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The Menhaden Wars Come to Maine

Sometime around 1850, an elderly lady from Blue Hill, Maine, set off the menhaden wars that would roil the Maine coast for 30 years.

Like many coastal Mainers, Mrs. John Bartlett and her family scraped out a living by fishing and farming. One day she boiled a kettle of menhaden to make some food for her chickens. But then she skimmed the oil that rose to the top, put it in a jar and took it to Boston.

Mrs. John Bartlett then walked into a shop owned by an oil dealer, Eben. B. Phillips. She told him about the vast schools of menhaden, also known as pogies, that swarmed along Maine’s coast. He said he’d pay her $11 for every barrel of menhaden she brought him, and he gave her a seine net.

Pretty soon Mrs. Bartlett’s husband and sons were busy catching menhaden. In their second year of operation, they sold Phillips 100 barrels, earning more than five times what an average Maine fisherman made in a year.

By 1861, menhaden had grown into the largest fishery in the United States, with a fleet of 200 vessels, 4,000 fishermen and 30 factories.

Mrs. Bartlett’s jar of fish oil established the first industrial fishery — which collapsed within 30 years.

Menhaden Wars

The menhaden, commonly known as pogy or mossbunker, is a fatty, smelly, inedible fish. Generally viewed with contempt, the fish for centuries was used for bait, fertilizer and animal feed.

Around the time Mrs. Bartlett took her jar of oil to Boston, the whaling industry had started its long decline. Menhaden oil began to replace whale oil for dressing leather, for lamp oil and for making soap, rope and paint.

Pogies seemed inexhaustible. One Newport, R.I., sea captain reported seeing a school of menhaden off Portland two miles wide and 40 miles long. Ichthyologist G. Brown Goode said he heard a story that 1.3 million menhaden were caught in a single haul in New Haven Harbor – and he believed it.

Blue Hill, Maine, in 1920, well after the menhaden wars killed the fishery.

Very little goes unnoticed in a small coastal town like Blue Hill. Mrs. Bartlett’s neighbors saw the money they could make in the menhaden oil business. Fishermen started going after pogies in Hancock and Waldo counties in Maine.

Until about 1860 it remained a cottage industry. Small sloops, schooners and dories caught menhaden with gillnets and seines. The fishermen then took their catch ashore to try works, large kettles on outdoor hearths. After just 30 minutes of boiling, the oil was poured into locally made barrels and shipped off on coasting schooners.

Some people began to wonder if they weren’t leaving too much oil in the fish before getting rid of them. So Phillips, the Boston oil dealer, outfitted 50 families in Maine with mechanical screw presses to crank out even more menhaden oil. The presses, along with steam processing, transformed the fish oil business from a cottage industry into a leading coastal industry.

Pogy Mania

Pogy mania then spread along the northeast coast – on Cape Cod, along Boston’s South Shore, in Rhode Island, Long Island and Connecticut.

The farmer’s fish was becoming an industrial commodity. Fish oil factories were springing up all along the Maine coast, replacing the primitive kettles and hearths on the shore.

Within five years, fishermen in Maine began to see the effects of overfishing. Food fish like cod, mackerel and haddock feed on menhaden. Pogy mania, they believed, was causing the fish stocks to decline. Hundreds of Mainers who fished with hook and line began to protest the menhaden slaughter. They blamed the seiners for harvesting an unsustainable amount of pogies.

Fishermen from Boothbay, Surry, Ellsworth and Sedgwick sent petitions to the Legislature demanding an end to seine fishing. In 1855, lawmakers met them partway, banning the practice in bays, inlets and harbors.

The First of the Menhaden Wars

Bigger and bigger fish oil factories went up all along the New England coast. In 1864, a commercial fish oil operation started in Bristol, R.I. it cost $12,000, with buildings, boilers, engine, pipes, wharf, hydraulic press and cooking tanks. Rhode Island, along with New York, would dominate the fish oil business for the next decade.

By 1870 more than 90 menhaden reduction plants lined the coast from Maine to North Carolina.

But Maine attracted fishermen from all over coastal New England because it had the best menhaden. Pogies travel north to the Gulf of Maine, and by the time they arrive they’ve gotten good and fat feeding on the plankton along the way.

The sight of out-of-staters gathering up huge catches of menhaden in enormous nets incensed the Maine fishermen. Up and down the coast, they demanded the Legislature do something. Lawmakers responded, passing a bill in 1865 forbidding out-of-state fishermen from seining in state waters up to three miles out. Violators would get fined heavily and forfeit their boats and gear. The law exempted small nets, though, and coastal residents could still seine in their own town waters.

Menhaden Trust

But the industrialists who harvested and processed menhaden oil on a large scale organized itself into the Association of the Menhaden Oil and Guano Manufacturers of Maine, the so-called Menhaden Trust. It used its wealth and growing power to persuade the Maine Legislature in 1866 to loosen some of the new restrictions on menhaden seining. The new law let county commissioners give permits to seine for menhaden – which mean out-of-staters could once again harvest Maine fish in state waters.

The change outraged Maine fishermen, convinced the industrial operators would wipe out the menhaden and with it, the cod, haddock and mackerel that fed on them. They complained the fish oil factories had diminished their catch by a third.

Petitioners from Brunswick complained. “The interests of the many demand protection from the monopoly of the few wealthy capitalists, who by this means may appropriate the whole fishing privilege upon the coast,” they argued.

But the hundreds of people fishing for the Menhaden Trust and working in their factories supported the loosened restrictions.

Massachusetts Menhaden Wars

By 1865, fishermen in Massachusetts divided over the same issue that had riled Maine fishermen. The commonwealth had banned purse seines, which could encircle and harvest entire schools of fish.

Line-and-hook fishermen opposed seining for pogies because they feared it would destroy the cod and mackerel fisheries. Others wanted to overturn the ban on purse seining. They argued that pogies were an inexhaustible resource that could bring wealth to coastal communities.

Lawmakers turned to the Fisheries Committee to resolve the dispute. The solution they came up with: They told the line-and-hook fishermen they could seine for pogies themselves in their own towns without getting a license.

The Crash of 1879

Until 1870, wind had powered all the vessels fishing for menhaden. But in 1870, the Church brothers, Rhode Island’s pogie barons, launched the first menhaden steamer called Seven Brothers.

In 1873, the first menhaden steamer appeared in Maine waters. By the middle of the 1870s, the fish oil business had moved to Maine from Rhode Island and New York. In 1875, historian Samuel Adams Drake predicted the extinction of the menhaden.

No longer did a fleet of small sailboats and dories fish for pogies using small seine nets. Instead, the Menhaden Trust ran the show. They had 48 steamers and 13 sailing vessels, employing 727 fishermen on their vessels and 300 men in their factories.

Maine’s largest factory could process 4,000 barrels of pogy oil a day, up from 500 a day just a few years earlier.

By then no one could ignore the depletion of the cod and mackerel stocks. Menhaden disappeared from the waters off Maine’s easternmost towns, Jonesport and Lubec.

In 1879, Maine fishermen told the U.S. Fish Commission that menhaden no longer schooled near shore anymore as they had for decades. Maine lawmakers again responded by banning seining in inland waters.

It was too late.

No More Pogies

The menhaden fishery crashed. In Maine, menhaden landings fell from a million pounds of menhaden landings in 1878 to 20,000 in 1879. Factories sat idle. Hook fishermen had no bait and no income. Steamers with purse seines had cleaned the pogies out of the water. There would be no more pogies in Maine for six years.

Alarm spread throughout New England over the collapse of the fisheries.

Bills were introduced in Congress to protect the menhaden, for example, by requiring larger holes in seine nets and banning pogy fishing within two miles of the coast. But the Menhaden Trust, led by Rhode Island fish processers, killed any serious effort to save the fishery.

In 1880, ichthyologist G. Brown Goode described the menhaden decline: “More than 40 steamers went out into the Gulf of Maine in July,” he wrote. “To return in a few weeks without wetting their nets.”

But Goode, in the thrall of the Menhaden Trust, remained in denial about the cause of the fishery collapse.

“After reciting numerous theories on the subject, and showing their improbability, the speaker gave it as his opinion that they were kept away by the decrease in the temperature of the water, caused probably by a deflection of the polar currents. A vote of thanks was unanimously given to Prof. Goode for his able and instructive treatise.” According to the New York Times on Jan. 15, 1880.

Gone for Good

Goode was wrong. Industrial overfishing killed the menhaden fishery in New England.

“The fish have not been encountered in abundance in the coastal waters in that area since,” wrote Fred C. June for the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in 1961.

Instead, they moved south.

Elijah Reed, a menhaden fisherman from Maine, grew frustrated with the menhaden wars and went south to find more abundant fishing grounds. In 1867 he put down roots by the Chesapeake Bay, where fishermen hadn’t started going after menhaden. He built a fish oil factory on Cockrell’s Creek. The town that grew up around menhaden fishing and processing named itself Reedville, after Elijah Reed.

By 1900, the menhaden industry was centered in New Jersey and Virginia. It never returned to New England.

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Six Places Products Were Made

Back in the day, products were made in New England — a lot of products.

The early cod fishermen and Yankee traders made their fortunes and invested them in mills and factories and railroads. Those investments resulted in what we now call the Industrial Revolution in the United States.

Starting with the first water-powered cotton mill in Pawtucket, R.I., New England clothed a good part of the world for many, many years. New Englanders made clocks and can openers, steam engines and shoes, board games and battleships.

So many products were made in New England that people started attributing technical expertise and inventiveness to ‘Yankee ingenuity.’

Now, as you travel along the highways and railroad tracks you can see the crumbling brick remnants of New England’s industrial strength. If you want a glimpse of what it used to be like to make things, you can visit some restored mills that have been turned into historic parks. Or you can visit New England’s over-financialized downtowns, where once-productive factories and warehouses are now brew pubs, offices and condos.

Mickey Mouse Watch

Part of the Waterbury Clock complex. Photo courtesy Google Maps

Oh, could Mickey Mouse sell watches. He rescued a floundering clock company as well as Walt Disney studios during the Great Depression.

For years the Waterbury Clock Company was one of the biggest makers of clocks in Connecticut’s Naugatuck Valley, known as the Switzerland of America. It also churned out wristwatches during World War I from its huge brick factory on North Elm and Cherry streets in Waterbury.

By the 1930s, the Waterbury Clock Company struggled financially. So did Disney. An ad salesman proposed making and selling the Mickey Mouse watch to save them both. Skeptical company executives – including Walt Disney – decided to try it anyway.

The cheap cheerful watch was just what a depressed public wanted. A Macy’s promotion sold 11,000 Mickey Mouse watches in one day. And by 1957, 25 million Mickey Mouse watches had sold.

In the 1950s, the company took the Mickey Mouse watch off the market and began selling a line of reliable and inexpensive watches. They called them Timex. Today, the Waterbury Clock Company has morphed into the Timex Group, its Waterbury factory buildings nothing but empty hulks. The company started a Timexpo Museum in Waterbury, which traced the company’s history, but that, too, closed.

Bates Bedspread

The old Bates mill, where products were made and people had jobs. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

For decades, the Bates Bedspread made an ideal wedding gift for a discriminating young couple like George and Barbara Bush. In fact, the Bushes posed in a 1948 magazine ad for the coverlet.

Bates for years was Maine’s largest employer. The giant textile mill complex in Lewiston, Maine, opened with one building in 1854 and grew to eleven. In 1940, the company hit on the idea of reproducing colonial-era candlewicked bedspreads like the one George Washington gave to Martha. It was a hit. By the 1960s, it seemed everyone had a Bates Bedspread.

By 1990, demand petered out and cheap imitators took a big piece of the market. The company closed in 2001, its mills now part of the Bates Mill Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places. You can still buy a Bates Bedspread at the Bates Mill Store (904 Main Street, Monmouth, Maine) from former employees who started Maine Heritage Weavers to carry on the tradition.

Monopoly

How ironic that the former Monopoly factory gave way to real estate development. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

In 1888, the Parker brothers started their eponymous company in Salem, Mass., making board games out of an old laundry building. First they made board games like Billy Bumps Goes to Boston, then they introduced ping pong and tiddly winks, and eventually they came up with Monopoly. They bought more land and built a 35,000-square-foot factory, employing 500 people.

Hasbro bought Parker Brothers and therefore Monopoly in 1991. The game is still actually manufactured in a 1960s-era plant in East Longmeadow. Hasbro bought the plant from Milton Bradley and then sold it to Belgium-based Cartamundi in 2015. Cartamundi agreed to make Monopoly in the East Longmeadow factory, at least until 2020.

Prophetically, perhaps, the Monopoly factory gave way to real estate development. The old Parker Brothers factory was torn down, replaced by the Jefferson Street apartment complex. The neighborhood now belongs to the Bridge Street Neck Historic District.

Levi’s Denim

Amoskeag Millyard, 1911, where many, many textile products were made

You can’t miss the Amoskeag Mill complex in the center of Manchester, New Hampshire. The city grew up around the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, founded in 1831. The mill yard it grew into the world’s largest cotton textile plant, with sixty-four mill buildings stretching a mile and a half along both banks of the Merrimack River.

Among the cloth it produced: denim for the first Levi Strauss ‘waist overalls.’ Strauss and his partner Jacob Davis invented the blue jean when they received a patent for the way they riveted their waist overalls in 1873. Amoskeag shipped its nine-ounce XX blue denim to San Francisco, where Levi’s workers sewed it into blue jeans. Until 1915, the Amoskeag mills supplied all the denim for Levi’s 501 jeans.

After World War I, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company suffered from recession, competition, aging technology and floods, finally closing in 1935. Some textile manufacturing continued in the old mills for a while, but many of the mills were torn down. Today offices, restaurants, college branches, and the Millyard Museum fill the old mill yard.

The Catamaran Sailboat

Products were made here for very wealthy people. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

One of the most talented naval architects in the world was Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, named after the Revolutionary general from his home state of Rhode Island.

After Nat Herreshoff graduated from MIT he opened a boatyard in 1878 with his blind brother, John, in Bristol, R.I. The Herreshoff Manufacturing Company started making steam-powered boats, but during most of its sixty-seven years designed and built yachts for wealthy Americans.

The Herresshoff boatyard built every yacht that won the America’s Cup race between 1893 and 1934. Nat Herreshoff built the U.S. Navy’s first torpedo boats, invented new and efficient marine hardware, developed methods to make light wooden hulls and patented the sailing catamaran.

The Herreshoff Manufacturing Company also built seven catamarans, including Amaryllis and Amaryllis II. The boatyard closed in 1945 after Nat Herreshoff died, but a museum now stands on the former site. There you can see the Amaryllis II, as well as some famous yachts, models and designs of the Herreshoff company.

Fairbanks Scales

Fairbanks scales, still made here on Portland Street in Saint Johnsbury. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

The town of Saint Johnsbury in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom once made Fairbanks platform scales and sold them around the world.

Today Fairbanks still makes scales in a long, low commercial building in scenic Saint Johnsbury. And the company still sells them around the world. You’ve probably stood on one in a doctor’s office.

In 1824, Thaddeus Fairbanks, a wheelwright by trade, opened an iron foundry with his brother in Saint Johnsbury. They made and sold heating stoves, plows, and farm implements. Around 1830 he got interested in growing hemp, but ran into trouble trying to weigh large amounts of the stuff from a balancing beam. So he came up with the idea of the platform scale, which used levers to counterbalance the weight. By digging a pit for his contraption and placing a platform on top of it, he could weigh an entire wagon accurately.

The Fairbanks brothers’ company has changed hands several times, its headquarters moved to Kansas City, Mo., and another plant built in Meridian, Miss. But they still make scales in Saint Johnsbury, and if you look around you’ll see the Fairbanks gave the town many of its public institutions.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Bristol Fourth of July Parade, From Pious Henry Wight to Rascally Buddy Cianci

The Rev. Henry Wight is the unlikely inventor of today’s raucous Independence Day celebrations and the famous Bristol Fourth of July parade.

A quiet, pious and amiable man, he passed 43 years of his life ministering to the same church in Bristol, R.I. The town remembered him for his decency and devotion to its people — and still celebrates the Fourth in the style he originated.

henry wight

Wight probably couldn’t have been more different than another prominent Rhode Islander associated with the famous Bristol parade: Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci. The city’s longest serving mayor liked to crash the parade in spectacular fashion — when he wasn’t in prison.

Henry Wight

Henry Wight was born in Medfield, Mass., on May 26, 1752, and graduated from Harvard. He also served as a soldier in the American Revolution.

Henry Wight, godfather of the Bristol Fourth of July parade

Buddy Cianci was born in Cranston, R.I., on April 30, 1941, graduated from Fairfield University and earned a law degree from Marquette. He served as a second lieutenant in the Army’s military police corps.

Buddy Cianci

In January of 1785, the First Congregational Church of Bristol, R.I. hired Henry Wight as its new pastor. Only five ministers had led the church previously. With just 36 people in the congregation, Wight was handed the keys to a newly built church building and encouraged to get on with building it up.

In his first year at the First Congregational Church, Wight determined the town of Bristol should observe Patriotic Exercises on the Fourth of July. He led the ceremonies in 1785 with a speech and call for reflection on the veterans who won the war and celebration of the new nation’s freedoms.

Cianci first won election as mayor of Providence in 1974, but he had to resign 10 years later after pleading no contest to a felony charge. He had kidnapped a Bristol contractor, Raymond DeLeo, and tortured him with a lighted cigarette because he thought the man had an affair with his wife.

The Bristol Fourth of July Parade

Bristol had already celebrated the Fourth in an informal way. In 1777, a British officer heard sounds from across Narragansett Bay.

This being the first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the Rebel Colonies, they ushered in the morning by firing 13 cannons, one for each colony, we suppose. At sunset, the rebel frigates fired another round of 13 guns, each one after the other. As the evening was very still and fine the echo of the guns down the Bay had a grand effect.

But since Wight initiated the first formal patriotic exercises, it gave Bristol, R.I, its claim as birthplace of the Fourth of July celebration. For 40 years, Henry Wight would continue leading these ceremonies, which soon included the Bristol Fourth of July parade.

The Bristol Fourth of July parade. Note the red, white and blue stripe down the street.

As mayor, Cianci brought the Bruins hockey team to Providence and created an Arts and Entertainment District. He also started the annual WaterFire celebration in downtown Providence. And year after year he marched in the Bristol parade, though the town explicitly told him not to.

Providence during the WaterFire festival.

First Congregational

The Congregational Church, under Wight’s leadership, became a place where the poor visited for food and medicine. Others sought Wight’s advice on practical matters. He was a lifelong reader with a good knowledge of Greek, Latin, mathematics and science. He served for 40 years on Brown University’s governing body, its Board of Fellows.

Wight did not shy from bringing political discussions into the pulpit, even when his opinions cost him members of the congregation. He practiced medicine as well as religion. He routinely called on sick members of his congregation and provided them with remedies as well as spiritual counsel.

Cianci won re-election in 1991, seven years after his resignation. He worked as a talk-show radio host in the interim. During his second term, which lasted until 2002, he was credited with revitalizing downtown Providence. But he had to resign again following his conviction on racketeering charges. He served four years in federal prison, returning to the airwaves after his release. He hosted a television show called The World According to Buddy and wrote a book called Politics and Pasta.

Cianci also launched a brand of pasta sauce, called Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce. He said proceeds would go to scholarships for Providence schoolchildren. They didn’t.

Henry Wight died in 1838, 10 years after his retirement from full-time ministry. He had married twice and fathered seven children along with the Fourth of July celebration we all know today.

Buddy Cianci died of colon cancer in 2014 after serving as Providence mayor for two decades. He married and divorced once, fathered one daughter and had quite a few girlfriends.

Buddy Crashes The Bristol Fourth of July Parade

Bristol’s 231st annual Fourth of July parade in 2016.

Sometime in the early 1800s the now-2.5-mile Military, Civic and Firemen’s Parade began.

In 1975, Providence’s new mayor, Buddy Cianci, started fighting with parade organizers. Under the rules, only federal, state and Bristol town officials could participate. He came anyway, usually riding a horse.

The Bristol Town Council banned him from the 1980 parade and the police threatened to arrest him. But when Cianci arrived in a helicopter, Miss Rhode Island greeted him. Paradegoers, who numbered 300,000, cheered, giving him hugs, kisses, handshakes and cold drinks. The police had to let him march.

He missed some parades because of his legal troubles. In 1984, after his first felony conviction, he didn’t march. Instead, a clown dressed in a prison uniform carried a ball and chain to ridicule him. Then in 1997 Cianci brought along an entourage of law enforcement officers squirting the crowd with water rifles.

Buddy Cianci marched in his last Bristol Fourth of July parade in 2002, after his conviction for RICO conspiracy. The parade passed the home of the contractor he’d tortured, where a large party was held every year. As Cianci walked past, partygoers began singing to the tune of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.

For he’s a RICO felon…which nobody can deny.

Today Bristol’s Fourth of July celebration officially starts on June 14th, Flag Day, and ends with the parade on July 4th. In between are concerts, fireworks, a drum corps show, a firefighters muster and a Fourth of July ball.

This story updated in 2022.

Images: Bristol Fourth of July parade By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49912345. Bristol parade with center line By TwoSheds (talk) (Uploads) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109547000. Buddy Cianci By Sharperimage0 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89148498.

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Ambrose Burnside, The Sideburned Civil War Commander Who Didn’t Want The Job

When Ambrose Burnside received his orders to take command of the Army of the Potomac in November of 1862, it was said he wept like a child.

Ambrose Burnside, by Matthew Brady.

He had twice refused the command, believing he wasn’t up to the task.

Burnside was dashing, charming and humble, popular with his soldiers. He invented a weapon that helped the Union win the Civil War. As a politician, he won election to some of the highest offices in America.

He was also completely unsuited to command an army.

His facial hair inspired the noun ‘sideburns.’ Another Civil War general whose name also became a noun usurped him as commander of the Army.

Ambrose Burnside, Unhappy Tailor

Ambrose Burnside was born May 23, 1824 in Liberty, Ind., the fourth of the nine children of Edghill and Pamela (or Pamilia) Brown Burnside. Edghill, a slaveholder from South Carolina, freed his slaves when he moved to Indiana.

As a boy, Ambrose Burnside was apprenticed to a tailor, and he returned home to open his own shop after his mother died. He realized he didn’t want to be a tailor, and his father, who had some political influence, got him an appointment at West Point.

Burnside missed most of the Mexican War, but fought Apaches in the west. He came back from one battle with an arrow in the neck. While recovering from his wound, he had a brainstorm: Cavalrymen could only use sabers against their enemy because muzzle-loading rifles were too hard to load while mounted. What if, thought Burnside, he could invent a light, breech-loading carbine efficient enough for the cavalry to use?

Left At The Altar

Burnside spent the winter of 1850-51 looking for love on a long furlough in Liberty. He proposed to Charlotte Moon, who accepted. On the day of their wedding, according to local legend, the minister asked Charlotte Moon if she would marry Ambrose Burnside. She replied, “No siree, Bob, I won’t,” and walked out.

Charlotte, the story goes, later got engaged to an Ohio lawyer. On the day of that wedding, the lawyer brandished his gun and said there would either be ‘a wedding tonight or a funeral tomorrow.’

The army promoted Burnside to lieutenant in 1851 and assigned him to Fort Adams in Newport, R.I., the next year. There he was luckier in love. He met, courted and then married Mary Richmond Bishop of Providence.

Burnside Carbine

Burnside with his staff from the 1st Rhode Island Regiment

He resigned from the Army in 1853 to develop the Burnside carbine at his Bristol Rifle Works in Rhode Island. When it looked as if he would get a large government contract, he borrowed money and boosted production. The contract fell through when a competitor bribed the Secretary of War to break Burnside’s contract. Burnside declared bankruptcy and sold his possessions and patents.

The gun became a popular weapon during the Civil War. Mary moved in with relatives and Burnside moved in with his old friend George B. McClellan and his family in Chicago. McClellan, a vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad, got Burnside a job with the company. Burnside rose to company treasurer, paid off his debts and in 1860 moved back with his wife.

Civil War

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Burnside was appointed colonel of the 1^st Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry and quickly promoted to brigade command. He fought at the First Battle of Bull Run and again won a promotion, to brigadier general. He had an early success closing most of the North Carolina coast to Confederate shipping and won still another promotion.

Wilmer L. Jones, in Generals in Blue and Gray: Lincoln’s generals, observed,

Burnside was liked by his men because of his concern for them. He was a trusting man with an optimistic outlook on life and found it difficult to believe another person could wish him harm until it was so obvious he could not ignore it. When his plans fell short, he tended to take the blame himself. At difficult moments in his life, he accepted responsibility and tried to solve his problems on his own. Ambrose was six feet tall with a deep chest… Despite his intimidating size, his smile and good humor drew people to him.

Hooker

Jeffrey D. Wert, in The Sword of Lincoln, called Ambrose Burnside ‘unfortunate.’

Joseph Hooker

His tenure had been marked by bitter animosity among his subordinates and a fearful, if not needless, sacrifice of life. A firm patriot, he lacked the power of personality and will to direct recalcitrant generals.

Joseph Hooker was certainly recalcitrant. He was the other Civil War general said to have inspired a word: “Hooker,” slang for a prostitute. The word did appear in print 15 years before Hooker was a well-known figure, though his reputation as a ladies’ man – and the prostitutes in “Hooker’s Army” who followed his division – probably popularized the term.

Ambrose Burnside hated Hooker and remained loyal to his old friend McClellan.

After the failure of McClellan during the Peninsular Campaign, President Lincoln twice offered Burnside command of the Army of the Potomac. He refused. Then came Antietam, after which Burnside was criticized for slowness in attacking the enemy and crossing what is now known as Burnside’s Bridge.

McClellan also performed poorly at Antietam. Worse, he didn’t pursue Robert E. Lee after the battle. For that, Lincoln relieved McClellan.

Command

On Nov. 7, 1862, a courier traveled through a blinding snowstorm to Burnside’s headquarters and handed him his order to command the Army of the Potomac. Burnside argued he didn’t want the command and he hadn’t sought it. Then he learned Joseph Hooker would get the job if he didn’t. Burnside accepted the command.

He received orders to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond. In December 1862, Burnside suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg, with nearly 13,000 casualties, more than twice that of the Confederates. He offered to quit; Lincoln refused.

In January 1863, Burnside’s forces failed in a winter offensive against Robert E. Lee in what became known as the Mud March. He again offered to quit; Lincoln accepted and replaced him with Joseph Hooker. That spring Hooker lost the Battle of Chancellorsville. Just before the Battle of Gettysburg he, too, lost his command.

Final Humiliations

Burnside in 1862.

Burnside was sent west to Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois, where he shut down an antiwar newspaper in Chicago. He also arrested an Ohio congressman who spoke out against the war. Both actions provoked a backlash and Lincoln reversed the actions, announcing that Burnside had exceeded his authority.

He redeemed himself in August by outmaneuvering Confederate Lt. Gen. James Longstreet and holding Knoxville.

The Siege of Petersburg in July 1864 brought Burnside’s ultimate undoing. He agreed to a plan brought to him by a regiment of Pennsylvania coal miners. They wanted to tunnel under an entrenched Confederate fort and set off explosives, creating a breakthrough for Union soldiers. Generals Ulysses S. Grant and George Meade reluctantly approved the plan.

Burnside specially trained his African-American troops in the fourth division to lead an attack after the giant hole was blown. Hours before the attack, Meade ordered Burnside not to use the black troops. Untrained soldiers led the assault instead and were slaughtered. Burnside took the blame for the fiasco and the Army relieved him of command.

Vindication

Ambrose Burnside sent his letter of resignation to Abraham Lincoln on the afternoon of his assassination. Later, a congressional inquiry exonerated him from blame for the failed Battle of the Crater.

Life improved for him after the Civil War. He got appointed director of several railroads, won election as governor of Rhode Island and then U.S. senator.

He also served as the first president of the National Rifle Association.

Sen. Ambrose Burnside died of a heart attack on Sept. 13, 1881, in Bristol, R.I. His most famous quote: “It is not death therefore that is burdensome, but the fear of death.”

With thanks to Generals in Blue and Gray. This story was updated in 2022.

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Connecticut Methodist Camp Meeting Leads to Murder (Pt. 2)

The following is the second in a two-part series. To read the first part, click here.

Methodist Camp Meetings were key to the expansion of the Methodist church. Part retreat, part homecoming, they often were lively events. A campsite would be chosen and churches from all over would attend, setting up a tent in which the members of that community would spend the week.

Attendees would immerse themselves in a flood of stem-winding sermons, prayer meetings, singing and religious discussion. Religious visions and epiphanies happened often, and attendees got little sleep as they made the most of the occasion. Many reserved New Englanders, including Sarah Cornell’s brother-in-law/employer, found the camp meetings ridiculous. But the mill girl enjoyed this form of worship immensely. It was a great relief to her that she was now allowed to attend the camp meetings again, as we mentioned in part one of this story.

Thompson, Conn.

Ephraim Avery attended the Camp Meeting at Thompson, Conn., as well. For clergy, the camp meetings offered fellowship with other ministers. Because ministers relocated so often, the meetings provided a welcome chance to socialize with parishioners from past assignments. Ephraim, though not preaching at the meeting, looked forward to it for that reason.

By August of 1832, Ephraim had been re-assigned from Lowell. His new parish was Bristol, R.I., an oceanfront community connected to Portsmouth and Newport by ferry. Ephraim inherited an active flock of more than 200 in the long-established Methodist community.

When he returned to Bristol, Ephraim reported that little of note happened at the Thompson meeting. He called it a success. It renewed the spirits of those who attended and brought perhaps 20 new congregants into the Methodist fold. He noted seeing many colleagues and friends, and he did catch sight of Sarah Cornell, he later reported. He said he mentioned to others that she was not fit to attend the meeting, but did nothing to expel her. The two did not speak to each other.

The Methodist Camp Meeting

Sarah Cornell told a very different story about what happened at Thompson. At the meeting, she sought out Ephraim, she would later tell her doctor. She asked Ephraim to destroy letters she had written to him that detailed the scandals that she confessed to in Lowell. Ephraim agreed, she said, but he had a price for complying. She had to have sex with him. Despite initially refusing, she says he persisted and they did have sex in the woods near the tavern where Ephraim stayed.

Cartoon depicting Methodist minister Ephraim Avery strangling mill girl Sarah Cornell. Though a jury cleared him of the crime, the public decided he had done it.

1830s cartoon depicting Methodist minister Ephraim Avery strangling mill girl Sarah Cornell.

By the end of September, Sarah knew she’d gotten pregnant. She discussed the pregnancy with her sister and brother-in-law. Collectively, they decided she should go to work in the Fall River mills, near to Ephraim Avery in Bristol. Once situated, she would approach Avery and seek a financial settlement.

Sarah had two goals, to keep her child and to preserve the reputation of Ephraim Avery. Though Avery’s defender tried to paint her as vindictive and hateful toward him, the best evidence suggested that she did not want to injure him or his family.

Last Days

Prosecutors pieced together the following story of the final weeks of Sarah’s life. In Fall River, they said, she did reach out to Ephraim via mail. She informed him of the pregnancy and he suggested she seek an abortion or find a place to discreetly have the baby and then surrender it for adoption. She would agree to neither. They ended their conversation with the agreement to wait a bit to be sure Sarah was actually pregnant. Whether he agreed to settlement terms, prosecutors did not know.

Ephraim himself mentioned this meeting. But he recalled that they met by chance while he was in Fall River and her intent in talking to him was to ask that he not reveal her past scandals to the local church. He agreed to this request provisionally, but warned he would tell all if her behavior warranted it.

On the night of October 8, Sarah went to visit a doctor. He shared her opinion that she was pregnant. In discussions with him over the course of several visits, she named Ephraim Avery as the father. The doctor was appalled, but said he accepted her plan to seek compensation.

Damned

In late November, prosecutors said Sarah and Ephraim again exchanged letters and agreed to meet – on the night of December 20. The following morning, she was found hanged.

Initially, an inquest concluded Sarah had killed herself, and that her actions were the result of her involvement with an unscrupulous married man. But within days, that opinion was reversed as an examination showed bruises on Sarah’s body. Experts also questioned whether the rope, as tied, was consistent with her death, and suspicious letters were found when her belongings were examined.

The most damning note left behind simply said:

“If I should be missing, enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol, he will know where I am.”

Vigilantes

From virtually the moment Sarah’s body was discovered, the battle lines were drawn. Defenders of the working-class girl formed committees and immediately started looking for any evidence they could find linking Avery to the death.

Vigilantes from Fall River initially ferried over to Bristol to try to pull Avery from his home, ostensibly to be taken to Massachusetts for justice. The Bristol sheriff, backed by local Methodists, stood against them and blocked their way until they left.

The anger stayed at a boiling point for months. Avery decamped to Rindge, N.H. He said later it was at the urging of his lawyers. Outraged public officials called on the governor to put a bounty on the minister for his return, and eventually a band of vigilantes tracked him down in New Hampshire and he ‘accompanied them’ home.

The Fall River committees searched high and low for evidence to use against Avery. They dug into his past, uncovering details of minor disputes he had earlier in his career as a preacher.

But most potent of all, the statements that Sarah’s doctors gave at her inquest — implicating Avery — were made widely available. This included details about Avery pressing Sarah to take oil of tansy, a potentially lethal drug, to induce an abortion. It was, to most of the public, a case that was already solved.

Messy Details

On the other side, the Methodist community immediately began undermining Sarah’s reputation. The Methodist minister of Fall River initially identified the girl as a member of his church in good standing. But within hours, he changed his story, declaring she was not of good character, and the church wouldn’t bury her.

Ephraim’s supporters began revealing the seamy details of her past. They found people to testify that she had threatened suicide. They found two innkeepers to testify that she had extorted money from a man in Connecticut by pretending to be pregnant. And they suggested she had committed adultery with her own brother-in-law.

And, perhaps most helpfully to Avery, they scoured the countryside for witnesses who could help him build an alibi for the night of December 20, for he was not at home then. His story, of taking the ferry to Portsmouth and getting delayed until it was too late to return, seemed weak. But the Methodists found people willing to report that they had seen the minister at various times, leading to one conclusion: Either they were lying, or he would have been hard pressed to be at the site of Sarah’s death.

Avery’s detractors charged that the Methodists operated as a cabal, conspiring, lying and twisting facts to win his freedom.

Astounding Verdict

In the end, the prosecutor’s case proved to have too many holes to persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt. The letters found in Sarah’s belongings that arranged for the meeting on the 20^th were not signed. Nor could they be definitively linked to Avery. It wasn’t certain who sent them. Her reputation for dishonesty and history of threatening to kill herself helped persuade the jury. And, most harmful to the prosecution, her statements to her doctor were not allowed into testimony.

The jury ruled that Avery was not guilty. The verdict astounded nearly everyone. Avery’s wife swooned when he walked into their house and informed her he was free. Among members of the public, there seemed to be a sense of acceptance at first. But it turned out to be more like a temporary stunned silence.

For 27 days, the country had been transfixed by the trial. The public was fascinated as lawyers teased out facts, such as the color of the paper used in letters to Sarah, and as they picked away at every minor inconsistency in a witness statement. The verdict, at last, seemed to clear the way to the heart of the matter.

Quandary

The furor over Ephraim Avery’s not guilty verdict started slowly. And to the Methodist hierarchy, long-tired of this minor minister being the face of their church, it almost seemed as if the storm had passed with the jury’s decision on June 2.

Newspaper cartoon depictiing Methodist minister Ephraim Avery being spirited across the river Styx to hell for the murder of Mill Girl Sarah Cornell.

The church had paid Avery’s legal bills, which eventually ran into the thousands. And while urging Avery to tell the truth, church officials clearly didn’t want scandal. In meeting with his superior at the start of the case, Avery reported the man told him:

If you have disclosures to make, I do not ask that you make them to me, or to any of your brethren in the ministry; it would be too much for such to witness against you, which must be done; but to some other person.

But he admonished Avery not to cover things up: “I must warn you not to add sin to sin. Don’t do so — on your peril.”

In some ways, it would have been better for the church had Avery been convicted. The hierarchy could have disowned him and moved on. As it was, they owed him loyalty.

Aftermath

The Methodist Episcopal Conference of New England was meeting the same month the court exonerated Avery. The conference launched a review of the case. On June 11, they exonerated Avery too, finding that he had no role in Sarah’s pregnancy nor her death. And on the next day, he gave a sermon at the First Methodist Church in Boston.

Ephraim returned to Bristol by July, and was again preaching. But the anger over his acquittal was incubating. The Bristol Methodist community largely supported Avery, with some dissenters. But the outside world viewed him as a murderer. Whenever he left the safe confines of Bristol, the protests would erupt. Effigies of him hung in Fall River and Newport. In Lowell, effigies depicted him murdering Sarah Cornell. In Providence, a coffin bearing his name floated downstream. And in New York, a play was performed about the murderous minister. And in taverns, songs depicted him as a murderer.

Unequal Justice

The people of Fall River had no doubt that Rhode Island had committed an injustice on the working classes, that there were two versions of the law: one for the working classes and the other for the powerful who could afford a 27-day trial. Methodist ministers throughout New England were subject to insults and public confrontations over the case.

In Providence and Newport, Avery’s name was treated with disgust. The Republican Herald newspaper was the most outspoken in pursuing Avery after the trial, putting out a book shouting their belief that the minister was guilty. Published under the pseudonym Aristides, they needled the hypocrisy that shot through the case.

Questions

Why, if Sarah Cornell was nothing more than a prostitute, did Avery agree to let her continue in association with the church in Fall River?

Why, if the men of the church were happy to believe that Sarah Cornell had had sex with three men when dismissing her from the church in Lowell, had they balked at believing her when she claimed to have had sex with a fourth – Ephraim Avery — when the evidence was every bit as convincing?

And why, when confronted with the stories of her improper relations with men, had the church not bothered to turn up any of the men’s names? Where was their interest in moral fitness when it came to her partners?

In the end, the church had little defense, but could not eliminate Avery from the ministry without appearing hypocritical – again.

After trying, and failing, to continue preaching, Ephraim stepped back from his duties as minister in 1834. He eventually moved to Richmond, Mass., for a time. Then he permanently relocated to Pittsfield Township in Lorain County, Ohio, where he died at age 70 in 1869.

Fall River, Mass. grave of mill girl Sarah Cornell. Methodist Minister Ephraim Avery was accused as her killer.

While his case temporarily cooled the fervor of the Methodist movement, the damage was temporary. The church continued its rapid growth for 50 more years.

And whatever damage was done to the reputation of the mill girls didn’t last long, as they populated New England mills for another century.

End Notes

This article owes much to the many excellent resources on the history of Ephraim Avery and Sarah Cornell. You’ll find a few at these links:

Catherine Read Williams’ distills the story in a very readable text:

Fall River: An Authentic Narrative (Complete text)

Ephraim Avery’s defense, and related court proceedings can be found in:

Trial of Rev. Mr. Avery (Complete text)

Aristides’ Strictures on the case of Ephraim K. Avery (Complete text)

Richard Haslett’s:

A report of the trial of the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery, before the Supreme Judicial Court of Rhode Island, on an indictment for the murder of Sarah Maria Cornell (Complete text)

This story was updated in 2022.

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Methodists vs. Millgirls in the Murder Trial of the Century (Pt. 1)

Everyone agrees on one thing about the Methodists and the mill girl: On December 21, 1832, Sarah Cornell was found dead.

A Fall River, Mass., mill girl, she was discovered hanged in a farmyard in neighboring Tiverton, R.I. – so stiff from the cold that her body would not lie flat on the ground after a farmer cut her down.

That’s about where the consensus ends.

Methodists and Mill Girls

Within a week, a gang of Fall River vigilantes crossed into Rhode Island to the town of Bristol. They then surrounded the home of Methodist Pastor Ephraim Avery, demanding to take him to Fall River — and justice.

And within a year, the entire country talked about this unlikely pair as Avery was tried for the murder of Sarah Cornell.

How did they become connected at all? Why had their lives gone so terribly wrong?

As in most stories that catch fire as this one did, the characters represent more than just themselves. They were case studies—cautionary tales—of just what was wrong with the times. Their supporters glorified them beyond reason and their detractors simultaneously vilified them. Both sides sought a larger meaning to the tragedy.

To those who sided with Sarah, the murder resulted from the country handing the spiritual and moral reins of power to Methodists. To those who sided with Ephraim, Sarah’s death resulted from young girls leaving the family to work in the mills seeking freedom and advancement.

Industrial Revolution

In 1832, the upheaval of the Industrial Revolution tore through Fall River. From 1820 to 1830, the population of the town boomed by 160 percent to more than 4000. Investors in Fall River — and all around New England – raced to build and staff factories to churn out cloth.

New England rushed headlong into its heyday as the fabrics maker for the world. The technology for weaving cloth on a massive scale had been expropriated from Europe. Favorable tariffs and exchange rates protected the nascent industry. The region also had an underemployed, overgrowing farm population.

Hundreds of thousands of girls would be swept up in the manufacturing boom over the coming century. The life of a mill girl in the early 1800s offered the freedom to explore the world and pursue education, camaraderie and a livable wage.

Mill Girl in Winchendon, Mass.

The tension between those who thought girls belonged at home and the advocates of millwork was a constant undercurrent in New England at the time. Critics of the mills emphasized the sometimes on-again off-again nature of the work and the dangers of the cities.

But still the mills attracted girls by the thousands who either wanted—or needed—some opportunity. These girls wanted something other than farm life, a husband or work as a servant.

Sarah Cornell was one such girl.

Methodists

While the Industrial Revolution transformed New England attitudes about work, long-held religious beliefs were challenged as well. The Methodist movement was steamrolling the established religious traditions of the country and causing a tremendous stir. Somewhat more progressive in their attitudes toward slavery and women in the church, the Methodists reached out to include the working poor. The church preached that salvation was there for the asking, no matter your background or sins.

The ability of a man to move up in the ranks of the Methodist clergy at that time owed little to his schooling or family ties. Rather, the successful Methodist minister needed charisma and zeal.

Methodists limited local friction within churches by routinely rotating clergy every year or two. This meant ministers largely carried a uniform message. They rarely got entrenched in local personality conflicts and politics. Thus they were markedly separated from the dominant Congregationalists–for whom church was political, as well as spiritual and social. They also differed from the numerous Quakers in Rhode Island, who eschewed hierarchy in their churches.

Methodism’s appeal to the growing nation was apparent in its numbers. In 1775, 2 percent of churchgoers were Methodists. By 1850, 34 percent of people attending church were Methodists.

All the while, opponents used rumor and innuendo to try to slow the Methodists’ growth. They brand them as fanatics or an outgrowth of Freemasonry. But the scare tactics did nothing to dull the appeal of the vigorous, welcoming church.

The Methodists’ growing market share brought with it tremendous opportunity, as the church constantly needed new ministers. Though not usually highly paid, the ministers were revered by their flock. Often in the early 1800s a Methodist minister arrived at his profession after a good deal of casting about for his mission in life. Ephraim Avery was one such man.

Sarah Meets Ephraim

Ephraim Kingsbury Avery

In July of 1829, the two first met. Sarah Cornell, then 27, applied for work as a housekeeper at the Lowell, Mass., home of the 30-year-old Reverend Avery. It was a departure for her, as she had spent most of her working life in the textile mills or as a tailor. Sarah had moved through a succession of jobs, relocating to different mill cities, finding work and then moving on when the work dried up or she wore out her welcome.

The year 1829 finds her working in Lowell. She had recently lost her job at the Appleton Mill there because she had damaged a loom. And when the new pastor, Ephraim Avery, came to the city, housekeeping seemed a good opportunity.

Sarah had renounced her Congregational beliefs and become a Methodist in 1825. Methodism’s promise of salvation and redemption held great appeal to her. She was a woman frequently in need of redemption because of the social codes of the day.

Put simply: Sarah Cornell liked men. Though she sometimes rebuffed their advances, there are several documented cases of her acknowledging sexual relationships with them, as well.

While in her early 20s, she was frequently under suspicion for having been seen at night alone with men. And these suspicions were a serious problem for her on two fronts. The church frowned on extramarital sex, and, perhaps more importantly, so did the mill operators. Mill girls had to be women of high moral standing. Mill owners often received criticism for employing women. Thus they had a desperate aversion to any hint they contributed to a decline in morality.

If At First…

Moral unfitness was cause for termination from the mills and expulsion from the church.

Modern psychiatry would probably make quick work of Sarah Cornell. Her childhood does not seem especially happy. Her father abandoned her shortly after her birth in Rupert, Vt., in 1802. She was impoverished by her grandfather, Christopher Leffingwell, because he despised her father. Eventually an aunt raised her. By the time she turned 20, she and her elder sister had engaged in a rivalry for the affection of the same man. Her sister Lucretia won.

Lucretia married the object of their affections, tailor Grindall Rawson. Sarah then moved to Rhode Island for the first in a series of mill jobs that eventually led her to Lowell.

Ephraim arrived in Lowell by his own circuitous route. Born in Connecticut, he first tried working as a farmer, then a clerk, then salesman. Finally he embarked upon a medical education before settling on the ministry in 1822. He started out as an assistant and proved an able minister. Each year he won new posts from the Methodist Episcopal Conference of New England, which oversaw the postings. Pleased with his work, the Conference sent him to Lowell in 1829.

A Checkered Career

The first meeting between Sarah and Ephraim is somewhat murky. As he told the story, she applied for work as a housekeeper, but he did not hire her. A contemporary of his testified much later that he had hired the girl to work in his home, but dismissed her within a week.

In both tellings of events, Ephraim’s wife put an end to any prospect of Sarah working in their home. Ephraim reports that she simply didn’t like the look of the girl. His colleague reported that Ephraim’s excessive attentions to Sarah prompted the quick dismissal.

In either case, Sarah took the idea of working as a housekeeper with her to Lynn, Mass. There, Lowell’s former Methodist pastor had recently been assigned. In that city, the pastor arranged work for her, but she quickly lost her job on suspicion of thievery. It was a new blotch on Sarah’s record that already included an instance of shoplifting in Providence.

Back to Lowell

french-canadian-textile-workers-lowell-mill

Lowell textile mills

Forced to leave Lynn or face legal action, Sarah then returned to Lowell and the Appleton Mill. She persuaded the manager to give her another chance. He reinstated her on probation, but her problems soon worsened. As bad as breaking the equipment was, it was not nearly as serious as bringing scandal on the mill. And soon after returning to the mill, the management heard a new story of Sarah’s recklessness with men.

This instance involved a particular suitor, a reputable counting-house clerk who Sarah hoped to marry. The relationship foundered, however. Stories of sightings of Sarah and the man in taverns began to spread.

When confronted, Sarah acknowledged to Ephraim Avery her involvement with multiple men. She spelled out her transgressions in several letters to him in hopes the confession would prompt mercy from her church. The admission, however, resulted in a church trial. By September of 1830 the church expelled her and she lost her job at the mill.

Sarah then moved to New Hampshire, seeking work first in Dover and then Somersworth. She couldn’t gain admission to the Methodist church in either community, however, because of word from Ephraim Avery. Adding to her past difficulties, he now told local ministers that Sarah left Lowell owing a doctor for gonorrhea treatment.

Back To Normal?

As she sought a fresh start, some friends say Sarah began to express anger at Avery for injuring her reputation. Her sister and brother-in-law helped return her to a more normal life in May of 1832. By then, Lucretia and Sarah had made up their differences.

Lucretia invited Sarah to take a position with her husband, Grindall, in his tailor’s shop in Woodstock, Conn. She thrived in this job, winning Grindall Rawson’s confidence.

Now, with the imprimatur of the Rawson family behind her, Sarah could again join the community of Methodists, this time in Woodstock. Though not a full member of the church, it gave her standing to participate in church social and religious activities.

With her affiliation renewed and her fortunes restored, Sarah announced her plans to attend a camp meeting of Methodists in August at Thompson, Conn.

Part 2: Did Connecticut Methodist Camp Meeting Frolic Lead to Massachusetts Murder?

This story about Methodists and mill girls was updated in 2022.

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