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Chelsea Mass.

The Christmas Blizzard of 1909: ‘The Sea Never Gives Up The Living’

More than 50 people died in the Christmas blizzard of 1909, a two-day storm with disastrous effects from Pennsylvania to Canada. The worst carnage happened at sea, where the storm caught mariners unaware.

Mild weather had dominated December of 1909 in New England. The weather service reported 20 “ideal days” that month. The string of mild weather came to a halt, however.

In New England, ships crashed onto the rocks, people drowned in their beds and bodies turned up buried in snow for weeks.

The Christmas Blizzard Starts

The snow started falling and gale winds arrived at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and would take some 24 hours to peter out, with two monster high tides. Snow totaled roughly 18-inches, but it varied from place to place along with the winds. In Boston, for instance, the highest wind recorded was 54 miles per hour, but on Cape Cod winds soared to 84 miles per hour.

Though not the largest blizzard ever, the Christmas blizzard of 1909 left a dramatic impact. All in all, the Christmas blizzard of 1909 did more than $10 million in damage and resulted in more than 50 deaths in the United States.

Chelsea and Everett Flooded

Chelsea and Everett, Mass., felt the most dramatic impact of the wind and tides. After initially holding strong, the floodgates at the mouth of the Island End River gave way at night as the storm surge pushed water higher.

Ocean water rushed into the streets, flooding low-lying homes and businesses in a matter of minutes. Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Harkins drowned while asleep in their bed, the newspapers reported, and Michael Callahan, an elderly man, drowned when flood waters invaded his home – on the second floor.

Forced from their homes, hundreds of residents waited in the raging blizzard as wagons slowly transported them to safety on higher ground. It would take weeks to rebuild the floodgates and restore people to their homes.

In all, 25,000 people fled their homes as the ocean waters pushed through the streets. Eighty acres of land flooded. At least four people drowned.

Connecticut and Rhode Island survived with less damage, though it took work crews days to restore telegraph and railroad lines.

The Christmas Blizzard at Sea

The ships at sea felt the greatest effects of the 1909 Christmas blizzard. The Seamen’s Journal reported 15 ships lost or severely damaged, with many more incidents not recorded. The Davis Palmer accounted for the most tragic loss of the storm.

Sister Ship to Davis Palmer werched in the Christmas Blizzard of 1909

Schooner Paul Palmer, Sister Ship to Davis Palmer wrecked in the Christmas Blizzard of 1909

As Christmas approached, the Davis Palmer, a five-masted schooner, made her way north around Cape Cod toward Boston Harbor. The ship was one of 14 that naval architect W.F. Palmer built and named for his children. The Bath, Maine, shipyards produced the Davis Palmer; she stretched more than 300 feet in length.

The crew aboard the Davis Palmer celebrated Christmas in style, oblivious to their fate. The barge Hop Along reported passing by the ship. The Palmer’s crew stood on deck singing and making merry as they headed toward their destination, loaded down with West Virginia coal from Newport News, Virginia.

The Wreck of the Davis Palmer

The ship worked her way through the gale force winds until she had nearly cleared the Graves, outer ledges in Boston Harbor. But the storm soon drove the Davis Palmer onto Finn’s Ledge. From there she drifted into Broad Sound and sank. Fourteen of her crew died in the wreck. Bodies would wash ashore in the weeks to come; some never turned up.

Other ships fared better. The schooner Maud Seward, from Deer Isle, Maine, lost her way off Cape Cod and washed up, wrecked, on Martha’s Vineyard where she rotted for years. But no lives were lost. The Ada Damon, from York, Maine, washed up at Ipswich, Mass. – probably a total loss, but the wreck injured no one. In the harbor at Plymouth, Mass., the storm damaged more than four vessels.

Chaos at Sea

Further out at the Five Fathom Bank, off New Jersey, sailors reported seeing the schooner George P. Hudson bound from Norfolk, Va., to Boston with a load of coal. The storm had badly crippled the Hudson, but her captain refused assistance. With people waiting in concern, the Hudson prompted great relief when she limped into Vineyard Haven, damaged but still afloat.

The schooner Wyoming

The six-masted Wyoming, the largest wooden ship ever built, left Bath, Maine, just days before Christmas – newly launched. Likewise, the F.W. Camp departed Boston for Norfolk. Both were missing for days before they finally turned up safe.

The Christmas gale of 1909, according to the Seamen’s Journal, “illustrates the force of the adage that ‘the sea will claim its own.’ It is said that ‘the sea never gives up its dead.’ It would perhaps be truer to say ‘the sea never gives up the living.’

“Christmas 1909 will long be remembered by the seamen of the Atlantic Coast as one of the most fateful days in the fateful history of those waters.”

Havoc Elsewhere

As the storm proceeded up the coast to Newfoundland, another 11 schooners from Newfoundland disappeared into the raging blizzard, carrying 60 more people to their deaths. “Worst storm in 50 years,” newspapers reported, with damage placed at more than $750,000.

After the storm, streets up and down the eastern seaboard remained blocked by snow for days as a cold front passed through, so cold that rivers froze over. Thousands of people filled the streets to remove snow and ice, restore electricity and help those trapped in their homes. Cleanup would continue into 1910. On January 25, rain in Pennsylvania revealed the corpse of a man who had frozen to death in a field, overcome by the blizzard four weeks earlier.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Mary Antin, Poster Child for Letting Immigrants Into America

Mary Antin wrote a poem praising George Washington just a few years after she arrived in Boston a poor, 13-year-old Russian Jew who spoke only Yiddish. She published her first book at 18. At 30 she wrote a national best-seller that launched her into political circles that included President Theodore Roosevelt.

Mary Antin became famous as a symbol of the immigrant who achieved the American Dream. But she also discovered the dark side to the dream, and that fame doesn’t necessarily bring happiness.

Mary Antin

To some, her rags-to-riches story seemed too pat, too easy. Later in life, Mary Antin hinted at her embarrassment about winning wide acclaim for a slim accomplishment.

“[S]he considered her position a false one and suffered a nervous breakdown as a consequence,” wrote Sarah Blacker Cohen.

Mary Antin

Maryashe Antin was born June 13, 1881, to Israel Pinchus and Esther (Weltman) Antin in the shtetl of Polotzk in the Pale of Settlement. The Pale, a western region of Imperial Russia, was crowded with impoverished Jews evicted from the cities. Antisemitism made life dangerous for them.

Map, the Pale of Settlement

The Antin family at first prospered in the Pale, with a large house and servants. As a traditional Jewish girl, Mary Antin received an inferior education to her brother. Later, in a short story, she wrote, “What are daughters worth? They’re only good to sit in the house, a burden on their parents’ neck, until they’re married off.”

When illness destroyed her father’s business, the family ended up living in a room. “We had absolutely no reliable source of income, no settled home, no immediate prospects,” she wrote.

Mary Antin and her older sister Fetchke as children

Coming to America

In 1891, her father borrowed money to get to Germany. There an emigrant society helped bring him to Boston. To Mary, America became the Promised Land. Three years after he left, their father sent them a letter saying he’d saved enough money to bring them to America.

Her mother read the letter aloud. “There was an elation, a hint of triumph, such as had never been in my father’s letters before,” she wrote in her book, The Promised Land. “He saw something — he promised us something. It was this “america.” And “America” became my dream.”

In 1894, Mary Antin left for America.

Book cover, From Plotzk to Boston

In a book of her letters (now an audio book), she described how her family traveled in packed, airless fourth-class railroad cars. They encountered corrupt crossing guards and German officials who crudely disinfected them. They were locked in quarantine until finally they took the steamer across the Atlantic and reunited the family in Boston.

Boston Slums

Mary’s father’s attempts to make money failed, and the family moved from slum to slum: Chelsea and Boston’s West and South ends. They lived in gloomy tenements filled with “unkempt, half-washed, toiling, unaspiring foreigners, pitiful in the eyes of social missionaries, the despair of boards of health,” she wrote.

Boston’s South End, from The Promised Land. The original caption read, “Harrison Avenue in the South End ghetto.”

But her father had hope for Mary, frail and clearly intelligent. He enrolled her in the local public school in Chelsea, called the Williams School. Said to be the largest school in New England, it had many non-English-speaking immigrant students.

Mary Antin’s father.

Because she spoke no English, Mary Antin had to wedge herself into a kindergarten desk. After four months, a composition she wrote called Snow impressed her teacher. The teacher sent Snow to an education journal, Primary Education, which printed it. And so Mary Antin determined to follow a writer’s career.

She wrote a poem called “My Country,” which described her thrill at sharing citizenship with George Washington. Then she went to Newspaper Row and found an editor willing to publish it.

Uplifting Tale

Mary learned quickly, and her teachers held her up “as an illustration of what the American system of free education and the European immigrant could make of each other.” Many people wanted to hear that story, and Mary Antin made a career of telling it.

Her bestselling book, The Promised Land, offered up a romanticized version of the immigrant’s assimilation and rise through public education.

In the book, Mary found a way to glorify their South End tenement on Wheeler Street, which ran crookedly between brothels on Corning Street and a saloon on Shawmut Avenue.

“I delighted in the moonlike splendor of the arc lamp just in front of the saloon,” she wrote.

Boston Public Library

She also rhapsodized about the hours she spent reading and dreaming in the Boston Public Library. “That I who was born in the prison of the Pale should roam at will in the land of freedom was a marvel that it did me good to realize. That I who was brought up to my teens almost without a book should be set down in the midst of all the books that ever were written a miracle as great as any on record. That an outcast should become a privileged citizen, that a beggar should dwell in a palace–this was a romance more thrilling than poet ever sung,” she wrote.

Her patriotism would later cost her her marriage.

First Book

Mary’s sister Frieda went to work at 14, which allowed Mary to attend Girls’ Latin School, Boston’s premier public prep school for girls.

Assembly at the Girls’ Latin School

Lina Hecht, a Jewish philanthropist, took notice of Mary Antin. Hecht arranged to have her letters about her journey to America translated from Yiddish and published. So in 1899, 18-year-old Mary published her first book, From Plotzk to Boston. (The printer misspelled the name of her home town, Polotzk.) The precocious scholar-immigrant thus achieved local celebrity.

Marriage

Mary’s life took another turn on a field trip with the Hale House, a South End settlement house sponsored by Edward Everett Hale.

The trip was led by Amadaus Grabau, who studied at Harvard and worked at the Boston Society of Natural History. Their attraction to each other may have seemed unlikely – she, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who wrote poetry; he, an American-born son of a Lutheran minister who studied geology. Not to mention the 11-year difference in their ages.

Amadaus Grabau

They married on Oct. 5, 1901. She was 20, he was 31. Her marriage outside her faith cost her some friendships, though her family stood by her.

Mary had dreamed of going to Radcliffe. But after marrying Grabau she followed him to New York, where he had gotten a job as a professor of geology at Columbia University. They lived in university housing on Morningside Heights and then in Brooklyn, a far cry from the dingy South End tenements she knew in Boston.

Mary attended Columbia Teacher’s College and Barnard, but didn’t graduate. They had a daughter, Josephine Esther, on Nov. 21, 1907.

At Columbia, Grabau had a reputation as a loner and a workaholic. His marriage to a 20-year-old Jewish immigrant writer and his failure to develop friendships with his colleagues marked him as an outsider.

Mary Antin, Celebrity

Then in 1912, when Mary was 32, she published the wildly successful The Promised Land. It made her a celebrity. Former president Theodore Roosevelt wrote her letters. He credited her — along with Jane Addams and Frances Kellor — with lighting a fire under him to support women’s suffrage.

Mary Antin in 1916

Mary sent her daughter to boarding school and embarked on a national lecture tour about immigration. On Dec. 12, 1912, 1,000 people came to listen to her at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Then from 1913 to 1918 she lectured on “The Responsibility of American Citizenship,” “How You and I Can Serve Our Country” and “The Public School as a Test of American Faith.”

Her goal was to prove that immigrants could become good American citizens during a time of rising anti-immigrant feeling.

By the time her lecture tour ended, World War I broke out – in Europe and in her home.

World War I

Despite virulent anti-German sentiment during World War I, Grabau didn’t hide his attachment to the German culture. That contributed to the loss of his job at the university and to the end of his marriage.

Their daughter, Josephine, remembered their battles during World War I. “We fought the World War right in our house in Scarsdale. Mother was for the Allies and Father was for the Germans. Mother hung the Allied flag out her study window and Father put the German flag out his study window. They fought the war upstairs and downstairs, into the attic and into the cellar. It was too much for me and I fell apart. They saw what they were doing to me and finally agreed to separate for my sake.”

After they separated, he moved to China, where he played a key role in establishing Chinese geology. Along with expatriates and Chinese academics, Grabau recruited and trained Chinese geologists and set up institutions devoted to geology. He never reconciled with his wife, and he only returned to the United States once for the 1933 International Geological Congress.

Decline

Their separation marked the beginning of Mary’s decline. Her third book didn’t have nearly the success of The Promised Land. She wrote no fourth book. She withdrew from her friends and family, and suffered from health problems – both physical and mental.

Mary spent several years at the Austen Riggs Psychiatric Center in Stockbridge, Mass. From 1922 to her death in 1949, she checked in and out of the Gould Farm, a healing community for people “experiencing emotional and psychiatric vulnerabilities” in the Berkshire mountains.

In 1930 she wrote to a friend, “I have so little mastered the art of tranquil living that wherever go I trail storm clouds of drama around me.”

Mehar Baba.

She eventually followed of Meher Baba, an Indian mystic who claimed he was the avatar. Baba stopped speaking on July 10, 1925 and communicated using hand gestures or an alphabet board for the rest of his life. He traveled to Hollywood in the 1930s, where he enjoyed the attention of celebrities like Gary Cooper and Tallulah Bankhead.

Antin then followed Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian clairvoyant who founded another esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy.

The End

She died in 1949 of cancer. By then, The Promised Land had gone through 34 editions. The book opened with a bold statement: “I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over.”

But perhaps Mary Antin had wanted more than to be an assimilated immigrant. “One of the best novels I never wrote is called The Unwilling Celebrity,” she wrote in a letter. “It deals with the embarrassment of a woman who never succeeded in reconciling a large measure of public recognition with her insufficient achievement.”

With thanks to Sarah Blacker Cohen in Mary Antin’s “The Promised Land”: A Breach of Promise in Studies in American Jewish Literature, Winter 1977-78.

Also Keren R. McGinity in The Real Mary Antin: Woman on a Mission in the Promised Land, American Jewish History Sept. 1998.

And to Alan Mazur, A ROMANCE IN NATURAL HISTORY; THE LIVES AND WORKS OF AMADEUS GRABAU AND MARY ANTIN.

This story updated in 2021.

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Wonderland, Revere’s Brief, Brilliant Million-Dollar Amusement Park

In 1903 and 1904 the face of American public amusement changed with the successful opening of two new parks in Coney Island: Luna Park, which replaced Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park, and Dreamland, originally to be called Wonderland. Together with Steeplechase Park, they gave the relatively small Brooklyn district a high concentration of state-of-the-art attractions and rides.

Entrance to Wonderland through the Administration Building on Walnut Street, as it appeared in 1906.

Entrepreneurs in other cities saw the large crowds drawn by such parks and the potential profits. And so they started to construct their own amusement parks. They often named them after the Coney Island parks, with the result that Luna Parks, Steeplechase Parks, Coney Islands and Wonderlands blossomed across the country.

Because they all wanted the same high-draw popular rides, the parks were superficially very similar. Most had more than one of the popular attractions from the Coney Island parks. Those included a Shoot the Chutes water ride plunging into a central lagoon. They also had a LaMarcus A. Thompson Scenic Railway, a Tower of Light, a Fighting the Flames show and a Wild Animal Show.

The Wonderland Park that went up in Revere was another of these enterprises that hoped to cash in on such appropriated glory. Revere’s Wonderland, however, was larger and more impressive than most.

Revere’s Wonderland

It got its start with John Joseph Higgins, a real estate agent and a recent transplant to Chelsea, Mass., from Savannah, Ga. Higgiins managed to obtain almost 25 acres of land near Revere Beach. Located near the new narrow gauge railway, it was easily accessible from Boston – much more so than Norumbega Park to the west or the newly-opened Paragon Park on Nantasket Beach in Hull.

There were already amusements going up along the recently refurbished Revere Beach Boulevard, and Coney Island had shown the advantages of concentrating the amusements in one central location.

Somehow Higgins made the acquaintance of Floyd C. Thompson, who had spearheaded an attempt to build the largest amusement park in the world in Coney Island. Thompson bought up Steeplechase Park and nearby property. He intended to tear down most of the amusements and construct a completely new park.

The deal fell through when the consortium he put together could not raise enough funding to complete the purchase. This left Thompson and his co-investors on the edge of bankruptcy. But the experience left Thompson with contacts for performers, crowd-pleasing acts and architects of rides. He threw himself into the construction of Wonderland Park in Revere, lining up railroad and mining magnates as investors and contacting ride inventors.

A photograph of the Shooting the Chutes ride from the Wonderland Souvenir Book. You can see how the boat leaps into the air.

The Rides

The centerpiece of the park was, as in many of these parks, a Shoot the Chutes ride. A light skiff was drawn up a long ramp to a tower at the top, then released with a lubricating base of water. The boat would achieve such a high speed sliding down the ramp that it would skip across the surface of the lagoon like a stone. Thompson managed to acquire the largest Shoot the Chutes ride in the world, built for the 1904 St. Louis exposition. It had two tracks, so that boats could be released alternately from each side.

The front of the LaMarcus A Thompson Scenic Railway (which was next to the Beautiful Orient).

Revere Beach already had a Scenic Railway ride, but it was not constructed by the originator of that ride, LaMarcus Adna Thompson (no relation to Floyd). Floyd Thompson visited the Thompson Scenic Railway company and arranged to bring the first Thompson Scenic Railway to Massachusetts. The ride featured a railway track that undulated up and down with a gentle sinusoid rather than the high plunges and sudden turns that characterized later roller coasters. It took passengers to a separate building that housed dioramas of scenes from Venice and Vesuvius and other places around the world. Then it returned them along the undulating track to their starting point.

Descent Into Hell Gate

One of the most popular attractions of the St. Louis exposition had been the ride Creation, invented by magician-turned-ride inventor Henry Roltair. Dreamland at Coney Island had installed a somewhat reduced version of the ride. Wonderland attempted to obtain the rights to a copy of Creation, but the deal fell though.

The front of the Descent into the Hell Gate Ride.

They ended up with their own copy of another Dreamland attraction instead: Attilio Pusterla’s Descent into the Hell Gate. This ride took the passengers on a boat through a spiral track toward a center point where it dropped suddenly down into a lower level. The lower level was decorated as a cave populated by demons and mythological creatures. The riders disembarked and were brought to the throne of Satan himself, before emerging back into the sunlight.

Top view of the Descent into the Hell Gate ride from Attilio Pusterla’s patent, showing the spiral track the boats ran on (and, in dashes, the “underground” path they took after they dropped down).

Fighting the Flames

Another feature, virtually essential in amusement parks, was the Fighting the Flames show. This, too, had been a hit at the 1904 St. Louis fair. Both Luna Park and Dreamland at Coney Island imitated the show. They opened their copies within a few weeks of each other.

The “Fighting the Flames” postcard. This color postcard is a drawing, but it’s a pretty accurate portrayal of the “set”, judging from photographs, and it depicts the show as it must have appeared during a night show.

Thompson contacted the leading theatrical agent in New York to get the talent to build his own. The show featured an entire city square constructed in an amphitheater with 3,500 seats. Twice a day, actors would stage a street scene, in the midst of which a fire would break out. Real retired and off-duty firemen would then rush in with examples of the latest fire-fighting and rescue gear to put out the faux conflagration.

Wonderland also had a Hale’s Tours, a sort of virtual reality ride. Patrons sat in a replica of a Pullman railroad car and watched a motion picture of a railroad journey, seen from the point of view of the engine, projected on the front wall. The amusement park also had a ballroom and restaurant, a wild animal show, a circus ring and an infant incubator exhibit. It had a Japanese Village, complete with a miniature Mt. Fuji, and a Beautiful Orient Near Eastern attraction with camels, a bazaar and belly dancers).

The Japanese Village, including its own miniature Mt. Fuji. The attraction features a Japanese torii gate, several bridges, tea shops, a jiu-jitsu demonstration, and a lecture on the recent Russo-Japanese war.

Changes

The attractions at Wonderland didn’t stay static. The circus acts changed every week, for example. The theater that housed Gillette’s Dog and Monkey Circus the first month was used for the musical revue The South Before the War for the rest of the summer.

The Beautiful Orient attraction as it appeared in 1906. If you look closely you can see a camel in front (the exhibit had a camel barn in the back). The banners hanging in the archways read “Turkish Wrestlers”. The attraction also featured “muscle dancers, which we would call “belly dancers,” and were considered scandalous at the time.

Even larger changes occurred from year to year. Although the large attractions – Shoot the Chutes, Hell Gate, the ballroom – remained every year, many of the others changed. So for the second year The Beautiful Orient gave way to the Florida Alligator Jungle (despite keeping its domes and minarets). The South Before the War became Willard’s Temple of Music, an attraction called The Fatal Wedding (a magic illusion) was replaced by a giant glass-walled water tank called Under the Sea.

The next year Willard’s Temple of Music became Paradise – The Show Beautiful. Under the Sea became Pilgrim’s Progress (a funhouse), and the Florida Alligator Jungle became Darktown. For that third season, the Fighting the Flames show was replaced by Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show.

Panic of 1907

By the end of the third season, however, Wonderland was virtually bankrupt. A large part of the reason was the Panic of 1907, a recession on the same scale as the more recent one of 2008. It sapped discretionary income and many amusement parks around the country, their business drying up, were forced into bankruptcy as well. Revere’s Wonderland was able to keep going with some financial sleight of hand. With some severe belt tightening, they were able to keep Wonderland going, and actually turned a profit in 1909. But the park continued to decline, possibly because so much of the park had to be shuttered, but also because it was not directly on Revere Beach, and was losing business to attractions along the Boulevard. Wonderland closed at the end of the 1910 season.

Cover of the 1906 Souvenir Book. The painting on the cover is from early 1906 and represents the park as it was then visualized, not as it was when built. But it’s very close in appearance. Things such as the large fountain in the foreground and the large round building on the right were never constructed.

It was not an uncommon fate. Of six amusement parks named “Wonderland” that had opened in the United States in 1905 or 1906, five had closed by 1911. The original park that gave these their name – Dreamland in Coney Island – was in financial straits in 1910. It finally closed when a fire started, ironically in that park’s Descent into the Hell Gate ride. The resulting conflagration destroyed the entire park.

Fireproof

That would not have happened at Revere Wonderland’s Hell Gate ride. Revere’s park had been especially constructed to be fireproof. It had non-flammable materials where possible, asbestos sheeting between walls, fire-resistant roofing materials and plenty of fire hydrants. It also had its own in-house fire department, separate from the one used in the Fighting the Flames show.

The leading fire insurance magazine of the day wrote those features up as an example of safe and fireproof construction. In its five years of operation Wonderland never suffered a serious fire. But that still couldn’t preserve it from bankruptcy.

The author of this story, Stephen R. Wilk is a scientist, engineer and author who lives in Saugus. His previous books include Medusa: Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon and How the Ray Gun got its Zap!, both from Oxford University Press. He also writes genre fiction and a semiregular column for the Optical Society of America.

Check out more pictures of Wonderland at www.lost-wonderland.com. You can purchase Lost Wonderland: The brief and Brilliant Life of Boston’s Million-Dollar Amusement Park by Stephen R. Wilk from the University of Massachusetts Press or from book stores like bookshop.org.

This story last updated in 2022.

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12 New England Military Heroes, Sung and Unsung

New England has given countless military heroes to the United States of America over its history. Their heroism took many different forms. It includes Henry Mucci’s bravery during the great raid on a Japanese POW camp or John Stark’s leadership at the Battle of Bennington. It includes George Luz keeping up the morale of his Band of Brothers during the invasion of Normandy and Red Cross nurse Jane Jeffrey tending the wounded in a hospital tent while injured herself. And it includes such unlikely heroes as an 11-year-old drummer boy from Vermont and a Harvard-trained sculptor who battled off Rhode Island.

Here, then, are just a dozen stories about New England’s military heroes in recognition of all of their service.

Henry Mucci Launches the Most Daring Rescue of Our Time

In October 1944, more than 500 mostly American survivors of the Bataan Death March were held in the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines while the 6th Army marched toward Manila to liberate it from the Japanese. The American prisoners were in imminent danger of being massacred by the Japanese before their countrymen could save them.

Henry Mucci in the Philippines by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

Lt. Col. Henry Mucci, commander of the 6th Ranger Battalion, was ordered to infiltrate Japanese-held territory, rescue the POWs at Cabanatuan and bring them back to the American lines. On Jan. 28, 1945, Mucci led a strike force on a march 30 miles through Japanese territory and rendezvoused with two companies of Filipino guerillas near the POW camp. They learned a Japanese column was heading along the main highway away from Cabanatuan, and they decided to wait 24 hours so there would be fewer Japanese to defend the camp. By the next day, there were 3,000 Japanese in the vicinity against Mucci’s 128 Army Rangers and Alamo Scouts and 250 Filipino guerillas, some unarmed.

At dusk on January 30, the guerrillas set up ambushes along the highway. The American strike force crawled nearly a half mile from the woods across an open field to a ditch outside the camp fence. Mucci joined the attack on the ground, unusual for a colonel. An Army Air Force night fighter buzzed the POW camp to distract the Japanese.

Surprise

The attack took the Japanese by such surprise it lasted but half an hour. None of the Japanese troops or tanks got past the guerrillas along the highway or survived the strafing by P-61s from the 547th Night Fighter Squadron. All but one of the 513 prisoners were liberated from the camp. The remaining prisoner, either English or Canadian, had lost his hearing and part of his sight during his imprisonment. He was in a latrine during the fighting and didn’t notice until dawn that he was the only living person left in the camp. The Filipino guerillas found him and took him to safety.

Cabanatuan POWs celebrate their liberation by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

More than 500 Japanese troops were killed or wounded, 21 Filipino guerillas were wounded and only two Rangers were killed in the action. Some of the prisoners were so weak from disease and starvation they couldn’t walk, and the Rangers carried them — sometimes two at a time — out of the camp. They were carried in carts drawn by water buffalos to hospitals behind American lines. (Watch a short video here.)

The mission is considered the largest and most successful rescue mission in the history of the U.S. military. Henry Mucci was treated as a welcoming hero in his hometown of Bridgeport, Conn. He received the Distinguished Service Cross from his friend Gen. Douglas MacArthur. A section of Route 25 between Bridgeport and Newtown, Conn., was named the Col. Henry A. Mucci Highway in his honor, and a film called The Great Raid about the rescue was released in 2005.

(To see a short video of the American strike force behind enemy lines on the way to Cabanatuan, click here. For more photos of the liberation of Cabanatuan, click here.)

Willie Johnston Earns Medal of Honor at 11 Years Old

Willie Johnston of Salem (now Derby), Vt., is the youngest person to receive the Medal of Honor.

When his father enlisted in the Union Army in December 1861, 11-year-old Willie begged to go with him. He was mustered into the 3d Vermont Infantry Regiment on May 1, 1862, and soon saw action.

Willie Johnston

During the Seven Days Battles near Richmond, Va., the Confederate Army drove the Union Army into a retreat down the Virginia peninsula. Many of the men threw away their guns to lighten their load while retreating. Willie hung on to his drum and brought it safely to Harrison’s Landing.

Since he was the only drummer boy left with a drum, he was given the honor of drumming for the division parade. President Abraham Lincoln heard the story and recommended the boy be given a medal. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton presented the Medal of Honor on Feb. 15, 1864, when Willie was 13 years old – for something he did when he was 11.

It was the second Medal of Honor ever given. Johnston was mustered out of the army on Dec. 30, 1864. His drumsticks and a photograph of him are on display at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury, there is a statue of him in Santa Clarita, Calif., and a book, Mr. Lincoln’s Drummer, was written about him in 1995.

John Stark, Hero and Quote Machine

Gen. John Stark is now best known for coining New Hampshire’s motto, “Live Free or Die,” but in his day he was hailed as the Hero of Bennington.

John Stark, one of New England’s revolutionary heroes

As a young man, Stark impressed the Abenaki Indians who had taken him captive. He fought back against the young Indians who forced him to run the gauntlet. Later, he led daring raids as second in command of Roger’s Rangers. And as soon as he heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he marched his New Hampshire Militia to Boston. They fought valiantly in the Battle of Bunker Hill, and it may (or may not) have been Stark who said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

As a general in the Continental Army he led untrained men into battle at Bennington, where they mauled the British forces. There, Stark ordered the attack, rallying his men with the cry, “We’ll beat them before night or Molly Stark’s a widow.”

The battle boosted American morale, prevented the British from taking supplies and helped make possible the crucial victory of the Battle of Saratoga by thinning British forces.

After the war, Stark spent the rest of his life in Manchester, N.H. (then Derryfield). He declined an invitation to attend a reunion of the Battle of Bennington in 1809. He was 81 and too frail to attend, but he wrote a letter to his comrades that closed with the words, “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.”

Jane Jeffrey, From the Battle of the Marne to Maine

Jane Jeffrey (also spelled Jeffery), a registered nurse caring for a sick relative in Dorchester, Mass., volunteered for the American Red Cross during World War I. In July 1918 she was serving at a military hospital at Jouy-sur-Marne in France, where the overwhelmed staff treated wounded soldiers in tents with no plumbing. The hospital came under attack during the second battle of the Marne. Jane Jeffrey received the the Distinguished Service Cross for her actions during the air raid. Her citation reads:

Jane Jeffrey

For extraordinary heroism in action at Jouy-sur-Morin (Seine-et-Marne), France, on July 15, 1918. While she was on duty at American Red Cross Hospital No. 107, Miss Jeffrey was severely wounded by an exploding bomb during an air raid. She showed utter disregard for her own safety by refusing to leave her post, thought suffering great pain from her wounds. Her courageous attitude and devotion to the task of helping others was inspiring to all her associates.

While convalescing in America, Jane Jeffrey was offered a job as a nurse at the Poland Spring House in Poland, Maine, by its proprietor, E.P. Ricker. While at Poland Spring, she met and married his brother, Alvan Bolster Ricker. She left in her will a bequest to build the Alvan Bolster Ricker Memorial Library in Poland.

John Mihalowski, an Extraordinary Hero

When Worcester, Mass., native John Mihalowski enlisted in the Navy in 1927, he couldn’t have known he would play a key role in the greatest submarine rescue in history.

John Mihalowski

During his naval career, Mihalowski trained as a diver and rose to the rank of chief torpedoman. As the U.S. entry into World War II loomed, he was assigned to the crew of the U.S.S. Falcon.

On May 23, 1939, the Falcon was urgently summoned from New London, Conn., to rescue of the U.S.S. Squalus. The submarine had sunk during a test dive from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Some of the men had survived, but it was unlikely they would get out alive. There was little time before their air would run out, and no one had ever been rescued from a submarine that sank.

Once they reached the coast of New Hampshire, Mihalowski and several other divers managed to make four trips to the sub in an experimental diving ball. It was with great risk to their own lives that they carried all 33 survivors to the surface.

John Mihalowski received the Medal of Honor ‘for extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.’ Read more about the dramatic story of the greatest submarine rescue ever here.

Nathan Hale, the Only Volunteer

In September 1776, Gen. George Washington moved his army to New York City to prevent the British from invading. He was desperate to know where the British planned their attack, and he thought the only way to find out was to send a spy behind enemy lines.

Nathan Hale, from statue in City Hall Park, New York

Only one man volunteered: Lt. Nathan Hale. He was a 21-year-old former schoolteacher, born in Coventry, Conn., and trained at Yale College. He moved with the 7th Connecticut Regiment to Manhattan in 1776.

Hale was ferried behind enemy lines and discovered by the British as a spy in Lower Manhattan — how is unclear. He was questioned, found to have incriminating evidence on him and sentenced to hang. His exact last words may or may not have been, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” Several witnesses, though, said he behaved with dignity and composure. He was hanged at what is now 66th Street and 3rd Avenue in New York City. Today Nathan Hale is remembered as Connecticut’s state hero.

William Harvey Carney Never Let the Flag Touch the Ground

Sgt. William Harvey Carney was one of the many African-American men who volunteered for the the 54th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. It was a proud African-American unit of the Union Army established during the Civil War in 1863. Col. Robert Gould Shaw and 28 other white officers led the regiment.

William Harvey Carney

So many men volunteered the recruiters could be selective, resulting in what the surgeon general called the most “robust, strong and healthy set of men” ever mustered into service in the United States.

In July 1863 they saw their first action on James Island in South Carolina, where they stopped a Confederate assault. Shortly afterward they led an attack on Fort Wagner near Charleston, S.C. Shaw was killed in the battle; 271 of the 600 who charged the fort were killed, wounded or captured. During the battle, Sgt. Carney grabbed the U.S. flag as the bearer fell, carried it to the ramparts and back, singing, “Boys, the old flag never touched the ground.”

Union forces couldn’t take and hold the fort, but the 54th was heralded for its bravery. That acclaim encouraged enlistment of African-American troops. Thirty-seven years later, Sgt. William Harvey Carney was awarded the Medal of Honor. His citation reads,

When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under a fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded.

The battle was dramatized in the film Glory, and the 54th is memorialized in a bronze monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens facing the Massachusetts Statehouse.

The Band of Brothers’ Morale Booster

George Luz belonged to the famed Band of Brothers with Easy Company during World War II. Born in Fall River, Mass., he grew up in Warwick, R.I. He had nine biological siblings. Of Portuguese descent, he had a knack for mimicry and an impish sense of humor.

George Luz, one of the more lighthearted heroes

Luz enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 1942 and became a technician fourth grade in the 101^st Airborne Division. He jumped into Normandy on D-Day, finding himself alone on the battlefield. Luz later said he ducked behind a hedgerow and watched his fellow paratroopers shot by tracer rounds.

He regrouped with his company, and saw further action in Europe. At the Battle of the Bulge Luz lost several friends. After the war he married and settled down in West Warwick, R.I., where he worked as a maintenance consultant. He died in an accident when an industrial dryer fell on him. During his wake, 1,600 people lined up outside the funeral home to pay their respects.

Actor Rick Gomez portrayed Luz in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. He is credited with boosting Easy Company’s morale with his lighthearted wit during difficult times.

Esek Hopkins, Not One To Obey Orders

Hopkins, one of the more controversial heroes

Esek Hopkins was the controversial – and only – commander-in-chief of the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War. Born in Scituate, R.I., in 1718, he had sailed to nearly every part of the globe by the time war broke out.

On Dec. 22, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed him to head America’s infant navy to protect commerce. Ordered to head to the Chesapeake Bay, he instead took eight merchant ships outfitted for war to the Caribbean. He decided he risked annihilation of his small fleet in the Chesapeake. He wanted to divert the British Navy from the American coast and capture a prize rather than see his small fleet destroyed.

On March 3, 1776 he launched the Battle of Nassau in the first U.S. amphibious landing. Sailors and marines captured munitions and two ships, while severely injuring another. Hopkins was lauded by some, condemned by others for the bold stroke. He was relieved of his command in July 1778. The National Register of Historic Places now lists his home in Providence.

Donald Skidgel Gave His Life for Others in Vietnam

Sgt. Donald Skidgel of Bangor, Maine, gave his life at the age of 20 to save others on a battleground in Vietnam.

Sgt. Donald Skidgel, one of the heroes of the Vietnam war

He joined the Army in 1968 and soon rose to sergeant. On Sept. 14, 1969, his unit was guarding a convoy near Song Be when it came under fire from the enemy concealed in tall grass and bunkers along the road. Skidgel maneuvered off the road and began firing, silencing one enemy position. Then he ran across 60 meters of bullet-raked ground and fired at other enemy positions. He then saw the command group of the convoy coming under intense attack. Skidgel tried to draw the enemy’s attention away from it by manning a machine gun in his vehicle while his driver steered through the hostile fire.

An exploding grenade knocked him onto the rear fender. He staggered to his feet and continued firing until small arms fire killed him. He had saved the convoy command and inspired his fellow soldiers to defeat the enemy.

Donald Skidgel earned the Medal of Honor posthumously. On Oct. 15, 2011, the replacement bridge on Route 2 spanning the Sebasticook River in Newport Maine was dedicated as ‘The Donald Sidney Skidgel Memorial Bridge.’

John Lonergan: “Fall Out, Every Damned One of You!”

Capt. John Lonergan came to Vermont in 1848 as a refugee from famine and political oppression in Ireland. He worked as a cooper with his father in Winooski, but in 1862 formed a company of Vermont Irishmen who volunteered to fight for the Union Army.

Capt. John Lonergan, one of the Civil War’s heroes

Lonergan had ulterior motives: He wanted to develop military skills for the cause of Irish freedom.

He earned the Medal of Honor for his valor at the Battle of Gettysburg. During that battle, his company captured Confederate artillery. As the men moved the gun carriages to a better position, Lonergan realized they took heavy fire from the Codories House in front of them. Lonergan ordered his men to charge it. They surrounded the house and Lonergan knocked in the front door, bellowing, ‘’Surrender! Fall out here, every damned one of you!’ The Confederates tumbled out of the house, and Lonergan’s company took 83 of them captive.

After the war, Lonergan headed the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood and organized two failed raids into Canada from St. Albans. He wanted to pressure Britain to leave Ireland.

He died in 1902. In 2013 his great-granddaughter unveiled a memorial marker to honor him in Burlington’s City Hall Park.

Norman Cota, D-Day’s Overlooked Hero

Norman Cota, a native of Chelsea, Mass., graduated two months early from West Point in April 1917 when America entered World War I. At West Point, Cota and Dwight Eisenhower became good friends playing football.

By D-Day he was a 51-year-old brigadier general, assistant commander of the 29^th division. He was also one of the highest ranking officers on Omaha Beach that day and possibly the oldest person.

Norman Cota, one of D-Day’s heroes

Cota warned his men of the terrible confusion they’d encounter that day. He got it right. Troops landed in the wrong places and the German defenses were stronger than anticipated. The Allies couldn’t get a foothold on the beach under intense enemy fire and around obstacles and mines.

About one hour after the invasion started, Norman Cota rode a landing craft into a crossfire of bullets, artillery and mortar. He strode upright across the beach toward a group of Rangers pinned next to a sand dune by enemy fire. It was then that he may have uttered his most famous words: “Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Let us go inland and be killed.”

Into the Breach

He asked the commander of the unit, “What outfit is this?” When told it was the 5th Ranger Battalion, he replied, “Well, God damn it then, Rangers, lead the way!” That elite unit now uses Cota’s “Rangers lead the way!” as its official motto, but Norman Cota led the way that day.

Wire fences obstructed the soldiers’ path up the cliffs off the beach. A soldier placed a Bangalore torpedo – a tube filled with high explosives – under one fence and blew it away. The first soldier through the breach was killed by sniper fire. The men following him froze.

Cota raced into the breach. He led the soldiers who’d survived the invasion through the gap in the fence and up a steep bluff to overtake a German gun embankment. At one point he got ahead of his men and stood waiting for them, twirling his .45 on his finger.

Opening the gap allowed men and equipment to move off the beach to safer places inland. Norman Cota earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his leadership that day. An effort is underway to upgrade his decoration to the Medal of Honor.

This story about New England heroes updated in 2022.

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Norman Cota, Overlooked Hero of D-Day (And the Next)

Norman Cota may have been the oldest soldier to set foot on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He was certainly the baddest.

His command of shell-shocked troops through enemy fire earned him the honor of leading U.S. Army troops down the Champs Elysees in the parade celebrating the liberation of Paris.

Norman Cota. D-Day hero, led U.S. Army troops in the parade down the Champs Elysees celebrating the liberation of Paris.

He was highly decorated, remembered for his leadership, his courage, his ability to visualize a battle and his preparation of his men.

Norman Cota on D-Day personally led traumatized soldiers through a gap off bloody Omaha Beach.

Then he topped that performance the next day.

Norman Cota

He was born May 30, 1893, in Chelsea, Mass., to George William Cota, a telegrapher and later a storekeeper, and Jessie Mason, a schoolteacher from Croatia. He got the name Dutch from his friends while working in his father’s store.

Norman Cota graduated two months early from West Point in April 1917 when America entered World War I.

At West Point, Cota and Dwight Eisenhower became good friends playing football. Commissioned a lieutenant, Cota earned a promotion to major by war’s end.

On D-Day he was a 51-year-old brigadier general, assistant commander of the 29^th division. He was also one of the highest ranking officers on Omaha Beach that day and possibly the oldest person.

On Omaha Beach

Cota had correctly warned his men of the terrible confusion they’d encounter that day. Troops landed in the wrong places and the German defenses were stronger than anticipated. The Allies couldn’t get a foothold on the beach under intense enemy fire and around obstacles and mines.

About one hour after the invasion started, Norman Cota rode a landing craft into a crossfire of bullets, artillery and mortar.

Photograph entitled ‘Into the Jaws of Death’ shows American infantry troops landing on Omaha Beach. Photo courtesy National Archives.

He immediately set to making order out of chaos, setting up a command post on the beach. Two of his commanding officers were killed within feet of him.

Then he strode upright across the beach toward a group of soldiers pinned down by enemy fire next to a sand dune. It was then that he may have uttered his most famous words:

Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Let us go inland and be killed.

U.S. assault troops landing on Utah Beach. Photo courtesy U.S. Army.

Rangers Lead the Way

He asked the commander of the 5th Ranger Battalion, ‘What outfit is this?’ When told, he replied,

Well, God damn it then, Rangers, lead the way!

“Rangers lead the way!” is now that elite unit’s official motto — but it was Norman Cota who led the way that day.

The Germans had put up wire fences to obstruct the Allies’ path off the beach. A soldier placed a Bangalore torpedo – a tube filled with high explosives – under one fence and blew it away. The first soldier through the breach was killed by sniper fire. The men following him froze.

Cota saw what happened and raced into the breach. He led the surviving soldiers through the gap in the fence and up a steep bluff to overtake a German gun embankment. At one point he got ahead of his men and stood waiting for them, twirling his .45 on his finger.

Opening the gap allowed men and equipment to be moved off the beach to safer places inland. Norman Cota earned the Distinguished Service Cross for his leadership that day. An effort is underway to upgrade his decoration to the Medal of Honor.

U.S. Army Rangers on the cliffs of Normandy two days after D-Day.

This Is How You Take A House

The next day the Allies tried to broaden the beachhead, fanning out in vulnerable spots. The Germans continued their fierce defense. Many fired on the Allies from behind stone walls and from within stone barns and farmhouses.

Cota came upon a group of infantry pinned down by some Germans in a farmhouse. Stephen Ambrose in Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany recounts what happened.

Cota asked the captain in command why his men weren’t trying to take the house.

“Sir, the Germans are in there, shooting at us,” the captain said.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, captain,” said Cota, unbuckling two grenades from his jacket. “You and your men start shooting at them. I’ll take a squad of men and you and your men watch carefully. I’ll show you how to take a house with Germans in it.”

Robert Mitchum as Norman Cota in ‘The Longest Day.’

Can’t Do It For Everybody

Cota tried to get as close as possible to the house by leading his squad around a hedge. Then he suddenly shouted a war whoop and ran forward. His men followed, yelling as well.

Some of them tossed grenades into the windows while Cota and another soldier kicked in the front door. They threw a couple of grenades inside, waited for them to blow up and then raced into the house. The Germans who survived the explosions ran for their lives out the back door.

Then, wrote Ambrose,

Cota returned to the captain. “You’ve seen how to take a house,” said the general, still out of breath. “Do you understand? Do you know how to do it now?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, I won’t be around to do it for you again,” Cota said. “I can’t do it for everybody.”

Before Norman Cota died on Oct. 4, 1971, he got to see himself played by Robert Mitchum in the film, The Longest Day.

This story about Norman Cota was updated in 2022.

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1913, the Year of the Great Tango Controversy

In April 1913, 90-year-old Henry McHenry walked out of the Chelsea Old Soldiers Home, telling his friends he was going to town – which they assumed meant Boston – and he didn’t come back. Three days later, word arrived that he had surfaced in New York City with a pocketful of cash. McHenry pointedly told police, who wanted to send him home, that he would leave when he had seen what he came for. What enticed this cantankerous Civil War veteran and retired stonemason to travel all the way to New York? He wanted to see this new dance phenomenon everyone was talking about: the tango.

The year 1913, the writer H.G. Wells noted, was “the year of the tango.” This new dance where couples danced cheek-to-cheek, legs and arms pressed close against each other in an erotic embrace, had everyone’s attention.

Chelsea Old Soldiers Home (Boston Public Library Archive)

And New England was no exception. Just like controversial dances today, the tango in 1913 gave rise to fascination, longing, disgust and fury – depending, of course, on your age and point of view.

Tango Travels to America

Where the tango originated is open to debate. But it took firm root in Argentina. Poor people danced it in the slums. At the time, Argentina was a wealthy nation (seventh richest in the world), but there were tremendous inequalities. So while the wealthy danced their sedate steps at fancy balls, the poor danced the tango in bars, brothels and dance halls.

Among the young and wealthy, the tango became a fascination, and they would slip into the ghettos for a taste of the dance craze. As these young people went to Europe to polish their education, they brought the tango with them.

In 1909 and 1910, the dance began popping up. But in 1913, it took the entire world by storm, first sweeping Europe and from there to the rest of the world, including the United States. Among the non-dancers, curiosity turned to outrage as soon as they got a firsthand look at the new dance. It was disgust at first-sight.

Rushing headlong into the First World War, the nations and religions of the world didn’t seem to agree on much. But the tango proved an exception. The people loved it; the leaders did not.

Germany’s Kaiser banned the dance. And England’s Queen Mary also ordered it kept out of any palace functions.

“Tango Tee” from Puck Magazine.

In the United States, ministers, priests and rabbis began speaking out against the immoral dance. The more strident labeled it “unwholesome degeneracy.” They were especially angry at the hordes of adults who tangoed, making it seem acceptable to children. The more moderate clergy saw it as a passing fad; an evil, but a temporary one.

In the summer, towns throughout New England began waking up to the fact the tango being performed in their midst. Town officials began issuing directives to local dance committees to ban it from town and benefit dances.

Banning the Tango

In Lebanon, N.H., the selectmen announced that people attending dances at the town would be expelled for dancing the tango. But it had little effect. The students of Dartmouth College were singled out as the offenders, but the dancing continued until the selectmen finally voted to ban dances altogether.

In the popular summer destination of Nahant, Mass., the police chief learned the dance halls of Bass Point were promoting tango exhibitions to lure customers. He ordered all the posters for the event torn down and announced the police would stop any such dancing.

Opponents also expanded their battleground. “Medical authorities have lately expressed the opinion that these objectionable dances are nerve-wracking, and if persisted in must undermine both health and morals,” they told the newspapers.

And one newspaper editorial bemoaned the state of affairs where citizens would ignore the bills from their dentists and butchers to instead pay for tango lessons.

U.S. Vice President Thomas Marshall, speaking to a Methodist camp meeting in August of 1913, denounced the dance craze. The tango, turkey trot and slit skirts, he said, were all signs that the churches were losing their hold on people: “It is high time that the people were waking up.”

Finding Popular Support

The tango had advocates as well, mostly among dancers, dance instructors and young people. These factions tried a multipronged approach to making the tango acceptable. First, they tried to calm people’s sensibilities. They pointed out that new forms of dance often excited outrage. The polka, they noted, had been widely criticized when first introduced.

Similarly, the waltz scandalized people when it was introduced in America. It was known as the Boston, and a variation was known as the Boston Dip. Both were abhorred by moralists. But both were eventually accepted as proper. The tango was no different, its defenders said.

This line of reasoning did little to persuade the anti-tango factions.

Advocates reached out to their own medical experts, who pointed out the tango helped people lose weight and stay in shape.

But most of their efforts focused on convincing tango dancers themselves to embrace a more modest form of the dance, one that didn’t involve so much physical contact and flamboyance. And no dipping, they instructed. At least not “deep dipping.”

Banning the Tango

In October of 1913, Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald upped the ante.

The Boston Musician’s Protective Union had announced its opposition to “freak dances” that involved “glides, slides and hugs.” While the union didn’t pledge that its members would not play music for these dances if directed to, they would discourage it.

Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald, known as “Honey Fitz”

Fitzgerald put the force of government behind their opposition, and he announced a ban on the tango at all city dance halls:

“The prohibition includes all the so-called animal dances such as the turkey trot, bunny hug, bear dance, etc. also the kitchen sink, tango and other extravagances,” the announcement said.

The new rules further stated:

All dancing would stop at 11:45 on Saturday nights.

“No moonlight or shadow lighting effects. The hall must remain fully lighted.”

A police matron would be assigned to each dance hall, and have charge of the ladies room. A police officer assigned to the hall would have the authority to stop the music if necessary.

In November, Pope Pius X declared the tango immoral and off-limits to Catholics. If they partook in the dance, they were instructed to include it in their confessions and would need to do penance. Supporters of the dance fabricated a story that the pope had witnessed a demonstration of the dance and recanted his opinion, but the Vatican quickly shot that down as a falsehood.

With New England’s large Catholic population, the edict had weight. But not enough to kill the tango.

Happy Dance

The fight against the tango finally came to a head in 1914. At English High School in Lynn, Mass., students made headlines by boycotting dances where the principal had banned the tango.

Social and country clubs and hotels came under great pressure to eliminate the tango from the popular dances and “tango teas.” Some did, others did not. And people boycotted charity balls that banned the tango, which prompted a satirical cartoon in Puck magazine. Wellesley College vacillated, first banning the dance and then reversing course.

In the Massachusetts Legislature, Rep. Lewis Sullivan introduced a bill to outlaw the tango across the state. Like Henry McHenry, he traveled to New York to see a tango firsthand. He saw a sedate version of the dance. But he remained opposed to the dance in its more expressive forms.

By now, however, public opinion moved in the direction of the tango as people saw that it did no harm. With little remaining popular support for banning the dance, Sullivan’s proposal died in legislative committee.

Rudolph Valentino dances the tango

The tango soon became much more mainstream in the United States. Then it faded, only to be popularized again by Rudolph Valentino in the 1921 film, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Vice President Thomas Marshall would haul out the tango once again for political purposes. When a rival attempted to replace him on the ticket in 1916, rumors spread that the Missouri rival liked to dance the tango.

Vice President Thomas Marshall.

And in Catholic circles the dance remains controversial. When Pope Francis told reporters that he had danced the tango as a young man and still enjoyed the dance, his critics saw red and called him a weak successor to men like Pius X.

This story was updated in 2022.

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