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When Massachusetts Abolished the State Police

In 1875, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts abolished the state police department. It was only 10 years old, the first state police force in the country, but Massachusetts had had enough.

Attitudes toward a centralized police force were very different in the 19^th century than they are now. Americans generally preferred a vigilant citizenry rather than a standing army to control disorder and crime. They distrusted powerful authorities, especially in rural areas.

And in Massachusetts, they didn’t like the state police seizing their booze.

Some of Massachusetts’ first state police officers: John Gilman, Charles Hair and William King.

The Constabulary

On May 16, 1865, Gov. John Andrew signed a bill into law creating the Massachusetts State Constabulary. By then the temperance movement had taken hold in Massachusetts, but people brazenly flouted the laws governing alcohol. And so that first state police force had as its mission the enforcement of the alcohol laws, as well as suppressing gambling and houses of prostitution.

Up until then, cities and towns left crime control up to local constabularies and police. The state had little to do with the local police and the local courts.

But local constables tended to be part-time, unsalaried officials who served for a year. They didn’t get paid much, but did get rewarded for making arrests, serving warrants and producing witnesses. Constables often had to collect taxes, which made the officeholder unpopular and the office undesirable. As a result, inexperienced men who wanted to avoid trouble got the job, but they tended not to keep it for long.

Private crime-fighting associations filled the gaps left open by the amateur constables. Property owners formed such associations to prevent theft and pursue horse thieves. Banks formed them to go after counterfeiters and temperance organizations formed them to rampage against rum.

During the 19^th century, New England had at least 72 protective societies — like the Worcester Association for the Protection of Fruit or the Pownal Association to Counteract and Detect Horse Thieves and Robbers — in more than 100 towns.

state-police-society-for-the-mutual-aid-against-thieves

The Worcester society for the mutual aid against thieves at work.

The State Police

But times were changing. In 1855, Massachusetts passed a version of Maine’s dry law, which banned alcohol — except for medicinal, mechanical or manufacturing purposes. It was honored more in the breach than in the observance.

So shortly after the Civil War, Massachusetts established the state constabulary to crack down on purveyors of alcohol. Andrew appointed Gen. William Sterling King, shot 21 times at the Battle of Antietam, to head the first state police force in the United States.

Over the next 10 years, about 360 state police constables served an average of 2-1/2 years. Most had fought in the Civil War. They came from all walks of life and from all over the globe.

Booze Busters

The state constabulary got off to a fairly good start. They had to protect attendees at the Methodists’ annual meeting in Wesleyan Grove on the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Ground in August 1865. Five constables received the assignment and won praise for their performance.

Martha’s Vineyard Campground Tabernacle in the Wesleyan Grove, Oak Bluffs

But they also began to shut grog shops, saloons and rum mills. During the first six months of their existence, they won convictions for 1,404 liquor sellers. Many more liquor dealers agreed to cease operations, but they anticipated (correctly) the Legislature would repeal prohibition.

They also started to seize large quantities of alcohol. In December, 1869, for example, Deputy Constable Amasa H. Tolman was involved in the seizure of 80 gallons of ale and three-and-a-half gallons of spirits in Boston.

They didn’t win many friends, though, for grabbing people’s booze.

Someone shot at Constable William McKay from a wooded area in North Adams because he seized so much liquor. McKay once confiscated 60 barrels of beer and stored them in his barn, butthen someone tried to blow up the building with nitroglycerin.

Adding to the unpopularity of the state police was the shooting death of a brick-thrower in Westfield, Mass., in 1867. The constables had raided a gambling den, which started a riot, and a constable shot a rioter about to throw a brick at him. When the rioter died, the sheriff arrested the constable, but he was not prosecuted.

In 1870, the Legislature cut the state police budget, and 72 constables were suspended from duty. Many of the laid-off constables agreed to work for half pay.

Local Sovereignty

For the first decade of its existence, in fact, the Massachusetts General Court repeatedly tried and failed to abolish the state police. It wasn’t just the controversy over liquor seizures and prosecutions, though. People did not want a police force controlled by a powerful centralized government.

On May 18, 1874, the Boston Post wrote an editorial against the state police.

The whole system of a State Police is extraneous to the spirit of true local sovereignty. That a power from without should be imposed upon the people … is fatal to the soundness of the theory from which such a police force draws its life.

Ten years after the state police force began, the Legislature abolished it. They replaced the booze-busting constables with a small detective force and charged it with quelling riots and helping prosecutors find evidence. Then in 1879 lawmakers abolished the detectives and replaced them with ‘district police.’ Two men in each district had only limited duties.

It wasn’t until 1921 that the Massachusetts state police force began to take its current shape. That year, the Legislature enlarged the agency to 50 officers stationed in barracks across the state. Their job: to enforce the law in rural areas that didn’t have adequate police forces.

With thanks to State Police in the United States: A Socio-historical Analysis by H. Kenneth Bechtel; Stop, Thief! Private Protective Societies in Nineteenth-Century New England, by Ann-Marie Szymanski in The New England Quarterly; and The First To Serve by Ronald J. Guilmette. Images: Wesleyan Grove By LisaHendricks – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2847459.7. This story was updated in 2023.

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James Somerset, the Boston Runaway Who Ended Slavery in England

In 1771, James Somerset languished in an English prison ship that would soon set sail for Jamaica. From there, he would be sold to a sugar plantation owner who would probably work him to death well before he reached old age.

But he had friends in England, and they went to court asking for a writ of habeas corpus. And so the prison ship captain dutifully took James Somerset to the Court of King’s Bench, where a judge would decide whether he had been legally imprisoned.

He hadn’t. And the judge’s decision in Stewart v. Somerset would end slavery in England, at least in the public’s mind. It sent American Southerners into the patriot camp, fearing that England would take away their slaves. And it inspired enslaved men and women to sue for their freedom in the northern colonies.

Granville Sharp

James Somerset

A Boston customs collector named Charles Stewart bought James Somerset from a Virginia plantation owner. He brought him to England in 1769, but James Somerset escaped. Stewart caught up with him, however, and had him incarcerated on the prison ship Ann and Mary.

But James Somerset had been baptized a Christian in England, and his three godparents went to court to set him free. England’s leading abolitionist, Granville Sharp, assembled a team of five lawyers to defend James Somerset. Frederick Douglass would later quote one of those lawyers, an Irishman named John Philpot Stewart.

The lawyers argued that no law authorized slavery in England.

Stewart’s lawyers argued that property rights took precedence over human rights. Plus, they pointed to the danger of freeing all 15,000 enslaved black people in England.

Lord Mansfield, who ruled in favor of James Somerset

Air Too Pure

In 1772, Lord Mansfield, the chief justice, ruled on the case. He decided that slavery had no basis in natural law or in English law. He found slavery so odious, he wrote, that it required Parliament to pass a law to legitimize it.

The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law [statute]… Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from the decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged

Lord Mansfield’s decision did not include a quotation often attributed to him: “This air is too pure for a slave to breathe in.”

Shock Waves

Slavery did persist in England, however, for another six decades after the ruling. James Somerset, though, had set in motion a series of actions that would ultimately end slavery in England. And his legal victory persuaded the English public at large that no man was a slave on English soil.

In the American colonies, of course, it would take a Civil War to end slavery.

During the run-up to the American Revolution, the colonial newspapers reported extensively on Stewart v. Somerset. The case created a sensation, especially in the South. Plantation owners realized that Parliament could not only tax them without representing them, it could free their slaves.

The Massachusetts General Court in 1771 had actually drafted a bill to emancipate the slaves, but the patriot leaders killed it. James Warren explained it “would have a bad effect on the union of the colonies.”

James Warren by John Singleton Copley

Selfish Colonials

Historian Alan Taylor argues that James Somerset’s victory persuaded many African Americans to take the Loyalist side in the looming revolution.

“Many enslaved men and women began to look to the king as a potential liberator,” Taylor wrote. African-American preachers preached the king ‘was about to alter the World and set the Negroes Free.’ The selfish colonials had blocked his wishes.

Elizabeth Freeman played an important role in ending the slave trade.

Some colonies did take the battle for liberty to include more than just white men. Vermont abolished slavery in 1777, and Pennsylvania followed in 1780, Massachusetts in 1783 and Connecticut in 1784.

In Massachusetts, two enslaved servants followed James Somerset’s example and filed freedom suits. Elizabeth Freeman and Quock Walker both won their cases, effectively ending slavery in Massachusetts.

James Somerset presumably died in England – a free man.

With thanks to American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 by Alan Taylor. This story was updated in 2023.

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Seven Fun Continental Army Facts

Certain Continental Army facts are implanted in the minds of U.S. schoolchildren at a young age: How patriot farmers dropped their plows and picked up their muskets to fight. How soldiers suffered during the harsh winter at Valley Forge. How Washington took command of the Continental Army on July 3, 1775. Or how the British wore red and the patriots wore blue-and-buff uniforms.

But other, little-known Continental Army facts tell us more about the real American Revolution than the U.S. textbook – and certainly the Hollywood — version.

For example, officers had a code of etiquette, even if they fought on opposite sides. After George Washington’s defeat at the Battle of Germantown, he returned British general William Howe’s dog to him. The fox terrier had strayed into the patriots’ camp, and he had Howe’s name on his collar. Washington sent the pup back with a nice note, probably written by his aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton. (Read it here.)

So here, then, are seven Continental Army facts that you may not have known.

1. Continental Army, 10% Black

Black soldiers made up as much as a tenth of the Continental Army. In 1775, the New England states enlisted 200 black soldiers, but Washington put an end to that practice. A Pennsylvania captain explained why. He wrote that African-American soldiers ‘had a ‘disagreeable, degrading effect’ on the army.

However, the Continental Army had such a shortage of men that Washington gave in. He said the New England states could recruit the enslaved, promise them freedom and pay their masters. Rhode Island started its own black regiment, but with white officers. A French officer called them ‘merry, confident, sturdy,’ and ‘the most neatly dressed, the best under arms, and the most precise in its maneuvers.’

This image illustrates two Continental Army facts: A Rhode Island regiment soldier on the far left, a soldier in rifle dress second from right.

2. Second Thoughts

One-fifth of the Army deserted. After the initial excitement of the shot heard ‘round the world, the merchants and farmers who eagerly signed up began to realize that military life wasn’t for them. At first, soldiers enlisted for one year, which meant Washington had to rebuild his army every winter. By 1777, the states began to draft soldiers for three-year-terms.

Those who couldn’t get out of the draft tended to be men on the fringes of society: apprentices, transients, beggars, drunks, indentured immigrants, even loyalists who preferred the Continental Army to the continental prison. But many couldn’t or wouldn’t endure the danger, low pay, hunger, disease, cold and fatigue. So they deserted. Some even mutinied.

3. Rations Included Beer

Soldiers got beer or spirits as part of their daily rations. Every day they were also supposed to receive a pound of bread, a pound of beef and/or pork, a pint of milk, a gill of peas or beans and six ounces of butter. One day a week they had salt fish instead of meat and a pint of vinegar to ward off scurvy.

That, at least, was what they got in theory. In practice, the food had often turned rancid. Soldiers frequently went without bread or meat. Even more frequently, they lacked vinegar and vegetables. The meat diet, wrote Washington, ‘untempered by vegetables or vinegar, or by any kind of drink but water, and eating indifferent bread … are to be ascribed the many putrid diseases incident to the army.’

4. Intolerable Smells

Soldiers could get whipped for failing to use the privy. When they arrived at Valley Forge, some men relieved themselves wherever they felt like it. They left the carcasses of horses to rot where they fell. Washington, concerned about disease and disgusted by ‘intolerable smells,’ ordered five lashes for anyone who did not use ‘a proper Necessary.’ He also ordered two windows cut in every hut to let in fresh air.

Continental Army Fact: You could get whipped for failing to use the privy.

5. Rifle Dress

Those blue-and-buff uniforms didn’t arrive until later in the war, and then only a few states had those colors. In the early days, Washington suggested the ‘rifle dress.’ It included a fringed hunting shirt (a long loose coat usually made of homespun) and long pants with gaiters or leggings dyed the color of a dry leaf. The soldier topped off his rifle dress with a round dark hat turned up once or three times with a cockade or sprig of green. He also had a white belt for the cartouche box and a black cloth around the neck.

Washington liked the rifle dress because of its practicality and because it scared the British soldiers, who thought only sharpshooters wore it. “It is a dress which is justly supposed to carry no small terror to the enemy, who think every such person a complete marksman,” wrote Washington.

6. Remember the Ladies

One of the little-known Continental Army facts is that women were part of it. And not just a few women, like Deborah Sampson, who dressed up as men and served. Thousands of women followed their husbands and boyfriends in the Continental Army. So did loyalist women.

Known as camp followers, the armies couldn’t function without them. They did laundry, they tended cattle, they cared for the sick and they guarded baggage. In many ways the army treated them as soldiers. Like soldiers, they could be punished for misbehavior, they received rations and they were ordered what to do.

In 1778, for example, British Gen. Henry Clinton ordered “The Women of the Army are constantly to march upon the flanks of the Baggage of their respective Corps.”

7. POWs

More patriots died in British prisons than in battle. A total of 6,800 died in action, while another 6,100 were wounded. But 20,000 were taken prisoner, and of those as many as 12,000 died while prisoners.

With thanks to ‘American Revolution: A Continental History‘ by Alan Taylor for some of our Continental Army facts. This story was updated in 2022.

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Higley Copper Coins: Connecticut’s Rare, Exciting and Historic Penny

According to the legend of the Higley copper, a Connecticut doctor with a powerful thirst and a copper mine minted the colony’s first copper coins.

Dr. Samuel Higley frequently patronized the local tavern, where a drink cost threepence. So Dr. Higley, who happened to own a copper mine, struck his own three-penny coins. One version of them bore the words, “VALUE ME AS YOU PLEASE.”

The story may be apocryphal, but Dr. Higley did exist. He and his family mined copper, which grew into a major Connecticut industry. And coin collectors believe the homemade Higley copper circulated fairly wildly.

In 2014, a coin collector bought a Higley copper for a half-million dollars.

19th-century drawing of a Higley copper

The Higley Copper

Dr. Samuel Higley, born around 1687 in Simsbury, Conn., attended Yale College for two years and trained as a doctor. He also learned blacksmithing and picked up metallurgical and mining skills. Before his marriage to Abigail Bement in 1719 he taught school.

He is credited with making the first steel in the U.S. colonies. In 1728, he told the Connecticut General Court he had ‘with great pains and cost’ discovered a ‘curious art’ by which he could transmute iron into good steel. Two blacksmiths testified that Higley had come into their shop, asked for a pound or two of iron and said he’d make it into steel. Several days later he brought it back, and the blacksmiths found it ‘good steel,’ the first they’d ever seen.

So the Connecticut General Court gave Higley a 10-year monopoly on steelmaking.

That same year he bought a tract of 143 acres in what is now East Granby and began mining the land. People said the mine had such rich copper that Dr. Higley could walk into it with a pick and simply stab a lump of pure metal. He’d then take it home and strike coins from it.

Connecticut Copper

The Connecticut copper industry, which lasted about two centuries, began in Copper Hill in Simsbury around 1707 and ended in Bristol in 1953. Mines stretched up and down the Connecticut Valley and dotted the surrounding hills. They gave a start to U.S. brass manufacturing, which centered in Waterbury, Conn., the world’s leader in brass production.

Today, little remains of the once-thriving industry. In 1776, revolutionaries turned the mine into a POW camp, and later the state made it into a prison called Newgate. Prisoners nicknamed it Hell. Today, the state operates the Old Newgate Prison as a museum.

Old Newgate Prison, 1910 postcard

Back in the 1730s, copper mines were small-scale operations, and much of the metal ended up in England.

Samuel Higley undoubtedly had help mining his copper. And it isn’t clear if he himself made the steel dies or struck the coins from them.

Making your own coins, as you might suspect, violated the law in the 1730s. John Hull had minted coins in Massachusetts Bay Colony until English authorities shut him down in 1682. But the colonists suffered a shortage of small coins, and the British authorities couldn’t always enforce the law.

The Coins

One version of the Higley copper legend has it that Simsbury’s local tavernkeeper stopped accepting Higley’s threepence after he’d accumulated quite a few of them. Another story says people started complaining the coin wasn’t worth two-and-a-half cents more than the British halfpennies then circulating.

Whatever the story, Higley struck a version of the coin that said, “VALUE ME AS YOU PLEASE,” on one side, and “I AM GOOD COPPER” on the other.

Coin collectors, though, say his local prominence as a businessman and landowner helped establish the value of the Higley coppers. Thousands, mostly dated 1737, circulated in the region.

“It is likely that a large number and a variety of sellers accepted Higley Coppers in transactions for goods and services,” wrote Greg Reynolds in Coin Week. They probably had more stable value than colonial paper money, he wrote.

What Goes ‘Round

All except one have a deer and the numeral three on the tails side. One bears the image of a broad axe with the words, “I CUT MY WAY THROUGH.” Another has the spokes of a wheel and the legend, “THE WHEEL GOES ROUND.”

Four kinds of Higley copper have a hammer on the back, while three have an ax. Some date to 1738 and 1739, after Samuel Higley died at sea while taking a shipment of copper to England. His family may have continued making coins after he died.

Five varieties of the Higley copper are on display at the Connecticut State Library, the Simsbury Historical Society and Connecticut Historical Society. Coin collectors identified two other varieties, and consider them among the rarest and most exciting early American coins.

They have sold for tens of thousands of dollars. Even replicas of the Higley coppers go for far more than their original value: One sold for $646.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Tariffville Disaster Inspires the First Emergency Phone Call

The Tariffville disaster, a train wreck near Hartford, prompted the first-ever emergency telephone call when a doctor summoned help from a local drugstore.

The disaster also made big news, providing sensational photographs of the twisted wreck and thrilling stories of heroic rescuers. It killed more than a dozen passengers and made the telephone famous. And it contributed to the bankruptcy of the Connecticut Western Railroad two years later.

A passenger coach hangs off the bridge the next morning.

The Tariffville Disaster

Shortly before 10 pm on the cold night of Jan. 15, 1878, a train carrying eight cars of sleepy passengers and two locomotives left Union Station in Hartford. Many of the passengers had attended a religious revival held by famed evangelist Dwight L. Moody in Hartford. They were returning to their homes in Bloomfield, Simsbury and towns in New York state.

When the train made its first stop, some young men hopped on between the cars and hung on for a free ride.

A half-mile past the Tariffville station in Simsbury, the first locomotive passed over the wooden bridge that spanned the Farmington River. Then as the train approached the western abutment, the span collapsed, sending the two engines, the baggage car and three passenger coaches 10 feet into the river.

The train’s superintendent rushed back to the Tariffville station and telegraphed the main office for help. Some of the freeloaders had been crushed to death under the train’s weight. Injured passengers cried for help from the icy river. Tariffville residents and survivors tried to crawl out on the broken ice and save them before they drowned.

The Tariffville disaster from the Simsbury side of the river. Detail of a stereograph by Daniel S. Camp of Hartford.

Emergency Phone Call

A doctor named D.P. Pelletier learned of the accident, probably by telegram from the railroad’s main office. He knew that a nearby druggist on Capitol Avenue had installed Alexander Graham Bell’s speaking telephone. He rushed over and used the store’s telephone to call other doctors for emergency aid. They organized a special relief train that carried physicians and other first responders to the scene. The train that rushed to the Tariffville disaster was called the Samaritan Special.

The doctors ministered to the injured passengers while the Tariffville residents brought the survivors into their homes. Reporters and photographers hurried to the scene of the wreck. In the end, 13 passengers died and 70 were injured. Many more might have died had it not been for Dr. Bell’s new device.

The Tariffville disaster made page one news, and so did that emergency telephone call.

Wooden timbers and iron rods broken in the wreck. Detail of stereograph by Daniel S. Camp of Hartford.

Aftermath

Alexander Bell’s speaking telephone had proved its usefulness, wrote Bruce Sterling in The hacker crackdown: Law and disorder on the electronic frontier

“After Tarriffville, the telephone network spread like crabgrass,” he wrote. “By 1890 it was all over New England.”

At the time of the crash, the Connecticut Western Line, which linked Hartford with the Hudson River Valley, teetered near bankruptcy. An inquest was held, in which railroad executives blamed the bridge for the Tariffville disaster. Bridge experts blamed the railroad. A jury reached a split decision.

And on the day after the Tariffville disaster, Moody told 2,000 attendees at another Hartford revival meeting about the “shortness of life, the unexpectedness of death, and the importance of being always ready.”

tariffville-disaster-riverbank-morning-after

A locomotive on the riverbank on the day after the Tariffville disaster. Detail of stereograph by Daniel S. Camp of Hartford.

This story was updated in 2024.

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The Civilian Conservation Corps, a Young Man’s Adventure

During the depths of the Great Depression, a 17-year-old boy from Warren, R.I., enlisted in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

He did it to help support his family, but his time in the Civilian Conservation Corps turned into the adventure of a lifetime.

The CCC started when President Franklin D. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass the Emergency Conservation Act on March 31, 1933. His goal: to generate jobs for young men suffering from an almost 25 percent unemployment rate.

The Warren boy at first was too young to join the Civilian Conservation Corps. You had to be 18 to enlist. But in October 1935, the government lowered the age requirement to 17, and he signed up. The teenager met all the other requirements. He was unemployed, unmarried, physically fit and his family was on relief — like tens of millions of other American families.

He earned $30 per month {about $570 today), but he had to send $25 home. That beat the $21 per month that regular U. S. Army soldiers made at the time. The money the CCC boys sent home supported an estimated 12 to 15 million family members.

The Civilian Conservation Corps 141st Company. Leo Caisse is in the middle row, second from right.

Go West, Young Men

The Warren boy was sent to Fort Adams in Newport for physical conditioning and evaluation, just as all other enrollees in the nation did at their local Army depot. At the end of their two weeks of training and evaluation, he received his final physical and inoculations. For some of the boys it was the first time they saw a doctor.

The Civilian Conservation Corps assigned the Warren boy to the 141^st company posted at Burlingame in Charlestown, R.I. He was issued a blue denim work suit and a renovated Army olive drab uniform with CCC patches. (Roosevelt thought the uniforms looked shoddy and in 1938 ordered the Navy to design a spruce-green uniform.)Then he took the CCC oath.

civilian-conservation-corps-burlingame-beach-house

The Civilian Conservation Corps built this beach pavilion at Burlingame State Park.

His company, like several others, was transferred out West, which had more forest work and fewer unemployed young men than in the East. He had to get his parents’ permission because of his age.

He took a train cross country from Fort Adams to a campsite at Triangle Lake near the Town of Junction City, Ore. There they became the 2108 Company of the Civilian Conservation Corps.

In Oregon, the teenager and his company built fire guard service stations, fire lookout towers, trails and shelters. They fought forest fires when needed, a hallmark of the CCC wherever they were.

Cowboys and Mountain Lions

The young man earned a truck driving license issued by the Department of the Interior. He learned to operate a bulldozer, tractor and a jackhammer. He also learned welding, a skill he would later use in helping to build the USS Massachusetts at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Mass.

In Oregon, he served a maximum of four six-month enlistments, all that the CCC allowed and was honorably discharged on June 23, 1936.

Leo Caisse

He returned to Warren, but after a little more than a year he re-enlisted in 1937. This time was assigned to the 2130^th company in Casper, Wyo.

In Wyoming, his Civilian Conservation Corps company built bridges, roads and a dike, according to National Archives records. He fought fires, of course, and some members of his company fought coal fires. While in Wyoming, he also learned another skill: how to evade a mountain lion in the wild.

Later in the 1950s he told stories to his son about how he knew real cowboys and Indians out West. That was really intriguing because it was the heyday of cowboy shows on TV and Cowboy Town in Plainville, Mass. His name was Leo Caisse. He was my father and he passed away when I was very young.

It has been a revelation researching his adventures and it has given me a sense of pride that he and so many others benefitted from this program, which began the green movement.

Roosevelt’s Tree Army

Roosevelt’s Tree Army developed many public parks that still stand today as a living legacy to their work.

Less obvious today was the improved health and well-being of the boys who joined.

Enlistees were so undernourished due to the Depression that they gained an average of 12 pounds each. When issued their uniforms, it was the first time most of them got new shoes.

Many camps had two movies a week with state-of-the-art equipment, chaplain services, lending libraries, organized sports and vocational education. President Roosevelt mandated that all enrollees learn to read and write in the service if they hadn’t achieved literacy yet.

The Civilian Conservation Corps offered 603 different courses nationwide. They often had camp newspapers, wrote poetry, composed songs and put on plays, as well as engaged in organized sports with other camps and local teams.

A Civilian Conservation Corps pillow

The men celebrated holidays in camp, including Mother’s Day. In one instance, they invited their mothers to camp for a dinner and the boys put on a skit for them. In another, the commanding officer collected 25 cents from each man to send home a special pillow to their mothers.

The Army ran the CCC, but the state or national park service would select the projects. Since fascism was on the rise overseas, the Army was careful not to drill the Tree Army. Nor did it allow saluting or weapons training.

Still, many Civilian Conservation Corpsmen who joined the Army were automatically inducted as corporals or sergeants, depending on their leadership experience in the Corps.

Following are summaries of the Civilian Conservation Corps in each New England state.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island had eight camps, but they did not all operate continuously or simultaneously. Fort Adams served as their state headquarters.

In the very beginning at least two Rhode Island companies were sent to other states: one to Rangeley, Maine and another company (about 200 men) to Vermont. Later they went to Oregon and Wyoming.

Rhode Island eventually enrolled 15,900 men out of 2.5 million men who served nationally.

civilian-conservation corps-goddard-state park

The Civilian Conservation Corps built this structure and many fireplaces at Goddard State Park in Rhode Island.

Massachusetts

Over 100,000 men served in the Massachusetts Civilian Conservation Corps, which brought together two wasted resources: young men and the land.

When the CCC began, Massachusetts had accumulated 100,000 acres, mostly inaccessible to the public. When the Emergency Conservation Act passed, Chief Forester Harold Cook immediately prepared applications for seven camps. He would eventually have 31 camps.

The first enrollees arrived at Fort Devens for medical exams and some basic training and testing to acclimate them to a military routine.

They built roads and trails, overlooks, picnic shelters and log cabins. And they engaged in timber improvement, pest control and forest fire fighting. In the end they planted 12 million trees and improved 170,000 acres of state land. The Massachusetts enrollees collectively sent an estimated $20 million home to their families.

Friends of the Upton State Forest are restoring a former CCC administration building and cottage. At least one former member – and probably many others — was so desperate for work he forged his birth certificate and joined at age 15. He learned construction skills that served him the rest of his working life.

They built the access road to the top of Mount Greylock as well as the Thunderbolt Trail. The CCC created the Savoy State Park, too, and the Elliot Tower in Milton’s Blue Hills Reservation. It still stands today and offers a panoramic view from Boston Harbor to Mount Wachusett. The Blue Hills reception center has a small CCC exhibit that includes memorabilia.

New Hampshire

Bear Brook State Park is one of the few surviving CCC camps that now serve as museums.

Over 37,000 young men served in the CCC in New Hampshire. They built state parks such as Moore Brook and Bear Brook, and ski facilities such as Waterville Valley, Cannon Mountain and the Wildcat Trail at Pinkham Notch. They also fought forest fires, planted trees and built dams, bridges, roads, camp grounds and hiking and bridle trails.

At the Bear Brook exhibit stands a statue of a shirtless Corpsman with an ax. Identical statues stand at the Freetown State Forest, a former camp, and at the Maine State Library in Augusta.

civilian-conservation-corps-acadia-shelter

The Civilian Conservation Corps built many park shelters, like this one at Arcadia State Park in Rhode Island.

Connecticut

Connecticut had a total of 17 camps, and over 30,000 men served in the CCC. Some hadn’t enlisted, but were LEMs – locally enlisted men, such as carpenters and stone masons. Along with their traditional work, the CCC also built nine lookout towers, constructed 123 bridges and developed over 1000 acres of public camping and picnic grounds.

As in all other camps, the Connecticut CCC couldn’t build roads. They did, however, build many truck roads for fighting forest fires.

When a dam broke above Hartford in 1936, it devastated the area. The CCC lent a hand by clearing out 2,950 buildings and 800 other structures.

A CCC Museum in Stafford Springs, Conn., once the administration building for Camp Conner, contains photos, displays, information and artifacts.

Maine

CCC statue in Augusta

Fort Williams in Portland Harbor administered and trained Civilian Conservation Corpsmen for both Maine and New Hampshire. At its height, Maine had 16,686 men, 1,612 supervisors and 1,136 out-of-state enrollees in 19 camps. Additionally, Rhode Island sent 144 to the Rangeley area. The camps closed by 1942, but in their heyday the CCC’s emphasis evolved from emergency relief to job training. The Maine and New Hampshire Tree Army sent home an estimated $4 million.

Their assigned work came from the Maine Forest Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Biological Survey and the National Park Service. It included, much like all the other CCC work roads, trails, recreation areas, erecting buildings, and pest control.

George Dorr, superintendent of Acadia National Park, saw his chance to improve the park in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He asked Roosevelt for a camp at Acadia. Eventually some 3,000 poor boys, mostly from Maine, came to three CCC camps in Acadia. They opened new trails and improved old ones, planted thousands of trees, made fire roads, fought fires, built footbridges and constructed two campgrounds, Blackwoods and Seawall. They built Ocean Drive, which loops around the park with stunning views of the coast and opened hiking trails to Echo Lake, Long Pond and Beech Cliff.

There is a memorial dedicated to the CCC and their work in Maine in Augusta.

Vermont

Vermont was originally allocated four camps but got 30, more than any other state of its size. The reason? The highly motivated State Forester Perry Merrill, a man with great foresight who saw the potential for CCC work.

Some 40,000 men served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in Vermont. However, only about 11,000 came from Vermont. The other companies transferred from other states such as Rhode Island because Merrill found so much work for them to do.

A massive flood in 1927 had devastated much of the state, and the Vermont CCC boys gained recognition for their flood control activities and dam building. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the 2,000-foot Waterbury Dam along with the Wrightsville and East Barre dams.

They also built many ski slopes, including the Stowe Ski Resort and the Mount Mansfield State Park. They also built 105 miles of truck roads for forest fire fighting and 10 lookout towers.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He has also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College. Leo passed away in 2020, and we miss him very much. This story updated in 2022.

Photos, except for the Civilian Conservation Corps pillow and statue, courtesy Leo Caisse. CCC statue by By DrStew82 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59856211. This story was updated in 2021.

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