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How the Irish Immigrants Came to New England

In 1718, five ships from Ulster arrived in Boston Harbor. Their passengers, Scots-Irish immigrants, came at the invitation of the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts. The Puritans sympathized with their plight, fellow Protestants who suffered from Anglican intolerance.

But the Puritans didn’t exactly welcome them with open arms. And they weren’t the first Irish immigrants to New England.

Their story usually begins with the Great Hunger of the mid-19^th century, but it started well before that—and lasted long after.

The First Irish Immigrants

Before England destroyed Ireland’s merchant marine, Irish merchants traded with the American colonies as early as the 1630s. Irish fishermen from Galway and Waterford settled the Isles of Shoals, an archipelago of tiny islands nine miles from the Maine and New Hampshire coast. At first seasonal residents, several hundred Irish and other European fishermen had a permanent settlement on the islands by 1653.

The Isles of Shoals by Childe Hassam (painted many years later)

The archipelago developed into a thriving entrepot where they caught fish, salted it and sold it on the world market. Fishermen named Kelley, Haley and McKenna lived on the islands with their families. They abandoned the Isles of Shoals during the American Revolution.

The Puritans in Boston looked down on the Shoalers, a hard-drinking, Maypole-erecting lot. They also viewed the Protestant Irish who arrived in 1718 with a measure of dismay.

Protestant Irish

The Scots who settled in Ulster beginning more than a century earlier were called the Ulster Scots-Irish, or the Ulster Presbyterians. Squeezed between hostile Irish Catholics and the Anglican Church, they had to pay tithes, but couldn’t hold official positions. Parliament passed the Test Act in 1704, which required them to take Holy Communion in the Anglican Church — otherwise they couldn’t hold civil or military office and their marriages weren’t recognized.

The impoverished Scots-Irish immigrants who arrived in Boston in 1718 created a problem: How to support them? The Rev. Cotton Mather wrote,

But what shall be done for the great number of people that are transporting themselves thither from ye North of Ireland?

Massachusetts Gov. Samuel Shute envisioned Irish pioneers settling on the frontiers of Maine and New Hampshire, buffering the colony from French and Indians. So in 1720, an ordinance passed in Boston ordering ‘certain families arriving from Ireland to move off.’

Boston Harbor ca. 1765

Some settled in Nutfield, N.H., now called Londonderry. Some went north to Casco Bay, where they had a land grant. Fifty families moved to Worcester. From those settlements they spread out, and they kept arriving from Ulster. According to one estimate, the Scots-Irish made up 10 percent of New Hampshire’s population in the 18^th century.

In 1730, Massachusetts Gov. Jonathan Belcher tried to annex New Hampshire. But enough Londonderry Scots-Irish lived along the border to make sure it didn’t happen.

Today, many place names in Maine and New Hampshire reflect their Scots-Irish roots: Derry, Antrim and Londonderry, N.H.; Belfast and Limerick, Maine; Colrain, Mass.; and Londonderry, Vt.

Early Irish Immigrants

By 1650, a steady stream of Boston-bound ships began to leave Ireland filled with redemptioners, many of them Irish Catholic. They were indentured servants who agreed to near-slavery for seven years in exchange for passage, food, shelter and clothing.

They sailed from Dublin, Cork and Waterford to Marblehead, Boston, Providence and Piscataquis County, Maine. Some came from Galway via Newfoundland, where they fished.

Some came by way of Barbados, where Oliver Cromwell had deported 50,000 Irish Catholic peasants as indentured servants in the mid-17^th century. Ann Glover was one. She was living in Boston by 1680 and hanged on Nov. 16, 1688 as a witch. The proof: she could only say the Lord’s Prayer in Gaelic.

The Puritans treated Irish-Catholic newcomers even worse than they treated the Protestant-Irish immigrants. They wouldn’t let people own property or carry on a business in Boston unless they took the Oath of Allegiance to some Protestant faith.

The Catholics kept out of the Puritans’ way and they stayed out of the historical record. Historian Michael O’Brien argues that many Irish Catholics abandoned their faith and became Baptists and Methodists. “There was no alternative for them,” he concluded.

One Irish immigrant who came to Rhode Island left his mark. The Irish-Anglo philosopher George Berkeley arrived in Newport in 1729, hoping to found a college. He stayed for a little less than three years, but helped found the Redwood Library and donated his library to Yale College.

American Revolution

The Irish may have avoided the Puritans, but they had no love for the English. So when the American Revolution broke out, Irish immigrants and their descendants played major roles in achieving American independence.

Hibernian names fill the muster rolls of the Continental Army. The name “Kelly” alone appears 695 times. So many fought, in fact, that one British general testified at the House of Commons that “half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland.”

Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart 1806

Some of the best fighters and leaders on both sides of the American Revolution were Irish immigrants or sons of Irish immigrants. Continental Army generals Henry Knox and John Stark were Scots-Irish, and Gen. John Sullivan’s parents had emigrated from County Cork. American general Richard Montgomery and his friend Guy Carleton, a British general, both grew up in Ireland.

Eight of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had Irish birth or ancestry as did seven of the 54 framers of the Constitution.

Great Hunger

Between 1815 and 1845, as many as 1 million Irish immigrants came to “Amerikay,” looking for opportunity. They found a measure of it, building canals and railroads and factories.

But it wasn’t until the potato crop began to fail in 1845 that the enormous influx of Irish immigrants sailed into New England. Hunger and poverty had pushed them out of Ireland, but the promise of work pulled them to the region’s industrial powerhouses. They flooded into Boston, Pawtucket, Lowell, Portland and Burlington, and to the manufacturing cities in the Merrimack and Connecticut river valleys.

Irish famine victims, Bridget O’Donnell and her children, 1849.

From 1845 to 1855, the so-called famine ships brought 2 million Irish immigrants to ports in Boston, New York and Canada. Many came to Canada first because of the cheaper fare, then made their way to New England. Those immigrants had a nickname: Two Boaters.

Many Irish immigrants died aboard the famine ships, also known as coffin ships. A Boston priest wrote a survival guide for those who dared make the journey. Father John O’Hanlon began it with a caution: “Change of location does not always bring better fortune to the emigrant.”

Suffering and Discrimination

The Irish immigrants often lived in crowded, unsanitary housing. Some dwellings had 100 people living in them with one sink and one toilet. In 1849, a cholera epidemic struck Boston. Of the 611 people who died of it, 500 were Irish.

“No Irish Need Apply” signs appeared in many a shop window and classified advertisement. The Irish endured frequent mockery as drunken, slovenly, ape-like creatures. They also suffered outright persecution.

Thomas Nast cartoon titled, “The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things.”

In Rhode Island, a man named John Gordon was hanged in 1845 for the murder of a prominent industrialist. His real crime was being Irish.

Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland, Maine, waged a war against booze in 1855. The city’s Irish community thought he was waging war against them. They had a point. When a riot over rum broke out, Dow called out the militia. A fisherman was shot to death in the melee.

When the Civil War started, many Irish immigrants fought in the Union Army, not always willingly. Some viewed it as practice for their military campaign to free Ireland from England. In 1870, a fanatical Irish-American army decided to conquer Canada to win Irish freedom. They invaded Canada from a Vermont farm, but their effort failed.

Depiction of Irish immigrants arriving at Constitution Wharf, Boston, 1857

Another Wave

Even after the famine subsided, they still came. From 1855 to 1921, large numbers of Irish immigrants left their farms for jobs in the industrial cities of the Northeast. They came to Portland, Maine, Burlington, Vt., and the New Hampshire cities of Manchester and Dover. They came to Pawtucket, Providence and Cranston in Rhode Island, to Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut. And they especially came to Massachusetts, to Boston and its North and South Shores, to the Merrimack River Valley and to Holyoke and Worcester.

Then, in 1922, quotas restricted the number of immigrants into the United States, including the Irish.

Concentration of Irish in America, 1970, according to the U.S. Census.

Triumph

When John F. Kennedy won the presidency of the United States in 1960, people viewed it as a triumph over a century of discrimination. But his family had already succeeded. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, had amassed a fortune and served as U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Many other Irish immigrants and their descendants had thrived in politics, people like Boston Mayor James Michael Curley and Speaker of the U.S. House Tip O’Neill.

Today, more than one in five residents of Massachusetts and New Hampshire claims Irish ancestry. And about 18 percent of people living in Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont have Irish forbears. Connecticut may be the least Irish state in New England, with only 16.6 percent of its people claiming Irish blood. But still, it’s in the top 10, with only Delaware claiming slightly more.

The world’s largest Irish flag at Rowe’s Wharf in Boston.

Boston, the most Irish city in the country, has retained much of its Irish culture and still attracts Irish immigrants. Mayor Marty Walsh’s parents were born in Ireland. Boston has the Celtics, Boston College, many churches and pubs, as well as the legacy of Whitey Bulger. Boston’s South Shore, known as the Irish Riviera, gave us the Dropkick Murphys.

Many Bostonians take off from work on March 17, a holiday in Suffolk County. To appease Yankee sensibilities, though, it’s called Evacuation Day. Though it commemorates the British departure from Boston, there’s no Evacuation Day parade.

Largest Irish flags By John Hoey from Framingham, MA, United States – World’s Largest Irish Flag (1), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411665 and https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411658.

This story last updated in 2023.

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The Story of Love Story: How Erich Segal Won Fame and Lost a Career

Before he wrote Love Story in 1968, Professor Erich Segal was a star on Yale’s campus. Not because he taught ancient Greek and Latin literature, but because he co-wrote the screenplay to the Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine. Segal’s celebrity helped fill a 600-seat hall for his lectures on classical civilization.

“I became a figure of awe to the kids here,” he told an interviewer. “On football weekends they’d bring their dates around to Ezra Stiles [house] and reverently point out the window of the study in which I’d written Yellow Submarine.”

But then Harper & Row published Love Story, his 131-page tearjerker about a rich Harvard jock and a poor brainy Cliffie who dies. Critics trashed the book, Yale denied him tenure and students at the Ezra Stiles College, where he lived as a resident scholar, campaigned to eject him.

But Love Story also made him a world-famous millionaire who hobnobbed with celebrities.

Erich Segal, Author of Love Story

He was born June 16, 1937, in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of three boys. Even as a child, Erich Segal wanted to be a writer. His father, an orthodox rabbi, wouldn’t hear of it. He wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. So Erich studied Greek, Latin and Hebrew at Midwood High School. On afternoons he took the subway to the Jewish Theological Seminary, and in summer he took classes in Switzerland. He didn’t have much of a social life.

Segal did win election as class president and the Latin prize, so naturally he went to Harvard. He graduated as class poet and Latin salutatorian in 1958, something only T.S. Eliot had done. Then at Harvard he earned a master’s the next year and a doctorate in comparative literature in 1965.

Erich Segal

He had a penchant for pop culture, though. As a senior undergraduate, he wrote a play for the Hasty Pudding theatricals called The Big Fizz, something of a big flop. But then as a graduate student he wrote a spoof on the Iliad called Sing, Muse, performed at Harvard’s Leverett House. A producer saw it, liked it and took it off Broadway, where it ran for 39 shows. Richard Rodgers of Oklahoma! fame noticed it and invited Segal to work with him on a musical. And that’s how he eventually got to collaborate on the animated film, Yellow Submarine, released in 1968.

Back at Harvard

Segal had been teaching classic literature at Yale, but in 1968, he took a sabbatical at Harvard to write a screenplay. He stayed at Dunster House, where he grew friendly with two college roommates who later became famous.

Dunster House

Segal combined the roommates into the character of Oliver Barrett IV, the preppie jock with a poet’s heart. Oliver’s wealthy, powerful father opposes his marriage to Jenny Cavilleri, a baker’s daughter from Cranston, R.I.

In the story, Oliver defies his father and marries Jenny, who gives up a music scholarship to put him through law school. And then, at 25, she dies.

Segal later said he based the character of Jenny on a girl he had dated. And he based Oliver on Tommy Lee Jones, the sensitive jock, and his roommate, Al Gore.

Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones

“Gore] was always under pressure to follow in his father’s footsteps and that was the conflict, to keep up the family tradition,” Segal explained to a New York Times reporter in 1997.

Jenny Cavilleri had nothing to do with Tipper Gore, Segal added.

Love Story

Love Story came as a shock – not because of sex or nudity, there was none. But as a book, its publisher thought it might sell a few thousand copies. And as a film, its producer thought it might make a small profit.

At first, Segal couldn’t interest anyone in his screenplay. Finally, his agent suggested he turn it into a book. Segal did just that.

And so Harper & Row decided to print 5,000 copies of Love Story in time for Valentine’s Day 1970. At the last minute, plans changed to 7,500 copies.

Then lightning struck. Network TV hostess Barbara Walters mentioned Love Story on air one morning.

[She] “began her program by saying: ‘I was up most of the night reading a book I couldn’t put down, and when I finished it, I was sobbing. I cried and cried’,” recalled Mel Zerman, a former Harper & Row executive, in an interview with the American Legends website.

“That’s all the women of America had to hear,” Zerman said. “By the time bookstores were opening all over the United States they were getting calls for a book called Love Story by someone you never heard of named Erich Segal. Harper went crazy. We were out of stock within hours….”

Love Story rocketed to the top of the New York Times best-seller list and remained there for 41 weeks, ultimately selling 21 million copies.

Love Story, the Movie

As luck would have it, filming ended on Love Story, the movie, three days before Love Story, the book, hit the bookstores. Segal had finally sold his screenplay to Paramount Pictures.

Model-turned-starlet Ali MacGraw had read the script and liked it. She was then married to Robert Evans, the head of Paramount, and persuaded him to produce it. He thought it might make a small profit and gave it a limited budget of $2.2 million. A half-dozen future stars turned down the role of Oliver – including Michael Douglas, Jon Voight and Peter Fonda. Finally Ryan O’Neal took the part. And Tommy Lee Jones made his film debut as Oliver Barrett’s roommate Hank.

Arthur Hiller began directing the film in Massachusetts and New York even before the book came out. Most of the scenes took place in winter, and production at Harvard damaged the campus. Fake snow killed three trees, and the university denied many future requests to film there.

Hiller also shot the movie at the Myopia Hunt Club in Hamilton, Mass., the Boston Public Garden and at the frame house at 119 Oxford St. in Cambridge. There, MacGraw’s character utters the famous words, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” The American Film Institute voted the line as the #13 greatest movie quote of all time. MacGraw later called it “a crock” and O’Neal said, “You better say you’re sorry.”

The film debuted on Dec. 16, 1970 and smashed box office records.

The Critics

From 1955 to 1975, Erich Segal ran the Boston Marathon. After Love Story, a spectator shouted at him, “Hey Segal, You run better than you write.”

“The banality of Love Story makes Peyton Place look like Swann’s Way as it skips from cliche to cliche with an abandon that would chill even the blood of a True Romance editor,” wrote Newsweek.

Love Story was nominated for the National Book Award, but the fiction judges threatened to walk out unless it was withdrawn. It was.

William Styron called it a “banal book which simply doesn’t qualify as literature.”

New York Times film critic Vincent Canby called it “almost unreadable.” He loved the film, though.

“What can you say about a movie about a 25-year-old girl who died?”’ wrote Canby. “That it is beautiful. And romantic…That it looks to be clean and pure and without artifice, even though it is possibly as sophisticated as any commercial American movie ever made.”

Little Richard

John Simon panned Love Story the film in the National Review, and then attacked Segal to his face on the Dick Cavett Show.

Segal compared himself to the Greek playwright Euripedes, loved by the people but hated by the critics. Simon retorted Segal could choose to be a knave or a fool. “You chose the latter, deluded by your own lack of talent,” Simon said.

Another guest, Little Richard, famously ended the debate by screaming at Simon “Shut up!”

Not Scholarly Enough

Unlike Little Richard, Segal could not silence his critics.

For the next decade or so, he continued to seek the limelight. Nothing came close to the success he had with Love Story. He worked as a sportscaster for the 1972 Olympics, wrote more novels, taught at various colleges and edited books about such classic authors as Aristophanes, Menander and Plautus. In a 1970 interview with film critic Roger Ebert he bragged about dating a Playboy model.

Questions arose, though, about the seriousness of his scholarship.

“Suddenly the professor who wrote Love Story found his students and fellow academics questioning his seriousness of purpose,” wrote Linda Pelzner in The Professor Who Wrote Love Story.

Old campus of Yale University

“They were hostile, they were deprecating, they were implying–and sometimes saying explicitly–that I had vulgarized myself, or that in fact I was always vulgar,” Segal told Wendy Smith of the Chicago Tribune.

Segal protested he’d always been an academic. “It’s the most important thing I do.”

For a while, he devoted himself exclusively to academics. It didn’t work. He eventually admitted the doubts of others undermined his confidence.

His colleagues suggested he take a leave of absence from his teaching job at Yale. He did. Never again would academics be his full-time profession. He taught as an adjunct or a visitor.

The End

In 1974, Segal met Karen James, a British children’s book editor. They married a year later and had two daughters, Francesca and Miranda. They lived in London.

When he was in his 40s, Erich Segal contracted Parkinson’s disease. He continued to write and teach. On January 17, 2010, he died of a heart attack.

With thanks to Erich Segal: A Critical Companion by Linda Claycomb Pelzer, ‎Linda De Roche.

Images: Erich Segal By Karen Segal – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18038980. Yellow Submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16104951. Dunster House By Margaret Maloney – Mdmalon at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2473300. Love Story May be found at the following website: http://www.pophistorydig.com/?tag=erich-segal-yellow-submarine., Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33459577. Yale campus By Namkota – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50507969.

This story last updated in 2023.

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The Brahmin Rough Riders of New England

Some people believe that the Rough Riders were almost all cowboys from out West. After all, it had earned the nickname “The Cowboy Regiment.”

But that wasn’t entirely the case, as you shall see. Brahmins from New England with refined backgrounds also joined the Rough Riders.

Men from every New England state volunteered for Teddy Roosevelt’s U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the Rough Riders. Massachusetts had as many as 25. As a matter of fact, the actual commander of the unit, Leonard Wood, hailed from New Hampshire. Frederic Remington featured Woodbury Kane from Rhode Island in his famous painting of the immortal charge up San Juan Hill.

Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders on top of San Juan Hill.

Roosevelt had four recruiting stations out West, in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and the Oklahoma/Indian Territories. He had vast experience in the West and knew the cowboys already knew how to ride and shoot. But Roosevelt knew another target-rich area full of ready-for-action men: His wealthy, pedigreed friends throughout New York and New England.

Roosevelt put out the word. They responded in droves from polo clubs, boxing clubs, duck blinds, steeplechase courses, yacht clubs, Ivy League athletic fields and glee clubs. Many had graduated from Harvard.

One Rough Rider, James McClintock, who hailed from California, said they were in it for the adventure.

The Rough Riders are the stuff of legend, having generated a movie, a television show and, of course, a President. They were, however, one of the shortest lived units in American military history. They only existed for four months and 13 days before they disbanded.

Rhode Island Rough Riders

Woodbury Kane, Newport;Joseph S. Stevens, Newport; Norman Maxwell, Newport; Charles Hatch, Newport; Joseph F. Flynn, Cranston.

Rough Rider Woodbury Kane

Woodbury Kane, a classmate of Teddy Roosevelt’s at Harvard, was born in Newport, a cousin of John Jacob Astor IV. A noted yachtsman, he belonged to the New York Yacht Club and served on the crew of the Columbia in the 1899 America’s Cup Race. He was also a noted big game hunter.

After graduation, he lived the life of a bon vivant in Newport and New York. In April 1898 he and other East Coast friends joined the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry.

After enlistment, he, William Tiffany and other East Coast friends donated two $7,500 Colt machine guns to the unit. When the unit expanded to a thousand men he received a lieutenant’s commission.

While serving in the Rough Riders he was always noted for being dressed to a T, no matter the conditions. While leading K Troop in the charge on San Juan Hill, he was wounded in the forearm. Kane was awarded a citation for gallantry and promoted to captain.

He spent the rest of his life living the life of a dandy until a heart attack cut him down at the age of 46. His obituary noted he left no children, but he did leave his beloved polo pony.

Vermont

Ira A. Hill, Grand Isle; Wallace Batchelder, Chester.

Wallace Batchelder graduated from Chester Academy in Chester, Vt., before enlisting in the Rough Riders. He later fought in the Philippines under General Wood. After his service he returned to Vermont, where he became a lawyer and chaired the state’s committee to elect Roosevelt President of the United States in 1904. He later broke with Roosevelt, who in 1912 sent him a telegram telling him not to support any candidate who didn’t support Roosevelt. Batchelder replied he wouldn’t support Roosevelt.

New Hampshire Rough Riders

Dudley S. Dean, Laconia; Walter F. Hickey, Nashua; Leonard Wood, Winchester.

Leonard Wood was the actual commander of the Rough Riders; Teddy Roosevelt was his second in command.

A descendant of four Mayflower passengers, he trained as a physician at Harvard Medical School. He served as a major general in the Army. When he came to command the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry in Cuba, he was a seasoned Indian fighter in the West and had already been awarded the Medal of Honor. After the Spanish-American War, he served as Governor-General of the Philippines and contended for the Republican nomination for President in 1920.

Dean was an All American football quarterback for Harvard from 1888 to 1890. He participated in the charge on San Juan Hill. That was not to be his last military adventure. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant colonel In the U.S. Army Air Force. He was the executive producer of the play Winged Victory, which ran from November 1943 to May 1944. He lived until the age of 79, passing away in 1950.

Dudley Dean, football star

Dudley’s son John H. Dean played football for Harvard too. At Harvard, he befriended Joseph P. Kennedy and they spent summers together at Cohassett, Mass.

Maine

Guy Muncie, Calais; Harrison J. Holt, Portland; Frederick C. Wesley, Bangor.

Harrison Holt graduated from Phillips Andover and Harvard. Upon his Harvard graduation in 1898 he enlisted with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. After the war and some business ventures in Mexico he joined the New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser as a reporter. Later in life he wrote novels and detective stories, including The Calendared Isles, a Romance of Casco Bay (read it here) and Midnight at Mears House.

Connecticut

Edward C. Hall, Wallingford.

Unlike most of the Ivy League Rough Riders, Edward Hall graduated from Yale, not Harvard. Upon graduation in 1894, he went to work for Westinghouse and did a brief stint at a North Dakota ranch before enlisting with the Rough Riders. After the war he joined General Electric in Lynn, Mass., then transferred to the Schenectady office, where he died in 1912.

Massachusetts

Harry A. Curtis, Boston; Prescott H. Belknap, Brookline; John D. Hubbell, Boston; Rufus K. Thomas, Boston; Wellman H. Saunders, Salem; John P. Gardner, Boston; Guy H. Scull, Boston; Harry A. Davis, Boston; Francis B. Crowninshield, Marblehead; William H. Mitchell, Salem; Winslow Clark, Milton; Edward F. Donnelly, Boston; Michael F. Hogan; William T. James, Fitchburg; Arthur M. Leroy, Boston; Raymond Morse, Springfield; Edward A. O’Brien, Charlestown; William J. Tudor, Boston; Harry C. White, Somerville.

Francis Boardman Crowninshield, another Harvard graduate, went on to become a noted international yachtsman. He fought with Troop K of the Rough Riders and took part in the charge up San Juan Hill. In 1900, he married Louise DuPont from the famous chemical family. In 1911, he won the King of Spain’s Cup in Spain, now among his many trophies at the Eastern Yacht Club in Marblehead, Mass.

Rough Riders. Image courtesy New York Public Library.

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

This story updated in 2022.

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How Narragansett Beer Survived Prohibition (But Still Couldn’t Escape the Government)

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, anyone who walked into a New England tavern and ordered a beer probably got a Narragansett. That wouldn’t have been a surprise, since the sign outside probably said, “Narragansett Lager Beer” along with the name of the tavern.

Narragansett, fondly known as ‘Gansett, ranked for decades as New England’s most popular beer. The Red Sox drank it, Dr. Seuss created its mascot and Captain Quint crushed a can of it in Jaws. You just couldn’t miss its slogan, “Hi, Neighbor! Have a ‘Gansett!”

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Jaws, Narragansett brought back a vintage 1975 can.

Though Narragansett beer survived Prohibition, it couldn’t escape the U.S. Justice Department. Government lawyers actually tried to enforce antitrust laws back in the 1960s . However, they ignored other threats to competition — including a certain St. Louis-based beer maker.

The old Rhode Island beer died in the 1980s, but that isn’t the end of the story.

Birth of Narragansett Beer

In December 1890, the Narragansett Brewing Co. brewed its first commercial beer in its new brewery in Cranston, R.I. Six German-Americans had pooled $150,000 to start the company. You may recognize one of their names: Jacob Wirth. He was the same Jacob Wirth who ran a popular restaurant in Boston’s Theater District that survived until 2018.

Jacob Wirth

Rounding out the original six were John H. Fehlberg, Augustus F. Borchandt, Herman G. Possner, George M. Gerhard and Constand A. Moeller.

The old Narragansett brewery.

People liked the light, sparkling beers that came out of the German breweries cropping up after the Civil War. In New England they really liked Narragansett lager.

By 1914, Narragansett had enough customers to build its own bottling plant on its 42-acre complex. That made it the biggest beer brewery in New England.

Prohibition

On Jan. 17, 1920, Prohibition took effect, banning the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Many breweries went under, but Narragansett survived. Fortunately for the company, it already had a business delivering ice, with its own icehouse, ice pond and refrigeration machines. Narragansett continued to deliver ice through Prohibition.

Narragansett also obtained a license to brew and sell porter for medicinal purposes. People then thought its low-alcohol and high-iron content benefited pregnant women. Only five other U.S. breweries were allowed to do so. The brewery called it Narragansett Dark.

Narragansett also survived by turning its pilsner into a near beer with an alcohol by volume content of less than 0.5 percent. And it made ginger ale, sarsaparilla and root beer, along with a malt tonic for recovering invalids.

Narragansett, Part of the Culture

Shortly after Prohibition ended in 1933, the Haffenreffer family of Boston brewers bought the Narragansett brewery. One of the Haffenreffers attended Dartmouth College with Theodor Geisel, later Dr. Seuss. Narragansett hired Geisel to illustrate advertisements for the beer. Today people collect the company’s metal trays imprinted with Chief Gansett, along with such slogans as “Gangway for Gansett.”

After World War II, the Haffenreffers decided to make Narragansett the dominant beer in New England. The company embarked on an aggressive advertising and promotional campaign.

In 1944, Gansett officially sponsored the Boston Red Sox, thus becoming the first alcohol company to sponsor an American sports team. People still remember Red Sox announcer Curt Gowdy praising the “straight from the barrel taste.” Mike Nichols also called it a “straight from the barrel taste” in a hilarious animated commercial with Elaine May. (You can watch it here.)

Then Narragansett beer began its “Hi, Neighbor! Have a Gansett!” ad campaign. The company promoted Gansett beers at ball parks, concert arenas and golf courses with attractive young women called Gansett Girls. Irehne Hennessey, Betty Vickowski and Penny Sojka started off as the female faces of Narragansett, also known as the Hi Neighbor Girls.

Becoming the Biggest

Narragansett grew into New England’s largest brewery. In 1959, it brewed for the first time one million barrels of beer. To celebrate, the brewery gave each employee a gold-plated bottle of Gansett. By the 1960s it had an 80 percent share of the Rhode Island market, and 65 percent throughout New England. At its peak, Narragansett employed 850 people.

During the 1950s and 1960s, J. Joseph Garrahy worked for Narragansett as one of its top salespeople. According to legend, the many, many people he met in his job ended up voting for him, first for the Rhode Island state Senate, then as lieutenant governor and finally for four terms as governor. A popular governor, people viewed him as a friend of the working class.

Joseph Garrahy

Then when the U.S. Navy announced plans to scrap the battleship USS Massachusetts, her former crew campaigned to save her as a museum ship. Narragansett Brewery led the fundraising effort with paid advertisements, which ultimately succeeded in saving “Big Mamie,” now in Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass.

Falstaff Buys Narragansett — Finally

In 1964, the St. Louis-based Falstaff Brewing Co. offered to buy the Narragansett company for about $20 million. Falstaff, then the fourth largest U.S. brewery, had no market share in the Northeast. It intended to run Narragansett as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Two days before the sale closed, the U.S. Justice Department brought an antitrust suit against Falstaff. It took nine years for the resolution of the case, which finally ended in 1973 when a U.S. district court ruled in favor of Falstaff. But nine years of legal wrangling couldn’t have helped the Rhode Island brewery.

Not everybody…

In hindsight, the case shows how much attitudes have changed about corporate concentration. When the antitrust case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Byron White wrote the decision that acknowledged the consolidation of the New England beer market.

He noted that the number of brewers operating plants in New England fell from 32 in 1935, to 11 in 1957, to six in 1964.

But White suggested Falstaff would have figured out a way to enter the New England market anyway, and sent the case to a lower court. In the end, Falstaff won the case and took over Narragansett in 1974.

Modern Times

While government lawyers tried to prevent Falstaff from entering the New England market by buying a brewery, Anheuser-Busch built a state-of-the-art brewery in Merrimack, N.H. It opened in 1970 and gave stiff competition to Narragansett.

Then in 2008, a multinational brewing company called InBev bought Anheuser-Busch, creating a beery behemoth. The consolidated company, based in Leuven, Belgium, acquired more companies and ultimately grew into a multinational giant called Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV. Meanwhile, Falstaff and its new acquisition, Narragansett, sputtered.

In 1964, Falstaff and Narragansett had combined sales of about $155 million. In fiscal year 2020, Anheuser-Busch InBev reported sales of $46.9 billion, more than 300 times the combined revenue of Falstaff and Narragansett back in the day.

Rebirth of Narragansett Beer

Beset by competition, legal problems and an aging facility, Narragansett shut its doors in 1983. The company sold its equipment to China and tore down buildings in Cranston, leaving a small trolley barn that burned in 2005.

Now on your grocer’s shelves.

That year, Rhode Islander Mark Hellendrung, former Nantucket Nectars president, began to restore the Narragansett brand as a heritage beer. According to Bloomberg News, Narragansett beer is cool again as millennials in Brooklyn, N.Y., bars now drink it.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Narragansett Beer came up with a novel promotion: Get a vaccine or get a friend vaccinated, and the next round is on us.

With thanks to Ashleigh Bennett and Kristie Martin, “Rhode Island Beer: Ocean State History on Tap” and to David Zax, “The Many Pop-Culture Moments of Narragansett, the “Forrest Gump of Beers”” in Fast Company.

Image: Narragansett logo By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32655382. Narragansett beer ads courtesy NarragansettBeer.com. Jacob Wirth By Biruitorul – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4004137. This story was updated in 2022.

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How To Talk Rhode Island

To talk Rhode Island requires more than a passing knowledge of the expression ‘No school Fosta Glosta’ or the difference between a cherrystone and a littleneck.

It’s a hybrid of Northern and Southern New England English, a Boston-meets-Brooklyn sound with a dash of Italian and Portuguese slang mixed in.

Some say you can talk Rhode Island by using a Boston accent mixed with Italian slang. Not quite. ‘Cot’ and ‘caught’ are not pronounced the same way in Rhode Island as in the rest of Eastern New England.

Rhode Islanders, like many New Englanders, do tend to drop their Rs – and then add them to the end of words, such as ‘bananner.’ And like Bostonians they use the same word for a political fundraiser: a ‘time.’

To talk Rhode Island, pronounce it ‘Va-DI-len’

How To Talk Rhode Island

Thom Jones, voice coach at Brown University/Trinity Rep Consortium, says Rhode Islanders’ broad A is less pronounced than in Boston. Rhode Islanders say ‘Pawk the caw,’ whereas Bostonians say ‘Pahk the cah.’ In Boston you ride a hahs, but in Providence, you ride a hawse.

To talk Rhode Island, pronounce the ‘er’ at the end of a word as an ‘eh,’ says audiobooks narrator Matt Haynes. Rhode Islanders drink from a bubbleh. The klenzehs, or cleansers, is the local dry cleaner.

Like the other New England accents, the Rhode Island accent started with the English colonists who first arrived in North America. They brought with them speech patterns from Elizabethan London and rural speech from Yorkshire and Lancashire. In Rhode Island, Italian, Irish and Portuguese immigrants contributed their own pronunciations.

After they arrived, immigrants to Rhode Island learned to look down on Swamp Yankees, or Swampehs. The newcomers viewed swampehs as uneducated rural folk, stubborn, old-fashioned and frugal. Swampehs take only mild offense at their nickname.

Va-Dilen

To talk Rhode Island Italian-American-style, add a V where a V doesn’t belong. ‘Va-DI-len’ is the way to pronounce the name of the state. Antnee, Bvenda, Richit, Shevl are names of children in Italian-American neighborhoods like North Providence and Cranston.

Haynes notes Rhode Islanders turn ‘am’ into ‘e-am’ and ‘an’ into ‘e-an.’ That’s how Cranston, which is about 33 percent Italian-American, comes to be pronounced Cveaanstin. You might drive a Camavo in Cveaanstin.

A Jaguah is more likely to be driven in South County, which is really Washington and Kent counties. South County was so nicknamed during the American Revolution because it sounded better than its real name, King’s County.

You may go to a casino in Rhode Island, but don’t expect to gamble. The U.S. government recognizes the Newport Casino as a National Historic Landmark.The word comes from the Italian, ‘casina,’ which means little house. The big house, the Adult Correctional Institute, is known as the ACI and is located in Cveeanstin, which is north of Wa-wick.

Newport Casino, 1900, where you can talk Rhode Island

Cuisine

To talk Rhode Island, you have to know the nicknames for the state’s cuisine.

If you ask for gravy in Cveaanstin, you will get a red tomato sauce for your paster.

A cabinet is a milkshake, unless it’s an Awful Awful.

Hot dogs and clams inspire especially vivid nicknames.

New York System wieners

A New York system wiener, unknown in New York, consists of a 4-inch pork, beef and veal wiener in a steamed bun with yellow mustard, onions, celery salt and a ground beef sauce. It’s also known as a gagga, a bellybuster, a destroyer or a hot wiener. You might eat it with coffee milk and an order of beef stew – French fries loaded with ketchup and salt.

A saugy is a hot dog with a natural casing that snaps when cut. The Saugy Company has made them since 1869.

Rhode Island’s Portuguese people contributed chorizo or chourico (pronounced shuh-reese), a small, dense, spicy sausage to the state’s cuisine. If you don’t like too much spice, order linguica (leen-gwee-sa) instead.

The strawberry Awful Awful

A stuffie is a stuffed clam, or quahog, harvested with a bullrake. In western Rhode Island, quahog is pronounced kwa-hog; in eastern Rhode Island it’s ko-hog.

A cherrystone is a quahog slightly larger and juicier than a littleneck, which is the smallest clam legal to harvest.

A grinder is another word for a sangwidge, which is a ‘torpedo’ in the Pawtuxet Valley and a ‘dynamite’ in Woonsocket.

Woonsocketisms

Many Franco-American mill workers used to live in Woonsocket, where they developed their own much-made-fun-of patois.

Today it’s a standing, if inaccurate, joke about how they talk in Woonsocket. “Side by each” is the classic example. “Shut the light” is another.

“Puffcorn” is a Woonsocketism for popcorn.

Salty Brine

Other Woonsocketisms include misplaced phrases, such as “throw me down the stairs my hat” and the double pronoun, such as “I’m going to the klenzehs, me.”

For those who didn’t grow up in Rhode Island, “No school Fosta-Glosta” was a catchphrase of radio host Salty Brine. Children eagerly listened to him list school closings on snow days, and Salty Brine lumped Foster and Glocester side by each as “No school, Fosta-Glosta.”

With special thanks to Quahog.org.

Images: Rhode Island sign, By Morrow Long – Pachaug Trail – “Welcome to Rhode Island sign” at Beach Pond, Hope Valley, RI, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16138014.

This story about How To Talk Rhode Island was updated in 2022.

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Yogi Berra Hits His Way Through New England (Under a Fake Name)

Yogi Berra might never have starred for the New York Yankees had he not talked his way onto the Navy team based at the Groton submarine base in 1945.

Yogi Berra in his unflattering uniform

He had to beg the manager to let him try out. He was a short, squat, awkward gunner’s mate who’d seen action on D-Day. Now, as World War II wound down, he’d returned to the States and longed to play baseball.

“If I didn’t make it in baseball, I won’t have made it workin’,” he said. “I didn’t like to work.”

Yogi Berra

The base’s ball club was run by James Gleeson, a former Major League outfielder nicknamed “Gee-Gee.” Gleeson didn’t think Berra looked anything like a ballplayer. “So I’m ugly,” Yogi later said. “I never saw anyone hit with his face.”

Gleeson didn’t believe Yogi was the property of the New York Yankees, either.

James “Gee-Gee” Gleeson

Yogi finally convinced him, and he went on to become a Hall of Famer and a beloved cultural figure. His unwittingly witty comments were known as Yogi-isms. “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded,” was one of his many classic lines. So was, “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

Yogi tried to distance himself from his Yogi-isms. “I never said most of the things I said,” he said.

Lawrence Peter Berra

Berra was born Lawrence Peter Berra on May 12, 1925 in St. Louis to a family of Italian immigrants. He dropped out of school after eighth grade because all he wanted to do was to play baseball.

“Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets,” he said.

After his best friend Joe Garagiola signed with the St. Louis Cardinals for a $500 bonus, Yogi Berra decided he had to have a $500 bonus too. The Yankees gave him one, along with $90 a month to play for their Norfolk, Va., minor league team, the Tars.

As a Tar in 1943, Yogi Berra hit seven home runs and 56 RBIs – including 23 in one double header. At the end of the season Berra enlisted in the Navy. He became a gunner’s mate and saw action on D-Day aboard a rocket boat, a 36-foot landing craft that sprayed rockets on the beach before the troops landed. Berra spent 10 days on the boat before he finally returned to his ship.

About the invasion, he said, ‘we were closer than the hitter is to the Green Monster at Fenway Park.’ At 18, he didn’t think anything could kill him.

I didn’t know enough to be scared. I had my head up over the side of the boat all the time, looking around like it was the Fourth of July in Forest Park and after the fireworks we were going to go over and get some hot dog and cokes.

New England Baseball (Not the Red Sox)

Before he was mustered out, Yogi Berra was stationed at the submarine base at Groton, Conn., where he finally convinced James Gleeson to let him play.

New England was a good place to hone one’s baseball skills as World War II wound down. Thousands of young men who played baseball, some in the Major Leagues, were stationed at military installations throughout the region. They could play for service teams like the Groton Raiders. Or they could play for for teams in the New England League like the Nashua Dodgers and the Pawtucket Slaters. They could even play for both. The League didn’t allow players signed with professional teams to play semi-pro games as ringers, and the military discouraged the practice. But on the semipro teams they could make $50 a game – half a month’s pay. So the professionals played under assumed names on their days off.

As a Yankee in 1953

Yogi Berra played under an assumed name for the Cranston Chiefs (later the Providence Grays) of the New England League.

His record is murky, as local sportswriters protected the identity of the players. “The New England is a league of aliases and fictitious names. No scribe desires to prevent any young man from earning a dollar by using his right name,” the Lynn Evening Item wrote.

Cusano?

The Italian-American Writer blog shared a memory of Yogi Berra as a Chiefs player:

At Cranston Stadium, for example, a guy named Cusano kept hitting home runs for the Cranston Chiefs and few people knew that his real name was Yogi Berra, a top Yankee prospect.
The city updated the field and raised the fence 30 ft because one day Berra… uhhh Cusano… hit a ball 500 feet off the roof of the Cranston Bible Chapel in centerfield.

The real Crash Davis (Kevin Costner played the fictional Crash Davis in Bull Durham)

Crash Davis had played professional ball for the Philadelphia Athletics before being drafted by the Navy. As the war wound down, he managed the Lawrence Millionaires of the New England League.

I remember one game when we were playing in Providence, Rhode Island, and all those players were using assumed names. Jimmy Gleeson, who had been with the Cubs and the Reds, was playing in the league and first base was open so I elected to walk him. I didn’t know that little guy that was hitting next but I knew Gleeson. That short little guy looked about 18 or 19 years old, and it turned out he hit a home run with the bases loaded. His real name was Lawrence ‘Yogi’ Berra.

The Legend of Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra in 1956

On June 25, 1945, the Yogi Berra legend was born. The New York Giants, returning from a series with the Boston Braves, played against the Groton team. Berra went 3-for-4. One of his hits came off a wild pitch. Giants manager Mel Ott decided he had to have the odd little catcher. He offered the Yankees $50,000 for Berra. Yankees general manager Larry MacPhail refused without knowing who Yogi Berra was – but decided to find out.

MacPhail summoned Berra to New York for an interview. Yogi walked in wearing the sailor’s outfit so unflattering to his short, squat physique. “You want to see me, Mister?” he said to MacPhail. MacPhail was stunned. He later recollected that Yogi ‘looked like the bottom man on an unemployed acrobatic team.’

But Yogi managed to convince MacPhail he was a professional ball player — by asking who he should see about his expenses for the trip.

MacPhail promoted him to the Newark Bears, just one rung down from the New York Yankees, for the 1946 season.

The Yankees

On Sept. 22, 1946, Yogi Berra was called up to the Yankees. As a Yankee he would appear in 14 World Series and on 18 All Star teams, and he would win the American League’s Most Valuable Player honor three times. In 1972, he was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.

On a night the Yankees chose to honor him, he expressed his appreciation: “I’m a lucky guy and I’m happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.”

James Gleeson in 1964 became Yankees’ manager Yogi Berra’s first base coach.

Yogi Berra died on Sept. 22, 2015, at the age of 90. His advice to mourners: “You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”

With thanks to The New England League: A Baseball History, 1885-1949 By Charlie Bevis and Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee By Allen Barra. This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Newark Bears By buba69 – https://www.flickr.com/photos/buba69/1297630664/sizes/o/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31323851.

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