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Maine Stamp Act Riot of 1766

News was slow to reach Maine in 1766, and it cost William King dearly. The Maine Stamp Act Riot of 1766 targeted King, of Scarborough, and ironically it occurred after the act had been repealed. It also was not, strictly speaking, about the Stamp Act – at least not completely. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and other colonies had played host to stamp act riots. So it’s not surprising violence erupted in Maine.

Illustration of the Massachusetts Stamp Act Riot (Cassell’s Illustrated History of England)

On March 19, 1766 King and his family were asleep when a band 20 to 30 of their neighbors, dressed as Indians and likely quite drunk, sneaked up on the King house. They tossed hatchets through the windows and started terrorizing the family and its servants.

King and his family cowered while the fake Indians rifled his papers, burning all they could find. First they destroyed the papers in his house and then all the papers they could find in his store. Then the party left.

King would spend the rest of his life trying to obtain justice.

William King

King came to Maine from Watertown, Mass. where he had been a successful businessman. In Maine, his prosperity blossomed. He understood the demand for lumber in Massachusetts and became a lumber exporter. His ships returned to Maine with goods that he sold at a store.

He extended credit to his neighbors. Those who couldn’t pay him with money were allowed to pay him with land, from which he could take more lumber and load on his ships to Boston.

But King’s wealth began making him unpopular. As treasurer for the parish, King published a list of parishioners who owed money to the church. Many of those who owed money disagreed.

King, a loyalist, further alienated himself from his neighbors by supporting the Stamp Act, which required American paper goods to carry a stamp signifying that tax had been paid to Britain.

King had two chief opponents: the Andrews family and the Stewart family. Both played an active role in town affairs and disagreed with King’s politics. They also owed him money, which undoubtedly influenced their dislike of him.

King received an appointment to serve a constable in 1765, but he declined. Townspeople fined him for refusing to do his civic duty, but King refused to pay.

The outspoken John Stewart criticized King. He charged that King not only neglected his civic responsibilities, but that he had earned his money by taking advantage of the poor. Stewart vowed to oust King from Scarborough.

Attacks Continue

The riot at King’s house set up an awkward tension in Scarborough. To some extent the rioters had achieved their aims, as they had destroyed many of King’s records related to the debts he was owed and property he had taken in trade. But King did not leave town.

King and his tormentors sat side by side in church, with King refusing communion as long as his enemies were allowed to receive it. And he sued Stewart and Andrews and others, seeking ₤ 2000.

The attacks on King continued, meanwhile. In 1767 his barn was burned and a house on his property torched. But King would not back down. He pushed on with his case.

King won a small judgment, but lost on appeal. John Adams would represent him in one trial, offering an impassioned plea for justice:

Imagine yourselves each one for himself—in Bed with his pregnant Wife, in the dead of Midnight, five Children also asleep, and all the servants. 3 Children in the same Chamber, two above. The Doors and Windows all barrd, bolted and locked—all asleep, suspecting nothing—harbouring no Malice, Envy or Revenge in your own Bosoms nor dreaming of any in your Neighbors, In the Darkness, the stillness, the silence of Midnight.

Armed Banditti

“All of a sudden, in an Instant, in a twinkling of an Eye, an Armed Banditti of Felons, Thieves, Robbers, and Burglars, rush upon the House.—Like Savages from the Wilderness, or like Legions from the Blackness of Darkness, they yell and Houl, they dash in all the Windows and enter—enterd the[y] Roar, they stamp, they yell, they houl, they cutt, break, tear and burn all before them.

“Do you see a tender and affectionate Husband, an amiable deserving Wife near her Time, 3 young Children, all in one Chamber, awakened all at once—ignorant what was the Cause—terrifyd—inquisitive to know it. The Husband attempting to run down stairs, his Wife, laying hold of his Arm, to stay him and sinking, fainting, dying away in his Arms. The Children crying and clinging round their Parents—father will they kill me— father save me! The other Children and servants in other Parts of the House, joining in the Cries of Distress.

“What Sum of Money Mr. Foreman would tempt you, to be Mr. King, and to let your Wife undergo what Mrs. King underwent, and your Children what theirs did for one Night?

“I freely confess that the whole sum sued for would be no temptation to me, if there was no other Damage than this.

Adams Loses

But Adams’ arguments did not carry the day. King died in 1775. His sons continued his case and won a small judgment, but it’s doubtful they collected.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Courageous Heroes From New England

Not all courageous heroes receive their due on Veterans or any other day. So many sacrifices have gone unheralded, so many men and women who risked their lives for their country were all but forgotten.

For all of New England’s courageous heroes and veterans, we mention these six on Veterans Day. One comes from each state. If you know of another courageous hero who deserves accolades, please share it in the comments section.

Henry Mucci, Bridgeport, Conn.

Henry Mucci, one of many courageous heroes who rescued POWs.

One of the most courageous heroes of World War II, Lt. Col. Henry Mucci led a daring rescue mission in the South Pacific.

Stationed in New Guinea during World War II, he created a new Army Ranger unit, the 6^th Ranger Battalion.

In October 1944, the Japanese held more than 500 mostly American survivors of the Bataan Death March in the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the 6th Army was marching toward Manila to liberate it from the Japanese. The American prisoners were in imminent danger of being massacred by the Japanese before their countrymen could save them.

Mucci received orders to save them.

On Jan. 28, 1945, Mucci led a march 30 miles through Japanese territory and rendezvoused with Filipino guerillas near the POW camp. A total of 378 rangers and guerillas faced 3,000 Japanese. Some of the guerillas didn’t even have weapons.

At dusk on January 30, the guerrillas set up ambushes along the highway. Mucci led the Rangers on a half-mile crawl across an open field to a ditch outside the POW camp. An Army Air Force fighter buzzed the Japanese to distract them.

The surprise attack lasted but half an hour. None of the Japanese troops or tanks got past the guerrillas along the highway. Many didn’t survive the strafing by the 547th Night Fighter Squadron. The Rangers liberated all but one of the 513 prisoners.

Cabanatuan POWs celebrate their liberation.

More than 500 Japanese troops were killed or wounded. Only two Rangers died and 21 Filipino guerillas suffered wounds.

Some prisoners, weakened from disease and starvation, couldn’t walk, so the Rangers carried them, sometimes two at a time.

More…

Henry Mucci came home to Bridgeport, welcomed as one of the war’s most courageous heroes. He received the Distinguished Service Cross.

A section of Route 25 between Bridgeport and Newtown was named the Col. Henry A. Mucci Highway. Additionally, a film, The Great Raid, was released in 2005.

To see a videos and photos of the liberation of Cabanatuan, click here, here and here.

Donald Skidgel, Bangor, Maine

Sgt. Donald Skidgel

Sgt. Donald Skidgel of Bangor, Maine, gave his life at the age of 20 to save others on a battleground in Vietnam.

He joined the Army in 1968 and soon rose to sergeant. On Sept. 14, 1969, his unit guarded a convoy near Song Be. The enemy began firing from hiding places in tall grass and bunkers.

Skidgel maneuvered off the road and started shooting, silencing one enemy position. Then he ran across 60 meters of bullet-raked ground and fired at other enemy positions.

Suddenly Skidgel saw the convoy’s command group coming under intense attack. He tried to draw the enemy’s attention by manning a machine gun while his driver steered through the hostile fire.

An exploding grenade knocked him onto the rear fender, but he staggered to his feet and continued firing. Finally, small arms fire killed him.

He saved the convoy command and inspired his fellow soldiers to defeat the enemy.

Donald Skidgel received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

On Oct. 15, 2011, the bridge on Route 2 over the Sebasticook River in Newport Maine was dedicated as ‘The Donald Sidney Skidgel Memorial Bridge.’

John Mihalowski, Worcester, Mass.

John Mihalowski

When Worcester, Mass., native John Mihalowski enlisted in the Navy in 1927, he couldn’t know he would play a key role in the greatest submarine rescue in history.

Mihalowski trained as a Navy diver and rose to chief torpedoman. As the U.S. entry into World War II loomed, he joined the crew of the U.S.S. Falcon.

On May 23, 1939, the Falcon raced from New London, Conn., to rescue the U.S.S. Squalus. The submarine sank during a test dive from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

Some of the men survived, but they probably wouldn’t last long because they had so little air. Besides, no one had ever survived a submarine sinking.

Once the Falcon reached the Squalus, Mihalowski and several other divers managed to make four dangerous, difficult trips to the sub in an experimental diving ball. At great risk, they carried all 33 survivors to the surface.

John Mihalowski received the Medal of Honor ‘for extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.’ Read more of the dramatic story of the greatest submarine rescue ever here.

The Kittery Historical and Naval Museum in Kittery has an exhibit dedicated to the Squalus rescue.

Alexander Scammell, Durham, N.H.

Alexander Scammell

George Washington thought Alexander Scammell one of the funniest men in the Continental Army. Washington enjoyed the company of the tall, handsome and charming soldier.

Scammell was born in Mendon (now Milford), Mass., but spent most of his adult career in New Hampshire after graduating from Harvard. He studied law in Durham, N.H., with John Sullivan, who became a general and a governor.

Alexander Scammell saw action even before the Revolution began. He seized the British flag during a raid on Fort William and Mary in New Castle, N.H., in December 1774.

He joined the 2^nd New Hampshire Regiment during the Siege of Boston and eventually joined Washington’s Army. Scammell remained with Washington as the British chased the shrinking American army through New Jersey. On Christmas night 1776, Alexander Scammell crossed the Delaware in Washington’s boat before the morale-boosting victory of the Battle of Trenton.

A week later, he distinguished himself at the Battle of Princeton.

Alexander Scammell saw the American forces being badly beaten and, in a daring move, rode to the fore to lead a charge against the enemy. Washington rode up moments later. They rallied the troops, turning a defeat into victory and putting the British on the defensive.

Scammell didn’t survive the war. He died from his wounds during a skirmish before the Battle of Yorktown.

Alexander Scammell’s portrait hangs at the New Hampshire Statehouse, along with dozens of other portraits of military heroes. They belong to the Collections of the New Hampshire Statehouse & State Library. Scammell’s likeness may be viewed in the Visitor’s Center, Rooms 118 and 119. Fort Scammell in Casco Bay, Maine, and the Alexander Scammell Bridge over the Bellamy River near Durham were named after him.

Esek Hopkins, Scituate, R.I.

Esek Hopkins

Esek Hopkins, born in 1718 in Scituate, R.I., had sailed to nearly every part of the globe by the time the American Revolution broke out.

On Dec. 22, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed him to head America’s infant navy. He ignored his orders to head to the Chesapeake Bay, and took eight merchant ships outfitted for war to the Caribbean.

He defied orders because he risked annihilation of his small fleet in the Chesapeake. Hopkins decided instead to divert the British Navy from the American coast and capture a prize.

On March 3, 1776 Esek Hopkins launched the Battle of Nassau in the first U.S. amphibious landing. Sailors and marines captured munitions and two ships, while severely injuring another. Hopkins received praise by some, condemnation by others for the bold stroke.

Esek Hopkins got no medals during the war. He had a hot temper and criticized Congress, which did not view him as one of the war’s courageous heroes. Finally, Congress relieved him of his command in July 1778.

Esek Hopkins’ home in Providence is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Willie Johnston, Derby, Vt.

Willie Johnston

Willie Johnston of Salem (now Derby), Vt., received the Medal of Honor as the youngest and one of the most courageous heroes of the Civil War.

When his father enlisted in the Union Army in December 1861, 11-year-old Willie begged to join him as a drummer boy. He mustered into the 3d Vermont Infantry Regiment on May 1, 1862, and soon saw action.

During the Seven Days Battles near Richmond, Va., the Confederate Army drove the Union Army down the Virginia peninsula. Many men threw away their guns to lighten their load while retreating. Willie hung on to his drum and brought it safely to Harrison’s Landing.

As the only drummer boy left with a drum, he was given the honor of drumming for the division parade. President Abraham Lincoln heard the story and recommended the boy receive a medal. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton presented the Medal of Honor on Feb. 15, 1864, when Willie was 13 years old – for something he did when he was 11.

Willie Johnston mustered out of the army on Dec. 30, 1864, the second-ever recipient of the Medal of Honor.

You can see Willie Johnston’s drumsticks and a photograph of him at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. A statue of him stands in Santa Clarita, Calif., and a book, Mr. Lincoln’s Drummer, came out in 1995.

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Puritans Name, Shame and Take Over Anglican Maine

In 1652, Massachusetts Puritans decided to bring the English Civil War to North America by taking over Anglican Maine.

The year before, Puritans in England had won the final battle of the English Civil War. They had abolished the bishops, beheaded Charles I, exiled Charles II and put Parliament in control of the government. They also did away with High Anglican practices that smacked of Roman Catholicism.

The Massachusetts Puritans, emboldened by their success in England, sent negotiators to the scattered settlements along Maine’s west coast. One by one, the Maine communities agreed to the Puritan ‘suggestion’ that they join the Bay Colony. The Massachusetts militia may have helped them make up their minds.

The Puritans then gave new names to some of the Anglican Maine communities – names some of the Mainers didn’t like one bit.

Early map of eastern New Hampshire and the western Maine coast.

East vs. West

Take a look at the place names along the southern Maine coast: Kittery, Wells, Biddeford, Dartmouth and Falmouth. They mirror place names in Southwest England, known as the West Country.

Map of the West Country

Historians compare the region to the American South. In the 17^th century, it had large plantations and a rural population. Its people were more likely to support the Anglican Church than were the Puritans in eastern England.

Now take a look at Massachusetts place names: Boston, Lynn, Ipswich, Yarmouth, Cambridge, Essex. They come from eastern England, or East Anglia.

East Anglia gave names to 63 percent of Massachusetts towns founded before 1660. Most of those had names from towns within 60 miles of Haverhill in the East Anglian county of Suffolk.

That’s because the Puritan elite of Massachusetts came from East Anglia.

Unlike the West Country, East Anglia in the early 17^th century was urban, entrepreneurial and a hotbed of Puritan opposition to the monarchy and its High Anglican practices.

Sir Ferdinando Gorges

Sir Ferdinando Gorges, born around 1565, came from an Anglican family that claimed royal descent. A military man loyal to King James I, for a time he served as governor of Plymouth in the West Country.

Gorges decided to colonize the New World after receiving three captured North American Indians from an English ship captain.

King James I

In 1607 Gorges helped finance the failed Popham Colony in present-day Phippsburg, Maine. The Popham settlers brought with them an Anglican priest, Richard Seymour, brother to Henry VIII’s wife Jane Seymour. Richard Seymour conducted the first Anglican service in America.

In 1620, King James I granted Gorges a patent for ‘planting, ruling, ordering and governing’ the territory between Virginia and New France.

Gorges, as head of the Council for New England, gave himself and his partner John Mason a grant for all lands between the Merrimac and Kennebec rivers.

Mason took New Hampshire, and Gorges took the territory north of the Piscataqua River. He called it New Somersetshire after his own home in England.

Anglican Maine

While Gorges was off fighting the French in 1627, the Massachusetts Bay Company got a royal charter for Massachusetts. Gorges thought Massachusetts belonged to him.

To add insult to injury, the Massachusetts Puritans believed in self-rule. Gorges wanted his territory run by Anglican feudal lords and their deputies.

Gorges tried maneuvering in Parliament to get Massachusetts back. His efforts sparked antagonism between the Anglican, Royalist Gorges and the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, a trickle of Anglicans from the West Country came to fish, farm and trade along the southern Maine coast in places they called Black Point, Blue Point, Stratton’s Island, Spurwink and Casco.

Gorges tried to establish another colony between the Saco and Kennebec Rivers, which he called the province of Lygonia after his mother, Cecily Lygon. Another settlement took Gorges’ own name — Gorgeana.

The settlers in Anglican Maine and Lygonia squabbled over who owned what land. Their disunity didn’t help them when the Massachusetts Puritans came calling.

What’s In A Name?

Since the arrival of the Winthrop fleet in 1630, Massachusetts had steadily grown in size and in wealth. With an organized government, its citizens had the rights of trial by jury and the freehold tenure of land. Freemen elected councils to write bylaws and deputies to attend the General Court, observed historian Hannah Farber.

By 1650, Massachusetts’ rapidly growing population reached 14,000. In contrast, only about a thousand English colonists lived in Maine, and most of them barely scratched out a living.

John Endecott

Massachusetts Gov. John Endecott sent commissioners to their eastern neighbor, where they went from town to town. They suggested to the people of Maine and Lygonia they might have more legal rights and more prosperity if they joined Massachusetts Bay. The Puritans also may have mentioned the size of their militia.

Town by town the Maine settlements voted to join Massachusetts. In 1652, Kittery came to Massachusetts, and the next year Wells, Cape Porpoise and Saco followed. Lygonia caved in 1658 and the Puritans changed its name to Maine.

Names carried great importance to the early New England Puritans. And so when Gorgeana agreed to join Massachusetts, the Puritans renamed it York. Gorges had died by then, but the Puritans undoubtedly didn’t want to honor the Royalist who tried to take away their charter. The name York carried a special sting as it was shared by the Royalist city that fell to Parliament during the just-ended English Civil War.

New Overlords in Anglican Maine

The Massachusetts Puritans also renamed two towns after the last Royalist strongholds to fall to the Puritans in England.

Black Point, Blue Point and Stratton’s Island became Scarborough, which in England had surrendered only a month before the execution of Charles I.

Maine coast in 1623-4

Spurwink and the Casco Bay settlements would be called Falmouth, later renamed Portland. Queen Henrietta and the Prince of Wales (the future Charles II) found safety in Pendennis Castle in Falmouth for five months before it surrendered to the Puritans.

“The Puritans of Massachusetts imposed the names Falmouth and Scarborough in conquest, a reminder to the population of their fate and of their new overlords,” wrote historian Emerson W. Baker in an essay, Formerly Machegonne, Dartmouth, York, Stogummor, Casco and Falmouth: Portland as a Contested Frontier in the Seventeenth Century.

After the monarchy was restored in England, a royal commission came to Maine in 1665 and put the province under royal authority. But it took only three years for the Massachusetts Puritans to retake control of Anglican Maine.

Not until March 15, 1820 would Maine separate from Massachusetts as a result of the Missouri Compromise.

This story was updated in 2023.

Images: West Country England, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2530598.

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The Ben Franklin Statue That Ran Away From Home

Two hundred years after Ben Franklin started writing for his brother’s newspaper, a Ben Franklin statue followed the route he took when he ran away from home.

The Ben Franklin statue

Only instead of ending up in Philadelphia, the Ben Franklin statue ended up in Waterbury, Conn.

A renowned sculptor, Paul Bartlett, received a commission to create the statue of Franklin in 1921. He had completed his masterwork, the pediment to the U.S. Capitol, five years earlier. When Bartlett finished his Ben Franklin statue, someone had the bright idea of putting it on the road before settling in Waterbury.

Why Waterbury?

The Ben Franklin Statue was a gift to the city from Elisha Leavenworth, a Waterbury industrialist who died childless in 1911.

The Waterbury Republican took out an ad to explain why Waterbury needed a Ben Franklin statue: “Waterbury loves the memory and respects the character of Franklin, and will furnish the proper atmosphere for a statue of the Revolutionary philosopher and statesman,” the ad said.

In a burst of boosterism, the ad extolled the virtues of Waterbury: studious, thrifty, prosperous and beautiful.

Ben Franklin Statue Runs Away

Ben Franklin described the route he took to Philadelphia in his autobiography.

First he sailed to New York City. A friend persuaded the captain of a sloop that the teen-aged Franklin had ‘got a naughty girl with child.’ He said Franklin needed to leave secretly because her friends would make him marry her.

Benjamin Franklin

“So I sold some of my books to raise a little money,” he wrote, “was taken on board privately, and as we had a fair wind, in three days I found myself in New York, near three hundred miles from home.”

Franklin tried to get a job with a printer, who told him to go to Philadelphia because his son, also a printer, had lost his helper. Franklin boarded a ship for Philadelphia, but a squall sent the vessel off course. He disembarked in Perth Amboy and walked 50 miles to Burlington, N.J.

In Burlington he realized people thought he had run away. He immediately caught a boat to Philadelphia. Franklin arrived in the city dirty, tired and hungry. He had only a Dutch dollar and a copper shilling in his pocket.

The Ben Franklin Statue

The Ben Franklin statue got a bigger celebration than the real Ben Franklin ever did, at least as a runaway. The 22 cities it visited gave “large-scale patriotic demonstrations” on its arrival, according to the Boston Globe.

Paul Bartlett around 1890 by Charles Sprague Pearce

Printers, electricians and opticians took charge of the statue along the route, which started in Philadelphia. It stopped in the New Jersey towns of Bordentown, Burlington and Perth Amboy on the way to New York.

The Ben Franklin statue then sailed to Boston, where it arrived at Charlestown Navy Yard. It was “securely strapped to the deck of the Naval tug Lykens, forward of the pilot house and accompanied by two sea scouts,” according to the Boston Globe.

The statue paraded through the streets of Boston, got reviewed by the governor and paused in front of Franklin’s birthplace on Milk Street. People placed memorial wreaths on Franklin’s parents’ graves in the Old Granary Burying Ground.

Then the statue was exhibited on Boston Common for two days with an honor guard of sea scouts, soldiers and Boy Scouts.

It moved on to Providence, New London and New Haven, the birthplace of the sculptor. Finally, the statue made one more stop in Bridgeport.

And then it rested in Waterbury, where it was unveiled June 4, 1921.

The statue still sits in Library Plaza today.

Image: By Amphictyon1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46419672. This story last updated in 2023.

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Hell-Born Babes and Slubbers: Ten Ways to Call Someone Wicked in Colonial Times

Colonists coming from England had plenty of and informal and slang expressions to call someone evil. Here are ten of them:

A Hell-born Babe was a young person, lewd, graceless and possessing a naturally wicked disposition.

The Puritan Governor Interrupts the Christmas Sports Amongst Early American Settlers from Howard Pyle’s Book of The American Spirit

A Hell-hound was a wicked loner.

A Sad Dog was a wicked, debauched person.

A Shit Sack was a dastardly person.

A Slubber de Gullion was a dirty nasty fellow.

A Damber was a rascal and a Dimber Damber was the head rascal in a gang of rascals.

A Queer Cove was a rogue and Queer Topping was the act of knavery.

A Cunning Man was a man or woman who cheated people by pretending to tell their futures.

A Ruffin was a devil and a Ruffler was a notorious rogue.

And Goodyer’s Pig was someone who was never happy unless they were up to no good.

Of course if you spoke ill of someone they said you cut queer whids, but that’s a different matter.

Thanks to: Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, By Francis Grose (1785) and Villainies Discovered: OR The Devil’s Cabinet Broken Open, By Richard Head (1673).

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J.J. Van Alen Finds a Wife — But Not His Own

J.J. Van Alen served as a lightning rod for controversy his whole life. But never more so than when he took up with Elizabeth Colt, wife of industrialist Samuel Colt. This tangling between two would-be political forces never caught fire as the Sprague-Conkling affair did. But it intrigued Rhode Islanders as they geared up for an entertaining feud among the state’s society elite.

Samuel Colt had remarkable success in business, which he could not extend to other areas of his life. A nephew of Connecticut arms maker Samuel Colt, his mother belonged to Rhode Island’s DeWolfe family, which acquired its wealth through slave trading.

Samuel Colt

Originally from New Jersey, Colt trained as a lawyer and took up residence in his adopted home of Bristol, R.I. As a businessman he rehabilitated a failing rubber company, turning it into Uniroyal, at one time the nation’s largest tire manufacturer. He founded Industrial Trust Company, a bank which would later become Fleet Bank and merge into Bank of America.

Samuel P. Colt

He settled into a grand home in Bristol, which served as a filming location for The Great Gatsby, and married Elizabeth Bullock. There the two started a family, and Colt pushed into politics. He was popular with locals, who called him “Unkie.” (Friends called him Pom, short for his middle name Pomeroy.) His home, Linden Place, is now a museum. His country retreat is now the beautiful Colt State Park.

But politics was not Colt’s strong suit. He won the honorary title of colonel for his service to the state’s governor. He served in the Legislature, and rose as high as attorney general — winning the office three times for one-year terms. But his effort to reach the governor’s office failed, and his attempt to be elected to the U.S. Senate ended up as a political debacle that stands out even by Rhode Island standards.

Linden Place

Colt threw his name into a tightly contested three-way race in 1906, and Rhode Island’s Legislature was unable to settle the election for more than four months. That left the state with an empty senate seat. Eventually, Colt withdrew.

J.J. Van Alen

But the most celebrated turn of events in Colt’s life came in 1895 when his wife Elizabeth became friends with J.J. Van Alen. Van Alen, known as Jimmie, came from a similarly affluent background. With a father wealthy in his own right, Van Alen married into the Astor family.

J.J .Van Alen

The Van Alens were New Yorkers who maintained Wakehurst, a mansion in Newport. Van Alen’s wife died just a few years after they married, leaving Jimmie a bachelor. Perhaps most unsettling to Colt was that Van Alen was a Democrat while the Colts were Republican.

Van Alen’s claim to political fame came in 1893 when he backed Grover Cleveland’s presidential campaign. The Democrats needed cash, and Van Alen dumped $50,000 — at the time a considerable sum — into Cleveland’s campaign, helping him over the top.

Cleveland then nominated Van Alen to serve as American ambassador to Italy. The result was an outcry that Van Alen had bought the posting. The Senate confirmed Van Alen, but Van Alen stepped down and refused to serve.

Wakehurst, the Newport residence of J.J. Van Alen

The move was typical of Van Alen, long on showmanship but short on actual accomplishment. During Britain’s Boer War in South Africa he offered to buy an ambulance to assist wounded British troops if he were allowed to drive it himself. The offer was declined.

Messy Divorce

He was an ardent Anglophile, swimmer, flower-grower and socialite. At age 72 he would renounce his U.S. citizenship. He said he would spend his final days in Europe to protest America’s prohibition of alcohol. The announcement raised a few skeptical eyebrows since no one believed alcohol was unavailable to Van Alen and other wealthy Newporters. He insisted it was a point of principle.

Exactly how he became acquainted with Elizabeth Colt isn’t clear. But in October of 1895, the Colts began divorce proceedings with a bang. Samuel sued J.J. Van Alen for $200,000 for alienation of his wife’s affections. He had a sheriff dispatched to Newport to arrest Van Alen if he didn’t post $400,000 bond. Van Alen retaliated, charging slander.

Colt’s lawsuit against Van Alen was a response to his wife’s filing for an outright divorce. Samuel had refused her request for a quick and quiet settlement.

If Samuel thought his mudslinging would frighten Elizabeth, he was wrong. She fired back releasing a statement to the press that offered a hint of the fireworks to come: “A number of society people started for Jackson Falls, N.H., in early August. Col. Colt was one of the party, and so was a distant relative of his, a society woman of New York. His attentions to this young lady became so marked that three of the party became disgusted and came home to Providence. Hence the present trouble.”

The salacious mudslinging on both sides apparently was all that was required to calm the matter. By December of 1895 the Colts agreed to separate but not divorce. Samuel Colt issued an apology to J.J. Van Alen, explaining that he had based his lawsuit upon a misunderstanding.

The Colts never did divorce. Their son Russell married actress Ethel Barrymore, and they lived in Linden Place for a time.

This story was updated in 2024.

Images: Linden Place By Bbucco – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72135235. Van Alen’s Newport residence By SalveWebT – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49986309.

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