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Brattleboro Vt.

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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Six New England Presidential Visits and the Stories Behind Them

New England is full of sites that hosted past presidential visits as the country’s leaders came north in search of votes, campaign cash or just a vacation. Here are six of them:

Providence, 1843

Market Square, Providence, 1844.

In 1843, President John Tyler’s presidency was reeling. Tyler was the first vice president to ascend to the presidency because the incumbent died. His detractors let him know it. They dubbed him the ‘Accidental President’ or ‘His Accidency.’

By 1843, Tyler was facing dramatic turnover in his cabinet. His efforts to negotiate the annexation of Texas into the United States was causing an uproar, since Taylor wanted it to join the United States as a slave-holding state.

Buffeted by Washington, Tyler decided to take his program to the people. He headed north, and the wildly popular response encouraged him to mount a third-party bid for office in 1844.

Tyler arrived before dawn on June 15 at Stonington, Conn., where a crowd of 2,000 greeted him.

Travelling north toward Rhode Island, the crowds began swelling around North Kingstown. The New York Herald noted that Providence was unprepared for the huge outpouring of people eager to see the president:

The curiosity to see him was immense. The Common Council of Providence mismanaged everything most horribly; a mob surrounded the cars, and set all order at defiance. An old man cried out, “Here, I’ve had my pocket picked of my pocket book.”

Tyler traveled the streets to Brown University and back to Market Square, where he ate at the Franklin House, an inn that used to stand across from the Market House.

Across the river he did some handshaking at the first indoor mall in America, the Westminster Arcade: “The president then went into a queer looking place called Westminster, and shook hands with 5,000 people,” reported the Herald.

A delegation from Lowell, Mass. buttonholed Tyler and persuaded him to visit that city, as well. He traveled there after the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument. There he learned of a new disaster brewing for his administration – his attorney general had died. The president decided to return to Washington rather than continue his tour, but his spirits were greatly improved.

Tyler finally dropped out of the 1844 race when the Whigs approved his plan to annex Texas.

The Westminster Arcade remains open to this day in Providence. Today it’s a shopping destination with two stories of apartments.

Sargent’s Purchase, N.H., 1869

Stereo-graph photo of Ulysses Grant atop Mount Washington in 1869.

In the summer of 1869, Washington’s heat drove the new president, Ulysses S. Grant, to visit New England with his wife and children.

On Aug. 27, 1869, the Grant family climbed Mount Washington. They took the three-year-old cog railway, the first cog railway in the world. Sylvester Marsh designed the railway for the mountain’s steep grade. The train has cog wheels that mesh with a toothed rail in the center of the track.

It wasn’t the first train the Grants took on that vacation. They rode from Newport, R.I., to Boston, where a large crowd greeted them. They took another train to Nashua, N.H., where they were again greeted by thousands of well-wishers. On they went to Manchester, where Grant toured the printing department of the Amoskeag Mills and greeted some 3,000 millworkers lined up to see him.

In Concord, Grant told the welcoming crowd that it was his first visit to New Hampshire and he was sorry an injury prevented him from shaking hands.

At 9 a.m. the next day, the presidential party left the Crawford House in Crawford Notch, N.H., for what was then called the Sky Railroad. According to news reports, the president was particularly struck with the simplicity and safety of the air brake.

The Grants seated themselves in the car and moved skyward. A cannon was fired when they reached the summit and the president was told the Harvards had lost the boat race. “Well I am very sorry to hear it,” Grant said.

After lunch, the presidential party headed to Littleton and then Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

The Cog Railway to the top of Mount Washington has never stopped operating.

Brattleboro, Vt., 1877

Brooks House, Brattleboro, Vt.

Until 2000, history counted the election of 1876 the closest contest for the White House ever. Rutherford B. Hayes, an Ohio Republican, won the Electoral College. Samuel Tilden, a Democrat, won the popular vote.

The two parties hammered out the compromise of 1877, in which Hayes got the White House and the Democrats got everything else. They won an end to the Reconstruction period of federal control of the South.

Without federal troops to intervene when African-Americans were harassed, Democrats soon took control of the southern statehouses. Their anti-black policies that survived for decades.

As a longtime supporter of Reconstruction, Hayes wanted to “wipe out the color line.” His efforts at promoting racial harmony failed. Perhaps no one could have succeeded.

In his first months in office, Hayes had to authorize the military to repulse Mexican criminal bandits terrorizing the border and put down the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

He needed an escape, and Vermont was the tonic. Hayes’ grandfather, Rutherford, built a home at West Brattleboro in 1780. His son, also Rutherford, built at Dummerston before moving to Delaware, Ohio, where the president Rutherford Hayes was born in 1822.

On his 1877 return visit, Hayes stayed with his cousin William Bigelow in West Brattleboro. Bigelow was said to be the wealthiest man in Vermont at one time. A large reception was held at the Brooks House in Brattleboro, and the time spent in Vermont restored Hayes’ outlook.

Vermont would retain a special place in Hayes’ life. After leaving office, he was a regular visitor. Some reports held that he had become engaged to Mary Ann Hayes Bigelow, who had been host to Hayes in 1877 with her husband William. The wedding had been delayed because of the death of Mary Ann’s son Russell, and Rutherford died before it could take place.

Hayes ordered Dummerston Granite shipped to Ohio from the family’s Vermont homestead and used it as the base for the stone that marks his and his wife’s grave.

Today Brattleboro’s Hotel Brooks is still open and operating as a shopping and dining destination.

Adams, Mass., 1897

Postcard showing statue of William McKinley at Adams, Mass.

Adams and North Adams, Mass., never had a better friend than William McKinley. His trade policies strengthened the textile industry and helped the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company grow to be a world leader in textile manufacturing.

The Plunkett family, who owned the mills, invited McKinley to stay with them twice. In 1897 he was given the honor of laying the cornerstone for the Adams Free Library. To this day the library contains a chair that was especially constructed for McKinley for the occasion.

The Plunketts also arranged for him to give a speech to the thousands of attendees at the Hoosac Valley Agricultural Fair on Sept. 22, 1897.

McKinley would return to Adams for a week stay beginning June 21, 1899, during which he was treated more like royalty. He traveled through Holyoke, Westfield, Pittsfield and Springfield, encountering huge crowds at each.

It was North Adams that pulled out all the stops. The city erected a viewing stand for McKinley to watch a special parade that featured bands, school children, military units and mounted police. Pressed to give an impromptu speech, McKinley marveled at the prosperity manufacturing had brought to the area:

I know something about North Adams from my visit two years ago, but as I rode through the beautiful streets of your city today I must confess I was wholly unprepared to witness its splendid progress and prosperity.

When McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901, no town mourned the loss more than Adams. The town erected a statue in his honor that stands to this day in front of the library he dedicated. It was rededicated in 1903.

Poland Springs, Maine, 1921

The summer of 1921 was especially gay at the Poland Springs resort, which the Ricker family had been running in one form or another since 1793. Motor traffic had never been heavier, and the first week in August was filled with dancing, tennis and golf.

Poland Spring House

That week came to a climax with a visit from President and Mrs. Warren G. Harding, who had driven from Lancaster, N.H. There they had been staying with Harding’s secretary of war, John Wingate Weeks.

On Aug. 4, 1921, the Hardings arrived in Poland Springs for lunch after driving 200 miles from Lancaster and stopping at a sanitarium in Oxford, Maine. There the president promised World War I veterans, mostly suffering from gas attacks, that the government would do everything it could to help them.

He had asked that Poland Springs do nothing special for his visit, but the caddies were noticeably excited. The president and his wife ate lunch and then he played a round of golf. That night, Harding left from Portland for Washington on the presidential yacht Mayflower.

The Poland Springs resort is still open and still offering a challenging course for golfers.

Groton, Conn., 1952

President Harry Truman laying the keel for the USS Nautilus.

On Saturday June 14, 1952, President Harry Truman visited the shipyard at Groton, Conn., to celebrate laying the keel for the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine ever built.

Truman, who ordered the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, said he hoped it would begin an age where the discoveries that fueled development of the atom bomb would be applied to industry in ways that would benefit society.

Truman envisioned planes and ships powered by atomic energy, as well as power plants driven by this inexpensive new generating process:

Such a possibility would revolutionize the technological basis of our civilization. It could provide the answer to the crying need for sources of power in the underdeveloped areas of the world. It could mean industrial development for areas now held back because they have no supply of coal, or oil, or waterpower.

Truman said he prayed the submarine would never have an enemy and be tied up someday as an historic relic of a threat of war long passed.”

While all Truman’s projections didn’t come to pass, the Nautilus is in fact tied up and open for tourists as a museum and library.

Of course Truman didn’t forget politics in his speech, praising Sen. William Bento for standing up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his red-baiting tactics.

Truman’s private journal hints at a more curmudgeonly president behind the hoopla. He wrote:

“Well here I am, Sunday evening all alone. Margaret came to the Great White Prison for the week end on Friday 13th. I went by train to Groton (rhymes with rotten) to speak on atomic energy for peace time use. Should have flown both ways but my staff decided that it would be bad weather going up. It wasn’t.”

And of the frustrations of the White House life that was coming to a close, he said, “Lesson: Don’t raise your boy to be President of the United States.”

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The Wreck of the Greenfield Marks the End of the Connecticut River Men

In 1840, the river men who hitched their fortunes to ships like the Greenfield, which hauled freight up and down the Connecticut River, were in for a disappointing surprise.

Since the early days of colonial New England the river had served as a means of transporting raw materials and finished goods. Boats carried tons of cargo back and forth from Vermont, New Hampshire and Western Massachusetts to Hartford, Conn. and beyond.

In the age of sail, a long flat boat was used. It carried a single mast with a square mainsail down low and a smaller sail above for lighter winds. For extremely light wind, the flatboat had another topsail.

Connecticut River Men

Connecticut River steamboat

River men called spike-pole men worked the boats. When the wind was insufficient to propel the boat against the current – which it frequently was – the spike-pole men stepped in. Using poles 12 to 20 feet long, they would drag the boat forward by planting the spike end of their poles into the river bed and walking from forward to aft on the boat.

The age of steam put an end to the spike-pole men. Boats were fitted with steam engines in the early 1800s that could do the job faster. A single steam-powered river boat could tow one or more barges upriver and back.

By 1840, however, trains posed a new threat to the river men. The same steam power that could power a boat could also pull a train. The increasingly reliable trains could carry more cargo that the flat steamboats..

For river men, the race was on.

The Greenfield

Stockbridge, Allen, Root & Co. had formed in Greenfield, Mass., by combining two smaller concerns. The company’s business was groceries and freight hauling. One Monday in May of 1840, it sent its steam vessel Greenfield on a journey up river from Hartford to points in Massachusetts.

View of the City of Hartford by William Havell, 1841.

The steamer hauled four barges, and planned to connect a fifth. The vessel was a new one, an investment of $5,000 to $10,000. The company wanted to speed up shipping and become more competitive. The boat was narrow and drew little water to help it navigate canal locks. The engineer who built the vessel, with its twin boilers, was aboard to oversee how the new boilers would operate under the extreme load.

The safety of boilers was a major concern in the day. Some 14 percent of all steamship boilers exploded in the 1830s. Congress had passed laws, albeit weak ones, to improve their safety. But the explosions kept on.

Just south of Northampton, Mass. calamity struck: the Greenfield’s boilers exploded. They blew holes in the ship, sending it immediately to the bottom. Portions of the boilers were found in the fields on the side of the river.

Blown apart by the explosion were Capt. John D. Crawford, of South Hadley Falls in Massachusetts; engineer Alanson D. Wood, of Brattleboro, Vt., and William Lancey, the designer of the vessel, from Springfield, Mass.

Railroads Take Over

In all, some 30 men were manning the Greenfield and the barges it towed. Most escaped injury. Ebenezer Morse of Northampton had the good fortune to be standing directly beside one of the boilers when it blew. The explosion threw him high into the air. He splashed down into the river with barely a scratch.

Captain Crawford was a highly regarded river man with 10 years’ experience, but he and the company couldn’t escape all criticism.

Freight still gets carried along the Connecticut River. Photo from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division..

“Perhaps no blame should be attached to anybody,” the Northampton Gazette noted. “[B]ut we cannot refrain from believing from the best information we can obtain, that the boat was pushed harder than prudence and safety would warrant. It was a new boat, and there was an ambition to establish its reputation for speed.”

Reputation for speed or no, river men soon lost the race to the railroads as they expanded in the years ahead. The freight firm Stockbridge, Allen, Root & Co. would go out of business after the Connecticut Railroad Co. bought it.

This story was updated in 2021.

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Lightfoot and Thunderbolt – The Last New England Highwaymen

In July of 1816, Michael Martin encountered an odd clergyman at a tavern in his native Ireland. The cleric dazzled him with his wealth: fine clothes, rich jewelry and an endless river of liquor.

The clergyman put him through a series of tests to measure his strength and his running speed. Martin impressed the man so well, especially with his foot speed, that he offered him a job, a partnership really. But not as a clergyman, as a highwayman robbing unwary travelers.

Captain Lightfoot robbing Maj. Bray (Captain Lightfoot, the last of the New England highwaymen)

The clergyman revealed himself as a notorious robber in disguise, Captain Thunderbolt — so named because he struck fast and without warning – and he offered 20-year old Martin a place in the fraternity of highwaymen.

Martin hesitated momentarily, he later said. He had not, to this stage of his young life, committed any serious crimes. But he was about to start.

Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt dubbed Martin “Captain Lightfoot,” for his foot speed, and he schooled his new partner in his own personal highwayman’s code:

Steal from the wealthy, not the poor.
Never kill anyone unless threatened with death.
Be courteous, even charming, to those you rob.
Never rob a lady, and
At all times use minimal violence.

Thunderbolt stressed that most people, especially wealthy people, were quick to hand over their money and jewelry if they didn’t feel they would be harmed.

Armed with brass pistols, the two men took to the highways, robbing at will and drinking and dining around Scotland, England and Ireland. By 1819, both Doherty and Martin felt harassed. Though charming rogues, they were still rogues and the law wanted them found.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot’s stock in trade was disguise, posing as Quakers, beggars and physicians. They also altered their ages and features. But the hunt for them was so intense they feared being caught.

The Americas

So, separated in Dublin one day, Martin made the jump to go to New York. From that day forward, he said, he never saw his old friend Thunderbolt again. He did receive a letter from him, he said, in which Doherty explained he had dropped his Captain Thunderbolt identity and planned to go straight. Doherty added said he was traveling to the West Indies.

Martin, meanwhile, traveled to Boston and from there north to Salem, Mass. He worked for a time for Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., heir to many of Salem’s China Trade millions. But he soon received news from home that his father died. On the heels of that news came $400 from his brother, representing Martin’s inheritance.

Now with nearly $500, Martin took a last stab at going straight. He set himself up as a brewer, but the beer making business proved too difficult for him to master. By 1821 he was broke and in debt.

Martin resumed his robbing as Captain Lightfoot, travelling up to Montreal and back down through Vermont. He had a close call robbing a large man in Boscawen, N.H.

“He was a stout fellow and if he had shown spirit enough, might have given me a good battle,” Martin said. After robbing another man in Portsmouth, he headed south toward Boston.

Crime Spree

His plan, he said, was to find some people to rob in Boston or, “…if I did not succeed, I could probably find an opportunity of embarking for the West Indies, to meet my old friend Thunderbolt.”

Martin stole a horse in Salisbury, Mass. and rode to Medford. On the road there on an August night, he happened on the coach carrying Major John Bray and his wife.

Dr. John Wilson of Vermont (a.k.a. Captain Thunderbolt)

He stopped he coach and robbed Major Bray at gunpoint. As Bray’s wife clutched at her jewelry, the ever-gallant Martin assured her that he never robbed a lady – not strictly true, but it was that night.

From beginning to end it was a typical Lightfoot-Thunderbolt robbery. Get in, get out, get going. Only this time, the victims weren’t on a desolate road with miles to go before they could sound an alarm. Word spread of the robbery instantly and Martin found himself running from a mob of angry townspeople. In a fall from his horse, he dislocated a shoulder.

His fleet feet did not fail him, however, and he outran the pursuers finding a barn in Cambridge where he tied together his cravat and suspenders, attached one end to a post and the other to his wrist and re-located his shoulder — a painful process, he recounted.

Martin kept running all the way to Springfield, where his pursuers finally captured him.

The Gallows

Martin was convicted, but he first made one last desperate escape attempt. He managed to obtain a file and cut through his ankle chains. When his jailer entered his cell, Martin clobbered him with the manacles, knocking him senseless and nearly escaping.

However, his escape was thwarted at the jail yard gate, which would not yield to his repeated charges. Michael Martin (a.k.a. Lightfoot) was hanged dead in Cambridge in December of 1821. He walked to the gallows and, with a noose around his neck, signaled to the hangman he was ready by dropping his handkerchief. He was the first man sentenced under the new law that called for the death penalty for highway robbers.

The legends of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot might have ended there were it not for Martin’s decision to tell his story to a writer who published it soon after his death.

In it he gave a precise description of Captain Thunderbolt. New Englanders, traumatized by Lightfoot’s raids, kept a wary eye out for the other highwayman.

Return of Thunderbolt

In Dummerston, Vt., Dr. John Wilson had established himself as a physician. He was a Scot who said he spent a short time in the West Indies. A smart dresser and heavy drinker, he was nevertheless a well-regarded country doctor and something of a curiosity with his thick brogue.

Lightfoot had said that Thunderbolt was adept at passing himself off as a physician and there were whispers that Wilson might be the missing Thunderbolt. But the talk never amounted to anything, though Wilson was obsessed with the Lightfoot tale.

Over time, Wilson moved to Newfane and Brattleboro, where he married and then divorced Selah Chamberlain. He was a tyrant, she said, and what’s more she knew he had been a robber. She took him for as much money as she could get.

By the 1840s, Dr. Wilson had become something of a recluse. Often drunk and disheveled, he wore an ascot year-round. When he died, he demanded that he be fully covered. The undertaker, preparing Wilson for burial, discovered some unusual things. The cravat was hiding a large scar on his neck. The scar matched one that Thunderbolt had received in jail back in England, according to Lightfoot.

In addition, Dr. Wilson was found to be missing part of his left heel and his misshapen left calf had a hole in it — an exact match for the wounds that Lightfoot described him receiving in a shootout.

During his whole life, Wilson disguised his leg injury by wrapping his calf with paper so it looked normal. He also stuffed cork into his shoe to hide the shorter leg. He never even limped.

Upon his burial, the townspeople of Brattleboro concluded that Wilson, whose home belongings included some brass pistols and unexplained jewelry, was in fact Thunderbolt.

His biographer would say: “Sometimes I think he was the Thunderbolt and sometimes I think he was not. But the opinion is gaining very rapidly in this place, that he was the veritable man.”

This story about Lightfoot and Thunderbolt was updated in 2018.

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Ida May Fuller Gets the First Social Security Check

Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vt., received the first Social Security check on Jan. 31, 1940.

Ida May Fuller

The check was numbered 00-00-0001, the first of the first batch of 220,000 checks issued to adults as well as children.

Born on a farm outside of Ludlow, Ida May Fuller attended the Black River Academy in Rutland, Vt., three years behind Calvin Coolidge. She worked for a while as a schoolteacher, then in 1905 began work as a legal secretary. She never married.

Between 1937 and her retirement in 1939, she paid a total of $24.75 in Social Security payroll taxes.

While running an errand on Nov. 4, 1939 she dropped by the Rutland Social Security office to inquire. Urged to apply for benefits, she filed her claim.

“It wasn’t that I expected anything, mind you, but I knew I’d been paying for something called Social Security and I wanted to ask the people in Rutland about it,” she said.

That first Social Security check was for $22.54, nearly what she had paid into the system.

Frances Perkins

Some critics thought it suspicious that a Vermonter received the first check because John Winant, former New Hampshire governor, was the first head of the Social Security Board.

But it was another New Englander who made sure Ida May Fuller got her check: Frances Perkins, President Franklin Roosevelt’s secretary of Labor.

Perkins was born in Boston, grew up in Worcester and summered at her family homestead in Newcastle, Maine. Her ancestors included Revolutionary War orator James Otis.

Perkins persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to ride the wave of Townsend clubs to support a federal retirement program for workers. California physician Francis Townsend started the clubs after he saw three elderly women rooting through a garbage can for food. During the Great Depression, more than half of older Americans were poor.

Thousands of Townsend clubs pressured Congress to pass an old age pension plan. Sensing the opportunity, Roosevelt acquiesced to Perkins’ demand. He assigned her to run the committee that would craft the legislation.

President Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, with Labor Secretary Frances Perkins behind him.

“The Taxing Power, My Dear”

As soon as the Social Security Act passed, conservatives in Congress began to attack it as unconstitutional. Frances Perkins had made sure it would withstand judicial scrutiny. Months before Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on Aug. 14, 1935, she had consulted with Supreme Court Justice Harlan Stone, a native of Chesterfield, N.H.

Kirstin Downey describes what happened in her biography of Perkins:

At an afternoon part at Stone’s home, Frances was drinking tea with the justice when he asked her how things were going. She told him they were wrestling with how to establish an economic security program. Stone looked around to see if anyone was listening, then leaned in toward Frances. “The taxing power, my dear, the taxing power,” he said in quiet tones.

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Social Security Act.

Paying for My Expenses

Though Ida May Fuller had paid into Social Security for only three years, she received monthly checks until her death on Jan. 27, 1975 at 100 years old. She received a total of $22,888.92 from Social Security.

During her last eight years, Ida May Fuller lived with her niece in Brattleboro, Vt. Near the end of her life she told a reporter her Social Security benefits “come pretty near paying for my expenses.”

She was described in 1955 as “a kindly, likable, practical and placid woman whose ability to derive deep satisfaction from simple, wholesome living has eased her through life.”

But as a Republican, she hadn’t voted for Franklin Roosevelt.

Ida May Fuller was 76 when the photo at the top of the page was taken in 1950. Congress had just voted an 80 percent raise in benefits, and she held up her check for $41.30. She didn’t think Congress should have raised the benefits.

With thanks to The Woman Behind the New Deal, by Kirstin Downey. This story was updated in 2021.

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Alonzo Draper Leads a Strike, Then Fights a War

Gen. Alonzo Draper, one of the great lost leaders of the late 19th century, organized shoemakers in their fight for living wages and distinguished himself on the battlefield during the Civil War.

Gen. Alonzo Draper

Alonzo Draper

Born in Brattleboro, Vt., in September 1835, he traveled in his youth with Grizzly Adams as his assistant. He later moved to Lynn, Mass., which offered plenty of jobs in the shoe industry.

There, Draper became a leader in the Lynn Mechanic’s Association, a forerunner of today’s modern labor unions. He also published and edited the New England Mechanic, a progressive newspaper.

In the late 1850s, modern equipment had allowed the shoe factories to produce more shoes than needed. With an economic slump under way, factory owners forced workers to take repeated wage cuts.

In 1860, discontent with low pay boiled over and prompted one of the first widespread organized strikes in New England. The New England Shoemakers Strike started in Lynn in February, and quickly spread to nearby cities.

A Man of Some Little Education

On Feb. 16, 1860, the New York Times published this description of Alonzo Draper, who it credited as a leader of the strike.

Mr. Draper is a man of some little education, and has at times taught writing, book-keeping and, we believe, French. He is also a man of ambition, and is understood to have been very anxious for a seat in the Legislature, which he came near securing a year or two ago, having obtained the votes of a large number of shoemakers.

By March, women workers joined in the walkout. By April, the factory owners relented and offered raises, though they refused to officially recognize the union. That would take more years of organizing effort.

Civil War

Draper’s leadership came into full view, however, when the Civil War broke out. He turned his attention to the cause of liberating slaves. He used his organizing skills to begin enlisting men in the 14^th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry from Lynn and nearby cities.

By August 1863, Draper sought and received a post leading the North Carolina Colored Volunteers. He did it after pleading his case in support of freeing and educating slaves. His organizing skills again paid off, as he actively recruited slaves and former slaves to join the unit.

The recruitment of colored volunteers was a controversial move by Union forces, as it made clear to the Confederacy there would be no peace without abolishing slavery.

The 4th U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment

Draper defended his men against the insults and racism from Union soldiers. He promoted efforts to teach the former slaves to read. Though Draper was criticized for his aggressive attacks on southern guerillas, he rose through the ranks. Before he turned 30 he achieved the rank of brevet brigadier general, a promotion given for bravery. He also got command of a brigade.

Upon entering Richmond near the end of the war, Draper witnessed the freeing of slaves being held for sale.

“I became so overcome with tears that I could not stand up under the pressure of such fullness of joy in my own heart,” he wrote of that moment.

We’ll never know what he might have gone on to accomplish in life. At the end of the war, Draper remained in the army. He died three days before his 30th birthday, killed by an accidental gunshot.

This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Colored troops By Julius Jääskeläinen – Company E of the 4th United States “Colored" Infantry Regiment, at Fort Lincoln, Washington, D.C. c. 1864., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=97861766.

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