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1774

Israel Potter, Revolutionary POW, Hobnobs in Europe With a King and 2 Founding Fathers

Israel Potter, a Revolutionary War POW, spent 50 years in exile in England, where he met King George III, Benjamin Franklin and a founding father imprisoned in the Tower of London.

Israel Potter

The British had captured Potter shortly after the Battle of Bunker Hill and took him to England aboard a prison ship.

After returning home in 1825, he published his amazing story, which sold for 28 cents throughout New England. He wrote it to persuade Congress to grant him a pension in his old age.

Herman Melville then picked up the story and wrote a fictionalized version of it, adding encounters with Ethan Allen and John Paul Jones.

In his book, Israel Potter wrote he couldn’t return home because he couldn’t afford the voyage for the wife he married in England or their children. The story made some sense: the U.S. government did pay for prisoners of war. But historians have uncovered another reason for Israel Potter’s long stay in England, one he conveniently left out: He probably spied for the British.

Israel Potter

He claimed he was born in Cranston, R.I., on Aug. 1, 1744, to reputable parents who loved and indulged him – until he turned 18. He then fell in love with a neighbor’s daughter, but his parents forbade him from seeing her. So he ran away from home.

Israel Potter spent the next few years clearing land in Northern New Hampshire, working as a surveyor, hunting, trapping and trading with Indians. After nearly three years he returned home to his parents, who had given him up for dead. They still refused to let him marry the girl he loved, so he again ran away – this time to sea.

But the ship burned, and Israel Potter, a castaway, signed on to two whaling voyages. When he returned to Rhode Island he got a job with a farmer in Coventry in 1774 and enlisted in the local militia.

When he learned of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he marched with his regiment to Boston. There he immediately went to work digging breastworks for the Battle of Bunker Hill. During the battle he fought valiantly and received a musket ball in his hip and one in his ankle.

Meeting the King

King George III

He then volunteered to crew aboard the Washington, a tragic mistake that ruined his life. The ship was to patrol Boston Harbor, preventing British ships from bringing supplies to the besieged soldiers. But the British quickly captured the Washington, and Israel Potter ended up in a floating prison in Portsmouth.

He escaped, and ultimately managed to find work with Englishmen sympathetic to the American cause. Then his tale grows completely implausible: He got a job with Princess Amelia, sister of King George III, for three months. Following that, he went to work for King George at Kew Garden. One day he was gravelling a walk when he was

unexpectedly accosted by his Majesty: who, with much apparent good nature, enquired of me of what country I was– “an American born, may it please your majesty, was my reply (taking off my hat, which he requested me instantly to replace on my head) — “ah! (continued he with a smile) an American, a stubborn, a very stubborn people indeed! — and what brought you to this country, and how long have you been here!” “The fate of war, your Majesty–I was brought to this country a prisoner about eleven months since,” –and thinking this a favourable opportunity to acquaint him with a few of my grievances, I briefly stated to him how much I had been harrassed by the soldiers–“while here employed they will not trouble you,” was the only reply he made, and passed on.

Potter concluded the king was less tyrannical and more open-minded to the Americans than he had heard in the colonies. His sympathetic portrayal of King George suggests something else: he had, by then, shifted his loyalties to the British.

Unpacking the Lies

Two centuries later, David Chacko and Alexander Kulcsa grew obsessed with the story of Israel Potter. They found his publisher, Henry Trumbull, had a reputation in his day as a prolific literary liar. Trumbull once published a narrative with 22 chronological errors on a single page.

And so the two men sought to uncover the truth about Israel Potter. They found, first of all, he was not born of reputable parents on Aug. 1, 1744. He was born in 1754, the illegitimate son of Amey Ralph. Eventually the Potter family, prominent Quakers, adopted him, perhaps because Mr. Potter was his real father.

Other, early parts of his tale ring true. Surveying did take place in northern New Hampshire when he claimed he had done that work. He probably told the truth about the ship that burned. But if he had taken the whaling voyages he said he took, he would have returned in 1777 – well after the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Kulcsa and Chacko found another problem with his tale of Bunker Hill: No Rhode Island regiments fought in the battle. Not one. They chalked it up as a complete fabrication.

The British did capture the Washington, though Israel Potter left out one important detail: the crew had mutinied on its first voyage. And he probably did end up on a floating prison in Portsmouth, England.

But what of his encounter with King George? Probably another lie.

Meeting Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (detail) 1767

“Curiously, when Potter’s memoir grows most impossible, it becomes, in a hectic sense, most true,” wrote Kulcsa and Chacko.

Israel Potter wrote that he began to think about surrender when he got a message from Squire Woodcock, an English radical sympathetic to the American cause. He went to see him and found two other Yankee sympathizers: John Horne Tooke and James Bridges. They asked him to go to Paris for them, secretly. They gave him a letter to take to Benjamin Franklin in the false heel of a boot.

Israel Potter did visit Benjamin Franklin, who saved the letter he brought. But the letter wasn’t what Potter said it was. He claimed it represented the views of various British ministers.

The letter, wrote Chacko and Kulcsa, was no more than an introduction and an attempt by certain parties to establish a surreptitious contact with the American commissioner. It certainly didn’t come from radical English gentlemen, as it was written in an unintelligible hand and filled with misspellings.

Franklin dismissed the letter as a clumsy attempt to spy on him. At the bottom of it he wrote,

“Israel Potters, pretended Letter from some Gentm. in England.”

Franklin gave Israel Potter money to return home to Rhode Island – but he stayed in England.

Henry Laurens

Another odd event suggests Israel Potter had worked on behalf of the British until the American Revolution ended: His visit to Henry Laurens in 1781.

Laurens had been vice president of South Carolina and president of the Continental Congress. The British captured him at sea and kept him under close watch in the Tower of London. “No one was permitted to visit him without a warrant from one of the three secretaries of state,” wrote Chacko and Kulcsa. But Israel Potter paid him a visit.

Why? The British wanted to persuade Laurens to defect. He didn’t, though Israel Potter may have had a hand in their efforts. Laurens wrote of a visit by a young man named ‘Bradfille,’ who offered to help him and asked him many questions. His guards later told him ‘Bradfille’ – perhaps Israel Potter – was a British spy.

Israel Potter lived in relative comfort in London until 1783, when the war ended – and the British, presumably, no longer had any use for him.

His life then spiraled downward into poverty and wretchedness. He worked as a coachman, then a brickmaker, then a chair mender and, finally, a rag picker. He married a poor but respectable woman, who gave him 10 children. He buried seven of them under the age of five, two before the age of 20. Then he buried his wife.

That part of his story is probably true, concluded Chacko and Kulcsa. A writer interviewed Israel Potter around 1819 and described him as a scavenger.

Home At Last

Finally he and his surviving son Thomas went to the American consul in London – probably because he learned Congress had agreed to fund pensions for Revolutionary War veterans. Israel Potter was so weak and ill he had to crawl up the steps. The consul cheerfully agreed to help him. On April 5, 1822, he set sail for his native land.

Israel Potter hoped an inheritance awaited him in Cranston. It didn’t. His brothers had sold all his father’s property and divided the proceeds among themselves.

In hopes of getting a pension from Congress, he wrote, or rather dictated to Henry Trumbull, The Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter.

Congress didn’t believe his story either, and denied him his pension. He spent the rest of his days eking out a meager living repairing chairs in Rhode Island. He probably died in 1826, his gravesite unknown.

With thanks to Chacko, David, and Alexander Kulcsa. “Israel Potter: Genesis of a Legend.” The William and Mary Quarterly 41, no. 3 (1984): 365-89. doi:10.2307/1922730. This story updated in 2022.

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The New Hampshire Volcano That Promised Untold Riches

As early as 1735, residents living along the New Hampshire-Vermont border reported a New Hampshire volcano erupted violently.

The inhabitants of Fort Dummer in Brattleboro, Vt., gave the story its greatest boost when they reported one night that they heard rumbling. The earth shook, they said, and flashes of light shot through the sky.

It was so jarring that the people at the fort sent out an expedition the next day to scour Mount Wantastiquet in New Hampshire. The mountain, also known as West River Mountain, lies on the border between Hinsdale and Chesterfield.

Near the top of the mountain, the searchers found an indentation and some strange rocks, which they took as signs of an eruption.

Volcanic Scam

The volcano next played a part in an apparent scam carried out by a travelling con man working the area around 1774. He persuaded several residents they could find silver in the earth under the site of a volcanic eruption. For a fee, he would instruct them where to dig.

After prolonged mining at the mountain’s top and at its base, the townspeople concluded that there was no silver to be had. The only thing that had been had was them.

But the story of the volcano went unchallenged.

The New Hampshire Volcano

Full Moon Over Kilauea (1887 painting by Jules Tavernier.

A lawyer named Daniel Jones had colleagues who’d heard about the New Hampshire volcano. They asked him to investigate and report back. So he traveled to the mountain and reported on his findings.

He then found the mountain 12 miles north of the Massachusetts line on the east side of the Connecticut River and opposite the mouth of the West River.

“On the south side of the Mountain, about eighty rods from the summit, there has been an eruption,-perhaps not within the present, or last century,” he concluded. “The peasants, in the neighborhood of the Mountain, discovered this place, and became possessed with the idea of gold dust being in the mountain.”

Those peasants, he wrote, believed the gold dust melted into a solid body by the extreme heat of the mountain’s explosion. As a result, they went to work in search of the supposed treasure.

“After fruitless searches, they formed larger connections, entered into covenant with the proprietors of the land, and with one another, to make search for all kinds of mine and mineral.”

Jones concluded something had exploded. He didn’t believe, though, that he saw definitive evidence of a volcano.

Timothy Dwight and the Volcano

The volcano next crops up in Timothy Dwight’s Travels in New England and New York, published in 1821.

Timothy Dwight

Dwight, the president of Yale College, visited Hinsdale, N.H., in 1798 to examine the mountain. He’d heard it was ‘to a very humble degree volcanic.’

Dwight went to see a Mr. Butler of Hinsdale, and he took him to West River Mountain. About 150 feet from the summit they found a pit, 60 or 70 feet deep. The inhabitants had dug it with the hope of finding ‘some species of ore.’

But Dwight reported they could only look down into the pit.

He heard the volcano story from Mr. Butler and some people he’d found at an inn. They told him that 23 years ago, ‘the people of the neighborhood were alarmed by a loud noise, proceeding from this mountain, and resembling the sound of cannon.’

The Pine Tree

“A Mr. Barrett, who visited the place, found a hole, forced through the mountain by a blast, evidently as he thought the result of intestine fire,” wrote Dwight.

Barrett described the hole as about six inches in diameter. Nearby, a pine tree was covered with a black mineral substance. The substance had been ‘forced violently out of the passage,’ he said. It consisted ‘chiefly of melted and calcified iron-ore strongly resembling the scoriae of a blacksmith’s forge.’

Someone had cut down the tree, however, but Dwight saw the substance stuck to the rocks and the earth. The substance couldn’t be broken off without a violent effort, he wrote.

“From the whole appearance it was completely evident that it was driven against the cliffs in the same liquid state,” he wrote.

And, he saw two holes below the pit that he decided animals couldn’t have made.

“They must have been formed by a blast of air from the bowels of the mountain,” Dwight then concluded.

The Volcano Dies Out

Dwight brought specimens of the vitrified ore to Yale, along with some yellow ochre he found.

Over the next several decades the New Hampshire volcano received publicity in newspapers throughout America.

Several decades later, geologists concluded the New Hampshire volcano was not a volcano. Instead, they theorized, the residents heard the sound of a rock slide, and in the darkness they mistook it for a volcano.

But then the story of the volcano gained credibility through repetition over many years until geologists could thoroughly investigate it.

But those who would love a New Hampshire volcano should take heart. Geologists describe the Ossipee Mountains, north of Lake Winnipesaukee, as the remains of a volcanic ring dike.

Ossipee Mountains

Ossipee Mountains: By Jrclark at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15450885

This story was updated in 2022.

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In 1774 Joshua Edson Reads About His Death

In October of 1774, Benjamin Edes and John Gill printed a letter that told of a startling sight in Bridgewater in the newspaper they published, the Boston Gazette:

Passing through this town the other day, I observed the at a distance forward the appearance of a person hanging by the neck on a gallows about 15 feet high; upon advancing, I perceived a considerable discoloration of his face, which I suppose was owing to a stagnation of the blood and should have remained ignorant of his person, had I not discovered an inscription over his head, in large capitals, thus, Col. E_s_n. I found he had hung there some time, and was informed that being a traitor to his country, there was no one, (not even his dearly beloved lieutenant colonel) who would vouchsafe for the kindness to cut him down, so that he would in all probability be soon reduced to a skeleton. This ignominious fate its thought will soon be the portion of several others of the same club, and be a solemn warning to everyone who seek to be aggrandized upon their country’s ruin.

Fortunately for Edson the story was a warning not a prophesy. If Edson needed any reminders, here was a warning in black and white about how precarious his position had become. After a 35-year career as judge, church deacon, colonel of the militia and popular elected member of the General Court, it seemed there was at last no more room for him in Bridgewater.

Joshua Edson Joins the Council

East view of the village of North Bridgewater, Mass, 1844. (Boston Public Library)

In the summer of 1774, Britain’s Parliament put Bridgewater’s Joshua Edson in this very tight spot. Parliament passed the Massachusetts Government Act, which called for the colonial military governor to appoint the members of the Massachusetts Council, one of the colony’s governing bodies. This changed the prior practice of having cities and towns elect their representatives to the council, though the General Court was still elected.

Edson had been elected by popular vote more than ten times to represent Bridgewater in the colonial legislature. So, it may not have seemed a controversial decision when Governor Thomas Gage chose to name Edson to the Massachusetts Council. But it proved otherwise.

These newly appointed councilors gave a focal point to Massachusetts’ struggling patriot movement, and protesters like the Sons of Liberty demanded the councilors resign. Most did, but Edson did not. He is probably best described as a moderate political figure of that time.

Educated at Harvard, he prospered as a farmer and a merchant. Historians suspect he was unhappy with the treatment of Massachusetts by the English parliament, but unconvinced that open rebellion was warranted, or likely to succeed.

A Frost Sets In

Edson’s relations with his neighbors grew frosty. One oft-repeated story tells of the time he tried to lead a hymn in the church where he was a deacon. Traditionally the deacon would read aloud and the congregation sing with him. This time as Edson read the lines, the congregation remained silent.

One night in the early fall of 1774, a crowd gathered outside his home. Members of the crowd accused him of being a traitor, and demanded he resign his position on the new council. Edson managed to quiet the crowd, and it dispersed. But the experience must have convinced him that he could no longer survive in Bridgewater.

Days later Edson saddled his horse and rode out of Bridgewater, headed to Boston where’s Gage’s British troops could offer him protection. When word spread that Edson was leaving, a large group of his neighbors lined the streets to watch him pass, though they let him through unmolested. He left his wife Abigail and son Joshua behind.

Losing it All

By the time war broke out, Edson was safely under the protection of British troops. When the British were driven from Boston in 1776, Edson was among the evacuating Tories who went to Halifax, and from there to British-held Long Island.

The Continental Congress ordered Edson’s estate seized. His house on Bridgewater’s common, known today as the Tory House, was sold.The Congress then included Edson’s name on a list of loyalists who were permanently banished from returning to their homes.

Living now under the protection of the British Army, Edson twice had to appeal to the British government for financial support, as he had lost everything.

Edson would died before the end of the war, most likely in 1778 in Long Island, a one-time respected and prosperous citizen of Bridgewater reduced to living in exile, deprived of even seeing his family for the last five years of his life.

If you enjoyed this story, you might like Jolley Allen Missed Evacuation Day in 1776 and it Cost Him Everything.

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Six Places That Raised a Liberty Pole

Beginning in 1766, the liberty pole symbolized dissent from Great Britain, but over the years it took on different meanings for the people who raised them.

The first liberty pole in America was actually a tree. On Aug. 14, 1765, the Sons of Liberty hanged stamp collector Andrew Oliver in effigy from the boughs of a large elm in Boston. Forever after it’s been known as the Liberty Tree.

When someone raised a red flag – a gift of John Hancock — at the top of the tree, it meant the Sons of Liberty should meet. British soldiers later hacked it down when they occupied Boston.

As tall as 170 feet high, the liberty pole sprang up in towns throughout New England as the British Parliament imposed unpopular taxes and restrictions on the American colonies. Sometimes it stood next to a liberty tree. Sometimes it replaced the tree.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, commenting on symbolic reisistance to Great Britain, wrote, “In this department of silent propaganda no single venture paid richer dividends than the Tree of Liberty.”

“Raising the liberty pole,” 1776 / painted by F.A. Chapman ; engraved by John C. McRae, N.Y.

The Liberty Pole

The Romans erected the first liberty pole after assassinating Julius Caesar. The murder plot’s leaders met at the Roman Forum, where someone placed a Phrygian cap from a freed slave on top of a pole to show the Romans won their freedom from Caesar’s tyranny.

In the British North American colonies, the liberty pole began to spring up in response to specific events. Shutesbury, Mass., for example, erected a liberty pole on Sept. 5, 1774, the day the Continental Congress first met.

When the pole (or tree) was capped with a red Phrygian cap or a flag, it meant the townspeople should assemble and vent their anger with the British government.

The liberty pole reappeared even after the Revolution ended. It showed resistance to the Whiskey Tax and support for the French Revolution. When the Sedition Act passed, the liberty pole reappeared — and disappeared. Federalists who supported the Sedition Act cut them down in Wallingford, Vt., and in Vassalboro, Maine.

By the mid-19^th century, people erected liberty poles as focal points for Fourth of July celebrations or as symbols of loyalty to the United States. Sometimes they stood for symbols of dissent and had nothing to do with patriotism.

The Phyrgian cap survives too — on the official seals of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Army and the state flags of West Virginia, New Jersey and New York.

Here, then, are six places where a liberty pole once stood. If you know of any others, please mention them in the comments section.

Newtown, Conn.

On May 19, 1774, 1,000 residents of Farmington, Conn., erected a liberty pole, burned an effigy of Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and a copy of the Boston Port Act.

By October 1774, Connecticut newspapers reported, “Liberty-poles from 100 to 170 feet high, are erected and erecting in most of the towns of Connecticut.”

Newtown, Conn., put up a liberty pole to commemorate the nation’s centennial in 1876. It wasn’t the town’s first liberty pole, though; a resident remembered one in his childhood, sometime in the 1830s. The wooden pole fell to the weather and the town replaced it several times. Today, Newtown’s flagpole stands as the town’s most prominent landmark.

Old Town, Maine

A disagreement among two factions of the Penobscot Indian tribe resulted in two liberty poles on their reservation.

Sometime between 1848 and 1859, the Indians on the Penobscot Reservation in Old Town, Maine, split into two groups. It started when the old sachem, Atien Swassin, was accused of drunkenness, adultery and corruption. A public council convicted him and removed him from office, but his followers remained loyal to him. They formed the Old Party and erected a liberty pole and flag.

Those loyal to the new sachem formed the New Party and also erected a liberty pole and flag.

The two groups argued and fought until the Old Party sent a messenger to several Indian tribes in Canada, inviting them to participate in a fight on the reservation, also known as Indian Island. The tribes refused, but held a Great Fire Council to try to reconcile the two parties.

The council sent two envoys to the Penobscot Reservation, and they agreed to abolish the parties, cut down the liberty poles and live in peace. But a wily leader of the Old Party persuaded the New Party to cut down its liberty pole first. After they cut it down, three members of the Old Party hugged their liberty pole so now one could cut it down without cutting their arms.

Eventually the three Old Party members repented and apologized, and the two parties managed to get along after that, according to Sprague’s Journal of Maine History in 1917.

Bedford, Mass. (Still Raising a Liberty Pole)

The liberty pole appeared in many Massachusetts towns, including Taunton, Concord, Middleborough, Barnstable, Granville and Vineyard Haven. But as far as we know, only Bedford still commemorates the raising of the liberty pole two Saturdays before Patriots Day.

The tradition began in 1965, a year after the Bedford Minuteman Company of reenactors formed. Now, minutemen reenactors from all over New England gather on the Town Common and march with fife and drum to Wilson Park. There they watch a minuteman shinny up a 25-foot pole and place a red cap on it. Then a British soldier disrupts the celebration.

The Bedford Liberty Pole Capping Parade and Ceremony is one of the opening event for all of the minuteman companies of the region;

Portsmouth, N.H.

A tall flagpole with an eagle, a shield and a carved Phrygian cap marks the spot of Portsmouth’s first liberty pole. It lies between what is now Prescott Park and Strawbery Banke.

During the run-up to the American Revolution, a tidal inlet separated the two places, and a swing bridge connected them.

On Jan 9, 1766, New Hampshire’s Sons of Liberty erected a liberty pole by the bridge to show their opposition to the Stamp Act. They hoisted a banner that read, ‘Liberty, Property and No Stamp.’ They also forced the stamp tax collector, George Meserve, to resign.

From then on, Portsmouth called the bridge Liberty Bridge.

Portsmouth put up a flagpole to honor the original liberty pole on the Fourth of July in 1824, and then replaced it with another in 1899.

At that point, Portsmouth also filled in the inlet, dismantled the Liberty Bridge, tore down dilapidated old buildings and created Prescott Park and the Strawbery Banke house museum.

The flagpole, though, still stands in the original spot.

Newport, R.I.

Newport’s patriots assembled under the liberty tree on a triangular piece of land at the corner of Thames and Farewell streets. William Read had donated the land to William Ellery and other Sons of Liberty shortly after the repeal of the Stamp Act. There, the patriots held mock funerals for liberty and hanged unpopular Loyalists in effigy. They also put up a liberty pole at a distance from the tree and put their colors on both whenever appropriate.

When the British occupied Newport, they cut down the liberty tree. Newport patriots planted an oak tree in its place to commemorate their victory in the American Revolution. It lasted until the Civil War, and another oak was planted in 1876. That one lasted only 21 years. The fourth liberty tree, a leaf beech tree, was planted in 1897 and still stands. In 1919, Henrietta C. Ellery deeded the property and the tree to the city. It is now William Ellery Park, a small pocket park.

Waterford, Vt.

Capt. John Wyman was a belligerent Revolutionary War veteran extremely proud that he had fought at Bunker Hill. After the war he moved to Dummerston, Vt., and said he wanted to be buried on a hill on his farm. He got his wish, at least until the town moved his body to a cemetery. While he rested on his farm, however, townspeople erected a liberty pole next to his grave.

However, we couldn’t figure out where the old revolutionary had been buried, and Dummerston bears no sign of a liberty pole. Nor could we find evidence of liberty poles in Bennington or Wallingford, where Vermonters had erected them. We hit pay dirt, though, in the Lower Waterford section of St. Johnsbury.

The Caledonian Record reported on May 17, 1861, “People of all parties assembled at Lower Waterford to participate in the ceremony of giving to the breeze the American flag … and to declare their devotion to the constitution and the Union.” They formed into a hollow square around the liberty pole, and ‘the flag was brought forth and flung to the breeze…’

Howard Coffin, in his book, Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont, refers to a photo that shows the flagpole in front of the Congregational Church across from the old hotel. Both still stand.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Six Historic Barns

Thousands of New England’s historic barns have survived severe weather, westward migration, suburban sprawl and competition from corporate agribusiness.

Often connected to other farm buildings and the farmhouse, they usually had many uses. Historic barns sheltered dairy cows, teams of oxen, horses, hay and crops.

Some historic barns, on the other hand, were built specifically for one purpose, like Connecticut tobacco or Vermont dairy cows.

But typical New England farm families grew a variety of crops and livestock, making and selling anything to support the farm. A New England farmer might sell maple syrup, timber, clothing, hard cider and barrels. He might run a tavern, or rent out his rooms or his beehives.

Big House, Little House…

Northern New England’s historic barns often connect to the house and to other buildings, Thomas L. Hubka described such connected farm buildings as ‘Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn.’

Though you might assume New Englanders connected their houses to outbuildings because of the weather, you would be only partly right.

According to Hubka, the agricultural reform movement beginning in the early 19^th century inspired New England farmers to make their farms more efficient.

So they connected their houses with such outbuildings as barns, ells, chicken coops, sugar houses, woodsheds, workshops and carriage sheds.

Farming as a way of life has waned in New England, but the public appetite for locally grown, unadulterated food is sparking a revival on a smaller scale.

If you have any favorite historic barns in New England, please share them in the comments section.

Windsor Tobacco Barn

Two of Windsor’s historic barns that sheltered shade tobacco. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Tobacco loved the sandy soil of Windsor, Conn., and in 1640 farmers began planting tobacco seeds from Virginia. As cigar smoking grew popular in the early 19th century, Connecticut farmers began to specialize in cigar binders using Broadleaf and Havana Seed. Eventually, they grew a light, tasty tobacco under tents of hand-woven cloth (hence ‘shade tobacco’) to use as wrappers.

By the middle of the 19th century, Connecticut emerged as a leading producer of tobacco. The tobacco Valley ran from Springfield to Hartford.

Tobacco farmers relied on seasonal labor from college campuses in the South, including Morehead College, which sent a young Martin Luther King, Jr., to Simsbury. They also used local child labor. World War II and the passage of child labor laws forced farmers to rely on immigrant workers from Puerto Rico and Jamaica.

Health concerns and competition from mass-produced cigar wrappers caused Connecticut’s tobacco acreage to dwindle.

Windsor produced more shade tobacco than anywhere else in the state. So in 1988, the Connecticut Valley Tobacco Historical Society formed in Windsor to preserve artifacts from the era. The historical society’s Luddy/Taylor Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum is located in Northwest Park in Windsor.

135 Lang Road, Windsor, Connecticut

Sabbathday Lake Barns

The Shakers built these classic examples of New England historic barns. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Ann Lee founded the Shaker sect, formally known as the The United Society of Believers, in Manchester, England, in 1847. Lee broke away from the Quakers, and her followers were known as the ‘Shaking Quakers’ because of their ecstatic dancing during Sunday meeting.

After Ann Lee – known as ‘Mother Ann’ – went to prison for her beliefs, she came to America with eight followers in 1774.

The Shakers expanded to 19 utopian communities throughout the Northeast and Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia and Florida. They preached a doctrine of celibacy, self-sufficiency, pacifism, communal living and equality between the sexes.

In 1794, the Shakers formed Sabbathday Lake near New Gloucester and Poland, Maine,

By the 1840s, the Sabbathday Lake Shakers had carved a large enterprise out of the Maine forests. They owned 1,900 acres and 26 large buildings, including barns, a meetinghouse, a blacksmith shop and a large dwelling house.

The Sabbathay Lake Shakers built their barns in the New England style, the most common found in the region. Larger than typical barns in other parts of the country, they have doors at the ends and basements. The Shakers built the Sabbathday Lake barns into the side of a hill, which allowed them to access the upper floor from the ground.

The Shakers peaked in the 1840s, with 6,000 members throughout the United States. Their belief in celibacy would doom them to slow, near extinction.

But for many years during the 19^th century, the simple, self-sufficient Shakers of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, sold their products to the luxury-loving guests and the owners of the Poland Spring Hotel.

707 Shaker Road, New Gloucester, Maine

Old Tavern Farm

Like many historic barns in New England, the Old Tavern barn connects to the other farm buildings.

Like many historic barns in Northern New England, the barn at the Old Tavern Farm in Greenfield, Mass., connects to buildings with other uses.

The Old Tavern Farm served many purposes over the centuries, reverting today to its original use as a bed and breakfast.

The Old Tavern Farm’s early owners supplemented their farm income by running a tavern – or perhaps it was the other way around. They served neighbors and travelers along the Old Post Road

The tavern also served as a meeting place, a courtroom and a newsroom, noted the registration form for the National Register of Historic Places. The property doubled as a military training field, sports arena, stockyard and fairgrounds.

The main house was built around 1820, but the wing was built in 1794 on a foundation built in 1740.

Samuel Hinsdale inherited the farm from his father, Mehuman Hinsdale, once taken captive by Indians in the 1704 raid on Deerfield. Hinsdale began building on the land in 1740, and by 1747 he operated a tavern.

Others ran the tavern from 1836 until 1860, when the temperance movement shut it down. The Smith family ran the 160-acre farm from the latter part of the 19th century until 1997.

817 Colrain Road, Greenfield, Massachusetts

Bennett Farm

That cupola on the Bennett Farm’s barn was once a steeple.

Ocean Born Mary’s son Thomas Wallace once owned the land in Henniker that became the Bennett Farm. The son of the legendary New Hampshire woman then sold it to Joseph Lewis in 1777. Its subsequent owners ran it as a tavern until 1848. From that point on, its owners ran it as a typical Northern New England farm.

The barn was built in 1834 as a religious meeting house. Around 1860, the Bennett Farm’s barn burned down, so the farm’s owner moved the meeting house to the farm and converted it to a barn. The top of the steeple blew off during the Hurricane of 1938, leaving a cupola. .

Mark Bennett bought the farm in 1902, and his son Stephen took over when his father died in 1925 and ran it into the 1960s. Stephen’s son now runs the farm.

“Bennett Farm as it survives today conveys the character and scale of a late 19th-early 20th century diversified family farm,” notes The National Register of Historic Places registration form.

11 Bennett Rd., Henniker, New Hampshire

Mount Hope Farm

See Mount Hope’s historic barn at the Saturday farmer’s market held at Mount Hope.

Mount Hope Farm in Bristol, R.I., includes a mansion built in 1745 and expanded in 1840 and 1895, and two historic barns built in 1860. But it also owes its significance to its storied owners and connected events.

Once the traditional seat of the Wampanoag Indians, Benjamin Church killed King Philip nearby. The colonists then confiscated the land, and the wealthy merchant and slave owner Isaac Royall, Jr., built the farmhouse in 1745. But Royall’s Loyalist sympathies forced him to move to Halifax at the outbreak of the American Revolution.

The State of Rhode Island then confiscated the land again. Proceeds from the sale of Mount Hope went to pay Continental Army officers and soldiers.

William Bradford, great, great grandson of the Pilgrim governor, bought the house in 1783, and George Washington visited him for a week there. Bradford later won election to the U.S. Senate. The farm is also known as the Governor Bradford House, though he only served as deputy governor.

In the early 1950’s, the then-owner, Rudolf F. Haffenreffer, III, deeded Mount Hope and approximately 250 acres of the original farm to Brown University.

“Today, this handsome estate with its historic mansion and beautiful gardens, is an island of tranquility in an increasingly urban landscape,” noted the National Register of Historic Places registration form.

250 Metacom Ave., Bristol, Rhode Island

Shelburne Farms Horseshoe Barn

The Horseshoe Barn at Shelburne Museum.

Cornelius Vanderbilt’s granddaughter, Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb, created a classic Gilded Age gentleman farm in Shelburne, Vt.

Eliza and her husband, Dr. William Seward Webb, bought up small farms to create their 3,800-acre estate in 1886. They hired Frederick Law Olmsted to design the winding drives, scenic vistas, parklands, gardens and a golf course.

Among Shelburne Farms’ historic barns is the horseshoe barn, not one of the original buildings designed by architect Robert Henderson Robertson. It was built later as the next generation of Vanderbilts struggled to keep up the farm.

The Webbs’ daughter-in-law, Electra Havemeyer Webb, turned Shelburne Farms into a museum. She wanted a proper setting for the carriage collection, so she searched and found a rare horseshoe-shaped dairy born in Georgia, Vt.

Because the owner refused to sell it, Electra had her staff find, move and assemble hand-hewn beams from 12 historic barns and stone from two gristmills. They finished the 238-foot-long barn in 1949.

In 1957, the museum built the annex to house 150 more vehicles added to the collection.

In 1972, the Webb descendants incorporated Shelburne Farms as a nonprofit educational organization. It has 400 acres of sustainably managed woods and a grass-fed herd of Brown Swiss cows. It’s also one of the principal concert sites for the Vermont Mozart Festival. Shelburne Farms also features an inn and restaurant, open seasonally, on the shores of Lake Champlain, tours, walking trails, a children’s farmyard and a farm store that sells, among other things, cheddar cheese.

Shelburne Farms, 1611 Harbor Road, Shelburne, Vermont

Images: Bennett Farm By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19490337; Old Tavern Farm By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24500134.

Mount Hope Barn by By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28160904.

This story about historic barns was updated in 2021.

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Johnny Appleseed, The Real Reason He Wandered

Johnny Appleseed wasn’t quite a New England version of St. Francis, wandering the countryside in rags, scattering apple seeds and befriending woodland creatures.

Oh he did wear rags, he did love animals and he did bring apples to thousands of people. And he certainly roamed the newly settled frontier.

But he did it to make money selling apples for hard cider.

And Johnny Appleseed died a wealthy man.

John Chapman birthplace in Leominster, Mass.

Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Appleseed was born John Chapman in Leominster, Mass., on Sept. 26, 1774. You can hardly miss him if you visit the city. His birthplace has a granite marker and a billboard, streets and schools bear his name and a wooden statue of him stands in City Hall.

He only lived in Leominster a few years, though. His mother died when he was very young, and his father moved to Longmeadow, Mass., and remarried. Along came 10 half-siblings, and Johnny and a half-brother left the crowded house around 1796.

At that time, New England farmers began to head west in great number, looking for better soil and bigger farms. Life on the frontier wasn’t easy, and often farmers only had hard cider to quench their thirst for an alcoholic beverage.

Photograph of John Chapman in the 1840s.

Johnny Appleseed saw his opportunity. He had a knack for predicting where the next wave of settlement would go, and he began to plant apple seeds in anticipation of the next settlers.

He didn’t scatter seeds for orchards, but planted nurseries — in western Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana. Johnny Appleseed eventually traveled as far as Ontario, Illinois and West Virginia.

Once he planted his nurseries, he built fences around them. Then he hired someone to take care of them and returned every year or two to check on his trees. The caretaker sold seeds and saplings.

He wandered because he had to to buy up inexpensive land before the next group of customers settled the frontier.

Apples

The apple industry created the myth that Johnny Appleseed brought a healthful, delicious fruit to pioneer farmers.

Johnny Appleseed

In truth, his apples had one purpose, and it wasn’t to make pies and crumbles. Farmers could only make hard cider from them.

Johnny Appleseed’s apples didn’t come from grafted trees, but from seedlings. Henry David Thoreau once wrote that apples from seeds were “sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream.”

Eight years before he died, the financial panic of 1837 took a toll on his wealth. Nevertheless, Johnny Appleseed died a rich man, owning more than 1,200 acres of prime real estate.

Bit of a Loon

Parts of the Johnny Appleseed myth do have elements of truth to them, though. He did dress in rags, sometimes even in old coffee sacks with holes cut in them for his head and arms.

Stamp.

He did it because he followed the Swedenborgian religion, and believed that the more he suffered in this world the more happiness he would experience in the hereafter. According to his obituary, he ‘submitted to every privation with cheerfulness and content, believing that in so doing he was securing snug quarters hereafter.’

Johnny Appleseed often stopped in frontier cabins to spread ‘some fresh news from Heaven.’

According to Harper’s magazine, he once lingered to hear a longwinded preacher speak to a crowd of people from a stump he used as a lectern.

The preacher urged his listeners to give up extravagance.

“Where now is there a man who, like the primitive Christians, is traveling to heaven barefooted and clad in coarse raiment?” the preacher asked

Exasperated, Johnny Appleseed put his bare foot on the stump and said, “Here’s your primitive Christian!”

Folk Hero

Johnny Appleseed shared his trees with Native Americans during his travels, and converted some of them to his religion. They in turn taught him how to heal with herbs and plants, and even hostile tribes left him alone.

He had some other eccentric beliefs, which at least one biographer attributes to a kick on the head from a horse. For example, he thought it cruel to ride a horse or chop down a tree.

Gravesite of John Chapman.

He also liked to give ribbons to small girls and entertain small boys by walking on hot coals.

Eventually his travels brought him a reputation as a healer and a folk saint.

Johnny Appleseed died around 1845, though the exact date of his death is disputed. He left his valuable nurseries to his sister.

Today, an annual Johnny Appleseed Festival draws an average of 10,000 people – held in the fall, of course, around the time of the apple harvest.

Read more surprising apple history along with historic apple recipes in the New England Historical Society’s e-book, 29 Historic New England Apple Recipes. Available now for only $2.99 from Amazon.

With thanks to MassMoments. Image of Johnny Appleseed gravesite, By Rochelle Karp – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21439692; Apples by By Leslie Seaton from Seattle, WA, USA – Newtown pippins, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33880381. This story was updated in 2022.

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