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Amesbury Mass.

Josiah Bartlett, Founding Father, Gets Used to Wrongness

Dr. Josiah Bartlett saved his own life in the same spirit he signed the Declaration of Independence: by questioning authority.

He was the first to vote for independence during the Continental Congress in 1775. He was the second to sign the Declaration of Independence. His fictional descendent starred as the fictional president of the television series, West Wing. He himself was briefly president – of New Hampshire.

Bartlett was a dedicated physician and a true citizen-legislator in the mold of Gen. John Stark. Both left their homes and affairs when their country needed them but returned as soon as they could.

Throughout his life, he depended on his own judgment rather than accepted wisdom.

“Just be wrong,” he wrote. “Just stand there in your wrongness and be wrong, and get used to it.”

Josiah Bartlett

Bartlett from an early age wanted to be a doctor.

He was born Nov. 21, 1729, on a farm in Amesbury, Mass., to a strict Puritan family. According to his biographer, from his youth he questioned Puritan doctrine and believed in the ‘free agency and moral accountability’ of mankind.

Josiah apprenticed to a local doctor and by 21 moved to the frontier town of Kingston, N.H., where he set up his medical practice.

Two years later in 1753 he developed a high fever that would have killed him had he followed the medical wisdom of the day.

His doctor ordered a ‘warm and stimulating regimen,’ but as Bartlett got worse the doctor said he would die. But Bartlett asked two young men who watched him to pour a quart of cider and give it to him in small doses. They at first refused, afraid it would kill him, but Bartlett prevailed. Throughout the night, they gave him half-teacups full of cider. The cider caused him to sweat and broke the fever.

In 1754, an epidemic of throat distemper struck Kingston. It was a serious and often fatal disease among children. Bartlett experimented with different drugs. He discovered Peruvian bark, which contains quinine, relieved the symptoms long enough to allow recovery.

His practice flourished. He was friendly and smart and interested in political affairs.

Revolutionary

Josiah Bartlett won election to the New Hampshire Legislature in 1765, but he quickly grew disillusioned with the greed of the royal governor, Benning Wentworth.

Wentworth granted a number of charters, reserving large tracts of land for himself and the Church of England. His nephew John Wentworth succeeded him as governor and continued the practice. Bartlett began to oppose Gov. John Wentworth’s policies.

Wentworth tried to coopt Bartlett by appointing him justice of the peace and a colonel in the militia. In 1775, Wentworth was run out of New Hampshire, but not before he fired Bartlett from his appointed posts.

Around then Bartlett lost his home to fire, presumably set by Tories. He was a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1775-76, the first to vote for independence. When the tally was counted, Bartlett ‘made the rafters echo with his approval.’

Detail from John Trumbull’s ‘The Declaration of Independence. Arrow points to Bartlett.

He signed the Declaration of Independence right after John Hancock; like the other signers he could have been hanged for it. He returned to New Hampshire, but when duty called he accompanied John Stark to the Battle of Bennington and tended to wounded soldiers. In 1778 he went back to the congress and worked on drafting the Articles of Confederation, but then begged off and went home.

Governor Bartlett

Though Bartlett wasn’t a lawyer, he was appointed a judge and rose to chief justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court. When New Hampshire ratified the U.S. Constitution he was elected U.S. senator, but he declined the post. Instead he became president of New Hampshire and then its first governor. Soon after retiring he died at home in Kingston, age 65.

“Unlike many others, he had no family, or party connections, to raise him to influence in society;” wrote the Rev. Charles Goodrich in 1829. “But standing on his own merits, he passed through a succession of offices which he sustained with uncommon honour to himself, and the duties of which he discharged not only to the satisfaction of his fellow citizens. but with the highest benefit to his country.”

His home in Kingston, built in 1774, is still in the Bartlett family. His descendants used to give tours throughout the year, but in 2014 the house was put on the market.

The gastropub, J. Bartlett’s Public House, located inside of the Whole Foods Market grocery store in Nashua, is also named after him. So is the town of Bartlett, N.H.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Thomas Macy Fined for Befriending Quakers

In the summer of 1657, a rainstorm drove four men to the home of Thomas Macy in Amesbury, Mass. They sought shelter and directions to Hampton, N.H., and to Casco Bay. Macy was wary, but he let them stay a short time while the rain let up.

Macy was a founder of the town of Amesbury and its first town clerk, having moved from Salisbury. His position, however, did not place him above the law, and Macy was very much breaking the law by opening his home to the visitors.

Puritans landing in the New World.

Macy was a Baptist. That already placed him in a difficult position with the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts, who banned Baptists from preaching. But to make matters worse, the men now seeking shelter in his home were Quakers. One was Edward Wharton; some sources say the others included William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson.

Stephenson and Robinson, Quakers banished from Massachusetts, had chosen to return. They did it to protest a recent law that ordered the death penalty for banished Quakers without property who returned to Massachusetts. In October of that year, that’s exactly what happened to Robinson and Stephenson. Two others, known as the Boston Martyrs, suffered the same fate. A statue to one of them, Mary Dyer, now stands in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Statue of Mary Dyer in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Thomas Macy

For Thomas Macy, the consequences of his actions were less severe. A 1657 law made it a crime to entertain Quakers. Macy’s neighbors notified the Rev. Worcester of the infraction, and he placed the matter before the General Court.

Thomas Macy’s house, known as the Macy-Colby House, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Macy pleaded innocent of holding Quaker leanings. “On a rainy morning there came to my house Edward Wharton and three men more; the said Wharton spoke to me, saying they were travelling eastward, and desired me to direct them in the way to Hampton, and asked me how far it was to Casco Bay.

“I never saw any of the men before except Wharton, neither did I inquire their names or what they were; but by their carriage I thought they might be Quakers and told them so, and desired them to pass on their way, saying to them I might possibly give offence in entertaining them; and as soon as the rain ceased (for it rained very hard) they went away, and I never saw them since.

45 Minutes

“The time they stayed in the house was about three quarters of an hour, but I can safely affirm it was not an hour. They spoke not many words in the time neither was I at leisure to talk with them, for I came home wet to the skin immediately before they came to the house, and I found my wife sick in bed. If this does not satisfy the Honored Court I am subject to their sentence.”

The explanation did not satisfy the honored court, which fined Macy 30 shillings and admonished him. The episode inspired John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem, The Exiles.

With the increasing intolerance of the Puritans, the finding could not have surprised Macy. He had apparently already been plotting an escape.

1827 medal depicting Tristram Coffin

He had joined with Tristram Coffin in planning a new settlement — out of the reach of the Puritan extremists. Coffin, also a Baptist, had left England at the start of the English Civil War in 1642. He had gathered a group of like-minded investors and had arranged to purchase the island of Nantucket from Macy’s cousin, Thomas Mayhew.

Nantucket

Mayhew had settled on Martha’s Vineyard where he served as governor. He acquired Nantucket via a grant and purchase from Native Americans, and he was ready to sell the whole of Nantucket less a portion he retained for himself.

With Nantucket falling under the jurisdiction of New York, the new residents hoped to make it a more tolerable place. For the sum of 30 pounds and two beaver hats, the investors bought Nantucket in July of 1659 and made it their new home. The island did become the tolerant locale that the founders envisioned, with Quakers making up a large portion of the population.

Macy remained a lifelong Baptist. The Macys established a family there, and he died at 74 in 1682 after a successful career. His wife Sarah lived on another 24 years, and she did in fact become a Quaker late in life.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Macy-Colby House By Daderot at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17590751.

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Al Capp Meets John and Yoko (And It Doesn’t Go Well)

Al Capp earned legions of fans for his bitingly satirical cartoon strip Li’l Abner. President Richard Nixon and Queen Elizabeth admired his work, as did William F. Buckley, Al Hirschfeld, Harpo Marx, John Kenneth Galbraith and John Updike. In 1953, John Steinbeck called him ‘possibly the best writer in the world today.’

Al Capp self portrait

John Lennon was not among his fans. Al Capp famously quarreled with him and Yoko Ono during their 1969 Bed-In for Peace in Montreal.

Capp insulted Yoko, saying to John, “Good God, you’ve gotta live with that?” He accused John of staging the Bed-In for money.

“Do you think I could earn money by some other way, sitting in bed for seven days, taking shit from people like you?” Lennon retorted. “I could write a song in an hour.”

Rough Beginnings

It had been a long, twisted journey to the hotel room in Montreal, starting with a difficult childhood in New Haven.

He was born Alfred Gerald Caplin on Sept. 28, 1909. His parents, Latvian immigrants, were so poor his mother sifted through ash cans for reusable bits of coal.

As a boy, Al Capp lost a leg in a trolley car accident. Losing the leg gave him a dark, sardonic worldview that later informed his Li’l Abner comic strip.

He turned to drawing and voracious reading for therapy, finishing all of Shakespeare’s plays by the age of 13. He spent five years at Bridgeport High School in Bridgeport, Conn., without graduating. Capp later became good friends with another satirical cartoonist from Bridgeport, Walt Kelly, author of the Pogo comic strip.

Al Capp at 1966 Art Festival in Florida, by Tom Simondi

While he attended a series of art schools, Capp began dating his wife, Catherine Cameron of Amesbury, Mass., at Seabrook Beach. They married in 1929, and he tried to make a go as a cartoonist. In 1934 he introduced Li’l Abner and a cast of hillbillies in the fictional town of Dogpatch. The series appeared at first in eight newspapers, but caught on so quickly Capp was earning $150,000 a year during the Great Depression. The Capps bought a home in South Hampton, N.H., and later a summer place in Seabrook.

Dogpatch

Capp liked to say Dogpatch was based on Seabrook, which the local citizens didn’t appreciate. Perhaps some of his characters were inspired by people he encountered during his 40 years vacationing in the seaside community. Geographically, though, Dogpatch, is based in an Appalachian hamlet in Kentucky.

Eventually Li’l Abner reached 90 million people. Its satire, slapstick and biting wit drew fans from Marshall McLuhan to Charlie Chaplin. The comic strip introduced new words into the English language: Sadie Hawkins Day, double whammy, skunk works, Lower Slobbovia and shmoo.

During the ‘40s and ‘50s, Capp targeted greedy corporations and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. He created General Bullmoose to lampoon General Motors’ chief executive, putting into his mouth the words, “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for everybody!” He called McCarthy a poet because he used poetic license to create a fictional world of good and evil.

Capp consistently championed racial tolerance and gender equality, but he switched his targets in the ‘60s. He and his family moved to Cambridge, Mass., and Capp had little tolerance for hippies. He made fun of Joan Baez, creating a character Joanie Phoanie and ridiculing student radicals with the fictional “Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything!” (SWINE).

A Campus Fixture

Al Capp was the best known cartoonist of his era, speaking frequently at colleges and appearing often on television. President Richard Nixon discussed finding a way for Capp to run against Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who Capp ridiculed as Senator O. Noble McGesture. He had such prestige that as early as 1939 he helped found Endicott College in Beverly, Mass., as one of the original trustees.

During the turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Capp appeared on campus as a defender of traditional values, inviting hecklers and trading barbs with students. That is no doubt how he ended up with an invitation to visit John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their Bed-In from May 26-June 1, 1969 in Montreal.

Neanderthal Fascist

Capp walked into their hotel room and said, “I’m a dreadful Neanderthal fascist. How do you do?” He then mocked them for publishing nude pictures of themselves.

“Clearly you must have felt the world wanted to know what your private parts looked like,” he said. And when Lennon claimed to be a representative of the human race, Al Capp retorted, “Whatever race you’re the representative of, I ain’t part of it.”

The discussion devolved into an argument, and after about 10 minutes Capp walked out. (You can watch the confrontation between John Lennon and Yoko Ono and Al Capp on youtube.) Capp was the only one of John and Yoko’s guests NOT to sing on the song they recorded on June 1, Give Peace a Chance.

Bed-In for Peace, Amsterdam 1969, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, by Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Rijksfotoarchief: Fotocollectie Algemeen Nederlands Fotopersbureau

Bed-In for Peace, Amsterdam 1969, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, by Eric Koch

Finished by Scandal

Al Capp had his own problems with traditional values, however. He was a sexual predator who tried to trap young women on campus. In 1971 he pleaded guilty to attempted adultery, and columnist Jack Anderson fed the scandal. Though Li’l Abner limped on for a few more years, Capp was essentially finished.

Before he died on Nov. 5, 1979, he donated his collection of Li’l Abner anthologies to the South Hampton Public Library in New Hampshire.

His headstone in Mount Prospect Cemetery in Amesbury reads, The plowman homeward plods his weary way / And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

The Al Capp Memorial is off Market Square, next to Powwow Falls. He worked from an office in Amesbury.

In 2010, a mural commemorating the 100^th anniversary of Al Capp’s birth was unveiled in downtown Amesbury.

This story about Al Capp was updated in 2022.

Images: Photo of Al Capp by By Tom Simondi – I attended the festival with twin lens reflex (2.25" square negative) in hand and took the picture.Previously published: Not published, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22898060. Bed-in By Eric Koch / Anefo – http://proxy.handle.net/10648/ab63599e-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65912906. Al Capp memorial By Botteville – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22430157.

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