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Massachusetts

Abigail Adams, Matchmaker

Nothing cheered Abigail Adams so much as a wedding. During her lifetime of difficulty and sadness, she needed cheering. Her husband was often absent, a beloved son died young, a daughter lost a battle with breast cancer, another son became a dissolute alcoholic. Through it all, her family and servants came to view her as Abigail Adams, matchmaker.

She thought of her servants as family, kept their secrets and hosted their marriage ceremonies. She married off six pairs of them, five of them in her own home.

In 1801, that meant the White House.

1793 plans for the White House by James Hoban

Abigail Adams, Matchmaker

Abigail’s nephew, William Smith Shaw, knew how much she loved weddings. “I declare I wish you would have, Aunt, a wedding every night in the week, for I plainly see that it gives you better spirits and consequently better health, than all the medicine in the world,” he wrote to her in 1798.

“I am a great friend to Matrimony, and always like to promote it, where there is a prospect of happiness & comfort,” she replied.

Portrait of William Smith Shaw by Gilbert Stuart.

She had just hosted the wedding of her servant Abigail Hunt and a local farmer, Ebenezer Harmon, at her farm in Quincy, Mass. “I regaled them with a Glass of wine, & some cake and Cheese,” she wrote. Then she went to bed as the wedding party went off dancing. “I retired to rest at about nine, and with the pleasurable reflection of having made Several honest families happy & pleasd I enjoyd a comfortable nights repose.”

John Adams heartily approved of Abigail’s matchmaking among the servants. “I hope you will marry Louisa & Betcy Howard and all the single ones, who are ripe,” he wrote to her from Philadelphia in 1798.

The First Wedding

In 1784, Abigail Adams made her first match. John Adams was then serving as minister to Great Britain and she was about to sail for London to join him. She hired John Briesler, a local man, to accompany her across the Atlantic. Before she left, she wrote to her husband about him . She called Briesler “a steady frugal fellow, with a mind much above the vulgar.” The Adamses came to depend on Briesler. “As good a servant as ever bore the name,” she later wrote. If it hadn’t been for him, she wrote years later, she never would have gone into public life. He was “virtuous, handy and attentive.”

Briesler was especially attentive to Abigail’s 23-year-old ladies’ maid, Esther Field. In 1788, just a few weeks before they were to return to America, Esther came to Abigail in much distress. She confessed Briesler had gotten her pregnant.

“[P]oor Brisler looks so humble and is so attentive, so faithfull & so trust worthy, that I am willing to do all I can for them,” Abigail wrote to her sister, Mary Cranch.

abigail-adams-attacked-thomas-jefferson-portrait

Abigail Adams by Gilbert Stuart

Abigail Adams, matchmaker, got them married a few days later in St. Marylebone church in London. Abigail worried about Esther delivering the baby aboard the ship returning home. She arranged for a nurse to come with them to help with the childbirth. The baby, a girl, was born aboard the ship. “We got through this business much better than I feared we should. I had for the first time in my life, to dress the little animal,” she wrote to her daughter.

Over the years, Esther had more babies. Abigail, however, found ways to keep her employed.

In 1797, she hosted the wedding of another servant, Polly Doble Howard, and Jonathan Baxter, Jr.

The White House

Abigail had managed the farm and family during her husband’s long absences. She engineered the moves to join him. She set up official houses in London and Paris on his diplomatic missions; to New York when he served as vice president of the United States and to Philadelphia as president. Then, three years into his presidency she had to set up another house. This time, she did it in the Wilderness City – Washington, D.C. – where the seat of government had moved.

It was November 1800. Abigail was 56 years old and not looking forward to the move. She had stayed at her Quincy farm fighting off raging fevers as her husband fought off his political enemies. He moved into the President’s House a few weeks earlier than she.

John Briesler was with him. Abigail had also sent William Shipley ahead of her to help. Another of John Adams’ servants was also probably in Washington: Richard Dexter, an “honest and faithful domestick” who handled horses.

John Adams by Gilbert Stuart

White House Wedding

A week before Abigail was to leave for Washington, she sent two of her housemaids ahead. John Adams had called the White House “habitable,” but that may have been charitable. The staircases hadn’t been finished, the plaster hadn’t dried on the wall and none of the rooms had been furnished.

Rebecca Tyrell was one of the maids Abigail sent ahead. Rebecca had worked for Abigail since 1790 and nursed her through various illnesses. Abigail viewed her almost as a daughter. She called Rebecca “my most beloved domestic who was to me as a child in sickness and in Health.”

Betsy Howard went with Rebecca. She was Polly Doble Howard’s sister, and one of the domestics John Adams considered “ripe.” She would sleep on the same floor of the President’s House as Abigail and John Briesler. Their rooms, wrote Abigail, were as “handsome and well-furnishd as any of my Bed chambers at Quincy.”

The other servants slept along the ground floor corridor, in the basement.

So why did Betsy Howard get special treatment? “[F]or Many reasons I chose to have her under my own Eye,” wrote Abigail to her doctor, Cotton Tufts.

Abigail was probably worried that Betsy might find herself in the same position as Esther Field had 16 years earlier. Or maybe she had.

In January 1801, Betsy Howard married William Shipley in the President’s House.

Abigail Adams, Matchmaker Twice More

Abigail Adams spent only four months in the cold, unfinished White House, where she had famously hung her washing to dry in the East Room.

Her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, would observe, “there is something in the climate and habits of this place very hostile to the happiness of New Englanders.” She and John had, in fact, been miserable in the White House.

Two weeks after Abigail Adams arrived in Washington, their son Charles died, a homeless alcoholic, in New York City. Two weeks after that they would learn John had lost the presidential election. During that time they had only 13 servants to do the work of 30 – furnishing the big house, hosting official entertainments and keeping the fires going to dry the plaster.

Abigail left Washington happily in February 1801. “My residence in this city has not served to endear the world to me. I am sick, sick and sick of Publick life,” she wrote as she left.

Peacefield, the Adams home in Quincy

She wasn’t sick of matchmaking. In 1802, Elizabeth Epps and Tilly Whitcomb married at the Adams’ farm in Quincy.

Rebecca Tyrell stayed with Abigail another three years after they left Washington. John Adams had brought Richard Dexter back with him to Quincy. In 1804, Rebecca Tyrell married him at the Adams farm. Abigail would remember Rebecca in her will, bequeathing her $30 and a gown.

After the ceremony, Abigail Adams, matchmaker, bragged of her love matches to her friend, Hannah Phillips Cushing.

“At the Wedding,” Abigail continued, “amongst other Guests were six couple who had lived with me during her residence with me all of whom had been married from me in that period & all but one married in my family. This I believe is rather a singular instance.”

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Jacob Riis’s “Happy Valley”

By 1912, social reformer Jacob Riis had spent more than 30 years giving a voice to some of New York City’s most vulnerable citizens using a pen and a camera.

Jacob Riis

As a scrappy young reporter and an immigrant himself, Riis witnessed the city’s staggering poverty and corruption firsthand. Its slum neighborhoods were filthy, dangerous, and seemingly ignored by middle- and upper-class New Yorkers. Riis wanted to change that. He bought a camera, began conducting interviews and finally published his first of many books, How the Other Half Lives, in 1890. Riis became a household name in a matter of months. He helped bring about school, housing, sanitation and zoning reform. In short, he made a difference.

Street Arabs in the Area of Mulberry Street, sleeping children, photographed by Jacob Riis.

Riis maintained a celebrated career at a breakneck pace. He practically ran everywhere he went. He spoke loudly and laughed loudly. While late nights and long hours had helped secure his prominent reputation, they also took a serious physical and mental toll. In 1912, doctors diagnosed him with coronary heart disease. The advice was clear: slow down.

Aside from his diagnosis, Riis’s upbringing, career and changing family circumstances led him to purchase a farm in Barre, Mass. He learned that the life of a New England farmer was not simple nor leisurely. Nonetheless, Barre served as a place of meaningful reflection in the twilight of Riis’s life.

The Making of an American

Riis always recalled his hometown—Ribe, Denmark— romantically. Surrounded by windswept marshland overlooking the North Sea, the Viking-settled hamlet was a close-knit community. Riis met the love of his life, Elizabeth Giørtz, there. Her family disapproved when he first proposed marriage. After all, she was the daughter of a wealthy factory owner; Riis was a carpenter’s apprentice. Heartbroken but determined to make himself worthy of her, he departed for the United States in 1870 at age 21. He later described weeping on the steamship Iowa’s upper deck as he cast a final glance at his hometown. Yet, he thought, “The world was before me.”[1]

Ribe, Denmark, in 1904.

Riis arrived in a nation on the brink of the Gilded Age, a transformational era marked by both progress and inequality. After the Civil War, the United States experienced a boom of technology and industry. Its population swelled, aided by a massive influx of immigrants like Riis. Those who chose to settle in cities like New York lived in increasingly crowded neighborhoods. By the late nineteenth century, the city boasted the nation’s highest concentration of millionaires, but three-quarters of its total population lived in tenements, “shameful old wrecks of buildings” where landlords packed up to eight families into apartments built for one.[2] Subpar sanitation bred disease and startling mortality rates.

Bandits’ Roost, 59 1/2 Mulberry Street, considered the most dangerous part of New York City. From How the Other Half Lives.

Riis witnessed crime, overcrowding and municipal corruption as he acclimated himself to his adopted country and embarked on his journalistic career. The hours were long, the pace demanding and the competition fierce, but he counted the work of a journalist among “the highest and noblest of all callings.”^[3]

His success gave him the confidence to again propose marriage to Elizabeth. This time, she said yes. It also led him to speak out against the injustices surrounding him.

“…To Clean Up and Make Light in the Dark Corners”

It was one thing to tell his readers about slum conditions; Riis wanted to show them. The advent of flash photography provided his chance, a way to literally force light into dark spaces. Riis taught himself how to use a camera—no small feat; he once nearly blinded himself with the flash powder— and included 15 haunting photographs in How the Other Half Lives. Writing with “heart, humor, and understanding,” Riis emphasized his subjects’ humanity and urged lawmakers to make meaningful change in New York. [4]

After the success of How the Other Half Lives, Riis spent the rest of his life advocating for zoning regulations, clean air, green space and education. He helped transform Mulberry Bend, a portion of Manhattan’s Five Points neighborhood once described as “the foul core of New York’s slums,” into today’s Columbus Park.[5] Riis counted it among his greatest achievements. “The Bend had become decent and orderly because the sunlight was let in,” he triumphantly wrote.[6]

Simultaneously, Riis chafed against his proximity to the city’s grime and crowds. He wrote, “I have to be where there are trees and birds and green hills, and where the sky is blue above.”[7] As soon as the Riises could afford it, they created some distance and settled in the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens. With its shady streets and room for the growing family’s gardens and menagerie of pets, the Richmond Hill house was a place where “[t]he very lights of the city were shut out.”[8]

Jacob Riis’ wife, Elizabeth (center), and children. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

“And Now, After Twenty-Five Happy Years—”

The Riis family spent many happy years in Richmond Hill, but when Elizabeth died in 1905, their home was altered. Since they first moved in, Riis had become a nationally renowned author and confidante of President Theodore Roosevelt. Richmond Hill was not as quiet as it had been. All but one of his children were grown and gone, and now so was Elizabeth.

Three old friends. The President, Bishop Vincent and Jacob Riis taken at Chautauqua NY, August 11th 1905. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Riis worried that his youngest son, 13-year-old John, needed a mother figure. On July 29, 1907, Riis married his secretary, Mary Philips. Mary was an intelligent, capable, and kind woman. Herself a housing reform activist, she deeply admired Riis’s work. They were partners in the truest sense.

Mary Phillips Riis

During their honeymoon on a New Hampshire farm, Riis confessed that he had always wanted a farm of his own. With Mary’s encouragement, the couple began an exhaustive search of New England, finally settling on a 200-acre property on Barre’s Hubbardston Road. The “beautiful old colonial house” overlooked fields surrounded by tall pines and edged by a brook full of trout.[9] One Associated Press article called it “some of the finest farm land in Worchester county.”[10] The Riises named it Pine Brook Farm.

Introduction to Farm Life

“There was a time when the life of a farmer beckoned as a placid sort of existence where… a man was at peace with all things living and dead,” Riis wrote shortly after moving to Barre. “If I were now to describe a farmer’s life, I should rather compare it with the hair-trigger existence a fireman leads in the city…”[11] When they moved in, the Riises quickly realized how much work was needed to get the farm up and running.

The Riis house in Happy Valley.

After restoring the derelict outbuildings, they began planting crops, through which Riis received a practical education in New England’s infamously rocky soil. They planted wheat, hay and fruit trees that first year, but only the potatoes survived the frost. In a letter to the editor of The Century magazine, Riis wrote, “[W]hereas I struggled all these years with bosses and politicals [sic] I am now fighting the blight and the potato bug and winning out.”[12]

Then there were the animals. Temperamental but beloved horses, cows, pigs, chickens and a dog named Sandy constantly got into trouble, testing the fences and harassing the hired farmhands. Meanwhile, Riis battled crows in the gardens and foxes in the henhouse. It was hard work, but he and Mary found humor in it. They were up for the challenge.

Jacob Riis, Tried by Leisure

The Riises’ determination carried them through those early months, but they also learned to depend on their neighbors. Riis was initially critical of the New England farmer’s tendency to be “forever dropping one thing he has begun to take up another that must be done first.”[13] He described some of his peers as the “leisurely kind that tr[y] your city soul,” and their slower pace—exactly what his doctors encouraged—frustrated him.[14] However, he also found much to admire. “They are not men of many or long speeches, but they are level-headed and good,” Riis concluded.[15] Amidst the many challenges of farm life, he and Mary were relieved to have “made friends with some of the finest men I have ever come across….”[16]

Jacob Riis’s farm today. Photos by Emily Parrow.

“The Lengthening Shadows”

With Pine Brook Farm finally established, Riis resumed his national lecture tour, spending summers in Barre but returning to Queens during the harsh winters. After all, the farmhouse did not have electricity. Due to financial strain, the Riises later sold their home in Queens and permanently relocated to Barre in April 1913.

Meanwhile, Riis’s health steadily declined, prompting extended visits to health resorts and sanatoriums. After each treatment, returning to Pine Brook Farm gave Riis the opportunity to reflect. He fell in love with Western Massachusetts, and it was there, he decided, he wished to be buried.

He wrote:

Glad I am… that the lengthening shadows find me in this place with my feet on the soil to which my dust shall return. By our front door stand two great maples… Under them I spend my dreaming hours. A deep valley spreads out at my feet, reaching to the far range of southern hills. Great oaks and elms, and dark majestic pines, clothe the hillside. In October flaming birch and crimson maple light up the valley by day; the moonlight, when the mists are rising from the river, by a strange magic makes of it an inland sea with wooded headlands jutting into it far and near… Long years after I knew that my home was no longer in the land of my fathers, its soil gripped me still. Amid the silent wastes of the Danish heath, where the plover pipes about the viking’s lonely barrow, would I then have laid my bones. But no more do I look across the seas to where my cradle stood. In my happy valley I would live, and here I would lie, a weary toiler, glad of his rest when the day’s tasks are done.[17]

Jacob Riis Departs

Riis suffered a heart attack in the early spring of 1914. While hospitalized, he begged to return to his farm. His doctors finally acquiesced after realizing little more could be done. Riis died on May 26, 1914, leaving a remarkable legacy and a nation in mourning. The Worcester Gazette wrote, “When he chose to make our Worcester County his home and claimed citizenship with us, we loved him all the more, and now this city joins the rest of the country in lamenting the departure from this world of that eminent American, Jacob Riis.”[18]

Before he died, Riis asked that little fuss be made over his burial in Barre’s Riverside Cemetery. He requested that mourners donate to charity rather than send flowers. Because of Riis’s tangible impact on American cities, one might expect a grand monument for his burial plot. On the contrary, the grave was marked by a humble field stone bearing no inscription.

Jacob Riis’s grave

Afterward

Today, it is easy to miss the turnoff that grants public access to the former Pine Brook Farm. A few crumbling foundations are all that remain of Riis’s house and outbuildings. The fields are overgrown, but portions of his orchard survive. Nonetheless, the land remains peaceful, a testament to the idyllic country haven—meant to recapture elements of his childhood in Denmark— that Riis carved out after a long, productive career.

Footnotes to Jacob Riis’s “Happy Valley”

[1] Jacob Riis, The Making of an American (Norwood, MA: Norwood Press, 1901), 20.
[2] Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1890), 42.
[3] Ibid., 99.
[4] Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1931), 204.
[5] Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 35.
[6] Riis, The Making of an American, 99.
[7] Ibid., 183.
[8] Ibid., 185.
[9] “Back to Farm for Jacob Riis,” The Hope Pioneer, Hope, ND, February 8, 1912, 1.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Jacob A. Riis, “Our Happy Valley,” The Craftsman 25, no. 1 (October 1913): 143-144.
[12] Jacob Riis to R.U. Johnson, quoted in Louise Ware, Jacob A. Riis: Police Reporter, Reformer, Useful Citizen (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, 1938), 280.
[13] Jacob A. Riis, “Our Happy Valley: Number Two,” The Craftsman 25, no. 3 (December 1913): 268.
[14] Ibid.
[15] p. 269, Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17]pp. 272-273, Ibid.
[18] “We Loved Him,” Worcester Gazette, Worcester, MA, June 15, 1914, quoted in Tom Buk-Swienty, The Other Half: The Life of Jacob Riis and the World of Immigrant America, Annette Buk-Swienty, trans. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 8.

Image of the farmhouse at Pine Brook Farm, published in The Craftsman magazine (1913)- Public Domain: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015006761178&view=1up&seq=573&skin=2021&q1=riis

The author of this story, Emily Parrow, was born and raised in Connecticut. Emily completed her M.A. in History in 2021 and wrote her thesis on nineteenth century Newport, Rhode Island. She currently serves as the National D-Day Memorial Foundation’s Annual Giving Coordinator in Bedford, Va.

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James Cagney: Hollywood Icon, Martha’s Vineyard Farmer, Daddy Dearest

Hollywood icon James Cagney took a break from the demands of movie-making in 1936 and bought an antique house and 200 acres on Martha’s Vineyard. Fed up with the movies and movie stardom, he decided he wanted to try his hand at farming.

The Vineyard had yet to attract celebrities like the Clintons, the Obamas, Carly Simon, John Belushi or Jacqueline Bouvier Onassis. Quiet and remote, Cagney sought peace and freedom away from the clamor of Hollywood.

James Cagney around 1930

Cagneys, he wrote, have a deeply ingrained sense of privacy. “We would never intrude upon each other. Each family member would do what he or she had to do without bothering the other.”

You could take that to a ridiculous length. For example, you could build a separate house for your two small children to live in. Which is what James Cagney actually did.

James Cagney

James Cagney’s early life explains, in part, how he ended up on Martha’s Vineyard for nearly 20 years. He was born July 17, 1899 on New York’s Lower East Side to poor parents. His father was an Irish bartender, his mother a half-Irish homemaker. His childhood, he wrote, was marked by trouble, illness and his father’s alcoholism.

“I was very much a city boy,” he wrote in his autobiography. “But one day my dad rented an open four-wheeler known as a barouche and piled me, my mother, and three brothers into it for a two-week visit to my great-aunt in the then open country that is now Flatbush. That vivid memory is with me yet, and I can still see the tremendous elm in her front yard and the morning glories growing on the white picket fence. Ever since those two glorious weeks at the turn of the century, morning glories have been my favorite flower and, just as lasting in its effect, during those few days I changed from a city boy to a country boy.”

Years later, when Rollins College in Florida awarded him an honorary degree, he acknowledged the honor by sending the college an essay he wrote on soil conservation.

Show Biz

He had no intention of going into acting, but someone suggested he try out for a vaudeville drag show called Every Sailor. He got the part. His mother didn’t approve, though, so when the show ended he went to work in a brokerage house as a runner. But then he tried out for a Broadway musical called Pitter Patter, and got a part as a specialty dancer.

He also got a wife. 16-year-old Frances Willard “Billie” Vernon, a chorus girl in the show. They married two years later and stayed married until he died 64 years later.

Billie Vernon Cagney

He called marrying Billie “absolutely the smartest thing I ever did.”

“I am still crazy about this lady,” he wrote in his 1976 autobiography.

She was devoted to him. Perhaps too devoted.

Vaudeville and Stardom

He played the vaudeville circuit for the next decade. “Life seemed just a never-ending sequence of damned dingy, badly furnished rooms with a one-burner plate,” he wrote.

He finally got his break in 1930 in a play called Penny Arcade. Warner Brothers decided to make it into a movie starring James Cagney. He went to Hollywood with a three-week contract to play in the film renamed Sinners’ Holiday. He stayed with the studio for 31 years.

The grapefruit scene in The Public Enemy

By 1936, he had achieved A-list celebrityhood. He had starred in such films as The Public Enemy and Taxi!. In a classic scene in Public Enemy, he shoved a grapefruit in Mae Clarke’s face. It made such a stir he couldn’t go to a restaurant without someone sending a grapefruit to his table, he complained.

He walked out on Warner Brothers in 1932 and in 1935, demanding a fair salary. In 1936, he bought his farm on Chilmark, which then had a population of fewer than 250 people. On Martha’s Vineyard he could order a lobster at Homeport in Menemsha without getting a grapefruit along with it.

Menemsha Harbor in Chilmark. Cagney was also an avid sailor.

Farmer Cagney

“In 1936 I attained one of my best and fondest dreams – I bought a farm,” he wrote. “Martha’s Vineyard then was uncluttered with developers (which is too gracious a designation for those gentlemen; developers actually develop nothing but their own bankrolls). I couldn’t think of anything more satisfactory, more life-fulfilling, than living on a farm surrounded by salt water. This is what Martha’s Vineyard allowed me to do. The old, old house we found there – its building deed reads 1728—met my expectations wonderfully, and everything about the land and its situation charmed me right out of my shoes.”

Moreover, he wrote, property taxes amounted to $39 a year. He figured he could always scrape up $39.

“I used to lie in my California bed and dream of that old house in its very happy state of quiet decay,” he wrote. “I loved it beyond words, and at the time I said to myself, “If I had just six months to live, I’d spend them at the Vineyard”.”

Summer people had been coming to the Vineyard for decades, and Cagney found like-minded friends on the island. An amateur artist, he painted and drew with two other summer sojourners, artists Thomas Hart Benton and Sanford Ballard Dole Low. At night they’d sit around smoking cigarettes, drinking liquor and sketching each other.

People of Chilmark by Thomas Hart Benton.

Parenthood, Sort of

At home in Chilmark, Billie doted on her increasingly famous husband. She made sure he always had a hot meal and enforced his privacy. No one could make noise while he concentrated on studying his lines. Over the next 20 years, he would make 30 films and become one of the leading Hollywood film stars. He would earn nominations for three Academy Awards and win an Oscar for his performance in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

In 1941, they adopted two children a year apart: a boy they named James Francis Cagney, Jr., and a girl they named Catherine, called Casey. “He was a perfectly beautiful little guy,” wrote James Cagney. “Casey, also beautiful, equally important to us right from the beginning.”

Cagney recalled the “wonderful, wonderful feeling of having them both sit on my lap as I told them stories.”

People who knew him on Martha’s Vineyard said he tried to spend time with the kids, at least in the early years. His demanding career didn’t allow him to see much of them, though.

Billie was much tougher on the children., friends later said. Very early in their young lives, she decided to build a separate house for them at their home in Coldwater Canyon. She also relegated them to the two-story guesthouse on Martha’s Vineyard, 200 feet away from the main house. They weren’t allowed to play in their parents’ house or to bring friends to it. A Japanese couple took care of the children.

James Cagney’s house in Chllmark. The children lived in a separate house 200 feet away.

“That living in another house — I can’t think Jim Junior and Casey could do anything other than resent it,” said an old family friend.

Estrangement, and Sad Endings

Cagney’s efforts at farming his Chilmark estate didn’t work out too well. He found the soil poor, and he couldn’t get help. So in 1955, when the children reached their teens, he bought a farm in Dutchess County, New York, and called it Verney Farm. There he raised cattle and Morgan horses.

His friends on Martha’s Vineyard began to age and die, and he and Billie found Verney Farm more accessible. He spent less and less time on the Vineyard, and finally gave the farm to Jim Jr. Jim Jr. couldn’t keep up the farm and sold it.

The children grew estranged from their parents. Jim Jr., joined the Marines. His father sent him checks, which he refused to cash. He wanted his father’s attention, not his money. They grew further apart. Jim Jr., left the Marines, married, had two children and ran a gas station in South Portland, Maine. Once he went to his parents’ farm to reconcile with them. Police escorted him off the property. He died of a heart attack at 42, two years before his father’s death.

Casey loved horses as her father did. She married Jack Thomas, who worked on her father’s farm. They had two daughters and divorced. Plagued by health problems, she died of cancer at the age of 64. She, too, grew estranged from her parents and didn’t speak to them in the years before they died.

Casey, Billie, Jim Jr., James Cagney

Death

James Cagney died at Verney Farm on March 30, 1986. He left his personal belongings to Billie and nothing to his children. He had written the will in 1982, two years before Jim died.

Cagney added Article VI to his will:

I have intentionally made no provision for any grandchild of mine because I believe it is the obligation of each parent adequately provide for his own children during the parents’ lifetime just as I have done, and just as I believe my children should do for their children.

Martha’s Vineyard

In 2017, the house that once belonged to James Cagney went on the market with an asking price of $13.5 million. The description of the property noted it had 69 acres, the house where the late actor lived and a “guesthouse.” It left out the sad fact the guesthouse, 200 feet away, had been home for his two small children.

Images: James Cagney summer residence on Chilmark by Boston Public Library via Flickr CC By 2.0.; Menemsha Harbor By User:Elkman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Menemsha.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350749. Grapefruit scene by Dennis Amith via Flickr, CC By-SA 2.0. Billie Cagney, Fair Use. Family photo, Fair Use.

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New Discoveries at the Wheeler-Thoreau Shanty Site

The continuing scientific evaluation of the Wheeler-Thoreau Shanty site has revealed some exciting new discoveries.

Charles Stearns Wheeler built the shanty in 1836 near Flint’s Pond in Lincoln, Mass. His close friend and Harvard roommate, Henry David Thoreau, spent six weeks at the shanty during the summer of 1837. His experience living there gave Thoreau the idea to build his Walden cabin. Amateur archaeologist Jeff Craig solved the mystery of the shanty’s location by discovering the site in 2018 after spending more than five years working on the project.

Henry David Thoreau and Charles Stearns Wheeler.

Discoveries at the Wheeler-Thoreau Shanty

New foundation stones have been found at the site, and the photos shown below reveal the unique construction of the discovered stones. The first stone pictured below anchored a portion of the Shanty structure itself. The “split” in the foundation stone was intentional, anchoring a rope or cable firmly into the ground. The rope or cable connected a portion of the shanty structure, holding it firmly in place.

Another of the discoveries at the Wheeler-Thoreau shanty site: Foundation stone.

The second foundation stone was clearly chiseled into the surface rock, holding a portion of the shanty structure in place. These two stones belonged to the shanty’s “dry stone” foundation, a foundation built without mortar. There were no bricks used in Wheeler’s foundation. Much of the stone foundation remains intact underground. Both of these stones were discovered at the surface level, after removing significant amounts of dirt that had kept them hidden from view (Note: the foundation stone pictured below is about 15 inches in length).

Another foundation stone discovered at the site

Layout of the Shanty

Wheeler built the shanty in 1836, perhaps with Thoreau’s help. We know from a letter written by Robert E.C. Stearns (Wheeler’s cousin) that Wheeler had significant help with the construction of the shanty, probably from other family members.

As shown in the following diagram, the shanty measured 22 feet x 22 feet (larger than Thoreau’s cabin at Walden, which measured 10 feet by 15 feet). A post hole was dug at each of the four corners, and the remains of the four post holes are still there today.

The shanty did not have a chimney because Wheeler and his college friends used it primarily during their summer vacations from Harvard. The shanty also had an in-ground cistern, which collected rainwater from the roof. The cistern was carefully constructed to filter the water continuously, providing safe drinking water at the site.

How the shanty may have looked

Lime Mortar

Although Wheeler built the shanty with a dry stone foundation, he used lime mortar in other parts of the structure. Numerous artifacts have been found at the shanty site containing lime mortar. The photo below shows some examples.

Lime Mortar used in the construction of the shanty

The mortar was primarily used as a filler to plug the gaps between the wooden logs used to build the shanty. The walls of the shanty would have been porous without mortar, allowing the wind and rain inside. Lime mortar was used extensively in the 18th and 19th centuries as a key building material for houses and other buildings. In the late 19th century, portland cement and concrete largely replaced lime mortar as the preferred building materials.

Gold and Silver Artifacts Identified

An unexpected surprise was the discovery of an in-ground cistern at the site. Located adjacent to the southeast corner of the shanty, Wheeler used it to provide drinking water for him and his guests. Metal fragments found in the cistern, utilized as part of the filtering system to keep the rainwater fresh.

Some of these fragments were identified as silver. People understood in the 18^th and 19^th centuries that silver helped keep water clean. Several metal fragments had multiple layers, built with copper, silver and gold. The layers of metal were fused together, with copper and silver making up the inner and middle layers, and gold making up the outermost layer. By using copper as the base layer, the artifacts had more strength. It also saved the expense of using silver and gold exclusively. Using gold as the outer layer also protected against tarnish, whereas silver and copper will tarnish over time.

The gold and silver were definitely used to help treat the water. Exactly how these objects functioned in the cistern is still a mystery at this point. The research continues into this question and also how the cistern’s complex design worked.

Gold and Silver artifacts recovered from the cistern

Formal Excavation?

The goal of conducting a formal excavation at the site remains a priority. An initial attempt to organize an excavation with an archaeological team fell through because of disagreement over risk management issues. The excavation goal is complicated by the fact that the site is on conservation land.

Formal approval of an excavation on conservation land introduces another layer of red tape that must be resolved if an excavation plan is to be approved. This question and other challenges remain before considering opening the historic site to the public. Fortunately, much about Wheeler’s shanty has already been revealed, thanks to Jeff Craig’s discovery of the lost site.

It will take time, but the site should give up more of its secrets as research continues.

For more information about discoveries at the Wheeler-Thoreau shanty site, click on this web address:

https://sites.google.com/view/wheeler-thoreaushanty/

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Mashie Miaskiewicz, a Salem War Hero, Comes Home

In 1942, like thousands of men from throughout New England, a young man from a Polish neighborhood in Salem, Mass., enlisted to fight for his country during World War II. Mieczyslaus Miaskiewicz (pronounced Mis-kev-itch), known as Mashie, was one of those young men.

Mieczyslaus (Mashie) Miaskiewicz’s Army photo

Derby Street

Mashie grew up on Derby Street in the heart of Polish Salem, the son of Czeslaw Miaskiewicz, an emigrant from Poland. The family was devoutly Catholic, producing two priests among the seven children surviving to adulthood.

The Derby Street neighborhood was tight knit. Polish families utilized the St. John’s Society, a fraternal organization that offered insurance and sick benefits to members. It also promoted a marching band, drill team and athletic teams. The society was housed in St. Joseph’s Hall at 160 Derby Street, a building that still stands today at the corner of Derby Street and Palfrey Court.

The four-story Kotarski building at 167-69 Derby Street, Salem. Mashie Miaskiewicz lived here for most of his childhood. Demolished in 1938. (Peabody Essex Museum photograph).

Mashie attended St. John’s Polish School on Herbert Street, where Polish language was part of the curriculum. He liked sports, worked out at the YMCA and bowled.

Like so many men in Salem back then, Mashie’s father was a leather worker. He worked for many years at Korn’s leather factory in Peabody. It was hard work, dirty work, smelly work and sometimes dangerous, but it was good pay and steady. In 1934, when he was 18, Mashie followed his father into the leather factory. It is unclear if he graduated from high school.

Mashie’s insular world came to an end with the advent of World War II. He enlisted in the Army in 1942.

Staff Sgt. Mashie

By late 1943, he achieved the rank of staff sergeant and was flight engineer aboard a B-17g bomber, called the Daisy Mae, stationed in Tortorella, Italy, part of 347^th Bomber Squadron, 99^th Bomber Group. The B-17, Flying Fortress, was a heavy bomber with a wingspan of over 100 feet, powered by four, 1,200 hp engines. It was the ideal aircraft for long-distance missions. But it was hazardous duty fraught with danger from antiaircraft fire. Roughly one third of aircraft operating over enemy territory in Europe were shot down.

A restored B-17g Flying Fortress similar to the aircraft Mashie Miaskiewicz served on as flight engineer and top gunner. (Photo by Master Sgt. Ken Hammond www.defenselink.mil/multimedia).

Mashie’s job was to know the workings of the airplane better than anyone else, including the pilot. He must know engine mechanics, fuel consumption, and operation of all equipment, including the radio, bombing equipment, and armaments. It required considerable technical training. And he must be a gunner as well. It was a vital job placing a lot of responsibility on the former leather worker from Salem.

Final Mission

On May 18, 1944, the 347^th Bomb Squadron received orders to bomb the oilfields at Ploesti, Romania, a vital oil supply for the Third Reich. The squadron flew in a box formation, a horizontally and vertically staggered formation that concentrated the bombers’ guns for defensive purposes. A sudden change in the weather forced the Daisy Mae to return home before completing the mission.

A refinery burning in Ploesti after a U.S. bombing raid, 1943.

Flying over Yugoslavia, within sight of the Adriatic Sea, the aircraft was hit by flak, blowing the nose section completely off, killing the pilots and radio operator. With the props still rotating, the remainder of the plane went into a rightward spiral, allowing enough time for some of the crew to bail out.

Three crew members, the bombardier, the navigator, and the waist gunner, bailed out and survived. The rest, including Mashie, were killed.

The Body on a Hillside

After the war, American forensic teams scoured Europe searching for the remains of those missing in action. Miaskiewicz’s remains could not be positively identified from those located at the Daisy Mae crash site, and what was presumed to be his remains were flown to the United States and buried at the National Cemetery on Long Island.

Over the next 60 years, his sisters Christine and Theresa Miaskiewicz would travel to Long Island to visit their brother’s grave.

But that changed dramatically in 2011, when the Miaskiewicz sisters were contacted by the United States military with astonishing news.

A Bosnian archaeological team was searching the Mostar area for remains of Bosnians who perished in mass killings after World War II. Near the village of Stubica, the Bosnian team heard about an American airman shot down during the war. Villagers had discovered his body and brought it for burial on a nearby hillside. Apparently, his remains were still there.

Bosnian authorities alerted the U.S. ambassador by letter, which included a photograph of American dog tags taken from the airman’s remains. A week later forensic specialists went to Stubica to make a positive identification. There they reassembled the skeletal remains.

At that point, although the identification was not yet positive, the indications were overwhelming. SSgt Mieczyslaus Miaskiewicz had not been buried in New York, but rather in a hillside grave in Bosnia.

The Mystery Solved

How did Mashie’s remains end up on a Bosnian hillside? Mashie’s chute never opened, and he plummeted to the ground to his death. It is likely for that reason that he landed away from the other crew members. Then American forensic teams missed his remains after the war.

Villagers near Stubica saw the giant plane come down. They found Miaskiewicz’s body, wrapped him in his parachute and buried him. They kept his artifacts safe, including his dog tags, rosary beads and a crucifix. The villagers prayed and lit candles at the gravesite over the years. As far as they knew, the American serviceman had nobody to pray for him.

Mashie Returns to Salem

The reburial ceremony for Mashie Miaskiewicz at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Salem, 67 years after he was shot down over Bosnia. (Courtesy of William Legault).

Back in Salem, in the very house where they first got word that Mashie was missing 67 years before, Miaskiewicz’ sisters got a phone call.

They were asked to provide DNA samples so that a positive identification could be made, the last piece in the identification puzzle.

At last, their brother would be coming home.

Today, he is buried at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Salem.

End Notes

James F. Lee, the author of this story, is a freelance writer and blogger whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, and AAA Tidewater Traveler Magazine. He can be reached at www.jamesflee.com and 570-713-5926.

Sources:

In the Heart of Polish Salem: An Ethnohistorical Study of St. Joseph Hall and Its Neighborhood, (Stanton and Becker, NPS, 2009).

Email correspondence with Theresa Miaskiewicz via Thomas Miaskiewicz.

U.S. City Directories, Salem, MA, 1922-1943, and U.S. Census, accessed via Ancestry.com.

“So Close: The Last Flight of the Daisy Mae,” by David J. Kinsey. 99^th Bombardment Group Historical Society Newsletter, December 2012.

“A WWII Tragedy from Sixteen Brief V-mails,” by David Steinert, Motorpool Messenger, August 2010.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/over-cauldron-ploesti-american-air-war-romania

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JFK One-Liners: Presidential Wit and More

President John F. Kennedy managed to seduce reporters with witty retorts to their questions during presidential news conferences. Many JFK one-liners are still remembered, such as his observation that “Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”

His childhood friend Lem Billings remembered his sense of humor before he moved into the White House. “I’ve never known anyone in my life with such a wonderful humor — the ability to make one laugh and have a good time,” Billings once said.

Lem Billings and the future president. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Here, then, is a collection of JFK one-liners from well before and during his presidency.

Early JFK One-Liners

His mother, Rose, remembered him as a funny little boy. He once said to her, “Daddy has a sweet tooth, hasn’t he? I wonder which one it is.”

He also had a sharp tongue, which he directed at his mother. Rose didn’t show her children much warmth and took long trips away from her family. Just before she left on one journey, five-year-old Jack said, “Gee, you’re a great mother to go away and leave your children all alone!”

JFK in his first Communion suit. Image courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

In Sickness

Throughout his life, he suffered through a series of illnesses. At Harvard, he was rushed to the hospital with an illness the doctors misdiagnosed as leukemia. He wrote to a girlfriend.

Took a peek at my chart yesterday and could see that they were mentally measuring me for a coffin.

He also had chronic back pain and several surgeries to correct it. After one unsuccessful operation, he wrote,

In regard to the fascinating subject of my operation, I …will confine myself to saying that I think the doc should have read just one more book before picking up the saw.

World War II

Kennedy joined the Navy during World War II and commanded a PT boat in the South Pacific.

The most famous JFK one-liner during his naval career wasn’t funny.

Kennedy aboard PT-109. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

A Japanese destroyer had rammed his boat in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy swam for five hours to an island, a wounded shipmate on his back. He held on to the man by clenching his lifejacket straps in his teeth. Kennedy carved a message for help in a coconut and sent it with a native.

NATIVE KNOWS POSIT HE CAN PILOT 11 ALIVE NEED SMALL BOAT KENNEDY

Rescued after seven days on the island, he came home a hero. As president, someone asked him how he got to be a hero.

“It was involuntary,” he said. “They sank my boat.”

Before the Japanese sank his boat, he had already grown disillusioned with the war effort. In a letter, he expressed his cynicism. “We are at a great disadvantage–the Russians could see their country invaded, the Chinese the same,” he wrote. “The British were bombed, but we are fighting on some islands belonging to the Lever Company, a British concern making soap.” And then:

I suppose if we were stockholders we would perhaps be doing much better, but to see that by dying at Munda you are helping to secure peace in our time takes a larger imagination than most possess.

After his boat sank, he had little use for the desk duty to which he was assigned.

“Once you get your feet upon the desk in the morning, the heavy work of the day is done,” he wrote to a friend.

His brother Robert joined the Naval Reserve in Boston while in his senior year of high school. Their parents had sent Jack a clipping of Robert taking the oath. He wrote to Robert, “The sight of you up there, just as a boy, was really moving, particularly as a close examination showed that you had my checked London coat on.”

Politics

After the war, Kennedy decided to run for Congress from the Massachusetts district once represented by John Quincy Adams.

His father spent lavishly on his House campaign and interfered with the decision making. When one of his campaign aides objected, Kennedy said, “I know you’re right about this, but Dad’s putting up the money and we have to let him win a couple.”

Congressman John F. Kennedy

On the campaign trail, he was late to a communion breakfast in Chicopee, Mass. He urged his driver to speed up, and he did. Kennedy than turned to his seatmate, Billy Sutton, and said,

Billy, if we get into an accident, you’ll have to remain conscious to that you can give our names, but more important than that, don’t forget to tell the reporters I was in a state of grace.

Once elected, he only lasted three terms in the House, which didn’t satisfy his ambition.

“We were just worms in the House–nobody paid much attention to us nationally,” he later said.

And so in 1952 he ran for Senate against incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., the incumbent. It was a classic Boston grudge match: Lodge’s grandfather had defeated Kennedy’s grandfather for the seat in 1916. “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names,” Kennedy once said.

Though considered a long shot, Kennedy beat Lodge by about 70,000 votes, helped by his father’s cash. He spent five times more than Lodge on the campaign. Joe Kennedy had a one-liner of his own:

It takes three things to win in politics. The first is money, the second is money, and the third is money.

The Senate

Even before he ran for Senate, Jack Kennedy had his eye on the White House. He knew he needed a wife, and in 1953 he married Jacqueline Bouvier. She fascinated the public as much as he did. Once, as president, he introduced himself during a press conference in Paris.

I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

September 1953 Hammersmith Farm, Newport, Rhode Island Wedding of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier. Photograph in the Toni Frissell Collection, Library of Congress.

In the Senate, Kennedy grew into a political star.

Tip O’Neill once wrote that until Kennedy won election to the Senate, “You just couldn’t imagine that he was really going anywhere.”

In 1960, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president of the United States. He won the Democratic Party nomination, which prompted another JFK one-liner: “Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.”

His father again spent heavily on his son’s campaign. Kennedy acknowledge as much on the campaign trail.

“I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy,” he said: “’Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide’.”

When asked his favorite song, he replied, “I think ‘Hail to the Chief’ has a nice ring to it.”

President JFK One-Liners

Kennedy didn’t lose his sense of humor as president.

He defended his choice of his 35-year-old brother as attorney general. “I see nothing wrong with giving Robert some legal experience as Attorney General before he goes out to practice law,” he said.

JFK and his brother Robert. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

He said he liked the job.

I have a nice home, the office is close by, and the pay is good.

However, he faced serious challenges.

“When we (The Democrats) got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.”

He joked about his approval rating after a vacation in Florida.

“I’ve been back in touch with my constituents and seeing how they felt,” he said. “And frankly I’ve come back to Washington from Palm Beach, and I’m against my entire program.”

He had a rocky relationship with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. When asked why he didn’t fire Hoover, Kennedy said, “You can’t fire God.”

Last Words

Kennedy’s life ended on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

The First Lady and President arrive in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

His last words before an assassin’s bullet struck him were mundane, but ironic.

Nellie Connally, the wife of Texas Gov. John Connally, was traveling in the open limousine with him. “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” she said.

“No, you certainly can’t,” he said.

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