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Six Canals That Built New England

In 1803, one of the first New England canals made Boston the undisputed commercial center of New England.

Called ‘the Incredible Ditch,’ the Middlesex Canal allowed a barge to haul 30 tons of goods back and forth between Chelmsford (now Lowell) and Charlestown (now Boston). A horse and wagon could haul perhaps three tons over the rough roads of the era.

Canal fever broke out in New England during the early 19^th century with the opening of the Erie Canal, finished in 1825. The Erie Canal gave New York City an unbeatable advantage over other port cities, and a frenzy of canal-building broke out throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic States.

New England states built dozens of canals, first to transport goods to seaports and then to power mills and factories. By 1840, there were 3,300 miles of canals in the United States.

Today the canals are mostly gone, filled in, paved over or maybe declared a Superfund site. Some still function as recreational trails, waterways for pleasure boats or even sources of hydroelectric power.

Here are six canals built in New England before the Civil War. If you know of other interesting canals, please mention them in the comments section below.

Farmington Canal

An old lock along the Farmington Canal.

The Connecticut Legislature granted six canal charters to private companies, but only two – the Enfield and Farmington – were actually built.

Beginning in 1825, Irish immigrants and farmers along the route dug the canal, four feet deep and 20 feet wide using handmade shovels, wheelbarrows and wagons. The private investors got no state help and struggled financially. It took 10 years to dig the canal, which began at New Haven, snaked through Granby and ended at the Connecticut River in Northampton, Mass. The laborers also built 60 stone locks along the 80-mile waterway.

When the New Haven-to-Farmington leg of the canal opened in 1828, four African American boys rode gray horses that pulled a boat carrying 200 dignitaries sipping refreshments. For a while the towns along the canal prospered, as apples, butter, cider, and wood flowed south to New Haven; coffee, flour, hides, molasses, salt, and sugar headed north.

In Plainville, Edna Whiting built a general store with doors opening onto the canal for dropoffs, which included the original Eli Terry clock weights.

But heavy rains damaged the canal, which required repairs, and toll revenue covered only 20 percent of expenses. The Farmington Canal turned a profit in just one of its first 10 years, and canal operations were slowly phased out. Eventually the Farmington Canal owners sold the land to the New Haven and Northampton Company, which built a railroad that became the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad.

The railroad was turned into a rail trail in the 1990s, and today the Farmington Canal Trail runs from downtown New Haven to Northampton, Mass.

Cumberland and Oxford Canal

A steamboat like the ones that used the Cumberland and Oxford Canal between Sebago and Long Lakes about 1910.

Unlike Connecticut, Maine lawmakers decided the state should support a new canal from inland lakes to the Portland seaport. A state lottery raised $50,000 and a bank was chartered to provide the funds for the $206,000 project.

The Cumberland and Oxford Canal, opened in 1832, connected the large lakes of southern Maine with Portland along the Presumpscot River. The 38-mile canal required 27 locks to reach Sebago Lake, 267 feet above sea level. Passengers paid a half cent to go through each lock.

Barges carried lumber, firewood, masts, barrel hoops and apples from Maine’s forests and farms to the sea. From Windham, the Oriental Powder Company mills sent down the canal a quarter of the gunpowder used in the Civil War.

When the railroad that became the Maine Central opened a station in Sebago Lake, the canal started its decline. A steamboat company continued to carry tourists between Portland and the Lake Region until the last steamboat Goodrich burned at its dock in 1932. Songo Lock is still in service for pleasure boats.

Tours have been held along the old canal in Portland.

Lowell Power Canals

The Pawtucket Gatehouse, which controls power from the canals.

Lowell, Mass., contains the world’s largest system of canals that generate hydro-electric power, but they began as a modest transportation waterway in 1796.

The Pawtucket Canal was built so New Hampshire logs could be hauled around the Pawtucket Falls in East Chelmsford, Mass., to shipyards in Newburyport, Mass.

By 1806, the Middlesex Canal made the Pawtucket Canal irrelevant.

In the early 1820s, associates of Francis Cabot Lowell (who had just died) gave new life to the Pawtucket Canal: They saw it could power textile mills instead of hauling canal boats. The subsequent canals that fed off he widened and deepened Pawtucket Canal created the City of Lowell.

First the Merrimack Canal powered the Merrimack Manufacturing Co. Then waterpower from the Hamilton Canal was sold to other companies. Then the Northern Canal and the Moody Street Feeder increased the waterpower to the system. The canal owners finally built the Pawtucket Gatehouse to control flow from the Pawtucket Dam into the Northern Canal.

Lowell’s six-mile canals are still there and working. They are part of the Lowell National Historical Park, established in 1978. For a map of walks along Lowell’s canals, click here.

Amoskeag Canals

One of the canals along the Amoskeag Millyard in Manchester, N.H.

Manchester, N.H., was a tiny town called Derryfield when industrialist Samuel Blodget declared, “For as the country increases in population, we must have manufactories, and here at my canal will be a manufacturing town, the Manchester of America!”

It was 1807, and Blodget was as good as his word. He had gotten money from state lotteries in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In 1798, he broke ground on the canal, which ran parallel to the Merrimack River. Ten years later, the granite-lined canal was ready for business.

Why a canal? It was nearly impossible to travel up the Merrimack River in New Hampshire. Between Chelmsford, Mass., and Concord, N.H., the river falls 135 feet, including a 54-foot drop at the Amoskeag Falls. The canal bypassed the falls through a series of locks.

In 1810, the first textile mills were built along Blodget’s canal, then renamed the Amoskeag Canal. They used secondhand machinery bought from Samuel Slater, but it didn’t work well. In 1831 the Amoskeag Manufacturing Co. bought the land and water rights along the canal and built the enormous brick Millyard, which became a manufacturing powerhouse until the 1920s.

A second canal was built one block east of the Amoskeag Canal along the length of the Millyard and parallel to the river. The two canals powered the mills. By the 1880s the mill owners switched to electricity and steam power (with disastrous results in 1891).

The canals were paved over in the 1970s. One became Commercial Street, the other a railroad track.

Today, the remains of two small canals sit at the top of Manchester’s Millyard near PSNH’s Energy Park.

Blackstone Canal

The Moshashuck River portion of the canal in Providence, ca 1968. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

During the canal mania of the 1820, Providence merchants wanted to profit from trade with the farming communities near Worcester County and the Blackstone Valley. Until then, farmers sent their products by wagon to Boston.

In 1823, shortly before the Erie Canal opened, Massachusetts gave a charter to the Blackstone Canal Co. Rhode Island soon followed. Irish immigrants dug the canal, a ditch next to the Blackstone River. In Providence, the Moshassuck River became the lower part of the canal.

Benjamin Wright, the chief engineer, had supervised work on the Erie Canal and applied lessons learned to the Blackstone Canal.

The 45-mile canal opened on Oct. 7, 1828, when the canal boat Lady Carrington arrived in Worcester. For the next 20 years, the canal brought prosperity to farmers, sparked the construction of textile mills along its banks and sustained the growth of Providence and Worcester.

In 1847, the Providence and Worcester Railroad opened, putting the Blackstone Canal out of business the next year.

Today, long sections of the canal belong to the Blackstone River and Canal Heritage State Park in Massachusetts and the Blackstone River State Park in Rhode Island.

The WaterFire Festival in Providence.

Every summer in Providence, the Moshassuck and Providence rivers attract tourists to the WaterFire Festival. People light 86 fires in braziers anchored just above the waterline to the sound of world music.

Pine Street Barge Canal

Aerial view of the Pine Street Barge Canal and Lake Champlain.

In the 1860s, Burlington, Vt., ranked one of the busiest lumber ports in the United States, and the Lake Champlain waterfront near Battery Street ran out of room. City planners dreamed up the Pine Street Canal to expand the waterfront and allow the loading and unloading of canal boats. A breakwater was also built near the shore of Lake Champlain.

The plan worked. Commerce flourished and factories sprang up along the Pine Street Barge Canal. Unfortunately, the factories also dumped toxic waste into the water.

The U.S. government has designated the Pine Street canal, now a 38-acre polluted swamp, as a Superfund site – perhaps the only superfund site with four shipwrecks in it. At the canal entrance, surveyors found three construction barges from the mid-20th century and the mid-19th century schooner Excelsior.

The brick factories that grew up around the Pine Street Barge Canal are now restaurants, an antiques mall and yoga studios.

Images of canals: Farmington Canal By Staib (talk) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22646095; Pawtucket Gatehouse By Emw – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21042220. This story updated in 2022.

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New Hampshire’s Constitutional Convention Creates a New Nation

In February 1788, George Washington was staying close to home at Mount Vernon, anxiously awaiting news from New Hampshire. The state’s constitutional convention was to be held on February 13, and two of his friends were running it: John Langdon and his former general John Sullivan.

Washington had been relieved to hear that on Feb. 3, 1788, Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the Constitution. From Boston, Henry Knox wrote to Washington to say New Hampshire would surely follow its neighbor. Knox thought of New Hampshire as a stronghold for Federalists, who supported the document.

It had to happen, Washington thought. The current government created under the Articles of Confederation was in chaos. The new country had huge war debts and no way to pay them. And often, enough congressmen didn’t show up to make a quorum, so they couldn’t conduct daily business.

Meanwhile, two of the biggest and most powerful states, New York and Virginia, quarreled bitterly over the Constitution. Rhode Island had no intention of ratifying it. Washington realized if New Hampshire didn’t ratify the Constitution, the country probably wouldn’t have one.

Then the devastating news arrived: New Hampshire’s constitutional convention adjourned after nine days on February 22 — without ratification.

John Langdon

Founding Father John Langdon

John Langdon, politician and Portsmouth merchant, had gotten very rich in international trade. An early revolutionary, he built a grand Georgian mansion that Washington later visited.

Despite their friendship, John Langdon helped Ona Judge Staines evade Washington’s nephew when he came to New Hampshire. The nephew wanted to bring her back as Martha Washington’s slave.

Like the other Portsmouth shipping merchants, John Langdon ardently supported the Constitution. He thought a stronger national government would protect and expand American commerce.

But Langdon understood something outsiders didn’t. Most New Hampshire people lived inland from New Hampshire’s 18-mile coastline. They didn’t expect to benefit from maritime commerce, nor did they like coastal merchants. They opposed the Federalists, because they feared a central government would concentrate power and destroy democracy.

The Massachusetts Constitutional Convention

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention finished in Philadelphia in September 1787. Nine of 13 states had to approve the document for it to take effect. By the time Massachusetts got around to its Constitutional Convention on Jan. 9, 1788, Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut and Pennsylvania (though only barely) had ratified.

The Old State House in Boston today..

The Massachusetts delegates argued for days inside the Old State House in Boston. Washington kept tabs on developments. “We are locked in ice,” he wrote John Jay on Jan. 20, 1788.

Gov. John Hancock had stayed away with gout, but when he finally arrived at the Constitutional Convention he had a proposal. Hancock suggested Massachusetts recommend a bill of rights. When Sam Adams supported Hancock, Massachusetts ratified the Constitution on Feb. 3, 1788.

New Hampshire’s Constitutional Convention would follow in just 10 days.

John Sullivan

John Sullivan by A. Tenney

New Hampshire Gov. John Sullivan was a canny politician who knew the western part of the state wouldn’t vote to ratify the Constitution.

He was the son of an Irish schoolmaster and his wife who immigrated to America. Born in Somersworth, N.H., he practiced law in Durham, N.H., and formed a friendship with Gov. John Wentworth.

But then Sullivan turned away from Wentworth in the run-up to the Revolution. Along with John Langdon, he became a delegate to the Continental Congress. When war broke out, Sullivan received a commission as a brigadier general.

For five years after the war ended, either John Langdon or John Sullivan served as governor of New Hampshire.

Sullivan supported ratification, and he tried political trickery to get it. He called a meeting of the state Legislature in January 1788, when winter roads made it hard for westerners and northerners to travel to Exeter. The largely Federalist Legislature agreed to hold the Constitutional Convention in February, when snow and ice still blocked the roads.

But Sullivan’s maneuvering didn’t work. Nor did a pro-ratification propaganda campaign that included ministers preaching supportive sermons. While Washington watched from Mount Vernon, strong opposition broke up New Hampshire’s Constitutional Convention after nine days.

The surprising development did huge damage to the cause. New York’s governor, George Clinton came out as an ardent opponent of the Constitution. Opposition also gained steam in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

But then Maryland ratified the Constitution in April, South Carolina in May. So Langdon and Sullivan decided to try again in June.

Vote Counting

Sullivan and Langdon had counted votes carefully. They persuaded four Federalists to stay away from the Constitutional Convention because their towns bound them to oppose ratification.

Old North Meeting House, destroyed in 1870

Ninety of the 113 delegates showed up on the first day, June 18, 1788, at Concord’s Old North Meeting House. By the second day, 107 delegates were present. Pierce Long, a Portsmouth delegate, described ‘dry arguments gone over again’ that left both sides tired out.

When Maj. Joseph Kimball of Plainfield, a supporter, arrived on the third day, Langdon and Sullivan decided to go for it. They knew four of the five still-absent delegates opposed ratification, and they might show up at any moment.

Since proposed amendments had won the day in Massachusetts, John Langdon headed a committee to propose New Hampshire’s own amendments. They were the same as those in Massachusetts, but New Hampshire added three: there was to be no quartering soldiers in private houses; no laws touching religion; no disarming of citizens unless they’d been in actual rebellion.

Then Joshua Atherton, a former Loyalist from Amherst, made a motion. He wanted the Constitution to take effect only with the amendments. He strongly opposed the Constitution because it endorsed slavery.

Samuel Livermore, a Federalist from Holderness, moved that the amendments not be a condition of ratification. He won.

Then Atherton sent fear into the hearts of the Federalists. He moved to adjourn.

Atherton lost. The vote would take place the next day.

On June 21, 1788, the clerk took the yeas and nays. Ratification of the Constitution passed by the surprising margin of 57-47. The amendments had done it.

The Constitution was now the law of the land. New Hampshire had put it over the top and, in the process, become the ninth state in the republic.

Aftermath

Virginia and New York had yet to ratify the Constitution, however. Could the Republic stand without those two large important states as part of it? Four days later, Virginia ratified the Constitution. New York would follow in a month.

News traveled slowly in those days. Virginia was already celebrating its own ratification with cannon fire, banquets and toasts. Then an express rider arrived at Mount Vernon before dawn with the surprising news that New Hampshire had ratified the Constitution.

George Washington attended a stag dinner at John Wise’s Fountain Tavern to celebrate. He was greeted outside the tavern with the fire of 10 cannon and 10 toasts, to celebrate the 10 new states.

He rejoiced at the decision ‘by the People of this great Country to preserve the Union–establish good order & government — and render the Nation happy at home & respected abroad.’

This story about New Hampshire’s constitutional convention was updated in 2023.

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The Secret History of New England’s Sundown Towns

“Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark” reads the faded road sign, an artifact on display at the Tubman African American Museum in Georgia. The sign was found outside one of Connecticut’s sundown towns.

Sundown towns were municipalities that prevented African-Americans or other minorities from lingering after dark.

A sundown town sign found in Connecticut

James Loewen, a sociologist who taught at the University of Vermont, discovered thousands of sundown towns throughout the United States, including New England.

Beginning in the 1890s, New England’s small towns and rural communities drove African-Americans into urban ghettoes, Loewen contends.

Small towns kept out not just black people, but Jews, Catholics, Greeks, Italians, Indians, even trade unionists and gays. They used violence and intimidation and restrictive covenants and mortgage practices

Great Migration

Some New England counties drove out their entire African-American populations. From 1890 to 1940, many African Americans who lived in rural areas of New England had to move to cities.

From 1890 to 1930, the U.S. black population increased 60 percent. Between 1915 and 1930, more than a million African-Americans moved from the South and the Caribbean to the North. And yet entire counties in New England became whiter.

In Maine, for example, only two of the state’s 16 counties had fewer than 10 blacks in 1890. By 1930, Maine had five.

Writes Loewen, in Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, 14 Maine counties had at least 18 African Americans. By 1930, only nine did. Five black people lived in Lincoln County in 1930, where 26 had lived in 1890. Hancock County had 30,000 people in 1930, but only three were black. Forty years earlier, there had been 56.

Vermont had no all-white counties until 1930. New Hampshire had no all-white counties in 1890, but two in 1930.

Rise of the Klan

Keeping out African-Americans happened well before the 19th and 20^th century. In 1717, Town Meeting in New London, Conn., voted against free blacks living in the town or owning land anywhere in the colony.

But in the 1890s, racism deepened in the North as memories of the Civil War faded. Waves of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Canada and southern Europe moved into Yankee mill towns. The influx of immigrants sparked the revival of the Ku Klux Klan — and created sundown towns.

In the early 1920s, the Klan began to hold regular meetings and cross-burnings in small towns in eastern and central Massachusetts. A Klan rally near Montpelier, Vt., in 1925 drew 10,000.

Klan members march on Washington in 1926

The Klan spread rapidly in Maine, with 15,000 showing up at the state convention in 1923. The KKK held its first daylight parade in the United States in Milo, Maine, in 1923, and others soon followed.

In 1925, The Washington Post estimated New England had more than a half-million Klansmen, with 150,141 in Maine and more than 370,000 across the other New England states.

Though Klan membership fell almost as quickly as it grew in New England, the KKK left a legacy of sundown towns. Their history is rarely told.

Tales of Sundown Towns

Loewen collected anecdotes about places where minorities were afraid to spend the night.

Italian stonecutters who quarried in Portland, Conn., were told to be on the other side of the Connecticut River by sundown. The bridge would then stay open at night so no one could pass over it.
One resident of the Wollaston neighborhood of Quincy, Mass., remembers an incident from the mid-1950s: “My father, a jazz musician, had some of his musician friends over one night for some jamming. Most of the musicians involved were black. The next day, a delegation of neighbors…came by to register their disapproval that my father had blacks in their neighborhood after dark.”
A similar story was told about Burlington, Conn. An African-American family friend from Waterbury came over to play cards. “He always made a habit of leaving before sunset and if he could not, he would spend the night on the couch. … [In] earlier years, whenever he would drive in or out of town, the police would stop and harass him, detain him for questioning, or pull him over and run his license and plates. Comments were made to the effect that being a black man in Burlington after dark, he couldn’t be up to any good…”

Starting in the 1930s, the Negro Motorist Green Book guided African-American travelers away from sundown towns. Black travelers typically carried blankets, food and cans of gasoline in their cars to avoid embarrassment, or worse.

Restrictive Covenants

In 1905, restrictive covenants began appearing in property deeds. They typically stated, “No portion of these premises shall ever be sold to or occupied by anyone other than members of the white or Caucasian race.” Then they often added, “Nothing in the foregoing shall preclude live-in servants.”

The exception rather than the rule: Jackie Robinson at home in Stamford with his wife Rachel, sons David, Jackie Jr.. and Sharon.

A 1940 deed for a development called High Ledge Homes in West Hartford, Conn., said, “No person of any race except the white race shall use or occupy any building on any lot.” The deed allowed one exception for people of a different race: the owner’s employees.

Similarly, Manchester-By-The-Sea in Massachusetts only allowed blacks and Jews to live within its borders if they were servants.

Government-Supported Sundown Towns

The federal government encouraged sundown towns through discriminatory mortgage practices. Between 1934 and 1968, 98 percent of loans approved by the federal government in Connecticut went to white, non-Hispanic borrowers.

In 1954, baseball great Jackie Robinson bought a house in Stamford, Conn., but only with help from prominent white people. He proved the exception in suburban New England.

In Nahant, Mass., a property deed written in the 1920s contained language forbidding the owner to sell the house to Greeks or Jews. (Nahant, ironically, now has the densest population of Greek descendants in New England.)

Anti-Semitism

A film that exposed Darien as one of Connecticut’s sundown towns.

In 1922, the Sharon, Conn., chamber of commerce distributed a leaflet asking homeowners not to sell to Jews. Another realtor in Greenwich, Conn., sent a similar memo. It said, “From this date on, when anyone telephones us in answer to an ad in any newspaper and their name is, or appears to be Jewish, do not meet them anywhere.”

Darien, Conn., did not let Jews spend the night within its borders. The 1947 film Gentleman’s Agreement , co-starring Paul Revere’s descendant Anne Revere. exposed the practice. Gregory Peck played a reporter pretending to be Jewish to write a story on anti-Semitism.

The Civil Rights movement then started to change all that with laws against racist policies. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited housing discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, family status or national origin.

But attitudes didn’t necessarily change.

In 1973, all-white Ashby, Mass., voted at Town Meeting 148 to 79 against inviting people of color into town.

Photos: Darien, Conn., via Wikimedia. This story about sundown towns was updated in 2023. With thanks to Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James Loewen.

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Six Historic Downtown Department Stores

In the time before Amazon, downtown department stores used to provide a special shopping experience. People dressed up when they went to visit downtown department stores, plastic charge cards in hand. They often stayed for the day, patronizing nearby theaters, banks, restaurants and other stores, maybe Kresge’s or Woolworths.

Downtown department stores played a vital role in local economies — and to a city’s identity.

They offered convenience, modernity, style and elegance: the best and latest merchandise, large selections and top quality. And the great downtown department stores prided themselves on gracious service.

At Christmas, downtown department stores took on magical qualities with festive shop windows, patient Santas and evergreens and twinkling lights everywhere.

Downtown department stores have pretty much disappeared, replaced by suburban shopping malls, which in turn are falling prey to Amazon.

Here are some memories of six downtown department stores that once graced New England:

Department Store Historic District

G. Fox, the most beloved of Hartford’s downtown department stores

Customers from the entire region of central Connecticut traveled to Hartford for the city’s three leading downtown department stores: Sage Allen & Co., Brown Thomson & Co., and G. Fox & Co. Now, along with the 1889 Sage Allen sidewalk clock and the G. Fox warehouse, they belong to the Department Store Historic District.

Henry Hobson Richardson, of Trinity Church fame in Boston, designed the Brown Thomson building, and Cass Gilbert designed both the Woolworth Building in New York and G. Fox in Hartford.

If you couldn’t find an item in one of those stores, you probably couldn’t find it. At Brown Thomson you could buy a Cadillac along with a full line of automotive supplies.

Hartford’s department stores appealed to all the senses. At Sage Allen, the aroma of spicy sticky buns pulled customers into the downtown basement. Shoppers also loved G. Fox’s cream-cheese-and-date-nut-bread-sandwiches.

None of the downtown department stores treated their customers as well as G. Fox. If a customer wanted to return a spool of thread, a vehicle from the G. Fox fleet would pick up the thread.

Since 1847, the store always offered free home delivery, first by wheelbarrow, then by horse-drawn carriage, then by car and truck. In 1947, G. Fox marked its 100th anniversary by delivering packages by helicopter. On Christmas Eve, G. Fox kept a small staff and drivers on standby until midnight for desperate parents who needed an emergency Christmas gift.

Everyone in central Connecticut knew exactly where to meet someone at the clock — the Sage Allen sidewalk clock, a landmark since 1889. The clock disappeared after a windstorm damaged it and finally returned in working order in 2007.

All three of Hartford’s great downtown department stores are sorely missed. They disappeared in the early 1990s, felled by two large regional malls.

884-956 Main St., 36 Talcott St., Hartford, Conn.

Porteous

Portland’s Congress Street Porteous today

Porteous, Mitchell and Braun opened in 1904 on Congress Street in Portland, the largest department store in Maine. Porteous boasted ‘lavish and delightful’ Christmas decorations of colored lights, thousands of yards of greenest evergreen and ‘truly fascinating show windows.’

Two years after it opened, the store advertised in the Chamber of Commerce Journal of Maine. “We have spared neither time, money, nor inventive genius, to make this store … THE Christmas Store of the City and State.” The merchandise was “peculiarly and ideally correct for Holiday gift giving. Every nook and corner of this splendid building radiates the true Christmas spirit. COME AND SEE WHAT WE HAVE DONE FOR YOU!”

And the people did come to see the spectacular store decorations and awe-inspiring toy and doll departments.

One shop window displayed an old-fashioned circus. Inside the store, hundreds of decorated Christmas trees, Christmas baskets and red holly bells wowed customers.

The store hit its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s, expanding to shopping malls in Auburn, Bangor and Presque Isle, Maine, Burlington, Vt. and Newington, N.H.

The Texas-based Dunlaps store chain started running Porteous in 1993. By the late 1990s it began closing stores because it couldn’t compete with other retailers. By 2003 Dunlaps shut the doors to the last Porteous store in Presque Isle. The flagship store in Portland closed just short of its 100^th birthday that same year. The store is now home to the Maine College of Art.

522 Congress St., Portland, Maine

Filene’s

Filene’s Christmas decorations, 1950. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Filene’s got its start as Filene’s Sons and Co. in 1881. William Filene, a German-Jewish immigrant from Prussia, had arrived in Boston in 1848 and began building up his small empire of little retail shops.

Filene’s sons, Edward and Lincoln, made the store a household name after inheriting it in 1901. Edward pioneered the store’s basement annex, thronged by bargain-hunters week after week. The annual wedding dress sale drove brides-to-be into frenzies and usually made the local news.

One suburbanite born in 1946 remembers the glory years of Boston’s downtown department stores: “We went “in town” for everything,” ML told the history of department stores. “You would never consider buying a winter coat locally – you always made a trip to Filene’s, Jordan Marsh, R. H. Stern or R. H. White.” Filene’s actually sent photographers to customers’ homes to take baby pictures — or you could go to the store for that first communion photo.

Shoppers at Boston’s downtown department stores at Downtown Crossing pre-1956. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

At Christmas, the store shook off its humbler aspect, decked out and decorated for Christmas. It became a centerpiece of Boston’s Downtown Crossing, along with rival Jordan Marsh.

From 1930 through the 1990s, Filene’s stores sprang up in malls throughout America.

The 1990s brought on the store’s shrinkage, however, and in 2006 the name Filene’s disappeared from the retail landscape, merged with Macy’s. The former flagship Boston store now houses the Irish retailer Primark’s first U.S. store.

10 Summer St., Boston, Mass.

Varick’s

Varick’s is on the right

Elm Street was the place to be in Manchester, N.H., at Christmas. When the shifts ended at the gargantuan Amoskeag mill yard, workers went to Elm Street to mingle with friends, have a meal and spend their paychecks at the shops that lined the street.

In the heart of the shopping district was the John B. Varick Co. at 809-819 Elm St. For years it was the largest hardware store outside of Boston, but it also sold a huge variety of merchandise, including sporting goods, jewelry, silver, fishing gear, seeds, toys, luggage and radios. Varick’s stocked up on silverware at Christmas, a popular item during the season.

Varick’s was founded in 1845 by John P. Adriance. His nephew John B. Varick came to work in the store at age 16, and two years later bought the company from his uncle with a partner. Varick ran the business for 53 years until his death in 1902. Sons Thomas and Richard took over the store, and by 1916 they owned the Varick Building, half of the Varick-Sullivan Building and three warehouses, two of which were next to railroad tracks and could handle seven cars of freight at once.

Varick’s offered low prices because of low insurance rates, no rent, ideal freight conditions and its ability to buy in large quantities without borrowing money, The Granite State Monthly explained.

The store also boasted an early and massive sprinkler system. The reason? Fire wiped out the store in 1888, 1892 and 1914. The last fire gutted the five-story store brick building after it reached the sporting goods department and ignited powder and cartridges.

John B. Varick’s sons had died by 1943, and the business was sold to the Gould family after World War II. By 1951 the company closed its doors. Today the building includes retail space and apartments.

819 Elm St., Manchester, N.H.

Westminster Arcade

Westminster Arcade, the granddaddy of Providence’s downtown department stores. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Providence’s Westminster Arcade, built in 1828, is the first indoor shopping mall in America. In the heart of downtown Providence at Westminster and Weybosset Streets, it’s a long narrow building with European-style skylights, Greek columns weighing 13 tons each and granite walls. Inside, walkways were lined with shops that had interior-facing windows displaying their wares.

Cyrus Butler built the arcade, and at first people called it Butler’s Folly because it was so far from the town’s retail district. Eventually three sisters opened a fashionable hat shop in the building. The shop was popular and other retail establishments located nearby on Westminster Street.

“I have a wonderful memory of my mom bringing my brother and me to the Arcade at Christmastime,” remembered Audra Wooten. “It was so festive and exciting to see as a child.”

The three great department stores that grew up on Westminster Street – Shepard’s, Cherry & Webb and Gladdings – decked themselves out for the holiday, and if you got lost you waited for your parents under the tall, neon-lit Shepard’s clock.

The Arcade survived a fire and three hurricanes, but never made money and was nearly torn down in 1944. The Metropolitan Museum of Art called it one of the finest commercial buildings in the history of American architecture.

In 1976, it received National Historic Landmark status. The building fell into disrepair, and by 2008 it had emptied. Developers restored it and by 2013 converted the building into retail space and tiny apartments.

65 Weybosset St, Providence, R.I.

Montgomery Ward

Montgomery Ward, one of Burlington’s downtown department stores.

Church Street in Burlington, Vt., has long been a busy downtown shopping corridor lined with impressive brick buildings. At Christmas, the lighted trees along Church Street imparted a festive holiday air.

Montgomery Ward’s 515th store opened on Church Street in Burlington on Dec. 28, 1929. It missed the Christmas season though plasterers, carpenters and painters tried to get it done in time by working around the clock.

The company had settled on an ambitious plan to expand its stores, but fast. Its mail-order sales had dropped, and its rival Sears was opening hundreds of stores on the outskirts of major cities.

Montgomery Ward decided to challenge Sears in smaller cities, where country people were driving their new cars to shop. By 1930, two out of three Vermont farms had a car, up from one in four a decade earlier.

In 1927 Montgomery Ward had only 36 stores. Two years later, it had more than 500, 200 more than Sears. Architects in Chicago probably designed the one in Burlington, which has wide Chicago windows on the second floor.

The Burlington store announced its opening with an ad in the Burlington Free Press promoting electric washing machines, vacuum cleaners, men’s
suits, ladies’ dresses, automobile tires, radios, and a ‘smart three-piece living room suite covered with peach mohair.’

The company’s timing — the eve of the Great Depression — didn’t help the store’s survival. It lasted only 32 years, closing in December 1961. Various retailers have operated in the building since then, and a bank now uses part of it.

Today Church Street belongs to Burlington’s lively outdoor pedestrian mall.

52-54 Church St., Burlington, Vt.

Photos: Howland-Hughes By GrammarFascist – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44118309. Montgomery Ward by By Mfwills; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:32, 22 October 2013 (UTC) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29141129. This story about downtown department stores was updated in 2022.

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6 of the Oldest General Stores in New England

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colebrook Store

The Colebrook Store

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

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

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

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

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

Hope General Store

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

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

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

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

Davolls General Store

Davoll’s General Store

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

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

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

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

Old Country Store and Museum

The Old Country Store and Museum is on the far right

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

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

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

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

Brown & Hopkins Country Store

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

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

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

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

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

1179 Putnam Pike, Chepachet, R.I.

Dorset Union Store

Dorset Union Store

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

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

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

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

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

This story about general stores was updated in 2022.

13 comments 7.3K views

6 Historic Stagecoach Stops You Can Visit

The history of New England’s post roads and their stagecoach stops mirror the history of the country. The roads date back to the Pequots who used the trails that grew into the post roads for generations. The same trails carried John Winthrop on his journeys from Boston to Springfield.

Traffic on the roads shrank as King Philip’s War turned them into dangerous gauntlets. They expanded again as the war ended and horses made travel more enticing and the mails more efficient.

The heyday of the stagecoaches in the 1800s really drove a blossoming of the post roads. They grew from the first Upper Post Road into a maze of roads that wound their way into every corner of New England.

These stagecoaches created economic booms wherever they went, bringing commerce as well as jobs. Stagecoach stops, needed every 12 to 20 miles or so, were essential, especially in the early days of the stagecoach era. These inns provided income to their owners, and many others: drivers, ticket agents, coach makers, blacksmiths, stable hands and farmers.

Today, the vestiges of the stagecoach era remain with us. Many of the roads New Englanders travel today were once used by the stagecoaches. And along those roads, some of the old stagecoach stops still serve up food, drink and comfort to the weary traveler.

Here are six still open to the public today, one in each New England state:

Old Riverton Inn

The Old Riverton Inn, one of Connecticut’s many, many stagecoach stops back in the day.

Several years before the American Revolution, stagecoaches and stagecoach stops appeared on the Upper Post Road from New York to Boston, and from Hartford to Norwich and Providence. The war interrupted service, but resumed when it wound down. Stagecoach service expanded quickly on the new turnpike roads and postal routes.

Levi Pease began a stage service between New York and Boston on the Upper Post Road. He got the mail contract for all of New England from the U.S. Congress in 1789. Then he expanded his business into Northern New England and to Albany.

By 1827 Connecticut had 26 stage routes. By then it took only 36 hours to travel between New York and Boston vs. the previous six days. Taverns were generally 12 to 18 miles apart. Drivers announced their arrival at stagecoach stops by blowing on a trumpet.

During the early part of the 19^th century, Connecticut developed the most complex network of toll roads in New England. The state had few centers of wealth like Providence or Boston, and market towns competed fiercely for the trade of the back country. Between 1792 and 1839, 1,600 miles of turnpike road were created in Connecticut. The Talcott Mountain Turnpike was a key part of the route from Hartford to Albany.

Jess Ives opened the Ives Tavern or Ives Hotel in 1796 along the Hartford-to-Albany Route in Riverton, Conn. Today it’s known as the Old Riverton Inn and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It overlooks a wild and scenic section of the Farmington River.

The artist who painted murals on the walls of the Hobby Horse Bar also painted murals for the 1936 New York World’s Fair. The inn features bar stools made of saddles on kegs.

For more information about the Old Riverton Inn, click here.

Coach Stop Inn

The Coach Stop Inn, one of the stagecoach stops along the way from Bar Harbor to Maine’s interior.

Stagecoach lines began regular service between Maine towns after the Revolutionary War. The first stages ran between Portland and Portsmouth, N.H., a journey that took three days in 1787. By 1825, a stage could make the journey between Bangor and Portland in 36 hours.

The Coach Stop Inn in Bar Harbor was built in 1804 for newcomers who came to build homes, farms and ships on Mount Desert Island. Known as the Halfway Tavern, it often hosted sailors in the early days. Patrons would arrive by sea and take a stagecoach from the tavern into Maine’s interior towns.

Wealthy patrons charmed by fresh air, beautiful scenery and hiking trails made Bar Harbor a fashionable summer resort during the Gilded Age. In 1947, a fire that burned much of Maine also destroyed some of Bar Harbor’s hotels and mansions. The oldest hotel to survive the fire is now the Coach Stop Inn, a luxurious bed and breakfast.

For more information, click here.

Longfellow’s Wayside Inn

The most famous of the stagecoach stops, The Wayside Inn.

The Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Mass., boasts that it’s the oldest operating inn in the United States. It has accommodated travelers along the Boston Post Road since 1716. Just a few miles down the road from historic Minuteman National Historical Park in Concord, it began life 300 years ago as Howe’s Tavern. David Howe ran it as an extension of his own home.

David handed the property to his son Ezekial – a soldier in Sudbury’s militia during the American Revolution. The Howe family continued to operate and expand the inn until 1861, serving traffic between Worcester and Boston.

The inn stopped operating as a traditional inn in 1861. The owners converted it into something more like a boarding house and dance hall.

But in 1862, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow sealed the inn’s place in history. Longfellow visited the building and published his now-famous Tales of the Wayside Inn in 1863. From that time on, the inn was the destination of tourists and literary pilgrims who wanted to see first-hand the inspiration for Longfellow’s book.

In 1923, the inn took another important step into immortality when automobile magnate Henry Ford bought the property. Ford then began the restoration and expansion that gave shape to the inn’s current configuration.

For more information, click here.

Coach Stop Restaurant & Tavern

The Coach Stop, one of New Hampshire’s many stagecoach stops in the early 19th century.

In 1786 the legislature in New Hampshire expanded the system of post roads to travel to four sections of the state. Though the earlier post roads moved mail and people between Portsmouth and some points west and north, only later did the routes reach deep into the western portion of the state.

One such line ran from Portsmouth across the state’s southern tier over to Amherst and back, creating the need for taverns and inns along the way.

Londonderry’s Coach Stop Restaurant & Tavern began life in 1810 as the home of the town’s doctor. Later in the 1800s it was maintained as Plummer’s Tavern, located at the junction of two post roads. One carried coaches east and west to Nashua and the other carried traffic north and south to Manchester and Concord. For a map of all stagecoach lines operating in New Hampshire in 1833, click here.

Today the restaurant and inn maintains much of its historical charm, with signs of the original elements of its days as a coach stop remaining intact.

For more information, click here.

Stagecoach House Inn

The Stagecoach House Inn, for many years one of the stagecoach stops along the New London Turnpike.

Settlers first came to Wyoming, a historic village in Richmond, Rhode Island, in 1757. Wyoming grew and prospered when the Brand’s Iron Works was founded across the Wood River in Hopkinton in 1787. Sometime around 1800, an inn was built at a strategic crossroads in Wyoming.

Textile mills sprang up in the area, and in 1815 the New London Turnpike opened right past the inn. The new road brought stagecoach riders between Richmond and New London, Connecticut

By 1835, the New London Turnpike – now Route 3 – connected Providence and New London. It proved to be faster and more direct than the Old Post Road, which followed the coastal route. The village thrived, and for many years an inn once known as Dawley Tavern continued as a stagecoach stop.

By the 20^th century, industry began to founder along the Wood River. That, however, allowed Hopkinton and Wyoming to retain much of their historic 19^th century character. The National Register of Historic Places lists almost a square mile of the two villages as the Wyoming Village Historic District. It includes the old ironworks, Greek Revival, Late Victorian, and Federal architecture in both Wyoming and Hopkinton.

Today the Dawley Tavern is called the Stagecoach House Inn at 1136 Main Street.

For more information, click here.

Stagecoach Inn

The Stagecoach Inn, a fitting name for one of Vermont’s old stagecoach stops.

At the start of the 19th century, ancient footpaths connected Burlington and Montpelier in Vermont. In 1805, the 36-mile Winooski Turnpike along the Winooski River was chartered to connect the two major towns.

The old Winooski Turnpike turned into U.S. Route 2, the main highway connecting the White Mountains to the Adirondacks. It cuts through Waterbury, the town where Ben and Jerry’s make their ice cream.

In 1826 either a Mr. Parmalee or a lawyer named Dan Carpenter had a structure built on the corner of the Winooski Turnpike and what is now Route 100. The building served as a tavern and inn for travelers and as a meeting place for locals.

By the mid-1800s, a farming family named the Henrys owned the inn. Their eccentric daughter Nettie married an Ohio rubber baron, Albert Spencer. Nettie smoked cigarettes, chewed tobacco and wore a celluloid eyeshade. She expanded and improved the old family house in Queen Anne Style.

Nettie Spencer died in 1947. The home was later run as a rooming house and fell into disrepair. A young couple from Boston bought the property in 1985 and rebuilt the house. Today it’s the Old Stagecoach Inn, a historic bed-and-breakfast in the center of downtown Waterbury.

For more information about the Stagecoach Inn click here.

This story about New England stagecoach stops was updated in 2021. If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about six Revolutionary taverns here.

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