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

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

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

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

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

And now it’s back.

Origins of Cohasset Punch

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

View from the Yacht Club in Cohasset, Mass.

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

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

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

Cohasset Punch Gets a New Home

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

Minots Ledge Light

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

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

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

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

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

A modern bottle of Cohasset Punch

William H. Crane

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

William H. Crane, actor and godfather to Cohasset Punch

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

New England Rum

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

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

Bottle of Cohasset Punch from the 1980s

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

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

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

1.5 ounces of dark or New England rum

1 ounce of vermouth (sweet or dry)

Half a lemon

1-2 dash orange bitters

One Del Monte canned peach half

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

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

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Aaron Lopez, Colonial Newport’s Preeminent Merchant

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

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

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

Aaron Lopez

Aaron Lopez Comes To Newport

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

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

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

Anna Lopez and her son, Joshua, by Gilbert Stuart

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

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

Trading Success

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

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

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

arrangements.

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

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

Newport, 1730. Courtesy New York Public Library.

Aaron Lopez, Philanthropist

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

Touro Synagogue. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

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

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

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

***

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

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Ward McAllister’s Newport Summers

In Gilded Age Newport, Rhode Island, an invitation to one of Ward McAllister’s summer picnics could make or break a hopeful social climber.

One contemporary aptly described this era as “an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of dazzling wealth, restless endeavor, and rivalry.”[1] American ideas about class were changing, especially in cities. Old and new money mixed like oil and water. The increase in American fortunes necessitated stricter guidelines for social acceptance. Enter McAllister, a controversial figure who coached this evolving class of insecure millionaires in Old World aristocratic customs.

Ward McAllister

Ward McAllister’s Newport Roots

McAllister held a rapt audience among the exclusive “Four Hundred” in New York, but he held court on Aquidneck Island. Part of his success stemmed from experience. McAllister’s visits to Newport predated the New York crowd by decades. He was so intimately entwined with the city’s 19th-century history that one local newspaper claimed the Georgia-born, world-traveling transplant as “a native Newporter.”[2]

A Ward McAllister picnic at Bayside Farm

McAllister’s childhood summer vacations illustrate a very different kind of Newport — one still on the rise and not yet “the most luxurious and stratified resort in America.”[3] They demonstrate some of the features that attracted early tourists to Aquidneck Island. They also sketch a portrait of a loving extended family, ordinarily scattered hundreds of miles apart, who associated the area with togetherness and refuge. Finally, these summers were formative for McAllister’s later social ascent.

Newport’s “Rise and Fall and Rise” [4]

At the outbreak of the American Revolution, Newport was the fifth largest city in the colonies.[5] As participants in the Triangle Trade, the port city’s merchants made connections with their counterparts in other colonial maritime hubs, notably Charleston. They dealt in molasses, sugar, rum, slaves and other lucrative goods.

The arrival of 10,000 invading British troops changed everything. The Revolution bled Newport of half of its population and most of its prestige. As historian Jon Sterngass notes, “No city seemed less likely to prosper in the first third of the 19th century.”[6]

Yet it did. A newly-independent United States found its footing, and Americans gained the means to travel for pleasure. Wealthy southerners with pre-war connections to and fond memories of Newport returned to the city, rescuing it from a decades-long economic depression. One of these early tourists was Ward McAllister’s grandmother, Sarah Marion Mitchell Hyrne Cutler.

View of Newport

“The Duchess” [7]

Born in 1761, Sarah was no stranger to vacationing in Newport. Joining other prominent South Carolinians, Georgians, and Virginians, the Marions trekked north to enjoy Aquidneck Island’s congenial social scene, natural beauty and cool climate. Newport saw such an influx of southern families seeking reprieve from summer heat and mosquitos that the resort became known as “the Carolina hospital.”[8]

The death of Sarah’s first husband, Dr. Alexander William Hyrne, left her a widow at 20—and a very wealthy one. This tragic event could have cemented South Carolina as her lifelong sphere of influence. However, Sarah’s periodic visits to the Northeast had proved influential, if not fateful.

Sarah Cutler

When Sarah fell in love with Benjamin Clarke Cutler, the sheriff of Norfolk County, Mass., she knew marrying him would mean moving north. Undaunted, she said her vows in Charleston in 1794 and embarked for Boston, where the couple settled happily. They had five children: Mary (called Eliza), Julia, Benjamin, Jr., Louisa and Francis Marion.[9]

“A Meteor-Like Life”[10]

Each of the Cutler children grew up, married, and moved away. Sarah welcomed her children’s spouses with open arms and cherished the births of her grandchildren. However, she lamented that changing circumstances would force her “to lead a meteor-like life by wandering from one star to another” to see her scattered family.[11]

Louisa moved farthest from her Boston home. She married Matthew Hall McAllister, Jr., of Savannah in 1823. A private lawyer when he married, McAllister rose to become U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia in 1827. He also served as a Georgia state senator in 1834 and mayor of Savannah in 1837. Louisa and Matthew Hall McAllister were married for more than 40 years. They had five children: Harriet, Julian, Matthew Hall III, Ward, Francis Marion and Benjamin.[12]

For Louisa, the distance between Georgia and the great cities of the Northeast, where her siblings had settled, seemed interminable. “I wish I did not love you all so much,” she once wrote to her sister, “as I am to be deprived of your loved society… The kindness of strangers and friends excite[s] my warmest gratitude, but the love of my own is more precious than rubies. I do not love the South, but[,] as it is my home[,] must try to make the best of it.”[13]

Louisa Cutler McAllister at 64

Louisa’s husband was sensitive to her homesickness. Consequently, as Ward McAllister would later write, “this best of fathers sent his family North every summer, with one or two exceptions, to Newport, R.I.”[14] Summers on Aquidneck Island were a salve for the pain of great geographic distance.

“Our Terrestrial Paradise”[15]

Newport’s early tourists typically stayed in one of the city’s many boarding houses. Or they rented cottages on The Point or on Thames Street. Others, like McAllister’s extended family, preferred more space, opting to stay in farmhouses on the outskirts of Newport proper.[16]

The Cutlers, McAllisters, Francises and Wards rented each summer from the Bailey family, not far from Third Beach in Middletown. When the weather cooperated, they enjoyed being outside. Ward McAllister—called “Wardy” in family letters— remembered flying kites and building crackling fires under the stars at Purgatory Chasm, a commanding rock formation overlooking Sachuest (Second) Beach.[17]

Purgatory Chasm

The rock formations of Paradise Valley were another favorite spot. As Ward’s uncle, Rev. Benjamin Clarke Cutler, wrote to a parishioner in Brooklyn:

In this retreat every thing is delightful. This morning I spent alone, rambling over the most glorious battlements of ocean scenery I ever saw. It is a place called Paradise, an immense pile of rocks, affording a view of the whole southern end of this fine island, and of a noble amphitheatre of sea and sky. Around are highly cultivated fields and farms, and near by, entirely sequestered, are groves of forest trees, affording a perfect shade, broken only to give a view of the neighboring ocean. The morning has been peerless; a cool, bracing air from the northwest, a bright sun and a clear sky, relived only by a few silvery clouds. I confess I have not for years been so elevated by natural scenery…[18]

From Paradise to Purgatory by William Trsot

Family letters — full of charming, funny stories of antics, outings, and visitors — capture the happy cacophony of the Bailey farmhouse. After long days exploring the Island’s natural beauty, everyone crowded inside and drifted to sleep on mattresses stuffed with corn husks.[19]

Town and Country

From the 1830s onward, Newport’s renown grew, but its atmosphere remained largely communal. Summer visitors of different backgrounds, regions and social classes sailed, swam and fished together. They might go into town to visit the Redwood Library or attend a theatrical performance. Or they’d dance at the immensely popular “hops” hosted at hotels. Construction of those hotels heralded the crescendo of Newport’s antebellum tourism scene.[20]

Young Julia Ward Howe, Ward McAllister’s first cousin and another visitor to the Bailey farm, captured the resort’s antebellum character, and her family’s place in it. The future activist, writer and “Battle Hymn of the Republic” lyricist observed, “Newport is quite full, visitors flocking from every direction… As for us, we eat, we drink, and sleep abundantly, ride and walk constantly, and are neither important, influential, witty nor wise.”[21]

Refuge from Cholera

In the summer of 1832, family matriarch Sarah Cutler again “united the various branches of her family under one roof.” But this was no ordinary season in Newport.[22] Cholera had arrived in North America.

Carried on westbound ships, the horrific disease struck Canadian ports first and New York City shortly afterward. July and August 1832 saw roughly 2,500 cholera deaths in New York alone. The victims included Lt. Col. Samuel Ward, Jr., Sarah Cutler’s brother-in-law.[23] Those too poor, sick or otherwise unable to flee the crowded city fell victim to this vicious, stigmatizing and rapidly spreading infection.[24] “The accounts from New York keep us in a constant state of uneasiness,” Louisa McAllister wrote to her sister Eliza, who remained in the city, “and we long to gather our dear group at Bailey’s.[25]

Map of the New York City cholera epidemic

Newport was safer than New York, largely due to city officials’ quick enforcement of a strict embargo. No ships could come into port or leave. Even mail delivery paused, triggering increased anxiety at the Bailey farm. However, these precautionary measures proved effective. By the epidemic’s end, only nine reported cholera deaths had occurred in Newport. [26] Those lodging with the Baileys that summer were spared.

Ward McAllister’s New Age in Newport

Even years later, Newport remained central to Ward McAllister’s adult life. In 1852, he married Sarah Taintor Gibbons, whose father had loaned “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt money to buy his first ferryboat. The couple purchased a 50-acre parcel called Bayside Farm. Like the Bailey farm, it was located outside Newport proper and offered gorgeous views of the water. Prior to settling in New York in the late 1850s, the growing McAllister family lived at Bayside for nine months out of the year.

As the Civil War loomed, Newport’s social atmosphere shifted. Despite connections drawn by trade relationships and trans-regional marriages like Sarah Cutler’s and Louisa McAllister’s, southern newspapers urged their readers to shun northern resorts to demonstrate Confederate patriotism.[27] The “Southern contingent” that had fundamentally shaped the early tenor of 19th-century Newport’s tourism industry was quickly outnumbered by the northern elite.[28]

Watching a regatta from Castle Hill

Meanwhile, Newport’s reputation grew. So did the crowds. Fashion drove the center of Newport’s social life into the city limits, first to grand hotels like the Ocean House and, later, to subscription-based entertainment spaces like the Newport Casino and private homes.

Newport Cliff Walk ,1885

The “galaxy of most elaborate country houses” that later came to dominate proud Bellevue Avenue and Ocean Drive were “walled in” from prying eyes and parvenus “with an almost feudal aggressiveness.” [29] After the Civil War, as historian Rockwell Stenstrud writes, “Newport [became] unrecognizable to anyone who had been away for a period of time.”[30]

Adapting to the Gilded Age

McAllister, more savvy than often credited, remembered the old days. Witnessing Newport’s evolution had primed him to marry the Island’s antebellum charm with the “cutthroat culture” that permeated Gilded Age resort life at his Newport farm.[31] He did it with picnics.

Ward McAllister, seated with guests at a picnic

Guests included New York’s most powerful families—Astors, Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Wetmores. They picnicked alongside diplomats, state and local political figures, and even artists. However, McAllister once commented, “do not for a moment imagine that all were indiscriminately asked to these little fêtes… if you were not of the inner circle… it look the combined efforts of all your friends’ backing and pushing to procure an invitation for you.”[32]

During McAllister’s exclusive summer picnics, Bayside Farm’s rustic white farmhouse and picturesque livestock in the pastures—no matter that they were rented specifically for the occasion— created a “romantic, out-of-town feeling” that seemed like a novelty.[33] Guests feasted on rich delicacies and enjoyed champagne, claret and madeira from McAllister’s meticulously-curated collection. Afterwards, there was dancing in the barn, where a brilliant chandelier hung from the rafters.

Ward McAllister’s picnic table

Between food, decorations, table settings, music and other essential elements for hosting 140 people, one of McAllister’s picnics cost roughly $27,700 in today’s money.[34] The price, as one newspaper editorialized, “makes a plain, hungry, pickle-and-sandwich picnicker… smile.”[35]

A pinnacle example of McAllister blending his early memories with higher social stakes came in 1882. He organized a luncheon for President Chester A. Arthur overlooking Paradise Rocks.[36] To the “commander-in-chief of the 400,” the “noble amphitheatre of sea and sky” that his family had once enjoyed was unquestionably fitting for the commander in chief.[37]

The Last Valley-Paradise Rocks by John LaFarge

Ward McAllister’s Newport Summers

No matter how radically Aquidneck Island changed, McAllister and his extended family could always “make a little visit to Bailey’s and see the dear group in imagination.”[38] The social arbiter’s authority in Gilded Age Newport gains richness when understood as the culmination of generational visits throughout the resort’s 19th-century history. On Aquidneck Island, he and his family created memories, with enduring influence, to last a lifetime.

Ward McAllister at an 1890 picnic

***

Walk in the Footsteps of Heroes.
Your Guide to the Living History of New England’s Revolution is Here.

Go beyond the history books and stand where America’s fight for independence began. This isn’t just a guide—it’s your time machine. The newly updated third edition of Revolutionary War Sites in New England is packed with everything you need to plan an unforgettable journey through the past.

Fully Updated & Expanded: This third edition includes new itineraries, a hundred new landmarks and even more stories to enrich your adventure.

Click here to order a paperback or ebook.

Footnotes and an image guide are in a separate post. Click here to see them.

Emily Parrow earned her M.A. in History from Liberty University in 2021 and wrote her thesis on Ward McAllister and nineteenth-century Newport, Rhode Island. She currently serves as Manager of Individual Giving at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s Home, in Lenox, MA. Emily’s thesis can be accessed here: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/masters/719/

This story updated in 2026.

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The Jeremiah Lee Mansion, Marblehead’s Crown Jewel

When Jeremiah Lee lost his fortune in the American Revolution, he left behind a magnificent Georgian mansion in Marblehead, Mass., that remained little changed for centuries.

Jeremiah Lee by John Singleton Copley

Jeremiah Lee was one of the great lost leaders of the American Revolution. On the night of April 18, 1775, he was meeting with fellow Marbleheader Elbridge Gerry, Sam Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Mass. When Paul Revere warned that the red coats were coming to arrest them, they hid in a field. Lee caught pneumonia and died soon afterward.

Lee had accumulated an enormous fortune as a shipping merchant. He owned a warehouse and wharf, a fleet of trading ships and fishing vessels. He employed a great many sailors and tradesmen. In 1768 he built the 16-room trophy house in Marblehead that stands today.

Lee knew that British rule would soon ruin him and his fellow Marblehead merchants. So, he became a representative to the rebel Congress and began preparing for war. He imported cannons, powder and shot from Europe. He also established connections in Maryland and Virginia to procure supplies for war. Lee raised a regiment of mariners and fishermen, and he would have led it had he lived. Now known to us as Glover’s Regiment, it ferried Washington across the Delaware on that fateful Christmas Eve.

The Jeremiah Lee Mansion

It took two years to build the mansion, from 1766 to 1768. Lee spared no expense in appointing his showplace. He had mahogany wainscotting imported from Santa Domingo, ordered wallpaper from England and hired talented local craftsmen to carve the woodwork.

In the Great Hall, the ornately carved wooden mantle over the fireplace formed the focal point of the room. The Lees entertained dignitaries including the Marquis de Lafayette and George Washington in the Great Hall.

Martha Lee by John Singleton Copley

Lee worked from home in his counting room, where he met with his ship captains and other employees. His double-door safe is still in the chimney.

The house fell out of the Lee family’s hands when the fortune dwindled away, and in 1909 the Marblehead Museum (now the Marblehead Museum and Historical Society) took ownership.

The U.S. government designated the Jeremiah Lee Mansion as a National Historic Landmark in 1960 as one of the finest Late Georgian houses in the United States. It has changed little since Jeremiah Lee lived in it (no restrooms, for example).

King Hooper Mansion

Roughly 50 yards away from Lee’s mansion is the King Hooper mansion, named for Robert “King” Hooper, son of a candle maker who had built himself a fortune in shipping. Hooper and Jeremiah Lee were brothers-in-law. Unlike Lee, however, Hooper thought his best hope for preserving his fortune lay in befriending British officials during the Revolution. It’s unclear how deeply their political differences affected their personal lives.

Hooper, too, lost his fortune in the war.

The Marblehead Arts Association owns the Hooper Mansion, which you can visit year-round from 12-5, Wednesday through Sunday.

Marblehead

You’ll want to stroll around Marblehead’s dense waterfront historic district and look for signs of its Revolutionary past. You might look up and see a plaque on a house telling you it’s Founding Father Elbridge Gerry’s birthplace.

Old Fort Sewall offers a stunning view of Marblehead’s harbor, now a public park with underground, bomb-proof quarters.

Fort Sewall

Stop by Abbot Hall, where you’ll get a good sense of Marblehead’s Revolutionary history, with exhibits, busts and paintings, including The Spirit of ’76. Abbot Hall, part museum and part municipal office, is open during the week.

Marblehead Harbor

Stop in a local bakery to pick up a Joe Frogger, rum-and-molasses cookies named for Joseph Brown. He won his freedom from slavery by fighting in the Revolution. Afterward he ran a tavern by a frog pond and served the cookies made by his wife, Lucretia.

If you’re ready for lunch and you want to mingle with the locals in a no-frills (and we mean no-frills) atmosphere, check out the Driftwood. (No dinner and no credit cards). 63 Front St. The Barnacle serves lunch and dinner at 141 Front St. If you’re in town during a winter storm, there’s no better vantage point to take it in than the Barnacle.

Five Things You’ll Remember About the Jeremiah Lee Mansion

The old Lee Mansion, sometime before 1906

The Grand Staircase

Once you enter the large entryway, you can’t help but notice the grand staircase. Local craftsmen carved the ornate balusters in different patterns.

The Lee mansion staircase.

Trompe L’Oeil

From the outside, the house looks like it was made of stone, but it isn’t. Lee had workmen pain the wooden exterior to look like marble, a feature of the so-called Georgian Gothic style of architecture.

Furnishings and Art

The Lee Mansion has a fine collection of early American furniture, though only a few pieces are original to the house. It includes pieces by cabinetmakers from Boston, Salem and Marblehead. The yellow silk damask furniture in the guest bedroom is especially stunning. The great John Singleton Copley painted two portraits that hang in the Lee Mansion – one of Jeremiah, one of his wife Martha.

Third-floor furnishings

Wallpaper

The exquisite, hand-painted wallpaper is original to the house. It’s still intact, a testament to the durability of paper.

The Garden

Since 1936, the Marblehead Garden Club has maintained the Lee Mansion Gardens. The plants and designs are inspired by history. Visitors can walk, picnic or rest on the benches.

If you visit the Lee Mansion…

Since the Lee Mansion Hasn’t changed much since Revolutionary times, it’s not accessible for people with mobility issues. The garden, however, is partially accessible.

The mansion, at 161 Washington St., is open for guided tours from June 1 to October 31 at 10 am. Tours run every hour on the hour, Wednesday through Saturday.

Website: www.marbleheadmuseum.org/properties/lee-mansion/

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Learn more about Marblehead’s Revolutionary history in this complete guide to Revolutionary War sites in New England. Brought to you by the New England Historical Society. Click here to order your copy in paperback, here to order an ebook.

Images: Lee Mansion exterior By Daderot at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17977334. Hooper mansion By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9928890. Fort Sewall By Zandcee – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11376896. Marblehead Harbor By massmatt – https://www.flickr.com/photos/momentsnotice/50299834536/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=123587128.

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The John Brown House: Keeping Up With the Joneses

You could say the elegant John Brown House in Providence was built on the backs of enslaved Africans. But the story of John Brown’s involvement in the slave trade is a little more complicated than you might think.

Brown invested in a privateer ship, the Marlborough, that disrupted the British slave trade in a big way during the American Revolution. He did it out of patriotic, rather than altruistic motives. Brown’s privateersmen destroyed one of the top British slave trading posts in Africa. They also captured several armed British slave ships and sent them to North America.

Then they sold the human cargo into slavery. But in the process of capturing British slave ships off the West African coast, they discouraged British investment in slaving. The number of enslaved Africans shipped across the Atlantic fell probably by 60,000 or more during the early American Revolution, according to historian Christian McBurney.

So it is true that the John Brown House was, in part, built on the backs of enslaved Africans.

John Brown

John Brown was born into one of Rhode Island’s leading families in 1736. His ancestor, the Rev. Chad Brown, had followed Roger Williams to Providence. The Brown family prospered. John’s father and uncle traded in cocoa, rum, molasses and human beings.

The only known image of John Brown, a miniature by George Malbone

As a young man, he and his three brothers — Nicholas, Joseph and Moses — ran several kinds of business. They had sugar plantations in the Caribbean, and they engaged in merchant shipping, which included slaving and the China trade.

In 1764, they invested in a slaving voyage by the Sally. Plagued by delays, violent insurrection and an outbreak of dysentery, it ended in disaster. The Sally misadventure turned Moses Brown against slavery. He converted to Quakerism, founded an abolitionist society and drafted laws banning slavery. John, however, continued to bankroll slave expeditions.

John Brown ardently supported the cause of independence for Americans, white ones, at least. In 1772, he instigated the Gaspee Affair, burning a British revenue cutter that had zealously enforced customs laws.

During the American Revolution, the minuscule Continental Navy could do little against the mighty Royal Navy. So the Continental Congress decided to allow privateering — legal piracy against the enemy. It proved an effective weapon against British sea power and resulted in the capture of desperately needed gunpowder, weapons and food. Privateering also made John Brown rich.

The John Brown House

After the war, John Brown decided to build a trophy house high on College Hill. He sent his son and son-in-law on a trip to measure the dimensions of mansions, their porticoes and their staircases, along the Eastern Seaboard. He wanted to build one just as impressive.

Builders finished the 12-room Georgian house in 1788. The John Brown House exceeded the grandeur of his wealthy contemporaries’ homes, according to John Quincy Adams. He called it “the most magnificent and elegant private mansion that I have ever seen on this continent.”

Brown hired craftsmen to carve the mahogany woodwork. He filled the house with fine furniture from Providence’s leading cabinetmakers. Paintings, fine china, silver and wallpaper finished the look.

In 1901, local industrialist Marsden J. Perry bought the John Brown House. He renovated it with modern bathrooms and central heating. John Nicholas Brown then bought the house in 1936, and six years later the Brown family donated it to the Rhode Island Historical Society. The historical society restored it to its original Georgian decor.

The Neighborhood

John Brown played a big role in founding Brown University, then known as the College. His house borders the campus. Brown has several buildings on the National Register of Historic Places: University Hall, the oldest building on campus, and the elaborate Thomas F. Hoppin House.

The John Brown House and the college belong to the College Hill Historic District, which comprises a number of well-preserved 18^th– and 19^th-century homes and buildings, as well as the Rhode Island School of Design.

The John Brown House sits just off Benefit Street. A concentration of restored colonial homes, churches and museums line the street, nicknamed “the Benefit Mile.” The Providence Preservation Society makes available a brochure for a self-guided walking tour of the area as well as “A Guide to Providence Architecture.”

Five Things You’ll Remember About the John Brown House

China

The museum’s emphasis changed over the years and now addresses John Brown’s involvement with slavery. A decorative platter depicts the castle in Ghana that held enslaved people awaiting their voyage across the Atlantic.

Woodwork

Inside the house, Providence’s excellent woodworkers met up with the mahogany then available because people clear cut mahogany trees to make room for sugar plantations. Spectacular carved woodwork resulted, notably in the impressive staircase.

Wallpaper

The bright, pictorial wallpaper in early America house museums often surprises visitors. The wallpaper in the John Brown House is no exception. The home’s interior has striking reproduction wallpaper throughout. In the front parlor, for example, blue and gold French wallpaper features Eurasian Red Squirrels. They inspired the Rhode Island Historical Society’s squirrel logo.

But you’ll find the most remarkable wallpaper in the Washington Wallpaper Room. The John Brown who bought the house in the 1930s commissioned an artist, Nancy McClellan, to paint an epic mural of Washington’s first inauguration in New York, from his arrival by sea to his parade through Wall Street and then to church.

The original John Brown, a huge fan of George Washington, would have been pleased.

Carriage

The carriage in the carriage house, known as “John Brown’s chariot,” is said to be the oldest made in the United States of America. George Washington rode in it. Though he made two fact-finding and promotional tours of New England as president, he only came to Rhode Island once, in 1790. The feisty little state hadn’t ratified the Constitution the first time he came round, hence the snub.

When he did come to Providence, he stayed at an inn. But he came over to John Brown’s house for tea, and he rode around in John Brown’s chariot.

The Root That Ate Roger Williams

Roger Williams was buried in an unmarked grave in 1683, somewhere in a corner of a yard. Two hundred years later, some people tried to dig him up to give him a proper burial.

They started digging, and they found the earth’s texture indicated a body had been buried there. But no body. Instead, they found an apple tree root. Because of its shape, they assumed the root had consumed Roger Williams.

The Rhode island Historical Society has the root in its possession, and displays it in the basement of the John Brown House.

The root that ate Roger Williams. 19th century image.

If you visit the John Brown House…

Parking in Providence is no picnic, but the John Brown House has a parking lot to the side.

The entrance is a little tricky. You don’t enter through the front door, but on the side and to the rear.

The museum opens Tuesday through Saturday in the summer. Call ahead to check tour times, or you can take self guided audio tour. The museum is open for free on Gallery Night – the third Thursday of the month.

The historical society hosts concerts on the lawn for six weeks in July and August. They start at 6:30 p.m. On addition, Providence is a foodie town, and if you’re into Italian dining, check out Atwells Avenue.

Website: http://www.rihs.org/museums_jbh.html

52 Power Street

(401) 273-7507

Christian McBurney’s recent book, Dark Voyage, An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade (Westholme, 2022), tells the tale of the remarkable voyage of the Rhode Island privateer Marlborough to West Africa.

Images: John Brown House: By Filetime – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97569835. Frontal view of the John Brown House By Filetime – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97569827

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Rhode Island Privateer Marlborough Attacks Britain’s Slave Trade in Africa in 1778

On Jan. 2, 1778, the Rhode Island privateer Marlborough, with 96 Rhode Island and Massachusetts sailors on board, began its voyage to the west coast of Africa. It was one of the most extraordinary voyages of the American Revolutionary War.

Why would a privateer sail to far-away West Africa? The story starts in Providence, R.I., with John Brown, the main investor and mastermind behind the voyage. He belonged to the Brown family of Providence, among the most successful merchants in Rhode Island. In 1772, he organized and led the burning of the British revenue cutter Gaspee, an important early violent act of resistance against Great Britain. The Gaspee affair led to the Revolutionary War.

John Brown

Genesis of the Marlborough

In 1776 and 1777, Brown got rich investing in privateers. During the war, the Continental Navy was no match for the Royal Navy, the world’s strongest maritime power. America’s most effective weapon at sea by far was privateering—the operation of privately owned commerce raiders. From British ships, Americans captured gunpowder, weapons, food and other supplies they desperately needed.

Privateers were not pirates. Privateers were commissioned by the Continental Congress to attack only enemy shipping. Once a privateer captured an enemy vessel, the captain of the privateer would typically select from his ship a prize master and a small prize crew. They would sail the captured vessel to a safe U.S. port so an admiralty court could adjudicate the prize. The admiralty court would conduct a trial by jury to determine whether the privateer had lawfully taken the prize from an enemy combatant. If it was, it would be sold at public auction. The net proceeds would be divided. Typically, 50 percent would go to the privateer’s owners. The rest would go to the privateer’s officers and crew pursuant to a formula agreed to before the voyage.

The 12-gun privateer brig Independence, on the left and commanded by Thomas Truxton, captures a larger and better armed British merchant ship sailing from the Caribbean, in 1777. Watercolor by Irwin Bevan (1852-1940). (Naval History and Heritage Command).

In the early years of the war, American privateers easily seized hundreds of poorly-defended merchant ships sailing between Britain and both the Caribbean and Canada. Brown grew rich. But the days of easy conquests eventually ended. Powerful Royal Navy warships began protecting commercial vessels in convoys and seizing privateers. Most crews of captured privateers went to British prisons in New York or back in Britain. Many of the prisoners died of malnutrition and disease.

Off to Africa

Brown decided in the second half of 1777 that, with his new wartime profits, he could afford to construct a large privateer that carried at least 20 cannon. Such a privateer could avoid capture by a British sloop-of-war and defeat armed merchantmen. But it could still be captured by a 32-gun Royal Navy frigate, many of which were hunting for privateers in the British Caribbean and on the Canadian coast. What to do? Brown had the brilliant idea of sending his new privateer to the coast of West Africa.

Brown figured, correctly, that the Royal Navy was overstretched. It had few ships remaining to patrol the far-away African coast and British interests there.

The Atlantic Slave Trade

At the time, one of the worst tragedies in world history continued unabated: the Atlantic slave trade. European and American merchants sent ships across the ocean to purchase African captives. They then carried them to the Caribbean islands, Brazil and the North American mainland. There the Africans were forced into a lifetime of unpaid work and permanent bondage. The captives were taken away from their families forever, and thousands of them died during the voyage across the Atlantic, called the Middle Passage. It was a horrible, abominable trade, and it is mind boggling to believe it ever existed, especially by today’s moral standards.

Diagram of a slave ship from the Atlantic slave trade. It shows how kidnapped Africans were jammed into the ship’s hold.

In the first three-quarters of the 18th century, Great Britain led the world in slave trading. The year 1775 marked the zenith of Britain’s slave trade, led by merchants from Liverpool, Bristol and London.

A British slaving voyage typically had three legs, thus giving rise to the name “triangular trade.” Starting from Britain, the slave ship sailed to the African coast carrying goods mainly manufactured in Britain, such as muskets, gunpowder and textiles, used to trade for African captives. Then the ship carried the captives across the Atlantic to a Caribbean possession of Britain—such as Jamaica, Barbados or Antigua. There the surviving captives were ultimately sold to local plantation owners. Next, the ship’s captain purchased sugar—and related products, rum and molasses—to bring back to Britain to sell to British wholesalers.

Enslaved workers planting sugar cane in Antigua.

Sugar

Sugar was the key. Europe craved sugar, and the English in particular loved sugar in their cookies, cakes, tea and coffee. The value of sugar imports, and molasses and rum, from the British Caribbean by far outstripped the value of imports of tobacco from the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, and rice from South Carolina.

Slave labor was indispensable to the production of sugar. Plantation owners in the Caribbean islands used gangs of enslaved workers working in brutal conditions to cultivate, harvest, and process sugar cane into sugar.

The continuation of slave labor depended on the African slave trade. This was because sugar plantation owners needed to replenish their slave stock each year by purchasing new captives.

Enslaved people in the British Caribbean, due to poor food, primitive living conditions and overwork, left them vulnerable to deadly diseases. The mortality rate was shocking, much worse than for the enslaved in North America. As a result, British Caribbean planters had to import massive numbers of African captives just to maintain their enslaved populations.

What would become the United States and later became the United States overall played a comparatively small role in the African slave trade, outfitting only about 2.4 percent of all slaving voyages. Rhode Island dominated the slave trade among the thirteen mainland colonies. More than half of the North American slave trading voyages in colonial times emanated from Rhode Island (primarily Newport), with the rest coming mostly from New York City, Boston and other coastal New England ports.

John Brown

What led John Brown to his idea to send a privateer to distant Africa was his familiarity with the African slave trade. First, coming from Rhode Island, he could speak with returning slave ship captains to discover that few or no British warships patrolled the West African coast.

Second, Brown was himself an experienced slave trade investor. He had personally invested in two African slaving ventures, one in 1763 and another in 1769.

Brown was also aware, from reading newspapers, that beginning in early 1777, American privateers started to capture British slave ships. In most cases, American privateers captured British slave ships with hundreds of African captives on board just as they were about to reach their destinations in the British Caribbean. The American privateers typically sailed the seized vessel to a French Caribbean island and sold the human cargo there to French plantation owners.

Brown was not motivated to attack Britain in Africa from humanitarian impulses to aid Africans. But he did want to harm British economic interests and, at the same time, earn profits doing so.

A Privateer in Africa

A privateer sent to Africa could attack and plunder slave trading posts established by British slave traders. Such a post typically contained warehouses full of British manufactured goods intended for the local slave trade. The privateersmen could carry off this booty and load the goods into the holds of their privateer. In addition, African captives kept in pens at the slave trading posts, intended to be sold to passing British slave ships, could also be seized. Moreover, British slave ships with its human cargo on board could be captured.

Kidnapped Africans bound for slavery

If Brown was really fortunate, he figured, his privateer could capture a large British slave ship filled with African captives, ready to sail for the Caribbean islands. A prize crew from Brown’s privateer would be ordered to sail the slave ship in the Middle Passage and try to arrive at a safe port, in one of the French-controlled Caribbean islands or in American-held Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga. There the surviving enslaved Africans on board could be sold. Then Brown and his investors could really cash in.

Brown completed construction in Providence in late 1777 of a new 20-gun, three-masted brig. He named it the Marlborough. After breaking through a blockade of British warships (a close call), the privateer sailed to Martha’s Vineyard. There, 24 more crew members enlisted for the voyage. It then departed for Africa on Jan. 2, 1778.

The Story of the Marlborough

My recent book, Dark Voyage, An American Privateer’s War on Britain’s African Slave Trade (Westholme, 2022), tells the tale of the remarkable voyage of the Rhode Island privateer Marlborough to West Africa.

Most of the book is about the Marlborough’s voyage. In short form, here are some of the notable events from the voyage.

The New England privateersmen sacked and took out of operation one of the top British slave trading posts in Africa. They also captured several armed British slave ships and sailed them as prize ships back to North America.

One British slave ship, when seized, had more than 300 African captives on board. It was about ready to sail for the British Caribbean, just as John Brown hoped. The Marlborough returned to New Bedford, Mass., with 26 African captives on board.

A number of African leaders cooperated with the New Englanders, including King Tom. He had served as an intermediary for European and American slave ship captains for decades. Several British slave ship captains greedily agreed to cooperate with the New Englanders by giving them valuable intelligence. They did it even though that meant committing treason against their own country.

Impact of the Marlborough

The Marlborough damaged the British slave trade more than any other American privateer. In my book, I argue that the actions of the officers and sailors of the Marlborough, as well as those of other American privateersmen who intercepted British slave ships at sea, had a stunning unintended consequence. The British slave trade by 1778 had not only been disrupted, it had virtually collapsed. American privateersmen interfered with the conduct of the British slave trade to such an extent that British slave merchants substantially reduced their investments in African slave voyages. By 1778 the reduction was more than 70 percent. As a result, during the early years of the Revolutionary War, the number of enslaved Africans forcibly shipped across the Atlantic Ocean declined dramatically. It fell perhaps by as much as 60,000 and probably more.

On the other hand, the men of the Marlborough and other American privateersmen, when they did capture British slave ships, became crass slave traders, hoping to sell their captives for as high a price as possible. The privateersmen can thus be viewed as heroes or villains—or both.

The American Revolution, with its rhetoric emphasizing liberty and freedom, ultimately led virtually all states to abolish the African slave trade. However, due to a compromise with South Carolina in negotiating the U.S. Constitution, and some illegal slave trading, total abolition didn’t happen until January 1, 1808.

Christian McBurney, the author of this story about the Marlborough and the related book, has authored six books on the American Revolution and co-authored two on Rhode Island in World War II. He is also the editor and publisher of a leading Rhode Island history blog at smallstatebighistory.com. This story was updated in 2025.

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