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franklin pierce

New Release: ‘Eat Like a President’ in Paperback and Ebook

If you really want to know what a president was like, find out what he ate. That’s what Leslie and Dan Landrigan did with the six presidents from New England. The authors wrote the New England Historical Society’s new book, Eat Like a President: 30 Recipes from the White House to Your House, which tells you about the presidents’ families, their servants, their friends — and how they struggled to run the White House and the country at the same time.

You’ll find some surprises in Eat Like a President. Calvin Coolidge, for example, loved to play practical jokes on the servants. Chester A. Arthur indulged in fine dining despite having a fatal kidney disease. John Quincy Adams had a passion for Madeira wine.

Other presidential preferences won’t surprise you. The revolutionary presidential couple, John and Abigail Adams, served distinctly American food. Franklin Pierce, the backwoodsman, preferred comfort food from his native New Hampshire. And Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy loved fancy French cuisine.

The book also explores the historic setting in which the food was made and served. Each president grappled with America’s defining conflicts over freedom and equality. How they treated their servants revealed a lot about their attitudes toward servitude and slavery. Abigail Adams hated the Constitutional compromise that allowed slavery, and she hated watching enslaved servants toiling just outside the White House. She treated her own servants like family. Then, more than a century later, Calvin Coolidge tried to pass an anti-lynching bill and took his ill African American wine steward with him on an Adirondacks vacation to improve his health.

You’ll get a fuller picture of the difficulties a president faces from Eat Like a President. Among pressing cares about war, disaster, legislation and re-election, they still have to meet with hundreds of people every week – and feed many of them. A presidential couple still must host a state dinner even if their child is dying. A president has to spend hours shaking hands even when his enemies are killing his infrastructure bill. In the midst of all that, the first couple has to try to make the White House presentable.

You’ll also get a fuller picture of the presidential couples and their times just from what they ate and drank. Jane Pierce, a teetotaler, came from a cold roast Boston family, while Franklin, an alcoholic, grew up in a tavern. They didn’t appear together publicly very often.

Calvin Coolidge loved the Vermont pickles of his modest boyhood. People even said he looked like he was weaned on one. And yet he also enjoyed Chinese food, a cuisine embraced by aspirational middle-class city dwellers. Coolidge was both.

In the reckless 1960s, the Kennedys served tumblers of Cuba Libres at their White House Twist parties. Those were prosperous times, and the Kennedys — Jackie especially — spent lavishly. At one party they served 10 pounds of caviar in a gold bucket.

Finally, Eat Like a President describes where the presidents ate – in the White House. The first couples had to keep improving the building as America grew in power and prestige. In 1800, Abigail Adams furnished a drafty, unfinished 36-room house; 162 years later, Jackie Kennedy turned a 132-room mansion into an elegant showplace.

In the book…

Let’s face it, food is a fun way to learn about history. And history is a fun way to cook food.

In this book you will get step-by-step instructions on how to make 30 different kinds of presidential food in a modern American kitchen. The foods range from fairly simple colonial fare to fancy French dishes preferred by the Kennedys and the Chinese entrees the Coolidges loved.

You will also get an engaging account of each president’s White House years, with historical background and context. High school students might find it a compelling way to learn about American history — and American cooking.

Just click here to buy the ebook, here for the paperback.

About the authors

Dan and Leslie Landrigan are the authors of the New England Historical Society website. Over the past decade, they’ve written thousands of stories about New England history. They now live on an island in Maine, where they do a lot of cooking for themselves.

This books is the fourth in a series about historic foods. The others are 21 Historic Thanksgiving Foods, 29 Historic Apple Recipes: Cooks’ Favorites from 1650 to 1960, and Historic Italian Christmas Cookies, all ebooks available from Amazon.

Love history?

Then you probably want to join the New England Historical Society community by signing up for our e-newsletter, which comes out once a week. Click here to sign up.

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Rebekah Harkness, the Scorned Socialite of Watch Hill, R.I.

Rebekah Harkness spent much of the Standard Oil fortune she inherited on the ballet. Not just going to performances, but sponsoring entire ballet companies, buying up real estate for them and sending them on world tours.

Rebekah Harkness

In 1962 she turned her Rhode Island estate, Holiday House, into a summer dance camp for the entire Joffrey Ballet company. She gave the dancers everything they needed and then some.

With her help, the Joffrey won international renown—something she wanted for herself. She danced, too, and composed music. But she annoyed the neighbors, alienated her children and provided a tempting target for critics. They called her ballets worthless, her music crap.

She thirsted for acclaim as a composer, a dancer and an arts patron, but her thirst for booze and pills undid her. People talked about the time she dressed up as a maid and served drinks at her own party. And about the times she cleaned her pool with Dom Perignon, dyed the neighbor’s cat green and filled her fish tank with scotch.

Taylor Swift in 2019

Fast forward 60 years, and another thin, rich, beautiful white woman bought Holiday House. And then in 2020, the house’s owner, Taylor Swift, wrote a song about Rebekah Harkness, called The Last Great American Dynasty. The music video featured the beach and the waves from the house, just as Rebekah Harkness would have seen it.

Rebekah Harkness

“She had a marvelous time ruining everything,” Swift crooned. Maybe. According to her biographer, Craig Unger, Rebekah Harkness led a life “littered with high Gothic tragedy.” She was a poor little rich girl, and by the end of her life, she wasn’t that rich.

She was born April 17, 1915 to a wealthy St. Louis stockbroker Allen Tarwater West and his trophy wife Rebekah. West co-founded G.H. Walker & Co. with George Herbert Walker, grandfather and great-grandfather of the Bush presidents.

Her parents did care that she looked good, according to Unger. When they criticized her for getting pudgy, she took up skating and dance, practicing with a fierce discipline.

Watch Hill Harbor

The family spent summers at Watch Hill, then an old money, old Hollywood enclave overlooking Block Island Sound. Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks and Andrew Mellon owned homes there.

Her parents packed Rebekah off to finishing school. She and her friends called themselves the Bitch Pack and disrupted debutante parties. They performed a strip tease at a social event and put mineral oil into the punch bowl at a coming-out party.

Franklin Pierce Descendant In-Law?

In 1939 she married Dickson Pierce because, she said, she didn’t have anything better to do. They had a son, Allen, and a daughter, Terry. Pierce claimed to be a descendant of President Franklin Pierce, though that would have been quite a feat. Franklin Pierce’s three children died before reaching adulthood.

Franklin Pierce

The couple divorced in 1946. Then in 1947, she married Standard Oil heir William Hale Harkness, who brought her into the serious money class. The Harkness family had a reputation for its philanthropy. It donated Harkness Tower at Yale, Harkness Commons at Harvard and Harkness Pavilion at New York Hospital.

Harkness Tower at Yale University.

It was the second marriage for both of them. He had a daughter and a granddaughter who became the actress Elizabeth Montgomery.

Rebekah and Bill Harkness had one daughter, Edith. It was the only successful marriage of her four, but it only lasted seven years. In 1957, Harkness keeled over at Holiday House while sitting for a sculpture Rebekah was working on, dead from a heart attack.

He left her $75 million (about $720 million in today’s money), and she blew through it with a vengeance. She spent a small fortune buying her way into the dance world, surrounding herself with dancers, musicians and choreographers. At the same time, she studied music composition and dance.

Rebekah also loaded up on art and real estate. She bought a mansion in Palisades, N.Y., a Manhattan penthouse and getaways in Nassau and Gstaad. She also expanded Holiday House to include eight kitchens, 42 rooms and 21 baths. Nine servants and three cooks kept the place running.

“This arrangement effectively kept her from having to see her three children on anything like a regular basis,” the New York Times commented.

Holiday House

While Bill Harkness was alive, he and Rebekah threw raucous parties every weekend. She once dressed as a waitress at one of them so she could eavesdrop on the guests. But the loud parties caused problems with the neighbors. So did the ballet dancers practicing on her lawn. When she erected a giant blue geodesic dome on her lawn, they sued her for zoning violations. She retaliated by dying a neighbor’s cat green.

The parties continued when she brought the entire Joffrey to Watch Hill in 1962 and 1963. Then a little-known ballet company, they spent the summers practicing and experimenting with new ideas. She gave them weekends off and charge accounts to the shops in town. She once served them a cake with $10 bills baked into it. If a dancer needed dental work or a nose job, she paid for it. And when she discovered one of her Joffrey dancers didn’t own a suit, she sent all the Joffrey men to Saks and all the women to Bergdorf’s for formalwear.

She also bought them an old firehouse in Westerly to practice in, calling it the Harkness Center for the Arts.

Rebekah Harkness’ patronage allowed the Joffrey to perform in Iran.

Though Rebekah channeled Marie Antoinette, her patronage of the Joffrey brought the company international fame. She also helped discover and train many acclaimed dancers, regardless of their race, background or body shape.

The Joffrey dancers who spent the summer at Holiday House loved it. “We were in heaven,” said Danish ballerina Lone Isaksen.

Her children, not so much. They complained she cared more about the dancers than she cared about them.

Price to Pay

The Joffrey had a price to pay for Rebekah Harkness’s support. She insisted that it perform ballets to scores she had written. One work, Dreams of Glory, had an insipid story about a little boy who dreams of becoming John F. Kennedy. Dancer Lawrence Rhodes said it was one of the few times he was embarrassed to be in a ballet.

Others—Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine — flatly refused to choreograph her musical compositions. The same fate befell the popular tunes she composed.

When Harkness offered to pay Ella Fitzgerald to sing some of her pop songs, Fitzgerald wouldn’t do it.

Rebekah Harkness’ Ballet

After two years, Rebekah Harkness suddenly cut her ties to the Joffrey when Robert Joffrey, its founder and choreographer, wouldn’t rename his company for her. Then she stole most of the Joffrey dancers for her own ballet company – the Harkness.

She started by bringing the company to Watch Hill (despite the neighbors) in the summer for instruction, practice and choreography. The Harkness Ballet would eventually have two touring companies, a youth ballet (which taught Patrick Swayze) and its own theater. In its day, the Harkness would train more professional dancers than any other company.

Press photo of Rebekah Harkness in 1966 with two o her Harkness dancers.

Rebekah bought a mansion on New York’s Upper East Side and turned it into a posh training center for dancers called Harkness House. She brought in top choreographers, Jerome Robbins and Brian Macdonald — to teach 16 and 17 year olds. She hired Salvador Dali to design sets. And she gave Alvin Ailey his first commission. (You can see a video clip of Salvador Dali and Rebekah Harkness here.)

In 1972, she bought an old theater near Lincoln Center and refurbished it on a grand scale as the first theater devoted exclusively to ballet. It had hand-carved Louis XIV chairs and a huge mural that featured the company’s dancers – as well as Rebekah Harkness – in the nude. One critic denounced it as the worst mural ever made.

Critics

The critics, especially the New York Times’ Clive Barnes, savaged Rebekah. The rich socialite whose judgment sometimes lapsed was just too good a target. She didn’t help herself with her capriciousness. She got thrown off a cruise for swimming nude in the pool and swearing at the crew. Once she pretended to be a cleaning woman and approached the reclusive J.D. Salinger, hoping to convince him his stories should be set to her music.

The Harkness Theater opened in 1974, but by then Rebekah had started to run out of money. She began to cut back and look for public funding. She ended up selling the theater at a huge loss, and the Harkness Ballet company folded in 1975. Today it’s pretty much forgotten, despite the tens of millions of dollars she spent on it.

But according to An American Ballet Story,

The dancers, choreographers, composers and designers were pioneers and experimenters. Themes of sexual repression, homoerotic love, tribalism and even the aftermath of rape were explored by some of the most famous choreographers of the time. All of the work and much of the music was original.

The Sad End

Rebekah struggled with drugs and alcohol. She developed an addiction to injections of B-vitamins, painkillers and testosterone. Guests would find needles in her bathrooms, their walls spattered with blood. Her voice grew husky and her muscles calcified.

She’d had a brief, unhappy marriage to a doctor in the early 1960s. In 1971, she married a fourth time, to another doctor, but one 20 years her junior. That marriage lasted three years.

Meanwhile, the booze and the pills caught up with her. So in 1977 she checked into Silver Hill, a rehab clinic in New Canaan, Conn. When she got out, she sold her Palisades mansion to the Isley Brothers.

In November of 1977, her son Allen shot a man during a brawl in Miami. He received a prison sentence of 15 years, but didn’t bother to get in touch with his mother. He later said his time in prison was the happiest of his life.

Her youngest daughter, Edith, had tried to commit suicide at the age of 15 by flinging herself out of a high rise in front of her. An awning saved her life. Edith spent her life in and out of mental institutions, finally committing suicide in 1982. Rebekah died that same year after a long bout with cancer. She died June 17, 1982.

Holiday House, Redux

The Holiday House property was divided into three lots, according to Watch Hill Through Time. The gargantuan house itself was partially demolished, then sold to a family that remodeled it and renamed it High Watch.

Aerial view the former Holiday House. Image courtesy Holiday House, Courtesy Google, Maxar Technologies.

Taylor Swift bought the former Holiday House in 2013 for a reported $17.75 million in cash. She brought her ‘Squad – musician, actor and model friends – to the mansion for Fourth of July ‘Taymerica’ parties. They featured fireworks, boat rides and a giant inflatable water slide. Swift gave all her friends matching red-white-and-blue onesies.

The celebrities brought paparazzi and, echoes of the Rebekah Harkness era, complaints from the neighbors. Swift put up “No Trespassing” signs that they didn’t like either. Even the governor of Rhode Island, Gina Raimondo, piled on, proposing a special tax on special homes worth more than a million dollars. People called it the “Taylor Swift Tax,” though it never became law.

When Swift bought the house, a local writer for The Day reminded her of the time a body washed up on the beach under her Watch Hill mansion.

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Swift wrote and recorded a new album called Folklore. One song, The Last Great American Dynasty, is about Rebekah Harkness. Swift Identifies with Harkness in her last line, “There goes the loudest woman this town has ever seen/ I had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

The music video that accompanies the song features the beach below Holiday House as Rebekah Harkness would have seen it. (Watch it here.)

Images: Harkness Tower Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1653891. Taylor Swift By Cosmopolitan UK, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90905376. Watch Hill Harbor By Stephg82988 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23370833.

With thanks to Blue Blood by Craig Unger and The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company by Sasha Anawalt. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Catholic Test – When New Hampshire Outlawed Catholics

New Hampshire’s Constitution, adopted in 1784, had some of the toughest restrictions on religious freedom in the new United States. It stated unequivocally that to hold elected state office a man had to be “of the protestant religion.”

Similarly, it authorized the government to raise money for the support of “protestant teachers.”

An anti-Catholic cartoon from 1855 (Library of Congress)

Though not part of the state’s first, interim constitution of 1776, this language was inserted into the 1784 revisions. Over time these provisions — known as the Catholic Test — developed into a thorny issue.

To be fair, New Hampshire was hardly alone in banning Catholics from public office. New Jersey’s 1776 Constitution declared that only men “professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect” could hold office.

Other states were more tolerant of different beliefs. Massachusetts, for instance, required office holders to declare their allegiance to a Christian faith. But many states had some religious tests in their constitutions.

Reform Efforts

Three subsequent New Hampshire state constitutional conventions considered the issue . Each proposed removing the language referring to protestants from the constitution. But each time — 1792, 1851 and 1852 — voters failed to pass changes, which required two-thirds support to win.

In the constitutional convention of 1850, Rep. Enoch Cass of Holderness led a spirited defense of the Catholic Test in a speech to the convention:

“Was it safe to elect a man governor who was sworn to the Pope of Rome and believed that all protestants were heretics and should be persecuted unto death? Was it ever known that Catholics gained the power over any people, and got the government into their own hands, that they did not persecute, even unto death, all that were opposed to them? . . . Were not nunneries and Catholic schools springing up all around us? And were they not teaching the children that we are all heretics?”

Levi Woodbury

Levi Woodbury, U.S. Supreme Court justice and presidential candidate, led the push to revise the Constitution. As it stood, he said, it “offered the husk of religious freedom, but withheld the kernel.” The 1850 constitutional convention approved amending the constitution to remove the Catholic Test, but voters did not.

Franklin Pierce Controversy

The Catholic Test developed into an important issue in the 1852 election of Franklin Pierce to the presidency. Pierce was a weak candidate from the start. It had taken 49 ballots at the Democratic national convention to choose Pierce. He was a dark horse candidate who only appeared after the convention deadlocked, with a majority deathly opposed to James Buchanan, the most powerful of the nominees.

Franklin Pierce

Almost immediately, critics accused Pierce of anti-Catholic bias. He had been chair of the 1850 constitutional convention. His supporters produced and published a “speech” Pierce had given in support of removing the Catholic Test from the constitution. His opponents, meanwhile, scoured the record and found no such speech. The speech had been fabricated, they concluded, to con Catholic voters. However, they could also find no record of Pierce supporting the Catholic Test. He had stood silent on the issue, they charged.

As was typical of Pierce, he did his best to straddle the issue of religious freedom, seeking to avoid conflict. His stance on religious freedom did not prevent him from winning the presidency, but did create a blot on his character. After one term in office, voters replaced him with fellow Democrat Buchanan.

Catholic Test Repealed

New Hampshire received plenty of ridicule for its religious test in the years following the Pierce presidency. Political leaders across the country would entreat the state to abandon the anti-Catholic relic.

Finally, a new constitutional convention came together and recommended removing the Catholic Test. In 1877, enough voters agreed to strip it out of the law.

Thanks to: The New Hampshire State Constitution, By Susan E. Marshall.

If you enjoyed this article, you might like Anti-Irish Know Nothing Mob Burns a Charlestown Convent in 1834. This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Presidential Houses in New England

Before presidential libraries, there were presidential houses, and every New England state has at least one.

Massachusetts, of course, was the birthplace of the most presidents: the two Adamses, John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush. You could almost count Calvin Coolidge, as he lived in Northampton for years, and even George Washington spent nearly a year in Cambridge as commander in chief of the colonial military.

Coolidge, though, was born in Vermont, and New Hampshire gave us Franklin Pierce. No president came from Rhode Island, though Dwight Eisenhower spent considerable time in Newport. And if it weren’t for the Bushes, Connecticut and Maine would have little claim to presidential roots.

So in celebration of President’s Day, we bring you six presidential houses. If you know of another, please mention it in the comments section.

37 Hillhouse Ave.

37 Hillhouse Ave., where President George W. Bush lived for two years.

The housing shortage after World War II forced Yale University to convert an Italianate mansion into housing for married student veterans. George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara lived there while he studied at Yale and they started their family. George W. Bush lived there until he was two, and then the family moved to Texas.

The elder president had left Yale as a sophomore to serve in the Navy. Of his living conditions, he wrote, “Not to make too much of the postwar housing shortage, but there were a dozen other veterans’ families sharing the house with us — each with one child, except for Bill and Sally Reeder, who had twins. That made 40 in all.”

It couldn’t have been that much of a hardship. Both Mark Twain and Charles Dickens described Hillhouse Avenue as ‘the most beautiful street in America.’

Today, Yale uses the building for its Economics Department.

Walker Point

The main house of the Bush compound at Walker Point.

Americans grew familiar with the Bush compound during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, who held news conferences while staying there. His son, George W. Bush, also stayed at the home during his presidency. So did a half dozen world leaders — and George H.W. Bush’s political opponent, former president Bill Clinton.

The Bush family has used the Walker Point estate since the days of George H.W. Bush’s great-grandparents.

Walker Point juts out into the Atlantic Ocean in Kennebunkport, Maine, and includes a large Shingle Style house, eight other residences, tennis courts, a dock and a sports field. Though the Bushes still own it, tourists enjoy the scenic drive along Ocean Avenue, where they can glimpse the property.

Peacefield

One of many presidential houses in Massachusetts, both Adams lived at Peacefield in Quincy.

Massachusetts has produced more presidents than any other New England state and can claim the most presidential houses: John and John Quincy Adams, who lived at Peacedale in Quincy. John F. Kennedy, of course, was born in Brookline, summered in Hyannis Port and lived in Boston. George H.W. Bush was born in Milton, but his family soon moved to Greenwich, Conn.

Massachusetts also has quite a presidential houses known as summer White Houses. Calvin Coolidge, who lived the greater part of his life in Northampton, spent a summer in Swampscott. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama summered on Martha’s Vineyard. Less well-known summer visitors include Franklin Pierce, who spent time in Andover, Mass., and Grover Cleveland, who vacationed in Marion and Bourne on the South Shore. Cleveland’s summer home in Bourne, Gray Gables, was torn down but rebuilt to resemble the original.

William Howard Taft summered twice in Beverly until his hostess floated her house to Marblehead to discourage him. (She didn’t like the crowds he attracted.)

We won’t even count the presidents who lived in Massachusetts while attending Harvard. Okay, we will: the Adamses, Kennedy, Obama, both Roosevelts and Rutherford B. Hayes.

But since two presidents lived most of their lives in Quincy, we chose Peacefield, the Adams Family homestead. Built by a Loyalist in 1731 and abandoned during the American Revolution, John and Abigail bought the house in 1787. They lived in London at the time, and found the house disappointing when they returned. Abigail said it looked like ‘a wren’s nest.’ But she spent years renovating and expanding it while John attended to his political duties.

John Quincy Adams also lived at Peacefield, as did his son, the statesman Charles Francis Adams and his grandson, historian Henry Adams.

Peacefield today belongs to the U.S. government as the Adams National Historical Park. It comprises 11 buildings, including the birthplaces of John and John Quincy Adams.

For more information, click here.

Franklin Pierce Homestead

The Pierce Homestead, one of two presidential houses in New Hampshire where Franklin Pierce lived.

Franklin Pierce grew up in the gracious home his father built after serving in the American Revolution. He may even have been born there in 1804, the year his father built the house.

Benjamin Pierce had bought 200 acres in Hillsborough, N.H., after the new state turnpike opened nearby. Benjamin Pierce ran a tavern, and on Christmas Eve in 1824 hosted a dinner for 21 Revolutionary War veterans. Franklin probably attended — or helped serve — the dinner. Benjamin Pierce later served two terms as New Hampshire’s governor.

Franklin lived in the family home until for 23 years until 1834, when he married. He had spent seven years away at school, college and law study in Portsmouth.

His wife, Jane Appleton, didn’t like Hillsborough, and they moved to Concord. Benjamin Pierce died in 1839 and left the house to his son-in-law. Franklin’s sister, Elizabeth, married John McNeil, Jr., a general in the War of 1812.

After his disappointing single term as president, Franklin Pierce briefly returned to his childhood home in Hillsborough.

New Hampshire actually has two Franklin Pierce presidential houses: the one in Hillsborough, and the Pierce Manse in Concord, also a house museum. For more information, click here.

Eisenhower House

Eisenhower House, one of Rhode Island’s presidential houses.

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife Mamie summered in Newport, R.I., during his presidency in 1958 and 1960. At first in 1958 he stayed at the Naval War College on Coasters Harbor Island, but he wanted to be closer to the golf course at the Newport Country Club. He moved to a mansion at Fort Adams.

Now called Eisenhower House, it was built in 1873 for Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt, a Civil War artillery officer. The house has stunning views of Narragansett Bay and Newport Harbor.

Another of Rhode Island’s presidential houses, Hammersmith Farm, was the site of John F. Kennedy’s marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier. As president, Kennedy occasionally visited the farm, still in private hands.

Eisenhower House is now part of Fort Adams State Park and available for weddings and social events. For more information click here.

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Birthplace of Calvin Coolidge, one of several presidential houses in Plymouth Notch.

Calvin Coolidge’s birthplace is such a throwback to the way Vermont used to be that some people call it “Vermont’s Brigadoon.” Coolidge cannily used it as a backdrop to hone his image as a thrifty Yankee.

Coolidge was actually sworn in as president of the United States while vacationing at his boyhood home in Plymouth Notch, Vt.

His father, a notary, swore him in at 2:47 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1923, hours after President Warren G. Harding died.

Coolidge often visited his family home, a modest white frame farmhouse in the classic New England style of big house, little house, back house, barn.

The Secret Service detail assigned to him slept in tents on the property and a dance hall nearby served as his office in the summer of 1924.

Today Coolidge’s birthplace and surrounding buildings comprise the Calvin Coolidge Homestead District, which includes the Cilley General Store, the Post Office, the Wilder Restaurant (serving lunch), the church, several barns, the dance hall and the Plymouth Cheese factory. For more information click here.

Click on the image to buy the ebook from Amazon. Paperback version now available.

If you really want to know what a president and first lady were like, find out what they ate. The New England Historical Society’s new book, Eat Like a President, tells you about the six New England presidents, their servants, their families, their friends and how they struggled to make the White House presentable for public entertainment. Click here to buy the ebook; here for the paperback.

Images: Graves-Gilman House By Eumenes12 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5447836. Walker Point, By Zollernalb – own work, eigene Arbeit, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2730841. Franklin Pierce Homestead By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20697770. Plymouth Notch By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34788716. Peacefield by By Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3162095.

This story about presidential houses was updated in 2023.

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Jefferson Davis in New England – The Unlikely Campaign

Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, who would go on to become president of the confederate states during the Civil War, was no stranger to New England.

A firebrand and die-hard defender of the south and all its traditions – including slavery – Davis twice traveled to New England in the 1850s. The first trip came in 1853. Davis visited the region in his official capacity as secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce to tour military installations.

Both trips were designed to escape the south’s summer heat, but Davis’ second visit was also to help him restore his health and perhaps steer the nation away from war.

Gracious Maine: Jefferson Davis in New England

Davis left Baltimore for Boston aboard a steamer on July 3, 1858. After an overnight stop in the city, he caught a second steamer to Portland.

His tour of Maine included a stop at the home of General Henry Knox in Thomaston, a trip to Lead Mountain and a stop in Belfast to review a state militia meeting. In Brunswick – once home of abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe – he was honored with an honorary degree. And in Portland, he agreed to address the Cumberland County Democractic Convention.

Jefferson Davis

Davis was quite an attraction. The Republican press had vilified Davis and his extreme views as a man of the “ultra south.” Crowds in New England who came to see him might well have expected a raving tyrant. What they got was a smooth, elegant southern gentleman with impeccable manners and exotic green-tinted glasses to protect his eyes.

Davis was largely blind in one eye due to an persistent infection, which he hoped the moderate northern climate would help him ease.

At the Democratic Convention in Portland, he sounded a note of conciliation. Were the differences between north and south really so great as to demand a war;

“Shall narrow interests, shall local jealousies, shall disregard for the high purposes for which our union was ordained, continue to distract our people and impede the progress of our government towards the high consummation which prophetic statesmen have so often indicated as her destiny?”

“No, No, No,” the crowd thundered in reply.

Boston Wowed

As he began his return journey home in October, Davis stopped again in Massachusetts. He toured Daniel Webster’s Marshfield homestead.

Charles G. Greene, founder and editor of Boston Post, hosted a reception for Davis on Sat Oct. 16 and he socialized with prominent Massachusetts’ democrats, such as Caleb Cushing.

Republican Nathaniel Banks was governor of Massachusetts at the time of Davis’ visit. Banks was a moderate Republican who had won support of Massachusetts’ fervent abolitionists in part by firing Judge Edward Loring. Loring had enforced the Fugitive Slave Act, which required northern states to return escaped slaves to the south rather than grant them asylum.

On October 11, Davis addressed the state Democratic Convention held at Faneuil Hall to nominate Erasmus Beach to run for governor against Banks. (He would fail in the general election).

Again, Davis sounded his somewhat conciliatory tone. He defended slavery. And he called it an issue of state’s rights. (Though he didn’t extend the states’ rights argument to the right to grant asylum to escaped slaves.)

But he crafted a message designed as music to the ears of New Englanders wary of war. Was Massachusetts, home of John Hancock and Samuel Adams, really ready to discard all that the country had achieved over these regional disagreements?

Jefferson Davis, Peacemaker?

He sang the praises of John Hancock for snubbing President George Washington when the president visited the commonwealth in 1789. Hancock had asserted that the governor of each state should be of superior rank to the president in matters of protocol.

Davis reserved his harshest criticism for the abolitionists, painting them as bent on destroying the country. “The political agitator, like the vampire, fans the victim to which he clings but to destroy,” he said.

In summation, Davis said he hoped that those hoping to split the nation would not succeed.

“Why, then, I would ask, do we see these lengthened shadows, which follow in the course of our political day? Is it because the sun is declining to the horizon? Are they the shadows of evening; or are they, as I hopefully believe, but the mists which are exhaled by the sun as it rises, but which are to be dispersed by its meridian splendor?”

Davis, in his speeches, stressed that the differences between the south and north were not so great as to require a split. But he never said exactly what compromise he supported to avert it, leaving the listener to form his own conclusions.

Eruption in the South

In the north, moderates might well be persuaded that Davis’ position was softening, that he was suggesting an end to slavery might be acceptable for the preservation of the union. That interpretation was pleasing to some.

In the South, the Davis’ visit to New England was viewed as something like treason.

The Charleston Mercury in South Carolina declared Davis was a “Union Mormon.” It said “Jefferson Davis we know is no more.”

Davis needed to harden his rhetoric and in November of 1858, he did so. In a speech to the Mississippi legislature, he declared that the south must secede if an abolitionist were to be elected president.

“I love the flag of my country with even more than a filial affection,” he said. “I glory in the position which Mississippi’s star holds in the group; but sooner than see its lustre dimmed—sooner than see it degraded from its present equality—would tear it from its place to be set even on the perilous ridge of battle as a sign round which Mississippi’s best and bravest should gather to the harvest-home of death.”

This story about Jefferson Davis in New England was updated in 2023.

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The Oldest Bank in Each New England State

The oldest bank in a state isn’t necessarily the first one chartered. Banks have had their difficulties over the years and many failed or were swallowed up by other banks.

Bank of America, for example, started out as the Providence Bank in Rhode Island in 1791. It became the Industrial National Bank in the 1950s, morphed into Fleet Financial Group in the 1990s, bought Shawmut and BankBoston, and then was acquired by the Bank of America in 2004.

Here, then, are brief histories of the oldest bank in each New England state. If you know of other old banks with interesting histories, please include them in the comments section.

Liberty Bank

Historic Main Street district in Middletown, Conn.

In 1844, a young merchant from Old Saybrook named Frederick Sheffield rode his horse to Middletown, Conn., and deposited $8 in the Liberty Bank. Six months later he deposited another $18.

That $26 grew to more than $32,000 in 1994, when Sheffield’s descendants closed the account. It was the oldest individually owned savings account in America.

Liberty Bank was founded in 1825 as a mutual savings bank to help the poor and working class become thrifty. The bank’s headquarters complex includes its original location at Samuel Southmayd’s pharmacy on the corner of Main and Williams Streets in Middletown. They are part of the Main Street Historic District, and they include the former post office built in 1916, the Middletown Savings Bank built in 1928 and the Old Banking House Block built in 1796 and 1815.

Since 2000, Liberty Bank merged with several other smaller banks and is now the third largest as well as the oldest bank in Connecticut, with 56 branches and about 700 employees. It introduced a checking account to offer rebates of other banks’ ATM surcharges and built an affordable housing complex in Norwich, Uncas Condominiums.

Saco & Biddeford Savings Institution

Maine’s oldest bank, Saco & Biddeford Savings Institution was founded in 1827 as a social good, a way to encourage low-income people to save money.

The Saco & Biddeford Savings Institution was chartered during a flurry of charters for savings institutions along the East Coast. The first was founded in Boston in 1816, and within three years savings banks were incorporated in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Hartford, Providence and Salem, Mass.

Today it has eight branches along the coast of Southern Maine, employs about 200 people and has assets of about $900 million.

State Street Bank and Trust

An early incarnation of the State Street Bank

Massachusetts Gov. John Hancock in 1792 signed the first charter for Union Bank, the forerunner of the State Street Bank and Trust Co. It was the third bank in Boston, located at the corner of State and Exchange streets. Its first president was Hancock’s lieutenant governor, Moses Gill.

The bank was tied to Boston’s shipping industry, and has always celebrated the city’s maritime history. The bank’s offices featured ship models, prints, harpoons and figureheads, and published about two dozen monographs about Boston’s shipping past.

The monographs, wrote one collector, “hold a unique place in Boston publishing history for a number of reasons, including their high level of scholarship, the elegant printing and presentation of the volumes, the very many rare photographs and illustrations first published therein, and the magnanimity of the great financial institution which made them available to the public.”

The bank’s interior was described as looking like a New England merchant’s counting house of the late 18^th century, including the period furniture.

In 1924, Massachusetts Investors Trust chose State Street Bank as custodian of the country’s first mutual fund. The importance of that development wouldn’t become clear until years later.

In the 1970s, State Street decided to move away from retail banking and commercial lending, and into the high-tech world of processing asset management, global custody, 401(k), retirement plan accounting, and trusteeship of debt securities

A series of mergers and moves resulted in the bank’s current structure. Today it is a subsidiary of the State Street Corporation, the third largest asset manager in the world with $2.45 trillion under management. State Street Corporation is responsible for the custody and administration of 11 percent of the world’s assets. It is the oldest bank in Massachusetts and the second oldest bank in the country next to the Bank of New York, founded eight years earlier.

Bank of New Hampshire

Bank of New Hampshire in Laconia, N.H.

In 1832, the Meredith Bridge Savings Bank in Laconia received its first deposit: $10.50. Its charter had been signed by Franklin Pierce the previous year. Thirty-eight years later it would change its name to the Laconia Savings Bank, and so it would remain until 2012, when it became the Bank of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire’s oldest bank was founded as a mutual savings bank, owned by its depositors, and it has remained that way ever since. In 1994, the bank began acquiring other banks, and today has 24 branches throughout the state.

The Bank of New Hampshire boasts of its support for such nonprofit organizations as the Laconia Public Library, Lakes Region Childcare, the Bedford Public Library and the Children’s Museum of Portsmouth. It has $1.5 billion of assets under management.

Washington Trust Company

Historic downtown Westerly, R.I.

The Washington Trust Company was chartered by the Rhode Island legislature in 1800 to furnish loans and savings options for residents of the Westerly area. More importantly, it also had responsibility for issuing bank notes. The federal government at the time did not issue currency as we know it today, and paper notes were from time to time in short supply. This made bank currency essential to a functioning economy.

Named for President Washington, the Washington Trust Company was known as Washington Bank. It became the first bank in the nation to issue currency that bore Washington’s portrait — a full 69 years before federal currency would bear his likeness. It was just the third bank chartered in Rhode Island history.

In the earliest days of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the bank insisted that its reliance on the values of Yankee thrift and frugality made it so sound that it had no need of FDIC insurance. Congress eventually forced all banks to participate in the insurance system, regardless of the health of their balance sheets.

National Bank of Middlebury

The State of Vermont chartered the National Bank of Middlebury in 1831. It operated out of the Middlebury Hotel until 1845 when it opened its first building. The bank became a federally chartered bank in 1865.

In 1885 the bank suffered a setback when an investment in the National Bank of St. Albans failed. The National Bank of Middlebury was among a group of banks that were shareholders who were asked to contribute funds to make good the deposits and debts of the St. Albans institution. The banks sued to escape liability, maintaining that they were not responsible for losses beyond their own investments. In 1888, however, the courts ruled that the National Bank of Middlebury, in addition to the others, must contribute to paying the St. Albans bank’s debts. Middlebury was ordered to pay $19,642 in the case.

After the banking crisis of 1933, during which Franklin D. Roosevelt closed the nation’s banks, the National Bank of Middlebury reopened and was declared one of the nation’s soundest banks. Today it is the oldest bank in Vermont.

Images: Liberty Bank, By Joe Mabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19384631; Westerly, R.I., By English Wikipedia user Daniel Case, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4422975

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