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Camden

Six Places New England Films Were Shot

New England films number in the hundreds since the turn of the last century, partly because the region provides such rich material for stories and characters set against quaint fishing villages, Gilded Age resorts and prep school campuses.

Familiar themes appear again and again in those settings. The theme of the salty sea captain fighting a sea monster inspired films from Moby Dick through Jaws. Family secrets inspired Eugene O’Neill’s fictional Ah Wilderness in 1906 as well as Peyton Place.

Local characters populate many New England films: the rustic Yankee in The Trouble With Harry, the stalwart fisherman in Jaws and the outsider struggling to assimilatein A Separate Peace.

Here, then, are six New England films, each shot on location in at least one of the New England States. If you know of other New England films worth mentioning, please share in the comments section.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds was based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Paul Zindel about an eccentric, unhappy middle-aged widow, Beatrice Hunsdorfer, and her teen-aged daughters, Ruth, an epileptic doomed to repeat her mother’s mistakes and Matilda, who is quiet, ambitious and intelligent.

Joanne Woodward played the lead, her husband Paul Newman directed and their daughter Nell Potts (who later ran Newman’s Organics) played Matilda. Roberta Wallach, Eli Wallach’s daughter, played Ruth.

Though the story took place on Staten Island, the film was shot in Bridgeport, Conn., because it was only 17 minutes from Paul Newman’s home in Westport, Conn. The set was constructed inside an abandoned Hungarian church, and scenes were shot at Warren Harding High School.

Warren Harding High School

Joanne Woodward immersed herself in the role, and later admitted to taking her angry, humorless persona home with her. One night Paul Newman arrived at a friend’s house carrying his clothes in a shopping bag. “I’d like to occupy your spare room,” he said. “If I spend another night in bed with Beatrice Hunsdorfer, one of us will not be on the set tomorrow.”

Peyton Place

Camden, Maine

Peyton Place was based on New Hampshire writer Grace Metalious’ best selling novel of the same name. It told the story of sordid secrets – adultery, sexual abuse, murder and hypocrisy – hidden behind New England’s closed doors.

Producers looked long and hard for a New England location. Vermont and New Hampshire rejected them because of the racy content. So they turned to the Maine towns of Skowhegan, Waterville and Wiscasset. Ultimately they chose Camden, where the public library wouldn’t put Peyton Place on its shelves.

Scene from Peyton Place

The 1957 film, which starred Lana Turner, was shot mostly in Camden, Maine, with some exteriors filmed in Belfast and Rockland (also Lake Placid, N.Y.). About 500 local people appeared in the film as extras, though some ended up on the cutting room floor.

The film premiered in Camden two days before everyone else saw it. Peyton Place didn’t do well at the box office for the first four months. Then, Lana Turner’s daughter killed her mother’s mobster lover, Johnny Stompanato. It became the second-highest grossing film of 1958.

Peyton Place received nine Oscar nominations, including four for supporting performances.

Back then Camden was mostly a working-class town that attracted some well-to-do tourists. Today it’s a wealthy tourist town, though it still looks much the way it did when the film was shot.

Jaws

Menemsha

The 1975 horror film, Jaws was a classic summer blockbuster and a watershed in the American movie industry. It featured a simple premise — the hunt for a man-eating shark that terrorized beachgoers.

The most successful of New England films – and in box office history at the time — it set a precedent as an action and adventure films released during the summer in thousands of theaters and advertised heavily.

Jaws was filmed in Massachusetts, mostly in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard, as well as in Falmouth. The film features the American Legion Memorial Bridge between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. Now it’s referred to as the “Jaws bridge.” (Click here for a map of the Martha’s Vineyard filming locations.)

Jaws won many awards, including three Academy Awards, despite an inauspicious start. “”We started the film without a script, without a cast and without a shark,” said Richard Dreyfuss, one of the film’s stars.

In 2001, Congress voted to include Jaws in the National Film Archive as “culturally significant.” The author, Peter Benchley, later felt guilty about unfairly maligning the Great White Shark, a creature generally uninterested in eating human beings.

A Separate Peace

Phillps Exeter

Producers didn’t have to look too hard to find a setting for the movie A Separate Peace, based on the novel by the same name written by John Knowles. Knowles based his bittersweet coming-of-age story on his time at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. So in 1972 when the filmmakers were adapting the story to the screen and needed a locale for “Devon Academy,” they brought the story back to Exeter.

Sharp-eyed viewers will also notice Newfields, N.H., and Salisbury Beach, Mass. in some of the backgrounds.

The film, about the rivalry between two school chums during the World War II era, received mixed reviews. But fans in New England enjoyed seeing the familiar locations highlighted. Phillips Exeter still maintains a photo essay that shows where scenes from the film were shot.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day

Anita O’Day at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958

One of the great concert documentaries, Jazz on a Summer’s Day captures many of America’s greatest jazz musicians performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. Filmed in Freebody Park, where the festival took place, it includes shots of the audience, the city and the America’s Cup race, then in progress.

The film was shot by fashion photographer Bert Stern and won praise for its lush, color-drenched luminosity and breezy feel. Headliner Louis Armstrong sings Rocking Chair with Jack Teagarden, Dinah Washington swings to All of Me, Ray Charles belts out I Got A Woman and Chuck Berry does the duck walk to Sweet Little Sixteen.

The star of the film, though, is Anita O’Day, who sings Sweet Georgia Brown and Tea for Two in white gloves and enormous feathered hat. (Watch her here.)

Trouble With Harry

Craftsbury Common

Just about all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films are classics, and The Trouble With Harry is no exception.

The trouble with Harry in the film is that he was dead. Hitchcock’ filmed his 1955 dark comedy starring John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine filmed in the Vermont towns of Morrisville, Barre and Craftsbury Commons.

The crew arrived in Craftsbury on September 27, 1954 to film outdoor shots of fall foliage. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any, so they glued leaves on trees.

The Trouble With Harry was nominated for three awards, including BAFTA, Directors’ Guild and Satellite for “Outstanding Classic DVD” in 2005.

Images: Camden, Maine, made by Robert Swanson. Original uploader was Ryssby at en.wikipedia – Transfered from en.wikipedia Transfer was stated to be made by User:Blast., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3185574. Menemsha By User:Elkman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Menemsha.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350749. This story was updated in 2022.

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6 of the Oldest General Stores in New England

General stores had their heyday between 1820 and 1860, when income was rising and the population was growing. Like the Hope General Store, they generally stood at crossroads. They were informal, though some might say bare bones, with bare wood floors, a hodgepodge of goods along wooden shelves, a cat cuddled up by the stove, and smells of apples, cheese, coffee and tobacco.

General stores served as centers of town life, where regular customers exchanged gossip and opinions. The storekeeper often doubled as postmaster and provided a link to the outside world. He likely educated himself from the books and magazines he carried and from his buying trips to big cities. The townspeople generally respected him.

Dozens of the old general stores survive in New England. Visitors often comment they remind them of a Norman Rockwell painting, with a smell of apples and coffee.

General stores have experienced something of a revival. The Wall Street Journal called them ‘one part country store, one part concept shop’ with a personal take on merchandise and serving as an informal community center.

The exact age of a general store is often hard to determine. Records are sketchy and claims sometimes exaggerated. And one general store that dates to 1788 – Gray’s, in Little Compton, Rhode Island – has an uncertain status. It closed in 2012 when its owner died, but then reopened as an antiques shop.

If you know of any great old general stores in New England, please add it to our comment section.

Colebrook Store

The Colebrook Store

The Colebrook Store is the oldest continuously operating general store in Connecticut. Founded in 1812, it operated until 2007, when it closed down. In December 2014 it reopened under the new management of Jodi Marinelli.

The store is just a stone’s throw from Town Hall in the center of Colebrook, a town in Litchfield Country. It was owned by Martin and Solomon Rockwell, one of the founding families of Colebrook. Julius Rockwell became a judge and, in 1854, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. The Rockwells also built the Colebrook Inn, which houses town offices and the historical society.

The Colebrook Store changed hands several times. In July 2007, owner Lora Murphy put out a sign that said, ‘closed for vacation.’ She never reopened.

In 2003, the Colebrook Preservation Society bought the building for $85,000. Five years later, Marinelli signed a lease on the building and moved with her family into the second floor above the store. Today the store serves breakfast and lunch, and sells groceries, candy, baked goods and knick knacks.

It’s located at 559 Colebrook Road in Colebrook, Conn.

Hope General Store

At the Hope General Store you can get much of what you need and learn most of what’s going on in the small farming community of Hope, Maine.

The store sits at the crossroads at the center of town, just outside of Camden. There’s a blacksmith across the street and a carpenter next door. Built in 1832, it’s been a Grange hall, an antique store, and a post office.

The closing of the store in the late 1990s left a hole in the town, but a new owner brought it back to life as a year-round business. In 2014, another new owner put in new heating and cooling systems and a generator, but kept the small town magic of the store. An updated menu features sandwiches made with brie and caramelized onion, and the beverage selection runs from champagne to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Also for sale: the requisite penny candy, maple syrup, candles, and local honey.

The Hope General Store is at 449 Camden Rd., Hope, Maine.

Davolls General Store

Davoll’s General Store

Davolls is at the mercantile center of the Russells Mills historic district in Dartmouth, Mass., down the road from the fire station. Its owners included a series of prominent Dartmouth families: Howland, Russell, Allen, Slocum, Tucker.

William Howland bought the building in 1792, and opened a general goods shop. In the latter half of the 19th century it was known as Slocum’s until the Davoll family bought it in the early 20th century. Wilfred and Virginia Morrison and their daughter Beverly bought it in 1974. Wilfred told the New Bedford Standard Times, “We stand around and solve all the problems of the world.”

The family sold the store in 2016 to Kim Arruda and Jim Chouinard. The couple then spent a year and a half renovating it. They found boat knees and a felt hat from the nineteenth century inside the walls of the old building. Today they sell penny candy, maple syrup, bread, jewelry and beach towels – among other things — from the freshly painted store right next to the Wild Honey Café.

Davoll’s is at 1228 Russell’s Mills Road, Dartmouth, Mass.

Old Country Store and Museum

The Old Country Store and Museum is on the far right

The Old Country Store and Museum in Moultonborough in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region may be the oldest general store in the country. The Holden family, which runs the historic store, has records dating to 1781. It has also been home to a library and the post office. Town Meetings used to be held at the store.

Town founder Jonathan Moulton was deeded the land on which the store stands for his service in the American Revolution. He sold it to Samuel Burnham, ‘with barn frame thereon,’ in 1777, who sold it in 1779 to a trader named George Freese. Records show Bradbury Richardson worked for Freese in exchange for goods in 1781. A map of New Hampshire printed in 1784 shows the store as the only building in that part of Moultonborough.

Today it’s a Lakes Region tourist attraction. A wooden Indian stands guard at the entrance to the store chockablock with merchandise: bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, bomber hats, t-shirts, shoes, candles, cookware, maple syrup and toys.

The Old Country Store and Museum is at 1011 Whittier Highway, Moultonborough, N.H.

Brown & Hopkins Country Store

“A Destination for Generations,” boasts the owner of the Brown & Hopkins Country Store. She is named neither Brown nor Hopkins, but Elizabeth Yuill, and she bought the store in 2004.

Located on Putnam Pike, which runs through the village of Chepachet in Glocester, R.I., the store is crammed with primitive country wares. It also features a penny candy display on a 24-foot pine checkout counter from the nineteenth century.

A Timothy Wilmarth built the wooden building, now painted green, as a home and a hattery. It became a general store in 1809 when Ira Evans bought it, and it’s been one without interruption ever since.

Mr. Brown and Mr. Hopkins (James and William) gave the store its present name when they bought it in 1921. For years they sold utilitarian items like brooms, long underwear, rifles and coffee.

Then in the 1970s, country decorating became the rage and the store went into the business with a vengeance. It still sells reproduction country furniture and accessories, as well as clothing, local foods, a grab-and-go café, and, of course, candles.

1179 Putnam Pike, Chepachet, R.I.

Dorset Union Store

Dorset Union Store

On the outside, the Dorset Union Store looks the same as it did in 1816, the year it opened. And it still has the same bell above the door that announces customers, the way it did two centuries ago.

The store presides over Dorset Green in the center of the town, which overlooks the Taconic Mountains. Not surprisingly, the Dorset Union store belongs to the Dorset Historic District, notable for its uniform white clapboard buildings. Some of the sidewalks are made of marble from the nearby quarries.

During a hiatus from 1955 to 2007, the store was called Peltiers, but new owners restored the original name. They also expanded the wine room and added a bakery and deli. You can buy fresh produce as well as Vermont products at the store, or grab a sandwich and eat outside at a picnic table on the green.

Dorset Union Store, 31 Church St., Dorset, Vt .

Photos: Colebrook Store By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/connecticut/national_register/colebrook_center.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29560503;Davolls General Store By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimeadia.org/w/index.php?curid=9112639; Dorset Union Store and Brown & Hopkins Country Store courtesy Google Maps.

This story about general stores was updated in 2022.

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Maine’s Mildred Gillars Wanted Fame and She Got It in WWII

Mildred Gillars paid a price for the fame she craved so desperately. She became one of the most hated women in America for her radio propaganda broadcasts on behalf of Germany during World War II.

Mildred Gillars, “Axis Sally,” seated on cot, smoking cigarette, in U.S. Counter Intelligence Headquarters, Berlin, Germany in 1946 (Library of Congress)

Gillars’ childhood started out inauspiciously. She was born in Portland, Maine, in 1900 to Vincent Sisk, a railroad man, and his wife Mae. Both had Canadian roots. But after seven tumultuous years together — Vincent suffered from alcoholism — her parents divorced.

Through friends, Mae met her second husband, Robert Gillars, a dentist. Robert applied for a license to practice in Maine, but couldn’t get one. The family then moved through the Midwest and Canada, returning to Maine when Mildred turned 16. Finally they left for good for Ohio.

By the time she reached adulthood, she had taken on a stepfather’s name — becoming Mildred Gillars — and developed a powerful appetite for fame. She got it.

Mildred Gillars, Actress

Mildred Gillars briefly attended Ohio Wesleyan College, but there the acting bug bit her. So she made her way to New York. In the city, she won small roles in stage plays and in vaudeville shows, but could not get a big break.

In 1928, in a bid to ignite her career, she pulled a stunt. Pretending to be a woman abandoned by her child’s father, she placed an ad in the Camden, N.J., newspaper looking for him. The ad and the news coverage it generated eventually blew up when it was exposed as a publicity plot for a movie about fatherless children.

The fame did little to help Mildred’s career, and in 1929 she traveled to France and on to Algiers, popular destinations for young Americans looking for adventure. She made her way by modeling and teaching English.

In 1933, Mae — whose second husband had turned out to be as big an alcoholic as the first — wrote and told Mildred she would be visiting Hungary, and she invited her daughter to join her.

For the next six years, the two lived in Hungary and later Berlin, Mildred always close to the theater and filmmaking scene. She earned her living, though, as a translator, English teacher and personal assistant.

War Breaks Out

By 1939, however, Hitler’s rule in Germany was growing increasingly autocratic and openly anti-Semitic. Meanwhile, Germany’s war machine was gearing up for all-out conflict. The U.S. State Department was urging U.S. citizens to return home.

Mae returned to the states, but she could not persuade Mildred to join her. In 1940, the war underway, Mildred took a job with the German state radio division, Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, which was then broadcasting on AM frequencies and short-wave.

At Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, Mildred was reunited with her former college professor at Hunter College, Otto Koischwitz. Mildred had several affairs with married men during her life, and she and Koischwitz had had an affair in her New York days. They rekindled their romance in Germany.

With his position as a leader in Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, Koischwitz encouraged Mildred to use her talents on behalf of the Third Reich, as a propaganda broadcaster.

In 1943, Mildred took to the airwaves as “Midge at the mic,” broadcasting English-language shows aimed at Americans. U.S. soldiers nicknamed her “Axis Sally,” a moniker that would stick with her forever.

For close to three years, Mildred Gillars broadcast shows aimed at undermining American morale. Sometimes she would make direct appeals to soldiers to give up the fight. Other times she would suggest they were risking life and limb while the “4-Fs” back home were taking their jobs and their women. Most famously, she would visit U.S. soldiers in hospitals and POW camps to record them giving greetings to their families back home, assuring family and friends of their safety. She would intersperse their recordings with subtle and not-so-subtle jabs at U.S. military prospects.

Listener Bait

The updates from the soldiers were “listener bait,” and the real message was what Mildred Gillars wrapped around those updates about U.S. servicemen. Some examples of her messaging:

“Mothers and dads in America, you’ve no idea what hell your boys have been through. And to thank, they’ve got Franklin D. Roosevelt who promised you American mothers that no American boy would be sacrificed on foreign battlefields. I only wish you could get a little glimpse of the conflict going on in Normandy. Well, Roosevelt asked you to do it for him and you did. Wait until some of these human wrecks get back home once again. You won’t be able to recognize some of them. Believe me, I’ve seen them. Well, this is Midge signing off . . . Good night, America!”

“It’s a disgrace to the American public that they don’t wake up to the fact of what Franklin D. Roosevelt is doing to the gentiles or your country and my country . . . This is a Jewish war and I refuse to participate in it and insist on fighting against it.”

Mildred Gillars mugshot

At the end of the war, Mildred tried to melt back into German society and struggled, with the rest of the country, to move past the trauma of the war. But she knew the U.S. military was still looking for her. In 1946, Mildred Gillars was placed under arrest.

Guilty

In 1949, Mildred was brought to trial in the United States. Armed with transcripts of her broadcasts and eyewitness accounts of soldiers she had interviewed, prosecutors initially charged her with 10 counts of aiding the enemy.

Mildred fought back. She was forced to sign a loyalty oath to Germany out of fear of imprisonment or even death, she said. She claimed Otto Koischwitz held such influence over her that she was virtually hypnotized and helpless to resist when doing her broadcasts.

In the end, the jury found Mildred guilty on just one count of treason – involving a radio play that dramatized an American invasion of Germany, resulting in huge losses. The purpose was to undermine U.S. confidence in the D-Day mission.

Prison

Mildred appealed, claiming freedom of speech protected her, but the appeals court ruled against her. The result was a 10- to 30-year prison sentence for Axis Sally.

Mildred Gillars would spend 13 years in prison in West Virginia before she won parole. She passed up her first chance at parole, apparently unprepared to face the public. When she was finally released in 1961, camera crews awaited her at the prison gate, asking for her thoughts and plans as she made ready to leave with her half-sister.

For once, however, the sultry voice that floated over the airwaves for countless hours during the war had been quieted.

“After 15 years, you don’t feel like having much to say,” she politely explained.

Mildred Gillars would return to Ohio, earn her degree from Ohio Wesleyan and spend some time teaching before finally shutting herself away in a convent, where she died in 1988.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Castles of New England

Castles adorn the landscape of New England as they do in Old England, though here they weren’t built to house royalty or to defend against invaders.

Some can be found among other historic attractions: Chateau-sur-Mer, for example, stands among a cluster of opulent 19th-century mansions in Newport, R.I., while the Armory of the 1st Corps of Cadets is in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay. Some are destinations in themselves. Wilson Castle in the Green Mountains of Vermont and Castle in the Clouds in New Hampshire’s Ossipee Mountains are just two. Camden, Maine, boasts two castles: an observation tower on top of Mount Battie and a seaside bed-and-breakfast modeled on several different European castles.

All the castles on our list are open to the public, if only seasonally. Some are house museums. Some are bed and breakfasts or hotels. Some can simply be climbed. Many can be rented for weddings, conferences or parties.

This guide is a member-only addition to the site, so you’ll need to sign in to access it. If you’re not a member, why not register today? It’s free. Download it now!

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The WWII Battle of Point Judith off the RI Coast

Just before Germany surrendered to the Allied powers, 67 men died in the Battle of Point Judith off the Rhode Island coast. Casualties included 55 German submariners and 12 American merchant mariners.

Sailors aboard USS Moberly firing on U-853.

The German submarine, U-853, was harassing U.S. ships off the New England coast in May 1945. Previous U.S. efforts to hunt her down were so elusive she was nicknamed Moby Dick. U-853 was on her third patrol and had already sunk a U.S. Navy vessel, the USS Eagle Boat 56. Only 13 of the crew of 67 survived the attack.

As World War II came to a close, orders were given to all German submarines and naval ships to return home. U-853 either didn’t get the message or ignored it.

Battle of Point Judith

The Battle of Point Judith began on May 5, when U-853 torpedoed the SS Black Point, a ship carrying coal to Boston, at Point Judith on the western side of Narragansett Bay. Black Point capsized within 15 minutes. Twelve men died, while 34 made it into lifeboats and were rescued by the SS Kamen, a Yugoslavian freighter. It was the last ship sunk by a U-boat in U.S. waters.

News of the attack went to naval headquarters on the East Coast.

The crew of U-853, before it lost the Battle of Point Judith

Four warships en route to Boston for shore leave then headed toward Point Judith, arriving at 7:30 pm. Coast Guard cutters, frigates, a destroyer and two blimps joined in the search-and-destroy mission.

At first the U-boat tried to flee, then it tried to hide by lying still in 18 fathoms of water. Sonar detected the submarine’s bearings. The crews of the USS Atherton and the USS Moberly dropped depth charges and hedgehogs over the spot where they thought they’d found the U-853.

They hit their target around midnight, and 55 German sailors perished with the vessel.

Aftermath

The U-boat still lies at the bottom of the Atlantic. It has continued to claim lives as a popular, but dangerous, site for divers.

In 1960, a recreational diver brought up one of the bodies. That prompted clergy and former navy admirals to ask the U.S. government for restrictions on disturbing war dead. The government then declared the site a war grave, and buried the German submariner with full military honors in Newport, R.I. Every year, a small service is held at Point Judith for the men who died.

The commander of the USS Atherton, Lewis Iselin, found a new career as a renowned sculptor living in Camden, Maine.

And in 2018, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration along with a robotics company took photos of the German U-boat sunk in the Battle of Point Judith. They also created images of three other U.S. submarines sunk to test torpedoes.

To see the photos, click here.

This story about the Battle of Point Judith was updated in 2023.

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Edna St. Vincent Millay Gives Thanks for a Basket of Flowers, May 4, 1918

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a 22-year-old Vassar student on May 4, 1918 when she wrote a letter thanking her friend Corinne Sawyer for a basket of flowers. She was already famous for a poem she wrote when she was 19.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on Feb. 22, 1892, in Rockland, Maine. Her father left the family when she was six, and her mother, Cora, moved her and her two younger sisters around until they settled in Camden, Maine. Cora was a night nurse and frequently left for days. She relied on her oldest daughter, who she called “Vincent,” to run the household from the time she was around 12.

Edna St. Vincent Millay Writes a Poem

When Edna St. Vincent Millay was 19, her mother suggested she enter a poetry contest. Her poem Renascance won fourth prize. Anyone familiar with midcoast Maine will recognize the references of the opening lines:

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;

The poem won national acclaim.It also caught the attention of wealthy philanthropist Caroline Dow, who offered to raise the money for the young poet’s college tuition. Edna St. Vincent Millay spent a semester at Barnard College. Then in 1913 she transferred to Vassar, where she raised hell. She smoked cigarettes, cut classes and took illicit midnight walks in the woods. Finally she left Vassar in 1917 for the Bohemian life of Greenwich Village.

Edna St. Vincent Millay would win tremendous critical acclaim for her poetry and fame for her feminism and her many love affairs with both men and women.

Thank You Note

All that was still before her when she wrote from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to her friend Corinne Sawyer:

Dear old chum –
Bless your heart! You
don’t forget me, do you? A May Basket! Why
it made me a little girl again.
It got here in wonderfully good condition
nothing smashed – nothing spilled. And its
perfectfully dear so sweet outside as in —
I love you a keg-ful, Corinne of Camden, and when
I get home we’ll talk as ever.
Member me to your folks.
– Vincent of Vassar

With thanks to All-night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930, by Andrea Barnet. This story updated in 2022.

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Camden

Six Places New England Films Were Shot

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds

Peyton Place

Jaws

A Separate Peace

Jazz on a Summer’s Day

Trouble With Harry

6 of the Oldest General Stores in New England

Colebrook Store

Hope General Store

Davolls General Store

Old Country Store and Museum

Brown & Hopkins Country Store

Dorset Union Store

Maine’s Mildred Gillars Wanted Fame and She Got It in WWII

Mildred Gillars, Actress

War Breaks Out

Listener Bait

Guilty

Prison

Castles of New England

The WWII Battle of Point Judith off the RI Coast

Battle of Point Judith

Aftermath

Edna St. Vincent Millay Gives Thanks for a Basket of Flowers, May 4, 1918

Edna St. Vincent Millay Writes a Poem

Thank You Note

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