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George H.W. Bush

Rhode Island’s Little Annapolis: The PT Boat Training Center at Melville

During World War II, Rhode Island residents could hear the roar of PT boat engines from Narragansett Bay all day and see tracer bullets fired over the ocean at night.

They could watch the PT boats racing around either in formation or practicing maneuvers. Perhaps Richard Nixon saw them from the Quonset Point Naval air station while he trained there in 1942. Perhaps George H.W. Bush had an aerial view of the little boats while training at the Charlestown Naval Air Station. And maybe they caught a glimpse of John F. Kennedy racing around the bay, leaving a rooster tail in his wake.

Birth of the PT Boat

The Navy had recognized early in the war that it needed small, high-speed, heavily armed gunboats to use among the hundreds of small islands in the Pacific. From that insight came the Patrol Torpedo boat, known as the PT boat. You may have seen PT boats in motion pictures such as They Were Expendable and PT 109 or the comedy TV show, McHale’s Navy.

Nearly all of the 14,000 PT boat officers and men trained at the small navy base on Narragansett Bay in the village of Melville, a part of Portsmouth, R.I. The Navy didn’t just train its men there, but developed PT boat policies and tactics as well.

Not many histories of these small bases have been written. Melville, however, graduated a disproportionate number of extremely successful men. In addition to a president of the Unite States, Melville graduated a U.S. Supreme Court justice, three movie stars, five U.S. ambassadors, four NFL coaches, six top corporate executives and a U.S. attorney general – to name a few.

This is their story.

Devil Boats

Leo Caisse, the author of this story about the 1916 U-boat visit, has published 10 historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He has a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lives in East Providence, R.I.

PT boat logo

The base was formally known as the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center (MTBSTC). The Japanese called them Devil Boats, and the Navy fondly called them the Mosquito Fleet, after their logo. The Secretary of the Navy signed an order establishing the PT boat fleet on Feb. 17, 1942.

In the beginning, a Massachusetts firm began construction on the small base. But then the Navy largely turned it over to the Rhode Island companies of Gilbane, Coleman and Collins. When all was said and done, there would be 59 buildings and 150 Quonset Huts (a Rhode Island invention). These buildings and huts would house classrooms, mess halls, warehouses, machine shops, living quarters and more — everything you’d find in a large Navy base.

The builders literally built a boat basin for the PT boats out of a swamp. It was staffed full time by 57 officers and 280 enlisted men. Motorists could see it from the Mt. Hope Bridge, which connects Bristol and Portsmouth.

Alongside the PT boat training unit was the Motor Torpedo Boat Repair Training Unit (MTBRTU). This unit had a staff of 30 officers and 950 enlisted men. Here they trained on maintaining the three 1500-horsepower Packard engines on a PT boat either in dock or the field. On the other side of the base was the Naval Fuel and Net Depot – a good location because those Packard engines gobbled up huge amounts of high-octane fuel.

Melville also had the advantage of having the Navy’s Newport Torpedo Station on Goat Island down the road from it. The torpedo station could provide training duds, sometimes live, for the torpedo boats to practice with. It also supplied experimental torpedoes to try out and a seven-mile torpedo range running north from the torpedo station up Narragansett Bay toward Prudence Island.

Mount Hope Bridge

Specht Tech

The Navy organized the PT boats into 44 squadrons, generally comprised of 12 boats. All told, the Navy commissioned over 650 PT boats by the end of the war.

The men nicknamed the squadrons ‘RON’, from the last three letters of ‘squadron,’ and added their number. RON 4 began operations at the Newport Navy Base on Jan. 13, 1942. It later moved to the crowded Melville base and remained in operation for the duration of the war. RON 4 patrolled the Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts coastline. Thus Narragansett Bay provided a safe haven for training and experimentation.

Lt. William C. Specht, soon promoted to lieutenant commander, was tapped to serve as Melville’s first commander in March 1942. He also ran the repair and fuel depots. Specht oversaw the construction of the base as well as the development of its curriculum. Navy men assigned to the course at Melville joked they attended “Specht Tech.”

Lt. jg. John F. Kennedy in PT 109

Plenty Tough

The PT boats were built mostly by the Higgins Company in New Orleans and the ELCO Company, a division of Electric Boat, the submarine builder. They had to measure at least 77 feet long in order to carry and launch Mark 8 torpedoes. They also carried twin 50-caliber machine guns. Some of the PT boats had 20 mm cannons.

The crewmen did their gunnery training at the Anti-Aircraft Center at Price’s Neck on Newport’s Ocean Drive. George Donovan, now 92, remembers them practicing at night. Along with his brother and cousins, he watched from his grandmother’s bedroom window, which faced Ocean Drive. They were fascinated and mesmerized watching countless tracer bullets fired out over the ocean at practice targets towed by small airplanes. These trainees used live ammunition, and occasionally they strayed off target and accidently shot down the tow plane.

The men trained in their PT boats on Narragansett Bay and in the ocean between Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard, 10 miles south of Newport. People said the rooster tail and the roar of the engines was most impressive the first time you heard and saw them. These boats could travel between 40-45 miles an hour at full throttle and were physically demanding to operate. So demanding they sometimes said that “PT” meant the men had to be ‘plenty tough.’

A PT boat underway near Midway

Accidents Happen

Occasionally, things went wrong.

Whenever the torpedo station was going to launch a test torpedo along its seven-mile range off Gould Island, it blew a very loud warning whistle. But one day in 1942 the commander of PT 122 did not hear the whistle, understandable over the roar of three Packard engines. He strayed into the test range and was nearly sunk by a test torpedo.

On another occasion that same year, PT 59 launched a torpedo in error. It traveled an estimated seven miles and struck the cargo ship USS Capella, anchored off Jamestown, and it began to sink. The quick-thinking skipper used his powerful engines to push the Capella to shallow water and thus save her from sinking. She was later repaired and put back into service. However, the entire incident was kept secret until the 1970’s.

Then in 1943, another PT boat launched a torpedo that went off course and sank a freighter anchored off the Quonset Point Naval Air Station.

And while patrolling Rhode Island coastal waters, PT 200 struck an unknown submerged object and sank.

Melville Today

Soon after the end of World War II, the Navy decommissioned the Melville Training Center and dismantled it. All that remains today are a couple of buildings and a plaque to commemorate what once was there. A busy marina operates in the PT boat cove.

When I was a youngster in the early 1960s, my friends and I used to play on an abandoned PT boat, which had been stripped of its armament and beached on the shore of what is now Hanley’s Beach, on Jacobs Point along the river in Warren, R.I. It had apparently crashed into something submerged because it had a large hole in its hull. We could enter the PT boat through the hole and play around, imagining what once might have taken place aboard her.

According to the Warren Preservation Society, what remained of the PT boat burned to the ground about 1970. All that’s left is some iron from what once must have been her engines.

Today there are precious few PT boats remaining, perhaps 10 in the world. Two fully restored boats can be seen on display at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass. If you want to experience what they were really like, take a trip to New Orleans and the National WW II Museum where they have fully restored the PT 305 to fully operating condition. You can even take a 45-minute ride on it in Lake Ponchartrain.

As noted previously, about 14,000 people went through the Melville Training Station out of about 12 million men and women who served in the armed forces during the war. What seems to me remarkable, and far out of proportion to its size, is the number notable men who served there.

The PT boat in Battleship Cove

Melville Alumni

Here is an incomplete listing:

Anthony Akers, U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand

Paul Austin, Chairman of the Board, Coca Cola

Howard Baker, U.S. Senator from Tennessee, chief of staff to President Reagan, U.S. Ambassador to Japan

William C. Battle, President of Field Crest Mills, U.S. Ambassador to Australia

Charles A. Black, husband of Shirley Temple and aquaculture pioneer

John D. Bulkeley, Navy Vice Admiral and one of the most decorated men in military history, including the Medal of Honor; skippered PT boat that took Gen. Douglas MacArthur out of the Philippines

Michael Burke, CBS Sports executive and President of the New York Yankees

John Clagett, author of 19 books

Bernard A. Crimmins, All-American football player, Notre Dame 1941; college football coach`

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., part of the invasion of Southern France, organized the Beach Jumpers, movie actor

Paul B. (Red) Fay, Undersecretary of the Navy, author

John Harllee, Chairman, Federal Maritime Commission

Michael J. Holovak, All-American football player, Boston College, 1942; college football coach and NFL team executive

John F. Kennedy, U.S. President

Joe Kuharich, college football coach and head coach NFL teams

Elgar Laux, Vice Chairman, Chrysler Corp.

Walter Lemm, head coach Houston Oilers and St. Louis Cardinals

Henry Loeb, Mayor of Memphis, Tenn.

Carl Maddox, Athletic Director, Louisiana State University

Clinton McClain, player, New York Giants

Torbert MacDonald, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts

John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General

Robert Montgomery, actor, President of the Screen Actors Guild

James Madden Newberry, founder of PT Boats, Inc.

Jack B. Olson, Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin, U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas

Paul T. Rennell, Vice President, Pan American World Airways

Don Rickles, actor and comedian

Raymond P. Shafer, Governor of Pennsylvania

Preston L. Sutphen, Sr., President of Electric Boat, builder of PT boats

Harold Thorkilsen, President and CEO, Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.

Malcolm Troon, U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Israel and the Soviet Union

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, millionaire

George Vanderbilt, millionaire

Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

End Notes

Leo Caisse, the author of this story about the 1916 U-boat visit, passed away in 2020. He published 10 historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

Images: PT Boat at Battleship Cove By Wikimaster97commons – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3846572; John F. Kennedy in PT 109 courtesy the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum. This story was updated in 2023.

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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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Six New England Places With a Unique Name

The early English and Scots-Irish settlers tended not to give a new settlement a unique name.

Many New England place names came from towns and shires in England and Ireland. The Puritans even named groups of towns in New England after groups of towns in England: Boston and Lynn, for example, were next to each other in East Anglia as they were in Massachusetts. So were Worcester and Leominster, and Amesbury, Salisbury, Newbury and Andover.

In Rhode Island, the geography of England was mimicked in Warwick and Coventry and in Bristol and Newport. In New Hampshire, Sandown and South Hampton are next to each other as they were in England. And, as in England, there was once a Gosport on the Isles of Shoals next to Portsmouth in New Hampshire.

Unique Names

The Scots-Irish did the same. As the earliest pioneers after the Puritans, they named their frontier towns after home. New Hampshire has a Derry, Dublin and Antrim; Massachusetts a Colrain and a Charlemont; Maine a Belfast, a Limerick and a Newry. Both Vermont and New Hampshire have a Londonderry, and Connecticut has a Waterford.

But sometimes the first settlers simply named a place after its geographic features, like Marshfield, Mass., and Rockport, Maine.

Others named their towns after heroes, like Washington, Warren, Hancock and Adams. Generally, individuals only had towns named after them after the American Revolution, though one New Hampshire governor was the exception that proved the rule.

There are at least six New England places that have a unique name found nowhere else.

Mianus, Conn.

The Mianus River

Mianus is a village along the Mianus River that lies in three other districts in Greenwich, Conn: Riverside, Greenwich and Cos Cob.

It began as a project of the Veterans Administration and the Town of Greenwich to build 40 starter homes for servicemen returning from World War II and their families. During the Baby Boom there were 90 children in Mianus, and they played in the nearby woods and along the river and harbor. A writer named Jack T. Scully grew up there and wrote a book of poems celebrating his elegiac childhood, called Mianus Village.

The unique name is pronounced ‘maɪˈænəs,’ which made it the butt of jokes on the reality show Jackass.

Mianus is also known to antique inboard marine engine enthusiasts because it was home to the Mianus Motor Works, founded in 1889.

The area was given its unique name by English settlers in the 17^th century, who called it Mianus after the chief of the Siwanoy Indian tribe.

Kennebunk, Maine

The King’s Highway in Kennebunk, Maine.

A large sign once proclaimed, “Kennebunk, the only village in the world so named.” The locally famous billboard boasting the town’s unique name was attached to the Kesslen Shoe Mill on Route One.

‘Kennebunk’ was an Abenaki Indian word meaning ‘the long cut bank,’ which refers to the long bank behind Kennebunk Beach. The town’s presence on the Kennebunk and Mousam rivers made it an early center of shipping and shipbuilding. Later, manufacturers built mills on the rivers to make textiles, leatheroid, shoes and luggage.

Today Kennebunk is a bedroom community and a destination for upscale tourists attracted by its beaches and shopping. The town was overshadowed by its neighbor – also with a unique name. Kennebunkport was often in the world’s news when President George H.W. Bush summered there at his family compound.

Kennebunk today is home to the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, historic buildings, the 1799 Inn, Tom’s of Maine and the Brick Store Museum.

Dracut, Mass.

The historic Old Yellow Meeting House in Dracut.

Passaconaway, the Pennacook sachem who brokered peace in the Merrimack River Valley, spent most of his life on what is now Dracut, Mass.

It was known as Augumtoocooke until Passaconaway’s daughter Bess sold the land in 1665 to Captain John Evered, whose family was associated with Draycot Cerne in northern England. (Evered had earlier been in charge of the execution of Mary Dyer.) The land was sold for ‘four yards of Duffill and one pound of tobacco’ and given the unique name of Dracut.

Dracut belonged to Chelmsford until 1701, when it formally separated. Part of Dracut was set aside as a Praying Town for Christianized Indians. Dracut’s paper and textile mills attracted French-Canadian and Irish immigrants. Modern real estate development swallowed much of the town. What isn’t a suburb of Lowell is now part of Lowell, which annexed large parts of the town. Dracut has a population of about 30,000 and still retains some rural landscapes and historic buildings.

Henniker, N.H.

The Mill Pond in West Henniker

Henniker, a bucolic New England town near Concord, prides itself on being ‘the only Henniker on earth.’ It was chartered before the American Revolution and named for British merchant Sir John Henniker, an unusual practice at the time.

Christopher Lenney argued that towns named ‘directly and unequivocally for persons are largely of post-Revolutionary vintage’ in Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England. “The custom was un-English and only became widespread in the 19th century, when antipathy to the practice had broken down.”.

New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth broke with that tradition when he dispensed land grants and charters in Vermont and New Hampshire, naming them after friends in high places to win their support for his westward expansion. Henniker, which received its charter in 1768, had been known as Todd’s Town and New Marlborough until Wentworth decided to name it after his friend.

Today Henniker is home to New England College, Pat’s Peak and the Old Depot No. 6 book barn.

Burrillville, R.I.

The Moses Taft House in Burrillville, R.I.

Burrillville, R.I., broke off from Glocester in 1806 and named itself after a favorite son, James Burrill, Jr. Burrill had established himself as a leader of Rhode Island by the tender age of 34. He had become Rhode Island’s attorney general at 25 and was elected a U.S. senator in 1817. Shortly before he died on Christmas Day in 1820, he delivered an eloquent speech opposing the Missouri Compromise, which banned free blacks and people of mixed race from settling in Missouri. That clause ‘was entirely repugnant to the Constitution of the United States’ he said, because it created separate classes of citizens.

Burrillville originally comprised 60 square miles but lost land to Massachusetts over a border dispute. Now part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, Burrillville once had many mills, now gone or shuttered.

St. Johnsbury, Vt.

St. Johnsbury, Vt.

St. Johnsbury was organized in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom in 1790, a time when the un-English custom of naming towns after individuals began to take hold.

St. Johnsbury was named for Michel Guillaume St. Jean de Crevecoeur, also known as J. Hector St. John, a French writer living in New York. St. John wrote Letters from an American Farmer in 1782, a book praising American agriculture.

St. John befriended George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and he corresponded with Ethan Allen, who wanted to name the town St. John. The writer suggested St. Johnsbury, realizing that several places already had the name St. John.

St. Johnsbury became a minor manufacturing center where the Fairbanks family made its famous platform scales. By the 1940s, St. Johnsbury was the world’s largest manufacturer of scales, maple sugar and candlepins for bowling.

Today it is a quintessential Victorian industrial town with a large historic district that encompasses the Railroad Street District, Main Street, the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium.

Photos: Dracut Old Yellow Meeting House, By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26184431 ;Henniker Congregational Church and Historical Society, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3380925. This story last updated in 2022.

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The Oldest Business in Each New England State

Family-owned businesses are becoming a thing of the past as Amazon and Walmart gobble up everything in sight. But the independent business still exists in New England. The oldest business in your state could be a farm that survived real estate development and competition from agribusiness. Or it could be a tavern that made it through more than a dozen wars. Perhaps it’s a ferry that’s been running since Nathaniel Hawthorne took notes.

Here, then, is the oldest business in each New England state.

Field View Farm, Connecticut’s Oldest Business

This farm in nearby Derby didn’t make it through the Great Depression. Here it is being auctioned off. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The Griswold Inn in Essex, Conn., and the Hartford Courant are two of Connecticut’s oldest businesses, having opened in 1776 and 1764, respectively. But neither is as old as Field View Farm, which has been in continuous operation in Orange since 1639.

Thomas Hine established the farm in 1639, and his descendants have run the farm for 12 generations. Today it’s a dairy farm that sells eggs, milk and ice cream (and lets you pet the cows). It’s the last remaining farm between New Haven and New York City, and it has stayed alive by diversifying. The farm is also a trucking business, with tractor trucks and trailers that haul goods throughout the Northeast.

A fire burned down the main barn in 1996, and since then the Hine family has sold agricultural equipment and rented vehicles to stay in business.

707 Derby Ave., Orange, Conn.

Seaside Inn

The Seaside Inn

The town of Kennebunk, Maine, bustles in the summer with tourists seeking lobster, whale watching, shopping and the summer home of President George H.W. Bush. Tourists have stayed in Kennebunk since 1667 at the Seaside Inn, Maine’s oldest business.

Innkeeping dates to 1660 on Kennebunk Beach, when ferrymen stayed on the oceanfront peninsula at the mouth of the Kennebunk River in case travelers needed to be ferried across the river.

John Gooch was the first member of the family to settle in Kennebunk. He arrived in 1637 as an agent of Ferdinando Gorges, who ordered Gooch to run the ferry. He began running an inn in 1667. The current inn has been in the Gooch family since 1756, when Jedidiah Gooch bought the business.

It is the fifth oldest family business in the United States. Maine also boasts the ninth oldest family business, Smiling Hill Farm, in operation in Westbrook since 1720.

For generations, the business was passed down to the first-born son. Four generations ago, it was passed down to a daughter and today the Seaside Inn and Cottages is run by a ninth-generation member of the family, Trish Mason, and her husband Ken.

Trish Mason has written a book, Seaside House: Maine Innkeepers. You can buy it here.
80 Beach Avenue, Kennebunk, Maine

Barker’s Farm

You can pet the cows at Barker’s Farm.

Barker’s Farm in North Andover, Mass., is still growing corn, strawberries and apples since it started in 1642. It has been in the same family since 1642, and is now run by Dianne Barker, the 11^th generation owner.

When the first Mr. Barker came to America, another old Massachusetts business was up and running – only in Constantinople. Zildjian didn’t move its cymbal company to Quincy until 1928 (it’s now in Norwell).

Today the Barker farm has 70 acres and a farmstand that sells corn, fruit, butter and vegetables. Customers can pick their own apples and flowers.

1267 Osgood St North Andover, Mass.

Tuttle’s Red Barn

Tuttle’s red barn

John Tuttle almost didn’t make it when he left England for the New World in 1632. His ship sank. But his wife and four-year-old daughter survived and found their way to what is now New Hampshire.

Now New Hampshire’s oldest business, The Tuttle Farm has been operating without pause in Dover, since 1632. It’s almost as old as the Shirley Plantation in Charles City, Va., which has been around since 1613.

The farm expanded to 240 acres in the 20th century, but now is down to 134. It’s been passed down through 11 generations of Tuttles. In the 1870s, Joseph Edward Tuttle died when his only son was still a baby. His brother ran the farm for 40 years until he died, when the farm went to the grown-up George Tuttle.

The Tuttle Farm today includes a 12-room house built around 1780, greenhouses, barns and a farmstand, which sells produce, groceries, plants and gift items. Its biggest crop is corn, followed by vegetables and berries.

Will and Lucy Tuttle sold the farm in 2013 for about $1 million to Matt Kozazcki, who also owns a farm in Newbury, Mass. It is now doing business as Tendercrop Farm.

123 Dover Point Rd., Dover, N.H.

White Horse Tavern

Newport, R.I., is home to three very old American businesses: John Stevens Stonecutter, Caswell-Massey and the White Horse Tavern.

The White Horse Tavern, Rhode Island’s oldest business, was built by Frances Brinley in 1652. It didn’t sell food and drink until 1683 when William Mayes bought the property and enlarged it into a tavern. And it wasn’t named White Horse until 1730.

The tavern was a hangout for Tories in the early days of the Revolution and housed British soldiers leading up to the Battle of Rhode Island. Among its more colorful owners was William Mayes Jr., a Rhode Island pirate.

Today you can not only visit the White Horse, you can still get a meal and a drink there. For more information, visit the Tavern’s website here.

John Stevens Stonecutter has been cutting stone since 1705, and Caswell-Massey has made soaps and scents since 1752. Kenyon’s Grist Mill has been grinding meal and flour in West Kingstown since 1696.

26 Marlborough St., Newport, R.I.

Fort Ticonderoga Ferry

Vermont ferries

The trip between Larrabee’s Point in Shoreham, Vt., and Ticonderoga, N.Y., takes seven-and-a-half minutes, just as it has for more than 100 years.

The Fort Ticonderoga Ferry makes its way across Lake Champlain guided by a set of cables that rest on the lake’s bottom.

There has been a ferry running from Ticonderoga to ports on the Connecticut River since at least the 1759 when Lord Jeffery Amherst, governor general of British North America, ordered the establishment of ferry service to assist in moving armies and supplies in the Seven Years’ War.

Since 1799, there has been a ferry service between New York and Larrabee’s Point, making it Vermont’s oldest business. In the early days it was essential to trade.

Operating from late spring through early fall, the ferry is less important as a vehicle for trade today than it used to be. But it still delights travelers as it did more than 100 years ago when Nathaniel Hawthorne noted its peculiar charms. He wrote of: “the continual succession of travelers who spent an idle quarter of an hour in waiting for the ferry boat, affording me just enough time to make their acquaintance, penetrate their mysteries and be rid of them without the risk of tediousness on either side.”

Images: White Horse Tavern By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58527439.

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When First Fathers Lose A Child: How Grief Has Affected Presidents

Three of New England’s First Fathers lost children to death after they were elected President of the United States. Franklin Pierce and Calvin Coolidge were so grief-stricken they could barely cope with their duties. First Father John F. Kennedy reacted differently to the death of his infant son.

First Fathers who lost a son — Coolidge, Kennedy, Pierce.

In his book, First Dads: Parenting and Politics from George Washington to Barack Obama, author Joshua Kendall presents psychological profiles of every president as a parent.

“Psychologists say grief can either break a parent or reshape a parent,” Kendall said in a recent interview with the New England Historical Society. In the case of Pierce and Coolidge, it broke them.

Psychologists also have the concept of post-traumatic growth. “Sometimes it energizes a person in a strange way,” Kendall said. That seems to have been the case with Kennedy.

Franklin Pierce

Franklin Pierce was considered a dynamo when he was elected president in 1852. He was a popular speaker elected with more than half the vote, something no Democrat would do until 1932.

Kendall argues Pierce suffered chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in January 1853. He took the train from Andover, N.H., with his wife and his third and only surviving son, Benny. The train crashed, and wood fell on the 11-year-old’s head. Pierce picked him up, not realizing he was dead until he took off his cap. The boy’s head was like jelly.

Franklin Pierce, one of the grief-stricken First Fathers.

Pierce never got over it.

A week after his son died, Pierce wrote former Sen. Jefferson Davis — his future Secretary of War — “How shall I be able to summon my manhood to gather up my energies for the duties before me, it is hard for me to see,” he wrote.

“It fried his brain,” Kendall said. “His wife goes psycho, writes letters to dead children.”

Kendall said Pierce’s close friend Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t mind that he was never invited to the White House because his wife was so impossible.

Pierce became fanatically obsessed with the health of children.

“OK, Pierce was a lousy president, but we have to give him some slack,” Kendall said.

Calvin Coolidge

Calvin Coolidge was full of energy until his son Calvin, Jr., died of a staph infection on July 7, 1924, after playing tennis without his socks.

“Just like with Pierce, the before and after is very striking,” Kendall said. “His depression may have caused the Great Depression. He was asleep at the switch.”

Coolidge slept 11 hours a day. He was cold and distant to his remaining son John, treating him harshly. While still in the White House he said he always saw his boy playing tennis on the court out there.

Calvin Coolidge, wearing a black armband for President Harding

The death of his son probably caused Coolidge to decline running for re-election, a race he almost surely would have won. When he died, Dorothy Parker said, “How can you tell?”

Coolidge’s wife Grace grew past her trauma and move beyond her son’s death. “Grace mourns and integrates the experience, and was very present with her remaining child,” Kendall said.

First Father JFK

John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie had a rocky marriage because of all his womanizing, Kendall said. As a parent, he was disconnected from his two young children.

Then Jackie gave birth to a son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who died two days later on Aug. 9, 1963.

Official White House portrait of John F. Kennedy by Aaron Shikler

“Most JFK experts believe this shared tragedy was bringing them together,” Kendall said. “It almost had a therapeutic effect on their marriage.”

Kennedy was assassinated less than three months later.

Playful Pal

The death of a child shaped still another president.

George W. Bush was what Kendall calls a ‘playful pal’ to his twin daughters. He was shaped by the death of his sister, Robin. “Barbara Bush is totally fried by the loss,” Kendall said. “George W. then become very playful in order to cheer his mother up.”

This story about First Fathers was updated in 2022.

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When Greenwich Kicked Out the United Nations

Peace after World War II was shattered in Greenwich, Conn., when a United Nations site committee started looking at land for its new headquarters in the tony suburb.

Not in this back yard. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The news came in December 1945 to the Greenwich Time newspaper by Prescott Bush, a resident, banker, future U.S. senator and father of George H.W. Bush. It shocked the town.

Prescott Bush

Fifty-one countries formed the United Nations in 1945 in the aftermath of World War II. They intended the organization to end future wars. But first the U.N. needed a place to meet.

The United Nations Organization site committee, headed by Dr. Stoyan Gavrilovic of Yugoslavia, had chosen a 42-square-mile site. It included nearly all of Greenwich north of the Merritt Parkway and parts of Stamford and North Castle.

It would be called the “Free City of the United Nations,” kind of like Vatican City in Rome. The committee proposed a new railroad spur and four-lane highway. Their wish list also included an airport, a sewage treatment plant, a residential section, a business section, a hotel, power plants, churches, schools, a hospital, fire and police stations. The crowning glory: a 12-story administration building modeled after the Pentagon, for 50,000 office workers.

Greenwich residents took to calling it UNOville. Most of them had one message for the U.N.: Not In My Back Yard.

Greenwich Selected

Cities and towns all across the United States scrambled to lure the United Nations. Sen. Harley Kilgore of West Virginia sent a letter to the committee arguing the town of Berkeley Springs would be much more affordable than Fairfield County. Stamford, Conn., unlike Greenwich, wanted the U.N. Also in contention were Atlantic City, Bear Mountain in New York, Palisades State Park in New Jersey, Glacier National Park in Montana, the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Golf and Nightclubs

Pedro Lopez, a diplomat from the Philippines, explained the attraction of Greenwich. Its idyllic countryside would inspire the meditation and contemplation that would help solve the problems of a suffering and miserable world. Plus, it offered golf, and New York’s nightclubs and theaters were only a short train ride away.

That would be nice for the diplomats, not so much for the residents of Greenwich. Prescott Bush explained the opposition in a letter to the UNO: A thousand families would be displaced and traffic, already a problem, would get worse.

Greenwich lawyer John L. Gray and his law partner Wilkie Bushby then organized a protest meeting at the Greenwich Country Day Schoo. Two hundred fifty people showed up and called themselves the Greenwich People’s Committee. A petition circulated, legal fees were raised, and Town Meeting supported a resolution opposing UNOville.

It wasn’t unanimous. Some residents supported the goals of world peace after the bloodshed of World War II. Others saw business opportunities and rising property values. However, they formed a distinct minority.

Opponents scheduled a referendum for George Washington’s birthday, but then rescheduled, fearing residents would be on vacation. On March 2, 1946, 73 percent of those voting opposed the U.N. They wanted world peace, just not world peace headquarters in their backyards.

Angry Millionaires

UN headquarters. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The news media couldn’t resist. “The millionaires of Connecticut are angry,” reported the Daily Mail from the UK. “Arise, Greenwichers, Ye Prisoners of the UNO,” blared a New York Post headline.

For those who didn’t know, the Daily Mail reported Greenwich had ‘mansions with 30 servants to run them’ and ‘golf clubs that cost $400 a year to belong to if you are the type that ‘belongs’.’ The town also offered private beaches, and ‘everything that a man can wish if he is a millionaire.’

Greenwich’s opposition began to sway UNO. The French sided with the protesters, unwilling to displace residents. Australia wanted San Francisco anyway. And Middle Easterners opposed New York because of its large Jewish population.

By October, the Rockefeller family had donated the land on the East Side of New York City, which made that city inevitable.

Greenwich could then breathe a long sigh of relief.

Images: UN Headquarters By https://www.flickr.com/people/flickr4jazz/ – https://www.flickr.com/photos/flickr4jazz/2724390955/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=88858853. This story was updated in 2023.

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