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Six Cranberry Bogs Throughout New England

Cranberry bogs, ubiquitous in Southeastern Massachusetts, can be found in every New England state.

They are enjoying something of a revival, as family farmers over the past decade have reclaimed and renovated old cranberry bogs—or built new ones –throughout New England.

Cranberry bogs are low shallow bowls of acidic peat soil near plentiful sand and water. They have four layers, starting with clay at the bottom, gravel, peat and sand.

Workers harvest cranberries during ‘Cranberry Time,’ which runs from late August through September in Southeastern New England.

A Massachusetts cranberry grower

History of Cranberry Bogs

If the Pilgrims served cranberries at the earliest Thanksgiving, they would have used them as a sweetener or a flavoring ingredient, not as a dish.

The first cranberry entrepreneur, Henry Hall of Dennis, Mass., noticed that his cranberry plants thrived when sand blew over them. He figured out how to transplant cranberry vines, fence them in, spread sand on them and flood the cranberry bogs at harvest time. That way, the cranberries floated to the top for easy picking.

Word spread about Henry Hall’s technique and cranberry bogs began flourishing in Southeastern Massachusetts. Some Massachusetts vines are more than 150 years old.

A vintage can of cranberry sauce

The cranberry industry advanced further when Marcus Libby Urann abandoned his profession as a lawyer to buy a cranberry bog. Urann made the first canned cranberry sauce .

In 1930, he joined with two other cranberry growers to found the cooperative that became Ocean Spray. Ocean Spray bottled and sold Cranberry Juice Cocktail starting in the mid-1930s. Urann is buried in Hanson, Mass., deep in cranberry country.

The Harwich Historical Society has an exhibit of cranberry culture (open in the summer) at its museum, at 80 Parallel St. in Harwich.

Here, then, are actual six cranberry bogs, one in each New England state.

Killingworth Cranberries

A 1940 cranberry picking machine.

In the late 19th century, Killingworth, Conn., had more than 20 acres under cranberry cultivation. Farmers eventually neglected their bogs, except for the Evarts family, which cared for the family bog for more than a century.

Sometimes they had help weeding and maintaining the bog from one of their biggest customers, Bishop’s Orchards, a Guilford, Conn., farm since 1871.

In 2016 Keith Bishop renovated the old Evarts family bog, planting 2.7 acres of the new hybrid Scarlet Knight cranberry vines.

Today it’s the only cranberry harvesting bog left in Connecticut.

The Killingworth Land Conservation Trust also bought two old cranberry bogs, now known as Pond Meadow Natural Area and Cranberry Hollow.

155 Pond Meadow Rd, Killingworth, Conn.

Sugar Hill Cranberry Co.

The Sugar Hill Cranberry Co. is a small family farm in the Down East town of Columbia Falls. John and Christine Alexander harvest three kinds of cranberries on 11 acres of cranberry bogs. They grow Pilgrims, a juice berry great for wine making; the popular Stevens and the heirloom variety Howes.

Christine grew up in Massachusetts cranberry country with relatives who harvested cranberries back in the 1940s.

256 Sacarap Road, Columbia, Maine

Flax Pond Farms

Picking cranberries on Cape Cad.

You may have once noticed a picture of Jack and Dot Angley on Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice labels (click here to see it and scroll to the bottom).

They bought their 100-acre farm in Carver, Mass., in 1967. It includes a 34-acre cranberry bog that farmers have harvested since the 1890s. Today the bog produces cranberries for Ocean Spray Cranberries.

As recently as 40 years ago, up to 30 farmworkers harvested the berries with hand-held scoops and hauled them to shore by wheelbarrow. Today harvesting machines pick the berries, which a helicopter then lifts to waiting trucks.

When the bogs freeze solidly enough, sanding machines apply 1/2 to one inch of sand on the ice. It settles on the vine, stimulating new vine growth and smothering some winter insect pests.

You can visit Flax Pond Farm starting Nov. 24 for fresh-cut Christmas trees and handmade wreaths.

Click here for four other Massachusetts cranberry bogs you can tour.

58 Pond St. Carver, Mass.

Cranberry Meadow Pond

New Hampshire doesn’t seem to have any commercial cranberry bogs left. But back in the late 19^th century, farmers harvested cranberries from bogs in Auburn, Manchester and Berlin, according to the Cow Hampshire blog.

Wild cranberries still grow in New Hampshire bogs, but you have to know how to look for them.

You might try the 4.5-mile Cranberry Meadow Pond Trail, which runs from downtown Peterborough to the summit of Pack Monadnock. The trail winds through some of the area’s most beautiful conservation land. For a map, click here.

Off Old Street Road near the intersection with Route 101, Peterborough, N.H.

Wild cranberries

The Greene Company

Cranberries in Rhode Island date to about 1855, when Abiel T. Sampson started planting his cranberry bog in Coventry. Eventually he expanded it to become the largest in the state. Sampson hired local families to pick the cranberries by hand for two cents a quart.

After Sampson died, the cranberry bog changed hands several times until Mr. and Mrs. Robert Leonard bought it in 1966. They ran it as the Coventry Cranberry Co. Today, The Greene Company, a 103-acre family farm in nearby Greene, harvests cranberries from the bog.

The company won a preservation award for restoring the antique cranberry processing barn on the property, built in 1890.

1065 Narrow Lane, Greene, R.I.

Vermont Cranberry Company

Bob Lesnikoski harvests cranberries from Vermont’s only commercial cranberry bog in Fletcher. He built the bog, or bed, himself and planted the cranberry vines. Lesnikoski dry harvests cranberries, but floods the bed after picking to clean it out. He told the St. Albans Messenger in 2014 that he sells about 25,000 pounds of cranberries annually to local distributors.

Doing business as the Vermont Cranberry Co., he also sells cranberries at the Burlington Farmers Market.

2563 North Rd., East Fairfield, Vt.

* * *

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society.. Available in paperback and as an ebook from Amazon (click here).

This story was updated in 2023.

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Who Killed William Dean? A Tale of Spies, Swindlers and Politicians

In August of 1918, someone murdered Dr. William Dean. His killer or killers tied up his body and submerged it in a rain cistern on his Jaffrey, N.H., farm. For the next 100 years people have tried to figure out the reason for his murder, and who killed him.

There is no shortage of possible solutions to the question of who killed William Dean. The case led investigators through a tangle of suspects that included his wife, a friend and a World War I-era German spy ring.

William Dean (1908)

The Germans Are Coming

Had Dean’s murder not been set against the backdrop of World War I, finding his killer might have been far simpler.

In 1918, Americans were on alert, looking for German spying operations. Tensions had risen for years, as American relations with Germany frayed even before the country entered the war.

In April of 1917, New Hampshire militia spotted an unknown aircraft circling the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, furiously turning out naval vessels for the war effort. The militia fired on the plane, but it flew off into the night. Police conjectured the plane could not have gotten far and must have operated out of an airfield somewhere inland in the state.

Mount Monadnock

In Jaffrey, N.H., summer residents and year-rounders alike took the warnings about German spies to heart. Late into the evenings they took note of lights flashing from nearby Mount Monadnock, and from other peaks – including the hilltop farm William Dean owned. Neighbors suspected the lights were secret signals flashed by German spies, communicating with each other across the mountains.

And they reported these suspicions to the federal Bureau of Investigations, a precursor to today’s FBI.

The Night of the Murder

On August 13, 1918, the last day of William Dean’s life, a couple of unusual things happened. Early in the day he asked a neighbor leaving for Boston if she would get in touch with the police for him. He had information for them. He didn’t say what.

Later in the evening he got a visit from his friend, Charles Rich, the local political kingpin. Rich was a judge in Jaffrey as well as a banker and politician.

Main Street, Jaffrey, N.H., in 1907

Rich would later say he visited William Dean to ask how to treat an injury he had just received when his horse kicked at him, leaving him with a black eye and head injuries.

Dr. William Dean had stopped practicing medicine and had long retired. He lived as a gentleman farmer. Nevertheless, he advised Rich on his injury and Rich returned to his home at about 10 p.m.

Roughly two hours later Dean, 63, left his house and went to the barn on his property. Unlike most farmers who milk their cows at first light and dinnertime, Dean milked his single cow at the unconventional hours of midnight and noon. Upon entering the barn, he was attacked, beaten, strangled, bound up and carried to a cistern on the property.

Discovery

Dr. Dean’s wife Mary worried about her husband. The next morning, when a hired hand arrived to begin mowing, she asked him to look for him. He was dead, she feared. She even speculated he was under water.

Mary was 68 and losing her faculties. But her immediate conclusion that her husband was dead raised suspicions. When Dr. Dean’s body was discovered, suspicion fell on Mary, who was also Dean’s cousin.

But there were two obstacles to the case against Mary. There was no evidence that she was at odds with her husband. While she was not completely rational, probably suffering from dementia, she was never known to be violent. And, she was physically not a likely suspect. Smashing her husband’s head, strangling him and carrying him to a cistern were beyond her abilities.

Spies in the Hills

With the case against her seeming unlikely, townspeople turned their attention to the potential spy in their midst: Laurence Colfelt.

William Dean needed money, though not inordinately so. He and his wife had moved from their large house to a smaller bungalow on their property. They rented the large house to Laurence Colfelt and his family.

Colfelt, a New Yorker, lived on a trust fund. It wasn’t unusual for people from elsewhere to come to Jaffrey, but it was unusual for them to spend the winter. Colfelt’s lack of any work and lack of local ties made people suspicious of him.

Rumors circulated that he was German, or at least had German sympathies. Might he be a leader of the spies flashing signals to one another in the New Hampshire mountains? Might he, or other spies, have killed Dean because he had caught on to the spying operations in the hills?

William Dean’s House

William Dean was not pleased that Colfelt was not farming the property he rented, and he asked the family to move on. Shortly before the murder the Colfelts moved to Greenville, but the town was awash in rumors that Colfelt was angry with Dean.

Colfelt, though, was far away when William Dean was murdered.

The Banker/Politician

The man who had probably the biggest target on his back in the murder investigation was Charles Rich, the banker and friend of William Dean.

The morning Dean was discovered murdered, Rich had a fresh black eye and bruises on his head. He explained his horse had kicked at him and knocked a board he was carrying, striking him in the head. Many in town doubted the story.

Though William Dean and Charles Rich were friends, one other odd occurrence implicated Rich. The day Dean’s body was found, an employee and friend of Rich’s visited Mrs. Dean and cleaned up the barn where the murder took place. Perhaps he obliterated evidence in the process.

Could Dean and Rich have fallen out over some business dealing? Was Rich the person Dean wanted to talk to the police about?

With no clear suspect in the murder, the town sent for Pinkerton detectives to help investigate. And as they came up dry, another character appeared in town to assist in the investigation.

William Dean’s brother was concerned that the investigation appeared stalled and so he asked a friend of his wife’s to look into the case. The investigator was widely known for relying on psychic methods of investigation, so he first came to Jaffrey under an assumed name to avoid publicity. Soon he revealed his real name: Wilhem de Kerlor.

The Psychic Detective

William Dean with his oxen

Wilhem de Kerlor was a con artist. He lectured about psychic phenomena, worked the vaudeville stages as a psychic and traveled Europe, attempting to put his psychic abilities to work solving crimes. He found a wealthy wife, Italian fashion designer and adventuress Elsa Schiaparelli. The two were run out of England because of de Kerlor’s fortune-telling schemes. They washed up in America in Greenwich Village in 1916.

When de Kerlor heard of the Jaffrey murder, he saw it as a chance to make a name for himself and his newly formed “Bureau of Psychology.” A natural showman, de Kerlor developed a theory that a garden tool found in Dean’s barn caused the injuries to Rich’s face.

Federal agents had suspected de Kerlor of harboring pro-German sentiments, but when Dean’s brother decided to dismiss him from the case, the town of Jaffrey hired him to continue. Town selectman Edward Boynton was convinced Rich knew more about the murder of William Dean than he was letting on. That is roughly where the murder inquiry ended.

The Cold Case

A grand jury empaneled to investigate the case concluded that Dean was murdered, but the members of the jury could not determine who did it.

The closest thing to a trial in the case was a $10,000 libel lawsuit Rich brought against selectman Boynton. The suit aired the issues surrounding the murder, but got nowhere. The trial raised the issue of the flashing lights, but with the war long over no one was chasing German spies any more. Rich’s movements were chronicled in detail, and his defenders and detractors each told the details of his personality.

In the end the jury concluded that Rich had not been libeled, but it did not answer the question of who killed William Dean?

Elsa Schiaparelli

Mary Dean died shortly after the murder. The psychic investigator de Kerlor died in 1928, shot in a Mexican bar fight. And around Jaffrey, the murder played on people’s minds for decades. Boston reporter Bert Ford wrote an investigative book, The Dean Murder Mystery, that favored the German spying angle as the cause of the murder.

In town, the open rift between Rich and his enemies flared from time to time, but Rich remained a local political power until his death.

Meanwhile sleuths, both amateur and professional, have spent countless hours trying to solve the mystery of who killed William Dean. They haven’t gotten there . . . yet.

Thanks to: The Dean Murder Mystery, Bert Ford; Elsa Schiaparelli: A Biography, Meryle Secrest and the Dean Murder Project. This story last updated in 2021.

Images: Mount Monadnock By Jonwmcinenrey – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39308867. Elsa Schiaparelli By John Phillips – LIFE Magazine, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21888448.

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Six Canals That Built New England

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farmington Canal

An old lock along the Farmington Canal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cumberland and Oxford Canal

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

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

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

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

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

Tours have been held along the old canal in Portland.

Lowell Power Canals

The Pawtucket Gatehouse, which controls power from the canals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amoskeag Canals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blackstone Canal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The WaterFire Festival in Providence.

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

Pine Street Barge Canal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The 1822 Maine Grasshopper Plague

In Maine, a dry summer meant an increase in locusts. In 1822, the stage was set perfectly for the Maine grasshopper plague. The spring was drier than usual. Forest fires had swept across large swaths of the state driving away predators and leaving young green shoots exposed for locusts emerging in the spring. Weather conditions and crops from the prior year had been hospitable for the locusts, a type of grasshopper.

Photograph of the Leavitt family farm, Turner, Maine, circa 1900. Courtesy of the Turner Museum and Historical Society.

The red-legged locusts were well known to farmers, but no one had seen anything like what was about to happen.

The Grasshopper Plague

In 1749, 1754 and 1756, locusts had overrun Maine, then a district of Massachusetts. They devoured anything green, including the tops of potato plants. The people were so alarmed, they held days of fasting and prayer to thwart the invasion. But the smaller population had meant less hardship.

In 1826, New Hampshire was inundated with millions of locusts. But an early flood and frost stopped the population from exploding the following spring. Farmer Arnold Thompson reported that during one four-hour window he was able to corral five bushels and three pecks of locusts simply using a sack tied to a pole.

Timothy Dwight

In 1798, Timothy Dwight found the town of Bennington, Vt., fighting off the locusts. He described what happened.

“Bennington, Vermont, and its neighborhood, have for some time past been infested by grasshoppers of a kind with which I had before been unacquainted. …They appear at different periods, in different years; but the time of their continuance seems to be the same. This year (1798) they came four weeks earlier than in 1797, and disappeared four weeks sooner. As I had no opportunity of examining them, I cannot describe their form or their size.

“Their favorite food is clover and maize. Of the latter they devour the part which is called the silk, the immediate means of fecundating the ear, and thus prevent the kernel from coming to perfection. But their voracity extends to almost every vegetable, even to the tobacco plant and the burdock. Nor are they confined to vegetables alone. The garments of laborers, hung up in the field while they are at work, these insects destroy in a few hours; and with the same voracity they devour the loose particles which the saw leaves upon the surface of pine boards, and which, when separated, are termed saw-dust.

“…At times, particularly a little before their disappearance, they collect in clouds, rise high in the atmosphere, and take extensive flights, of which neither the cause nor the direction has hitherto been discovered. I was authentically informed that some ‘ persons employed in raising the steeple of the church in Williamstown, were, while standing near the vane, covered by them, and saw, at the same time, vast swarms of them flying far above their heads. It is to be observed, however, that they customarily return and perish on the very ground which they have ravaged.”

Maine Grasshopper Plague

In 1822, Dr. Nathaniel Tuckerman True of Bethel, Me. would have been a boy of 10. The Maine grasshopper plague made a great impression on him.

“In June there appeared an immense number of red-legged locusts on the farm where I then resided in the town of Pownal, Cumberland County, Maine. The land was a light sandy soil, in places merging into a sandy loam, which, but a few years before, had supported a dense growth of spruce and hemlock; this had been burned over, leaving the ground covered with a heavy scurf of vegetable matter. It was apparently in this scurf that the locusts had laid their eggs the previous year.

“During the haying season the weather was dry and hot, and these hungry locusts stripped the leaves from the clover and grass, leaving nothing but the naked stems. In consequence, the hay crop was seriously diminished in value. So ravenous had they become that they would attack clover, eating it into shreds. Rake and pitchfork handles, made of white ash, and worn to a glossy smoothness by use, would be found nibbled over by them if left within their reach.

“As soon as the hay was cut and they had eaten every living thing from the ground, they removed to the adjacent crops of grain, completely stripping the leaves; climbing the naked stalks, they would eat off the stems of wheat and rye just below the head, and leave them to drop to the ground. Their next attack was upon the Indian corn and potatoes. They stripped the leaves and ate out the silk from the corn, so that it was rare to harvest a full ear.

Swarms

“While these insects were more than usually abundant in the town generally, it was in the field I have described that they appeared in the greatest intensity. After they had stripped everything from the field they began to emigrate in countless numbers. They crossed the highway and attacked the vegetable garden. I remember the curious appearance of a large flourishing bed of red onions, whose tops they first literally ate up, and, not content with that, devoured the interior of the bulbs, leaving the dry external covering in place. The leaves were stripped from the apple-trees. They entered the house in swarms, reminding one of the locusts of Egypt, and as we walked they would rise in countless numbers and fly away in clouds.

“During the latter part of August and the first of September, when the air was still dry, and for several days in succession a high wind prevailed from the northwest, the locusts frequently rose in the air to an immense height. By looking up at the sky in the middle of a clear day, as nearly as possible in the direction of the sun, one may descry a locust at a great height. These insects could thus be seen in swarms, appearing like so many thistle-blows as they expanded their wings and were borne along toward the sea before the wind; myriads of them were drowned in Casco Bay, and I remember hearing that they frequently dropped on the decks of coasting vessels. Cart-loads of dead bodies remained in the fields, forming in spots a tolerable coating of manure…”

The results of the plague were devastating. Livestock was reluctant to eat what little hay was available because it was so tainted with dead locusts. Food was scarce. Apples were largely spared, and peas. But it meant a hungry and worry-filled winter for many families. The astounding memory of locusts so voracious they would eat clothing and tool handles stayed with the farmers for years.

The calamity gave rise to the practice of raising poultry specifically for the purpose of setting them loose on the locusts emerging in the spring. The locust plague also added to the reputation of one thrifty and prosperous farmer in Penobscot County. His motto was to always be prepared for the worst.

The Grasshopper Year

Francis Hill had come to Bucksport, Maine, from Worcester, Mass.. with his family as a child. He had a tenacious, pioneering spirit. When neighbors packed up and returned south in the face of hard winters, Hill would buy their farms from them. Hill served as a selectman, deputy sheriff and bank director. But at his core he was a farmer. He and his wife between them managed a herd of dairy cows. In 1880, at age 90, he shucked 300 bushels of corn. And he was ready for any storm that came his way.

Upon his death, his barn contained several cords of wood that he had cut and stored 25 years earlier, ready in case he experienced an illness that would prevent him from preparing enough firewood for a winter. His barn also contained a band of hay cut decades earlier, should he have a poor season. When he died, his neighbors recalled that hay served him and his neighbors well during the “grasshopper year.”

Thanks to: Travels in New England and New York, by Timothy Dwight; History of Penobscot County, Maine, by Williams, Chase and Co. and Agriculture of Maine: Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture.

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Fortunate Son: The Madness of John Stark

For nearly 200 years, from the beginnings of the nation, the Stark name, beginning with John Stark, was the gold standard of New Hampshire. The family fortunes followed the arc of the new Republic from farming to industrialization to railroads and finance. Then in 1922, things took a dramatic turn.

John Stark’s Descendants

General John Stark was the hero of the Battle of Bennington. John’s son Frederick served as superintendent of the Union Locks and Canal Company of Manchester. Frederick also worked as a surveyor, judge and owner of a store that supplied the river men. He was the most influential businessman in the blossoming mill town of Manchester when he died in 1861.

Frederick’s son George became a surveyor and railroad builder. He was superintendent of the Nashua & Lowell Railroad and later the Boston & Lowell. He belonged to a six-man committee chosen to turn around the moribund Northern Pacific Railroad. A general in the New Hampshire militia, George was an essential recruiter for the army at the outbreak of the Civil War. By his death in 1892, he had built a fine home in Nashua. Though successful, he avoided any display of his wealth.

George’s son John Stark followed in his father’s footsteps As a civil engineer, he worked for the railroads. But by 1859, the Starks realized that finance was the blossoming industry of the day. Together they established a New York bank, J. F. Stark. John Stark would become a major force in Nashua as president of the New Hampshire Improvement Company and Pennichuck Water Works, with real estate and insurance interests. He served for 22 years as a library trustee and set up a country home in Hollis. He died in 1920.

George Stark

Then there was John’s son George. Few people in New Hampshire knew of him. Schooled partially at Andover, he had left the state as a young man, living in Boston, Atlantic City and Philadelphia. What little was known about him was that he worked in advertising. Those who knew John Stark , however, knew how George had disappointed him. And just after John died in 1920, the entire state found out just how much of a disappointment he was.

General John Stark

In John’s will, he left his son an income that would come from the investment profits from $50,000 (roughly $625,000 in today’s dollars). George bridled at the amount and vowed, “the exiled son of New Hampshire returns to his native soil to claim the inheritance that is his.” He announced his intention to sue to break his father’s will. The state waited in anticipation until June of 1922 when the trial over the Stark fortune began.

As celebrity trials go, the Stark case started out rather mildly, retelling the details of George’s early days. His father had married Eva Barr in 1873, and the couple had two children. Eva died in 1875, the same year George was born, and John married Eva’s sister Carrie, who raised the children.

Downhill Slide

There were few signs of acrimony in their early relations. That changed as George grew older. He had attended Andover, but stole money that his father sent him to pay bills and used it to party in Boston. Eventually, the school told John to come remove his incorrigible son.

Free from school, George turned to alcohol in a big way. He hopped from Canada to Boston on a non-stop binge. Frequent letters arrived at John’s home, asking him to pay the bills that young George had run up, sometimes fleeing ahead of paying. John wrote checks — for hotels, doctors, dentists and more – all to keep George out of jail.

John was trustee for a $14,000 legacy that George’s grandfather had left to him. When he turned the money over to George, he refused to take any fee for managing the funds. He begged young George to preserve the capital and use the modest income to launch himself on a successful career. George ran through the money, buying fancy furniture for an apartment, and travelling.

Along the way, George had married. Alcohol, especially absinthe, had pushed him into insanity. He ended up in a sanitarium for the insane. There, he met Alice Whitney. The two began a relationship and George moved in with Alice – well before his divorce from his first wife.

George credited Alice with helping him stay sober. But Alice had a difficult personality. When she and George visited New Hampshire, John cautioned the woman that his son could not support himself, much less a wife. The couple married anyway. Alice attacked John and smeared his first wife, claiming that she didn’t believe John was George’s real father. By the time they left, John confided to a friend he could no longer stand their company. He had dropped them off at the train station and left them to wait in foul weather.

Living Large

George and Alice moved to Atlantic City to improve Alice’s health. There they lived lavishly, renting expensive rooms and dressing in fine clothes. George launched himself into an advertising agency in Philadelphia, but never managed to pay his debts. By the time of his father’s death he had returned to Boston and was staying in a sanitarium for treatment of a nervous breakdown.

George wrote to his aunt — who was also his stepmother — with a plea for more money: “All I want is enough to take care of wife and self. Feel as though I am not going to live long.”

The reply was abrupt and harsh: “You were provided for far more generously than you deserved after 25 years of demand upon him.”

At trial, Carrie expanded on her late husband’s attitudes: “My husband worked hard and his belief was that the children of the wealthy should work.” John, she said, had drawn his will carefully and thoughtfully. He left George a modest income by design.

After two weeks, George produced a surprise witness. A nurse who had been fired by his aunt testified that the widow was more involved in creating the will than she let on. Then the blockbuster: George produced doctors to testify that John, his father, was insane and incapable of drafting a will.

John Stark, Reputation Upheld

John’s lawyers then blasted back at George: “He comes back to New Hampshire not to claim his rightful heritage, but to slander his father. He stands on the very brink of his grave and points his menacing finger at his father who cannot reply.”

A line of Nashua business leaders took the stand to testify that John Stark was not crazy. Among those who testified was Harry Gregg, father of future governor Hugh Gregg.

The attorneys presented a seemingly never-ending list of bills and pawn tickets that John paid off to get his son out of debt. And finally, they presented arguments that the doctors George had called upon had diagnosed his father as insane without ever meeting him in person.

At the end of the trial, the jury quickly declared that John Stark’s will was valid, dismissing George’s contention that his aunt had manipulated his insane father.

This story was updated in 2021.

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Six Historic Apple Orchards You Can Visit

Trying to pick six historic apple orchards in New England may be a fool’s errand. As Maine apple expert John Bunker explains, the notion of a commercial orchard is relatively modern.

“At a certain point, everyone had an orchard,” Bunker told the New England Historical Society. “Everyone lived on a farm, and every farm had an orchard.”

In the 1920s, a New Hampshire farmer came up with the idea of bringing tourists from Boston to pick their own apples in the fresh air and sunshine. The idea took hold. Today, 200-year-old farms are weathering developers (if not the weather) by diversifying with farm-to-table meals, cider, kids’ play areas, ready-to-eat food, hayrides, sleigh rides, corn mazes and even seasoned firewood.

Agritourism today is just as much a feature of the New England landscape as history tourism. Here, then, are six historic apple orchards, one in each New England state.

Lyman Orchards, Middlefield

Lyman Orchards can trace its roots back more than 275 years to John and Hope Lyman, who bought 37 acres of land in 1741 to establish their farm. Today the huge farm covers more than 1,000 acres, with a big history to match.

In 1830 the farm was headed by William Lyman, who became a leader in the abolitionist movement and a supporter of the Underground Railroad. The original 1785 Lyman homestead still stands on the property (though it’s been moved – pulled to its present location by oxen). The family tree sprouted a host of entrepreneurs who helped incorporate the town and build railroads, washing machines and gun sights.

The farm itself took on many flavors over the years, producing peaches, lambs, cattle and even supporting a golf course. Today it’s one of the most popular family attractions in Connecticut.

Lyman Orchards is located at 3 Lyman Rd., Middlefield, Conn.

Jonathan Fisher House, Blue Hill

Parson Jonathan Fisher was the first Congregationalist minister in Blue Hill, Maine, serving from 1794 to 1837. He was also a jack of all trades, a scientist who farmed, surveyed, wrote, bound his own books, made buttons and hats, built furniture, painted sleighs, reported for the local newspaper and helped found Bangor Theological Seminary.

Today his homestead is a house museum on the National Register of Historic Places. Around 2010, Leslie Cummins and Tim Seabrook of 5 Star Nursery in nearby Brooklin replanted his orchard around a 200-year-old pear tree still standing. They planted three trees he wrote about in his journals: Ribston Pippin, Golden Russet, and Roxbury Russet. The heritage orchard includes a group of apple trees that existed in New England before 1800, including the Rhode Island Greening.

The Jonathan Fisher House is at 44 Mines Rd., Blue Hill, Maine.

Lookout Farm, Natick

In 1650, Natick, Mass., was founded by Puritan missionary John Eliot and a small group of settlers who paddled down the Charles River in canoes. The settlers established a farm on the banks of the river in 1651. They planted beans, turnips, strawberries, grapes – and of course grew apples. In 1761, Capt. David Morse bought the farm, and he and his family lived and worked there for nearly 75 years. It got the name Lookout Farm in 1894, when Charles Whittemore and his brothers took over.

After a series of owners worked the farm, Joan and Steve Belkin bought it in 2005.

Today the farm comprises 180 acres with 60,000 fruit trees, a pick-your-own fruit business and a hard cider taproom. The Belkins also sell holiday pies and seasoned firewood.

They grow 11 varieties of apples, Asian pears, pumpkins, peaches, plums, strawberries and nectarines.

Lookout Farm is at 89 South Pleasant Street, South Natick, Mass.

Applecrest Farms, Hampton Falls

In the late 19th century, the railroad came to New Hampshire’s seacoast. It let farmers ship milk, apples, potatoes and lumber to Boston. A Hampton Falls farmer had another idea. He brought tourists once a week from Boston via an ‘Apple Train’ – one that stopped near his farm – so they could pick their own apples.

It was a novel idea back in the 1920s, but it worked. Four generations of the Wagner family have farmed the land, and today, Applecrest claims to be the oldest continually operated apple orchard in America. At the very least, it’s probably one of the oldest agritourist destinations.

Today, as many as 15,000 people visit Applecrest Farms on an autumn Sunday. There’s a 200-year-old barn on the 225-acre farm and buildings that date to the 18^th century. The farm offers pick-your-own apples, hayrides in season, apple cider and farm-to-table dining at its Farm Bistro. Their Idared apple dates to 1942, developed in Idaho as a cross between the Jonathan and Wagener.

Applecrest Farms is at 133 Exeter Rd. (Rte. 88), Hampton Falls, N.H.

Steere Orchard, Smithfield

Historic Smithfield, R.I., once had so many orchards it was known as ‘Apple Valley.’ Apple growing reached its peak in Smithfield during the 1930s, but the Great Hurricane of 1938 wiped out many trees. Real estate developers wiped out many of the orchards that the hurricane missed.

Steere Orchards in the Smithfield village of Greenville is Rhode Island’s largest orchard. According to its website, Arthur W. Steere with his son, Henry J. Steere, started the orchard around 1930. Arthur’s grandson John and great-grandson Jim now run the family apple business.

You can pick your own apples at the Steere Orchards, which offers 12 varieties: including Macoun, Honeycrisp, Gala, Cortland, Red and Golden Delicious, Macintosh and the famous Rhode Island Greening. The Greening was said to grow in only two places: heaven and Rhode Island.

They’re at 150 Austin Ave, Greenville, R.I.

Apple Barn, Woodford

Edward Hamlin Everett established Southern Vermont Orchards in 1910. He made millions in the glass business. Then he built a baronial mansion in his hometown of Bennington, and planted 75,000 apple trees, 3,000 plum trees and 2,000 quince trees. The orchards covered 10 miles. He planted 65 varieties of apples, cherries, quince, pears and plums. It was said to be the largest privately owned orchard in the world.

Everett died in 1929. He left most of his estate to his second wife and shortchanged his three daughters by his first wife, or so they thought. The daughters challenged the will after he died, and during the trial one of his daughters stayed at the family mansion. (He also had a house in Washington that is now the Turkish Ambassador’s residence.)

They’re at 150 Austin Ave., Greenville, R.I.

One night she heard weeping coming from her father’s study. She went to the room and found her mother lying on the floor, clearly a murder victim. At least that’s the story.

Bramley seedling apple

Today, Southern Vermont Orchards operates over 300 acres of orchard remaining from Everett’s original spread. Among the varieties they grow are Northern Spy, which originated in upstate New York in 1800; the 17^th-century Gravenstein; and the Paula Red, discovered in Michigan in 1960. The orchard’s Apple Barn offers beer, wine and cider tastings. They’re at 604 US Rt 7S, Bennington, Vt.

Are you looking for a book to help you explore apple recipes from yesteryear? The newly revised 29 Historic New England Apple Recipes includes recipes for traditional New England apple dishes, fun facts about the unique history of apples and a guide to making cider and cider vinegar. An Amazon #1 New Release.

Available now from Amazon.

Photos courtesy Library of Congress, except for Bramley apple By David Wright – Flickr: Bramley's Seedling Apples, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16594109.

This story about historic apple orchards was updated in 2023.

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