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7 Fun Facts About the Merritt Parkway

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In July 1934, a Connecticut congressman named Schuyler Merritt presided over the groundbreaking ceremony for the Merritt Parkway. The road would be “constructed for pleasant transit,” he said.

Tell that to the motorists who navigate the tight curves, narrow lanes, short ramps, dangerous entrances and low bridges that pinch cars together at an average speed of 73 mph—at least during non-rush hours.

Designed for Chrysler Airflows, Buick Roadsters and Cadillac All-Weather Phaetons, the Merritt Parkway originally had speed limits averaging 40-mph. The road stretched from the New York state line to the Housatonic River in Stratford. As a pleasant and quick way to travel from New York to the countryside, it spurred the development of Fairfield County’s tony suburbs.

“Driving into Connecticut on the Merritt Parkway gives drivers a fleeting glimpse of Fairfield County 60 years ago, when back-country Greenwich was still a hodgepodge of cow pastures and 20-acre estates,” reported the New York Times on Jan. 30, 2020. The story appeared after an accident on Dead Man’s Curve killed two Greenwich high school students.

“It is also a highway that thousands of commuters use to get to their jobs in New York, and although it is a beautiful road, the nearly eight-mile stretch of highway here can be dangerous,” reported the newspaper.

In the Merritt’s most recent history, preservationists and transportation officials have tried to balance scenic beauty and historic integrity with highway safety and efficiency. After all, those flowering trees are nice until someone dies crashing into them.

The Connecticut Department of Transportation can only do so much. The Merritt Parkway is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The 37.5-mile road is Connecticut’s largest—and most heavily visited—National Register historic district.

Steel flowers on a bridge in Stratford are one reason the Merritt is on the National Register

Merritt Parkway

It’s hard to believe today, but aesthetic ideals once inspired highway construction.

The Merritt resulted in part from the City Beautiful movement during the first half of the 20th century. City Beautiful advocates believed parkways linking parks outside of cities would alleviate urban problems like crime and delinquency.

The Merritt was actually the last of the New York area parkways. Urban planner Robert Moses had created a system of parks and parkways in New York City as well as Long Island. And right across the Connecticut border, Westchester County in 1906 began building parkways – the Saw Mill River, the Hutchinson River, the Briarcliff-Peekskill, and Cross County Parkways. In Washington, D.C., the George Washington Memorial Parkway opened in 1932. (Note: the urban problems didn’t go away.)

An abutment with sculpture on the Grumman Avenue Bridge in Norwalk

By then, the National Park Service had come up with a formal definition of a parkway. A parkway had to

  • Only allow recreational, noncommercial traffic;
  • Prohibit unsightly roadside development and signs;
  • Include wide rights-of-way to buffer abutting property;
  • Encourage preservation of natural scenery by granting no frontage or access rights;
  • Prefer a new site to avoid congested and built-up areas;
  • give best access to native scenery
  • eliminate major grade crossings; and
  • reduce traffic congestion with well-distanced entrances and exits. (On the Merritt, No Man’s Land runs 5.5 miles between exit 42 in Westportand exit 44 in Fairfield.

The Merritt qualified.

The Quintessential Parkway

The Merritt was one of the last of the parkways. It “culminated a generation of experiments in combining the talents of engineers, landscape architects and architects to create parkways that served recreational purposes and gave aesthetic pleasure while providing safe transportation,” according to the nomination for the National Register. “In it, all the best features developed in its predecessors were put together to create the quintessential parkway.”

But World War II came along, and the German autobahn became the model for high speed travel over highways.

Renovating the Merritt Parkway

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, two new interchanges went up over the Merritt Parkway in Trumbull. They endangered the road’s historic nature and agitated preservationists, who then in 1991 managed to get the parkway listed on the National Register.

The Redding Road Bridge on the Merritt Parkway

In 1992, the state Department of Transportation created a working group to come up with guidelines for maintaining and rehabilitating the parkway. Around 2000, the Merritt Parkway Conservancy began as a specialized SWAT team to make sure CTDOT complied with those guidelines. The Conservancy, for example, inspects every tree before it is cut down or moved.

CTDOT has since worked to rehabilitate all 37.5 miles of the parkway. It has  repaved the roadway, removed invasive species and installed wood guardrails reinforced with steel. It has cut down trees and removed ledge, recolored concrete bridges for historical accuracy and rehabilitated the Colonial Revival service stations. The state also began to allow fast-food vendors in the rest areas for the first time.

Here are some more fun facts about the Merritt Parkway.

1.It was originally called the Parallel Post Road.

The Merritt didn’t start off as a parkway, but as a solution to traffic congestion. The old Boston Post Road, the only shoreline artery linking New Haven with New York City, had gotten crowded and dangerous. In 1925, Gov. John H. Trumbull said he’d support a plan to build an alternate road.

Schuyler Merritt, the Republican congressman from Fairfield County, headed a commission to get the parkway built. For that, county Republicans urged the state to name the parkway after him.

2. A corrupt political hack bought the land for the parkway. He went to prison.

Leroy Kemp belonged to the Fairfield County Republican machine, and when it came time to buy rights-of-way for the Merritt, he got the job. Kemp, a Darien real estate broker, had served as a state representative and had a lot of friends in the state GOP.

Kemp ultimately inflated the cost of land purchases to $6.5 million, a whopping amount of money back then.

He took advantage of the secretive highway commissioner, John MacDonald, who refused to disclose plans for the parkway.

A Colonial Revival service station in Fairfield

Since no one knew where the road would go, Kemp told his real estate broker friends what parcels the highway department needed. They would then approach the landowners and offer to negotiate with the state. When the seller agreed to sell for a price, two, five and ten times the market value, the real estate agents would then split their fees with Kemp. In one deal, for example, Kemp  had the state buy a piece of land in Greenwich for $93,000. Fair market value was $7,458.

 

Eventually people got suspicious. The state and the press investigated, and ultimately Kemp was sentenced to three to seven years in the penitentiary. A jury found him guilty of conspiracy after three hours of deliberation.

A grand jury found Connecticut Highway Commissioner “entirely to blame” for most of the “waste, extravagance and incompetence” in buying the parkway’s rights of way. MacDonald resigned in disgrace after 15 years on the job.

Ornamental detail on the Lake Avenue Bridge

3. Nude swimmers and picnickers caused problems in the early years.

When the Merritt Parkway opened, people started taking picnic lunches and relaxing by the side of the road.

Harold Ross, editor of the New Yorker, complained to CTDOT about skinny dippers in a creek that passed under the Merritt and over his property.

4. Tollbooths caused a stir. Now they’re museum pieces.

Many people objected to the state’s announcement that it would collect 10-cent tolls in Greenwich and Milford (near the parkway’s entrance). People felt the government taxed them twice since taxes, not tolls, paid for the parkway’s construction.

Merritt Parkway toll booth at the Boothe Memorial Park

The highway architect, George Dunkelberger designed rustic, whimsical Log Cabin-style tollbooths. An out-of-work electrical engineer named Theodore Fleischmann paid the first toll at the Greenwich toll booth without complaint. But others protested by paying in pennies or throwing trash near the toll booths. One man drove fast through the tollbooth, then threw his dime in the grass.

When Connecticut eliminated tolls in 1988, the Milford toll booth went to Boothe Memorial Park in Stratford. Part of the Greenwich toll plaza went to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich.

5. The original 69 mostly-much-admired bridges are all different.

An urban legend about the bridges says different people made proposals to the highway department. Since government officials couldn’t make up their minds, they selected them all.  But it’s wrong. A single architect, George Dunkelberger, came up with the idea of building attractive, unique bridges.

The James Farm Road overpass with Nike wings

He designed most of them in the then-popular Art Deco or Art Moderne style. Some of the notable work includes relief sculptures of a Puritan and an Indian on the Comstock Hill overpass in Norwalk. Dunkelberger elaborately ornamented the Lake Avenue Bridge. He put concrete Nike (the goddess not the shoe) wings on the James Farm Road overpass.

For some bridges, Dunkelberger took inspiration from fortified French bridges of the Gothic and Renaissance eras. On the Route 110 bridge in Stratford he applied metal flowers.

The Comstock Hill overpass in Norwalk

Works Progress Administration workers built some of the bridges.

One exception is at exit 39, which has ordinary modern bridges constructed using undecorated concrete-on-steel I-beams. The highway department got a grant to build the bridge, but it didn’t cover the cost of decoration.

The Comstock Hill overpass in Norwalk.

6. It took 200 gardeners to landscape the Merritt Parkway.

A roadside development team of 200 men planted and shaped the parkway’s s surroundings. They removed mature trees from the path of the road and stored them for later replanting, and they scraped topsoil to use along the roadside.  Earl Wood, engineer of roadside development, later recalled, “The general objective was to help nature heal the scars of construction.”

Weld Thayer Chase, a 27-year-old landscape architect, supervised the landscaping. Wanting a splendid spring bloom, he contracted for 47,700 laurels and 3,777 dogwoods, He also bought 6,459 pines, 3,095 cedars and 2,037 hemlocks. In addition, Fairfield County garden clubs helped with the landscaping, donating thousands more flowering trees and shrubs. The parkway once had 17 bronze plaques embedded in rocks to commemorate the garden clubs’ efforts.

Chase also planted Oriental bittersweet, which has since overgrown the parkway. (Well, he was only 27.)

7. Commercial vehicles are still not allowed on the Merritt Parkway.

Technically, the Merritt Parkway doesn’t allow trucks, RV’s, cars towing trailers, buses and all commercial vehicles. However, commercial vehicles do flout the law, and trucks have gotten stuck under the 11-foot-high bridges.

The state police say they have higher priorities than keeping pick-up trucks off the Merritt.

The Nichols-Shelton Road Bridge


All black and white photos courtesy Library of Congress.

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The Mystery of the Walker Pond Massacre

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Sometime in the late 17th century, or maybe the mid-18th century, English soldiers massacred some or maybe all of the Wabanaki Indians at a place called Walker Pond in Brooksville, Maine. But strangely, the Walker Pond massacre  a major event in the history of Downeast,  almost completely forgotten.

According to one version, a Puritan militia captain from Massachusetts traveled to the pond in 1755 with 200 men. They surprised the village and killed all but a few escapees.

According to another version, famed Indian fighter Capt. Benjamin Church in 1660 led an expedition from Boston. They intended to retaliate for the murder of the crew of a fishing vessel in Downeast Maine. They arrived at daybreak and killed many.

Col. Benjamin Church, ca 1675

You’d think archaeologists and historians could find the truth somewhere. So far, you’d be wrong.

Todd Seabold, professor of history at the College of the Atlantic, described how he tried to solve the mystery of the Walker Pond massacre during a presentation at the Stonington Public Library, 12 miles from the site.

“I was naïve enough to think we were going to resolve it,” he said.

Walker Pond Massacre

Today the placid surface of Walker Pond belies the violent murders that happened over 250 years (or maybe 300) years ago. The three-mile-wide pond sits at the base of Caterpillar Hill. From the top of the hill, an overlook offers a stunning vista. The land slopes to the Eggemoggin Reach, which flows between Penobscot Bay and its islands. Walker Pond gleams like a monocle.

View from the top of Caterpillar Hill. Walker Pond is in the middle.

Walker Pond, today lined with camps and farms and homes, was once a hub of Wabanaki travel among. They migrated seasonally and carried on trade up and down the Penobscot River watershed and Penobscot Bay.  The Wabanaki Confederacy – an alliance of the main Eastern Algonquian nations — stretched from the Kennebec River to the St. John’s River on the Canadian border. Seabold said the Wabanaki world centered at the pond. Seabold called Walker Pond the most significant native settlement in Downeast Maine.

“This was a very, very significant place and we would do well to remember that,” Seabold said.

The English attack, Seabold said, was an attack on Wabanaki power. It probably happened at the moment when the English destroyed the village as a center of gravity for the Wabanaki.

Native Remembrance

The Wabanaki remembered the Walker Pond massacre, Seabold said. “Their account was that 50 people survived and moved upriver to Old Town, now the Penobscot Indian Island Reservation.

All the accounts differ in their details in some important way, he said.

For example, Grace Limeburner, in Stories of Brooksville, wrote that Church came to Penobscot in 1704, killed and “took many Indians prisoner.”

A Memory of the Walker Pond Massacre

There was some local memory that lasted until the late 19th century, according to Seabold. But there’s plenty of disagreement about when, why, who, and how many were killed.

A story in the May 21, 1885, Republican Journal is one clue. It quotes Hosea Wardwell relating “some of the old legends handed down from father to son.” He called the Walker Pond massacre the “Massacre of Indians in Brookesville.”

“The Jesuits had established a mission here and the natives had embraced the religion of Rome and were its devotees and faithful followers,” he said. That made them obnoxious to the Puritans of Massachusetts, he said. “In their dealings with the Indians they did not stop to consider whether they were guilty or not guilty but slaughtered indiscriminately friend and foe.”

“While cruising the vicinity of Owl’s Head, Cargill surprised and captured a young sanap,” the account continued. He tortured the young native. That evening they landed at Bucks Harbor in Brooksville “and arrived at the Indian Village just at daybreak. To begin his cruel work he first cut the throat of Eggemoggin his guide, least he should alarm his people and give them an opportunity to escape.”

View of Bucks Harbor in 1908

The natives were making breakfast. “The surprise was complete. Before they were aware of the approach of a relentless enemy, the discharge of 200 muskets carried death and dismay in every wigwam. No resistance was made. Cargill and his men rushed on and with knife and bayonet finished what the rifle had failed to do. Not a pale fact was hurt.”

Only five escaped, according to Wardwell: the French priest, an old squaw and three papooses. The Indians say that more than 50 escaped and joined their friends at Old Town.

Another Version

Another version, collected by Donald Soctomah, tribal historian, puts the massacre in 1660:

Some time during the spring the Indians captured a fishing vessel in the Eggemoggin Reach, at a little cove called the Punch Bowl, killing the crew and burning the vessel. An expedition was sent out from the Boston area with Colonel Church leading, landing near South Brooksville, where they captured an Indian who was promised his life if he showed the village to them. He led them a long and difficult way which kept them traveling all night. They came up on the village just at daybreak. It was green corn time. The tribe had been having a feast and unsuspicious of danger were sleeping late with no guards posted. The whites killed many of them.

Furthermore, many stone arrowheads, spearheads and other native implements have been found there, and nearby many human bones have been excavated, showing the location of an Indian burying ground.”

What We Do Know—Some Clues

There was other evidence provided by Wardwell.

  • A Mr. Gray built mills at the pond outlet he employed a millwright from Massachusetts. The millwright said he recognized the place as one where he as a private took place in the slaughter.
  • About 1770 a widow Grindal settled there and she selected the battleground as her garden spot. She hated Indians and was accustomed to spurn their bones with her foot and pile them under the bank until she had a heap as large as a haystack.
  • Many relics were found in 1885: skeletons, stone arrowheads and hatchets.

He also remembers as a child being shown the cornerstone of the chapel by an old man named Levi Gray.

Folklorist Fanny Hardy Eckstorm, born in 1865, wrote that her father’s journal reported that he camped on the spot. An aged resident told him that many years before, when he was a boy, he used to dig bullets out of the pine trees there, where the whites and Indians had fought a battle.

That’s it. That’s pretty much all we know.

An Uncomfortable History

Seabold said no other records of the battle have been found. Neither has any archaeological evidence. A researcher pored over hundreds of pages of colonial documents to find out more, but found nothing, he said.

Seabold said the likelihood that the Walker Pond massacre happened during the French and Indian War is high. “But I have no evidence,” he said. Since the French and Indian War went on from 1754 to 1763, that would put James Cargill as the leader of the massacre.

The Battle of Carillon, which took place during the French and Indian War.

Once the Wabanaki power was broken, it became possible to settle Downeast Maine, Seabold said. The region had been a battleground since King William’s War which began in 1688.

Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is why there are so few clues. Other Indian massacres – at Norridgewock, for example, or the Great Swamp Fight – are all documented and memorialized.

Why the forgetting?

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Seven Fun Facts About the Connecticut Civil War Monument

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Nearly every city and town in Connecticut has a Civil War monument, usually a standing soldier or an obelisk. Of the 169 municipalities in the state, 135 have at least one. The monument typically memorializes the soldiers who served from that town – not the generals.

Why so many? And why so many more Civil War monuments than monuments to soldiers of the American Revolution or the Mexican-American War?

Perhaps, argues historian Thomas Brown, the ubiquitous Civil War monument represents the growing acceptance of a standing army. The idea was much more palatable after the Civil War than before the American Revolution. After all, Americans fought the British partly because they objected to the standing army of redcoats in their midst.

Soldiers’ And Sailors’ Monument, Milford Green, Milford, Connecticut

Or perhaps the availability of talent, technology and materials explains the Civil War monument. After the war, quarries employed stonecutters in places like Barre, Vt., Concord, N.H., and nearby Westerly, R.I., and Guilford, Conn. Talented stonecutters immigrated from Europe, while architects and designers learned their craft to meet the demand of the postwar building boom.

But maybe it just came down to the unprecedented emotional impact of the Civil War on American families. In Connecticut, more than 55,000 residents fought in the conflict and 5,300 of them died during their military service. Overall, 620,000 died in the war.

Here are some more fun facts about the Connecticut Civil War monument:

1. The leading supplier and designer of Connecticut’s Civil War monuments also founded the Travelere’s Insurance Company.

Joseph Batterson was born into the stone business in Bloomfield, Conn. His father owned a marble quarry in Washington, Conn. Batterson expanded the business, acquired several quarries and employed a team of designers and sculptors to create monuments.

James Batterson

President Lincoln appointed him building contractor for the Library of Congress Building. He also built the Connecticut State Capitol, the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Building and Marble House in Newport, R.I., among others.

Some of his Civil War memorials include The American Volunteer at Antietam National Cemetery, the Soldiers’ National Monument at Gettysburg National Cemetery and the Soldiers and Sailors Monument in New London.

Batterson got the idea for the Travelers Insurance Company during his travels in Europe. He’d seen the success of the Railway Passenger Assurance Company and launched a similar business on his return.

Batterson had an avid interest in Egypt and was recognized as an expert Egyptologist. He also considered himself an artist and designed the Soldiers Monument in Granby, Conn.

The monument in Granby.

2, Nathaniel Lyon’s memorial shows why you shouldn’t use marble.

 

He has a monument in Eastford and one in St. Louis. The one in St. Louis is in much better shape.

Lyon was just a captain in the Union Army when he was put in charge of the St. Louis Armory just before war broke out in 1861. But Missouri’s governor refused to supply troops for the Union forces, so Lyon began recruiting his own military units. He drew from the Wide Awakes, a Republican paramilitary organization that had spent months preparing for war.

The monument to Nathaniel Lyon in St. Louis.

The makeup of the units offended Southern-leaning Missourians, but Lyon did not worry about the tactics he used to win. He armed his own units, 10,000-strong, and began shifting the militia’s supplies to Illinois. L did it for fear the secessionists in Missouri would seize them.

He died in battle months later, on Aug. 10, 1861. The first general to die in the Civil War, a crowd of 15,000 attended his funeral when his remains returned to Eastford, Conn.

Connecticut put up a marble memorial to him. And that isn’t a good thing. As the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History points out, it displays “ the attractive quality of marble for carving in combination with its unsatisfactory aging characteristics.” Three sides of the four-sided obelisk are black, deteriorated and covered with crusts, algae and cracks.

The Lyon memorial in Eastford.

3. There was no Civil War memorial to Connecticut’s black regiment until 2008.

29th Connecticut Colored Infantry Regiment, Beaufort, South Carolina, 1864

The 29th Regiment Connecticut Colored Volunteers was declared full on January 8, l864 and “mustered in” on March 4, 1864. Nine hundred men trained in Fair Haven. Afterward, they served as a discrete unit. The 29th had the distinction of being the first infantry to enter Richmond.

Until the erection of the monument in New Haven in 2008, the race of soldiers who died was indicated on only four monuments.

At Smith Gateway in Union Cemetery, Niantic, symbols designating “colored” follow the names on the plaque.

On Soldiers Monument in Weatogue, seven of the 194 names are identified as from “Colored Regiments.”

The Soldiers Monument in Center Cemetery, East Hartford, also identifies a name with “(col’d).”

Soldiers Monument in Watertown recognizes the 29th Regiment along with other regiments.

The 29th Colored Regiment monument in New Haven.

4. The oldest permanent Civil War monument in the U.S. is in Berlin, Conn.

There’s a reason for it. The Congregational Church in Kensington, part of Berlin,  wanted to honor six men killed in the war. And the pastor had a special interest in veterans.

The monument was a joint project of Kensington artist and photographer named Nelson Augustus Moore and the Kensington Congregational Church minister, Elias Brewster Hillard.

Moore and Brewster would embark on a second joint project to collect the reminiscences of the Revolutionary War veterans still alive. They had fought as teenagers and lived a century or more.

Hillard and Moore traveled to their homes, interviewed them and took pictures of them and their houses. The two men compiled the photos and narrative into a book called The Last Men of the Revolution, published in Hartford in 1864. The book showed how little they had received for their service.

Historian Thomas J. Brown notes the book and the monument stemmed from public awareness of the stingy pensions allocated to the Revolutionary veterans.  That happened when Congress passed legislation to increase their pensions.

Kensington Soldier’s Monument

The monument is an obelisk made of brown sandstone from Portland, Conn. It included the name of each Kensington soldier who died in the conflict and the date and place of his death. The orator at the dedication ceremony was the chair of the Senate Committee on Pensions.

The Soldier’s Monument included an inscription:

ERECTED TO COMMEMORATE THE DEATH

OF THOSE WHO PERISHED IN SUPPRESSING

THE SOUTHERN REBELLION.

“HOW SLEEP THE BRAVE WHO SINK TO REST

BY ALL THEIR COUNTRY’S WISHES BLEST.”

Less than a month after the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863,  the Kensington Soldier’s Monument was dedicated.

The Kensington Congregational Church still owns and cares for the monument.

5. Yale waited until 1913 to dedicate a Civil War monument

At the end of the conflict, Yale considered creating a Civil War Monument dedicated to the 700 students who died fighting the confederacy. The university’s students were overwhelmingly northern and opposed to slavery.

Yale

And yet Yale waited until 1913 to dedicate its memorial–to both Union and Confederate soldiers. Attitudes had changed by then, the Yale News reported. People had moved on from thinking of the war as the rebirth of the republic. Instead, they focused on binding up the wounds that divided North and South.

Judge Henry Howland, a Yale graduate, proposed a memorial for all the Yale men, northern and southern, who gave up their college years to fight in the war. “When the passions of that time have died away…it seems an appropriate moment to bring before the alumni of Yale the propriety of commemorating the men of both sides who gave their lives in the great struggle.”

6. Connecticut has one other monument to a confederate soldier.

A general, in fact. In Cedar Grove Cemetery in New London, a stone marks the grave of Maj. Gen. G. W. Smith.

Gustavus Woodson Smith grew up in Kentucky, fought in the Mexican-American War and then worked as a civil engineer in New York City. He served as the city’s Streets Commissioner for three years, but when the war broke out he went to Richmond and volunteered to join the Confederate States Army.

G. W. Smith

Smith briefly commanded the Army of Northern Virginia until Robert E. Lee took over, handled the defenses around Richmond and served as interim Confederate States Secretary of War. He survived the war and eventually moved back to New York, where he died.

So why was he buried in New London?

He had married a New London woman.

7. The most disastrous dedication of a Civil War monument happened in Mystic.

Nothing seemed to go right from the beginning of the dedication of the Soldier’s Monument at Mystic Bridge in Stonington. Batterson’s New England Granite Company of Westerly, R.I., didn’t deliver the statue in time —  May 31, 1883, Decoration Day. They had to postpone until June 13.

When the morning of the big day came, a thousand local residents assembled. Trouble was, that represented only half the crowd. The rest were either on the train with Gov. Thomas Waller or coming from Norwich with more veterans on a steamboat. But the train was late and so was the steamboat.

As the audience waited for the latecomers, part of the platform collapsed. spilling several dignitaries in the street.

Then a row of seats gave way and deposited onlookers into the grass.

Finally the train arrived. The National Guard and a band escorted Gov. Waller up the street toward the reviewing stand.

At just about the same time the steamboat docked. and a contingent of Mystic veterans rushed down to the wharf to escort  Norwich veterans to the monument.

Lt. Fish was standing by with the Fort Trumbull artillery battery.  Lt. Fish thought it would be nice to fire off a salute to the governor. Only he forgot to tell the artillerymen to point their guns in the air.

Just as the Norwich and Mystic veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic came into view, Fish yelled “Fire.”

The first volley hit the Mystic veterans, the second hit the Norwich men. At least the artillerymen did not fire a third volley. Twenty-eight men suffered burns, cuts, torn clothing and a concussion. Three needed medical attention.

The dedication went on however, despite the continued collapse of the platform and seats.

At least the ladies served them a good lunch.

“Perhaps it would have been well to allow the women to handle all the details,” opined the New London Day.

End Notes

With thanks to the  Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, which has a list of Connecticut’s Civil War Monuments on its website, and to Thomas J. Brown,   Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America. United States: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Images: 29th Regiment monument in New Haven: By Blerdlife – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82717765. Yale By Ad Meskens – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20409102.  St. Louis Arsenal monument By Americasroof at en.wikipedia – Self-photographed (Original text: Photo by poster in September 2007.), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4602308. Standing soldier, Milford By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57042204. Nathaniel Lyon Monument in Eastford By Morrowlong – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14882416. Granby monument By Wknight94 talk – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15343319. Kensington Soldiers Monument By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69309657.

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Warwick, the Puritan Pirate King Who Colonized New England

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Puritanism and piracy together helped colonize New England with the zealous oversight of Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick.

Known as the “Pious Pyrate” in his day, Warwick sponsored half the pirates in the Atlantic between 1626 and 1630. His proceeds from the plunder allowed him to invest in the various companies that sponsored colonists.

Robert Rich (1587-1658), 2nd Earl of Warwick

In her new book, Jamie L. H. Goodall explains how piracy was as important as Puritanism in colonizing North America. The Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy From Cape Cod to the Caribbean is less about Bellamy and more about the conditions that created pirates in the first place. Those conditions were in large part created by the man New England knew as Warwick. He “epitomized the intimate connection between piracy, colonization and intense religious devotion,” wrote Goodall.

Why Pirates? Why Bellamy?

The short version: Heads of state needed money to wage their wars, so they enlisted privateers to attack and loot enemy vessels. Then, when wars ended, unemployed privateers turned to piracy.

Privateer Boscawen engaging a Fleet of French Ships in 1745

Little is actually known about Black Sam Bellamy. He fell in love with a beautiful girl from Eastham, Mass., named Maria Hallett. He plundered the Caribbean and then sailed north, only to sink with his ship. The Whydah Gally wrecked in a hurricane off Wellfleet on April 26, 1717.

Bellamy became one of the better known pirates in 1984 when underwater explorer Barry Clifford discovered the Whydah Gally.Clifford has recovered several hundred thousand artifacts, including cannon, precious stones and pieces of silver. He also found pirate bones, though he has not identified Bellamy.

Without Warwick, Black Sam Bellamy may not have pursued his plunder. We know a lot about Warwick.

Warwick

Robert Rich was the first son and third child of Penelope Devereaux and the 1st Earl of Warwick. Penelope, famously unhappy, bore the first earl seven children, then lived as the mistress of Charles Blount, 8th Baron Mountjoy. she bore him five children.

Warwick was born in 1587 during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a time when piracy flourished. His rich and powerful family raised him as a devout Puritan. Warwick’s father, Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick, maintained a privateering fleet. In 1618 he paid King James I £10,000 for the title of Warwick.

James I didn’t feel as comfortable with the Puritan pirates as his predecessor had. He tried to pushing them away toward the Americas.

In the early years of colonization, most colonial ventures were undertaken by private investors with the permission or charter from the crown. Warwick made investments in the colonies, financed by the proceeds from his personal pirate navy. One Spanish politician said the only reason for the British colonies was that they were “good for pirates.” Boston, wrote Goodall, eventually earned a reputation as “the common receptacle for pirates of all nations.”

Warwick used his political clout and money to help Puritans get charters for the colonies of New Plymouth (New Zealand), Providence Island, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay. .

The Pious Plunderer

He also helped radical Puritan ministers, sometimes by hiding them from prosecutors. Mostly, though, he paid for their livings. Helped by his relative Sir Nathaniel Rich, he supported 22 ministers. “Warwick was well placed to support, to influence, and to help organize for various political and religious initiatives an unusually large number of Puritan ministers,” wrote Robert Brenner in Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550-1653.

Warwick’s religious zeal put him at odds with the English monarchs. When the English Civil War broke out, Parliament named  Lord High Admiral of the British Navy in 1642.

Olier-Cromwell

He retired from public life in 1649, but remained close to the Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell. His grandson, also Robert Rich, married Cromwell’s daughter Frances. The marriage didn’t last long, as Rich died shortly afterward in  1658. Warwick died the next year.

Here are some other fun facts about the 1st Earl of Warwick.

1. Warwick’s pirates bailed out Massachusetts.

In 1640, English merchants would only accept hard currency, but the colonists didn’t have much of it. Massachusetts Gov.  John Winthrop lamented, “scarcity of money made a great change in all commerce.”

Warwick helped them out of their trouble. As Lord High Admiral, he commissioned a pirate named Capt. William Jackson to assemble a small fleet. In 1643, Jackson and his men began plundering Spanish towns throughout the West Indies.

Several times they returned to New England, got drunk and spent lavishly—in hard currency. They sailed to Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1646, where they “spente and scattered a great deale of money,” according to Winthrop.  He felt “divine Providence” had brought them to the colony.

John Winthrop. American Antiquarian Society

2. He helped Thomas Hooker hide from his persecutors.

Hooker, credited with founding Connecticut Colony, attracted Puritans with his fiery sermons at what is now Chelmsford Cathedral. Warwick listened to Hooker’s sermons there. Hooker ran afoul of the spiritual authorities, who silenced him and bound him over to appear before the High Commission. Warwick may have paid for his bond, and he certainly hid him away at the family’s private retreat in the Netherlands.

thomas-hooker

Thomas Hoooker and his people

3. His pirates showed up drunk in Plymouth Colony.

William Bradford described how about 80 unruly “lustie men” came on shore. There they behaved like “madmen,” after they “did so distemper them with drinke.” They grew more moderate and orderly over the next few weeks. Winthrop praised them because they “spent liberally and gave freely to many of the poorer sort [in Plymouth].

Plymouth Colony’s governor William Bradford really couldn’t complain about Warwick.  He signed the Peirce Patent, which promised Plymouth Colony 100 acres for everyone who stayed in the settlement for three out of seven years.

4. At least a half dozen places were named after him.

They include Warwick, R.I,. and  Warwick, Mass. In Virginia, he inspired the Warwick River, Warwick Towne, Warwick River Shire and Warwick County,.Warwick donated the land on which Bermuda’s oldest school, Warwick Academy, stands.

5. He was “a heroic figure among devout Puritans.”

That’s according to historian Mark Hanna. They had reason to admire him. In 1643, he headed a colonial commission tasked with governing the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean. The next year the commission incorporated Providence Plantations, now Rhode Island. He won a guarantee of religious liberty in the colonies and issued a declaration that established freedom of worship in Bermuda. .

6. He established a Puritan pirates’ nest in the Caribbean.

He started the Providence Company and financed the colonization of Providence, Henrietta and Tortuga islands. Settlers lived under strict rules: no drinking, whoring or gambling. But piracy was encouraged.

“The Earl of Warwick and his friends were sincerely trying to create three nests of pirates with the behaviour and morals of a Calvinist theological seminary,” wrote historian C.V. Woodward.

In the end, Providence Island failed when the Spanish massacred most of the inhabitants.

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Major John Pitcairn, The Redcoat Who Partied With Paul Revere

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If you visit Christ Church (Old North Church) in Boston’s North End and peruse the many plaques lining its walls, you may notice one that seems out of place in this icon of American independence. It commemorates Maj. John Pitcairn, a British officer.

Old North Church

The plaque reads:

Major John Pitcairn
Fatally Wounded

While Rallying the Royal Marines

at the Battle of Bunker Hill

was carried from the field to the boats

on the back of his son

who kissed him and returned to duty

He died June 17. 1775 and his body

was interred beneath this church

Maj. John Pitcairn

John Pitcairn had not planned, of course, to take up permanent residence in the New World. He was born on Dec. 28, 1722, on Scotland’s southeast coast to the Rev. David Pitcairn and Katherine Hamilton Pitcairn. His father, a minister in Dysart for 50 years, also served as chaplain of the Cameronian Regiment during the War of Spanish Succession. In 1770, David Pitcairn won election as a Fellow of the Royal Society for his contributions to botany. The family was well known in the 18th century, making its mark in the fields of botany, medicine and the military. Sadly, however, that fame has passed into the dust of history.

Maj. John Pitcairn

John grew up next to the sea. Perhaps the nearness of the sea was in his blood, or possibly due to his father’s familiarity with the military, he was commissioned a lieutenant in Cornwall’s 7th Marines at age 24. It wasn’t until 1755 that the marines became permanent as the Royal Marines, and John retained his lieutenancy.  In 1756, John was promoted to captain.

The year 1757 saw him on board HMS Lancaster, eventually landing in Canada during the Seven Years War (known in America as the French and Indian War). How long he stayed in Canada is not clear. In 1771, he won promotion to major, He must have returned home at least once, since his son Alexander was born in Kent in 1768.

Then in 1774, he was posted to Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, in command of a 600-man marine contingent. The posting was in response to the growing unrest in the colonies, especially in Boston. It would be his final post.

Boston

By all accounts, Major Pitcairn was well received in Boston, not a minor feat in a city that was rife with intrigue and a growing distrust of the British military. Boston citizens, however, were not his first problem upon landing. His greatest problem was his own command.

Pitcairn’s new command came from Plymouth, and by his own account, were “troublesome” animals. With a lack of adequate officers, and constantly in trouble, the marines took to selling their kit to buy rum, a practice that killed several. Their lack of discipline and unruly behavior would have only reinforced Bostonian feelings against the military.

Uncharacteristic for an officer of his time, Pitcairn moved into the men’s barracks to keep order and end the drunkenness. Harsh enforced discipline that included, to his regret, flogging, and constant drilling turned the unit back into a military force.

Once Pitcairn moved out of the barracks, he was billeted with Francis Shaw, who favored the growing rebel movement. The billeting of soldiers in private homes was one of the pillars of that rebellious attitude. This home was in the very center of that coming rebellion.

Paul Revere house

Francis Shaw, a wealthy Boston merchant, owned a three-story brick house next to Paul Revere’s still-extant house. Shaw owned Pew #16 at Christ Church, where he had been a junior and senior warden. Christ Church stood only a few minutes’ walk from Shaw’s house, and Pitcairn joined the parish.

A Popular Guy

By all accounts, Pitcairn’s respectful attitude, open and honest personality and even temperament gained him acceptance in the Shaw household. He often held social gatherings there involving British officers and locals including Revere. In spite of political differences, the events were held in a civilized and convivial atmosphere. Pitcairn was more fortunate than most since his sons William and Robert served in Boston at the time, as was his son-in-law Capt. Charles Cochrane, married to Pitcairn’s daughter Katherine. All three regularly participated in Pitcairn’s social gatherings.

There was one troubling incident in the household, however. Also billeted with the Shaws was a Lieutenant Wragg. Wragg’s personality appears to have been the opposite of Pitcairn’s, to the extent that he deliberately insulted colonists in Francis’s son Samuel’s presence. Samuel took offense and threw a glass of wine in Wragg’s face, an action that could easily have led to a deadly duel. Major Pitcairn immediately intervened and defused the situation, much to the gratitude of Francis Shaw. It can only be imagined what conversation Major Pitcairn had with the lieutenant afterward. However, the incident was not repeated.

Major Pitcairn regularly attended services at Christ Church, but he was also a military man. As pious as he may have been on the Sabbath, his language while on duty was colorful enough to have been remarkable in its profanity! In this he joins the company of many military men in all armies from the past to the present.

The Shot Heard ‘Round the World

British authorities in Boston were well-aware of the brewing tensions. On April 18, 1775, Major Pitcairn’s next-door neighbor awaited word of the movement of British forces. The British, under Lt. Col. Francis Smith, assembled a force of regulars and marines to march on Lexington and Concord. They intended to locate and destroy rebel stores of guns, ammunition and gunpowder. Pitcairn, second in command, led the advance guard.

The Battle of Lexington, by William Barnes Wollen.

On April 19, 1775, at about 5:00 a.m., Major Pitcairn’s advance force reached Lexington and encountered a 70-man militia company commanded by Captain John Parker. Pitcairn ordered his men to hold fire. He then ordered Parker’s command to lay down their arms and disperse. Parker, in turn, ordered his men to disperse. But in the excitement and confusion of the moment, some unknown individual fired a shot, and a one-sided fight began. The British volley killed seven and mortally wounded one. They then marched on to Concord, reaching there at 8:00 a.m.

At Concord, the situation was different. Now forewarned and with three hours notice, over 400 armed militia had gathered. Major Pitcairn moved to secure the North Bridge. Seeing smoke from Lexington, and mistakenly believing the British fired the town, a large rebel force began an advance. The outnumbered advance British retreated across the bridge.

Account of John Pitcairn

What happened next is best described by John Pitcairn:

“Six companies of Light infantry were detached by Lt Colo Smith to take possession of two bridges on the other side of Concord…when we were advanced about two miles of Lexington, intelligence was received that about 500 men in arms were assembled, determined to oppose the Kings troops, and retard them in their march. On this intelligence, I mounted my horse and galloped up to the six Light Companies.

When I arrived at the head of the advance Company, two officers came and informed me, that a man of the rebels attempted to shoot them, but the piece flashed in the pan. On this I gave directions to the troops to move forward, but on no account to fire, or even attempt it without orders; when I arrived at the end of the Village, I observed drawn up upon a Green near 200 rebels; when I came within 100 yards of them, they began to file off towards some stone walls on our right flank.

And then…

The Light Infantry, observing this, ran after them. I instantly called to the soldiers not to fire, but surround them and disarm them, and after several repetitions  of those positive orders to the man, not to fire, etc. some of the rebels who had jumped over the wall fired four or five shots at the soldiers, which wounded a man of the Tenth and my horse was wounded in two places, from some quarter or other, and at the same time, several shots were fired from a meeting house on our left. Upon this, without any order or regularity, the Light Infantry began a scattered fire, and continued in that situation for some little time, contrary to the repeated orders continued orders both of me and the officers that were present…”

The Retreat

With the “Shot heard ’round the world,” the Revolutionary War began. The British began a long and costly retreat back to Boston. During the retreat, Major Pitcairn had his horse shot out from under him. One version claimed the horse carried a brace of highly decorated Scottish pistols that the rebels captured. Then Israel Putnam carried them throughout the war, including at Bunker Hill. Another version has it that they were captured in the British baggage train, but there would have been no baggage train for a day expedition that expected to return to Boston. However, while the pistols do in fact exist and are displayed in Lexington, the crest on them is not that of Pitcairn, and there was more than one horse lost that day.

British forces were now ensconced in Boston, completely surrounded by rebel forces that cut off all avenues of advance. While they still controlled the seas and could be supplied by boat, they could not move freely outside Boston by land.

Bunker Hill

On June 17, 1775, the British moved against rebel entrenchments on Breed’s Hill (mistakenly called Bunker Hill, even at the time). The American forces held fast against two British attacks. At this point, both sides had fallen into disarray. Large numbers of colonists deserted as they ran out of ammunition. The British in turn had suffered devastating casualties.  British Commander in Chief Sir Henry Clinton had sent over 400 regulars and additional marines from Boston to bolster a third assault. The bayonet was the focus of the third assault.

The Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull

Major Pitcairn, commanding the Marines, including his 21-year-old son William, landed at the South End of the Charlestown peninsula and made his way to the battlefield.  In blistering and debilitating summer heat, they pushed through a line of infantry falling back under fire. He ordered them to “Break and let the Marines through.” According to one story, probably apocryphal, he threatened to “Bayonet the buggers” if they did not move.

The Fog of War

The narration at this point becomes a bit cloudy. Tradition states that he was shot by Peter Salem, one of several black soldiers who fought in the battle, mortally wounding him with a shot in the chest as he topped the crest of the redoubt. However, the British version claims he was shot at the bottom of the hill. But in any event, it is certain that Pitcairn was seriously wounded multiple times, one being a shot to his breast. While it is entirely possible that Salem did fire the fatal shot, in the confusion and smoke of the battle, it could easily have been fired by anyone. Pitcairn would have been a target for numerous riflemen.

John Trumbull depicted the scene in his famous painting of the Battle of Bunker Hill, portraying both Pitcairn and Salem. Unfortunately, Trumbull took serious artistic license with the setting. He tried to lump the entire battle and its personalities into one tiny space and moment of time. No extant image of John Pitcairn exists, and his son David modeled for the painting.

In spite of his numerous wounds, Pitcairn did not immediately die. His son William carried him off the field and then returned to the battle, saying “I have lost my father.” Showing the fondness that his Marines felt for him, some replied “We have all lost a father!” Transported by boat back to Boston, he was taken to a house on Prince Street, in the North End. Amazingly, given his injuries, he was fully conscious. A realist, he knew he would not likely survive.

Death of John Pitcairn

General Gage sent Dr. Kart, a personal physician. Major Pitcairn refused treatment until he put his affairs in order. Once done, Dr. Kast examined him, and pulled off his waistcoat, a fatal mistake. Apparently, the waistcoat had stopped up the chest wound, and when pulled away, he immediately began to hemorrhage. In spite of this he survived long enough to have the bullet removed, keeping in mind that there were no anesthetics in the 18th century. Two hours later, however, he died.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Family, friends and enemies alike mourned Maj. John Pitcairn. His remains were interred in the crypt of Christ Church where he remains to this day. One story has it that in 1791, someone shipped his coffin to London for burial in a vault belonging to a brother and son, but Boston tradition denies this.

John Pitcairn Descendants

In the early 1740s, John Pitcairn married Elizabeth “Betty” Dalrymple. John and Elizabeth had several sons and four daughters. His son William, as noted, joined the Royal Marines and was with him when he was killed. Sometime between 1775 and 1779, William won promotion to captain. He died in London in November 1779 of an unknown cause.

His son David became a noted physician at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, and his son Alexander entered the British legal profession. His son Thomas retired as a lieutenant colonel in the British Army. All four of his daughters, Annie, Katherine, Johanna and Janet married army or naval officers.

Another son, Robert Pitcairn, served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. On July 3, 1767, while on board the sloop HMS Swallow, Robert, then 15, stood watch. He spotted an unknown island in the South Pacific. The captain magnanimously named the island Pitcairn Island in his honor. Pitcairn Island would later become famous as the scene of the Bounty mutiny. In January 1770, Robert served on board an East India Company ship when it vanished, lost with all hands.

Shaw Descendants

Samuel Shaw, the youth whose life Major Pitcairn almost certainly saved from a one-sided duel, served as a colonial officer throughout the Revolutionary War. In 1784 he sailed to China as George Washington’s Consul to China. His father, Francis, died on Oct. 18, 1784 and laid to rest in Copp’s Hill Burial Ground. His third great grandson, Col. Robert Gould Shaw, commanded the 54th Massachusetts Colored Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Civil War.

artist-home-shaw-memorial

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, on Boston Common.

Peter Salem was born a slave in Worcester, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on Oct. 1, 1750. In 1775 he was sold to Lawson Buckminster, who when appointed a Major in the Continental Army, emancipated Peter so he could serve in the army. He fought in several early battles of the Revolution and received an honorable discharged in 1779.  Salem served another three-month term in 1780. He settled down in Salem, married in 1783, moved to Leicester and struggled financially. He died in a poorhouse in Framingham in 1816.

Peter Salem

Time has not been kind to Major Pitcairn in his own country of Scotland. All vestiges of the Pitcairn family in Dysart, Scotland have disappeared, along with the memory of his name. In a curious twist of history, his former enemies better remember Maj. John Pitcairn in a country he never planned to call his own.

Major John Pitcairn is a distant cousin of the author (14th Cousin, 8 times removed). Somewhat ironically Major Pitcairn fought against 7 of the author’s relatives at Concord Bridge, 5 on Battle Road, and 12 on Breed’s Hill.

The author and his wife Anne were married in Christ Church (Old North Church).

Images: Revere House By Beyond My Ken – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77978509.

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Sherman Adams, the New Hampshire Logger Who Ran the White House

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Sherman Adams, a grocer’s son turned log driver, catapulted into the White House after a dozen years in politics. He served as President Eisenhower’s chief of staff, perhaps his most trusted advisor and the second most powerful person in Washington.

Some people, especially members of Congress, hated him for his abrupt manner. Others, including Eisenhower, were devoted to him.

Sherman Adams

Eisenhower called him “My right hand man, the only person who really understands what I am trying to do.”

Described as spare, steely-eyed, 140 pounds, Adams had such a horror of wasting time that he didn’t say hello when he answered the telephone. He simply expected the person on the other end to start talking right away.

He was viewed as so powerful that a standing joke went, “What if Adams should die and Eisenhower becomes President of the United States?”

And then in 1958 he lost it all because of a coat.

Sherman Adams

He was born Jan. 8, 1899, in his grandfather’s Baptist parsonage in East Dover, Vt. His father, a grocer, moved the family to Providence, R.I., where Adams grew up. He went to Dartmouth College, where he headed the Outing Club.

“Some fierce, moody New Hampshire demon burned in Adams in his youth,” wrote Richard Strout for the New York Times in 1956. Strout noted Adams was so driven he once hiked 83 miles in 24 hours.

When the U.S. entered World War I. he left college to join the Marines. He then returned to Hanover and earned a degree in economics.

Adams then got a job as a walking boss, supervising far-flung logging camps in the northern woods. But he also helped out on river drives. “Being a little guy, he’d be right up to his belly in that cold water,” an old woodsman told Time. 

He rose through the rugged lumber business to treasurer of the Parker-Young Co., in Lincoln, N.H. Parker-Young understood the value of political connections, and encouraged Adams to run for office. In 1940 he won the first of two terms as a state representative, serving as Speaker of the House in his second term. Adams then ran for and won a seat in Congress in 1944.

After just one term he ran for the Republican Party’s nomination for governor and lost. He tried again in 1948 with a happier outcome.

As governor, he earned a reputation for frugality. He brought his lunch to work. On disappointing days in the corner office he might come home at night, stomp by the dinner his wife had made and retire to his room without a word.

A New Era

A seemingly minor change ushered in a new political era. New Hampshire House Speaker Robert Upton was peeved the 1948 New Hampshire primary had gone unnoticed in the recent presidential election. He sponsored a bill to replace the name of delegates to the presidential convention with candidates’ names. Adams grumbled that it wouldn’t make any difference, but he signed it anyway.

It made a difference.

New Hampshire always held its primary early, at Town Meeting time. The reason? Towns didn’t see any reason to heat the meeting house twice in winter.

That first- in-the-nation presidential primary became a bellwether for the election. It was said for decades that no one could win the party’s nomination without winning New Hampshire. The primary also gave obscure New Hampshire politicians like Sherman Adams a career opportunity. As a liberal Republican he liked Ike more than the conservative senator from Ohio, Bob Taft. And so he campaigned for Eisenhower, who won the primary and put his trust in Sherman Adams.

Eisenhower himself changed something else when he won election. He created the chief of staff job. He’d had great success with his military chiefs of staff, and intended to replicate it as president. He ran his administration, unlike his democratic predecessors, by delegating responsibility through clear channels of authority. Sherman Adams stood at the top of that channel.

President Eisenhower

As Chief of Staff

Reporters described Adams as having the dedication of a vestal virgin and the temperament of a grizzly with a barked shin.

Adams rubbed many people the wrong way. He often replied to requests with one word, “No.” Thus he got the nickname,  “The Abominable No Man.”

Part of his job was to iron out differences within the administration. He brought together department and agency heads to negotiate a solution. If they didn’t come up with one, he would write it himself.  “And his is the one that goes to President Eisenhower marked with the all-important scrawl: “O.K., S.A.,” reported Time.

He fiercely protected the president’s time. Strout, in his New York Times profile of Adams, described how one day Nestor Hill of Hyannis, Mass., caught a 100-pound halibut. He decided to bring it to President Eisenhower. Accompanied by his congressman, Hill brought the fish to the West Wing in a wooden crate filled with ice. Adams interceded, telling him to get the damn thing out of the crate. Then he posed for a picture with the fish so Eisenhower wouldn’t have to.

Sometimes he was too fierce. He once emerged from his office to find two secretaries crying. He retreated into his office, where his assistant told him he had been abrupt and somewhat rude. Adams asked what he should do. “I think you ought to say something to them,” the assistant said. So Adams went out again and said, “Hiya, honey,” according to a 1956 story in Time magazine. That brought on another avalanche of tears.

The Vicuna Coat

Sherman Adams had another side, as well. He was passionately loved classical music. He also showed up at the White House on weekends in suede shoes and a sport coat and drove a sporty roadster convertible.

Bernard Goldfine, a Massachusetts textile manufacturer, had been having problems with the Federal Trade Commission. He asked Adams to intercede, and gave Adams a valuable rug and a vicuna coat. Made with the fine, silky wool of the delicate camel-like animal in the Andes, it was a luxury item that cost $895 in 1958.

Washington columnist Jack Anderson broke the story of the vicuna coat in 1958. It happened at a bad time for Adams. During the Truman presidency, Republicans in Congress had attacked the Democratic administration for influence-peddling. Now that a Republican sat in the White House, Democrats smelled blood. A House subcommittee looked into the affair.

Adams, who later admitted “mistakes in judgment,” said he never intended to do anything to help the friend who gave him the coat. Goldfine eventually went to jail for tax evasion and was fined $110,000.

At first, Eisenhower defended him. In a televised statement, he called Adams “imprudent.”

“But I like him and I need him,” Eisenhower said.

It wasn’t enough. The press went into a feeding frenzy, bringing pressure on the White House to fire Adams.  Time magazine reported,

Privately, bitterly. Dwight Eisenhower described it as “the most hurtful, the hardest, the most heartbreaking decision” of his 5½ years in office. The decision: to ask for the resignation of hard-bitten little Sherman Adams, Assistant to the President, next to Ike the most powerful man in the Administration, and the only person of whom Dwight Eisenhower had ever said, “I need him.”

Sherman Adams supervising construction of Loon Mountain.

Sherman Adams Goes Back to the Slopes

Adams returned to New Hampshire and began building Loon Mountain Ski Resort. He had skied avidly since he was 17, and the demise of the logging industry was hurting his hometown of Lincoln.  Adams put on snowshoes and identified ski trails, then supervised construction of 12, along with two lifts and a toilet. He served as president and general manager of Loon Mountain for nearly 20 years.

Well into his 70s, Adams would show up at the office at 6 a.m. and, in the winter, make two-mile ski runs, according to his New York Times obituary. He died of renal failure on Oct. 27, 1986, at the age of 87.

Images: White House By Ad Meskens – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12211575; construction of Loon Mountain By Ericshawwhite – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33190299.

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