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Eight Great Zingers by Bette Davis, Yankee Gal

The legendary movie actress Bette Davis called herself the “Yankee-est gal who ever came down the pike.”

She was born and educated in Massachusetts, married three New Englanders and had homes in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine.

Bette Davis in the trailer for Dark Victory.

On screen and off, Bette Davis had an acid tongue and a will of iron. She often played unlikable characters: a vulgar waitress, a crazy recluse, a spoiled southern belle, an embittered former child star. Though she didn’t have movie star looks, her beautiful eyes inspired the 1980s hit song, Bette Davis Eyes (which she liked).

She made 86 movies, won two Academy awards and was nominated for eight more. She married four times, but spent the last 29 years of her life without a husband.

In 1982 at the age of 74, she told an interviewer, “I didn’t intend to become one of those prim New England women who are afraid of sex, didn’t want to reach my present age and not have experienced everything…Now I’m a virgin again but I guess I did all right for a little Yankee girl.”

Bette Davis in Massachusetts

She was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis on April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Mass. She attended a boarding school, Crestalban in Lanesborough, Mass., then Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass.

Of growing up, she once said, “From the age of six, I have known that I was sexy. And let me tell you it has been hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it.”

At Cushing she met and fell in love with Harmon Oscar Nelson, a Massachusetts native she would later marry. Davis claimed his middle name gave the Academy Award statuette its nickname, though most people called him Ham. They wed in 1932, but she made 10 times as much money as he did and the marriage didn’t last.

Bette Davis in New Hampshire

She moved to California and made 22 mostly forgettable films from 1931 to 1934. In one of those films, though, she uttered one of her all-time favorite lines. In The Cabin in the Cotton, she said, “I’d love to kiss ya, but I just washed my hair.”

Then in 1934, Bette Davis finally won critical praise playing the frowzy Mildred Rogers in Of Human Bondage. The next year she won an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance as an alcoholic actress in Dangerous.

After finishing Dark Victory and Old Maid in 1939, Bette Davis went to Franconia, N.H., for a rest. She stayed at an inn called Peckett’s on Sugar Hill. There she fell for Arthur Farnsworth, the assistant manager of the inn. She called him Farny, and they married in 1940.

She bought a shack from the Peckett family on a beautiful piece of land and rebuilt it, calling it Butternut Farm. An old barn from Vermont became a lodge for guests.

Schoolgirls used to hang around the Carol Reed shop in nearby Littleton, hoping for a glimpse of their local celebrity. She treated her young fans graciously. “I’m the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived,” she once said.

Farny died three years after their marriage, and she came less frequently to New Hampshire.

Doing It Right

A strong-willed perfectionist, Bette Davis battled movie studios for good scripts and quality productions. In 1937, Davis sued Warner Bros. to get out of her contract. She lost, but the studio then accommodated her wishes. She then made some great movies with Warner Bros.: Now, Voyager, The Petrified Forest and Jezebel, for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress.

Along the way, Bette Davis earned a reputation as a bitch. Once she described herself as a ‘legendary terror,’ insufferably rude and ill-mannered.

It didn’t seem to bother her.

“If everyone likes you, you’re not doing it right,” she said.

Bette Davis in Maine

Bette Davis won an Oscar nomination for Best Actress in the 1950 film All About Eve, which won six Academy Awards. It also co-starred Davis’ fourth and last husband, Gary Merrill.

Merrill, born in Hartford, had attended Bowdoin College and loved Maine. After he and Bette Davis married in 1950, they bought a five-bedroom home in Cape Elizabeth. She called it ‘Witch Way.’

Bette Davis and Gary Merrill

Throughout the 1950s, they lived on Witch Way with two children they adopted and Davis’ daughter, B.D., with her previous husband, William Sherry. B.D. later wrote a tell-all, My Mother’s Keeper, portraying her mother as an abusive alcoholic.

Of parenthood, Davis said, “If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.”

Both Merrill and Davis actively supported the Maine Democratic Party, and Merrill helped Ed Muskie win his race for governor in 1958. Her films during the 1950s often premiered to large crowds in Portland. But the marriage soured, and they divorced in 1960.

Old Broads

“Old age is no place for sissies,” Davis once said. She was no sissy, though, and continued to make movies and appear on television into her 80s. She made her last film, The Wicked Stepmother, at the age of 81, and then continued to appear on television talk shows.

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

For years, Bette Davis feuded with another Hollywood movie queen, Joan Crawford. Crawford upstaged Davis several times and stole actor Franchot Tone from her.

In 1962, they appeared together in a comeback vehicle for both of them: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Davis had a Coke machine installed on the set because Crawford’s late husband had served as Pepsi’s CEO. Crawford retaliated by wearing a lead belt during a scene in which Davis had to drag her across the floor.

“There may be a heaven, but if Joan Crawford is there, I’m not going,” Davis said.

Bette Davis died of breast cancer in France in 1989 at the age of 82.

This story was updated in 2022.

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New England’s Six Wealthiest Towns (And How They Got That Way)

The wealthiest towns in each New England state all have good schools, beautiful homes and well-preserved historic districts. They are also, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly white.

New England’s wealthiest towns also tend to produce and attract celebrities and highly accomplished people in the arts, sports and business. Some of their residents are hell-bent on keeping the wealthiest towns wealthy. Conservative provocateurs Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter live in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Grover Norquist lives in Weston, Mass.

The Wealthiest Towns Get Started

In many cases, the wealthiest towns started off as sparsely populated farm villages. Then after the railroad came and the Civil War ended, rich people started building country estates on them. Then the estates fell to the income tax and the Great Depression. So when World War II ended, real estate developers pounced on some of these rural enclaves and turned them into suburbs.

In two other cases — New Hampshire and Vermont — the wealthiest towns evolved from historic, well-preserved colonial villages.

Several different statistics can measure a town’s wealth, but we chose per capita income.

Here, then, are the wealthiest towns in each of the six New England states.

New Canaan, Conn.

The famous Glass House was built in one of Connecticut’s wealthiest towns.

Bet you thought it was Old Greenwich, right? But New Canaan has the highest per capita income, $99,016, in the wealthiest county in the wealthiest state in the union. Greenwich at $91,478 and Darien, at $94,376, came in as Connecticut’s second and third wealthiest towns, according to the Connecticut 2014-15 Adjusted Equalized Net Grand List per Capita.

New Canaan started out as a Congregationalist parish in 1731, and didn’t get incorporated until 1801. After the American Revolution, shoemaking took off in the town. Then in 1868, the railroad came to New Canaan, bringing wealthy New Yorkers looking for a country retreat. Lewis Lapham, founder of Texaco, built Waveny House and summered on the estate for many years.

The New Yorkers began to stay year-round, commuting to work in the city. In the 1890s, New Canaan earned the nickname ‘Next Station to Heaven,’ though detractors call it the ‘Next Station to Hell.’ In 1980, The Official Preppy Handbook listed New Canaan as one of the preppiest towns in America.

Like most of New England’s wealthiest towns, New Canaan has preserved some of its colonial buildings. But the town has an unusual concentration of mid-century modern homes, such as Philip Johnson’s Glass House. A group of modern architects known as the Harvard Five lived and worked in New Canaan, all followers of Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius.

Not everyone loved the modern homes. Of the 80 or so built between 1940 and 1960, about 20 have been torn down. The town now tries to preserve them. You can see many of them in the 1997 film The Ice Storm.

Rick Moody, who wrote The Ice Storm, lived in New Canaan. Today, the town’s 20,000-odd residents include quite a few show people, including Martin Mull, Paul Simon, Harry Connick, Jr., Mike Wallace and Brian Williams.

Cape Elizabeth, Maine

A John Calvin Stevens house in Cape Elizabeth, one of Maine’s wealthiest towns. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Cape Elizabeth actually has a lower per capita income than North Oxford, Maine. But North Oxford is technically an unorganized territory and had only 17 residents in 2000, so we’re sticking with the seaside town of Cape Elizabeth.

King Charles I renamed Cape Elizabeth after his sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, when explorer John Smith brought him a list of North American places with native names. Anglican traders and fisherman came to the frontier village, which for decades was embroiled in the French and Indian wars.

In 1765, Cape Elizabeth separated from Falmouth (now Portland).Then in 1895 South Portland separated from Cape Elizabeth. The two towns had diverged in character: Cape Elizabeth remained rural, while South Portland grew with commerce and industry. Then, following the typical pattern, wealthy industrialists found the pretty countryside near the city a perfect place to build their estates. And after World War II, Cape Elizabeth turned into an affluent suburb.

Per capita income in Cape Elizabeth, population about 9,000, was $57,725 in 2016.

You’ve seen pictures of Cape Elizabeth’s most famous landmark, Portland Head Light. The town also has a number of Shingle Style houses designed by John Calvin Stevens. Two film icons lived in town: director John Ford was born there and Bette Davis had a summer home in Cape Elizabeth.

Weston, Mass.

The Henderson House, a private home in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts.

Ever wonder where all those athletes with the astronomical contracts go to live? Try Weston, Mass., the wealthiest town in Massachusetts.

Weston was little more than a field for grazing cattle until its incorporation as a town in 1712. Since the town lies along the Boston Post Road, taverns thrived serving travelers. Two still stand today as historic properties — along with one local historic district, 10 National Register districts, 26 historic areas, and seven houses listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The railroad brought small factories to Weston, and then it brought business moguls who liked the quick train ride from Boston. They began building large estates on land unsuitable for farming.

In 1927, a wool tycoon built Henderson House, the last great summer estate in Weston. About a dozen more huge estates survive, and rich people are building new ones. Hedge fund manager Jim Pallotta in 2007 built a 27,000-square-foot mansion nicknamed ‘the house that ate Weston.’

Weston boomed after World War II. More than half of the town’s increasingly expensive houses were built between 1950 and 1979. By 2017 the population reached 11,389. Today the median home price is about $1.5 million and the per capita income $105,217.

Five of the 50 richest people in Massachusetts live in Weston, and so do some of New England’s most beloved sports heroes: Celtics M.L. Carr, John Havlicek and Robert Parish. Bruins legend Bobby Orr lives in Weston, as do two former Red Sox players, David Ortiz and Jerry Remy.

New Castle, N.H.

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/wealthiest-towns-new-castle-wentworth.jpg

Wentworth-By-The-Sea today presides over one of New Hampshire’s wealthiest towns.

Tiny New Castle, a collection of island on New Hampshire’s seacoast, started out in 1623 as a fishing village. Within the next decade the British built a fort to protect the harbor. The state incorporated New Castle in 1683 and named it after the fort, now a historic landmark known as Fort Constitution.

For many years, the world overlooked the fishing village squeezed onto several small islands covering just .8 miles. That neglect preserved many of New Castle’s colonial-era homes. The town’s residents, 968 in 2010, have restored and preserved many of those houses.

In 1821, bridges connected New Castle to Portsmouth on the mainland. Then in 1874, the town got a huge boost with the construction of the grand hotel, Wentworth-By-The-Sea. The largest structure on New Hampshire’s 18-mile coast, it attracted famous socialites, politicians and business leaders from around the world. At the height of its glory, Wentworth-By-The-Sea accommodated negotiators for the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended war between Japan and Russia in 1905.

Wentworth-By-The-Sea began to decline with the rise of the automobile, but New Castle’s fortunes continued to rise. Per capita income tops the state at $97,601, according to the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.

Local preservationists saved Wentworth-By-The-Sea from the wrecking ball in 1997 by finding a new owner, Ocean Properties. By 2003, the restored hotel opened as a Marriott hotel property.

Barrington, R.I.

A town hall that’s appropriate for one of Rhode Island’s wealthiest towns.

You’d probably guess Newport as the wealthiest town in Rhode Island because of its famous Gilded Age mansions. But you’d be wrong. Barrington, just southeast of Providence, actually has the highest per capita income in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. Per capita income for Barrington was $59,464. Newport wasn’t even second. That honor belongs to Jamestown, just west of Newport.

Congregationalist Separatists founded Barrington in 1717, and for many years it remained a farm community. Then brickmaking companies moved into town, employing many French-Canadians and Italians. After World War II, the flight from the city began to transform Barrington into a bedroom suburb.

The population more than doubled between 1950 and 1960. In 2015, 16,240 people lived in Barrington. Spalding Gray, Sean Spicer and Roger Angell came from Barrington.

Like most of the wealthiest towns in New England, Barrington has preserved its history in nine historic districts and claims to have excellent schools.

Old Bennington, Vt.

The Old First Church of Old Bennington, one of Vermont’s wealthiest towns.

Old Bennington, an incorporated village inside Bennington, is not only the wealthiest town in Vermont, it’s possibly the most historic.

In 2010, Old Bennington’s per capita income topped Vermont’s list at $40,884, putting it ahead of Manchester Village by $33. Only 139 people lived in Old Bennington that year, which means one wealthy resident could have skewed the per-capita income figures upward — or downward.

However, Old Bennington’s many large, expensively restored Revolutionary-era homes, suggest most Old Benningtonians are comfortably fixed.

New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth chartered Bennington (and named it after himself) in 1749, making it one of the oldest as well as wealthiest towns in the state. Vermont law later created the incorporated village, a defined area within a town. Vermont’s incorporated villages can provide some municipal services like drinking water, sewer systems, police, fire, trash collection and building code enforcement.

Its historic district includes 93 buildings and objects, including the Battle of Bennington Monument and the Old First Church, named Vermont’s ‘colonial shrine’ by the Legislature. Robert Frost and his wife Elinor are buried behind the church, along with 75 Revolutionary War soldiers who died in the Battle of Bennington. A stone near the cemetery marks the spot where Ethan Allen’s house once stood.

Images: Glass House, By Staib – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7797606; Peirce-Henderson House in Weston, By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15922502; Old First Church By Nheyob – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16986574. Canaan Main Street By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/gcdougherty/all-towns-and-cities/north_canaan_ct/canaanvillagemainst-3.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74545267.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Places That Appear on the Back of a Quarter

From 1999 through 2008, the 50 State Quarter program released commemorative quarters with unique designs for each state. Half of all Americans collected them at least casually, making it the most successful commemorative coin program ever.

The U.S. mint released five each year, one quarter every 10 weeks. They came out in the same order that the states ratified the Constitution. In New England, that order meant Connecticut went first, then Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine.

Rules governed the choice of design. No live person, no state flag and no head-and-shoulder image of a dead person.

Each New England state responded with an image that you can visit today.

Here, then, are the six New England places that appear on the backs of quarters.

Charter Oak Tree

Connecticut State Quarter

King Charles II in 1662 granted Connecticut a charter that allowed it to elect some of its own officials and make some of its own rules.

Charles’ successor, James II tried to combine the New England colonies with New York under a single Crown-appointed official, Edmund Andros. It didn’t go well.

The Charter Oak by Charles DeWolf Brownell, 1857

In 1687, Andros and 60 soldiers met with the leaders of the Connecticut Colony in Hartford and heatedly insisted they turn over the charter. The colonists just as heatedly refused to give him the document, which lay on a table before them.

According to legend, something — a gust of wind, perhaps — blew out the candles that lit the meetinghouse. In the confusion, the charter disappeared. Someone hid it in the hollow of a large white oak tree, where the king’s men couldn’t find it.

The oak, of course, became the revered Charter Oak and a symbol of American independence. Already more than 300 years old in 1687, the Charter Oak fell to a violent storm on Aug. 21, 1856.

The Dominion of New England fell well before that. Andros dissolved the colonial governments, including Connecticut’s even without the charter. Two years later in 1689 Massachusetts colonists sent Andros packing. James II lost power, the charter came out of hiding and the colonies reverted to their previous form of government.

The Charter Oak still exists – as chairs in the Old Connecticut Statehouse and as artifacts currently on display at the Connecticut Historical Society.

On the corner of Charter Oak Avenue and Charter Oak Place stands a column with a globe and a descendant of the original tree. There may be as many as 100 such trees, as people had collected acorns before it fell. The Simsbury Historical Society, for example, planted a descendant of the Charter Oak in 1976 to commemorate the nation’s bicentennial.

A portrait of the Charter Oak, framed in wood from the tree itself, hangs in the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford.

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Maine State Quarter

Maine chose to honor its maritime heritage with an image of a windjammer sailing by Pemaquid Point Lighthouse on the back of its quarter.

President John Quincy Adams in 1827 commissioned Pemaquid Point Light in Bristol, Maine, about 60 miles north of Portland. The original lighthouse didn’t last long as builders mixed saltwater with the mortar mix. It had to be replaced in 1835, and the contract specified the use of fresh water in construction.

A storied lighthouse keeper, Marcus Hanna

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

, once staffed the lighthouse. He was the only person to ever receive a Medal of Honor for bravery during the Civil War and a Gold Lifesaving Medal for saving a life off Cape Elizabeth.

Today, the Bristol Parks and Recreation Department owns and operates the outbuildings surrounding the lighthouse as Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park.

The vessel on the quarter is the Victory Chimes, a rare three-masted schooner. Moored in Rockland, Maine, the Victory Chimes sails up and down the coast on windjammer excursions.

Minute Man National Park

Massachusetts State Quarter

Massachusetts honors its historic role in the American Revolution by putting a famous statue of the Minute Man. The monument depicts a farmer who dropped his plow to fight at North Bridge in Concord, Mass., on April 19, 1775.

Today the statue stands guard at The Minuteman National Historical Park in Concord, where 500 militiamen defeated three companies of British troops.

The Minute Man

In 1873 an unknown, 23-year-old college dropout was given the commission to create a monument to the Minute Man.

The 100^th anniversary of the shot heard ‘round the world was approaching, and the citizens of Concord wanted to honor the farmers and tradesmen who battled professional British soldiers.

They decided to award the commission to Daniel Chester French, who had never executed a full-size statue. They had their reasons: His father was well-connected in town, and he had taken art lessons from Louisa May Alcott’s little sister, who vouched for his talent. French, of course, went on to design many famous works, including the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Old Man of the Mountain

New Hampshire State Quarter

Alas, New Hampshire just can’t let go of the Old Man of the Mountain, though the mountain did. He tumbled to the ground on May 3, 2003, but his image still appears on license plates, state highway signs and the New Hampshire state quarter.

The Old Man of the Mountain, back in the day

Before the Old Man went to his forever home, he was a series of five granite ledges hanging 1,200 feet above the floor of Franconia Notch. He measured 40 feet high from forehead to chin, and over the years he was held together by chains and patched up with cement, plastic, steel rods and turnbuckles.

At least he was already on the quarter when the U.S. Mint released it on Aug. 7, 2000.

For nearly 200 years, the Old Man of the Mountain attracted tourists and served as a proud symbol of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire native Daniel Webster perhaps best expressed what the Old Man meant to the state:

[U]p in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge

Rhode Island State Quarter

Watery Rhode Island chose to put the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, New England’s longest suspension bridge, on the back of its quarter. Since 1969 it has connected Newport with Jamestown. Today it costs 16 quarters to cross.

The Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge

On a clear day, you can see the bridge from Gay Head Light in Martha’s Vineyard, the top floors of Providence’s tallest buildings and the parking lot of Stone Hill Marketplace in Johnston, R.I., 23 miles away.

Claiborne Pell served 36 years in the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island, and sponsored the bill to grant financial aid to college students in the form of Pell grants.

The quarter also depicts a vintage sailboat, as Rhode Island is nicknamed the sailing capital of the world. The nation’s smallest state, it has 400 miles of coastline and 100 beaches.

Camels Hump Mountain

Vermont State Quarter

Maple sugar is to Vermont as sailing is to Rhode Island. Well, maybe skiing is a more appropriate analogy, but Vermont went with maple sugaring on the back of its quarter.

The back of the quarter also features the Camels Hump Mountain in northern Vermont. It’s one of the tallest mountains in Vermont, and its distinctive profile makes it Vermont’s most recognized mountain.

Camels Hump, one of a dozen of Vermont’s National Natural Landmarks

The Camels Hump has had no less than a dozen names since Samuel de Champlain sailed down the lake that bears his name. De Champlain called it ‘Le Lion Couchant,’ meaning ‘the Resting Lion.’ Ira Allen called it the ‘Camel’s Rump.’ The Abenaki Indians called it ‘tahwahbodeay wadso.’

A forest preserve encloses the mountain, the summit of which philanthropist Joseph Battell donated to the state in 1905. By 1912, the Green Mountain Club built a trail between the mountain and Sterling Pond. Today the trail is a high point on the Long Trail system. The Green Mountain Club now pays a caretaker to make sure hikers respect the mountain’s fragile alpine tundra.

Images: Claiborne Pell Bridge By UpstateNYer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7548436; Pemaquid Point Lighthouse (featured image) By Tiger635 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31174599′ Pemaquid Point Lighthouse By WestportWiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21041474

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The Oldest Lighthouse in Each New England State

TThe oldest lighthouse in the country would have been in New England had the British not blown it up during the American Revolution. Today, Boston Light is the second oldest lighthouse in the country — and the oldest in Massachusetts.

Lighthouses and history go together like — well, ‘New’ and ‘England.’ Many of the coastal beacons predated the United States itself, but, like Boston Light, were replaced with newer, better versions.

Each New England state has multiple lighthouses. Maine, with its long coastline, has 57, while New Hampshire has only two along its 18 mile coast. Vermont actually has six.

But which are the oldest? Here, then, is a list of the oldest lighthouse in each New England state.

New London Harbor Light

Built in 1801, the New London Harbor Light is not only Connecticut’s oldest lighthouse, it is the tallest.

New London Harbor Light

The colonial Connecticut legislature in 1760 decided to build the first lighthouse at New London, then one of the busiest whaling ports in the colonies. The government sold lottery tickets to raise 500 pounds to pay for building it. In 1781, Benedict Arnold led a British raid on New London and burned the town, but the stone lighthouse and keeper’s cottage survived the attack.

Connecticut ceded New London Harbor Light to the United States in 1789, and 11 years later Congress voted money to rebuild it.

Abisha Woodward, a New Londoner, built the 80-foot-tall octagonal stone tower.

Lighthouse keepers were political appointees, and Martin van Buren appointed John Munn at New London Harbor Light. Munn lost his job in 1841 after van Buren lost reelection, and before he left he blackened the reflector and trashed the lamps. His successor, a popular fisherman named John Mason, took weeks to repair Munn’s vandalism. But after Mason served only four months as keeper, Munn wrangled his job back, outraging the locals. The controversy died down when Munn passed away and Mason took his place.

The Bureau of Lighthouses automated the New London Harbor Light in 1912, and auctioned the property. Today the lighthouse remains in private hands, but New London has others. Today, you can see five lighthouses from Pequot Avenue — and learn more about lighthouses at the Coast Guard Museum.

U.S. Coast Guard Museum, 15 Mohegan Ave., New London, Conn.

Portland Head Light

You may know the Portland Head Light as the Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse. The General Court of Massachusetts appropriated $750 to build it on the shores of Cape Elizabeth in 1787. Three years later, the U.S. government took responsibility for lighthouses and provided $1,500 to finish the job. President George Washington reminded the contractors the government didn’t have much money, so they should take building materials from the fields and shores.

Portland Head Light, the oldest lighthouse in Maine

Sixteen whale oil lamps first lit Portland Head Light on Jan 10, 1791.

One of the strangest shipwrecks in history took place at Portland Head Light on Christmas Eve, 1886. The three-masted bark Annie C. Maguire rammed right into the ledge by the lighthouse, though the crew plainly saw the light before the disaster. The keeper, Joshua Strout, along with his family and volunteers used a ladder as a gangplank to rescue all 14 aboard.

The U.S. Coast Guard decommissioned Maine’s oldest lighthouse in 1989. Today Portland Head Light, which sits next to 90-acre Fort Williams Park, has a museum within the former keeper’s quarters and a seasonal gift shop.

1000 Shore Rd., Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Boston Light

One would almost think Boston Light was cursed, given the trouble that befell the people who associated with it and the number of attacks it sustained from fire, lightning and warring armies.

Boston Light

There had been beacons on Brewster Island before to signal the approach of enemies and ships. The Boston merchant who petitioned the General Court to build Boston Light died before construction began. The first lighthouse keeper drowned. So did the second. The third lighthouse keeper had to clear his name after he was unfairly blamed for a fire in the light.

Fire broke out again and lightning struck the lighthouse several times. During the American Revolution, the Americans burned the wooden parts after the British captured it. When the British evacuated Boston, they left a time charge in Boston Light and blew it up.

A second Boston Light was built in 1783, and it is now the second oldest lighthouse in the United States. (The oldest is in Sandy Hook, N.J.)

Massachusetts gave Boston light to the federal government in 1790. In 1813, lighthouse keeper Jonathan Bruce and his wife watched the battle between the USS Chesapeake and the HMS Shannon. Just before dying, the wounded Chesapeake captain told his men, “Don’t give up the ship.” The crew gave up the ship anyway nine minutes later.

The military extinguished the light during World War II as a security precaution, and relit it on July 2, 1945. The Coast Guard decommissioned Boston Light in 1998, but it remains staffed by a keeper who acts mostly as a tour guide.

The National Park Service conducts tours of Boston Light twice daily on summer weekends.

Little Brewster Island, Boston, Mass.

White Island Light

The oldest of New Hampshire’s two lighthouses: White Island Light.

White Island Light, also known as Isles of Shoals Light, was built in 1859, though the New Hampshire light station had been around since 1821.

Thomas Laighton famously took the job as lighthouse keeper after losing the election for New Hampshire governor in 1839. He sold his business in Portsmouth, moved his family to the small archipelago known as the Isles of Shoals and vowed he’d never set foot on the mainland again.

Laighton bought four of the nine islands and wrangled the federal appointment as lighthouse keeper. His daughter Celia wrote a poem about the island’s sandpipers, which the Atlantic magazine published. Laighton later built a summer resort on another island in the Isles of Shoals, and Celia Laighton Thaxter became one of America’s most popular writers. She maintained a salon on the Isles, hosting such luminaries as Childe Hassam, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

New Hampshire’s oldest lighthouse was built of brick with a cast iron lantern.

The island is closed to the public, but you can get close to White Island Light in an excursion boat.

White Island, Rye, N.H.

Poplar Point Light

Built in 1831 in North Kingstown, R.I., Poplar Point Light is not only Rhode Island oldest lighthouse, it’s the oldest with a wooden tower in the United States.

Wickford, R.I.’s, protected harbor off Narragansett Bay allowed the village to develop as a shipping point for trade between local plantation and international ports.

Poplar Point Lighthouse

Congress agreed to spend $3,000 for a light at the entrance to Wickford Harbor, and local contractors finished it by the end of 1831. The Poplar Point Light guided sloops and schooners in and out of the harbor’s wharves.

By 1838, a Coast Guard survey concluded the light wasn’t needed, but Poplar Point Light stayed lit. By 1870, the government decided to build a new lighthouse at Old Gay Rock to guide the burgeoning ferryboat traffic. Albert Sherman bought Poplar Point Lighthouse at auction for $3,944.67. By 1932, Edith Grant owned the lighthouse and built a large house around it. The Shippee family bought the building in 1962, and has lived there since.

Poplar Point Light is not open to the public, but Rhode Island Bay Cruises and Save the Bay offer lighthouse cruises that may go near. They usually run between May and October.

Juniper Island Light

The oldest lighthouse in Vermont: Juniper Island Light in Lake Champlain.

Juniper Island Light is not only the oldest lighthouse in Vermont, it’s the oldest cast iron lighthouse left in the United States. Originally a lantern on a post on Juniper Island marked the entrance to Burlington Harbor until a 30-foot-tall brick tower, the first on Lake Champlain, replaced it. That fell to a tower of cast iron in 1846. The lighthouse guided thousands of ships into Burlington Harbor, for many years the second busiest lumber port in the United States.

After 108 years of service, an automatic light on a tower replaced the Juniper Island Light. A state senator named Fred Fayette bought the island and the lighthouse in 1956. Careless campers started a fire that destroyed the lighthouse keeper’s house in 1962. Fayette’s 11 children inherited the island after his death and in 2001 began to reconstruct the keeper’s house with reclaimed bricks. They later restored and painted the tower.

Juniper Island, Burlington, Vt.

Images: Portland Head Light, By Rapidfire – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7161757; Boston Light By Dpbsmith at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1663166. This story was updated in 2023.

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The Six Oldest Synagogues in New England

The oldest synagogues in New England were built well after the first Jewish settlers arrived.

Touro Synagogue, the only surviving synagogue from the Colonial era, was consecrated in 1763, nearly a century after the first Sephardic Jews arrived in Newport, R.I.

Several synagogues in New England were built on bequests from Judah Touro, the son of the Touro Synagogue’s hazzani. In his will he left endowments to 23 Jewish congregations in 14 states—including Hartford and Boston. (He also saved the Bunker Hill Monument.)

New England’s oldest synagogues were all built in cities within walking distance of their congregation. Many of them have since been converted to other uses, as their members moved to the suburbs.

Here are the six oldest synagogues in each New England state.

Beth Israel, West Hartford

Charter Oak Cultural Center, formerly Beth Israel Synagogue. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

Connecticut law allowed only the Christian religion until 1843. That year, Hartford Jews asked the General Assembly for the right to worship. Lawmakers passed a law that said, “Jews who may desire to unite and form religious societies shall have the same rights, powers and privileges which are given to Christians of every denomination.’

When the law changed, Connecticut Jews immediately incorporated two congregations: Congregation Mishkan Israel in Hamden and Congregation Beth Israel in Hartford (now West Hartford).

A small group of mostly German Jews organized Beth Israel as an orthodox congregation. For 19 years it was the only Jewish congregation in Hartford. In 1855, Judah Touro left in his will money for the congregation to buy its first building, a former Baptist church. After a fire destroyed the building, the congregation in 1876 hired an Irish architect to design what is now the oldest synagogue in Connecticut.

Beth Israel moved to its current building in 1936, leaving its synagogue to become the Charter Oak Cultural Center.

In 1991, the Connecticut Historical Commission and the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford conducted a survey of 46 historic synagogues in the state. By the mid-1990s, 15 of Connecticut’s oldest synagogues were placed on the National Register of Historic Places, more than any other state at the time.

21 Charter Oak Ave., West Hartford, Conn.

Shaarey Tphiloh, Portland

Shaarey Tphiloh’s first synagogue, Portland. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

In 1900, Portland had 80 Jewish families among its 50,000 residents. The oldest had arrived in the 1860s from Poland and Russia, and many were clothing and dry goods merchants. They had shops in the Lower Munjoy Hill area.

Up until 1900, three orthodox congregations worshipped in members’ homes, in rented spaces or at the Middle Street synagogue of the Sharith Israel congregation. The congregation ran a B’nai B’rith lodge, a Hebrew elementary school and a Jewish cemetery in Cape Elizabeth.

That year, the two other congregations decided to band together, build a synagogue and hire a rabbi. By 1904, the congregation raised enough money to build Shaarey Tphiloh, ‘Gates of Prayer,’ on Newbury Street. The first rabbi, Isaac Marcus, was a Russian who held services in Yiddish. Not until 1917 were services held in English.

Rabbi Marcus was followed by Rabbi Chaim Shohet, a distinguished Talmudic scholar who disagreed with the temple’s board of directors when it fired the cantor. The board then fired Rabbi Shohet, and according to legend moved his chair from the sanctuary to the bathroom. Some members of Shaarey Tphiloh followed him to Congregation Adas Israel on Middle Street.

Shaarey Tphiloh followed its congregation to the suburbs after World War II and built a new synagogue on Noyes Street in 1956. In 2016, the shrinking congregation moved to a smaller building nearby.

145 Newbury St., Portland, Maine

Beth Israel, Boston

The first Beth Israel synagogue. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

Puritan Boston didn’t exactly welcome Jews or any other outsiders, so the city’s Jewish population remained tiny for its first two centuries. In the 1830s, Boston’s booming commerce attracted Jewish immigrants from the German provinces, as well as second- and third-generation Jews from other U.S. cities. They were peddlers, shopkeepers, merchants, opticians, furriers, jewelers and tailors.

Boston’s first significant Jewish congregation started when young Jewish families and single men gathered at a bris for the firstborn son of a Polish capmaker. They decided to organize, Ohabei Shalom, and elected a German jeweler and real estate trader as its president.

Ethnic rivalries eventually tore the congregation apart. The Poles, or ‘Polanders,’ lived in the North End; the upwardly mobile Germans, or ‘Bayards,’lived in the South End. Services had been conducted according to the more formal German customs, but the Poles soon outnumbered the Germans, rejected the Bavarian rabbi Joseph Sachs and began to conduct services their own way.

In 1854, 25 families from southeastern Germany broke from Ohabei Shalom along with Rabbi Sachs. They tried to keep the name Ohabei Shalom partly because Judah Touro had left money in his will to the congregation. A two-year lawsuit followed, and the dissidents lost. They called themselves Kehillah Kedosha Adath Israel, or Congregation Adath Israel.

(Rabbi Sachs, by the way, left Boston in 1869 to start a school in New York. His sons, Julius and Samuel, married the daughters of Marcus and Bertha Goldman. Samuel Sachs and Marcus Goldman founded Goldman Sachs.)

Massachusetts’ Oldest Synagogue

In 1885, Temple Israel built what is now the oldest synagogue in Massachusetts on Columbus Avenue. It was designed in a historic revival style, popular in German-speaking lands, called Rundbogenstil. With twin towers and a rose window, the synagogue reflected the growing wealth and prestige of its members. Today that first synagogue is the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.

In 1906, the congregation built Temple Israel on Commonwealth Avenue as a replica of Solomon’s Temple. The congregation then moved to the suburbs and in 1967 sold the building to Boston University, which now uses it for large lectures and events.

Temple Israel began building another massive synagogue in 1926 near the Brookline border, but the stock market crash of 1929 put a halt to construction. Today Temple Israel, the largest Reform congregation in New England, holds services in its modern synagogue on Longwood Avenue near Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital.

600 Columbus Ave., Boston, Mass.

Temple Israel

Temple Israel Synagogue, Portsmouth, N.H. Photo courtesy Google Maps.

The first of New Hampshire’s Jewish synagogues was built in Portsmouth in 1905, though Jews had lived in the city since the 1790s. For more than a century they worshipped in private homes. They buried their dead in public cemeteries or in Jewish cemeteries in Dover and Somersworth.

Abraham and Rachel Isaac, Portsmouth’s first Jewish settlers, came from Prussia in 1789. He started out as an auctioneer, then opened a china shop. The Isaacs worshipped at their home on State Street, observed religious holidays and closed the store on Saturdays. They adopted a son, who moved away and married a minister’s daughter.

Abraham died in 1809: A local poet wrote his epitaph, including the words, “A faithful steward and an honest man.” Rachel moved away to be close to her son. For 50 years there was no record of Jewish people in Portsmouth.

By 1880, about 16 Jewish families lived in Portsmouth. By 1900 that number nearly doubled. In 1905 a Jew named Morris Port came from Newburyport and persuaded Portsmouth’s Jewish community to organize. By 1911 they had a rabbi, bylaws, the name of Temple Israel and a rented space in which to hold services. In 1912 they bought the old Methodist church on State Street and redecorated it in 1912.

The Jewish community grew around the synagogue in an area known as Puddle Dock, now Strawbery Banke. There were two kosher butchers, a Jewish bakery and three Jewish grocery stores.

Temple Israel renovated the building in 2007 and today congregants still sit on pews that date to 1827. A plaque stands outside Temple Israel, proclaiming it the first permanent Jewish house of worship in New Hampshire.

200 State Street, Portsmouth, N.H.

Touro Synagogue, Newport

Touro Synagogue. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Touro Synagogue, consecrated on Dec. 2, 1763, is the only synagogue built in Colonial America that still survives. Newport easily had the largest Jewish population in colonial New England, and Touro Synagogue is by far the largest and grandest of the early synagogues.

In 1658, 15 Sephardic Jewish families that escaped the Inquisition via Barbados arrived in Newport. They left a permanent mark on Newport by establishing a cemetery in 1677. Several more waves of Jewish families arrived from Curacao in 1690 and from New York in the mid-18^th century. For all that time, Newport’s Jewish population met for worship in private homes.

Many Jews prospered as merchants in the sea trade. What is now Bellevue Avenue was lined with Jewish shops. By 1758 the Jewish population had so grown in size and prominence a permanent house of worship was needed.

Newport architect Peter Harrison, born and trained in England, volunteered to design the synagogue. He planned a building with a plain Georgian exterior that hides an elaborate interior. (Harrison also designed the Redwood Library in Newport and King’s Chapel in Boston.)

Isaac Touro, born in the Netherlands, the synagogue’s first hazzan, or minister. Grateful for England’s protection, he was a Loyalist and stayed in Newport when the British captured the town in 1776. Three years later he moved with the British to New York, where he had to depend on charity. In 1782 he moved to Kingston, Jamaica and died a year later.

Two of Touro’s sons, Judah and Abraham, became quite wealthy and gave generously to Jewish and Christian causes. Abraham gave enough money to maintain Touro Synagogue and the cemetery.

Washington and the Oldest Synagogue

Many of the congregation had been Loyalists like Isaac Touro and left with him for New York. The Jeshuat Israel congregation dwindled and disappeared for a time, but in 1790 it was still functioning.

That year, George Washington famously visited Newport. Moses Seixas, a leader in the Touro Synagogue sent him a letter thanking God for a nation that did not tolerate bigotry.

Washington’s reply strongly supported religious freedoms for non-Christians. The government of the United States ‘gives to bigotry no sanction,’ Washington replied. The letter is recited annually at the synagogue.

The Jeshuat Israel congregation dwindled and turned Touro Synagogue over to a New York congregation, Shearith Israel. Jeshuat Israel reformed in 1903 and leased the building for $1 a year from Shearith Israel.

In 1946 the Touro Synagogue was designated a National Historic Site. Sixty-five years later, Jeshuat Israel tried to sell some of its historic artifacts. A lawsuit resulted. In an opinion written by retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a federal court ruled the Shearith Israel congregation owned the Touro Synagogue. In August 2022, a judge ruled that Shearith Israel could not evict the Jeshuat Israel congregation. Jeshuat Israel then sought a long-term lease.

85 Touro St., Newport, R.I.

Ohavi Zedek, Burlington

The old Ohavi Zedek Synagogue.

Ohavi Zedek is the oldest Jewish congregation in Vermont, and its original synagogue is one of the oldest synagogues still standing in the United States.

Eighteen Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, mostly Lithuanian, founded Ohavi Zedek in 1876. The congregation built the synagogue in 1885, and later sold it to another congregation, Ahavath Gerim.

Most were Lithuanian peddlers who discovered Burlington when they were traveling between New York and Montreal.

In the 1950s, Ohavi Zedek moved to a larger building not too far away. Then in the 1960s, hippies moved to Vermont and more Jews – including Bernie Sanders – followed.

Corner of Archibald and Hyde Streets in Burlington, Vt.

Images: Old Ohavi Zedek By Mfwills; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:00, 24 October 2013 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29160508. With thanks to Becoming American Jews: Temple Israel of Boston by Meaghan Dwyer-Ryan, Susan L. Porter, Lisa Fagin Davis. Featured image of Touro Synagogue interior: By S.d.touro – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48760457. This story was updated in 2022.

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New England’s Historic Haunted Houses

Haunted houses belong to New England lore as much as Revolutionary battles or clipper ship races.

New England ghosts, witches, devils and monsters in human shape have populated the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. The region’s special brand of horror even has a name: Gothic New England.

Here are stories of six haunted houses, plus some extras suggested by our readers and added in 2017. We use the term ‘houses’ loosely, for they include hospitals, a library, a dormitory, a lighthouse and a fort. But all have drama or sorrow in their past. If you know of other historic haunted houses, please share them in the comments section.

Seaside Sanitarium

Seaside Sanitorium

Is it ghosts that haunt the sinister and bizarre Seaside Sanitorium in Waterford, Conn. — or its past?

In 1936, doctors treated children with tuberculosis with rest, sunshine, fresh air and good food. Seaside was built as a ‘heliotropic’ treatment hospital for children. Gothic Revival architect Cass Gilbert, who also planned the U.S. Supreme Court building, designed the sanitarium. The building faces Long Island Sound, with large terraces and porches for sunbathing.

Drugs made heliotropic treatment obsolete, and Seaside then evolved into a geriatric hospital, a medical hospital and a hospital for the mentally disabled. People accused its staff of abusing the patients, and it had an unusually high death rate.

The hospital finally closed in 1996. Now dilapidated, creepy and boarded up, abandoned playground equipment litters its grounds. The ghosts of abused patients are said to haunt the place.

Lately, there’s been talk of rehabilitating the old building. The State of Connecticut may redevelop it into a lodge.

35 Shore Rd., Waterford, Conn.

Other Connecticut Haunted Houses

Two other former insane asylums in Connecticut have reputations as hospitals of horror: Norwich State Hospital in Preston and Fairfield Hills State Hospital in Newtown. Tales of cruelty and abuse in the creepy old buildings fostered rumors of hauntings.

Norwich State Hospital

An early lighthouse keeper named Ernie supposedly haunts the New London Ledge Lighthouse in the mouth of the Thames River. On the night before the lighthouse was automated, a Coast Guard officer wrote in the log: “Rock of slow torture. Ernie’s domain. Hell on earth—may New London Ledge’s light shine on forever because I’m through. I will watch it from afar while drinking a brew.”

Fort Knox

Fort Knox, Maine’s version of the Great Pyramid, was built in the mid-19th century to prevent the British from invading the region. They’d already done it during the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

The State of Maine bought the hulking granite fortress on the Penobscot River from the U.S. government in 1923. Back then it cost $2,100.

The fort provides ideal conditions for haunting: it stands next to swirling waters, it’s made of vast quantities of granite and it’s in a cold climate. It also has lots of dark tunnels.

People say they hear footsteps or laughter inside the fort, or they feel someone’s touch. Ghost hunters heard soldiers talking about the Civil War. A retired state trooper saw a white object with no head, arms or legs that moved, then vanished.

The ghost in the duster coat who wanders the fort’s dark, wet tunnels is Leopold Hegyi, the caretaker at the fort from 1887 to 1900. Of Hungarian ancestry, he served as a cavalryman who helped train George Custer’s army before moving to Maine. He then patrolled the fort for 13 years by himself, except when a few soldiers arrived during the Spanish-American War.

The fort hosts an annual paranormal/psychic fair. “Fright at the Fort,” a haunted house fundraiser that helps fund the preservation of the historic site.

Click here for a ghost tracker documentary of Fort Knox.

740 Fort Knox Rd., Prospect, Maine

Other Maine Haunted Houses

A woman in a nightgown climbs the spiral staircase of the Captain Lord Mansion, a Kennebunkport bed and breakfast. Some say she was the wife of Captain Lord, who built the house in 1812, but died before living in it.

Indian chief Taukolexis died by hanging from a tree, and he supposedly haunts the nearby fort, William Henry, now a museum near New Harbor.

The ghost of 19th-century poet Sylvester Beckett rips the bed sheets off guests at Beckett’s Castle, his former summer home on Cape Elizabeth.

Boston Athenaeum

The Boston Athenaeum today

As an aspiring writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne frequented the Boston Athenaeum, a private library across from the Statehouse. In April 1842 he visited the Reading Room and encountered Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, Harvard’s librarian. Harris sat in his usual chair, reading a newspaper. Hawthorne didn’t think anything about it until later that evening, when a friend told him Harris had died. Hawthorne said that was impossible, as he had just seen him in the Athenaeum.

Then the next day, Hawthorne returned to the Athenaeum only to see Harris in the same chair. The writer speculated he was reading his own obituary. Of the encounter he wrote,

I remember—once at least, and I know not but oftener—a sad, wistful, disappointed gaze, which the ghost fixed upon me from beneath his spectacles; a melancholy look of helplessness, which, if my heart had been as hard as a paving-stone, I could hardly have withstood. But I did withstand it; and I think I saw him no more after this last, appealing look.

The minister’s ghost isn’t the only creepy thing about the Boston Athenaeum. The library holds a copy of a criminal’s memoirs bound in his own skin.

James Allen robbed and shot a man on the Salem Turnpike. In 1835, Allen received the death sentence for attempted murder and was held in Charlestown State Prison.

Allen then told his life story to the prison warden. Before his execution, he asked that his skin be used to bind two copies of his memoirs. One copy ended up at the Athenaeum after Allen’s family passed it down. It had been used to spank children who misbehaved.

10½ Beacon St., Boston, Mass.

Other Massachusetts Haunted Houses

The Lizzie Borden House

The ghosts of the Borden family roam the halls at the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, now a bed and breakfast. Lizzie Borden famously …’took an axe/And gave her mother 40 whacks/When she saw what she had done,She gave her father forty-one.”

Jerusha Howe, an early innkeeper at the Wayside Inn before it was the Wayside Inn, rejected many suitors attracted by her beauty. She couldn’t resist an English gentleman who promised to return for her. He never came back, and Jerusha’s ghost waits for her lover in her bedroom, Room 9.

Novelist Edith Wharton built an estate called the Mount in Lenox around the turn of the century. She avidly collected ghost stories, and now visitors say they see ghosts in period dress — even Wharton herself reading — wandering what is now a house museum.

Ipswich has quite a few haunted houses, including the Treadwell-Hale house in North Main Street. It had a ghost that whispered from the top of the stairs to the rear bedroom.

Huntress Hall, Keene State College

Huntress Hall at Keene State College was named after Harriet Huntress, a New Hampshire Department of Education administrator. Her abandoned wheelchair is still stored in the attic of the building, built in 1926. The creaking chair can be heard wheeling around the attic at night, according to students who live there.

Huntress does not like to be mocked and wreaks revenge on anyone who dresses up like her at Halloween. Students who have done so – usually with a gray wig and a wheelchair — failed tests, broke their legs or been involved in bad car accidents.

The genesis of the Huntress haunting is said to be World War II. Keene State was then a teaching school and Huntress Hall was an all-female dormitory. During the war, the U.S. Navy began training pilots at Keene and housed the trainees in Huntress Hall. Huntress was said to hate men and promiscuous women, and it was then that she began to haunt the hall. Some say she is most active when students are having sex inside its walls.

Appian Way, Keene, N.H.

Other New Hampshire Haunted Houses

In the late 19th century, orphans lived in The Chase House on Middle Road in Portsmouth. According to legend, a young girl hanged herself in her room and now haunts the hallway.

Ocean Born Mary, as her name suggests, was born at sea. Pirates boarded the vessel that sailed from Ulster to New England, and the pirate captain heard the cries of a newborn baby — Ocean Born Mary Wallace, of course. He gave her mother a bolt of light green silk, which was later made into Mary’s wedding dress. Mary’s husband died and she moved to Henniker, where her ghost supposedly protects her house from harm.

Belcourt Castle

The Newport mansion Belcourt Castle features a screaming suit of armor, a haunted gold coronation carriage, chairs that toss people off their seats and apparitions dancing in the ballroom.

Belcourt Castle was built by Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, the wastrel son of financier August Belmont and grandson of Commodore Matthew Perry. (His brother August financed the Cape Cod Canal.) Richard Morris Hunt designed the mansion according to Perry’s wish to devote the first floor to carriages and stables for his beloved horses. He modeled the 60-room house on Louis XIII’s hunting lodge at Versailles.

Belmont married Alva Belmont, the ex-wife of his best friend William K. Vanderbilt, in 1896, and she began redesigning the mansion. After the Belmonts died, Harold and Ruth Tinney bought Belcourt in 1956 and filled it with their own collection of art and antiques. The Tinneys opened the house to the public for ghost tours and as a museum.

When the Tinneys owned Belcourt, suits of armor stood in a row at one end of the ballroom. People say they’ve heard screams from one suit of armor as the owner relives his death. A spear tip pierced his eye through a slit in the helmet.

A carved wooden statue of a monk brings a ghost of a brown-robed monk along with him. The ghost always appeared in the same room as the statue.

In 2012, the Tinneys sold Belcourt. Read more about it here.

657 Belleview Ave., Newport, R.I.

Other Rhode Island Haunted Houses

During the American Revolution, University Hall at Brown was converted into an army hospital where many soldiers died. A contorted soldier’s face appears in a second-floor window.

The body of Providence Mayor Thomas Doyle lay in state at City Hall after his death in 1886. His ghost is now said to haunt the building, smoking a cigar, moving chairs and whispering.

Edward Hamlin Everett Mansion

Hamlin Mansion

Edward Hamlin Everett got rich as the Glass Bottle King and inventor of the fluted bottle cap. He grew up in Bennington, Vt., and in 1886 married Amy King. Her father owned a Newark glassworks that Hamlin bought before their wedding.

Amy King died suddenly. Some said she committed suicide, others said she was murdered, still others say she drowned while swimming. Her obituary said she died after a severe operation following an unnamed illness.

Everett remarried, but his three grown daughters disapproved of the new wife. When he died, he left most of his wealth to his second wife, leaving only a tenth of it to his daughters. The daughters challenged the will in court, claiming their father wasn’t in his right mind. During the trial, known as The Second Battle of Bennington, the eldest daughter was staying at the house when she said she heard weeping coming from her father’s study.

She went to the room and found her mother lying on the floor, clearly a murder victim. Security guards say doorknobs turn in empty rooms and doors close by themselves. Students say they see a woman in white, roaming the house and grounds. Perhaps it’s the ghost of Amy King Everett.

In 1957, writer Shirley Jackson decided she wanted to write a novel about a haunted house. She began collecting postcards and newspaper clippings of ornate old houses. She likely chose the Edward Hamlin Everett home as the setting for her novel, The Haunting of Hill House. He book, a National Book Award finalist, inspired two feature films and a play.

The court, by the way, sided with the Everett daughters and gave them a third of the estate.

982 Mansion Dr., Bennington, Vt.

Other Vermont Haunted Houses

Hartness House Inn.

James Hartness, a factory owner and Vermont governor, built the Shingle-style Hartness House in Springfield in 1904. He built a labyrinth of tunnels under the house that included a library, workshop, study and bathroom. Today the house is run as a small hotel and his ghost is said to be down there still.

Ira Allen, a railroad magnate and relative of Ethan Allen, built the Marble Mansion in 1867 in Fair Haven, Vt. Today it’s an inn, and the ghost of a former owner, dressed in a gray suit, awakens guests by standing over their beds. A young woman supposedly haunts the basement and several ghostly children run around the halls.

End Notes

Photos: Norwich State Hospital, By CLK Hatcher – Norwich Hospital District – Admin BuildingUploaded by LongLiveRock, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15506667; Boston Athenaeum, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=722802; Belcourt photo by Charles V. Hamm; Hartness House Inn By Tyler Goodrich – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28509336. Seaside Sanitorium by By Victor Solanoy from Silicon Valley, USA – Seaside Sanitorium – Waterford, CTUploaded by Magicpiano, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29847509.

This story about haunted houses was updated in 2022.

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