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Enfield Conn.

Paul Robeson Moves To Enfield, Conn.

In 1941, the most famous black man in the world moved with his wife and son to a 12-room Colonial house in the all-white town of Enfield, Conn. It had four tall white columns, a pool and servants’ quarters. Paul Robeson would call it home for the next 12 years.

Look magazine sent a photographer and published a spread of smiling Robeson family togetherness. In one photo, they posed in front of shelves crammed with books. Robeson, in addition to singing and acting, had a law degree and spoke 20 languages.

Paul Robeson backstage, 1942

Robeson wasn’t the first black celebrity to move to rural, white Connecticut. Marian Anderson and her husband, for example, moved to Danbury in 1943. Jackie Robinson built a house in Stamford in the early 1950s. But like most exurbanites, Anderson and Robinson lived within a commuter train ride of New York City. Enfield sits on the border of Massachusetts, nearly 150 miles away.

So why would Paul Robeson, international star of stage, screen and concert hall, move to Enfield?

He said he liked the quiet of the country. Also, some of his classmates from Rutgers lived there.

Well…not really.

Paul Robeson

He was born April 9, 1898, in Princeton, N.J., the son of a preacher who’d escaped slavery at the age of 15. His mother taught school, but she burned to death when Paul was six. When Paul was 10, his father moved them to the more racially tolerant town of Somerville, N.J.

In high school, Paul excelled in athletics, drama and academics and won a scholarship to Rutgers University. He sang in the glee club, won 15 varsity letters, excelled academically and played football, the only African American on the team. Walter Camp, the father of modern football, called him the greatest defense end ever.

obeson, right, at Rutgers.

His father, who died when he was 20, wanted him to be an orator. Paul had the voice for it, a deep, melodious baritone. He also had the eloquence and the passion—for justice, for equality, for freedom.

Fame

Robeson graduated from Rutgers in 1919 as class valedictorian and moved to New York City. He joined the Harlem Renaissance while attending Columbia Law School, which he financed by playing football. In Harlem he formed a lifelong friendship with W.E.B. Du Bois.

After earning his law degree he went to work for a white law firm. That didn’t last long. When a white secretary refused to take dictation from him because of his race, he quit.

At Columbia, he met Eslanda Cardozo Goode, a brilliant chemistry student. He was on the rebound, as his girlfriend had dumped him. Essie saw his star power, and in 1921 they married. Essie pushed him toward the stage.

“Even then, I never meant to [become an actor], I just said yes to get her to quit pestering me,” he later recalled.

He joined the Provincetown Players, starring in Eugene O’Neill’s Emperor Jones. The role won him critical acclaim, but his singing catapulted him to worldwide fame.

Concerts

In the 1920s, middle-class African Americans viewed Negro spirituals as embarrassing reminders of oppression. Paul Robeson not only embraced them, he sang them on the concert stage. “These were not songs of defeat,“ he said. “These were songs that aided the Negro people in their struggle.”

In 1925, he recorded “Were You There” and “Steal Away,” which immediately sold 50,000 copies. The Provincetown Players sponsored his first concert that year, accompanied by his longtime pianist, Lawrence Brown.

“[I was the] first Negro to give program(s) of all-Negro music on (the) regular concert stage,” Robeson said. “First concert (was in) New York, 1925, and since (have) sung concerts in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Germany, Paris, Holland, London, and all of England with enormous success.”

He sang folk songs in many different languages, believing they promoted understanding among people.

London

In 1928, he, Essie and their young son Paul moved to London, where they encountered fewer racial barriers than in the U.S. He brought the house down with “Old Man River” in Showboat and as the lead character in Othello.

Paul Robeson as Othello in the 1940s

Paul’s serial infidelity caused a strain in their marriage, and he and Essie separated for a while. But after some time apart, he and Essie reconciled in an arrangement that focused on business.

He hoped to use his art to change people’s perceptions of his race. As a film actor, he had little success. He made movies about Africa because he thought they’d portray African culture. Instead, they glorified colonialism.

Joe Hill

One day in London, Robeson was walking down the street on his return from a matinee performance of Showboat.

The sound of a perfectly harmonized men’s chorus stopped him cold. Then an army of ragged workmen, carrying banners, came into view.

They were Welsh coal miners, locked out of their jobs by the mine owners. The starving men walked all the way to London, singing, in search of a way to feed their families. Robeson joined the march to the end. When they stopped in front of a city building, he jumped to the top of the steps and sang “Old Man River” – along with Negro spirituals.

Robeson sent them back to the coal valleys with a railroad car full of food and clothing. From then on, Robeson was an ardent trade unionist. He sang many benefit concerts for the coal miners and other union workers – including, in Enfield, the teacher’s union. In 1940, he starred in Proud Valley, a film about a heroic black mariner who joins a mining community in Wales.

Later, he told the House Un-American Affairs Committee,

You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.

Moscow

In 1934, Robeson was invited to Moscow to do a film about the Haitian Revolution. He said for the first time he was treated as a full human being. He perceived a lack of racism in the Soviet Union, and he was impressed that the Soviet constitution made racism an offense. So Robeson committed himself to socialism.

In 1937, again in Moscow, he decided his career had to take a back seat to the struggle for equality. “The artist must take sides,” he said. “He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I made my choice. I had no alternative.”

Those words were engraved on his tombstone.

Robeson then threw his support behind the Republicans fighting fascism in the Spanish Civil War. He gave concerts to raise money for displaced children. In Spain, he visited the battlefront and sang to wounded Republican soldiers.

Enfield

The looming war forced the Robesons back to the United States. In 1941, they bought the Enfield house on 2-1/2 acres for $19,000.

The Robesons announced they had settled down to country life. But Paul Robeson didn’t take to the new home. He said it reminded him of a Southern plantation house.

In reality, the house belonged to Essie, who began to carve out her own career She wrote several books there, studied anthropology at the Hartford Seminary, traveled, lectured and joined political campaigns. Paul spent more time in New York City, visiting regularly and spending some vacations there. Paul, Jr., attended Enfield High School.

Robeson leading Moore Shipyard workers in the Star Spangled Banner in 1942.

Robeson was riding high in the early 1940s, playing Othello in the longest running Shakespeare play on Broadway. He also supported America’s involvement in World War II. He recorded a wildly popular song, Broadcast for America, sold Liberty bonds and sang for the Armed Forces. All along he hoped the USSR would have a positive impact on the United States.

It wasn’t to be. He continued to support the Soviet Union as the Cold War broke out.

Then in 1949, something happened in Paris that transformed him from celebrity to martyr.

Paris

Robeson traveled to France to speak at a student peace conference sponsored by the Soviet Union. He sang “Joe Hill”, then spoke extemporaneously. According to a fabricated Associated Press story, Robeson said, “It is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union which in one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity.”

What he really said was, “We are determined to fight for peace. We do not wish to fight the Soviet Union.”

No matter. The press took up the charge of treason against Paul Robeson. From then on, he would be harassed, blacklisted and ostracized.

Peekskill Riot

The NAACP denounced him. So did Jackie Robinson, under pressure from the Dodgers. Eighty five Robeson concerts were canceled.

In 1950, the State Department took away his passport. He could have had it back if he swore he didn’t belong to the Communist Party. But he refused – though privately he said he didn’t.

Four months after the Paris speech, Robeson agreed to give a benefit concert for the Civil Rights Congress in Peekskill, N.Y. Local veterans groups organized an attack on concertgoers, seriously injuring 13 with rocks and baseball bats. They tore up the stage, lynched Robeson in effigy and burned a cross on a nearby hillside. Law enforcement arrived late, and a photograph showed police and a state trooper beating a highly decorated black aviator.

Supporters decided the concert must go on anyway. Two weeks later, they tried again. Twenty thousand people came to hear Robeson, protected by a ring of union members. The concert came off peacefully after the unionists flushed out a sniper’s nest, though concertgoers were ambushed afterward.

Harassment

Robeson’s income fell from $150,000 a year to $3,000. He could only play small venues, like schools and black churches. FBI agents took down the license plate numbers of those who came to listen. Though still popular overseas, he couldn’t travel without a passport.

In 1952, the Peoples’ Party ran into opposition when it tried to book Robeson for a benefit concert at Weaver High School—quite a comedown from Bushnell Memorial Hall, where he’d sung seven years earlier. The concert went off, but hundreds of police were detailed outside to prevent violence.

The FBI surveilled his Enfield house. A neighbor called the Justice Department to report a strange Dodge parked nearby. Was Robeson harboring Communists? she wondered. The Enfield police chief thought the car probably belonged to an FBI agent.

The Ku Klux Klan made death threats against Robeson and his family. So Essie installed an alarm system at the Enfield home. She also tried to get a gun, but the local police wouldn’t allow it. So she slept with a hunting knife by her bedside.

Robeson made so little money during those years he had to sell the Enfield house. Essie put it on the market for $35,000, but it didn’t sell until 1953, when she dropped the price to $22,000.

HUAC

The House Un-American Affairs Committee called him to testify in 1956. Ever defiant, Robeson told them, “You are the nonpatriots, and you are the un-Americans, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

A Supreme Court ruling in 1958 gave him back his passport, but by then his career was over. He moved to Europe, where he fell into depression and illness. Then in 1963, he returned to the U.S., living quietly in Harlem and then in Philadelphia with his sister. He died on Jan. 23, 1976, following a stroke.

With thanks to Paul Robeson: Here I Stand. Image of Proud Valley poster, By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49000945. This story updated in 2022.

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6 Places That Used To Be Part of a Different State

For centuries, New England’s borders were anything but stable, and New Englanders didn’t agree on what they were. Maine was once part of Massachusetts, New Haven and Plymouth were separate colonies and Vermont belonged to New Hampshire – or was it New York? At least six places – cities, towns and parts of towns – used to belong to a different state until a border dispute was settled.

Of course all of Maine once belonged to Massachusetts, but that’s a separate story.

Here then, are six places that used to be part of a different state. Or so it was claimed.

Enfield and Suffield, Ct.

The Southwick Jog

Enfield and Suffield — two towns in Connecticut — began their American history as part of Massachusetts.

The two towns’ transition from Massachusetts to Connecticut took 162 years to fully accomplish.

The confusion about which state owned the towns dates back to 1642. With Connecticut seeking a charter from the King of England, Massachusetts officials decided it would be wise to survey the southern border of their territory.

To carry out the assignment, Massachusetts hired two English surveyors — Solomon Saffery and Nathaniel Woodward.

The two men had determined the border’s location by using the most southerly point of the Charles River for reference. From there, they established a point from which they could draw a line directly westward. But when they drew the line, the two surveyors actually placed one end of the line at the wrong location. The result was a diagonal line that extended some seven miles below where Massachusetts’ border was supposed to end.

This mistake set off the 162 years of fighting. Rightly or wrongly, people have pilloried Saffery and Woodward over the years. Some historians had said the pair were drunks, and that explained the mistake. Others have said they were unqualified — that they were sailors, not surveyors (though Woodward, at least, had a track record as a surveyor).

More charitable historians have suggested the instruments available to surveyors at the time were not the most reliable. Further, they note, Saffery and Woodward took a shortcut to their surveying — extrapolating from mathematical calculations rather than walking the land. They had to, in part, because they worked on land the Indians considered to be theirs.

Back and Forth to a Different State

Regardless, at first Massachusetts had the upper hand in the debate (Connecticut didn’t even have a charter). However, Massachusetts had one difficulty in maintaining its claim: it was clearly wrong. Every time surveyors from both Massachusetts and Connecticut investigated, they concurred Saffery and Woodward got it wrong in 1642.

In 1713, the two colonies got together and reached an agreement. Though the 1642 line was wrong, they both agreed to accept it with regard to the towns of Suffield, Enfield and the newer town of Woodstock. The towns would stay in Massachusetts. In return Connecticut would receive unsettled land in Massachusetts as payment.

A stake marks the southernmost point in the “Southwick jog” of the Massachusetts-Connecticut boundary. Seen from East Street in Granby, Conn.

The 1713 compromise satisfied everyone but the people who lived in the disputed towns. They still wanted to be part of Connecticut — probably because Connecticut had lower taxes and a more progressive government. In 1749, the disputed towns declared themselves part of Connecticut. This later prompted residents of Southwick, now bounded on three sides by Connecticut, to petition to join Connecticut, too.

This eroding away of Massachusetts was too much for its officials to accept. But negotiations had to be put on hold while the American Revolution was decided. Finally, in 1804 representatives from the two states got together and agreed that Southwick would stay in Massachusetts. The others would stay in Connecticut. The result was a small, square cutout in the border known to this day as the Southwick Jog. In Southwick today you can stand at the corner of Two States Road and Two States Avenue.

Seavey’s Island, Maine

Seavey’s Island

When Maine became a state in 1820, her 95,640 people lived in 232 cities and towns that had already been incorporated by Massachusetts.

Maine’s border disputes with Canada erupted in 1838 with the bloodless and often comical Aroostook War. The boundaries were famously settled by Daniel Webster.

But it was New Hampshire that caused the most recent border dispute.

The Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, created in 1800, lies in the middle of the Piscataqua River between Portsmouth, N.H., and Kittery, Maine. It was cobbled together over the years from five islands, now called Seavey’s Island.

The federal government owns the island, and for decades the U.S. Navy viewed it as part of New Hampshire – hence the name, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

Different State

Shipyard workers come from New Hampshire, which doesn’t have an income tax, and from Maine, which does. New Hampshire shipyard workers had to pay Maine income tax because Maine claimed Seavey’s Island.

In 2001, New Hampshire went to the U.S. Supreme Court and tried to get Seavey’s Island back.

New Hampshire claimed it owned the Piscataqua River to the Maine shoreline. Maine claimed the boundary between the two states ran down the middle of the river.

Unfortunately for New Hampshire, it had agreed in a 1977 lawsuit over fishing rights that the border ran between the middle of the river.

Maine got Seavey’s Island.

Fall River, Mass.

Fall River. The pink section at the bottom was once Tiverton.

Fall River started out as a rural outpost of the Plymouth Colony. In 1694, its southern neighbor Tiverton was incorporated as part of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which by then had merged with Plymouth. In 1746, Tiverton was annexed to Rhode Island colony by Royal Decree. (So were Little Compton, Barrington, Bristol and Cumberland.)

In 1856, Tiverton decided to spin off its northern industrial section. It was called Fall River – Rhode Island. Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court moved the state boundary to create one Massachusetts city of Fall River.

Bellows Falls, N.H.

The International Paper Co. in Bellows Falls, Vt., starred in the final chapter of the border wars between New Hampshire and Vermont in 1934. These disputes had gone on for hundreds of years, predating Vermont’s creation as a state.

In the 1600s, governors of both New York and New Hampshire were merrily giving away sections of Vermont to their friends. The King of England intervened in 1624. He established the New Hampshire border as the western edge of the Connecticut River. This border was largely accepted, though a group of dissidents in New Hampshire decided to secede in the 1770s. In 1778, the 22 New Hampshire towns from Chester to Haverhill declared themselves part of the newly proclaimed Republic of Vermont (after toying with and rejecting the idea of creating a new state altogether called New Connecticut).

New Hampshire took the news badly. It threatened to withdraw support for the American Revolution and to send 1,000 troops into Vermont to restore its borders. Even George Washington had to get involved in whipping the towns back into line. Under pressure from the Continental Congress, Vermont announced it was rejecting the towns’ bid to secede and returning them to New Hampshire.

Bellows Falls at high flow.

When Vermont was granted admission to the union as a state, one condition was that it renounce all claims to any lands to the east of the western edge of the Connecticut River as measured at low water. That settled the matter for more than 100 years, but the Vermonters would once again challenge New Hampshire.

Power struggle

From 1909 on, New Hampshire towns tried to assess taxes on power plants, canals and the International Paper Company’s mill at Bellows Falls in Vermont. The logic was this: the mill was powered by water in the river and, to get access to that water, it had to extend part of its plant beyond the low-water mark and into the middle of the river. Hence the subject properties were in New Hampshire. Vermont sued. The correct location of the border, it now asserted, was the center of the river.

As the dispute dragged on, some novel solutions were proposed – including diverting the Connecticut River altogether to move the border with it.

But swift and steady are the wheels of justice. Well, steady at least. In 1934, the U.S. Supreme Court finally settled the matter, granting New Hampshire ownership of the entire river to the western low water mark. By that time, International Paper Co. had abandoned its Vermont plant, for unrelated reasons, and the Bellows Falls economy was in a tailspin.

Pawtucket, R.I.

Fall River’s neighbor Pawtucket, R.I., comes from the Algonquin name ‘River Fall.’ And when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1861 gave Fall River, R.I., to Massachusetts, it gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island as a consolation prize.

The original Pawtucket actually consisted of several towns. Part of it was known as Rehoboth, east of the Blackstone River. Rehoboth was part of Plymouth Colony. West of the Blackstone River a thriving industrial town (thanks to Sam Slater) was part of North Providence.

In 1828, Massachusetts carved out part of Rehoboth and called it Pawtucket, Mass. Pawtucket, Rhode Islanders were not happy.

After the Supreme Court gave Pawtucket, Mass., to Rhode Island, the North Providence land west of the Blackstone River went to Pawtucket. The two towns – East Pawtucket and West Pawtucket — then incorporated as the city of Pawtucket.

A Different State 4X

Windham County, Vt. Vernon is circled in red.

Vernon, Vt., received a charter as Northfield in 1672 as part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth, who grabbed much of Vermont for his own state, gave part of Vernon to another town he chartered, Hinsdale.

By 1779, four states claimed Vernon (then Hinsdale) due to bad surveying and squabbling over ownership: New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

Vernon has successively had the names Northfield in Hampshire County, Mass.; Hinsdale in Cheshire County, N.H.; Hinsdale in Cumberland County, N.Y.; and Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt.

But the Hinsdale in Windham County, Vt., had a problem On the other side of the Connecticut River sat a Hinsdale, N.H. The Vermonters wanted their own identity and voted in 1802 to change the name to Vernon. They supposedly chose it after President George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon.

This story about places that belonged to a different state was updated in 2022.

Image: Southwick Job By Dynzmoar – This file was derived from: Southwick-stake.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31670390

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Jonathan Edwards Loses His Pulpit Over Bad Books

Jonathan Edwards, the great Puritan theologian, helped ignite a religious revival known as the First Great Awakening across the 13 colonies. He converted ‘many hundreds’ to his church – and then he got fired from his job.

Jonathan Edwards

It all started when he tried to discipline some young men in his church. He caught them with bad books that ‘promoted lascivious and obscene Discourse among the young People.’

Those same young men had been among Edwards’ first converts. Apparently they fell back asleep.

The 1st Great Awakening

The First Great Awakening made it exciting to go to church. It drew the colonies together in the first major event they all shared. And it challenged established authority, preaching that God viewed all as equal.

Those two developments get credit for paving the way for the American Revolution.

Benjamin Franklin, commenting on the impact of the First Great Awakening, wrote,

…it seem’d as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk thro’ the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street…

Jonathan Edwards helped start it all.

Beginnings

Jonathan Edwards was born Oct. 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Conn., the only son of the 12 children of a minister and a minister’s daughter. He entered Yale at 12 and graduated at 17, then studied theology for two more years.

From his boyhood, he struggled with the Puritan idea that God predestines people for salvation. His own conversion experience solved the problem for him. He described how he experienced a personal, emotional connection to God:

…in my father’s pasture, I looked up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God that I know not how to express it. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything, in the sun, moon, and stars, in the clouds and blue sky, in the grass, flowers and trees, in the water and all nature, which used greatly to fix my mind.

In 1727 he married 17-year-old Sarah Pierpont, who possessed remarkable piety and common sense. Edwards wrote of her,

She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly and seems always to be full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what!?

They then had 11 children.

Northampton

Jonathan Edwards

That same year he became assistant pastor to his grandfather’s church in Northampton, Mass. Two years later his grandfather died and he found himself sole pastor of one of the largest and most influential parishes in New England.

In 1733, his sermons sparked a revival in Northampton that resulted in 300 converts to the church over the next few years. The religious fervor spread up and down the Connecticut River Valley.

The revival took a dark turn in 1735, when the revivals unsettled some New Englanders, but didn’t convert them. They grew despondent over their inevitable damnation, and at least two took their own lives. One suicide was Jonathan Edwards’ own parishioner and uncle, Joseph Hawley. The revival cooled for a while.

In 1740, Edwards helped arrange a visit to America by George Whitefield, the British evangelical minister who spread the First Great Awakening throughout the American colonies.

The First Great Awakening again gathered momentum, and on July 8, 1741 Jonathan Edwards preached one of his greatest sermons, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in Enfield, Conn. Today it is considered a classic of American literature.

“Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering,” he preached. His voice was mild but his message was so powerful his listeners gripped their pews.

Though vast multitudes of God’s enemies lock arms together, they are easily broken in pieces. They are like dandelions blowing in the wind, or a large dry field in the path of a wild brush fire. It is easy for us to step on and squish a worm that we see crawling on the ground, or cut a tiny thread holding something together. It is that easy for God, when He pleases, to cast His enemies down to hell.

‘Didn’t Care a Turd’

In the spring of 1744, Edwards learned about 10 young men who had passed around a midwifery book detailing the anatomy of women. Worse, they made lewd wisecracks about what nasty creatures women were. Edwards brought the matter to the church brethren, who appointed a committee. The committee deliberated while the young men waited in an anteroom. They played leapfrog, climbed a ladder to peek at women waiting upstairs and finally left to drink flip at a tavern. One of the young men said he would not ‘worship a wig,’ that he didn’t ‘care a turd’ for the committee because they were ‘nothing but men, molded up of a little dirt.’

Several of the young men confessed to disrespecting authority, and the matter seemed closed.

But it wasn’t.

The incident showed how Jonathan Edward’s influence was waning, for he had converted the young men in the first years of the Great Awakening. He made matters worse by refusing to continue his grandfather’s practice of allowing communion to anyone who had been baptized. Edwards only served communion to converts. For four years, no one joined his church.

Finally, a candidate came forward to join the church in 1748. Edwards insisted he meet formal tests that he had devised, and the candidate refused. The church backed the candidate, and on June 22, 1750 a vote was taken on whether Jonathan Edwards should continue as pastor. By a vote of 230 to 23, he was fired.

Jonathan Edwards 2.0

After he lost his pulpit in 1750, he was named pastor to the church in Stockbridge, Mass., and missionary to the Housatonic Indians. There he wrote the book The Life of David Brainerd, a missionary who died in his home. The book inspired thousands of missionaries throughout the 19th century.

In 1758, Jonathan Edwards accepted the position of president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) to replace his son-in-law, the Rev. Aaron Burr, who died. He moved to Princeton, N.J., in January 1758. As the town required, he was inoculated against smallpox, but died of the disease March 22, 1758.

His descendants include his grandson, Aaron Burr, Yale College President Timothy Dwight, First Lady Edith Roosevelt, writer O. Henry, Margaret Van Horne Dwight Bell and poet Robert Lowell.

George Whitefield preaching

This story about Jonathan Edwards was updated in 2022.

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