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Thomas Plant's LUCKNOW, now known as Castle in the Clouds

Thomas Plant Bets Big and Winds Up in a Castle in the Clouds

Thomas Plant did everything larger than life when it came to baseball, his shoe manufacturing empire and his castle.

Little evidence remains of his triumphs on the baseball diamond and in the shoe factory, but there is a castle in New Hampshire that became a lasting testament to his monumental life.

Born on October 5, 1859, in Bath, Maine to French Canadian parents, Plant had no formal education beyond eighth grade, but he did have a head for business and exceptional athletic ability. He was a tough, gifted baseball catcher in an age where the position was played without benefit of a mask or (often) even a glove. He played in an era where there was no formal, single major league. Teams were sponsored locally and played for a company, town or other affiliation.

Though the era of the superstar athlete was more than 100 years in the future, Plant nevertheless used his baseball skills to catapult himself to success. After working harvesting ice and at other trades, Plant settled on a vocation: the shoe industry. His biographers note his baseball ability may well explain his move to Lynn, Massachusetts, the shoe-making capital of the world, as companies sometimes recruited employee-athletes to bolster their sports teams.

In 1886, Plant became one of ten investors who pitched in $100 each to form the Lynn Union Cooperative Shoe Company. Tradition states that he raised his stake by betting on a baseball team that he managed. Over time, he would venture out on his own to start the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company. The company history has its highs and lows. Over the years, workers suffered serious injuries that resulted in contentious lawsuits and at one point labor relations were so strained that the union workforce waged a boycott of the company until conditions and wages were improved.

Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company

At the same time, the company also was known for its innovations and progressive labor practices. At its Jamaica Plain facility (built in part to escape the powerful unions of Lynn), Plant implemented color-coded uniforms for his workers to aid in efficiency and built ramps so that employees who had to move about the factory could use roller-skates to be more productive. The plant also paid higher wages than others and provided gymnasium facilities and a library to facilitate worker self-improvement. At its peak, the facility was the largest shoe factory in the world with more than 4,000 employees. (It was destroyed by fire in 1976.)

Thomas Plant’s Personal History

Plant’s personal legacy was as complex as his professional one. In 1895, Plant married Caroline Griggs in one of Chicago’s best-attended society weddings of the season. Griggs was of Connecticut descent, and her father was a wealthy, self-made man like Plant. By this point, Plant’s shoe company was generating more than $1 million in annual sales. He had lived frugally, occupying a room in his brother’s home rather than building or buying his own. Plant had aspirations of joining Yankee society and his marriage to Griggs helped his cause when the couple relocated to Boston.

But the marriage was ill-fated. It officially landed on the rocks when Catherine learned that Thomas had a paramour ensconced in a luxurious apartment, possibly a woman he’d met from his factory. Caroline served Tom with notice of divorce proceedings and moved to Cohasset in 1910. For the next two years, the marriage made wonderful newspaper headlines, but it resisted repair. It ended finally when one morning Catherine came down for breakfast in Cohasset to find a check for $1 million in her napkin ring – the final divorce settlement (at least that’s the story that is told).

Thomas Plant Takes on the Trusts

While his marriage was unraveling, Plant’s business was also experiencing headwinds. The United Shoe Machinery Company was formed when six machine-makers joined together and created a virtual monopoly on shoe-making equipment. They convinced the government to place a tariff on foreign equipment while they began putting the shoe industry in a stranglehold. They wouldn’t sell their equipment. Rather, companies had to lease it and pay royalties on shoes produced on the machinery. And if a company used any other manufacturing equipment in a plant with United’s machinery, it was a violation of the lease and United could, and did, repossess its machines.

Thomas Plant was unhappy with United’s business model. He first tried to negotiate with the company, suggesting reduced royalties for companies that produced large quantities of shoes. United declined. So he next set about patenting his own equipment and working with other companies until he could assemble a complete manufacturing line using non-United machines. This touched off a lengthy period of litigation between United and Plant. As his marriage was disintegrating, Plant began negotiations to sell his company to United to end the dispute. Over a period of many months, the two sides negotiated a price and he sold.

Some said Plant intended to sell his equipment and factory to United all along. Others said he was beaten by the monopolistic United and the sale was a defeat. During the negotiations, Plant confided to one friend that he was tired of business, and all he wanted to do was find a place to retire to in peace.

Out with Caroline, In with Olive

The sale complete, Thomas Plant took a vacation in France. He met Olive Cornelia Dewey, who was 24 years younger than he. This put paid to Plant’s marriage as the divorce proceedings resumed and quickly settled once he returned. Plant next married Olive Dewey, and the two began the hunt for Plant’s dream retirement home. His niece had filled his head with stories about the natural beauty of the Ossipee Mountains in New Hampshire and he dispatched his brother and his secretary to begin buying up land.

While other wealthy industrialists chose Bar Harbor or Newport for their summer retreats, the Plants chose a beautiful mountain top in New Hampshire.

The acquisition of the 6,300-acre property did not go without a hitch, as some landowners did not wish to sell. In some cases, Plant paid exorbitant prices for parcels. In others, he resorted to bullying to get people to move. When he finally assembled all the acreage he wanted, work began in earnest on Ossipee Mountain Park.

Thomas Plant Builds His Castle

Architects were hired and fired, as were craftsmen and others. More than 1,000 workers set to work on the project. Work stopped in one early stage when a builder hired on more than 100 Italian craftsmen from Italy only to be told by Plant to fire them. The result was the workers took their foreman captive and only released him when Plant coughed up the pay he owed.

Bit by grinding bit, Plant’s army carved the road to the cliff on which the castle is built. Stables, outbuildings, and other facilities were constructed and pink granite was mined and incorporated into the building.
The 16-room, 10,000-square-foot mansion was completed in 1914, and they called it LUCKNOW, perhaps a reference to a Scottish Castle or perhaps a simple pun because people who went there were in luck.

As everything involving Plant, the house was complicated and unique. It featured a blend of architectural styles, including Arts and Crafts, Mission, and Colonial Revival, reflecting Tom and Olive’s eclectic tastes. Plant himself suggested there were Norwegian, Swiss and Japanese influences in its makeup.

Likewise, the furnishings reflected the couple’s tastes and interests. Tiffany glass skylights and furniture by Irving and Casson represented the current styles they favored. Timber and building materials from locales around the world were incorporated into the construction. Modern indoor plumbing, needle showers, up-to-date kitchen and modern phone system highlighted Thomas Plant’s love of technology.

A suit of armor sized for the diminutive Plant was displayed, as were Tom’s trophies for his horses and an art collection, including several pieces depicting Napoleon. Thomas stood somewhere between 5-feet and 5-feet, 4-inches, depending on what source you believe, and he had a fascination with Napoleon.

Though no longer part of the property, Thomas Plant also established the Bald Peak Colony Club to have a golf course where he could play with friends.

Thomas Plant Strikes Out

An advertisement offering Thomas Plant’s LUCKNOW for sale.

Through most of the 1920s, Olive and Thomas Plant entertained guests at LUCKNOW, encouraging them to swim in Lake Winnipesaukee, ride horseback on the 30 miles of trails, enjoy a round of golf or just take in the scenic views.

Unfortunately, Plant’s success in the shoe industry did not translate to success in investing. He was patently bad at that, investing in sugar and Russian bonds, among other failures, and over the years his bank accounts dwindled.

He tried to sell LUCKNOW in the 1920s. His ad for the estate noted that the property was not for someone looking for a bargain and only men of “wealth and high standing and repute” should inquire.

“LUCKNOW is a country home for a man of big thoughts and ideas who can enjoy big things in a big way; a man who wants to make it possible for his family to spend long, happy summers and autumns in the open, close to nature, where they can enjoy within the limits of their own property every conceivable healthful outdoor sport.” He was unsuccessful in finding such a man.

Plant ended his life deep in debt. His former business associate held a mortgage on the LUCKNOW property and held off foreclosing, letting the Plants stay at LUCKNOW until Thomas Plant died in 1941. Upon his death, his friends had to take up a collection to pay funeral expenses, and the estate was sold at auction to settle his debts.

After Plant died, the property passed through a number of hands until it opened to the public as the Castle in the Clouds.

If you visit Castle in the Clouds.

Today the grounds are open for tours and hiking and riding seasonally, and the property includes a restaurant. It is a favorite destination for leaf-peeping. The property is located in Moultonborough, N.H. and offers a number of tours and special events each season. It is owned by the non-profit Castle Preservation Society.

This article draws on many sources of information, including the wonderfully researched Tom Plant: The Making of a Franco-Amer. Entrepreneur, 1859-1941 by Barry H. Rodrigue and Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory Fire by Walter H. Marx.

Photos: LUCKNOW by Fletcher – Own work CC BY-SA 4.0,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_in_the_Clouds#/media/File:Castle_in_the_Clouds.jpg

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The Christmas Blizzard of 1909: ‘The Sea Never Gives Up The Living’

More than 50 people died in the Christmas blizzard of 1909, a two-day storm with disastrous effects from Pennsylvania to Canada. The worst carnage happened at sea, where the storm caught mariners unaware.

Mild weather had dominated December of 1909 in New England. The weather service reported 20 “ideal days” that month. The string of mild weather came to a halt, however.

In New England, ships crashed onto the rocks, people drowned in their beds and bodies turned up buried in snow for weeks.

The Christmas Blizzard Starts

The snow started falling and gale winds arrived at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and would take some 24 hours to peter out, with two monster high tides. Snow totaled roughly 18-inches, but it varied from place to place along with the winds. In Boston, for instance, the highest wind recorded was 54 miles per hour, but on Cape Cod winds soared to 84 miles per hour.

Though not the largest blizzard ever, the Christmas blizzard of 1909 left a dramatic impact. All in all, the Christmas blizzard of 1909 did more than $10 million in damage and resulted in more than 50 deaths in the United States.

Chelsea and Everett Flooded

Chelsea and Everett, Mass., felt the most dramatic impact of the wind and tides. After initially holding strong, the floodgates at the mouth of the Island End River gave way at night as the storm surge pushed water higher.

Ocean water rushed into the streets, flooding low-lying homes and businesses in a matter of minutes. Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Harkins drowned while asleep in their bed, the newspapers reported, and Michael Callahan, an elderly man, drowned when flood waters invaded his home – on the second floor.

Forced from their homes, hundreds of residents waited in the raging blizzard as wagons slowly transported them to safety on higher ground. It would take weeks to rebuild the floodgates and restore people to their homes.

In all, 25,000 people fled their homes as the ocean waters pushed through the streets. Eighty acres of land flooded. At least four people drowned.

Connecticut and Rhode Island survived with less damage, though it took work crews days to restore telegraph and railroad lines.

The Christmas Blizzard at Sea

The ships at sea felt the greatest effects of the 1909 Christmas blizzard. The Seamen’s Journal reported 15 ships lost or severely damaged, with many more incidents not recorded. The Davis Palmer accounted for the most tragic loss of the storm.

Sister Ship to Davis Palmer werched in the Christmas Blizzard of 1909

Schooner Paul Palmer, Sister Ship to Davis Palmer wrecked in the Christmas Blizzard of 1909

As Christmas approached, the Davis Palmer, a five-masted schooner, made her way north around Cape Cod toward Boston Harbor. The ship was one of 14 that naval architect W.F. Palmer built and named for his children. The Bath, Maine, shipyards produced the Davis Palmer; she stretched more than 300 feet in length.

The crew aboard the Davis Palmer celebrated Christmas in style, oblivious to their fate. The barge Hop Along reported passing by the ship. The Palmer’s crew stood on deck singing and making merry as they headed toward their destination, loaded down with West Virginia coal from Newport News, Virginia.

The Wreck of the Davis Palmer

The ship worked her way through the gale force winds until she had nearly cleared the Graves, outer ledges in Boston Harbor. But the storm soon drove the Davis Palmer onto Finn’s Ledge. From there she drifted into Broad Sound and sank. Fourteen of her crew died in the wreck. Bodies would wash ashore in the weeks to come; some never turned up.

Other ships fared better. The schooner Maud Seward, from Deer Isle, Maine, lost her way off Cape Cod and washed up, wrecked, on Martha’s Vineyard where she rotted for years. But no lives were lost. The Ada Damon, from York, Maine, washed up at Ipswich, Mass. – probably a total loss, but the wreck injured no one. In the harbor at Plymouth, Mass., the storm damaged more than four vessels.

Chaos at Sea

Further out at the Five Fathom Bank, off New Jersey, sailors reported seeing the schooner George P. Hudson bound from Norfolk, Va., to Boston with a load of coal. The storm had badly crippled the Hudson, but her captain refused assistance. With people waiting in concern, the Hudson prompted great relief when she limped into Vineyard Haven, damaged but still afloat.

The schooner Wyoming

The six-masted Wyoming, the largest wooden ship ever built, left Bath, Maine, just days before Christmas – newly launched. Likewise, the F.W. Camp departed Boston for Norfolk. Both were missing for days before they finally turned up safe.

The Christmas gale of 1909, according to the Seamen’s Journal, “illustrates the force of the adage that ‘the sea will claim its own.’ It is said that ‘the sea never gives up its dead.’ It would perhaps be truer to say ‘the sea never gives up the living.’

“Christmas 1909 will long be remembered by the seamen of the Atlantic Coast as one of the most fateful days in the fateful history of those waters.”

Havoc Elsewhere

As the storm proceeded up the coast to Newfoundland, another 11 schooners from Newfoundland disappeared into the raging blizzard, carrying 60 more people to their deaths. “Worst storm in 50 years,” newspapers reported, with damage placed at more than $750,000.

After the storm, streets up and down the eastern seaboard remained blocked by snow for days as a cold front passed through, so cold that rivers froze over. Thousands of people filled the streets to remove snow and ice, restore electricity and help those trapped in their homes. Cleanup would continue into 1910. On January 25, rain in Pennsylvania revealed the corpse of a man who had frozen to death in a field, overcome by the blizzard four weeks earlier.

This story was updated in 2022.

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6 Historic Boat Rides

Early American history is inextricably linked with maritime history, and there’s no better way to get a feel for it than to take a summer cruise on one of New England’s many waterways.

The islands off New England were the site of some of the first settlements and fortifications. Wars were fought and commerce flourished along the region’s rivers, lakes and harbors. Lighthouses alone have a rich history, as do the fishing villages that became thriving cities and summer resorts.

We offer suggestions for 6 historic boat rides, one for each state, from Lake Champlain to the Long Island Sound.

Schooner Mystic Whaler

New London waterfront

Visitors to the 107-ton schooner Mystic Whaler will get a look at what a 19^th Century coastal cargo schooner was all about.

Coastal schooners were extremely profitable investments for their owners during the age of sail, supplying the cities up and down the eastern seaboard with cargo and passenger service.

The schooner Mystic Whaler is a reproduction built in 1967 and refitted in the 90s. And for comfort it has some modern amenities, including showers and comfortable cabins for overnight trips.

Each cruise offers a tour of the Thames River’s historic waterfront, including its famous forts and lighthouses, and passengers are invited to help raise sails, sing along with an old sea chantey and even take a turn steering the boat.

The ship offers regular 3-hour sailing trips in Fishers Island Sound as well as longer multi-day excursions.

All cruises sail from City Pier in New London, Conn. For more information, click here.

Maine Maritime Museum

A trip to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, offers a fascinating look at what the Percy & Small (P&S) Shipyard was like during the heyday of the coastal schooner era.

From 1894 to 1920, the yard built 45 vessels; 42 were four-, five- or six-masted schooners, including Wyoming, the largest wooden sailing vessel ever built.

For a water’s-eye view of the scene, the museum offers regular cruises that explore the lighthouses of Merrymeeting Bay, complete with some history about the lighthouses that guided the vessels coming in and out of the Kennebec to Bath.

For more information, click here.

Schooner Adventure

Annisquam Light, Gloucester

For a taste of what fishing the Grand Banks was like in the age of sail, you can book a trip on the schooner Adventure out of Gloucester, Mass.

The Adventure measures 121.6 feet and was built at the John F. James and Son Shipyard in Essex, Mass. She was a fishing vessel from 1926 to 1953 hauling in more than $4 million worth of fish in her day before she retired as the last American dory fishing trawler in the Atlantic.

Following a refit as a windjammer operating in Maine, the Adventure returned to Gloucester to be restored. With the restoration almost complete, the ship hosts regular sails and visitors will learn about life aboard a Gloucester fishing vessel as well as the history of the ship and her restoration.

For more information, click here.

Star Island Walking Tour

Gosport Chapel on Star Island

The remote and beautiful Isles of Shoals are barely inhabited today, but they have a long and fascinating history. They are an archipelago of nine islands, eight miles off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire.

In the early 16^th century, Basque, French, English and Portuguese fishermen fished the waters off the North American coast. So did Native Americans. By 1623, French and English fisherman lived on the islands seasonally to take advantage of the teeming schools of cod. It was fully incorporated as the town of Appledore in 1661. By the mid-19^th century, the fisheries had fallen off, but a new hotel built by Thomas Laighton attracted tourists and 19^th century celebrities. His daughter, Celia Thaxter, was the most popular female poet of the era, hosted an arts community that included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Childe Hassam.

Now, the islands are privately owned. UNH and Cornell have a marine lab on Appledore, and Star Island is home to a religious and educational conference center. It’s owned by the Star Island Corporation, affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ.

The Isles of Shoals Steamship Company, operating out of Portsmouth, N.H., offers day trips and walking tours to Star Island. The islands’ history is narrated on the cruise and by a guide on the island. For more information, click here.

Rhode Island Bay Cruises

Newport, R.I.

In 1776, the guns of Fort Adams drove British warships from Narragansett Bay. By the 19^th century, Newport became an ostentations summer resort for America’s super rich.

Rhode Island Bay Cruises takes passengers past some of the most beautiful and historic coastline of Narragansett Bay on a state-of-the-art catamaran.

The sightseeing cruise of Narragansett Bay features 10 historic lighthouses, 10 islands, Fort Adams and Hammersmith Farm, where John F. Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier. The rich history and folklore of Narragansett Bay will be narrated by local historian Arthur Strauss.

Rhode Island Bay Cruises leaves from North Kingstown, R.I. For more information, click here.

Spirit of Ethan Allen

Lake Champlain lighthouse

Spirit Of Ethan Allen, a 363-passenger cruise ship, cruises Lake Champlain past historic sites among the Adirondack and Green Mountain ranges. The ship sails along water highways used by Native Americans and unique geographic formations such as the Champlain Thrust Fault and Rock Dunder.

The captain will tell the story of Ethan Allen’s adventures, recount Indian lore, point out sights of historic shipwrecks and describe famous battles fought on the lake during the American Revolution. Passengers may also get a glimpse of Champ, the lake’s elusive monster.

The Spirit Of Ethan Allen leaves from the Burlington Boathouse in Downtown Burlington, Vt. For more information, click here.

Photos: New London from the waterfront, by By Iracaz at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17470662; Maine Maritime Museum, By Maine Maritime Museum CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21493216;; Annisquam Harbor Light by By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23028235; Gosport Chapel, By The original uploader was Shoaler at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Howcheng using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11338999; Newport, R.I., By MVASCO – Aerial Photo From Robinson R44 Helicopter by Michael Kagdis, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28626105; Lake Champlain lighthouse By Nagaraju.ramanna – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19728487.

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Daniel Webster Tells Dr. Samuel Merritt to Go West. He Does, With No Regrets.

In 1849, Samuel Merritt was making a name for himself as a physician in Plymouth, Mass. Merritt, originally from Harpswell, Maine, completed a difficult operation on a friend of the aging statesman Daniel Webster. Webster lived in nearby Marshfield at the time.

Impressed, Webster befriended the young doctor. As they spoke, Merritt admitted his fascination with the gold rush drawing people to California. Webster advised him, “Go out there, young man; go out there and behave yourself, and, free as you are from family cares, you will never regret it.”

Samuel Merritt

It was the nudge Merritt needed.

He was 26 years old. He decided to head west, making a business venture of his journey. Merritt bought a small sailing vessel and filled it with provisions. California was flush with gold, but it lacked supplies to build camps and roads and to feed and clothe miners.

As Merritt planned his departure, he had one regret. His efforts to procure nails for sale failed, and he had to leave without them. Though the nails would have brought him a fine profit, it hardly mattered. He left in September of 1849, equipped with letters of reference and an introduction from Webster. He sailed around the tip of South America, stopping for two weeks along the way.

When he arrived in San Francisco harbor, the city had just suffered the calamitous fire of December 1849. Its gambling houses and hotels were in ashes. The owners of these lucrative properties were desperate to rebuild. When Merritt’s ship showed up with supplies, they set upon him with offers for everything he had brought at prices far exceeding his expectations.

The enormous windfall encouraged Merritt to continue expanding his trading efforts. He leased another, larger ship. This time, his plan was modelled on Massachusetts’ Frederic Tudor’s ice business. Tudor took ice harvested from New England ponds and shipped it around the world.

Merritt believed San Francisco, with its healthy thirst, would welcome ice in the warmer months. And so he dispatched his new boat and its captain to the Puget Sound region with a crew to harvest ice and return with it.

When they returned, the captain had disappointing news. It was not cold enough to freeze the ponds in the Puget Sound area, and he had returned without ice. But he had not come back empty handed. The clever captain had bargained with the Native Americans he encountered to let him harvest timber, and he had filled the boat with lumber.

Successful Ventures

The trade was extremely profitable. Merritt would load his ship with goods for the Native Americans and return with lumber to fuel the exponential growth in San Francisco. Merritt kept the details of his transactions to himself while his ship made several more highly profitable trips. He next decided to get into the coal business.

Lake Merritt, 1890

He dispatched a ship to Newcastle, England, with instructions to load up with coal and return. Again, his clever captain made a wise decision. Upon arriving in Newcastle, the captain found the docks so crowded that he would have to wait a long time before loading. In addition, he realized the load of coal would be too small to make a profit.

Instead of waiting, he departed to Tahiti, where he procured a full load of oranges. They were the first oranges to arrive in San Francisco. People snapped them up, bringing enormous profit to Merritt.

Dr. Merritt

Merritt himself continued practicing medicine. He was regularly spotted rowing around San Francisco Bay providing medical care to sailors, since the city had no hospital.

He would return to Bath, Maine, to visit family in 1853 and again in 1862, to settle the affairs of his brother, Capt. Isaac Merritt. Upon his trips home, he would commission new ships, including two vessels designed specifically for the coastal lumber trade.

The Camron-Stafford House, built by Samuel Merritt in 1876.

With his fortune growing, Merritt invested heavily in California real estate, including the land surrounding Lake Merritt, in the center of Oakland, Calif. He dabbled in politics, serving on the 1856 committee of vigilance, a controversial vigilante organization in San Francisco. It policed crime, politics and civil disputes and handed out harsh old-West style justice, including hangings.

Robert Louis Stevenson aboard the Casco

Merritt declined an offer to serve as mayor of San Francisco, but did serve one term as mayor of Oakland. At 6’3” tall and weighing 340 pounds, Merritt was prominent both physically and politically.

Institutional Memory

Merritt influenced dozens of California institutions, some of which remain active today. He founded Samuel Merritt Hospital and Samuel Merritt University. He was a founder of the California Insurance Company and the Oakland Bank of Savings, and he was an early supporter of the creation of the University of California.

Merritt’s chief pastime, as he got older, was sailing on his yacht Casco, both on short journeys and long. And he provided the vessel to Robert Louis Stevenson for his voyage to the South Seas in 1888.

By 1890, diabetes took its toll on Merritt. He had never married, and his sister had joined him in California. A fall from a carriage that year triggered a sharp decline in his health. He died on Aug. 17, 1890 at the age of 67, with, as Daniel Webster had promised, few if any regrets.

This story was updated in 2022. Images: Lake Merritt By Aran Johnson, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7714281. Camron-Stafford House By Californiathegreat – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50547896.

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Ring Them Revere Bells

Only by accident did Paul Revere at 57 years old get into the business of casting bells.

Paul Revere, by Gilbert Stuart

He’d had some experience with bells. As a teenager he signed a contract with Christ Church – Boston’s Old North Church — to serve as a bell ringer. And like everyone else in Boston, he understood the importance of bells. They rang to wake people, to summon them to church services, to tell the cook to start dinner, to mark the passing of a human life.

The First Revere Bell

Revere in 1792 belonged to the New Brick Church, which had a problem: Its bell cracked. He offered to recast it, though he knew nothing about molding and casting bells. So he consulted with Aaron Hobart, one of the few people in America who did know about bells.

Hobart probably told him how bells with pleasant, musical tones are notoriously hard to forge: The shape affects the tone, as does the combination of copper, tin, silver, zinc, and lead. Copper from different mines will also create different sounds.

Revere’s first bell for the New Brick Church, a 912 pounder, was not terribly successful because of its harsh tone. But Revere and his sons Paul Jr. and Joseph Warren went ahead anyway. They then cast 398 bells between 1792 and 1828, first at their North End foundry and after 1804 in Canton, Mass. The bells often bore the inscription “THE LIVING TO THE CHURCH I CALL AND TO THE GRAVE I SUMMON ALL.”

King’s Chapel, about 1900

Powerful and Mellow

Over time Revere learned the proper composition of metals, and he used that knowledge in other metallurgical pursuits. In 1794 he was said to be the only man in America who knew anything of the difference between ores and the seven metals.

Revere and Sons made other kinds of bells as well, most notably for the U.S.S. Constitution. They also provided the copper sheathing for Old Ironsides and the Massachusetts Statehouse dome.

Revere, perhaps stung by criticism of that first bell, insisted that a committee approve the sound of a bell before its final sale. He’d cart the bell from his foundry into his back yard, where a committee of vestrymen or church deacons or selectmen had assembled. Small boys from the neighborhood gathered around the bell as well, according to Esther Forbes in Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. She described the Revere bells as beautiful bells, “powerful and mellow.”

Revere bell in the Pawtucket Congregational Church in Lowell, Mass.

Records

Revere was casual about recordkeeping. When young man in Farmington, Maine, bought a bell for $500, Revere forgot to write down his name. He did remember the bell was for Farmington Academy, and when he didn’t get paid he had to figure out who to write to. He wrote several threatening letters and finally did get paid.

More than a century later, researchers Edward and Evelyn Stickney traveled around the country compiling an inventory of Revere bells. They found 134 inscribed with the Revere name. Most were in Northern New England, but the Stickneys found Revere bells as far away as Savannah, Ga., Washington, D.C., and Tuscaloosa, Ala. They then published a small book about their discoveries in 1956, and revised it to mark the U.S. bicentennial.

There’s even a Revere bell in Asia. Revere’s daughter Maria married Joseph Balestier, the first U.S. consul to Singapore. In 1843, she donated a Revere bell to the first Church of St. Andrew’s in Singapore. Now the country’s national museum now has it in its collection.

Revere bell in the National Museum of Singapore

Revere’s first bell was resold in 1901 to St. James’s Episcopal Church in Cambridge, Mass., after the New Brick Church building was razed. The bell is on display, ringing only on Good Friday and at midnight on Christmas Eve.

More Bells

His biggest and most famous bell is still rung at services in King’s Chapel, where it is said to have a “unique and charming sequence of harmonic effects.”

The First Unitarian Church of Providence boasts that it has the largest bell cast at the Revere foundry in Canton.

The citizens of Bath, Maine, pay a special tribute to their Revere bell every year. They had bought it in 1803 for the new meetinghouse. Forty-seven people made pledges of $491 to buy the bell, in amounts ranging from $2 to $50. Now, at New Year’s Eve at noon they surround City Hall to ring the bell and sing Auld Lang Syne. They could sing Happy Birthday, since Revere was born on Jan. 1, 1735 (New Style).

Extraordinary

Woodstock, Vt. has five Revere bells. In 1818 three men traveled from Woodstock to Boston and bought a Revere bell for the First Congregational Church. It cost $319.95, at 45¢ a pound. It cracked in 1974, and so the church now just displays it. Three Revere bells still ring in Woodstock from the Masonic Temple, Saint James Episcopal Church and the North Universalist Chapel. The fifth rests on the putting green in front of the Woodstock Inn.

Old South

In 2012, a Paul Revere bell was restored and hung in the Old South Meeting House. It had come from the First Baptist Church of Westboro, Mass., which had closed. Two thousand people watched as a crane lifted the bell into the tower. Now the bell sounds the time for the Downtown Crossing neighborhood. Boston Mayor Tom Menino called it “extraordinary.”

This story was updated in 2022. Images: Lowell, Mass., Revere bell by By Emw – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21009269. Singapore Revere bell By Smuconlaw. – Own work., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38297817.

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