the country in The Spirit of St. Louis, which followed his historic transatlantic flight.

lindbergh

Charles Lindbergh and Bob Fogg (in uniform).

After the disastrous Vermont flood in 1927, Bob Fogg flew the mail from Concord to the stricken state during November and December in his open-cockpit Waco. Then in the early spring of 1928, he flew to remote Greenly Island in northern Canada. He made the flight to bring back the first newsreel footage of the first plane to fly nonstop east-to-west from Europe to America. The Bremen had landed in Newfoundland.

furs

Bob Fogg in the furs he wore to Northern Canada.

Flying High With Eleanor

Bob went to work for the Civil Aeronautics Board in Washington, D.C., in 1939, building 300 seaplane bases around the country for national defense. On several occasions he flew with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to dedicate them.

The story goes that he let the First Lady take the controls once airborne, and that she did a pretty good job. Imagine the First Lady trying that nowadays! Bob Fogg, Jr., related that the First Lady could not drink alcoholic beverages in public because of concerns over its propriety. But after they finished their official duties for the day, Mrs. Roosevelt would call Bob’s hotel room and invite him down for a Manhattan.

Following service in World War I, Bob served his country again in the Army Air Corps reserves from 1923 until World War II. Then he flew on active duty through 1945.

He hung up his flying goggles in 1951, having seen aviation progress from wooden biplanes with linen-covered wings to jets breaking the sound barrier.

Bob Fogg passed away in 1976 after a long and adventurous life.

Jane Rice, who wrote this story, is the author of Bob Fogg and New Hampshire’s Golden Age of Aviation, available online or from the author at [email protected].

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When Poor Apprentice Laborers Were 2 Years Old

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In 1754, Boston’s overseer of the poor bound out Joseph Clifton, aged two, as an apprentice to Aaron Clinton, a brickmaker in Medford, Mass. Joseph, probably orphaned or abandoned, had no say in the matter.

For the next 19 years, Joseph couldn’t leave his master’s household without permission. He had to gladly obey all of his orders. In return, Clinton would provide room and board and teach Joseph his trade, along with reading, writing and arithmetic. When Joseph turned 21, Clinton would give him two suits, called freedom suits, one for Sunday and one for work.

Joseph wasn’t alone. Surviving records in Massachusetts show that from 1735 to 1805, Boston’s overseers of the poor bound out about 1400 children as apprentices. Rhode Island’s surviving records show 725 poor children were bound out during the second half of the 18th century.

apprentice-contract

Apprenticeship contract for Sarah Scribner.

For some, like Isaiah Thomas, apprenticeship led to a successful career and a place in history. For others apprenticeship meant a lifetime of poverty and toil. And in the case of Nathaniel Sewell, it meant an early death.

Nathaniel Sewell, Smelly Apprentice

In 1643, a London street kid named Nathaniel Sewell arrived in Newbury, Mass., to work as an apprentice for William Franklin. The child had arrived with a batch of poor children sent to Massachusetts, where colonists had a pressing need for laborers.

It had been 24 years since English authorities shipped the first load of 100 homeless children to Virginia, where they labored as apprentices until they turned 21. The experiment succeeded, at least for the masters, and the next year another hundred kids arrived in Virginia.

Nathaniel Sewell, a smelly child, had the scurvy when he landed in Massachusetts. His master treated his young apprentice harshly. Franklin left him in the cold and wet, corrected him mercilessly and hung him in the chimney as punishment. But Sewell would not bend to Franklin’s will, and so Franklin took him to court in Boston.

On the way, Franklin had to tie the sick boy to his horse because he couldn’t sit up. Nathaniel begged for water, but Franklin refused. Hours after they reached Boston, Nathaniel Sewell died. Franklin was charged with killing his servant, found guilty and hanged for the offense.

The Family Apprentice

The Puritans believed servants, apprentices or employees had a duty to obey the master of the household, but the master also had a duty to them. He had to teach them to read Scripture, follow a trade and be a good person. He was also not supposed to kill them.

The practice of apprenticeship didn’t always work out, as in the case of Nathaniel Sewell. But the Puritans believed in the concept as sound. To their minds, an orderly society rested on the family – a family headed by a male. The single life inspired “sin and iniquity,” the Puritans believed.

In the 17th century, Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut colonies actually passed laws requiring single people to live with a family. If a single person didn’t find an established family, the local authorities would find one for him – or her.

That went for children, too.

Child Labor

From 1692 to the Revolution, Massachusetts took care of hundreds of poor children younger than 10 by binding them out as apprentices to families. (The maritime trades were the one exception to the family apprentice). About three dozen children hadn’t reached the age of five.

spinster

Most young girl apprentices spent a lot of time doing this.

In Rhode Island, very young children (who couldn’t be expected to work much) came with a premium paid by the town. Colored children made up 25 percent of all indentures in Rhode Island, where apprenticeships lasted longer.

Overseers of the Poor

In the 17th and 18th centuries, poor families in Puritan New England could expect a knock on the door. The door would open to admit selectmen or overseers of the poor, who would inspect their home. Then they’d decide whether or not to take a child away from the family as a pauper apprentice.

In the case of craft apprentices, like Paul Revere (silversmithing) or Benjamin Franklin (printing), parents had a say in the terms of the agreement. Not so in the case of poor, abandoned, orphaned or illegitimate children.

Puritan town officials even took children from their homes if they thought the parents immoral. Around 1644, for example, they took two children away from Ruben Guppy of Salem and apprenticed them to another family. Guppy had gone to court many times for stealing fences, lying and accusing his wife of a “wanton dalliance.” He’d also said something blasphemous to Puritan ears. God, he believed, found his nail parings as acceptable as a day of Thanksgiving,

Heartfelt Pleas

But town leaders also seized children from their parents because of their poverty. In Northampton, Mass., town officials in 1680 took two sons and one daughter away from Robert Lyman and his wife. They apprenticed the children to other families despite the parents’ heartfelt pleas to the court to keep their children.

It could have been worse for Mr. and Mrs. Lyman. In 1756, Massachusetts passed a law that ordered selectmen to bind out adults as workers for one year if they couldn’t support their children. Three years later, the colony passed another law allowing an unmarried mother to be indentured for five years if the child went on the dole before the age of five. Those two laws only took effect for a few years, and the Legislature did not reenact them.

Isaiah Thomas, Success Story

For some poor children like Isaiah Thomas, apprenticeship was the best thing that could happen to them.

Success story Isaiah Thomas

Isaiah Thomas’ father abandoned the family, leaving his wife to support five children. Isaiah went to live with a family in the country between the ages of two and six. At seven, he returned to Boston, where authorities drew up an apprenticeship contract on July 7, 1756, to a printer named Zachariah Fowle.

Until he turned 21, Isaiah had to obey Fowle, keep his secrets, leave him only with permission and avoid gambling, taverns, fornication and matrimony. In return, Fowle had to teach him printing, to cipher, read and write, and to give him two freedom suits when he turned 21.

Freedom suits, by the way, had considerable value. In 1761 a freedom suit was worth about five months’ wages. A few poor apprentices also received freedom dues in the form of cash, land or tools.

Isaiah Thomas ran away from Fowle at age 18, but returned to Boston and started an influential newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy. Thomas took up the patriot cause and emerged as the foremost publisher of his age. He was an ally of John Hancock and Sam Adams and friend of Paul Revere.

During the Siege of Boston, Thomas smuggled his printing press out of town and settled in Worcester. There he published the Bible, almanacs and the History of Printing in America. He also formed the American Antiquarian Society.

From Boston to the Boonies

In 18th-century Boston, children could end up as apprentices far from home and family. Hard economic times had fallen on the town after a series of wars and smallpox epidemics. Impressment of sailors by the British Royal Navy had also scared off shipping.

But settlers spreading out into outlying towns needed plenty of help. They looked to Boston’s poor to get it.

  • In 1745, Edward Holin was apprenticed in Boston at the age of 18 months to Robert Anderson, a housewright in Chester, N.H.
  • Five years later, five-year-old Mary Hermon left Boston to apprentice as a household servant to a trader named Joseph Langeret in Lebanon, Conn.
  • In 1765, seven-year-old Thomas More departed Boston for Pownalborough, Maine, as an apprentice housewright for the next 14 years to James Flagg.

Conversely, Rhode Island’s economy thrived, and the colony’s wharves and workshops needed cheap labor. Perhaps that’s why Rhode Island’s pauper apprentice boys didn’t win their freedom until 24, girls until 21.

Mary Butcher, 7, Apprentice

Few poor boy apprentices came close to Isaiah Thomas’ success. Historian Lawrence Towner found only three apprentices listed as masters of their own trade in 1796 out of 60 boys bound out to tradesmen between 1760 and 1790. They worked as a tailor, a hairdresser and a tobacconist.

The best that could happen to a poor servant girl was marriage to a decent husband. Other than that, she’d spend her life in service or, like Mary Butcher, end up in the poorhouse.

In 1754, Boston authorities bound seven-year-old Mary Butcher as an apprentice servant to Richard Storkney, a yeoman farmer in Stoughton, Mass.

idle-servant

The Idle Servant by Nicholas Maas.

For the next 11 years she had to work for him in exchange for room, board and a rudimentary education.

Storkney, like all masters, had to produce letters testifying to his good character (the Nathaniel Sewall case had apparently proved instructive). Then Mrs. Storkney had to train Mary to spin wool, to keep house and to read. (Girls didn’t need writing or math.) When Mary got her freedom at 18, the Storkneys had to give her two freedom dresses.

Fifty years later she reappeared in the record, poor, single and lame in Canton, Mass. The overseers of the poor wrote, “She is a person whom nature has not been over bountiful in furnishing her mental faculties.” They sent her to the Boston poorhouse, where she presumably died.

End Notes


With thanks to: Markets for Children in Early America: A Political Economy of Pauper Apprenticeship John E. Murray and Ruth Wallis Herndon in The Journal of Economic History, 2002. Graham Millar, The Poor Apprentices of Boston: Indentures of Poor Children Bound Out Apprentice By the ‘Overseers of the Poor of Boston, July 4, 1958. And The Indentures of Boston’s Poor Apprentices: 1734-1805 by Lawrence W. Towner, 1962.

Images: Young Girl at Spinning Wheel By https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/0a/28/c704a981cdb6bf5f30d829506d67.jpgGallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0039573.html Wellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-23): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/th7sdqf4 CC-BY-4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36633776. This story was updated in 2023.

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How Narragansett Beer Survived Prohibition (But Still Couldn’t Escape the Government)

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Back in the 1950s and 1960s, anyone who walked into a New England tavern and ordered a beer probably got a Narragansett. That wouldn’t have been a surprise, since the sign outside probably said, “Narragansett Lager Beer” along with the name of the tavern.

Narragansett, fondly known as ‘Gansett, ranked for decades as New England’s most popular beer. The Red Sox drank it, Dr. Seuss created its mascot and Captain Quint crushed a can of it in Jaws. You just couldn’t miss its slogan, “Hi, Neighbor! Have a ‘Gansett!”

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Jaws, Narragansett brought back a vintage 1975 can.

Though Narragansett beer survived Prohibition, it couldn’t escape the U.S. Justice Department. Government lawyers actually tried to enforce antitrust laws back in the 1960s . However, they ignored other threats to competition — including a certain St. Louis-based beer maker.

The old Rhode Island beer died in the 1980s, but that isn’t the end of the story.

Birth of Narragansett Beer

In December 1890, the Narragansett Brewing Co. brewed its first commercial beer in its new brewery in Cranston, R.I. Six German-Americans had pooled $150,000 to start the company. You may recognize one of their names: Jacob Wirth. He was the same Jacob Wirth who ran a popular restaurant in Boston’s Theater District that survived until 2018.

Jacob Wirth

Rounding out the original six were John H. Fehlberg, Augustus F. Borchandt, Herman G. Possner, George M. Gerhard and Constand A. Moeller.

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The old Narragansett brewery.

People liked the light, sparkling beers that came out of the German breweries cropping up after the Civil War. In New England they really liked Narragansett lager.

By 1914, Narragansett had enough customers to build its own bottling plant on its 42-acre complex. That made it the biggest beer brewery in New England.

Prohibition

On Jan. 17, 1920, Prohibition took effect, banning the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Many breweries went under, but Narragansett survived. Fortunately for the company, it already had a business delivering ice, with its own icehouse, ice pond and refrigeration machines. Narragansett continued to deliver ice through Prohibition.

Narragansett also obtained a license to brew and sell porter for medicinal purposes. People then thought its low-alcohol and high-iron content benefited pregnant women.  Only five other U.S. breweries were allowed to do so. The brewery called it Narragansett Dark.

Narragansett also survived by turning its pilsner into a near beer with an alcohol by volume content of less than 0.5 percent. And it made ginger ale, sarsaparilla and root beer, along with a malt tonic for recovering invalids.

Narragansett, Part of the Culture

Shortly after Prohibition ended in 1933, the Haffenreffer family of Boston brewers bought the Narragansett brewery. One of the Haffenreffers attended Dartmouth College with Theodor Geisel, later Dr. Seuss. Narragansett hired Geisel to illustrate advertisements for the beer. Today people collect the company’s metal trays imprinted with Chief Gansett, along with such slogans as “Gangway for Gansett.”

After World War II, the Haffenreffers decided to make Narragansett the dominant beer in New England. The company embarked on an aggressive advertising and promotional campaign.

In 1944, Gansett officially sponsored the Boston Red Sox, thus becoming the first alcohol company to sponsor an American sports team. People still remember Red Sox announcer Curt Gowdy praising the “straight from the barrel taste.” Mike Nichols also called it a “straight from the barrel taste” in a hilarious animated commercial with Elaine May. (You can watch it here.)

 

Then Narragansett beer began its “Hi, Neighbor! Have a Gansett!” ad campaign. The company promoted Gansett beers at ball parks, concert arenas and golf courses with attractive young women called Gansett Girls. Irehne Hennessey, Betty Vickowski and Penny Sojka started off as the female faces of Narragansett, also known as the Hi Neighbor Girls.

Becoming the Biggest

Narragansett grew into New England’s largest brewery. In 1959, it brewed for the first time one million barrels of beer. To celebrate, the brewery gave each employee a gold-plated bottle of Gansett. By the 1960s it had an 80 percent share of the Rhode Island market, and 65 percent throughout New England. At its peak, Narragansett employed 850 people.

During the 1950s and 1960s, J. Joseph Garrahy worked for Narragansett as one of its top salespeople. According to legend, the many, many people he met in his job ended up voting for him, first for the Rhode Island state Senate, then as lieutenant governor and finally for four terms as governor. A popular governor, people viewed him as a friend of the working class.

Joseph Garrahy

Then when the U.S. Navy announced plans to scrap the battleship USS Massachusetts, her former crew campaigned to save her as a museum ship. Narragansett Brewery led the fundraising effort with paid advertisements, which ultimately succeeded in saving “Big Mamie,” now in Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass.

Falstaff Buys Narragansett — Finally

In 1964, the St. Louis-based Falstaff Brewing Co. offered to buy the Narragansett company for about $20 million. Falstaff, then the fourth largest U.S. brewery, had no market share in the Northeast. It intended to run Narragansett as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Two days before the sale closed, the U.S. Justice Department brought an antitrust suit against Falstaff. It took nine years for the resolution of the case, which finally ended in 1973 when a U.S. district court ruled in favor of Falstaff. But nine years of legal wrangling couldn’t have helped the Rhode Island brewery.

Not everybody…

In hindsight, the case shows how much attitudes have changed about corporate concentration. When the antitrust case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Byron White wrote the decision that acknowledged the consolidation of the New England beer market.

He noted that the number of brewers operating plants in New England fell from 32 in 1935, to 11 in 1957, to six in 1964.

But White suggested Falstaff would have figured out a way to enter the New England market anyway, and sent the case to a lower court. In the end, Falstaff won the case and took over Narragansett in 1974.

Modern Times

While government lawyers tried to prevent Falstaff from entering the New England market by buying a brewery, Anheuser-Busch built a state-of-the-art brewery in Merrimack, N.H. It opened in 1970 and gave stiff competition to Narragansett.

Then in 2008, a multinational brewing company called InBev bought Anheuser-Busch, creating a beery behemoth. The consolidated company, based in Leuven, Belgium, acquired more companies and ultimately grew into a multinational giant called Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV. Meanwhile, Falstaff and its new acquisition, Narragansett, sputtered.

In 1964, Falstaff and Narragansett had combined sales of about $155 million. In fiscal year 2020, Anheuser-Busch InBev reported sales of $46.9 billion, more than 300 times the combined revenue of Falstaff and Narragansett back in the day.

Rebirth of Narragansett Beer

Beset by competition, legal problems and an aging facility, Narragansett shut its doors in 1983. The company sold its equipment to China and tore down buildings in Cranston, leaving a small trolley barn that burned in 2005.

narragansett-beer

Now on your grocer’s shelves.

That year, Rhode Islander Mark Hellendrung, former Nantucket Nectars president, began to restore the Narragansett brand as a heritage beer. According to Bloomberg News, Narragansett beer is cool again as millennials in Brooklyn, N.Y., bars now drink it.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Narragansett Beer came up with a novel promotion: Get a vaccine or get a friend vaccinated, and the next round is on us.

With thanks to Ashleigh Bennett and Kristie Martin, “Rhode Island Beer: Ocean State History on Tap” and to David Zax, “The Many Pop-Culture Moments of Narragansett, the “Forrest Gump of Beers”” in Fast Company.

Image: Narragansett logo By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32655382. Narragansett beer ads courtesy NarragansettBeer.com. Jacob Wirth By Biruitorul – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4004137. This story was updated in 2022.

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10 Holiday Gift Ideas for the History Lover in New England

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Does your holiday shopping list have a history lover on it? Check out these holiday gift ideas for the history lover to help get your imagination sparking.

23 and Me Ancestry Kit

23 and Me Ancestry +Traits package. One simple test and you’ll know more about your own personal history, including where your ancestors came from and ho you’re connected to the 1500+ regions of the world 23 and Me has mapped. Opt into the relative search and you’ll be put in touch with others from near or distant corners of your family tree.

 

Curiosity Stream Documentary Subscription

Curiosity Stream. There’s a streaming service for everyone these days. And now there’s one for the curious-minded. History, Anthropology, Nature – Curiosity Stream has it all. With over 2,500 original and licensed titles, the service is perfect for the young (or not-so-young) student on your Christmas list. Priced at less than $20 a year and best of all Curiosity Stream is so sure you’ll love its service you get a free seven day trial to make sure.

Replacements Ltd.

 

Replacements. Know someone with a set of vintage china with a piece or two missing or maybe they’d just like an extra place setting or two. Replacements.com can help out. Now closing in on 40 years old, the replacement service has helped countless people add the missing piece to their collection, and it now includes cutlery, collectables and a host of other items in its enormous inventory. And they’ll even help you figure out what pattern your object is and submit a “find it for me request.”

Fandango Films

Fandango. In this golden age of film, historical movies are hitting the big screen at a rapid pace. In December alone, World War I drama 1917 and the remake of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women – sure to be a blockbuster – are due in theaters. A Fandango gift certificate is a great way to spring for a movie for someone on your list.

Photo calendar

The New England-o-file in your life can have their favorite scenes on their office or kitchen wall all year round with a calendar with a New England theme from Calendars.com, which calls itself the largest collection of calendars in the known world. Or if a history-themed calendar is more up their alley there are dozens of those to choose from as well.

Solve a Mystery

Not strictly a history-related gift, but a fascinating concept for the curious mystery lover on your list, Hunt A Killer is a month-by-month game in which the player receives a box of clues to help solve a cold case. True-crime lovers will be delighted when they receive the monthly installment of clues buried in photos, crime reports, letters and other materials to sort through to solve the murder.

That Perfect  Book

Of course, you can’t go wrong with a book are an artifact for most history lovers. Since ABEBooks.com came along, finding antiquarian books and prints has never been so easy. A 1765 map of the route from Boston to the Penobscot Bay can be had for a modest $275,000 or $ 195,000 will get you a collection of Rockwell Kent photographs – along with thousands of more affordable choices.

Betty’s Attic

Feeling nostalgic? Look in Betty’s Attic where hundreds of quirky, tried and true gifts are lurking: Lincoln Logs, Simon games, and our favorite – candies from decades past. The enterprise began as a catalog outfit in 1914 and lives on today in its current online iteration. If retro is what your looking for, visit Betty’s Attic.

Bar Harbor Babylon

Finally, at the risk of sounding immodest, we’d also suggest Bar Harbor Babylon, published just six months ago and written by the New England Historical Society authors, makes a fine gift for anyone curious about the sleazier side of Northern New England’s premier summer colony.

FYI: New England Historical Society contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase through these links, this site will earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Thanks for reading!

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The Working Man’s Friend Who Busted the Hartford Newsies Strike

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The New York-based newsies strike, immortalized in the Disney film of the same name, succeeded in 1899. The Hartford newsies strike 10 years later did not — and all because of a former newsie.

Hartford Newsies

Hine’s caption: 9:00 P.M. March 4, 1909. Hartford, Conn. Group of newsies still selling although it was bitter cold and blizzardy. Smallest chap was 8 years old. The boys said he has been selling for 3 years. Boy next him (and) has been selling 4 years (called Bologna). Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Early in 1909, social reformer Lewis Hine brought his Graflex camera to Hartford, Bridgeport and New Haven to record images of boys and girls on the streets. They worked as newsies, bootblacks and messenger boys.

Social reformers thought children shouldn’t work on the streets, where they learned about gambling, swearing and booze. They went into saloons to sell papers, knowing that drunks made good customers. The kids also worked long hours, sometimes starting out at 5 a.m., and returning home at midnight. They fought over territory, and people sometimes shortchanged the youngest newsboys who didn’t know how to make change.

Others, however, pointed out the children’s families, mostly poor immigrants, needed the pennies they earned to survive. Some young girls, for example, paid for school tuition with their earnings as newsies.

hartford-newsies-saloon

Two newsies about to do business in a saloon. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Herman Kopplemann

Herman Kopplemann had started out as a Hartford newsie in 1888 at the age of eight. He came to Hartford from Russia with his parents when he was two years old.  He and his brother eventually formed a partnership to distribute Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers throughout Connecticut. They built it into the largest distributorship in the state.

At 24, Herman Kopplemann ran for city council and won, representing Hartford’s poor East Side. During his five terms in the council he brought improvements to the neighborhood: sewer upgrades, a public bath house and pay hikes for police officers and firefighters.

Toward the children who sold his newspapers, he showed less benevolence.

Hartford Newsies Strike

hine-twins

Hine’s caption: 7 year old twins. Been selling for 1 year. Sell sometimes until 8 P.M., Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

New York papers sold well in Connecticut, especially Joseph Pulitzer’s World and William Randolph Heart’s Evening Journal. The two millionaires battled each other for more circulation and bigger profit.

Typically, newspaper publishers bought back unsold newspapers from their distributors. But in 1909, they refused to do it anymore.

In Connecticut, that meant Herman Kopplemann would be the one to stick the newsies with the papers they couldn’t sell.

The newsies went on strike against Pulitzer and Hearst. According to the Shoeleather History Project, on May 1 newsies from all over the city assembled at a hall at the corner of Winthrop and Pleasant Streets. They formed a parade and marched in the rain behind a drum and bugle corps with a banner that urged people to buy only local newspapers. The next day they formed a union, the Hartford Newsboys’ Association, and elected officers.

At first it went well. Drugstores stopped stocking the Pulitzer and Hearst newspapers, people stopped buying them and supporters contributed to the strike fund. On May 17, the newsies marched through the streets again, wearing white hats and union pins and waving flags.

Scabs

Kopplemann, however, had no intention of backing down. He hired strikebreakers from out of town – at their peril, as it turned out, as the newsies beat them up. He spread rumors the strike had failed. And he enlisted his brother to form a rival ‘union.’

Hearst himself helped out. He sent an employee from New York to break the strike. A Hartford clothing store owner caught him buying a large quantity of boys clothing and shoes. Kopplemann had planned on offering the new clothes to the boys as a bribe to end the strike.

By the end of the third week, dissension spread among the strikers, probably instigated by the Kopplemanns and Hearst. Nineteen days after it began, the newsies voted to end the strike.

Some New Dealer

kopplemann

Herman Kopplemann

Herman Kopplemann then won election to the state Legislature. After lying, bullying and hiring scabs to break a children’s strike, he went on to get himself elected to Congress as a Democrat on a pro-labor ticket.

After serving five terms in Congress, he was defeated in 1946 and died 11 years later. Speaker of the House John McCormack memorialized him as a man who always extended a helping hand.

“There are many thousands of persons who are happier today because of Herman Kopplemann and his consideration of and his kindness to others,” McCormack said.

Tony Zazzaro

Paul and Tony Zazzaro. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Among the Hartford newsies photographed by Lewis Hine were Paul and Tony Zazzaro. Hine’s caption read,

8 A.M. A cold and windy day. Small boy, Paul Zozzaro, 9 years old, begins at 7 A.M. daily. Then goes to school. Sells after school until 6 P.M. and later. Older brother, Tony, gets up at 5 every morning and sells before school. Then after school again.

Historian Joe Manning did some sleuthing about Tony and Paul Zazzaro. The boys’ parents had immigrated from Italy. Their father worked as a street sweeper, their mother took care of seven children. When Paul grew up he started a successful restaurant called The Capitol Grille.

Tony became one of Hartford’s political bosses. For many years he delivered the Italian vote and served for a term on the city council. He also owned parking garages and a brewery. He had two aides who became well-known Connecticut political figures: John Bailey and Abraham Ribicoff.

Robert Chiles, in his book, The Revolution of ’28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal, wrote the triumvirate that ruled Hartford in 1928 consisted of Thomas J. Spellacy, Tony Zazzaro and Herman Kopplemann.

With thanks to Shoeleather History and Mornings on Maple Street.

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