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When New Englanders Feared a French-Canadian Immigrant Conquest

When French-Canadians came to work in New England’s textile mills in the later 19^th century they sparked conspiracy theories of an immigrant conquest. Even the New York Times claimed that there were secret attempts to turn New England into New France.

Lowell Mill Girls

In its earliest years, women were the main component of New England’s textile workforce. In the 1840s, an increasing number of European immigrants came to operate the textile machinery. Then came the Civil War, a disaster for cotton textiles, New England’s largest 19^th century industry. New England’s mills were devastated by the Union blockade of Confederate ports during the war that hindered southern cotton from reaching northern shores.

Some New England mills closed their doors, while others slashed their hours. A contemporary observer described the result in the flagship mill town of Lowell, Mass.: nine corporations shut down and 10,000 workers thrown “penniless, into the streets.”

After the war, New England’s textile manufacturers found that their workforce had scattered and was not returning to the mills. To save the industry – and New England’s economy – the textile corporations scoured the rural areas of the region. They also searched Europe and Canada for laborers. Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec responded to this call en masse.

Newcomers

In the years between 1865 and 1900, hundreds of thousands of French-Canadians crossed the border in search of work in New England’s factories. By the beginning of the 20^th century, French-Canadian men, women and children comprised 44 percent of the region’s cotton textile workforce.

Young millworkers from Manchester’s Little Canada, 1909. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

During this period French-Canadians established Little Canadas in industrial towns from Lake Champlain to the Blackstone River Valley, and from the coasts of Maine to the Connecticut River. In towns such as Woonsocket, R.I., and Biddeford, Maine, the French-Canadians eventually became the majority, electing their own as mayors.

St. Ann’s Church complex, Woonsocket. It was built with nickels and dimes from French-Canadian millworkers.

Throughout the region, the newcomers from the North preserved their French language, their Catholic religion and the traditions of their rural Canadian parishes. They established their own schools, and a host of mutual benefit and social organizations. They intended to preserve their French-Canadian identity within the U.S.

A Conspiracy Theory About an Immigrant Conquest

The French-Canadian desire to maintain their language and customs raised alarm bells in New England and throughout the U.S. So did their heavy concentration in densely populated neighborhoods and their ever-increasing numbers. The mainstream press reported on an alleged invasion of New England by immigrants from across the border. Major media outlets including the New York Times, Harper’s and The Nation weighed-in on the political, economic and social implications of this cross-border influx.

In the period between 1880 and 1900, elements in the press spun a conspiracy theory around the French-Canadian newcomers. Some commentators theorized that the Catholic Church had dispatched the French-Canadian workers into New England in a bid to take over the region on behalf of the church. The French-Canadian workers, claimed these conspiracists, would first seize political control of the region. Then, went the theory, Quebec would declare its independence and annex New England to create a revived New France.

Increasing Alarmism

The New York Times repeated these claims on several occasions throughout the 1880s and 1890s. In 1885, the paper stated that there were plans afoot “to form a new France occupying the whole northeast corner of the continent.” Returning to the story in 1889, the Times stated that this supposed revival of New France would include, “Quebec, Ontario, as far west as Hamilton, such portions of the maritime provinces as may be deemed worth taking, the New-England States, and a slice of New-York.”

Notre Dame of Montreal Basilica

The newspaper’s rhetoric became increasingly alarmist over time. By 1892, the Times opined that French-Canadian immigration was “part of a priestly scheme now fervently fostered in Canada for the purpose of bringing New-England under the control of the Roman Catholic faith…This is the avowed purpose of the secret society to which every adult French Canadian belongs.”

This editorial seems to have imputed subversive intent to the French-Canadians’ mutual aid societies. In fact, these groups offered insurance and other benefits unavailable to French-Canadian Catholics elsewhere. Such groups were not oriented around the conquest of New England. It was simply false to assert that “every adult French Canadian” belonged to them.

Protestant Efforts To Convert French-Canadians

Some Protestant clergy climbed on the immigrant conquest conspiracy bandwagon. They responded with initiatives to convert the French-Canadians. The Congregationalists of Massachusetts supported Rev. Calvin Elijah Amaron, a missionary who established the French Protestant College at Lowell. A few years later, he moved it to Springfield, Mass. A major aim of this college, today known as the American International College, was to train French-speaking Protestant missionaries to go forth and convert the French-Canadians of New England and Quebec.

American International College in Springfield, Mass.

In 1891, Amaron published a book called Your Heritage; or, New England Threatened. It was a long-form treatment of the theory that a French-Canadian Catholic cabal planned to undermine New England. In Amaron’s mind, Roman Catholics could not be reliable U.S. citizens since they owed their first allegiance to Rome. The “Romish clergy,” Amaron wrote, forced its adherents into a “moral and intellectual bondage” that is “worse than southern slavery.”

The Gospel Wagon

The Baptists also made efforts to convert the French-Canadians of New England. Statistics cited in the 1906 book Aliens or Americans? by Howard Grose showed that the Baptists expended more resources on missionary activities to convert the French-Canadians than on any other predominantly Catholic group in the United States.

The Baptists’ Henry Lyman Morehouse, in an 1893 article titled The French Canadian in Quebec and New England, compared the effort to convert the French-Canadians to the abolitionist movement. “Slavery in the United States has gone,” Morehouse wrote. “The next great act of emancipation is that which shall free from mental and religious servitude the people of Quebec…”

Henry Lyman Morehouse

The Baptists also fielded a contraption called the Gospel Wagon. A large horse-drawn vehicle, it had a pulpit, organ and lanterns for preaching by night. Missionaries deployed the wagon in Massachusetts and New Hampshire mill towns, preaching Protestantism to the French-Canadian enclaves from their customized vehicle.

Immigrant Conquest Conspiracy Countered

Other voices countered the rhetoric about an immigrant conquest conspiracy. William MacDonald, a professor at Bowdoin College, disputed the notion that the Canadiens were a threat to the region. In an 1896 article in The Nation, MacDonald soberly recounted the facts showing that a French-Canadian demographic takeover of New England was unlikely. MacDonald also summarized the region’s attitude toward the French-Canadians in their midst:

Useful and indispensable as they have become, they are nowhere received with cordiality, or commonly referred to save as an inferior class; even their religion is denounced as un-American, and the influence of the Church little regarded or else misconstrued….As a class, they are treated considerately in public because of their votes, disparaged in private because of general dislike and sought by all for the work they do and the money they spend.

The conspiracy theorists offered little evidence to buttress their claims beyond a handful of utterances from the ultra-Catholic wing of the French-Canadian elites in Quebec. A few firebrands in Quebec had made expansionist noises. But, then as now, the political future of Quebec was hotly debated. There were many views on the subject. There was no semblance of unanimity in Quebec around the notion of a revived New France that would include New England.

Most of the workers coming from French Canada to New England were poor farmers, their non-inheriting adult children, day-laborers and wage earners in small Canadian factories. Their motives for crossing the border were chiefly economic rather than political or religious. Jobs and steady wages were the magnets attracting them southward.

French-Canadians Assert Their Patriotism

While conspiracy theorists were proclaiming that the newcomers were incapable of U.S. citizenship, New England’s small French-Canadian elite were voicing their American patriotism at a series of national conventions held throughout the U.S.

French-Canadian family arriving from Montreal.

At these French-Canadian conventions, speakers pointed to their people’s service in the U.S. military dating to the American Revolution. They also highlighted their historical role in settling the U.S. Midwest. They or their French cousins had founded or helped to found Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, as well as Natchez, Mobile, New Orleans and numerous other cities.

Convention delegates also encouraged their people to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Contrary to the theory that Quebec planned to annex New England, many French-Canadians in the States favored U.S. annexation of Canada.

The End of a Conspiracy

The fear of a French-Canadian conspiracy subsided in the early 20^th century as newcomers from Southern and Eastern Europe began to enter the U.S. in increasing numbers. New England manufacturing slowly lost its lead in the textile industry to the U.S. South beginning in the 1920s.

As the mills faded away, the Little Canadas gradually dispersed, a process that continued throughout the 20^th century. And along with these enclaves went the memory of a period when some Americans considered poor French-Canadian mill workers a threat to New England’s way of life.

David Vermette is the author of this story about fears of an immigrant conquest, updated in 2022. He is a writer, researcher and editor born and raised in Massachusetts. He wrote the book A Distinct Alien Race: The Untold Story of Franco-Americans (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018).

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Oliver Otis Howard, The Mainer Who Founded Howard University

Gen. Oliver Otis Howard thought he was fighting the Civil War to preserve the Union, not to free any slaves.

Howard had earned the nickname of “the Christian General” for his deep, overbearing piety. His men didn’t always appreciate his hectoring them about the Ten Commandments or the evils of booze.

His moral certainty led him to great achievements and to terrible deeds. He founded Howard University, which educated 150,000 freed slaves. But he later led a massacre of women and children belonging to the Nez Perce tribe because they wouldn’t move to a reservation.

Oliver Otis Howard by Matthew Brady

But sometimes Oliver Otis Howard couldn’t rely on his moral compass. During the Civil War, he faced a puzzling dilemma: Should he disobey orders and allow a fugitive from slavery her freedom?

Oliver Otis Howard

Born in Leeds, Maine, on Nov. 8, 1830, his mother sent him away to live with relatives after his father died when he was very young. He graduated from Bowdoin College at 19, and went on to West Point. A diligent student, he ranked fourth in a class of 46.

In 1856, he was a lonely young soldier stationed in Florida, far from his wife and baby boy. Seeking comfort, he attended a Methodist prayer meeting and experienced a spiritual awakening. He felt a “new well spring within me, a joy, a peace & a trusting spirit.” He sensed God had destined him for great things.

His military career, like the rest of his life, veered from highlight to lowlight. He won the Medal of Honor for leading a charge at the Battle of Fair Oaks, which cost him his right arm. But he suffered ignominious defeats at Chancellorship and Gettysburg. His men started calling him “Uh-Oh” Howard.

Freedmen’s Bureau

After the Civil War he led the Freedmen’s Bureau, a Reconstruction program that helped former slaves. The Bureau had hundreds of agents in the South distributing food and medicine and finding jobs and schooling for the new citizens.

Howard issued an order to divide up land from confiscated plantations and give it to the people who’d worked them as slaves. But while he vacationed in Maine, President Andrew Johnson reversed his order. In the end, anyone who’d received the promised 40 acres and a mule had to give them back.

Johnson viewed Oliver Otis Howard as a fanatic, and he tried to stymie him at every turn. Howard eventually concluded southerners were still fighting the Civil War and wouldn’t change their attitudes. So he turned his energies to education, and he established a school that bears his name today – Howard University. He served as president from 1869-1874.

Howard University

Howard explained the importance of Howard University in his 1908 autobiography. In the South, white people who opposed educating black people wouldn’t permit any room or building for use as a school. From 1865-67, mobs all over the South burned schools and churches used as schools. They flogged teachers and drove them away. A number of times, they murdered them.

Howard University started on three acres in Washington, D.C. Classes began in 1867 with five students, all daughters of the school’s white founders. Though it emphasized teacher training, Howard added a law school, a medical school and a seminary under its first president.

Howard University, 1868

Eventually, black students and faculty would outnumber whites, and Howard today produces more black doctorates than any other university. Alumni include Toni Morrison, Andrew Young, Kamala Harris and Thurgood Marshall.

Founders library at Howard University

Enemies

Oliver Otis Howard’s efforts on behalf of the former slaves earned him plenty of enemies, and they got him charged with corruption in running the Freedmen’s Bureau. After years of litigation the courts exonerated him, but he nearly went bankrupt paying his lawyers. And in 1872, Congress abolished the Freedmen’s Bureau.

For his next act, he moved west to kick Indians off their land. He commanded the Department of the Columbia from Fort Vancouver in Washington Territory. His men pursued and slaughtered Nez Perce Indians who refused to move to a reservation.

Chief Joseph led the Nez Perce resistance to Howard’s campaign to remove them from their land.

In Howard’s mind, he tried to do for the Indians what he had tried to do for freed slaves. He was giving them land on which they could lead good Christian lives, only they refused. Finally corralled into a reservation in Oklahoma, many died of disease.

Oliver Otis Howard at Governors Island in 1893.

Howard finally commanded the Atlantic Military Division at Fort Columbus on Governors Island in New York before retiring in 1894 as a major general. Then in 1896 he founded Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tenn., to educate “mountain whites.”

He died in 1909 in Burlington, Vt., on Oct. 26, 1909. He lies buried in Lakeview Cemetery.

Greatly Puzzled

How did Oliver Otis Howard’s moral compass swing so wildly from educating freed slaves to slaughtering Indians?

One incident early in his career illuminates his thought process. He prided himself on following orders, and had difficulty resolving the moral dilemma that created.

Just after the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861, the 30-year-old Oliver Otis Howard commanded a brigade. He and his men were garrisoned on a farm just west of Alexandria, Va.

First Battle of Bull Run

Abraham Lincoln aimed to quell the southern rebellion without touching slavery. He felt he had to, otherwise the loyal border states might also rebel. Military commanders were to return escaped slaves to their owners.

Howard was entertaining visitors from Waterville, Maine, when a picket guard brought a frightened young woman to him. He described her as “tall straight, healthful and active,” with a boy of about two years old in her arms.

He saw the woman’s terror, and reassured her. In his autobiography, he recounted the incident.

“What do you wish?” I asked. “Sir, I’m a slave woman, and this here’s my child. Let me and my child go free!”

Property?

Meanwhile, a poorly dressed, shrill, sallow white woman was ushered in. “That there woman is my slave,” she said. “I have always treated her well, and here she is. She has run off. Now, sir, you must send her back to me, for she is mine. She and the boy, they’re my property.”

I found myself under most stringent orders not to harbor any slave property. The white woman, seeing my embarrassment, became more and more excited, and soon began to use abusive language, directed partially to me, but mainly to her slave.

The woman kept pressing her child to her breast and with her large eyes filled with tears continued to look toward me, repeating: “Oh! my child, my child!”

Howard realized he had to decide the case. He turned to the white woman and said, “There’s your property, take it!” She replied, “But I can’t take it. She’s stronger than I! You must give me a guard.”

That was too much for Howard. He said, “No, no, I will not give you a guard. I will never use bayonets to drive a poor girl and child into bondage.”

Both women went away, and the young fugitive found her way to Washington, D.C., and to freedom. His guests from Maine, ardent abolitionists, chastised him for his hesitation.

What to do with enslaved people presented a quandary until another New Englander, Benjamin Butler, declared them “contraband of war.”

Read Oliver Otis Howard’s account of the incident in his autobiography here. Image of Howard University PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13705310. Founders Library By Derek E. Morton – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74173648. This story was updated in 2023.

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Remembering Jonathan Cilley, the Reluctant Maine Duelist

In 1838, politicians in Washington, like Maine representative Jonathan Cilley, didn’t have Twitter to settle their political fights. But they did have guns and dueling was still legal in parts of the country, including Maryland.

James Watson Webb, William Graves and Jonathan Cilley

Nothing in Jonathan Cilley’s early years would suggest he would die in one of the last legal duels east of the Mississippi. Born in 1802 in Nottingham, N.H. he attended Atkinson Academy and Bowdoin College, graudating in the class of 1825. Cilley moved to Thomaston, Maine where he began studying law and teaching school. He apprenticed himself to John Ruggles, a judge and politician.

Ruggles initially supported Cilley’s ambition, and helped him win election to the Maine House of Representatives. But the two had a falling out when Ruggles accused Cilley of not enthusiastically supporting Ruggles’ own campaign for U.S. Senate. The split set up a life-long political feud between the two men, and Ruggles would attempt to have Cilley expelled from the Democratic Party.

Jonathan Cilley Congressman

Cilley, however, prevailed and was elected Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. In 1837 he won election to Congress. In his private life, Cilley was known as an amiable man, whose outlook was somewhat darkened by the deaths of two of his four children in infancy. He remained humble, despite his successes. The student at Bowdoin who had served as a school teacher to support his education still traipsed through town on his own looking for his cow when it took off wandering.

Cilley was fond of flower gardening and enjoyed spending time with his beehives, admiring the industrious occupants. In his public life, Cilley was eloquent, but direct. His bluntness would eventually lead to his death.

War of Words

Trouble began when Cilley attacked newspaper publisher James Watson Webb, publisher of the New York Morning Courier and Enquirer. Webb was a Whig and later a Republican. Cilley a Democrat. Webb was pugnacious, vain and corrupt. Cilley had called out Webb for flip-flopping on the issue of whether the Second Bank of the United States should be allowed to continue operating.

Webb had opposed the bank but then supported it after receiving substantial payments of $52,000 from the bank.

Webb took exception to comments Cilley made on the House floor. Webb gave a letter to his friend, Rep. William ‘Tip’ Graves of Kentucky, demanding an explanation or an apology of Cilley.

The etiquette of dueling was peculiar, and the appropriate response to a challenge was a touchy business. Cilley responded by explaining his criticism had not been intended to impugn the honor of either Webb or Graves. At first, the reply satisfied Graves. However, a group of his friends, including Kentucky Sen. Henry Clay, urged him not to accept the apology.

Webb responded with a note, probably written by Clay, asking Cilley to explain what he had meant in the House debate. Offended, Cilley replied that he would not accept any demand to further explain himself. That prompted Graves to issue the challenge to a duel.

The Dueling Grounds

Graves was a trained marksman with a pistol, so Cilley chose to fight with rifles. The two went to the dueling grounds in Maryland, with their seconds, on Feb 24, 1838. There they took their positions – some 90 yeards apart – and lowered their rifles and fired. The first shots missed. The seconds conferred and decided another round should be fired, this time from a closer range. Again, both men missed.

The seconds conferred again. Cilley had repeated his earlier statement that he had not impugned the honor of his opponents. But the seconds agreed to a third round. On his third shot, Graves hit Cilley in the leg. The bullet tore through his femoral artery. Cilley bled to death in a matter of a few moments.

A Nation Outraged

In reaction to the duel, outrage erupted from Thomaston, Me. to Washington, D.C. Congress investigated whether Graves had violated the rules of the House of Representatives. By a narrow margin, he survived an effort to expel him from the House. But he retired from politics at the end of the term.

Dueling was outlawed across the country. The fallout from the Cilley duel helped destroy Henry Clay’s career. He would seek the presidency, but was passed over. One the allegations against him was that his history of dueling made him unfit for office.

Webb, meanwhile, would go on to involve himself in one more duel. He would challenge Rep. Thomas Marshall of Kentucky to a duel in 1842. The duel left Webb with a bullet in his leg that caused him to limp for the remainder of is life. Adding insult to injury, Webb was arrested in New York and sentenced to two years in jail for breaking the laws against dueling. His political connections saved him; the governor pardoned him and spared any jail time.

Cilley, meanwhile, had been memorialized in an emotional service at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and then taken home to Thomaston where even his former political enemies condemned the manner in which he died.

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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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Six Gravesites of Military Heroes

Military heroes who sacrificed for their country certainly deserve to be remembered on Memorial Day weekend. Some people remember them with parades and speeches, others with flowers on their graves.

The New England Historical Society honors them with this story about the place where each state’s greatest military heroes rest, we hope, in peace.

Wooster Cemetery

David Wooster

Connecticut produced many military heroes, including Benedict Arnold, a hero at least for a while.

Nathan Hale is the first among all Connecticut’s military heroes, having given his life for his country. But no one ever found his body.

And you might get into an argument if you called Revolutionary War Gen. Israel Putnam a hero.

But Gen. David Wooster definitely qualifies as a military hero from Connecticut, albeit a largely forgotten one. He gave his life for his country in the Battle of Ridgefield, chasing British troops back to New York after they burned Danbury.

As Wooster lay dying, he said, “I am dying, but with a strong hope and persuasion that my country will gain her independence.”

He was buried in Wooster Cemetery on Mount Moriah in Danbury. And yes, Wooster Square in New Haven was named for him.

Monument to David Wooster in Wooster Cemetery.

Wooster Cemetery, Ellsworth Ave., Danbury, Conn.

Pine Grove Cemetery

Of all of Maine’s military heroes, Joshua Chamberlain stands as the greatest.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, by Matthew Brady

When the Civil War broke out, Chamberlain left his job as a Bowdoin College professor to command the storied 20^th Maine Regiment.

On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine held off three savage charges by Confederate regiments. By evening, the 20th Maine ran low on ammunition. He could either hold the hill and face certain destruction, or retreat and allow the Confederates to overrun the Army of the Potomac.

Instead, the men fixed their bayonets and charged down the hill. The shocked rebels broke and ran.

Chamberlain suffered grievous wounds during the Second Battle of Petersburg. He then received a promotion to brigadier general on what was thought to be his deathbed. He lived to the age of 85 and received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at Gettysburg.

A simple headstone marks Joshua Chamberlain’s grave in historic Pine Grove Cemetery near Bowdoin College, where he returned after the war.

military-heroes-gravesite-chamberlain-grave

Pine Grove Cemetery, image courtesy Google Maps

Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Maine

Old Burial Hill

The Americans might have lost the Revolution if it weren’t for one of Massachusetts’ great military heroes, John Glover.

military-heroes-glover's-regiment-glover

John Glover

Glover raised a regiment of Marblehead fishermen and sailors known for their discipline and teamwork. The regiment, which, included African-Americans and Indians, ferried George Washington and 2,400 men across the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776.

The Battle of Trenton, which followed, gave the American cause a boost in morale when it badly needed one.

Glover had already saved Washington’s Army. When the British defeated the Continental Army on Long Island, Washington ordered Glover’s Regiment to evacuate the troops to Manhattan. They safely landed 9,500 men, along with all their baggage, nearly all their artillery, stores, horses and provisions. Had the evacuation failed, Washington’s army—and probably the war—would have been lost.

John Glover is buried in Marblehead in the picturesque Old Burial Hill cemetery.

Old Burial Hill

Marblehead, Mass.

Stark Cemetery

John Stark

John Stark, , the most famous of New Hampshire’s military heroes, was also a quote machine. During the Battle of Bennington, Stark rallied his men with the words:

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!

Stark’s performance earned him the nickname Hero of the Battle of Bennington:

He may have been the one who said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And he most certainly coined New Hampshire’s motto, Live Free or Die.

Stark fought with distinction during the entire war, then went back to his farm in New Hampshire. He is buried with his wife in Stark Cemetery in Manchester, N.H. It’s in the back of Stark Park.

Stark Cemetery

Stark Cemetery, River Road, Manchester, N.H.

Common Burying Ground

You would expect Rhode Island’s greatest military heroes to be mariners and you would be correct.

But Rhode Island’s Oliver Hazard Perry wasn’t just a military hero. He defeated a British squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. His victory turned the tide of the war in the West, and he became a national hero as well as a military hero.

Perry didn’t have long to enjoy his fame. He died of yellow fever in 1819 at the age of 34.

Perry joins many of Newport’s most prominent citizens at the Common Burying Ground in Newport. His neighbors include Ida Lewis, Ann Smith Franklin and William Ellery.

The Common Burying Ground has a large number of colonial era headstones, including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the United States.

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The Common Burying Ground

Farewell St & Warner Street, Newport, R.I.

St. Joseph’s Cemetery

Capt. John Lonergan

John Lonergan realized his men were under heavy fire from a house in front of them. Lonergan ordered his men to charge it. They surrounded the house and Lonergan knocked in the front door, bellowing, ‘’Surrender! Fall out here, every damned one of you!’ The Confederates tumbled out of the house, and Lonergan’s company took 83 of them captive.

Lonergan later headed the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood and organized two failed raids into Canada from St. Albans. His aim was to pressure Britain to leave Ireland. He died in 1902. In 2013 his great-granddaughter unveiled a memorial marker to honor him in Burlington’s City Hall Park. He is buried, however, in St. Joseph Cemetery in Burlington.

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St. Joseph’s Cemetery

206 Auburn St. Burlington, Vt.

End Notes

Images: David Wooster’s monument, By Kensphotos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4064498. Common Burying Ground By Swampyank at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17984252. Oliver Hazard Perry, By Gilbert Stuart(Life time: 1755-1828) – Original publication: Portrait by Gilbert Stuart Immediate source: http://www.toledomuseum.org/2013/08/08/artwork-of-the-week-august-9/, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40572296. Stark Cemetery By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26455478. Google images by Google Maps. Image of Oliver Hazard Perry courtesy Toledo Museum of Art.Old Burial Hill By Newenglandhistory1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114115853.

This story was updated in 2022.

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8 Surprising Facts About Martin Luther King Jr. in New England

Martin Luther King Jr. spent plenty of time in New England, and not just giving speeches about civil rights. He worked in Connecticut over the summers as a teenager, and he earned his Ph.D. and courted his wife in Boston.

Here are eight facts you may not know about Martin Luther King’s impact on the region and its people.

1. A phone call to his wife helped elect JFK.

On Oct. 26, 1960, Sen. John F. Kennedy wanted to win his close race for president against Vice President Richard Nixon.

Martin Luther King, Jr., wanted to get out of a Georgia prison for protesting a segregated restaurant.

Kennedy called Georgia’s governor and asked him to try to free King. He also called Coretta Scott King to show his sympathy. The governor got Martin Luther King released, and word of Kennedy’s phone calls spread throughout the black community.

Many attributed Kennedy’s victory to those telephone calls.

Ironically, Martin Luther King had a better relationship with Richard Nixon than he did with Kennedy.

2. Boston was the 2nd home of Martin Luther King Jr.

He called Boston his “second home,” because he had lived in the South End as a graduate student at Boston University. He also courted Coretta Scott while she attended the New England Conservatory of Music.

Martin Luther King met his wife in Boston

3. He spent summers in Connecticut.

As a teenager, Martin Luther King Jr, spent two summers working in Simsbury, Conn.

In 1944, he worked in the tobacco fields to earn money for his tuition at Morehouse College. The school had an arrangement with Cullman Bros., which hired Morehouse students to work through harvest.

Young King (who then went by his birth name, Michael) found the experience liberating. He could worship with white people in church, eat in the same restaurants and sit in the same train car.

He returned three years later for another summer.

King with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and civil rights leaders, June 22, 1963.

4. He spoke at many New England colleges.

As a civil rights leader, Martin Luther King spoke at many New England colleges, including Bowdoin College, Francis College (now University of New England), Brown, Boston University, Harvard, Yale and the University of Rhode Island.

In 1964, Springfield College gave him an honorary degree. The FBI pressured the college’s president, Glenn A. Olds, to cancel the invitation to speak at the commencement. Olds held his ground even though it cost the college a potential $1 million contribution.

5. A gift to his widow disqualified a New Hampshire racehorse.

The New Hampshire thoroughbred Dancer’s Image won, then lost, the Kentucky Derby in 1968 because his owner supported the civil rights movement. Peter Fuller, who owned Dancer’s Image, said resentful white Southerners stripped him of his prize.

The horse had won the Derby on May 4, 1968, a month after King’s assassination in Memphis. Two days after King died, Fuller gave $62,000 won by Dancer’s Image to his widow.

Three days after Dancer’s Image won the Kentucky Derby, Fuller had to return his purse. The racetrack claimed the horse tested positive for a banned substance. Fuller maintained to his death they’d framed him because of his gift to Coretta Scott King.

Martin Luther King and his family arrive in Montgomery from Selma, March 1965

6. The KKK murdered a Boston minister after Selma.

A Boston Unitarian-Universalist minister, James Reeb, joined King’s second march in Selma, Ala., in 1965. The Ku Klux Klan beat him savagely that night, and he died two days later.

King held a news conference to denounce the “cowardly” attack.

Tens of thousands held vigils, and President Lyndon Johnson invoked his memory four days later when he sent the Voting Rights Act to Congress.

King during a 1964 news conference.

7. Martin Luther King Jr. found Jackie “something.”

King came to the White House to discuss civil rights with President John F. Kennedy.

The special assistant for civil Rights, Harris Wofford, escorted King to the family quarters, where Kennedy had asked to meet him. They entered a small elevator, but it went down instead of up.

When the elevator doors opened in the basement, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy – in blue jeans — got on. Wofford introduced them, and she said, “Oh, Dr. King, you would be so thrilled if you could just have been with me in the basement this morning. I found a chair right out of the Andrew Jackson period–a beautiful chair.”

King’s comment after she left: “Well, well—wasn’t that something.”

8. James Brown saved the day in Boston.

James Brown appeared in Boston just after King was assassinated.

After King’s murder, riots broke out in more than 100 U.S. cities. Boston remained relatively peaceful because of the legendary James Brown concert at Boston Garden the next day.

Boston Mayor Kevin White prevailed on Brown to let WGBH rebroadcast his performance. Throughout the show, between songs, the singer talked about Martin Luther King and urged the people to stay calm.

WGBH rebroadcast the show, over and over, and thousands of angry young people stayed home. The next day the local news media gave James Brown credit for keeping the peace.

This story about Martin Luther King Jr. was updated in 2023.

Image: King at a press conference By Marion S. Trikosko – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID ppmsc.01269.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17218777.

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