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Framingham Mass.

The New England Roots of the Chinese Revolution

In 1910, 43-year-old Sun Yat-sen arrived in Boston and set up a secret society to support the Chinese revolution. He started the Boston branch of the underground Tongmenghui Party with five laundry workers and two restaurant owners.

Boston’s Chinatown in the 1920s. Photo courtesy Chinese Historical Society of New England.

Sun met with them in the basement of the Chinese Freemason’s lodge at 12 Tyler St. in Chinatown. He slept in the basement when he wasn’t raising money and spreading his ideas about revolution, nationalism, democracy and prosperity for the people.

Sun encountered those ideas as a teenager living in Hawaii, where he gained an educated from Christian missionaries from New England. Though he was born in China and died in China, he spent much of his life traveling the world. He had a mission to enlist support in Chinese communities for the overthrow of the corrupt and feudal Qing Dynasty.

1911 Chinese Revolution

Sun inspired the Chinese revolution in 1911 that replaced the Qing monarchy with a republic. He was on his way to New England when he was named provisional president of the new country. He unified a divided nation, and even today Chinas on either side of the Taiwan Strait revere him.

Today an arch guarded by Chinese lions stands over the entrance to Boston’s Chinatown. Inscribed on the arch is a favorite saying of Sun Yat-sen: “All under Heaven is for the good of the people.”

Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen was born Nov. 10, 1866 in a farming village in Guangdong Province near the Portuguese colony of Macao. At 13, Sun attended school in Hawaii while living with his older brother, an entrepreneurial merchant and farmer. He studied at schools founded by Protestant missionaries mostly from New England: Asa Thurston of Fitchburg, Mass., and his wife Lucy Goodale, of Marlborough, Mass., Amos Starr Cook from Danbury, Conn., and Harvey Rexford Hitchcock from Great Barrington, Mass.

According to Sun Yat-sen by Marie-Claire Bergere,

Through more than thirteen years of schooling, starting with his arrival at the Iolani School in 1879, moving on from one establishment to another, from Hawaii to Canton to Hong Kong, Sun was a student, a protege, of the Protestant missionaries.

Sun attended the Punahou School, built on land given to Hawaii’s first Protestant missionary, Hiram Bingham, a native of Bennington, Vt., and great-grandfather of the Connecticut governor. Another founder of Punahou, the Rev. Samuel Damon, of Holden, Mass., had a son, Frank, who also became a missionary in Hawaii and a classmate, friend and supporter of Sun Yat-sen.

Sun Yat-sen

Punahou’s most famous graduate is President Barack Obama. It was there that Sun was exposed to the ideas that inspired the Chinese revolution: democracy, anti-imperialism, religious tolerance and the Christian doctrine of the individual’s ability to change earthly institutions.

Sun converted to Christianity in 1883 and studied medicine at the Guangzhou Boji Hospital under John G. Kerr, a protégé of Peter Parker, a medical missionary to China from Framingham, Mass.

Dr. Sun Yat-sen

In 1892, he earned his license to practice medicine from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese. Frustrated by the backward and repressive Qing Dynasty, he started on the course leading to the Chinese revolution of 1911.

He traveled several times to the mainland United States to raise money and enlist support from Chinese communities. Sun first arrived in the United States in 1905, while living in exile. He had already participated in two failed uprisings against the Qing Dynasty.

Then, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 forbade people of Chinese descent to enter the United States. Sun got into the United States by producing a fake birth certificate showing his Hawaiian birth.

Official Boston had no love for the Chinese people then. In 1903, police and immigration officials surrounded Chinatown at dusk. They then raided homes and businesses without warrants. Using a murder as an excuse, they rounded up 234 Chinatown residents who couldn’t produce their papers immediately. They deported 45 of them.

The Chinese Revolution

In 1911, Sun planned to return on a fundraising tour along the northern United States to raise money for the revolution. Starting in Portland, Ore., he planned to cross the country speaking and raising money. He would end his tour in the New England cities of Boston, Springfield, Hartford and Providence.

On Oct 12, 1911, Sun got the news somewhere in the Rocky Mountains that his followers had overthrown the Qing Dynasty two days earlier. He hurried on to China through Europe where he was inaugurated as the provisional president of the Republic of China. (The fundraising tour, by the way, raised $140,000, which would amount to about $3.5 million today).

Overseas Chinese played such a vital role in overthrowing the imperial Qings that Sun himself recognized them as the ‘Mother of the Revolution.’

Sun died of liver cancer on March 12, 1925 at the age of 58. One month after he died, Boston’s Chinatown held a memorial ceremony for him.

This story was updated in 2022. Images: Boston’s paifang gate By Ingfbruno – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27497701.

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Boston Holds a Water Celebration in 1848

On Oct. 25, 1848, a stream of water gushed from a fountain before 100,000 people assembled on Boston Common for the city’s great water celebration. Bells rang, rockets soared and people cheered, laughed, sang and even cried. A great civic undertaking had been completed.

The Water Celebration

The Cambridge Chronicle, reporting on the celebration, noted that the citizens of Boston had been annoyed for 30 years by the want of pure water. It had taken that long to solve the problem. Most of the delay was due to political controversy. It took only two years to build the aqueduct, dams, pipelines and gatehouses from Lake Cochituate in Natick.

And when the work was completed, Boston threw a water celebration of historic proportions.

Water, Water, Anywhere?

For years the people of Boston relied on cisterns, wells and a spring on Boston Common. As the town grew, private suppliers in 1796 introduced an alternative and began delivering water from Jamaica Pond through a system of hollow pine logs.

It worked until 1825, when Boston’s population more than doubled to about 43,000. Wells became brackish or went dry and the water table fell. A builder named George Cram testified that the city’s need for a public water supply was dire; in one case, 43 families were using a single well.

Mayor Josiah Quincy proposed a public water supply for the growing city (the population would grow to 127,000 by 1848). After a fire in April 1825 destroyed several dozen buildings in Boston, a committee was appointed to look into building a water works.

Quincy’s idea was opposed by private companies that wanted to supply the rapidly growing city and voters who feared a tax increase. ‘Steady and strenuous’ efforts were made for a public water supply, according to the King’s Dictionary of Boston.

After 23 years of controversy, work began under the supervision of three water commissioners – including Nathan Hale, nephew of the Revolutionary War spy and a journalist whose newspaper supported the diversion of water from Long Pond in Natick.

1852 map of the Cochituate Aqueduct

On Aug. 26, 1846, a small groundbreaking ceremony was held at Long Pond in Framingham. A polished steel blade with a rosewood handle and a plate with an appropriate inscription was used. Mayor Josiah Quincy, Jr., lifted the first shovelful of dirt into a wheelbarrow at that first water celebration. His cousin, former U.S. president John Quincy Adams, lifted the second, and Josiah Quincy, Sr., the third.

After the ceremony, the younger Quincy said the name Long Pond wasn’t memorable, and suggested an Indian name: Cochituate, which means ‘torrent’ or ‘place of rushing water.’ It was immediately adopted.

It took two years to build the waterworks, which included wooden dams, an aqueduct, granite gatehouses and pipelines to the Brookline Reservoir and smaller feeder reservoirs. The system was laid out by Ellis S. Chesbrough, who would later reverse the Chicago River, supervised the engineering. John B. Jervis, who designed the American steam locomotive and the Croton Aqueduct in New York, laid out the plans.

The Water Celebration

Principal Gatehouse in Brookline. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The great day began with a 100-gun salute and an immense parade through the city. Mayor Quincy gave a speech, at the end of which he asked if the people of Boston were ready for Cochituate water. The crowd roared, the gates opened and a stream of water 80 feet high burst from the Frog Pond Fountain.

Schoolchildren sang an ode written by poet James Russell Lowell for the occasion, which begins,

My name is water: I have sped
through strange, dark ways untried before
by pure desire of friendship led
Cochituate’s ambassador…

Mark Anthony DeWofe Howe, in his book Boston Common, described the scene:

When the water was turned on, and the fountain leaped high into the air, the school-children, assembled with every other element of the population, sang a song written by poet James Russell Lowell for the occasion…the bells rang, cannon were fired, rockets soared aloft; cheering, laughter and even tears paid their spontaneous tribute to the completion of a great undertaking.

A month later, Charlestown’s mayor toasted the father-and-son mayors. Noting that Josiah Quincy Sr., was responsible for building Quincy Market, the mayor called them ‘a very useful family for Boston — the father gave her a market — the son pure water, the one meat–the other drink.’

Lake Cochituate and the Brookline Reservoir are now parks listed on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the Principal Gatehouse. This story was updated in 2017.

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Crispus Attucks, ‘The First To Defy, The First To Die’ in the Boston Massacre

On the wintry night of March 5, 1770, a tall, angry sailor named Crispus Attucks led a resentful mob of civilians in a fight with British soldiers at Dock Square in Boston.

19th-century lithograph of the Boston Massacre, emphasizing Crispus Attucks

Tensions had risen between the British soldiers and the colonists since Parliament passed the hated Townshend Acts. They imposed import duties on paper, paint, lead, glass and tea.

For two years, British troops had been posted in Boston to protect Crown officials who tried to collect the tariffs.

In response, Boston boycotted British goods, which imperiled the livelihoods of struggling laborers. And off-duty British soldiers edged out American dockworkers. In addition, colonial sailors resented the British for impressing them into service in the Royal Navy.

As a result, working-class civilians and soldiers had clashed in the weeks and months before the Boston Massacre on March 5.

On that night, an argument between a wigmaker’s apprentice and a British sentry attracted a crowd, dockworkers, Irish immigrants and sailors like their leader, Crispus Attucks.

As W. Jeffrey Bolster writes in Black Jacks,

…a crowd of mostly white sailors followed a seafaring man of color into danger; and this time, into history.

Crispus Attucks

Attucks was born around 1723 somewhere near Framingham, Mass., perhaps Natick, the praying Indian town. His mother belonged to the Wampanoag tribe, and his father was an African-American slave. His mother may have been descended from John Attucks, hanged for treason because he sided with his people during King Philip’s War.

Crispus Attucks was enslaved for 27 years, probably by a man named William Brown of Framingham. In 1750 he won his freedom by running away to sea. Or he may have bought his freedom. In any case, he often worked on whalers, and in between voyages he worked as a ropemaker.

Crispus Attucks

Seafaring was one of the few occupations free men of color could enter. Twenty-five years after the American Revolution, one-fifth of the 100,000 men employed as sailors were African-American.

The sea allowed room for black leaders. White sailors would follow a skilled black seamen who could help navigate a ship out of danger.

African-American sailors also provided a vital communications link between North and South and among Africans everywhere. For example, they helped Boston abolitionist David Walker spread his inflammatory pamphlet, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, by taking copies to Southern ports.

And though the sea represented enslavement to Africans, it also gave a lifeline to freedom for people like Attucks. Northern sea captains not only employed black sailors, they helped southern slaves sail to freedom on their ships; Frederick Douglass, for example, disguised himself as a sailor to escape slavery.

The Boston Massacre

On the night of the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks had just returned from a voyage to the Bahamas. He planned to sail to North Carolina. But he first joined the growing crowd harassing the sentry in Dock Square.

Witnesses said his eerie war-whoop egged on the angry civilians. They threw snowballs, sea coal and oyster shells at the sentry. Attucks then poked him with a stick, called him a ‘lobster’ and said he would have one of his claws.

British runners alerted the officer of the watch, Capt. Thomas Preston. Preston then gathered seven men and joined the sentry on the steps of the Custom House. They loaded their muskets.

According to most accounts, Crispus Attucks led the crowd forward. He shouted, “Come on you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire if you dare, God damn you, fire and be damned, we know you dare not.”

In the confusion, one soldier discharged his musket – hitting Attucks, according to witnesses. Soon after the soldiers fired into the crowd.

Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Boston massacre.

First To Die

Crispus Attucks died on the spot, the first killed in what Samuel Adams named as the Boston Massacre. Samuel Gray , a ropemaker, and James Carpenter, a sailor, died alongside Attucks. Samuel Maverick, a 17-year-old, died the next day of his wounds. Patrick Carr, an Irish immigrant, died two weeks later.

After the killings, patriots carried the body of Crispus Attucks to Faneuil Hall, where it lay in state. Then they buried the four dead victims as heroes in the Granary Burying Ground.

Attucks became an icon of the black abolition movement.

In antebellum New York at the Coloured Seaman’s Home, boarders dined under a framed portrait of Attucks. In 1858, black abolitionists celebrated the first ‘Crispus Attucks Day’ at Fanueil Hall. Thirty years later, a monument was erected on Boston Common in honor of Attucks and the other victims, “the first to defy, the first to die.”

Reenactors typically reprise the Boston Massacre around the anniversary.

With thanks to MassMoments and Black Jacks. This story about Crispus Attucks was updated in 2023.

Image of Crispus Attucks By Original uploader was Mav at en.wikipedia. Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3559623

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A Grieving John Willis Fowler Heads to Camp Meeting, 1877

In 1877, John Willis Fowler of South Newbury, N.H., was grieving over the loss of his young wife Lonie in 1877. They were married on July 4, 1876, but she died the next month at the age of 24.

John Willis Fowler

In his diary, John Willis Fowler described frequent headaches and fatigue, but he managed to keep going. He and his brothers made wheels for the famous Concord coaches produced by the Downing & Abbot Co. At the time, stagecoaches were giving way to trains and wooden wheels were being replaced by metal ones. During the year 1877, John Willis, or Willis, described the ways he and his brothers adapted: making metal wheels and wooden furniture, repairing clocks and blacksmithing. He also spent time settling his late wife’s estate.

Born April 30, 1849, John Willis Fowler learned a number of skills from his father in his shops. His diary describes the routine of a small-town tradesman in the 1870s. He records visits to family by buggy and train, checking the potato crop, chores, going to meeting, singing with the choir and giving temperance talks.

“We have worked in the shop bending rims and have worked quite hard all day,” was a typical entry.

John Willis Fowler at Camp

On Monday, Aug. 13, he prepared for a trip to a religious camp meeting in South Framingham, Mass. He and his brothers Arthur, Elmer and Charles took a buggy to Concord, then a train to Manchester, where he did some business. They then spent nearly a week attending prayer meetings and sermons. He was interested in the meetings and felt it was good to be there despite the “immense” numbers of unbelievers who showed up.

Monday, August 13, 1877

(Written 24th)

This morning I repaired a clock for John Spalding and went over and put it in place and running, then came home and got ready to go away to be gone a week or more. At about 2 P.M. Charles, Arthur, Elmer and I took “Lill” and our 2 seat buggie and started for Concord arriving there at 7-40 P.M. and all went to Uncle Albert’s and put up for the night.

With thanks to ‘Social Genealogy, charting a people’s history of New England through our family tree. This story was updated in 2022.

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