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Six Paintings of New England Spring

Artists have probably created far fewer New England spring paintings than of any of the three other seasons. After all, New England has so little spring. The cold gray months morph into mud season and then black fly season. And then, suddenly, it’s the Fourth of July and summer.

And yet New England’s artists have managed to capture what is appealing about the brief New England spring. Maple sugaring. Apple blossoms. Bird’s nests. Brilliant, clear light on sunny days. Romantic moonlit nights.

So here are six paintings of New England spring, one in each state.

New England Spring by Moonlight

May Night by Willard Metcalf. National Gallery of Art.

Willard Metcalf painted May Night, one of his best works, while at the Old Lyme artist colony in Connecticut.

Metcalf was born into a working class family in Lowell, Mass., in 1858. He began painting at 16 and opened a studio in Boston at 18. Early success allowed him to study in Europe for five years.

He then moved around the Northeast, teaching and painting portraits and illustrations. Then he moved to Gloucester, Mass., and devoted himself to landscape painting. His friend Childe Hassam encouraged him to join the Old Lyme artist colony, where he could find high thinking and low living.

May Night depicts the home of Miss Florence Griswold, who founded the Old Lyme colony. In 1907, Metcalf won the Corcoran gold medal for it, along with a $3,000 purchase price. But Old Lyme probably lost its charm for him when his wife ran off with one of his students that year. The painting now belongs to the National Gallery of Art.

Metcalf then spent time at the Cornish Art Colony in New Hampshire, where he painted many landscapes of the changing seasons. One critic called him “the poet laureate of the New England hills.”

The Corcoran Gallery held a major exhibition of his work in 1925, the year he died of a heart attack at age 66.

Spring on a Farm

Spring, by Winslow Homer. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Winslow Homer, born in Boston, Mass., in 1837, learned watercolor at his mother’s knee. He apprenticed to a lithographer for a few years, but hated it. For the next 20 years he illustrated life in Boston and rural New England as well as battlefield scenes during the Civil War.

He then moved to New York, but traveled frequently, painting all the way. In the spring of 1878 he produced 50 watercolors, admired for their fluidity and sparkle. Spring, painted on a farm, is one of them.

Homer eventually grew reclusive around 1880. His family owned an estate on Prout’s Neck in Maine, and Homer moved into the carriage house. He painted the sea in Maine, traveling to the Caribbean during the winter and sometimes to the Adirondacks.

Though he also painted in oil, Winslow Homer knew he’d done something transcendent with his watercolors.

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors,” Homer once said. He hung some of his exquisite watercolors on the walls of the rental cottages. Now they’re in museums or private collections. His 1878 watercolor Spring belongs to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

‘As if the year were all springtime’

Still Life with Robin’s Nest by Fidelia Bridges. Private Collection.

Fidelia Bridges, born in 1834, was one of the very few women artists who could support herself with her work. She only painted birds and plants, which she rendered with exquisite detail and a poetic sensibility.

She ‘paints as if the year were all springtime,’ wrote one critic.

Bridges was often lonely and sad, but her exquisite paintings convey a lyrical joy in the birds and flowers she loved.

Fidelia Bridges was the daughter of a Salem sea captain who plied the China trade. Her parents’ death when she was 15 impoverished her family, but wealthy patrons allowed her to study art in Philadelphia and Europe.

She painted some of her best works in Stratford, Conn., along the Housatonic River. She also sold her work to Louis Prang, who invented the American Christmas card in Boston. For a time she worked as governess for Mark Twain’s children.

Girl on Rock

Spring by Maxfield Parrish. Illustration for Life magazine, 1922 Easter edition

The landscape of Vermont and New Hampshire inspired Maxfield Parrish in 1922 to create lush, romantic paintings like Spring.

Parrish belonged to the Cornish Art Colony from 1898, when he and his wife built a house in Plainfield, N.H. He downplayed his own abilities, calling himself “commonplace” and “a mechanic.”

He used an ancient technique to paint, starting with a monochrome underpainting and then layering transparent glazes. It made him rich and famous. His 1922 painting Daybreak was the most popular art print of the 20^th century, appearing in one out of every four households.

His painting Spring appeared as the Easter cover art for Life magazine April 6, 1922. Parrish then got sick of painting lissome nymphs in outdoor settings. No more girls on rocks, he told the Associated Press in 1931. From then until his death in 1960 he abandoned illustration and painted landscapes.

Apple Trees in a Meadow

Apple Trees in a Meadow by Edward Bannister. High Museum

Edward Bannister stunned the judges of the art competition at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. When he came to receive his gold medal, they were astonished to discover they’d awarded it to an African American.

After winning the prize he prospered as an artist, working out of his studio in Providence, R.I.

Bannister credited his wife, Christiana, with everything he accomplished. She ran several hair salons and told him to devote himself to his painting. Once his paintings started to sell, they spent summers in a cottage on Narragansett Bay. He often painted en plein air.

In 1890, Bannister painted Apple Trees in a Meadow, a familiar sight during the New England spring.

Bannister died in 1901, and his work fell into obscurity. He has since been rediscovered. Apple Trees in a Meadow now belongs to the High Museum in Atlanta.

New England Spring, Vermont Style

American Forest Scene–Maple Sugaring by Arthur Tait

You may well recognize this lithograph as a Currier and Ives, originally sold as a cheap and popular print but now quite collectible.

Nathaniel Currier started off in Boston but eventually moved to New York. Once he hit on the formula of dramatic scenes of newsworthy events, he was on his way. He teamed up with James Merritt Ives and they expanded into scenes of city life, portraits, politics, boats and landscapes.

The firm made prints from the work of the most celebrated artists of the day: Eastman Johnson, George Inness and Thomas Nast. It also employed its own artists, like Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, who specialized in sporting scenes.

New England winter scenes proved especially popular. Snow, however, is not unknown during a New England spring.

Arthur Tait, a British-American artist, painted American Forest Scene—Maple Sugaring. Though he lived in New York, we’re choosing to call this a Vermont scene, as it produces more maple syrup than any other state.

Currier and Ives lasted 72 years before going out of business.

This story updated in 2022.

Images: Spring by Parrish, Plum Leaves via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0; Robin’s Nest (1863, private collection) public domain PD-US.

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The Vermont Country Store, Nine Surprising Facts

You can’t have missed the catalog for the Vermont Country Store in your mailbox, and you may well have visited one of its two actual locations.

Inside the store in 1946.

And even if you haven’t set foot in the store, you know what it’s like: the quintessential country store, with a pot-bellied stove, bolts of calico and glass jars filled with licorice whips and smarties.

The Vermont Country Store carries foods that have disappeared from modern store shelves, including Indian pudding, maple sugar, dandelion greens, balsam soap, yellow eye beans, dried apples and common crackers. The store also peddles a little retro nostalgia, selling Lifebuoy soap, Jubilee kitchen wax, Turkish taffy, Postum and Fuller Brush brooms.

But the history of the store and the people who founded it is probably not quite what you think.

The Vermont Country Store

For starters, the Vermont Country Store began as a mail order catalog, not as a general store. And the physical structure was originally an inn that founders Vrest and Mildred Orton restored as a replica of his father’s country store in North Calais.

Vrest Orton had a long career as a writer, publisher and editor before founding his country store. About his career change he wrote, “I have done all I could to influence men’s minds and nothing much came of it. Now I have decided to influence their stomachs.”

Here are nine other things you may not know about the Vermont Country Store and its founders:

1. A Chase & Sanborn Coffee ad inspired Vrest Orton to open the Vermont Country Store. During World War II, he worked as a speechwriter and propagandist for the Pentagon when he saw the ad: Four old men sitting around a checkerboard on a barrel near a potbellied stove as a shopkeeper pouring sugar onto a scale. After seeing the ad, he vowed to go back to Vermont full-time and revive an old-fashioned, authentic country store.

2. Vrest, a proponent of enlightened rural living, wrote an article in 1929 arguing that Vermont should secede from the United States. It should also squash everything ‘unVermontish,’ including ‘summer camps and hot dog stands,’ ‘tourists who patronize natives’ and ‘factories belching smoke.’ He wanted to forbid foreigners to buy land in Vermont unless they grew food on it.

3. The Saturday Evening Post gave the Vermont Country Store a huge boost when it ran a story in 1952 called The Happy Storekeeper of the Green Mountains. It brought so much traffic they had to add to the back of the original building. And they eventually opened a second location in Rockingham, Vt.

4. Vrest maintained a warm friendship with Robert Frost for 25 years. He published a book of poems and remembrances after Frost died, called Vermont Afternoons with Robert Frost.

The Vermont Country Store.

36 Items

5. Mildred’s Christmas card list formed the basis for their first mail-order catalog in 1945, as soon as the war ended. They printed it on newsprint on the printing press in the garage and mailed it to about a thousand people. It had 12 pages and advertised 36 items. Mildred and Vrest wrapped products in brown paper and tied them with twine. Today 50 million store catalogs go out a year.

6. The Ortons were also friends with horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft came to visit the Ortons at their primitive farm near Brattleboro. Though a city boy who’d lived in Providence and New York, Lovecraft loved the experience. He learned to build a fire and round up cows. During his visit, the Brattleboro Reformer reported A Weird Writer Is In Our Midst.

7. As a young man, Vrest Orton worked for H.L. Mencken in New York City. He co-founded The Colophon, a book collector’s magazine, as well as the Stephen Daye Press in Brattleboro, Vt. He also co-founded Vermont Life magazine.

8. Vrest and Mildred together wrote a pioneering cookbook about wholegrain cookery in 1947, well before healthy eating became fashionable. Cooking with Whole Grains, still in print, includes recipes for regional foods such as Southern Johnnycake and Vermont Indian Pudding.

9. The National Register of Historic Places lists the Vermont Country Store as the first restored and operational rural general store in America.

Store interior: By The Vermont Country Store – The Vermont Country Store, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5372687. This story was updated in 2023.

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The West Indies Send Sugar, Slaves and Red Sox Stars to New England

For four centuries, the West Indies have made an outsized impact on New England. In 2018, West Indian stars and a West Indian manager brought the Boston Red Sox to a World Series championship.

West Indians have come to New England as doctors, teachers, ministers, slaves, farm workers and servants, depending on when they came.

Beginning in the 17^th century, merchants like Connecticut horse jockeys, Rhode Island slavers and Boston banana importers have traded with the West Indies. Well into the 19^th century, retail shops called West India Goods Stores sold items from the Caribbean and all over the world.

And West Indians came to New England in waves – from the British and Spanish West Indies, the French Antilles and the Dutch Caribbean. Some were Afro-Caribbean, like W.E.B. Du Bois’s father, some were Euro-Caribbean, like Oscar de la Renta, Jackie Kennedy’s favorite designer.

Kevin Youkilis, Alex Cora and Dustin Pedroia.

And some came as key players for the Boston Red Sox. Rafael Devers came from the Dominican Republic. Xander Bogaerts came from Aruba. Christian Vazquez and manager Alex Cora came from Puerto Rico.

So when the Red Sox clinched the world championship in Los Angeles, Cora acknowledged a historic relationship when he said, “I can’t imagine what’s going on in Boston, I can’t imagine what’s going on on my island.”

West Indies Trade

Tragically, the first documented West Indians in New England were slaves from Barbados. European slavers bought captured Africans and took them to Barbados in the British West Indies to work on ever-larger sugar plantations.

Because the West Indian planters grew few crops other than sugar cane, New England traders seized the opportunity to sell them farm produce, livestock, salted fish and wood products. They brought back sugar, molasses and some of their slaves on the two- to five-week voyage.

Enslaved Afro-Caribbeans first came to Massachusetts in 1638 and to Connecticut in 1639. At the end of the Pequot War in 1669, the Puritans tried to force captured Indians into slavery. The Indians, though, ‘would not endure the yoke,’ so the Puritans sent them to the West Indies in exchange for captive African laborers.

On the eve of the American Revolution, Massachusetts and Connecticut each had about 5,000 black people living within their borders. Most had lived in or were born in the Caribbean.

As late as 1860, one in five black Bostonians had a Caribbean birthplace. Many West Indians were free, and some quite successful. Prince Hall from Barbados founded the Negro Masonic Order in Boston in 1775. John Brown Russwurm from Jamaica founded the first African-American newspaper after graduating from Bowdoin College in 1826.

W.E.B. Du Bois, born free to a Haitian father in Great Barrington, Mass., in 1868, rose to international prominence as a historian, sociologist and civil rights leader.

An 1855 map of the West Indies

2nd Wave from the West Indies

From 1900 to 1930, a second wave of immigrants from the West Indies arrived, mostly from the English-speaking islands. They were typically literate and skilled, and a significant number had worked as professionals and in offices. Others were dockworkers, porters, laborers and domestic servants.

They came because they suffered tremendous economic hardship due to the decline of the Caribbean sugar plantation during the late 19^th century. And they came to New England for a very specific reason: cheap steamer fares.

During the late 19^th century, a group of Boston merchants called Boston Fruit ran a steamship service between the West Indies and Boston. They imported bananas, coconuts, oranges and lemons, eventually becoming Chiquita Brands International.

Boston Fruit’s steamer also carried passengers, including West Indians coming to Boston, the first port of call. They also settled in New Haven, Cambridge, Mass., and New York. Florida, though, had the highest concentration of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in 1900, just under 22 percent..

In 1924, immigration from the West Indies all but stopped with the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. The law sharply limited immigration from countries outside of Western Europe.

Then the Great Depression came, and many immigrants returned to the West Indies, forced home by economic hardship and even more restrictive immigration policies.

World War II

Puerto Rican men immigrating to the United States. Photo from the film ‘Puerto Rican Passages.”

In 1900 Puerto Ricans became U.S. citizens, and for the next 45 years about 90,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the continental United States. Some came to work in defense plants during World War II. But it wasn’t until 1945 that the Great Migration of Puerto Ricans started, lasting until 1964.

Half a million people from the islands, 21,000 a year, came to the mainland, many as farm workers. Some stayed in Springfield, Mass., and Hartford, Conn. They were joined by Jamaican contract farm workers picking apples, tobacco, melons and blueberries.

Life was harsh for Puerto Ricans in New England’s declining industrial cities. Young Puerto Ricans rioted from Worcester to Waterbury during the late 1960s through the 1970s. Many returned to the island.

Jamaicans

The flow of West Indian immigrants slowed in 1952, when Congress enacted an immigration law, the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. It aimed to keep out black immigrants, and it worked.

But like a pendulum, immigration laws loosened up in 1968. They let in close to half a million Caribbean immigrants, mostly Cubans, to Florida. The number of Jamaicans rose eightfold, to about 75,000 in the ’60s. Then it almost doubled in the ’70s to 140,000 and rose again in the 1980s to 208,000 in the 1990s.

In New England, Jamaicans concentrated in the Hartford and Bridgeport areas of Connecticut, which has the fifth highest population of Jamaicans in the country. The Blue Hills neighborhood of Hartford, in fact, has the densest concentration of Jamaicans in the United States. Jamaicans have also settled in the Boston area and throughout New England. Jamaican musicians perform at reggae festivals all over the region. Even Brattleboro, Vt., has a Jerk Festival.

Dominicans

Big Papi, David Ortiz

Today, three New England states – Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut – have some of the densest populations of people with West Indies heritage in the country. Only Florida and New York have more.

The arrival of Dominican immigrants from the West Indies contribute heavily to the West Indian presence in New England. Beginning with the assassination of President Trujillo in 1961, a series of political and economic crises drove waves of Dominicans to the United States.

Dominicans comprise the largest Hispanic group in Rhode Island – 35,008 in 2010. They also dominate the Hispanic population in eastern Massachusetts. The Connecticut cities of Danbury, Waterbury and Bridgeport have large Dominican populations.

Only New York City has more Dominicans than Lawrence, Mass., with 30,243 as of 2010. And when Marcos Devers was appointed as Acting Mayor of Lawrence, he became the first Dominican-American mayor of a U.S. city.

Massachusetts, in fact, has the fourth largest Dominican population (103,292 in 2010) in the United States. The Bay State can also claim David Ortiz, the Red Sox legend, now an American citizen living in suburban Boston.

End Notes

Images: David Ortiz By Arturo Pardavila III from Hoboken, NJ, USA – CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52501471; Alex Cora By Eric Kilby – Three Amigos, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63535958.

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The Halloween Ephemera Factory: An Empire Built on Orange Crepe Paper

The giant Halloween ephemera factory in Framingham, Mass., for many years churned out crepe paper and cut-outs that collectors go crazy for today.

Thousands worked for the Dennison Manufacturing Co., making Halloween costumes, pumpkin-themed party invitations, die-cut ghosts and orange-and-black table decorations.

Halloween ephemera from the 1920 Bogie book.

The company got its start in 1844 making paper jewelry boxes. Later it made merchandise tags. But the serious Halloween ephemera collector knows Dennison for producing oh-so-desirable Halloween party items from 1909 to the 1940s.

Dennison also made Bogie Books, retro-Halloween versions of Martha Stewart’s Living magazine. The Bogie Books showed the reader how to throw a successful Halloween party for adults. They included menus, ideas for games and many, many suggestions for decorations and costumes. All, of course, supplied by the Dennison Manufacturing Co.

Today, collectors use the Bogie Books as bibles of Halloween ephemera.

Dennison Discovers Halloween

Halloween began to take off as a holiday in the late 19^th century. Though trick-or-treating started in the 1920s, it didn’t really become ubiquitous until the 1950s.

Adult Halloween parties were then all the rage, and you could make a lot of money selling Halloween-themed costumes and decorations.

The Dennison factory in Framingham, which churned out tons of Halloween ephemera

The Dennison Manufacturing Co. saw the gold in Halloween ephemera. The 53-year-old company moved to Framingham in 1897 and rocketed to success, according to the Framingham Historical Society. Its factory made so many merchandise tags it gave Framingham the nickname ‘Tag City.’

By the turn of the century, Dennison employed 3,000 people, or about a third of the town’s population. They called its 16-acre campus ‘the Gold Coast.’

In 1909, Dennison started to make Halloween party items, timing the trend perfectly. Dennison became one of the two premier American companies selling Halloween ephemera. The other was the Beistle Company of Shippensburg, Pa.

Today, legions of collectors pay hundreds of dollars for vintage Halloween ephemera made by the two companies. For example, in 1928 Dennison sold a six-section paper table decoration called Hobgoblinville. It charged the then-steep price of $2.00, or about $28 in 2017. Recently it sold for $838.

Unfortunately for Framingham’s workforce, Dennison merged and moved to Pasadena, Calif. The name changed to Avery Dennison Corp.

Halloween Ephemera

Detail from the cover of the 1920 Bogie Book

Collectors especially appreciate the Dennison Bogie Books. “One thing I truly thank Dennison for was their nearly always annual publication of their Halloween Bogie Books,” wrote collector Mark Ledenbach.

Dennison used them as sales and marketing tools, but the collector finds them invaluable for determining the manufacture date of items.

Ledenbach manages a web site for the serious collector of vintage Halloween ephemera. He could barely contain his joy when he came upon an original 1915 Bogie Book with envelope. “OK, WOW!” he wrote. “For avid Halloween paper ephemera collectors, seeing this listing should cause your hearts to race and your sphincters to seize. Seeing this quality listing amongst so much eBay dreck made my day.”

The Bogie Book

The Bogie Book tells us a lot about 20^th century social life before World War II, especially for the upwardly mobile city dweller.

The 1920 book (click here to read it) gives party advice for simple menus, alcohol-free drinks and dancing or cards. Games and decorations seem childlike by today’s standards.

For example, the Bogie Book recommends a lively home party:

When your guests arrive the door should swing open and the hall should be entirely dark, except for a few very faint green lights that may be followed to the dressing rooms.

If your guests are not in costume, the hostess, dressed as a witch, should give each one a hat, a necktie or some other dress accessory to wear.

The business girl’s Halloween party, with H 175 lunch set

For a business girl’s Halloween party, the Bogie Book advises her to carefully prepare her decorations in advance. Crepe paper and cutouts decorate the chandelier and windows. Dennison thoughtfully supplies Lunch Sets (H 175 is featured above) for the table. Doughnuts, oranges or apples may be served ‘dressed up,’ while the menu includes fruit cocktail, chicken patties, potato chips, ice cream, individual cakes and coffee.

Perhaps the strikingly innocent entertainment explains the appeal of the era’s Halloween ephemera.

Fortune-Telling

Fortune-telling games played a big part in the evening festivities, according to the Bogie Book.

“The customs and superstitions that belong to this weird night are almost all connected in some way with future wedded bliss or material welfare,” instructed the 1920 Bogie Book. “Do not fail, therefore, at some time during the evening to have your guests bob for apples in a tub of water, peel apples in one continuous piece and throw the peelings over their left shoulders so that they may fall on the floor to form the initials of the future mate.”

Black cat cutouts

Halloween ephemera plays a big part in the party games. For example, in the game ‘The Witch’s Cats,’ ‘Cat Cut-outs H 35’ should be hidden about the room.

There should be one extra man (or possible there will be an extra girl). Announce that the witch has lost her nine cats and if one of them can be found by the person without a partner it will bring him good luck and he may dance with anyone he wishes. The deposed partner may in turn hunt for a black cat and so get another partner. If the party is large several people may hunt for cats at the same time, and so the cutting in will become quite lively.

This story last updated in 2023.

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Nine Apple Cider Traditions That Are No Longer With Us

Today apple trees litter the roadsides of New England, often ignored or painted and photographed for their scenic charms. But from the very first days of colonization, the apple tree served as a mainstay of any New England farm — and cider served as the national drink. Here are nine apple cider traditions, now mostly gone by the wayside.

1. No Wassailing Allowed

Puritans eschewed the English custom of apple wailing or wassailing around the start of harvest time. Farmers carried out the ritual by bringing pans of mulled cider to the orchard, drinking, singing and shouting among the trees.

They also splashed the tree roots with liberal amounts of cider to encourage greater apple production.

The Puritans, who didn’t like the pagan feel of the wassailing, instead held apple bees, also known as “parings” or “cuts.”

During a bee, farmers set out every empty pail, pan, tub and basket they could find in the farmhouse. They heaped barrels of apples in the center of the room. With the help of neighbors they would then empty the barrels, pare and quarter the apples and fill the empty vessels with them.

An apple bee in the 1850s.

2.The Harvest Dinner

Apple parings often concluded with a dinner celebrating the completed harvest. It featured foods from the home’s now-bulging stores. People would bring nuts from the attic, apples from the pantry and cider from the cellar.

3. The Kitchen Test

A girl tested her skill in cooking by seeing if she could pare an entire apple and make only a single peel.

4. Love Me, Love Me Not

A girl trying to decide between two boys could use apple seeds to sort the matter out. She would wet two seeds, one representing each boy, and place one on each cheek. The seed that stayed on the longest represented the boy whose heart was true.

5. Apple Cider Traditions and Etiquette

In most years, New Englanders had plenty of cider. In the earliest days of New England, people pressed cider by hand. But soon horse-powered presses took the place of hand presses and the cider flowed as freely as water.

During pressing season, the pressers would offer anyone passing the press a drink of sweet cider. And even when it had hardened in barrels, custom called for a family to offer any guest a drink of cider from the cider store. A large family might put up as many as 100 barrels of cider for a winter.

The historic Allen’s cider mill, which started operating in 1783 in Granby, Conn.

6. Frozen Cider

Those who wanted more kick to the cider could drink frozen cider. They produced it by leaving hard cider out in the winter. When the water in the cider froze into ice, it could be removed, leaving a denser, more potent cider. The process could be repeated six or seven times to produce a truly potent drink.

7. Apple Orchards Fell to the Temperance Movement

Farmers cut down apple trees by the thousands, perhaps millions, as the temperance movement swept America in the early 1800s. Farmers embracing the new non-alcoholic order removed entire orchards because they couldn’t imagine how they would possibly use the apples if they didn’t press them for cider.

Cider Press Building at Clyde’s Cider Mill, Mystic, Conn.

8. Cider Apple Sass

An important task on any farm was producing boiled cider apple sass during the winter.

Similar to apple butter, boiled cider took a lot of work to make. A large pot of cider was brought to a boil and two smaller kettles of cider were kept simmering on the fire. As the water boiled away from the cider in the large pot, more was added from the simmering kettles to keep the process constantly at a boil. The cider thickened into a molasses-like consistency. To finish, peeled and quartered apples were dropped into it and allowed to partially cook. It was then frozen and used like a relish.

9. Dried Apples for Spring

By springtime, the fresh apples, apple butter, apple sass and even cider ran low. A family would then turn to its dried apples for a taste of dried apple pie. In the fall, they had strung up apple slices and hung them outdoors to dry. Once dried, the apples hung in a home’s rafters for the winter until needed. Then, in the spring, the family cook would bring them down, soak and cook them into a dried apple pie.

Are you looking for a book to help you explore apple recipes from yesteryear? The newly revised 29 Historic New England Apple Recipes includes recipes for traditional New England apple dishes, fun facts about the unique history of apples and a guide to making cider and cider vinegar. Click here to order your copy today.

Thanks to Old Time Gardens, by Alice Morse Earle. This story about apple cider traditions was updated in 2024. Image of Allen’s cider mill By Sphilbrick – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11863504. Cider Press Building Clyde’s Cider Mill by Cynthia Donovan via Flickr, CC by 2.0.

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Six Canals That Built New England

In 1803, one of the first New England canals made Boston the undisputed commercial center of New England.

Called ‘the Incredible Ditch,’ the Middlesex Canal allowed a barge to haul 30 tons of goods back and forth between Chelmsford (now Lowell) and Charlestown (now Boston). A horse and wagon could haul perhaps three tons over the rough roads of the era.

Canal fever broke out in New England during the early 19^th century with the opening of the Erie Canal, finished in 1825. The Erie Canal gave New York City an unbeatable advantage over other port cities, and a frenzy of canal-building broke out throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic States.

New England states built dozens of canals, first to transport goods to seaports and then to power mills and factories. By 1840, there were 3,300 miles of canals in the United States.

Today the canals are mostly gone, filled in, paved over or maybe declared a Superfund site. Some still function as recreational trails, waterways for pleasure boats or even sources of hydroelectric power.

Here are six canals built in New England before the Civil War. If you know of other interesting canals, please mention them in the comments section below.

Farmington Canal

An old lock along the Farmington Canal.

The Connecticut Legislature granted six canal charters to private companies, but only two – the Enfield and Farmington – were actually built.

Beginning in 1825, Irish immigrants and farmers along the route dug the canal, four feet deep and 20 feet wide using handmade shovels, wheelbarrows and wagons. The private investors got no state help and struggled financially. It took 10 years to dig the canal, which began at New Haven, snaked through Granby and ended at the Connecticut River in Northampton, Mass. The laborers also built 60 stone locks along the 80-mile waterway.

When the New Haven-to-Farmington leg of the canal opened in 1828, four African American boys rode gray horses that pulled a boat carrying 200 dignitaries sipping refreshments. For a while the towns along the canal prospered, as apples, butter, cider, and wood flowed south to New Haven; coffee, flour, hides, molasses, salt, and sugar headed north.

In Plainville, Edna Whiting built a general store with doors opening onto the canal for dropoffs, which included the original Eli Terry clock weights.

But heavy rains damaged the canal, which required repairs, and toll revenue covered only 20 percent of expenses. The Farmington Canal turned a profit in just one of its first 10 years, and canal operations were slowly phased out. Eventually the Farmington Canal owners sold the land to the New Haven and Northampton Company, which built a railroad that became the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.

The railroad was turned into a rail trail in the 1990s, and today the Farmington Canal Trail runs from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Mass.

Cumberland and Oxford Canal

A steamboat like the ones that used the Cumberland and Oxford Canal between Sebago and Long Lakes about 1910.

Unlike Connecticut, Maine lawmakers decided the state should support a new canal from inland lakes to the Portland seaport. A state lottery raised $50,000 and a bank was chartered to provide the funds for the $206,000 project.

The Cumberland and Oxford Canal, opened in 1832, connected the large lakes of southern Maine with Portland along the Presumpscot River. The 38-mile canal required 27 locks to reach Sebago Lake, 267 feet above sea level. Passengers paid a half cent to go through each lock.

Barges carried lumber, firewood, masts, barrel hoops and apples from Maine’s forests and farms to the sea. From Windham, the Oriental Powder Company mills sent down the canal a quarter of the gunpowder used in the Civil War.

When the railroad that became the Maine Central opened a station in Sebago Lake, the canal started its decline. A steamboat company continued to carry tourists between Portland and the Lake Region until the last steamboat Goodrich burned at its dock in 1932. Songo Lock is still in service for pleasure boats.

Tours have been held along the old canal in Portland.

Lowell Power Canals

The Pawtucket Gatehouse, which controls power from the canals.

Lowell, Mass., contains the world’s largest system of canals that generate hydro-electric power, but they began as a modest transportation waterway in 1796.

The Pawtucket Canal was built so New Hampshire logs could be hauled around the Pawtucket Falls in East Chelmsford, Mass., to shipyards in Newburyport, Mass.

By 1806, the Middlesex Canal made the Pawtucket Canal irrelevant.

In the early 1820s, associates of Francis Cabot Lowell (who had just died) gave new life to the Pawtucket Canal: They saw it could power textile mills instead of hauling canal boats. The subsequent canals that fed off he widened and deepened Pawtucket Canal created the City of Lowell.

First the Merrimack Canal powered the Merrimack Manufacturing Co. Then waterpower from the Hamilton Canal was sold to other companies. Then the Northern Canal and the Moody Street Feeder increased the waterpower to the system. The canal owners finally built the Pawtucket Gatehouse to control flow from the Pawtucket Dam into the Northern Canal.

Lowell’s six-mile canals are still there and working. They are part of the Lowell National Historical Park, established in 1978. For a map of walks along Lowell’s canals, click here.

Amoskeag Canals

One of the canals along the Amoskeag Millyard in Manchester, N.H.

Manchester, N.H., was a tiny town called Derryfield when industrialist Samuel Blodget declared, “For as the country increases in population, we must have manufactories, and here at my canal will be a manufacturing town, the Manchester of America!”

It was 1807, and Blodget was as good as his word. He had gotten money from state lotteries in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In 1798, he broke ground on the canal, which ran parallel to the Merrimack River. Ten years later, the granite-lined canal was ready for business.

Why a canal? It was nearly impossible to travel up the Merrimack River in New Hampshire. Between Chelmsford, Mass., and Concord, N.H., the river falls 135 feet, including a 54-foot drop at the Amoskeag Falls. The canal bypassed the falls through a series of locks.

In 1810, the first textile mills were built along Blodget’s canal, then renamed the Amoskeag Canal. They used secondhand machinery bought from Samuel Slater, but it didn’t work well. In 1831 the Amoskeag Manufacturing Co. bought the land and water rights along the canal and built the enormous brick Millyard, which became a manufacturing powerhouse until the 1920s.

A second canal was built one block east of the Amoskeag Canal along the length of the Millyard and parallel to the river. The two canals powered the mills. By the 1880s the mill owners switched to electricity and steam power (with disastrous results in 1891).

The canals were paved over in the 1970s. One became Commercial Street, the other a railroad track.

Today, the remains of two small canals sit at the top of Manchester’s Millyard near PSNH’s Energy Park.

Blackstone Canal

The Moshashuck River portion of the canal in Providence, ca 1968. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

During the canal mania of the 1820, Providence merchants wanted to profit from trade with the farming communities near Worcester County and the Blackstone Valley. Until then, farmers sent their products by wagon to Boston.

In 1823, shortly before the Erie Canal opened, Massachusetts gave a charter to the Blackstone Canal Co. Rhode Island soon followed. Irish immigrants dug the canal, a ditch next to the Blackstone River. In Providence, the Moshassuck River became the lower part of the canal.

Benjamin Wright, the chief engineer, had supervised work on the Erie Canal and applied lessons learned to the Blackstone Canal.

The 45-mile canal opened on Oct. 7, 1828, when the canal boat Lady Carrington arrived in Worcester. For the next 20 years, the canal brought prosperity to farmers, sparked the construction of textile mills along its banks and sustained the growth of Providence and Worcester.

In 1847, the Providence and Worcester Railroad opened, putting the Blackstone Canal out of business the next year.

Today, long sections of the canal belong to the Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park in Massachusetts and the Blackstone River State Park in Rhode Island.

The WaterFire Festival in Providence.

Every summer in Providence, the Moshassuck and Providence rivers attract tourists to the WaterFire Festival. People light 86 fires in braziers anchored just above the waterline to the sound of world music.

Pine Street Barge Canal

Aerial view of the Pine Street Barge Canal and Lake Champlain.

In the 1860s, Burlington, Vt., ranked one of the busiest lumber ports in the United States, and the Lake Champlain waterfront near Battery Street ran out of room. City planners dreamed up the Pine Street Canal to expand the waterfront and allow the loading and unloading of canal boats. A breakwater was also built near the shore of Lake Champlain.

The plan worked. Commerce flourished and factories sprang up along the Pine Street Barge Canal. Unfortunately, the factories also dumped toxic waste into the water.

The U.S. government has designated the Pine Street canal, now a 38-acre polluted swamp, as a Superfund site – perhaps the only superfund site with four shipwrecks in it. At the canal entrance, surveyors found three construction barges from the mid-20th century and the mid-19th century schooner Excelsior.

The brick factories that grew up around the Pine Street Barge Canal are now restaurants, an antiques mall and yoga studios.

Images of canals: Farmington Canal By Staib (talk) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22646095; Pawtucket Gatehouse By Emw – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21042220. This story updated in 2022.

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