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When Teddy Roosevelt Barnstormed New England

In the fall of 1902, President Teddy Roosevelt barnstormed New England on behalf of Republican congressmen. He wanted as many elected as possible in the upcoming midterm elections.

He had spent less than a year in the White House, having risen to commander in chief upon the assassination of William McKinley on Sept. 6, 1901.

Roosevelt was only 43 years old and an object of some fascination, especially in Europe. From New Haven to Bangor to Burlington, wildly enthusiastic crowds met him with music, military salutes, flowers and flags.

He had not run for president before. In fact, he’d been drafted reluctantly to run for vice president. Roosevelt barnstormed New England in part to lay out themes that would win election in 1904: business regulation, manifest destiny and the need for a strong U.S. Navy. He also harped on the virtues of outdoor living and outdoor work, which he said promoted vigor and good citizenship.

The trip, though, ended in tragedy when a runaway streetcar ran over his bodyguard, William Craig. Roosevelt had grown fond of Craig, who read comic books with his four-year-old son. The accident happened in Pittsfield, Mass., toward the end of Roosevelt’s barnstorming trip. The president, himself cut and bruised, quieted the crowds that greeted him on the way home.

Cartoon showing New England welcoming Teddy Roosevelt with flowers. Courtesy Library of Congress.

How Roosevelt Barnstormed New England

On Aug. 22, 1902, he left his home in Oyster Bay aboard the naval yacht Sylph, landing in New Haven at 1:29 p.m. His secretary, William Loeb (father of the longtime Manchester Union-Leader publisher), had planned the itinerary.

Roosevelt and his entourage headed a procession of carriages through New Haven’s slums, the factory district and the city center. They covered four miles in less than an hour with the Connecticut National Guard providing an escort. Crowds lined the street, cheering and waving flags and handkerchiefs – as they did everywhere the president went.

By 3 p.m. he was in Meriden, where he gave a short speech, and then by 4:18 he reached Hartford by train. In Connecticut’s capital he was driven around in an electric car, also an object of fascination. In Pope Park, a Catholic priest presented him with an enormous horseshoe of flowers given by the working people of Hartford.

Roosevelt told the crowd, “I should, of course, be unfit for the position I occupy if I did not give my best thought and purpose to it and if I did not have the interest of the toiler of America – and also those who work with the head – at heart.”

In Hartford, he attended a formal dinner and gave a speech defending imperialism. Then he spent the night with a prominent Republican, John T. Robinson. The next day he left for Willimantic by train, but requested the workingman’s horseshoe of flowers be placed on the engine.

“The need in public and private life is common sense, decency, courage.” – President Roosevelt, Willimantic, Conn. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The Trust Speech in Providence

Roosevelt chose Providence to make a campaign issue of breaking up the trusts, delivering what was later called “his famous trust speech.”

“One of the features of the tremendous industrial development of the last generation has been the very great increase in private, and especially in corporate fortunes,” he said. Along with the benefits of industrial organization came evil – inequality, poor health and a loss of the feeling of brotherhood, he said.

“The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is in duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown. There is clearly need of supervision – need to possess the power of regulation of these great corporations through the representatives of the public wherever, as in our own country at the present time, business corporations become so very powerful alike for beneficent work and for work that is not always beneficent.”

The original caption of this photo reads: The great crowd intently listening to President Roosevelt’s now famous “Trust” speech, Providence, R.I. Library of Congress.

Roosevelt then took Sen. Nelson Aldrich’s yacht to the home of socialite Winthrop Chanler, where he spent the night. The next day he attended the christening of Chanler’s new baby, Theodore, acting as his godfather. Theodore Chanler would grow up to become a composer, teacher and music critic for the Boston Herald.

Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, he spent the night of August 24 at Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge’s waterfront mansion in Nahant. It had been an exhausting day. He had left Newport by train and waved to cheering crowds when the train slowed in Stonebridge, R.I., Fall River, Taunton and Mansfield in Massachusetts. More crowds in Boston, where he boarded a special train to Lynn. Then he boarded a carriage and drove four crowd-lined miles to Nahant.

Near midnight, while he slept at the Lodge estate, an intoxicated gentleman appeared under his window and tried to serenade him with a song called “Annie Rooney.” The military guard threw water on him.

The next day brought a speech at the Nahant Public Library, a long one in Lynn and a longer one in Boston at Symphony Hall. On August 26th he passed through three states, delivered eight speeches and encountered a quarter million people. Roosevelt praised imperialism in Lowell. He met his old barber from North Dakota in Lawrence. And he told an unruly crowd in Haverhill the United States needed to strengthen its navy.

“Whether we will it or not, we as a nation front a great destiny,” he told the cheering crowd in Lawrence, Mass.

Roosevelt barnstormed the mill towns on Boston’s North Shore, including Lawrence. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Teddy Roosevelt Barnstormed Maine

That same day the people of Dover, N.H., heard Roosevelt speak about the need for honesty, courage and common sense in public and private life.

The train engine overheated in Biddeford, Maine, giving Roosevelt a chance to deliver another speech. In Old Orchard Beach, he spoke from the back of his railroad car. In Portland, he shared the platform with Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top. Then he drove around Portland, visited the Longfellow House and at 4:50 p.m. left on the train for Lewiston, where he addressed 10,000 people. He stopped for two minutes in Brunswick. Auburn came next. He spoke at twilight and got off a joke, or perhaps a nonsequiter: “I have an archaic temperament, and I wish you all large families, by the way,” he said. Maybe he was tired.

Roosevelt made it to Augusta in time for dinner and the final speech of the day.

The next day in Bangor he reunited with his old Maine guide, Bill Sewall. “I am glad to see you Bill,” Roosevelt said. “You ain’t no gladder than I be,” Sewall replied. The president recalled they had eaten muskrat together the last time Roosevelt had a meal in Maine. He invited Sewall to join him on the train to New Hampshire.

A crowd listens to Roosevelt at the State Fair in Bangor. Library of Congress.

New Hampshire

Roosevelt had slept on the train from Maine, but a cheering crowd woke him up when it stopped in a small village. He threw on his overcoat to wave to the people, his socks and long underwear peeping out from beneath the hem.

Roosevelt arrived in Manchester with a crowd pleaser. He mentioned Revolutionary hero John Stark, who penned New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” motto.

“It is about 125 years ago that Molly Stark’s husband had a sawmill here,” Roosevelt said said. “He had his saw mill. He did his work here, but when the country called to arms he was going to do his duty or Molly Stark was going to be a widow.”

The president gave a speech in Nashua, one in Concord and one at the Weirs. He visited John Hay in Newbury. Then he went to Newport, N.H., to the game park owned by the late robber baron, Austin Corbin. There he shot a boar.

Teddy Roosevelt in New Hampshire at Corbin Park in 1902.

He then went to Cornish to visit his friend Winston Churchill — the American novelist, more famous then than the English politician.

R & R in Vermont

A speech at the State Fair in Windsor kicked off the Vermont leg of the trip. Roosevelt hit White River Junction, South Royalton, Bethel and Randolph. Fifteen minutes after finishing a long speech in Montpelier he was on a train to Burlington, stopping briefly in Waterbury. In Burlington the governor held a reception for him.

“You have understood that the best products of the state were its men and women.” President Roosevelt at Proctor, Vt. Library of Congress.

By then, the exhausted Roosevelt needed some rest and relaxation. He boarded a yacht to Thompson’s Point, where he busily acknowledged the crowd’s greetings. That night he stayed at U.S. Treasury Secretary L.M. Shaw’s house. The next day he went to Shelburne Farms, home of Dr. Seward Webb and his wife, Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb. Roosevelt spent the afternoon inspecting the horses.

After 36 hours on the shores of Lake Champlain, Roosevelt barnstormed more Vermont towns. Enthusiasm grew as he progressed through the state. It was Labor Day, and he praised the working man in short speeches along the way. In Middlebury he spoke from the rear of the train, then stopped at Sen. Redfield Proctor’s house. School children almost buried his carriage with flowers. He gave a short speech about the Monroe Doctrine, then delivered remarks in Rutland, Ludlow, Bellows Falls and Brattleboro, praising Civil War veterans and the working man. Then on to Northfield, Mass., where he spent the night in the Northfield Hotel, and delivered a speech the next day.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge to the left of President Roosevelt in front of the Northfield Hotel. Roosevelt barnstormed Vermont the next day. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The Pittsfield Tragedy

On Sept. 2, 1902, Roosevelt barnstormed the Massachusetts towns of Millers Falls, Athol, Gardner, Fitchburg, Worcester and Springfield, where he carefully examined the latest model of the Springfield rifle. Then he visited Westfield and Dalton before encountering tragedy in Pittsfield.

The top brass of the Pittsfield Electric Street Railway disobeyed the Secret Service orders to shut down the streetcar. They got behind schedule so they urged the driver, Euclid Madden, to go faster.

Euclid Madden did as ordered. But as he rounded a steep curve near the country club, he saw to his horror the presidential carriage crossing the tracks. The streetcar driver frantically clanged the bell, but too late.

William Craig

“Look out! Hold fast,” shouted William Craig as he tried to shield the president. Those were his last words.

The streetcar barreled into the carriage, fatally injuring one of the horses, who screamed in pain. Craig fell under the trolley, which crushed his skull and ground him under the wheels, killing him instantly.

Roosevelt flew out of the carriage and landed on his face in the mud. The crowd had to restrain him from attacking Madden. (Read what happened to Euclid Madden here.)

Roosevelt Barnstormed No More

A pall fell over the rest of the journey. The president had a black eye, swollen cheek and cut lip as he traveled by train through Lenox, Stockbridge and Great Barrington. He asked the crowds not to make noisy demonstrations and spoke only a few words.

In Connecticut he quieted the crowds in New Milford, saying he wouldn’t give a speech because a bad accident had killed a man he esteemed. He met with an enormous crowd in Bridgeport, but asked to be excused from a scheduled speech because of the tragedy.

He boarded the Sylph and went home to Oyster Bay.

With thanks to A Bittersweet Journey: Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 New England Trip by James Blase.

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The Great Lakeport Fire of 1903 Destroys a New Hampshire Village

Laconia, N.H., suffered several devastating fires over the centuries, but none so damaging as the Great Lakeport Fire of 1903.

A fire in 1846 wiped out much of Laconia, then known as Meredith Bridge and comprised of mostly wooden buildings.

The Lakeport Fire of 1903

Then on Nov. 11, 1860 a fire destroyed two-thirds of Laconia’s downtown business district. It started in a hotel stable and quickly spread, ruining all but two dry goods stores in the town. The town had only two fire engines and Meredith Village and Sanbornton Bridge came to help put it out.

Two Disasters

In 1902, Laconia suffered the first of two disasters within six months when an explosion destroyed the Masonic temple. The most imposing edifice in town, it housed two floors of Masons, the post office, city offices and a hardware and dry goods store.

It started with a fire, probably caused by a gas leak, and then the powder magazine in the basement exploded. The blast prostrated spectators and damaged many nearby buildings. It seemed a miracle that the explosion didn’t kill anyone, and eight inches of snow on the roofs kept the fire from causing further damage.

Conditions that spring, however, proved ideal for a devastating fire in Lakeport Village.

Great Lakeport Fire

Lakeport in 1903 was a bustling village of factories, homes, churches and an electric plant, located a mile-and-a-half north of downtown Laconia. It’s also five miles south of the Weirs Beach resort. At the center of Lakeport sits a power dam on the channel between Paugus Bay, an arm of Lake Winnipesaukee, and Opechee Bay.

The spring of 1903 had been exceptionally dry, so dry the National Weather Service would have put out a red flag warning. Strong winds gusted on the morning of May 26, when a fire started in the H.H. Woods hosiery mill. The alarm sounded at 2 PM.

The fire quickly spread to a lumber yard and Laconia Electric Lighting Co. The wind drove it uphill, carrying embers as far as four miles to the north and east.

Help arrived quickly by train from Concord, Franklin, and Dover. Tilton and Meredith brought help as well. The Laconia firefighters had only primitive firefighting equipment, though, and mostly pulled the engines themselves.

Burning Itself Out

Within four hours the fire consumed almost every building within 150 acres. It quite possibly ran out of buildings to burn, and stopped climbing when it came to flat land, according to the History of the Laconia Fire Department. The fire pretty much burned itself out, and firefighters called the conflagration under control at 6 PM.

The fire destroyed 108 homes, two churches, two factories, two blacksmith shops, a vacant mill, the fire station and the electric light plant. For the second time in a year, Laconians miraculously escaped death. Losses were estimated as high as $461,000, and 650 people lost their homes.

This story last updated in 2022.

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The Portsmouth Fires That Turned the City to Brick

Three Portsmouth fires, all at Christmas, destroyed 500 buildings within a decade in the early 19^th century. Miraculously, no one died in the blazes.

Portsmouth, N.H., was then a gracious seacoast town, home to wealthy merchants and the first federal shipyard. It had served as the colony’s seat of government before the Revolution, and remained so until 1808.

The fires would spare the wooden mansions of the wealthy, separated by wide lawns. But the poor and middle class who lived in crowded quarters would find themselves out on the street, again and again.

1^st Portsmouth Fire

The first of the Portsmouth fires started early in the morning of Dec. 26, 1802. It began in an old wooden building downtown, swept through the city and destroyed 100 homes.

Firefighting then amounted to ‘engines’ – water pumps on wheels – which fed the bucket brigades. Homeowners hung leather fire buckets (now highly collectible) near their doors for use in the bucket brigades. ‘Rescue’ involved fire societies, who salvaged items from burning homes. Members carried bags to rescue household valuables and bed keys to quickly dismantle beds and remove them.

Women and men fought the fire in bucket brigades until they dropped, relieved by volunteers from neighboring towns. When it was all over, only the North Church and the Old State House still stood. “The whole beauty of the town is gone! is gone!!!” wailed The New Hampshire Gazette.

Artists’ conception of the old New Hampshire Statehouse in Portsmouth (after the fire of 1813).

Most of the building owners had no insurance, and they had to rely on private charity to recover. Donations came in from near and far, amounting to f $45,410.43.

Congress stepped in – for the first disaster relief ever. In January 1803, Congress passed a law to temporarily suspend “the collection of bonds due by merchants of Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, who have suffered by the late conflagration of that town.”

Historic North Church in downtown Portsmouth.

New Hampshire businessmen also responded by incorporating the N.H. Fire and Marine Insurance Co.

2^nd of the Portsmouth Fires

Four years later, the second of the Portsmouth fires broke out on Bow Street, raced up Market Street and gobbled up a row of wooden commercial buildings along the Piscataqua River.

The blaze wiped out Market Square, which had barely recovered from the previous fire, as well as St. John’s Episcopal Church, built in 1732. The damage was estimated at $130,000, about $2.7 million in today’s dollars.

Portsmouth’s Market Square in 1853.

The disastrous fire preceded two more blows to the city: the Embargo of 1807 and the War of 1812. Both events sent Portsmouth, heavily dependent on shipping and trade, on a long downward slide. The industrial revolution bypassed Portsmouth, spurring growth in nearby mill towns like Dover and Rochester.

Gov. John Langdon’s house in Portsmouth, N.H., spared by the fires.

Last of the Portsmouth Fires

Then almost exactly seven years after the second fire, on Dec. 22, 1813, the worst of the Portsmouth fires caused more devastation. The blaze started in Mrs. Woodward’s barn at the corner of Court and Church streets, allegedly set on purpose by an angry servant.

The fire then marched down to the river, burning everything in its path. The conflagration wiped out 300 buildings, reducing 15 acres to smoking rubble and, as one resident put it, ‘a forest of naked chimneys.’

The huge fire could be seen as far away as Salem, Mass. Volunteers from that town traveled 48 miles in six hours to help put out the blaze. Help also came from Newburyport, Mass., and the New Hampshire towns of Dover, Exeter and Durham.

Market Square, well after the Portsmouth fires

The fire sent the N.H. Fire and Marine Insurance Co. into bankruptcy. It destroyed many businesses that had relocated after the first fire of 1802.

After the Fires

Portsmouth had been growing at a good clip before the fires. Its population increased 13.1 percent from 1790 to 1800, and then at a spectacular 29.9 percent from 1800 to 1810. After the fire of 1813, the city’s growth slowed to only 5.7 percent from 1810-1820. to 7,327. Some people, including a young lawyer named Daniel Webster, packed up and left.

In 1814, the New Hampshire General Court passed the Brick Act, requiring every building over 12 feet high to be built of brick with a slate roof. Portsmouth rebuilt its downtown in brick, and tried to enjoy the holidays.

Jefferson Street in Portsmouth’s Strawbery Banke Museum.

You can still get a feel for what Portsmouth was like before it went brick at the Strawbery Banke collection of house museums, right in the middle of the city.

With thanks to Dennis Robinson, The Three Fires of Christmas, SeacoastNH.com, 2005. Images: North Church By Billy Hathorn – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34161214. Gov. John Langdon House By Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5643711. Jefferson Street By Ken Gallager (Ken Gallager from en.wikipedia) – Author, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15734947. This story about the Portsmouth Fires was updated in 2023.

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The Privateer Liverpool Packet, The Evil Genius of Coastal Trade

The privateers that raided shipping off the New England coast in the War of 1812 were the gladiators of their day. Wealth, fame, legend – and danger – lured ships and their crews to sea. And none had more celebrity than Capt. Joseph Barrs and his privateer ship, the Liverpool Packet.

The trade embargo of 1795 put New Englanders in a difficult spot. The region made much of its money trading, and the embargo on British goods took a considerable toll. In Portsmouth, N.H., alone the value of cargo arriving in port plummeted from more than $785,000 a year before the treaty enforcement to less than $125,000 by the start of the War of 1812.

When war finally broke out with Britain, a surplus of hungry seamen eagerly sought to return to work on the legalized pirate vessels called privateers. American sailors by the scores jumped off their fishing vessels to sign on with a privateer that could capture British commercial vessels at will. The privateers hauled the captured ships into port and sold them along with their cargo. Once the government took a share, the crew divided the remaining profit.

Oil painting by Thomas Buttersworth titled British armed top sail schooner off Malaga, Spain, ca 1800-1828, in the collection at The Mariners’ Museum

Likewise, Canadian sailors also wanted to find work on privateers. But Canada was somewhat slower to get her privateers in the water. A ship needed a’Letter of Marque‘ for authorization as a privateer. The letter guaranteed a captured privateer crew would receive military courtesy rather than labeled as pirates.

England was slow in issuing Letters of Marque, but when they arrived the Canadians were equally eager to cruise the coast looking for American ships to capture and bring back to the British port of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Liverpool Packet

Of the many privateers, none had more success than the Barss brothers: Joseph, the swaggering sea captain; John, the seaman turned importer and investor. When it came to identifying lucrative targets for the privateers John knew where to find the loot. Joseph knew how to capture it.

The Barss brothers had backing from investors who had anticipated the windfall the War of 1812 could bring, including Canadian banker Enos Collins. Collins and his fellow investors had purchased a speedy schooner, the Liverpool Packet, in 1811. The ship had been seized and auctioned as an illegal slave-trading vessel. Joseph Barss took command of the vessel, soon the terror of the New England coast.

Joseph’s knowledge of shipping and his daring combined to make him public enemy number one among New England ship owners. In one week alone in October of 1812 he captured 11 ships and returned with them to Halifax. The city was alive with celebration as ships sailed into the harbor, their crews drunk on stolen wine. The ships’ cargoes, including paychests, belonged to the crew of the privateer that captured them. Barss was celebrated.

In New England, the situation grew dire as the cost of insuring ships flew through the roof. Shippers used horse and wagon to move goods up and down the coast. Grass grew on the wharves of Boston, observers lamented. One newspaper branded Barss ‘the evil genius of our coasting trade.”

Joseph Barss

When traffic off Cape Cod slowed down, Barss took his Liverpool Packet north to Massachusetts’ North Shore and to the coast of Maine. Rumors surrounded the Canadian captain. Some speculated that he had crew aboard with knowledge of New England harbors. That explained his ability to navigate so skillfully in and around the hazards he encountered.

Others speculated that his ship was backed, secretly, by wealthy Boston families who profited by investing in the privateer ships that were crippling their own country.

Thomas Shaw

In Portsmouth ship owners were furious that one ship should prove so lethal to their trade. Sea captain Thomas Shaw took up the job of capturing the Liverpool Packet.

The legend of the Liverpool Packet had grown beyond measure. Though hugely successful, Barss did not capture the 450 ships that legend credited him with.

One story told of the captain’s uncanny prowess in navigating New England ports. The ship ducked into the harbor at New Castle, N.H., and pulled alongside the fish flakes where fishermen put out their catch to dry. The privateer crew loaded fish onto the vessel and left a note of thanks from the crew, “lending their regards to the people of the town for thus providing for our wants.”

The inevitable finally happened in June of 1813. Shaw and his ship the Thomas, larger than the Liverpool Packet, tracked the vessel down off the coast of New Hampshire and overtook it after a grueling six-hour chase and brief battle.

What should have been a peaceful surrender turned ugly when the crews of the two ships broke out fighting before the two captains put an end to it. The Thomas towed the Canadian ship into Portsmouth Harbor. Crowds cheered as Barss and his crew were marched through the streets to jail. And the mighty Liverpool Packet was auctioned and renamed the Portsmouth Packet, sailing as a privateer under a captain from Dover, N.H.

But of course the story didn’t end there.

Epitaph of a Privateer

The Liverpool Packet stayed at sea under the American flag for less than two days. The British recaptured it, and Enos Collins and his investors returned it to service as a privateer. Collins, founder of the Halifax Banking Company, would become one of the wealthiest men in Canada. He disliked discussing the privateer days.

Joseph Barss returned to the seas as captain of another privateer. This broke the rules of the parole under which he was released. He was recaptured and this time imprisoned for the duration of the war. He never fully recovered his health following his imprisonment and died in 1824 in Halifax.

John Barss’ wealth would continue to grow and he, as well as his brother James, served terms in Canada’s parliament.

Images: British schooner By Thomas Buttersworth(Life time: 1768-1842) – Original publication: ca 1800-1828Immediate source: Took a picture of the painting at The Mariners' Museum, PD-US-expired, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37842107.

This story updated in 2022.

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A Poorhouse in Each New England State

The poorhouse was once a very real and often feared part of life in New England.

Poorhouses evolved from the English poor laws of the 16th and 17th centuries. They required the community, most often the town, to take responsibility for its poor residents.

During the earliest days of colonial New England, the poor often relied on families and neighbors for help. In Plymouth Colony, for example, most towns kept a herd of cattle to farm out to families in want. While poor families had the cows in custody, they could get milk and birth calves.

Eventually overseers were elected to find work for able-bodied people and help for those too old or feeble to work. A poor tax supported the overseer and the almshouse, the poorhouse or the poor farm.

The cost of caring for the poor caused some communities to warn out people who seemed likely to fall into poverty. Sometimes towns drove entire families away.

Benjamin Franklin didn’t think much of Boston’s first poorhouse, established in 1660. “There is no country in the world in which the poor are more idle, dissolute, drunken and insolent,” he wrote in 1766. (Anne Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher and companion, lived in a Massachusetts poorhouse.)

Other Massachusetts towns auctioned off their poor to the lowest bidder, a system called vendue. In 1786, Malden, Mass., auctioned Mary Degresha off to the lowest bidder, who earned six dollars a week for housing and taking proper care of her.

Often, poor people hired out to work as servants or laborers, a practice that bordered on slavery. Such abuse inspired change in the early 19th century, and the practice of hiring out gradually declined.

Financial panics — 1817 and 1837 — touched off waves of poor farms, as did the Irish migration during the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s.

The poor were kept out of sight, on farms down back roads or in walled-off buildings. By the late 19^th century, states were building asylums for the mentally ill. After the turn of the century, poorhouses declined and mostly old people lived in them.

Middletown, Conn., Alms House

Middletown Alms House

Since the 17th century, Connecticut’s poor law required towns to take care of their impoverished residents. In the earliest days of the colony, blood relatives and neighbors provided for people in need. By the time of the American Revolution, towns began to build almshouses for the poor.

The Middletown Alms House, built around 1812. is one of the oldest poorhouses still standing in the United States.

It still stands on Silver Street between the Connecticut River and the old Connecticut State Hospital for the Insane. In 1920, the Report of the State Board of Charities reported, “The bedrooms and beds appeared to be in excellent condition and the inmates seemed contented and well cared for. About thirty-five acres of land are attached.”

That year, 64 of Connecticut’s 168 towns had a poorhouse or town farm. Other towns sent their poor away, sent them to the loweest bidder or placed them in asylums and hospitals. By the end of the decade, only 50 towns still ran almshouses.

In 1853, Middletown moved its poor to a more remote location on Silver Street.

Click here for more information about Connecticut poorhouses.

Portland, Maine, Almshouse

Portland poorhouse

After the American Revolution, Maine put its poor in the hands of overseers, who paid people to take them into their homes for a year.

Mercy Lovejoy and her five children, for example, were auctioned off in 1817 to a farmer who fed and clothed them in exchange for their labor. The town of Livermore paid him $3.95 for the six Lovejoys.

Larger cities and towns began to build almshouses and poor farms. The bodies of inmates who died in custody were shipped in barrels or boxes to the medical school at Bowdoin College.

Portland may have had a workhouse since 1763. In 1803, the town established an almshouse next to the poor farm (now on the site is an ice arena). Portland police rounded up homeless people and sent them to the almshouse, which strictly regulated inmates’ behavior. Those who could had to work ‘cheerfully and faithfully.’

Portland closed the poor farm and almshouse around 1900 for a more modern hospital and workhouse. A cemetery on the property was dug up in 1904, and taken to a pit at Forest City Cemetery in South Portland.

Today a brick barn behind the Portland Expo still stands, the only remnant of the Portland almshouse and poor farm.

Falmouth, Mass., Poorhouse

Falmouth Poorhouse

The Falmouth poorhouse was built as a tavern in 1769. Then the War of 1812 caused a depression across Cape Cod, and the tavern owner packed up and left for Cincinnati. The town moved the tavern 4-1/2 miles next to the Methodist Cemetery, and it became the Falmouth Poor House.

The town fenced the land and later built a barn, which allowed it to reclassify the poorhouse as a work house. Anyone who refused to work would be confined in a cell or farmed out indefinitely.

In 1878 the poorhouse turned into a poor farm, which actually supported itself by selling food. It wasn’t closed until 1960. The seven people remaining in the poorhouse went on welfare and moved to hospitals. The poorhouse now stands empty.

Strafford, NH, County Almshouse

The Strafford County poorhouse

New Hampshire had a system of ‘poor in, poor out,’ with some poor people living at home. They got some help from the county, but they had to work.

Unlike the other states, which made their towns care for the poor, New Hampshire by 1866 required the county to provide for them. Each of New Hampshire’s 10 counties had a county poorhouse.

New Hampshire’s poor people generally had to qualify for help by living in a town and paying taxes for seven consecutive years. A 1904 U.S. government report summarized New Hampshire poor laws as follows:

The parents, grandparents, children, and grandchildren of any poor-person, if of sufficient ability, are liable for his support. Town paupers requiring complete maintenance, except honorably discharged veterans who must be supported outside the almshouses, as well as those without town settlement, are cared for on county poor farms … The overseers have authority…to bind out paupers, and to apprentice children.

A fire destroyed the main building of the Strafford County almshouse in 1881, killing 13 people. The county replaced it with a large, three-story brick almshouse, designed to shelter 300 people. The insane asylum was also located at the site.

Twelve years later, the insane asylum burned to the ground, killing 40 of 44 inmates. “Forty Crazed People Burned to Death,” reported the local newspaper on March 10, 1893. “At the window could be seen the tortured faces of the demented inmates, now raging and howling fiends.”

A controversy broke out about conditions at the county farms, especially for children. By 1898, the county moved most poor children into foster care.

In 1907, Strafford County built a jail next to the almshouse, and in 1970 built the county nursing home in front of it.

Dexter Asylum, Providence, RI

Dexter Asylum

Rhode Island philanthropist Ebenezer Knight Dexter bequeathed the funds for the Dexter Asylum when he died in 1824. He left his Neck Farm to the Town of Providence and stipulated that a wall surround it.

Previously, caretakers bid to the town for the job of taking in poor people.

Dexter left oddly specific instructions for the wall, which took eight years and $12,700 to finish.

The Asylum, a working vegetable and dairy farm, housed the poor, elderly and mentally ill. By the 1840s most of the residents were Irish immigrants indentured for six months. Men and women lived separately and only saw visitors once every three weeks. They had bread and tea for dinner.

The Asylum meted out punishment to those found guilty of drinking, immoral conduct, loud talking, disrespectful behavior or faking illness to avoid work. They confined such miscreants to a jail cell for three days and kept them on a short allowance of food. They confined the mentally ill in ‘maniac cells.’

By 1849, 190 residents overcrowded the poorhouse. Some of the mentally ill transferred to the new Butler Hospital. Eventually the Asylum capped its population at 100.

The Asylum then shut down in 1957, and playing fields replaced its gardens.

Today part of Providence’s poorhouse survives as the rough stone wall bordering Brown University’s Olney-Margolies Athletic Complex

Burlington, Vt. Poorhouse

Burlington Poorhouse

In Vermont during the 19^th century, towns or groups of towns built poor farms and poorhouses.

Burlington established its first poorhouse in 1816. During the Civil War, it filled with the families of deceased soldiers and with the families of draftees whose pay hadn’t reached them yet.

Many French transients came to Burlington from Canada in the depression after the Panic of 1873, while the Irish arrived during the potato famine of the 1840s and 1850s.

The Burlington poorhouse sheltered several hundred long- and short-term residents who slept on straw mattresses. In 1871, for example, 62-year-old resident Jerusha Waters was a crippled long-term resident. Mary Marks, 73, was blind and had lived there for 19 years.

Most, though, lived at the poorhouse for a short time, perhaps a couple of months. Often they arrived in the winter when they ran out of heating fuel and returned home in warm weather.

By the turn of the century, poorhouses fell into disrepute. Burlington’s poor were then directed to local affiliates of the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, the Elizabeth Lund Home for unmarried mothers and private nursing homes.

Photos: Middletown Almshouse By Steadyjohn – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5722133; Strafford County Poorhouse By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34873317. Falmouth Poorhouse By Gabe20770 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=95643580. This story about the New England poorhouse was updated in 2023.

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6 New Deal Projects Still in Use

The New Deal put tens of millions of people to work and changed the landscape in every New England city and town. It put sidewalks on streets, bridges over rivers, hiking trails in forests, seawalls on beaches and public buildings in cities and towns. Much of the New Deal legacy is still in use and still visible today.

President Franklin Roosevelt insisted relief programs provide jobs and not handouts. Over eight years, the Works Progress Administration alone employed more than 8 million Americans. The Civilian Conservation Corps put 3 million young men to work at a monthly wage of $30 — $25 of which they had to send home.

Roosevelt intended to revive the ideals of civil society, collective governance and social well-being. He took a special interest in building post offices because of their importance to the life of a community. He insisted his home post office in Hyde Park, N.Y., be modeled after one of the oldest houses in the town. His friend and relative Olin Dows painted the murals, which depicted both Roosevelt and Dows ancestors who lived in the Hudson Valley.

Southington Post Office Mural

Southington Post Office lobby. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

In Connecticut, the U.S. Treasury Department built or expanded more than 25 post offices and paid for more than 25 post office murals between 1934 and 1943. (Click here for a list of New Deal projects in Connecticut.)

Typically, the government oversaw the embellishment of federal buildings. But during the Depression, artists struggled along with the rest of the work force. During the New Deal, government for the first time aimed to support and encourage artists. Such noted artists as Reginald Marsh, Rockwell Kent, Philip Guston and Ben Shahn got jobs painting post office murals.

Artists vied for mural contracts by submitting sketches in national and regional competitions. The winners were chosen for their skill and for the way they showed ordinary citizens, their community and their history.

The post office mural program aimed to link people to an earlier time and place when Americans faced great obstacles and overcome them.

In the East Hartford post office a mural illustrated “The Stop of Hooker’s Band in East Hartford before Crossing the River.” New Haven’s post office featured the “Pursuit of the Regicides.” And Torrington remembered its native son in “Episodes in the Life of John Brown.”

Other Connecticut post offices depicted the industrial or agricultural heritage of their communities. In the Southington Post Office lobby, a mural shows the town’s industry, agriculture and landmarks. Ann Hunt Spencer painted it. She studied art in Paris and received the Kosciuszko Foundation’s scholarship in 1937 for study and travel in Poland.

The post office is at 125 Main Street in Southington. For a list of WPA post office murals in the United States, click here.

Acadia National Park

CCC boys building Otter Creek Road in Acadia. Photo courtesy National Park Service.

By the time of the Great Depression, Acadia National Park had nearly reached its 20th birthday. It was mostly overgrown and inaccessible. Its had few facilities, not nearly enough for the park’s many visitors.

Superintendent George Dorr dreamed of improving the park, and he saw his chance in the Civilian Conservation Corps. He asked Roosevelt for a camp at Acadia. Eventually some 3,000 poor boys, mostly from Maine, came to Acadia for six months or longer to work as part of Roosevelt’s ‘Tree Army.’

The CCC ran three camps in and around Acadia National Park. They opened new trails and improved old ones, planted thousands of trees, made fire roads, fought fires, built footbridges and constructed two campgrounds, Blackwoods and Seawall. They built Ocean Drive, which loops around the park with stunning views of the coast, and they opened hiking trails to Echo Lake, Long Pond and Beech Cliff.

To find other New Deal projects in Maine, click here.

Cape Cod Bridges

The Sagamore Bridge.

The Cape Cod Canal celebrated its grand opening in 1914. Its private owners hoped to cash in by charging tolls for shipping traffic. Mariners avoided the canal, though, because three drawbridges over it posed a navigational hazard. The canal enterprise lost money.

The U.S. government eventually took over the Cape Cod Canal. In 1933, the Army Corps of Engineers began building the Sagamore and Bourne highway bridges in the same spots as earlier bridges.

The Corps hired Fay, Spofford & Thorndike to design and supervise construction of the bridges so they would allow large oceangoing ships to pass below.

The Boston architectural firm of Cram and Ferguson designed the appearance of the bridges. The firm’s principal, Ralph Adams Cram, pioneered the Gothic Revival Style of architecture in buildings such as The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, Emmanuel Church in Newport, R.I., the Princeton University Chapel and many buildings at Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. The Episcopal Church of the United States honors him with a feast day.

The identical bridges over the canal both opened on June 22, 1935. A miniature copy of the bridges was used for the John Greenleaf Whittier Bridge, which connects I-95 from Newburyport to Amesbury.

On a summer day, the two bridges might together carry 130,000 vehicles.

Manchester Airport Terminal

The Manchester Airport terminal and tower.

The New Deal brought dozens of improvements to New Hampshire: the Hampton Beach seawall, town halls in Dover and Nashua, the Concord library, Cannon Mountain Ski Resort, schools, post offices and bridges.

The New Deal also brought to Londonderry in 1937 an Art Deco style airport terminal and control tower. The building evolved into the Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, now the fourth biggest airport in New England. It carries more than 2 million passengers a year.

The 1937 terminal continued in service until the airport was expanded in 1995. The terminal was slated for demolition, but saved by the airport, the New Hampshire Aviation Historical Society, the City of Manchester and the Town of Londonderry. It is now home to the Aviation Museum of New Hampshire.

You can visit the historic terminal on Friday and Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm and on Sunday from 1 pm to 4 pm

McCoy Stadium

McCoy Stadium scoreboard.

Thomas P. McCoy was the colorful mayor of Pawtucket who wore shamrock-patterned ties and a red rose in his lapel. The undisputed head of the city’s Democratic Party, he was nicknamed ‘The Prince of Pawtucket.’

McCoy used his political clout to get a baseball stadium from the New Deal. He laid the cornerstone on Nov. 3, 1940.

McCoy had chosen swampland called Hammond Pond as a building site, which guaranteed years of employment for hundreds of workers. Vehicles and equipment were swallowed overnight in the bottomless muck. In the end, the stadium cost more to build than the assessed value of Fenway Park.

In 1945, Mayor McCoy died suddenly. The stadium was named after him and dedicated to his memory in 1946.

McCoy Stadium struggled for years, intermittently attracting farm teams for the Boston Braves, the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Red Sox. In 1977, a Canadian businessman named Ben Mondor bought the Pawtucket Red Sox out of bankruptcy and visited McCoy stadium. “What a dump,” he said. He turned around the team and the stadium, making it a family-friendly place where Girl Scouts camped overnight on the outfield, children got free medical checkups and fans saw their birthdays and weddings celebrated on the Jumbotron.

Future Hall of Famers have played at McCoy. In 1981 the Pawtucket Red Sox played the longest game in baseball history against the Rochester Red Wings. Wade Boggs and Cal Ripken, Jr., played against each other in the 33-inning game.

McCoy Stadium was renovated in 1992 and expanded to seat 10,000 in 1999, surviving efforts to abandon it. However, in 2021 the PawSox moved to Worcester and the city made plans to tear down the stadium. A New York billionaire has expressed interest in buying it,

To see other New Deal projects in Rhode Island, click here.

Stowe Mountain Resort

Stowe Mountain Resort.

Vermont’s New Deal history – in fact, Vermont’s history – can’t be told without state forester Perry Merrill. When the Civilian Conservation Corps started up in the 1930s, few states had prepared projects. Merrill had the foresight to draw up a long list. He had already led long-range conservation, flood control and forest management projects following the Great Vermont Flood of 1927.

The federal government originally scheduled four CCC camps for Vermont, Merrill wrangled 30 camps from Washington, with nearly 41,000 men working in them from 1933-42. CCC crews planted more than a million trees, built dams and cleared more than 100 miles of roads.

Merrill had seen ski areas built in Scandinavia and understood how they provided jobs and recreation. He put on his list of projects ski trails on Mount Mansfield. The CCC boys built the Ski Master, the Overland, the Perry Merrill, and Lord, the S-53 and the Nose Dive.

They also made a large parking lot for several hundred cars. Then in 1940, state officials signed a lease with the Mount Mansfield Company to build a ski lift up Mount Mansfield.

Today, that CCC project is the Stowe Mountain Resort — the premiere ski resort East of the Mississippi.

Photos: McCoy Stadium scoreboard, By Giants27 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16035253. By FirozAnsari – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62714730. This story was updated in 2023.

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