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Dorchester Mass.

Sister Corita Kent Paints Boston a Rainbow and Gets the World’s Biggest Copyright

Corita Kent created two wildly successful works of art: a tiny collectible and a major Boston landmark.

The U.S. Postal Service sold more than 700 million of her 1985 ‘Love’ postage stamps. The bright, optimistic design typified her work.

And her rainbow swash on the 150-foot-high LNG storage tanks in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood is not only a visible landmark, it is the largest copyrighted work of art in the world.

Sister Corita Kent

Corita Kent was born Frances Elizabeth Kent Nov. 20, 1918 in Fort Dodge, Iowa, to devout Catholic parents. Just after graduating from high school, she followed her older sister and joined the Roman Catholic order of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles. As Sister Mary Corita, she taught art at Immaculate Heart College from 1938 to 1968, eventually heading the department.

At the college she created bold, colorful silkscreen works. She incorporated spiritual themes and literary and political writings with product slogans, street signs, and Beatles lyrics. She won national recognition, and in 1967 Newsweek put her on the cover. Her wide circle of friends included Alfred Hitchcock, John Cage, Saul Bass and Buckminster Fuller.

we care by Corita Kent, 1966

Sister Mary Corita embraced the reforms of Vatican II, which tried to make Catholicism more accessible. She also grew more political with the social unrest of the 1960s and 1970s. Her work began to convey messages of peace and love.

Leaving the Sisterhood

She fought cancer and insomnia, as well as the archbishop of Los Angeles, who criticized her liberal views.

In 1968, Kent took a sabbatical on Cape Cod, during which she decided to leave the sisterhood. She then moved to Boston, where she pursued her art career and designed the rainbow swash.

A controversy then erupted over the blue swash, said to contain the profile of Ho Chi Minh. Though Kent worked for peace, she denied painting the Vietnamese leader. In 1992 the Rainbow Swash tank was torn down and the Swash was reproduced on the adjacent tank – over the objections of veterans’ groups.

In 1985, the year before she died, Corita Kent designed the famous Love stamp. Since then, critics and curators have elevated her work to that of such Pop artists as Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. Several recent exhibits celebrate her work.

Images: Photo of Corita Kent: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34748779. we care By Thomas Hawk – photographer. Corita Kent – artist. – https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/40671776194/in/photolist-24Y2u5A-22pP9hY-Rmh68Y-24rPcLr-vTccXT-RmK3yN-61osen-281W3Xf-61sDf1-7qDcpr-BgfEnn-7gZWbC-61osoi-8yYPQD-84h8xB-61sDbY-84h4V8-84h5q8-84h6Ug-KJnCK-84k6Mq-HdsZFR-vAAFDq-N1Mzzm-23yufJz-23yujR2-23yuhvR-2cM5LYH-QpCE9i-23yuhTK-2e6iZn5-2e6iQDJ-2d4Vg8A-2d4Vh55-2d4ViQQ-S2T7PG-2cM5AJK-QpC7ki-S2SPnh-2e6iudy-23yutL6-23yuiyT-23yudMt-2d4Vjto-2cM5KyD-2e6ivgL-S2SFdm-23yus9D-2e6j5K9-23yumgM, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83371179. This story was updated in 2022.

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Edward Everett, the Other (Much Longer) Speaker at Gettysburg

Edward Everett liked the sound of his own voice. He was, after all, a minister, a politician and a university professor.

Others liked to listen to him too. One of his students, Ralph Waldo Emerson, idolized Everett and praised his speaking style. He described Everett’s voice as “slightly nasal” but “the most mellow and beautiful and correct of all instruments of the time.”

Edward Everett

By 1863, Everett had earned the reputation as the nation’s leading orator. That made him a natural choice to lead the dedication ceremonies for the Gettysburg National Cemetery. He spoke for two hours, brought his audience to tears and upstaged President Lincoln, at least according to some.

Everett, though, knew who delivered the better speech.

Edward Everett

He was born in Dorchester, Mass., on April 11, 1794, the son of a minister and his wife. He graduated from Harvard as class valedictorian at the age of 17. Unsure of what to do after graduation, he ended up studying for the ministry.

He was hired as pastor at the Brattle Street Church in Boston. Most of his congregation enjoyed his lively and florid sermons. Others, though, found him aloof and condescending. One critic said he “spoke like some superior intelligence, discoursing to mortals of what they ought to feel and know.”

The Brattle Street Church

In 1814, he delivered an over-the-top a funeral sermon for the Rev. John L. Abbott.

Farewell, dear brother, thy Saviour calls…Already thou hast past the portals of death; already thou hast mounted on seraph’s wings…Ages of happiness are bursting on thy soul! Thy march of Eternity has begun.

Later that year, Everett decided he preferred academia to the pulpit. Harvard offered him a teaching job, along with a two-year trip to Europe, and he jumped at it. He ended up spending four years in Europe, earning a Ph.D. at the University of Gottingen.

Everett around 1850

Everett returned to the United States in 1819, bringing German teaching methods to Harvard. Later, as Massachusetts governor, he brought the Prussian educational system to Massachusetts. He established the first board of education and named Horace Mann its secretary in 1837. The next year, he opened the first normal school in Lexington, now Framingham State University.

Who You Know

Everett quickly tired of teaching and turned his attention toward politics. He made connections with Boston’s elite, putting him in a good position to run for office.

In 1822 he married Charlotte Brooks, daughter of a wealthy Boston merchant. Her sister, Abigail, married Charles Francis Adams seven years later. Everett’s own sister, Sarah, married Nathan Hale, publisher of the Boston Daily Advertiser and nephew of the Nathan Hale. Everett also made friends with Daniel Webster.

Daniel Webster

He won election to Congress in 1824 and served for 10 years. His tongue got him in considerable trouble when he led a three-hour speech on the House floor. In it, he referred to New Testament references to slavery. It seemed to put him in the pro-slavery camp. In reality, Everett opposed slavery – but not at the price of war or a break in the union.

He then served four years as governor of Massachusetts, followed by another four as ambassador to the United Kingdom. Then in 1846, he returned to Harvard as president. He hated the job, partly because he couldn’t control the rowdy students.

President Millard Fillmore named him secretary of state in November 1852 to succeed Daniel Webster, who had died in office. Everett’s taste for politics returned, and he won election to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts.

Edward Everett for VPOTUS

After 15 months, Everett resigned because he didn’t oppose slavery aggressively enough to suit a constituency disgusted by it.

He then traveled the country with his family, promoting the reputation of George Washington. He gave more than 100 speeches recalling Washington’s life. Proceeds went to the purchase and restoration of Washington’s home at Mount Vernon.

George Washington entertaining French generals at Mount Vernon.

In 1860 he ran unenthusiastically for vice president of the United States on the Constitutional Union Party ticket, with John Bell running for president — against Abraham Lincoln.

But when the Civil War broke out, Everett defended Lincoln, often speaking out to defend his critics.

The Speech

On Nov. 19, 1863, he found himself on the battlefield at Gettysburg delivering a two-hour speech — from memory — before 15,000 people. Traces of the fierce battle lay scattered everywhere: scarred trees, rifle pits, broken fences, scraps of blue and gray clothing, pieces of artillery wagons and harness.

The Union dead at Gettysburg. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Everett had spent weeks preparing. He interviewed soldiers, reviewed General Lee’s account of the fight and made sure he got every detail right.

He began in typical florid style. “Standing beneath this serene sky, overlooking these broad fields now reposing from the labors of the waning year, the mighty Alleghenies dimly towering before us, the graves of our brethren beneath our feet…”

“It is with hesitation that I raise my poor voice to break the eloquent silence of God and Nature,” he orated.

Everett then managed to get over his hesitation. He told of the misery and tragic cost of the Battle of Gettysburg, moving his audience to tears.

But he also stressed hope remained for the future. He desperately wanted the speech to prepare the nation to come together after the war, which would end within six months.

“The people of the South are not going to wage an eternal war, for the wretched pretexts by which this rebellion is sought to be justified,” he said. Everett then enumerated the ties that unite the country as one people: language, belief, law, a common history, geography, railroads.

“These bonds of union are of perennial force and energy, while the causes of alienation are imaginary, factitious, and transient,” he said.

Gettysburg cemetery by the National Park Service

The Gettysburg Address

Today, Abraham Lincoln’s eloquent two-minute speech at that dedication ceremony is viewed as one of the greatest statements of national purpose: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…”

Lincoln arriving at Gettysburg.

Everett’s speech on reconciliation is often compared unfavorably to Lincoln’s speech on equality. But the speech was widely praised at the time. Lincoln was still a political figure and was even criticized for his brevity in some quarters. His delivery may also have suffered from the mild case of smallpox he was suffering. Everett’s lengthy table-setting effort to inspire hope was almost universally lauded.

Everett realized the brilliance of Lincoln’s short speech. He wrote to the president: “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

The Gettysburg oration was Everett’s swan song. He had inherited the reputation as the nation’s most eloquent speaker from Daniel Webster, and the Gettysburg speech was his final masterpiece.

Little more than a year after the speech at Gettysburg, Everett gave a speech in Boston to raise money for the poor in Georgia, left destitute by the war. He caught cold and died days later, on Jan. 15, 1865.

This story last updated in 2021.

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Roger Ludlow and the 1650 Scourge of Shuffleboard

In 1646, Roger Ludlow had the task of establishing laws for Connecticut. It wasn’t an easy job, but after four hard years he produced the Code of 1650. Sometimes called Ludlow’s Code, it addressed all manner of evils up to and including shuffleboard.

Ludlow belonged to the stauncher group of Puritans who left England during the Great Migration. Arriving in America in 1630, he first lived in Dorchester in Massachusetts before moving to Windsor, Conn. Later he moved to Fairfield, which he founded.

The Hazard Room, a 1792 painting by Thomas Rowlandson.

Roger Ludlow

Ludlow, an Oxford-educated lawyer, had some success in politics – serving as deputy governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and lieutenant governor of Connecticut. But his main contribution to the settlement of New England was his codification of laws for Connecticut. He also co-authored the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first constitution in America.

Ludlow’s Code proceeded alphabetically from “Ability” to “Wrecks at Sea,” and it covers the typical crimes. Capital offenses included murder, perjury, witchcraft and smiting one’s parents. Burglars were to be branded with the letter “B” and so forth.

Ludlow didn’t stop with major crimes. His code outlawed swearing, heresy, idleness and stubbornness. And he also singled out shuffleboard for elimination.

Monument to Roger Ludlow in East Norwalk

Shuffleboard

Outlawing shuffleboard was not that unusual considering the Puritan’s general orientation and the nature of the game in Britain. Europeans had enjoyed playing it for at least 500 years. In England, it went by names like shove halfpenny and earlier shove groat.

The basics of the game were similar to today’s shuffleboard. People slid a disk down a board and got points based on where it stopped. It was played in public houses in England and was a time-waster that was generally harmless – except when disputes arose between players or large wagers resulted in hard feelings. The Puritans, who opposed most sports played with a ball, had little use for it.

King Henry VIII played at shuffleboard and outlawed it for commoners in England during his reign. There’s little doubt that the Puritans had no use for the people who pursued it. Some tavernkeepers kept the shuffleboard hidden and secret from any strangers, only brought out for trusted regulars.

Aftermath

Arthur Miller in his play about the 1692 Salem witch trials, The Crucible, notes that Bridget Bishop’s tavern had shuffleboard. That hints at the prejudice the residents of Salem would have held against her.

In the long run, of course, shuffleboard prevailed – morphing into various forms and enjoying popular revivals during the Roaring 20s and the 1950s. Even today shuffleboard can be found in its table and floor varieties.

Purchase of Norwalk, a WPA mural by Harry Townsend, in Norwalk City Hall.

As for Roger Ludlow, the publication of his code represented the high-water mark for his career in New England. He did purchase the land that became Norwalk, but he had also gotten involved in various property disputes.

His troubles included a conviction by a court for slandering a woman he had declared a witch. Ludlow left Connecticut to settle briefly with his brother in Virginia in 1654 and then travelled to Ireland. There he won an appointment to a post of magistrate. He did not return to America and died in the 1660s – well before Connecticut became the gaming and gambling capital of New England.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Sleepy John Sears and the Revolutionary White Gold of Cape Cod

Cape Cod’s once-great salt industry was the brainchild of a retired sea captain nicknamed Sleepy John Sears because of his tendency to nod off during the day.

Onondaga saltworks showing salt being raked from solar evaporation vats of a design copied from the Cape Cod saltworks.

Salt works once lined the coast of the Lower Cape, Massachusetts’ South Shore, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Today they are not only extinct, but pretty much forgotten.

Also forgotten is the importance of salt in peace and in war. Without it, fish, beef, poultry and pork couldn’t be preserved. Salt was a strategically essential but scarce commodity during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. In 1777, New Jersey excused from military service as many as 10 men employed by a salt work.

Sleepy John Sears found a way to produce salt on a large scale during the Revolution and long afterward. Because of his ingenuity, salt was Cape Cod’s white gold through the middle of the 19^th century.

White Gold

Before refrigeration, salt was essential to preserving fish and meat. New England’s fishing industry depended on salt, for without it, cod was a perishable foodstuff rather than a lucrative commodity.

There were no local sources of salt in early America, and the colonists relied on Britain to supply it.

That became a problem as the American Revolution approached. Britain began taxing salt exports and blockaded America’s main source of salt, Turks Island in the Caribbean.

Smugglers were still able to bring in salt from Bermuda and the Bahamas until Gen. William Howe captured New York and Long Island. By the time Howe drove the Continental Army from Philadelphia, he had captured its salt reserves. Washington had sent a desperate message, “Every attempt must be made to save it.”

Profiteers began hoarding salt and the price of the commodity soared. In May of 1776, the Continental Congress issued a pamphlet declaring a bounty of one-third dollar for every bushel of salt made or imported.

That set off a frenzy of colonists boiling seawater for salt. The effort proved futile, as it took two cords of wood and 400 gallons of water to produce a single bushel.

No More Laughter

Sleepy John Sears was already thinking about solar evaporation. Born in 1744 in Yarmouth, he was living in Dennis by the time of the war. His family defended his narcolepsy, saying he had ‘fits of abstraction.’

Sears built the first salt works in the summer of 1776 in Sesuit Harbor. It wasn’t much more than a leaky vat, 100 feet long and 10 feet wide. He hauled seawater one bucket at a time to his salt works. It took 350 gallons of water to produce one bushel of salt. His neighbors laughed at him.

At the end of the summer he produced eight bushels. His neighbors called his salt works ‘Sears Folly.’

During the summer of 1777 he tried again, but only after caulking the vat to make it watertight. That year his salt works produced 30 bushels of salt.

In November 1778 he scavenged a bilge pump from the shipwrecked British Man-of-war HMS Somerset. He rigged it up the next summer so he could pump water by hand from the sea.

He was in business turning seawater into white gold.

Salty John

By 1783, the price of salt had risen to $8 a bushel from 50 cents. Capt. Nathaniel Freeman suggested he use a windmill to pump water. By 1785, Sleepy John Sears rigged up a windmill to pump seawater through pipes – hollow, lead-lined logs – to the vats.

The neighbors stopped laughing. They started calling him Salty John.

West Yarmouth Salt Works.

The industry spread along Cape Cod’s open coastline, to Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Plymouth, Kingston, Rochester, Hingham and Dorchester as well as Maine. By 1837, there were 78 salt works in Provincetown alone, 658 on the entire Cape.

“Every man living near the salt water had his patch of salt works, if it took his last patch of cornfield or potato yard,” according to Shebnah Rich in his book Truro–Cape Cod, Or, Land Marks and Sea Marks. Building and repairing the worlds employed many mechanics, and making the salt gave jobs to elderly men and boys.

Another inventor devised a sliding cover to keep the vats protected from the rain. Townspeople would race to the salt works to cover them when rain threatened.

Jack Johnson, in his 1944 book Stories of Cape Cod, quotes an old Cape Codder who remembered salt works on his grandfather’s farm.

There were rows and rows of them on my grandfather’s farm. And my grandmother! She had only 14 children. Generally three of them were in arms. Many a time when grandfather and the boys were at the flats (the shore) and a rainstorm came up, grandmother would walk half a mile, carrying one child, leading another, and the three-year-old toddling behind – to the salt works to cover them before the rain came on. Rain freshened the salt, you know.

During the War of 1812, British ships roaming the coast threatened the salt industry. Commodore Richard Ragget of the H.M.S. Spencer threatened to destroy Brewster’s salt works unless the town paid him $4,000. Brewster paid up.

Cape Cod’s vulnerability to military attack and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 contributed to the demise of its salt works. Investment shifted to upstate New York, where a salt springs was discovered in Onondaga

The gradual shut down of Cape Cod’s salt works left 1.425 million feet of wood from the vats. Cape Codders dismantled them and used the wood to build barns and homes.

The last salt work on Cape Cod closed in 1888. Sleepy John Sears did not live to see the demise of the industry he created. He died a rich man in 1817, and was buried in a nondescript grave in West Brewster.

You can see his headstone in the Sears family cemetery at the corner of Airline Road and Old King’s Highway. His epitaph reads, “John Sears, Inventor of the Salt Works, Aged 72 y’rs.”

With thanks to Edible Cape Cod magazine.

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The Stoughton Musical Society Wins America’s First-Ever Singing Contest in 1790

In 1790 the Stoughton Musical Society was challenged to a contest by the chorus of the First Parish Church in nearby Dorchester. The Stoughton singers confidently picked up the gauntlet. America’s first singing contest was on.

It was natural that singers from Stoughton and Dorchester should compete. Stoughton, Mass., had once been part of southwestern Dorchester, which is now a part of Boston. Stoughton was named after William Stoughton, the chief justice of the Salem witch trials.

A Boston composer named William Billings inspired the formation of the Stoughton Musical Society. Billings, the first American choral composer, gave a singing school to the musical men of Stoughton in 1774. By 1786, 25 men formed the Stoughton Musical Society – now America’s oldest — on Nov. 7, 1786.

They agreed on such regulations as

The President only shall beat the Time openly; and if the President be absent, the Vice President shall preside; and if they both be absent, the Society shall choose a President pro-tempore.

Every member shall behave with Decency, Politeness and Dignity; and whoever behaves disorderly shall be punished according to the nature of his offense, according as the Society shall order.

Unbounded Applause

Within four short years, the Stoughton Musical Society’s reputation as the finest singers around reached the old town – Dorchester — including the singers of the old First Parish. .

The society’s 1929 history tells what happened next:

These well-trained singers of the old town, so near the “Bay,” from whose shores emanated then, as now, from the “Hub,” excellence in art, grace in scholarship, and refinement in living, could ill brook the judgment that Dorchester did not wear the honors in the art of singing as in many other accomplishments. Confident in their ability and ready to test it, they challenged the Stoughton singers to a trial. The challenge was accepted; a meeting arranged. It was held in a large hall in Dorchester, and says the narrator, who was one of the singers, “The hall was filled with prominent singers, far and near, including many notables from Boston.” The Dorchester contestants had a “bass viol” and female singers. The Stoughton party consisted of 20 selected male voices, without instruments, and led by “Squire” Elijah Dunbar, the President of the Stoughton Musical Society, who was not only one of the most accomplished singers in his day, but distinguished for his commanding presence and dignified bearing.

The Dorchester party sang first an anthem, recently published, executing it with grace and precision. The Stoughton party followed with Jacob Frenches new anthem, “The Heavenly Vision,” rendered without book or notes. The applause was unbounded as they took their seats. Again the Dorchester choir sang; then, to close the tournament, the Stoughton Choir sang, without book, Handel’s grand “Hallelujah Chorus,” recently published in the country by Isaac [Isaiah]Thomas.

The Dorchester singers acknowledged defeat and endorsed the taste and judgment of the ministry. So endeth this incident of the olden time.

New Prominence

Edwin A. Jones, a leading citizen of Stoughton, brought the Musical Society to new prominence in the 19th century. He joined the society in 1871 and sang with it until his death. Jones designed the Stoughton Town Seal with a harp in it to commemorate the society. (For his reasoning behind the seal, click here.)

Jones also got the invitation for the Stoughton Musical Society to perform at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. More than 100 of the Society’s singers and orchestra musicians in early American dress entertained fairgoers with 18^th Century New England music.

His Soul Was In His Song

Sanford Waters Billings, president of the Stoughton Musical Society, gave the following account of the successful concert in Chicago.

The Conductor was enthusiastic, hopeful, and proud of the Society whose concerts he was to conduct. The chorus caught this spirit of cheer and enthusiasm and sang as only those can sing who are inspired with the music of the Father. The orchestra was led by Mr. E. A. Jones, who looked upon the work of the day with delight and interest, realizing that the long looked for time had come, the expected day had arrived, and that grand results were developing as each new selection was announced.

His select company of artists forming the orchestra who took the place when others had failed, won for themselves enviable distinction, while the soloists won from the listeners many an approval, and the grand old songs of the fathers, the composition of the pioneers in American music, so heartily rendered by the chorus, won the repeated applause of those who had come to hear the strains of yore. Some expressed the thought that nothing had given them so much delight, had so thrilled their souls, so aroused the tenderest and strongest chords of the human heart as the rendering of Easter Anthem, Emmanuel, Contentment, and the other selections their ears had been permitted to hear.

An especial feature of the concerts was the appearance of Mr. Alanson Belcher who, at the invitation of Conductor Soule, led the chorus through the inspiring strain of “As Shepherds in Jewry Were Guarding Their Sheep.” Where could we go to find a parallel of this, to see the grand musical Patriarch of more than four score years step to the front, wield the baton, mark the time, and throw from his own soul into the souls of others the inspiration of one who, though his brow was frosted with many a winter, seemed like one in the grandeur of life’s prime ?

His soul was in his song. His was not the service of the lip; his was the thanksgiving of the heart.

On Tuesday, the concert was repeated, losing none of its beauty or excellence. Those who had listened to the songs which used to be sung by lips long since silent in the days “that are past and gone,” experienced a pathos and rapture that widen and deepen as the song goes on.

The Chicago Record, World’s Fair Bureau, the Chicago Inter-Ocean, and Chicago Tribune all gave reports of commendation.

That was a delightful event which happened at the Massachusetts Building on Wednesday, P. M., when, surrounded by representatives, not only of the Old Bay State but from other commonwealths of the Union, and from foreign countries, our Society gave in the parlors of the State Building one of its best efforts. So inspiring were the strains, so inviting to the ear, that ere one selection was completed, the rooms were filled to overflowing. Massachusetts was doing through the Old Stoughton Musical Society what no other state in the Union had thought of doing, bringing the songs of the past century of the Bay State to the ears of the representatives of the World at Chicago. At this gathering, Mr. Belcher gave with fine effect the “Boston Tea Party.” The manner and vigor of the singer and the patriotic spirit of the song will not soon be forgotten by those who were so fortunate as to be present.

Now known as the Old Stoughton Musical Society, it is the oldest continuous operating choral society in America. The next concert is December 13th, 8:00 PM at the Stoughton Historical Society.

To learn more about the Old Stoughton Musical Society, click here.

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