Tag:

Brookline Mass.

The Brahmin Rough Riders of New England

Some people believe that the Rough Riders were almost all cowboys from out West. After all, it had earned the nickname “The Cowboy Regiment.”

But that wasn’t entirely the case, as you shall see. Brahmins from New England with refined backgrounds also joined the Rough Riders.

Men from every New England state volunteered for Teddy Roosevelt’s U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the Rough Riders. Massachusetts had as many as 25. As a matter of fact, the actual commander of the unit, Leonard Wood, hailed from New Hampshire. Frederic Remington featured Woodbury Kane from Rhode Island in his famous painting of the immortal charge up San Juan Hill.

Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders on top of San Juan Hill.

Roosevelt had four recruiting stations out West, in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and the Oklahoma/Indian Territories. He had vast experience in the West and knew the cowboys already knew how to ride and shoot. But Roosevelt knew another target-rich area full of ready-for-action men: His wealthy, pedigreed friends throughout New York and New England.

Roosevelt put out the word. They responded in droves from polo clubs, boxing clubs, duck blinds, steeplechase courses, yacht clubs, Ivy League athletic fields and glee clubs. Many had graduated from Harvard.

One Rough Rider, James McClintock, who hailed from California, said they were in it for the adventure.

The Rough Riders are the stuff of legend, having generated a movie, a television show and, of course, a President. They were, however, one of the shortest lived units in American military history. They only existed for four months and 13 days before they disbanded.

Rhode Island Rough Riders

Woodbury Kane, Newport;Joseph S. Stevens, Newport; Norman Maxwell, Newport; Charles Hatch, Newport; Joseph F. Flynn, Cranston.

Rough Rider Woodbury Kane

Woodbury Kane, a classmate of Teddy Roosevelt’s at Harvard, was born in Newport, a cousin of John Jacob Astor IV. A noted yachtsman, he belonged to the New York Yacht Club and served on the crew of the Columbia in the 1899 America’s Cup Race. He was also a noted big game hunter.

After graduation, he lived the life of a bon vivant in Newport and New York. In April 1898 he and other East Coast friends joined the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry.

After enlistment, he, William Tiffany and other East Coast friends donated two $7,500 Colt machine guns to the unit. When the unit expanded to a thousand men he received a lieutenant’s commission.

While serving in the Rough Riders he was always noted for being dressed to a T, no matter the conditions. While leading K Troop in the charge on San Juan Hill, he was wounded in the forearm. Kane was awarded a citation for gallantry and promoted to captain.

He spent the rest of his life living the life of a dandy until a heart attack cut him down at the age of 46. His obituary noted he left no children, but he did leave his beloved polo pony.

Vermont

Ira A. Hill, Grand Isle; Wallace Batchelder, Chester.

Wallace Batchelder graduated from Chester Academy in Chester, Vt., before enlisting in the Rough Riders. He later fought in the Philippines under General Wood. After his service he returned to Vermont, where he became a lawyer and chaired the state’s committee to elect Roosevelt President of the United States in 1904. He later broke with Roosevelt, who in 1912 sent him a telegram telling him not to support any candidate who didn’t support Roosevelt. Batchelder replied he wouldn’t support Roosevelt.

New Hampshire Rough Riders

Dudley S. Dean, Laconia; Walter F. Hickey, Nashua; Leonard Wood, Winchester.

Leonard Wood was the actual commander of the Rough Riders; Teddy Roosevelt was his second in command.

A descendant of four Mayflower passengers, he trained as a physician at Harvard Medical School. He served as a major general in the Army. When he came to command the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry in Cuba, he was a seasoned Indian fighter in the West and had already been awarded the Medal of Honor. After the Spanish-American War, he served as Governor-General of the Philippines and contended for the Republican nomination for President in 1920.

Dean was an All American football quarterback for Harvard from 1888 to 1890. He participated in the charge on San Juan Hill. That was not to be his last military adventure. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant colonel In the U.S. Army Air Force. He was the executive producer of the play Winged Victory, which ran from November 1943 to May 1944. He lived until the age of 79, passing away in 1950.

Dudley Dean, football star

Dudley’s son John H. Dean played football for Harvard too. At Harvard, he befriended Joseph P. Kennedy and they spent summers together at Cohassett, Mass.

Maine

Guy Muncie, Calais; Harrison J. Holt, Portland; Frederick C. Wesley, Bangor.

Harrison Holt graduated from Phillips Andover and Harvard. Upon his Harvard graduation in 1898 he enlisted with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. After the war and some business ventures in Mexico he joined the New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser as a reporter. Later in life he wrote novels and detective stories, including The Calendared Isles, a Romance of Casco Bay (read it here) and Midnight at Mears House.

Connecticut

Edward C. Hall, Wallingford.

Unlike most of the Ivy League Rough Riders, Edward Hall graduated from Yale, not Harvard. Upon graduation in 1894, he went to work for Westinghouse and did a brief stint at a North Dakota ranch before enlisting with the Rough Riders. After the war he joined General Electric in Lynn, Mass., then transferred to the Schenectady office, where he died in 1912.

Massachusetts

Harry A. Curtis, Boston; Prescott H. Belknap, Brookline; John D. Hubbell, Boston; Rufus K. Thomas, Boston; Wellman H. Saunders, Salem; John P. Gardner, Boston; Guy H. Scull, Boston; Harry A. Davis, Boston; Francis B. Crowninshield, Marblehead; William H. Mitchell, Salem; Winslow Clark, Milton; Edward F. Donnelly, Boston; Michael F. Hogan; William T. James, Fitchburg; Arthur M. Leroy, Boston; Raymond Morse, Springfield; Edward A. O’Brien, Charlestown; William J. Tudor, Boston; Harry C. White, Somerville.

Francis Boardman Crowninshield, another Harvard graduate, went on to become a noted international yachtsman. He fought with Troop K of the Rough Riders and took part in the charge up San Juan Hill. In 1900, he married Louise DuPont from the famous chemical family. In 1911, he won the King of Spain’s Cup in Spain, now among his many trophies at the Eastern Yacht Club in Marblehead, Mass.

Rough Riders. Image courtesy New York Public Library.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

This story updated in 2022.

0 comment 347 views

Bob Fogg Brings Aviation and Adventure to New Hampshire

“The Weirs” on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee, has been a popular summer resort since shortly after the last Ice Age, when the continental ice sheet melted away. It left the state’s largest lake, known as “The Smile of the Great Spirit,” in its wake. The Weirs attracted Native American fishermen, Civil War veterans and 20^th century tourists looking for fun and adventure. They found both with Bob Fogg.

Fogg carried over 50,000 eager summer tourists over the lakes and mountains in the biplanes that first brought flying to the Granite State. He operated from the seaplane base, a fixture on the lakeside boardwalk from the early 1920s until shortly after World War II.

Airplanes Arrive

Bob Fogg had flying in his blood from the very beginning. He owned an early Bleriot monoplane by 1915, when aviation was just 12 years old and he was just 18. His father, though, took the engine from it before young Bob could get hurt with his new toy.

Bob also worked on cars and had his radio operator’s license, so clearly he had a fascination for the new technology of the new century.

Technology has come at us so fast during the 20^th century that it’s hard for us now to imagine the excitement people felt in the early 20^th century when the “flying machine” first appeared. Human beings had dreamed of flight since the dawn of time, and now, suddenly, anyone with the price of a ticket could do it.

Imagine the thrill if you had never seen an airplane fly, and suddenly one day, one landed in the cow pasture next door!

If you have never seen the surface of the earth from a small plane a few hundred feet above the ground, or maneuvered among the clouds, it’s hard to convey the joy and wonder of it. But once done you can’t forget it. No wonder the early “barnstormers” loved to fly.

Iin-flight view from the Curtiss Canuck flown by Bob Fogg from 1920-23, thought to be in flight over Hampton Beach, NH.

Bob Fogg

Robert Stevens “Bob” Fogg was born in 1897 in Brookline, Mass., just a few years before the Wright brothers first flew in 1903. As a boy he avidly followed the adventures of the early birds of flight. So when the United States entered the Great War in 1917 and the aces of the Western Front began winning fame and glory, Bob was ready to go.

Enlisting in the U.S. Army Air Service, he learned to fly at a Texas Army flying field. But the war ended with an Allied victory before he could get to the fighting himself.

Bob Fogg in his World War I uniform.

When the war to end all wars ended, the United States had hundreds of surplus airplanes, mostly trainers. Anyone with a few hundred dollars could buy one, no training, license, or registration required. Bob Fogg was one of them.

After an adventurous flight from Toronto, using the “I Follow Railroads” method of aerial navigation, he arrived in Concord, N.H., on the Fourth of July, 1920. He then set out to make his fortune hopping passengers.

Making a Living

New Hampshire as yet had no airports, so he flew from the National Guard training field in Concord, on Hampton Beach (at low tide), and various fields and fairgrounds around the state. Like many another wartime aviator, he wanted to use his new skills to keep on flying and also to make a living, if possible.

As the military downsized and no airlines existed, selling thrill rides to a population that had never flown before was the only way to go.

Barnstorming did not turn out to be a get rich quick scheme, but it was the most exciting career choice a young man could make in 1920. Like other early aviators, Bob Fogg said the greatest danger a pilot faced was starvation. Unless, of course, he sold enough rides to put gas in the tank for one more day.

How quickly things once new and exciting become merely ordinary. Bob had the first privately owned airplane in the state in 1920. But by 1922, as he later wrote, ‘crowds no longer flocked three miles to some hayfield to pay five dollars for a ride in my Hisso Standard.’

“I then decided that if the people would not come to my plane, the next step would be to take a plane to the people.”

The Weirs

The Weirs, the main tourist stop on Lake Winnipesaukee, fit the bill. Surplus aircraft were still cheap and available, and for $750 Bob purchased a Curtiss Model MF flying boat, known as the Seagull. Brand new, right from the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia, the Seagull came all in pieces on a freight car with some assembly required.

Despite New Hampshire’s lack of airports, its many lakes and ponds made ideal runways. And many had existing summer resorts where Bob could sell airplane rides.

Assembling the Seagull on an old barge near the Weirs Channel, Bob and mechanic Caleb Marston converted the two-seat trainer to a four-place passenger plane, and made their first flight on Aug. 14, 1923. Two men, names lost to history, who had been watching the proceedings, asked for a ride, and for $5.00 each they became the first to “Fly With Fogg.”

Getting used to the feel of the new airplane, Bob Fogg ‘yoyoed up the bay like an airborne porpoise.’ He then arrived safely at the Weirs with the compliments of the two passengers.

On August 15, Bob and Caleb started their first business day on the boardwalk alongside the Weirs Café and the Mount Washington dock. They then flew for over 12 hours, taking up 73 passengers for total receipts of $315.

Andy Cannon, Bob Fogg, and Floyd Miller, pilots at the Weirs seaplane base

Thrill Rides

Today small private aircraft are a fairly common sight, but in the 1920s and ‘30’s, seeing an airplane fly over was a highlight. Taking a flight was the experience of a lifetime. Bob continued to fly the Seagull at the Weirs through the summer of 1927, on one occasion even charging $50 to a passenger who wanted to fly one mile high. It was a slow process at a rate of climb of approximately 250 feet per minute.

In 1925 he operated the first aeromarine mail service in America. He picked up mail from the Weirs train station and delivered it to ten locations around the lake, all before 8:00 a.m. He dropped off most of the airmail at boy’s summer camps, where plenty of willing volunteers waded out and swapped mail bags. They also helped turned the plane back toward open water for the next takeoff.

Regulation

In 1927 the government finally decided to regulate airplanes and pilots. And so the official inspector came to give Bob Fogg and the Seagull a check ride.

The wind blew offshore from the Weirs, so Bob and Inspector W.A. Brooks had to taxi a long way out in order to take off into the wind and clear Brickyard Mountain. After making a successful takeoff, with the engine roaring at full power to clear the pine trees atop the mountain, a startling bang came from the engine, and it quit cold.

Bob calmly guided the craft to a safe landing in Paugus Bay. Then he turned to the inspector and remarked, “Well! She never did that before!”

The inspector agreed that Bob had demonstrated excellent piloting skills, quickly licensed both plane and pilo, and left town on the next train.

Later, as technology advanced in during the 1920s and ’30s, Bob Fogg replaced the faithful Seagull with larger and more powerful Waco biplanes, a Travel Air 6000 cabin monoplane featuring cabin-enclosed comfort for six passengers. Later he bought a speedy Staggerwing Beechcraft capable of 200 mph, and a 10-passenger Sikorsky amphibian that could land on water or land. Quite an upgrade from the slow and steady old Seagull in just a few short years.

By the time he left the seaplane base in 1938, Bob had safely carried over 50,000 passengers, quite a feat considering that his airplanes only carried between two and eight passengers at a time.

Other Adventures

Bob had other high-flying adventures, including one with the Charles Lindbergh. He hosted the world-famous aviator in Concord during his tour of the country in The Spirit of St. Louis, which followed his historic transatlantic flight.

Charles Lindbergh and Bob Fogg (in uniform).

After the disastrous Vermont flood in 1927, Bob Fogg flew the mail from Concord to the stricken state during November and December in his open-cockpit Waco. Then in the early spring of 1928, he flew to remote Greenly Island in northern Canada. He made the flight to bring back the first newsreel footage of the first plane to fly nonstop east-to-west from Europe to America. The Bremen had landed in Newfoundland.

Bob Fogg in the furs he wore to Northern Canada.

Flying High With Eleanor

Bob went to work for the Civil Aeronautics Board in Washington, D.C., in 1939, building 300 seaplane bases around the country for national defense. On several occasions he flew with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to dedicate them.

The story goes that he let the First Lady take the controls once airborne, and that she did a pretty good job. Imagine the First Lady trying that nowadays! Bob Fogg, Jr., related that the First Lady could not drink alcoholic beverages in public because of concerns over its propriety. But after they finished their official duties for the day, Mrs. Roosevelt would call Bob’s hotel room and invite him down for a Manhattan.

Following service in World War I, Bob served his country again in the Army Air Corps reserves from 1923 until World War II. Then he flew on active duty through 1945.

He hung up his flying goggles in 1951, having seen aviation progress from wooden biplanes with linen-covered wings to jets breaking the sound barrier.

Bob Fogg passed away in 1976 after a long and adventurous life.

Jane Rice, who wrote this story, is the author of Bob Fogg and New Hampshire’s Golden Age of Aviation, available online or from the author at [email protected]

0 comment 540 views

Maurice Lerner, the Brookline Mobster Hired To Kill Fidel Castro

Maurice Lerner grew up in Brookline, Mass., and as a young man he was astute, polite and athletic. His athletic prowess landed him a baseball career that spanned 10 years playing second and third base and outfield. But it peaked at double-A ball, played out in tiny stadiums across the country.

Lerner had earned the nickname “Pro” – supposedly short for little professor – because of his studious nature as a kid. And in baseball he had a reputation as an early advocate of diet and fitness training in an era when most ballplayers relied purely on talent and genetics to keep them in the game.

But by the time his career wound down in 1962 and 1963, Lerner was moving into a life of crime. He knew how to induce fear in people, first with a baseball bat and later with a gun.

Maurice Lerner built a “shooting gallery” in his basement to practice his marksmanship. His demeanor and efficiency soon brought him to the attention of the New England Mafia, led by Providence’s Raymond Patriarca. In 1962, Lerner got his first taste of big-time crime.

The Plymouth Postal Robbery

As of Aug. 14, 1962, when it happened, the Great Plymouth Mail Robbery was the largest robbery ever. Though all the details aren’t known (nor will they ever be), it played out roughly as follows: George “Aggie” Agisotelis got the idea of robbing a mail truck. One specific mail truck.

Aggie had watched the truck perform its routine run from Cape Cod up to Boston. On certain days it was loaded with cash traveling from the banks on the Massachusetts South Shore to the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston. He knew just the spot to hijack the truck (which had no security) and just the guys to help him do it.

He reached out to John “Red” Kelley, a bank robber known for his precision bank jobs. They assembled a team of at least six men. Knocking off the mail truck was a breeze. One gangster, posing as a cop, flagged down the truck. The other cars then surrounded it. Gunmen held two postal employees at bay with machine guns, and the crew scooped the bags of cash – more than $1.5 million – into the waiting cars.

Maurice “Pro” Lerner probably belonged to the gang, though he was never charged. Aggie and Red were, and they got off, but only after one member of the gang disappeared – Thomas Richards. The gang didn’t think he would stand up under questioning and Lerner shot him.

Patriarca Affiliation

For several years Pro Lerner and Red Kelley formed a formidable team. Red was precise and disciplined. Pro was calm and smart. Police suspected that Red Kelley took part in planning for the Brink’s Job, but backed out when he didn’t like the way the plan shaped up.

Pro was getting more work and attention from the Patriarca crime family as his reputation for violence grew. Vincent Teresa became his contact with the family. Lerner was asked to kill two men – Rudolph Marfeo and Anthony Melei – who were interfering with Patriarca gambling operations.

Lerner recruited Red Kelley to help with the getaway planning. Raymond Patriarca was growing frustrated at the pace Kelley’s careful planning required. “I don’t want to hear any stories, I just want him [Marfeo] killed,” Patriarca said, ignoring his usual dislike for public spectacle.

Murder in Broad Daylight

So on April 20, 1968 Lerner and another gunman murdered the two bookmakers in the middle of the afternoon in Pannone’s supermarket on Pocasset Avenue in Providence. The public nature of the shooting put intense pressure on police to make arrests, and luckily they now had an edge.

Red Kelley, at age 55 and with a long criminal history, had been implicated in another robbery. Facing the prospect of a long prison term, he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. And at the top of his list of people to give up was Pro Lerner.

Maurice Lerner frightened Red Kelley. The younger Lerner, 34, was too violent. Kelley laid out exactly what happened in the shooting, right down to the route they planned for their getaway, and he was convincing. His testimony not only put away Lerner and the rest of those directly involved, it also put Raymond Patriarca behind bars.

Patriarca would be out of prison after serving a few scant years for his conspiracy conviction. But Lerner faced two life sentences for the murders. He would serve 20 years before he was even eligible for parole.

Maurice Lerner, Hit Man

About the same time that Red Kelley put Pro Lerner in prison, another member of the Patriarca crime family left the fold. Vincent Teresa, 325-pound “Fat Vinnie,” was a lieutenant in the organization. The Revere, Mass., boy rose up in the ranks of the Mafia and ran a number of operations for the mob, though he claimed he never killed anyone.

In 1966, one of Patriarca’s hit men, Joseph Barboza, had started cooperating with the federal prosecutors. Federal marshals decided to stash Barboza on Thacher Island off the coast of Gloucester. The small island with distinctive twin lighthouses is actually part of Rockport, Mass. With Barboza out of reach, Patriarca ordered Teresa to find a way to get him.

1928 police photo of Raymond Patriarca (Providence Library)

Teresa took Pro Lerner out on his yacht, The Living End, and they circled the island while marshals stood their ground on the shore armed with shotguns. Teresa and Lerner realized they had lost any element of surprise. Outnumbered, they had no chance of successfully getting a shot at Barboza. Lerner and Teresa discussed a sneak attack. Lerner could swim to the island in scuba gear and try to catch Barboza off guard, but they quickly discarded that plan as impractical.

Soon, with Lerner and Patriarcia battling murder charges, Teresa was having his own troubles. By 1969 he was making most of his money by leading gambling trips. Casinos paid him a share of the money lost by the high rollers he brought in. But Teresa also had come in contact with a man who could steal securities. Teresa helped sell the stolen stocks and bonds for a share of the profit.

Joey Barboza

Vincent Teresa Turns

When the stolen securities racket was broken up, Teresa initially kept quiet and went to prison peacefully. He began living the luxurious life in federal prison afforded to Mafiosi, rubbing shoulders with the likes of future New York Mafia don John Gotti. But soon Teresa learned some news that irritated him.

While he had done his duty and headed off to prison, he learned that other members of the Patriarca family were not playing by the rules. They had taken money (he claimed $4 million) that Teresa had stashed away for his family’s use while in prison. With that, Fat Vinnie became a government witness. And what stories he told. Fat Vinnie testified at more than a dozen trials that convicted his fellow mobsters.

Fifty-one indictments were tied to him, though he didn’t always succeed as a witness. Occasionally, his testimony didn’t add up. In 1978, he finally told his biggest shocker.

The Castro Contract

Rolling Stone Magazine got tangled up in a libel case in 1978 over an article that identified a casino as being connected to the Mafia. Teresa had to testify in the case. In a 300-page deposition, Teresa answered a question about Mafia involvement with the CIA, specifically the idea of assassinating Castro.

“I was there when the information came in for Henry (Tamaleo) and Raymond (Patriarca) and they picked Maurice (Pro) Lerner to do the work. This is the story that was told to Henry and Raymond, to whack out Fidel Castro and the man that was picked was . . . Lerner.”

Fidel Castro

Tamaleo and Patriarca were indeed mafia leaders. But was the story true? Patriarca was blunt in his denial to the Boston Herald American: “If you believe anything Teresa says you have to be crazier than he is. He hustled his mother for $2 and if you believe him, then you are crazy . . . I never knew Pro Lerner until they framed him like they framed me.”

Maurice Lerner, still serving time in jail, gave a simpler response: “The accusation isn’t true.”

So where is the truth? It’s well documented that the CIA, in the overheated days of the 60s, did reach out to the Mafia to discuss assassinating Castro. The agency hatched many plans (some of them comically absurd) to go after the Cuban dictator.

As for the CIA negotiations with the Mafia, the discussions were between Robert Maheu – the Waterville, Maine, boy who rose up to be a CIA operative and Howard Hughes’ right hand man – and Sam Giancana, the Chicago Mafia boss. And the Mafia, ousted from Cuba by Castro’s coup, certainly had no love for the dictator.

Model Prisoner

Red Kelley told one of his protectors, former U.S. Marshal John Partington, that he knew of the plan to assassinate Castro and had been approached about participating along with Maurice Lerner. But did Giancana reach out to Rhode Island and Lerner? Lerner was a significant enough underworld figure that a congressional committee investigating the assassination of President Kennedy subpoenaed and reviewed his CIA files. Still, the trail of evidence grows cold, and there were never many reliable sources in the matter to begin with.

All the parties to the story died long ago. Maurice Lerner got out of prison and led a crime-free life, detailed in a New York Times profile. The story portrayed a model prisoner who spent his final days reliving memories of his baseball career. Teresa would write three books about his Mafia life. By the end he was angry at his treatment by the government. Still, much of his insider information was valid and useful.

This story about Maurice Lerner was updated in 2022.

4 comments 940 views

Boston Holds a Water Celebration in 1848

On Oct. 25, 1848, a stream of water gushed from a fountain before 100,000 people assembled on Boston Common for the city’s great water celebration. Bells rang, rockets soared and people cheered, laughed, sang and even cried. A great civic undertaking had been completed.

The Water Celebration

The Cambridge Chronicle, reporting on the celebration, noted that the citizens of Boston had been annoyed for 30 years by the want of pure water. It had taken that long to solve the problem. Most of the delay was due to political controversy. It took only two years to build the aqueduct, dams, pipelines and gatehouses from Lake Cochituate in Natick.

And when the work was completed, Boston threw a water celebration of historic proportions.

Water, Water, Anywhere?

For years the people of Boston relied on cisterns, wells and a spring on Boston Common. As the town grew, private suppliers in 1796 introduced an alternative and began delivering water from Jamaica Pond through a system of hollow pine logs.

It worked until 1825, when Boston’s population more than doubled to about 43,000. Wells became brackish or went dry and the water table fell. A builder named George Cram testified that the city’s need for a public water supply was dire; in one case, 43 families were using a single well.

Mayor Josiah Quincy proposed a public water supply for the growing city (the population would grow to 127,000 by 1848). After a fire in April 1825 destroyed several dozen buildings in Boston, a committee was appointed to look into building a water works.

Quincy’s idea was opposed by private companies that wanted to supply the rapidly growing city and voters who feared a tax increase. ‘Steady and strenuous’ efforts were made for a public water supply, according to the King’s Dictionary of Boston.

After 23 years of controversy, work began under the supervision of three water commissioners – including Nathan Hale, nephew of the Revolutionary War spy and a journalist whose newspaper supported the diversion of water from Long Pond in Natick.

1852 map of the Cochituate Aqueduct

On Aug. 26, 1846, a small groundbreaking ceremony was held at Long Pond in Framingham. A polished steel blade with a rosewood handle and a plate with an appropriate inscription was used. Mayor Josiah Quincy, Jr., lifted the first shovelful of dirt into a wheelbarrow at that first water celebration. His cousin, former U.S. president John Quincy Adams, lifted the second, and Josiah Quincy, Sr., the third.

After the ceremony, the younger Quincy said the name Long Pond wasn’t memorable, and suggested an Indian name: Cochituate, which means ‘torrent’ or ‘place of rushing water.’ It was immediately adopted.

It took two years to build the waterworks, which included wooden dams, an aqueduct, granite gatehouses and pipelines to the Brookline Reservoir and smaller feeder reservoirs. The system was laid out by Ellis S. Chesbrough, who would later reverse the Chicago River, supervised the engineering. John B. Jervis, who designed the American steam locomotive and the Croton Aqueduct in New York, laid out the plans.

The Water Celebration

Principal Gatehouse in Brookline. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The great day began with a 100-gun salute and an immense parade through the city. Mayor Quincy gave a speech, at the end of which he asked if the people of Boston were ready for Cochituate water. The crowd roared, the gates opened and a stream of water 80 feet high burst from the Frog Pond Fountain.

Schoolchildren sang an ode written by poet James Russell Lowell for the occasion, which begins,

My name is water: I have sped
through strange, dark ways untried before
by pure desire of friendship led
Cochituate’s ambassador…

Mark Anthony DeWofe Howe, in his book Boston Common, described the scene:

When the water was turned on, and the fountain leaped high into the air, the school-children, assembled with every other element of the population, sang a song written by poet James Russell Lowell for the occasion…the bells rang, cannon were fired, rockets soared aloft; cheering, laughter and even tears paid their spontaneous tribute to the completion of a great undertaking.

A month later, Charlestown’s mayor toasted the father-and-son mayors. Noting that Josiah Quincy Sr., was responsible for building Quincy Market, the mayor called them ‘a very useful family for Boston — the father gave her a market — the son pure water, the one meat–the other drink.’

Lake Cochituate and the Brookline Reservoir are now parks listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the Principal Gatehouse. This story was updated in 2017.

2 comments 366 views

The Mysterious Death of Starr Faithfull Reveals the Sordid Secret of a Boston Mayor

On June 8, 1931, the bruised body of beautiful socialite Starr Faithfull was found on a deserted Long Island beach. She wore a silk Lord & Taylor dress and nothing underneath. An autopsy found her liver filled with barbiturates.

Starr Faithfull

Investigators found a diary that revealed the wanton details of her short, unhappy flapper life. It included references to sexual liaisons with 19 men, including AJP:

Spent night AJP Providence. Oh, Horror, Horror, Horror!!!

‘AJP’ was a powerful politician named Andrew J. Peters, her mother’s cousin by marriage. As mayor of Boston he had sexually abused 11-year-old Starr Faithfull. And then he paid off her family to keep quiet.

Family Misfortune

Starr was born Jan. 26, 1906 in Evanston, Ill., to parents who came from old New England families. Her father was Frank Wyman, a Beacon Hill ne’er-do-well working for an investment brokerage firm in Chicago.

Her mother, Helen Pierce, came from the impoverished branch of a wealthy family. Helen’s father and, later, her husbands could not earn or keep money. As a child Helen was sent to live with her grandmother at the old Alanson Tucker mansion in Derry, N.H., a town founded by one of her ancestors, the Rev. James MacGregor.

Starr’s parents moved to New Jersey after her birth. She grew into a bright, outgoing child. At 11, her rich cousins and aunts paid for her to attend an exclusive boarding school, Rogers Hall Academy in Lowell, Mass.

One of her Massachusetts relatives, 45-year-old Andrew J. Peters, took an interest in his young cousin. Peters had served as a congressman and Woodrow Wilson’s assistant Treasury secretary before his election as mayor of Boston. Her mother assumed he had an avuncular interest in Starr.

Some Uncle

Andrew Peters

She was only 11 when Peters doused her with ether, read instructions on sex from books by Havelock Ellis and seduced her.

For years afterward, Peters took Starr Faithfull on long automobile trips and stayed with her in hotels. She spent summers with him and his family on North Haven island in Maine.

When Starr reached her teens, she went through periods of odd behavior her family didn’t understand. She grew sullen and withdrawn, dressing in boys’ clothes to hide her femininity. Two months before graduation, she dropped out of Rogers Hall to live a life of Jazz Age depravity.

During that time her mother divorced her father. In 1925 Helen married Stanley Faithfull, her neighbor in Brookline, Mass. An inventor with social pretensions, he hadn’t made a dime in years. His first wife, who died, had been Leverett Saltonstall’s governess.

Starr and her younger sister Tucker took the Faithfull name and moved to Greenwich Village with Stanley and their mother. They lived a few doors down from New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Starr Faithfull

The young woman now known as Starr Faithfull continued her erratic behavior. Sometimes she seemed normal: happy, outgoing and well-dressed in stylish clothes. But at 19 she spent nine days in a Boston mental hospital. She was committed to Bellevue in New York after she was found drunk, naked and beaten up in a hotel room.

On July 1, 1926, Starr Faithfull took a nine-month Mediterranean cruise, the first of seven or eight ocean voyages. She then took three long visits to London. Where the money came from was a question. Her stepfather had no job, and her mother’s inheritance was a heavily mortgaged house in Centerville on Cape Cod.

Starr Faithfull liked to show up at bon voyage parties on Cunard steamships and stay on board when the ship left, trysting with ships’ officers. She abused alcohol, barbiturates and inhalants like those Peters had first given her. She seemed happy during her trips to London, but on one visit she took an overdose of sleeping drugs and nearly died.

In 1924, Starr Faithfull told her mother what Peters was doing to her. At some point Peters began paying Helen and Stanley Faithfull to keep quiet.

Peters, no longer mayor, sought the Democratic nomination for governor, but didn’t get it. In 1928 he seconded the nomination of Al Smith for president.

Oblivion

Starr Faithfull, discovered on the beach

On June 8, 1931, a beachcomber found the body of Starr Faithfull in a pile of seaweed on a deserted Long Island beach. She wore an expensive summer dress from Lord & Taylor with nothing underneath. Her nails were bright red, her body bruised and her liver full of barbiturates.

She was identified as Starr Faithfull several days later. Authorities then retraced her last movements. On May 29, 1931, she had been put off the Franconia on a New York dock, drunk and screaming, “Kill me! Kill me!” On June 5, she left the family’s apartment at 9:30 a.m. with $3 in her pocket. She apparently sneaked aboard the Mauretania, bound for the Bahamas.

The autopsy revealed she had drowned, but her bruises suggested she had had help.

Dr. Otto Schulz, who performed the autopsy, said as much, according to the Brooklyn Standard Union:

…his examination of the body led him to believe that Starr had been drowned in shallow water, and that she had been roughly handled. It is his assumption that two men held her head under water until she was dead.

A police officer found her diary – her ‘Mem Book’ — which detailed a decade of her sexual assignations with 19 men, including ‘AJP.’ The tabloids picked up the less steamy entries and reporters began to associate AJP with Peters. Rumors flew, and the former mayor had to issue a statement denying he’d had improper relations with Starr Faithfull.

Murder or Suicide?

Her stepfather insisted someone murdered her to keep her quiet. He also accused the district attorney of dragging his feet for political gain. Stanley Faithfull produced a check for $20,000 from Peters and a copy of the 1927 agreement to hold Peters harmless.

Then the New York Daily News broke the story that Faithfull had gone to Peters a few days before his stepdaughter’s death to ask for more money.

Her body was about to be cremated when the district attorney ordered a halt. They found another diary, and authorities said someone who wanted her silenced had pushed her overboard from the Mauretania.

Several days later, they changed their minds. A Cunard ship’s surgeon, Dr. George Jameson Carr, returned from England and revealed he had received several letters from Starr. She fell for him after he pumped her stomach the morning after a night of heavy drinking. He hadn’t returned her affections. In one letter, she wrote she wanted,

…to end my worthless, disorderly bore of an existence before I ruin anyone else’s life as well. I certainly have made a sordid futureless mess of it all. I take dope to forget and drink to try and like people, but it is of no use. Everything is an anti-climax to me now. I want oblivion.

Officials closed the investigation, but Stanley Faithfull continued to claim Starr Faithfull was murdered.

Late in the year, an inquest into the cause of her death was held. It reached no conclusion.

Butterfield 8

Peters reportedly had a nervous breakdown after she died. Two of his sons, John and Alanson, died of polio in 1932. Another son, Bradford, died in a car crash in 1933. Andrew Peters died of pneumonia on June 26, 1938.

The 1935 John O’Hara novel Butterfield 8 famously retold the story of Starr Faithful, as did the Academy Award winning film starring Elizabeth Taylor.

This story was updated in 2022.

1 comment 794 views

Beatrix Farrand Breaks the (Green) Glass Ceiling

Famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted in 1893 dismissed 21-year-old Beatrix Farrand as a dilettante gardener, but six years later she had risen to the top of the field.

Beatrix Farrand. Photo courtesy Yale University Library.

At 27, Beatrix Farrand had earned a reputation that allowed her to help found the American Society of Landscape Architects.

Her clients had estates in Newport, the Berkshires and Maine, but she also consulted with universities such as Yale and Princeton. She also designed public gardens such as the rose garden at the New York Botanical Garden and the Santa Barbara Botanical Garden.

Throughout her life she insisted on calling herself a landscape gardener.

Beatrix Farrand

She was born June 19, 1872, the only child of a New York society couple. Her rich father, Frederic Rhinelander Jones, had no ambition and loved to have fun. His serious little sister Edith became the novelist known as Edith Wharton. Beatrix’s mother, Mary Cadwalader Rawle, was also rich, but lively and bookish.

Beatrix’s parents’ marriage failed, and then after she turned 10 her father absented himself from her life.

She grew up surrounded by her mother’s women friends and, occasionally, Philadelphia lawyers, soldiers, artists and writers. “Always beautifully turned out, with an awesome briskness of manner,’ wrote Jane Brown in Arnoldia. ”She was formal, not jolly and good fun,” a friend of the family told the The New York Times in 2003.

“She had an elegant reserve, a perfectionism that suffered no fools,” the Times reported.

Reef Point gardens, managed by Beatrix Farrand. Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Frances Benjamin Johnston collection.

Reef Point

Beatrix and her mother spent summers at her family’s summer home, Reef Point, on Mount Desert Island in Bar Harbor, Maine. There she learned to love the outdoors, especially plants and trees. While still a teenager she took over the management of the Reef Point gardens.

Charles Sprague Sargent, who helped Beatrix Farrand with her gardening.

She also had the good fortune to meet Charles Sprague Sargent, director of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. He was perhaps the only person at that time who was willing and able to help her enter the exclusively male world of landscape architecture. Sargent, a stern and aloof Brahmin, appreciated Beatrix Jones’ knowledge and enthusiasm for plants.

Flowering trees at Holm Lea. Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Frances Benjamin Johnston collection.

On their trips between New York and Maine, Beatrix and her mother stayed at the Sargents’ Brookline home, Holm Lea.

Frederick Law Olmsted

In October 1893, the Sargents took Beatrix Farrand to Chicago to see Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscape settings for the World’s Columbian Exposition. The next summer they took her and her mother to see Olmsted’s gardens at the Biltmore estate in North Carolina.

Olmsted, then at the height of his fame, commented that Beatrix was ‘inclined to dabble in landscape architecture.’ The slight was widely quoted in landscape architecture circles.

The Arnold Arboretum in 2005.

After her visit to Biltmore, she stayed at Holm Lea for a summer, studying at the Arboretum. Sargent took her to see H.H. Hunnewell’s rhododendron collection at his home in Wellesley, Mass. He also took her to Frederic Law Olmsted’s home office – when Frederic Law Olmsted was away. There, Beatrix saw how designers sketched layouts for gardens on tracing paper over site surveys. She saw as well how they made plans for planting by referring to a card index describing each plant.

Clashing Azaleas

And she returned Olmsted’s slight (which she probably never heard) by recording in her notebook some badly arranged shrubs and clashing azaleas in pinkish blue and bright orange. (Anyone can visit Olmsted’s home office now; it’s now a National Historic Site run by the National Park Service.)

That fall she arranged for private tutors from Columbia University’s School of Architecture to teach her technical drawing and surveying. During a trip to Europe she studied formal gardens and the natural landscape. By 1897, Sargent had found her first job: thinning trees and remodeling plants on a garden slope. At 25, she was on her way, working from the top floor of her mother’s brownstone on East 11^th St. in New York City.

Farrand designed this rustic bridge in a birch grove at the Herbert Livingston Satterlee house, Bar Harbor. Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Frances Benjamin Johnston collection.

Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Frances Benjamin Johnston collection.

As a woman she was excluded from public projects, but she managed to find private clients among her family friends in Bar Harbor. Her Aunt Edith Wharton also helped with her connections. She designed the rustic bridge and the birch grove pictured above for the Herbert L. Satterlee estate in Bar Harbor.

White House garden designed by Beatrix Farrand. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

In 1913 she designed the East Colonial Garden at the White House for the first Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. It was replaced by the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden.

Aerial view of Harkness Memorial Park.

She designed the Italian, Oriental and cutting gardens for Eolia, the Waterford, Conn., estate of wealthy philanthropist Edward Harkness. Harkness left Eolia to the state of Connecticut in 1950. It is now open to the public as Harkness Memorial State Park, and the 42-room mansion can be rented for weddings and parties.

Maine Undertakings

Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Another philanthropist, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., hired her to design plantings that framed vistas and bridges along his 45 miles of carriage roads, now part of Acadia National Park. Much of her work was destroyed by fire in 1947. Above is the Duck Brook Bridge, spanning Duck Brook between Witch Hole Loop and New Eagle Lake Road in Bar Harbor.

Beatrix Farrand remained single until she was over 40. In 1913, she married Max Farrand, chairman of the Yale History Department.

Max and Beatrix Farrand set up Reef Point as an educational institution, but attracted few students. She used the grounds as a laboratory for her plants, studying soils and finding ways to protect tender plants.

By 1955, Max Farrand had died and she couldn’t find an institution willing to undertake the expense of maintaining Reef Point. In 1955, she ordered the house torn down and gave away her plants, keeping some of her favorites. She gave her library of 2,700 books and her herbarium to the University of California at Berkeley.

Charles Savage, an artist and innkeeper, took most of the plants, building the Asticou Azalea Garden and Thuya Garden in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Both are now open to the public.

Asticou Azalea Garden.

Garland Farm

Beatrix Farrand then moved six miles down the road, to Garland Farm, owned by Lewis Garland, her driver and handyman. His horticulturist wife Amy supervised the Reef Point gardens. She built an addition to the house that included a room for Clementine Walters, her companion and caregiver.

She lived at Garland Farm until her death on Feb. 28, 1959.

Garland Farm had two private owners until 2004, when the Beatrix Farrand Society bought the farm. It is open to visitors on Open Days and by appointment. The Society renovated the barn as an educational center for workshops, lectures and other programs.

With thanks to Lady into Landscape Gardener: Beatrix Farrand’s Early Years at the Arnold Arboretum by Jane Brown in Arnoldia. The photo Arnold Arboretum – Aug 2005(b) courtesy of Daderot at Wikipedia. The photo of the Asticou Azalea Gardens “Asticou Azalea Garden 2003 1” courtesy of Dudesleeper at Wikipedia. This story about Beatrix Farrand ws updated in 2022.

6 comments 627 views

Newer Posts

Older Posts