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 1.5K 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 2.3K 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 2023.

4 comments 5K 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 1.7K 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 2023.

1 comment 5.9K views

Ginery Twichell Raced Steam Engines on Horseback … and Won

[jpshare]

Ginery Twichell on his famous ride

Ginery Twichell rode into legend on horseback in 1846 when he brought the news of the British elections from Boston to New York four hours faster than his rival who traveled by train and steamboat. His feat was made even more difficult by the deep snow that enveloped the Boston Post Road.

He was a stage-driver who made his fortune during the golden age of stagecoaches, then won a seat to Congress as the railroad eclipsed horse power. While in Congress he was named president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway, then ran the Boston, Barre and Garden Railroad and the Hoosac Tunnel and Western Railroad.

As a young girl, historian Alice Morse Earle caught sight of the famous Ginery Twichell reliving his glory days. She was having her picture taken in a Worcester studio when the photographer’s assistant shouted, ‘Ginery is here.’ She looked outside and saw

…a great stage-coach with six horses which stood reeking, foaming, pawing, in front of the Baystate House across the street. A dignified and self-contained old man, ruddy of face, and dressed in a heavy greatcoat and tall silk hat, sat erect on the coachman’s seat, reins well in hand—and suddenly Ginery and his six horses were off with rattle of wheels and blowing of horn and cheers of the crowd; but not before there was imprinted forever in unfading colors on my young brain a clear picture of the dashing coaching life of olden days. It was an anniversary of some memorable event, and the member of Congress celebrated it by once more driving over his old-time coaching route to meet the cheers and admiration of all beholders.

Napoleon of the Mails

Ginery Twichell was born on a farm in Athol, Mass., on August 26, 1811. He quit school at 16 to work in a mill. He eventually got work helping a local farmer run a stage wagon that carried passengers, the mail and newspapers from Worcester into the countryside. By 1832, when he was 21, Ginery Twichell bought the farmer’s Worcester-to-Athol route.

He went to Washington, D.C., to get a contract to deliver the mail. His competitors assumed he would just try for one contract. They were surprised when he returned with a number of them. His stage lines expanded to 286 miles of route that required 156 horses to do the work, from Worcester to Northfield, Winchester, Keene, N.H., and Templeton, Templeton to Greenfield and Barre to Worcester. Four of his five brothers were tavern keepers along his stage lines.

He was viewed as a Napoleon of mail contractors.

But it was as an express rider that Ginery Twichell became known. He managed to bring election results from the four western counties in Massachusetts to Boston – on horseback in a blizzard — in time for the results to appear in the Boston Atlas the next morning. It had never been done before.

It was another ride that earned Ginery Twichell immortality.

The Ride

In 1846, the New York newspapers were in cutthroat competition with each other. All wanted the news from England: would Sir Robert Peel be returned as prime minister of Great Britain, ensuring peace over the Oregon question?

The news would arrive on the Cunard line in Boston in January. James Gordon Bennett of the Herald arranged for his express rider, and only his express rider, to take a special Boston & Worcester train to Norwich, Conn., and then by boat to Long Island and on to his New York offices. No other train could leave within 15 minutes of the one hired by Bennett.

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, asked Ginery Twichell if he could beat the Herald. Twichell said he could.

He knew he would have to ride horseback two-thirds of the distance between Boston and New York. He arranged for the best horses and most reliable stablemen to be ready for him between Worcester and Hartford, and New Haven and New York. He also ordered a special train to have its steam up and be ready to leave for Worcester 15 minutes after the Herald’s special train had left.

On Jan. 23, 1846, it snowed and snowed some more. Ginery Twichell got the dispatches, took the train to Worcester, and then rode 10 horses over the 66 miles to Hartford in three hours and 20 minutes. He took the train from Hartford to New Haven, and then rode another 76 miles between New Haven and New York. He arrived four hours ahead of the Herald’s dispatches.

The feat was much talked about at the time. An 1850 lithograph pictures him riding through the snow. It is entitled, “The Unrivaled Express Rider, Ginery Twichell, Who rode from Worcester to Hartford, a distance of sixty miles in 3 hours & 20 minutes, through a deep snow, Jan. 23, 1846.”

Racy Anecdotes

Ginery Twichell was 34 years old when he made his famous express ride. Shortly after he turned 35, he married Theolotia Ruggles. A year later he was made superintendent of the Boston & Worcester; a decade after that he was elected president of the railroad.

Twichell had a way with people that won him loyal customers – and later, voters. A friend recalled,

He had an inexhaustible fund of racy anecdotes which he would tell so well that it was a perfect treat to ride upon the box with him. He was a general favorite, especially with the country folks, and the boys and girls on the road, and with these he always had a joke to crack whenever it came his way to do so, to the infinite amusement of the travellers whom he had in charge.

An old stage driver remembered him as, “shrewd, quiet, persevering man of few words and those to the point. His voice was clear and low, never raised to horses or men.” He had a nervous habit of ribbing his hands when in earnest conversation, and he made friends and held them. The stage driver also revealed he always wore buckskin underwear on his long rides in winter.

In 1867, Ginery Twichell was elected to the first of three terms in Congress. He died on July 23, 1883, in Brookline, Mass., of typhoid fever.

The two-story frame Ginery Twichell House in Brookline, Mass., is on the National Register of Historic Places.

With thanks to The Old Post Road by Stewart H. Holbrook.

2 comments 828 views

Newer Posts

Older Posts