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Hartford Conn.

When Teddy Roosevelt Barnstormed New England

In the fall of 1902, President Teddy Roosevelt barnstormed New England on behalf of Republican congressmen. He wanted as many elected as possible in the upcoming midterm elections.

He had spent less than a year in the White House, having risen to commander in chief upon the assassination of William McKinley on Sept. 6, 1901.

Roosevelt was only 43 years old and an object of some fascination, especially in Europe. From New Haven to Bangor to Burlington, wildly enthusiastic crowds met him with music, military salutes, flowers and flags.

He had not run for president before. In fact, he’d been drafted reluctantly to run for vice president. Roosevelt barnstormed New England in part to lay out themes that would win election in 1904: business regulation, manifest destiny and the need for a strong U.S. Navy. He also harped on the virtues of outdoor living and outdoor work, which he said promoted vigor and good citizenship.

The trip, though, ended in tragedy when a runaway streetcar ran over his bodyguard, William Craig. Roosevelt had grown fond of Craig, who read comic books with his four-year-old son. The accident happened in Pittsfield, Mass., toward the end of Roosevelt’s barnstorming trip. The president, himself cut and bruised, quieted the crowds that greeted him on the way home.

Cartoon showing New England welcoming Teddy Roosevelt with flowers. Courtesy Library of Congress.

How Roosevelt Barnstormed New England

On Aug. 22, 1902, he left his home in Oyster Bay aboard the naval yacht Sylph, landing in New Haven at 1:29 p.m. His secretary, William Loeb (father of the longtime Manchester Union-Leader publisher), had planned the itinerary.

Roosevelt and his entourage headed a procession of carriages through New Haven’s slums, the factory district and the city center. They covered four miles in less than an hour with the Connecticut National Guard providing an escort. Crowds lined the street, cheering and waving flags and handkerchiefs – as they did everywhere the president went.

By 3 p.m. he was in Meriden, where he gave a short speech, and then by 4:18 he reached Hartford by train. In Connecticut’s capital he was driven around in an electric car, also an object of fascination. In Pope Park, a Catholic priest presented him with an enormous horseshoe of flowers given by the working people of Hartford.

Roosevelt told the crowd, “I should, of course, be unfit for the position I occupy if I did not give my best thought and purpose to it and if I did not have the interest of the toiler of America – and also those who work with the head – at heart.”

In Hartford, he attended a formal dinner and gave a speech defending imperialism. Then he spent the night with a prominent Republican, John T. Robinson. The next day he left for Willimantic by train, but requested the workingman’s horseshoe of flowers be placed on the engine.

“The need in public and private life is common sense, decency, courage.” – President Roosevelt, Willimantic, Conn. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The Trust Speech in Providence

Roosevelt chose Providence to make a campaign issue of breaking up the trusts, delivering what was later called “his famous trust speech.”

“One of the features of the tremendous industrial development of the last generation has been the very great increase in private, and especially in corporate fortunes,” he said. Along with the benefits of industrial organization came evil – inequality, poor health and a loss of the feeling of brotherhood, he said.

“The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is in duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown. There is clearly need of supervision – need to possess the power of regulation of these great corporations through the representatives of the public wherever, as in our own country at the present time, business corporations become so very powerful alike for beneficent work and for work that is not always beneficent.”

The original caption of this photo reads: The great crowd intently listening to President Roosevelt’s now famous “Trust” speech, Providence, R.I. Library of Congress.

Roosevelt then took Sen. Nelson Aldrich’s yacht to the home of socialite Winthrop Chanler, where he spent the night. The next day he attended the christening of Chanler’s new baby, Theodore, acting as his godfather. Theodore Chanler would grow up to become a composer, teacher and music critic for the Boston Herald.

Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, he spent the night of August 24 at Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge’s waterfront mansion in Nahant. It had been an exhausting day. He had left Newport by train and waved to cheering crowds when the train slowed in Stonebridge, R.I., Fall River, Taunton and Mansfield in Massachusetts. More crowds in Boston, where he boarded a special train to Lynn. Then he boarded a carriage and drove four crowd-lined miles to Nahant.

Near midnight, while he slept at the Lodge estate, an intoxicated gentleman appeared under his window and tried to serenade him with a song called “Annie Rooney.” The military guard threw water on him.

The next day brought a speech at the Nahant Public Library, a long one in Lynn and a longer one in Boston at Symphony Hall. On August 26th he passed through three states, delivered eight speeches and encountered a quarter million people. Roosevelt praised imperialism in Lowell. He met his old barber from North Dakota in Lawrence. And he told an unruly crowd in Haverhill the United States needed to strengthen its navy.

“Whether we will it or not, we as a nation front a great destiny,” he told the cheering crowd in Lawrence, Mass.

Roosevelt barnstormed the mill towns on Boston’s North Shore, including Lawrence. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Teddy Roosevelt Barnstormed Maine

That same day the people of Dover, N.H., heard Roosevelt speak about the need for honesty, courage and common sense in public and private life.

The train engine overheated in Biddeford, Maine, giving Roosevelt a chance to deliver another speech. In Old Orchard Beach, he spoke from the back of his railroad car. In Portland, he shared the platform with Joshua Chamberlain, the hero of Little Round Top. Then he drove around Portland, visited the Longfellow House and at 4:50 p.m. left on the train for Lewiston, where he addressed 10,000 people. He stopped for two minutes in Brunswick. Auburn came next. He spoke at twilight and got off a joke, or perhaps a nonsequiter: “I have an archaic temperament, and I wish you all large families, by the way,” he said. Maybe he was tired.

Roosevelt made it to Augusta in time for dinner and the final speech of the day.

The next day in Bangor he reunited with his old Maine guide, Bill Sewall. “I am glad to see you Bill,” Roosevelt said. “You ain’t no gladder than I be,” Sewall replied. The president recalled they had eaten muskrat together the last time Roosevelt had a meal in Maine. He invited Sewall to join him on the train to New Hampshire.

A crowd listens to Roosevelt at the State Fair in Bangor. Library of Congress.

New Hampshire

Roosevelt had slept on the train from Maine, but a cheering crowd woke him up when it stopped in a small village. He threw on his overcoat to wave to the people, his socks and long underwear peeping out from beneath the hem.

Roosevelt arrived in Manchester with a crowd pleaser. He mentioned Revolutionary hero John Stark, who penned New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” motto.

“It is about 125 years ago that Molly Stark’s husband had a sawmill here,” Roosevelt said said. “He had his saw mill. He did his work here, but when the country called to arms he was going to do his duty or Molly Stark was going to be a widow.”

The president gave a speech in Nashua, one in Concord and one at the Weirs. He visited John Hay in Newbury. Then he went to Newport, N.H., to the game park owned by the late robber baron, Austin Corbin. There he shot a boar.

Teddy Roosevelt in New Hampshire at Corbin Park in 1902.

He then went to Cornish to visit his friend Winston Churchill — the American novelist, more famous then than the English politician.

R & R in Vermont

A speech at the State Fair in Windsor kicked off the Vermont leg of the trip. Roosevelt hit White River Junction, South Royalton, Bethel and Randolph. Fifteen minutes after finishing a long speech in Montpelier he was on a train to Burlington, stopping briefly in Waterbury. In Burlington the governor held a reception for him.

“You have understood that the best products of the state were its men and women.” President Roosevelt at Proctor, Vt. Library of Congress.

By then, the exhausted Roosevelt needed some rest and relaxation. He boarded a yacht to Thompson’s Point, where he busily acknowledged the crowd’s greetings. That night he stayed at U.S. Treasury Secretary L.M. Shaw’s house. The next day he went to Shelburne Farms, home of Dr. Seward Webb and his wife, Eliza Osgood Vanderbilt Webb. Roosevelt spent the afternoon inspecting the horses.

After 36 hours on the shores of Lake Champlain, Roosevelt barnstormed more Vermont towns. Enthusiasm grew as he progressed through the state. It was Labor Day, and he praised the working man in short speeches along the way. In Middlebury he spoke from the rear of the train, then stopped at Sen. Redfield Proctor’s house. School children almost buried his carriage with flowers. He gave a short speech about the Monroe Doctrine, then delivered remarks in Rutland, Ludlow, Bellows Falls and Brattleboro, praising Civil War veterans and the working man. Then on to Northfield, Mass., where he spent the night in the Northfield Hotel, and delivered a speech the next day.

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge to the left of President Roosevelt in front of the Northfield Hotel. Roosevelt barnstormed Vermont the next day. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The Pittsfield Tragedy

On Sept. 2, 1902, Roosevelt barnstormed the Massachusetts towns of Millers Falls, Athol, Gardner, Fitchburg, Worcester and Springfield, where he carefully examined the latest model of the Springfield rifle. Then he visited Westfield and Dalton before encountering tragedy in Pittsfield.

The top brass of the Pittsfield Electric Street Railway disobeyed the Secret Service orders to shut down the streetcar. They got behind schedule so they urged the driver, Euclid Madden, to go faster.

Euclid Madden did as ordered. But as he rounded a steep curve near the country club, he saw to his horror the presidential carriage crossing the tracks. The streetcar driver frantically clanged the bell, but too late.

William Craig

“Look out! Hold fast,” shouted William Craig as he tried to shield the president. Those were his last words.

The streetcar barreled into the carriage, fatally injuring one of the horses, who screamed in pain. Craig fell under the trolley, which crushed his skull and ground him under the wheels, killing him instantly.

Roosevelt flew out of the carriage and landed on his face in the mud. The crowd had to restrain him from attacking Madden. (Read what happened to Euclid Madden here.)

Roosevelt Barnstormed No More

A pall fell over the rest of the journey. The president had a black eye, swollen cheek and cut lip as he traveled by train through Lenox, Stockbridge and Great Barrington. He asked the crowds not to make noisy demonstrations and spoke only a few words.

In Connecticut he quieted the crowds in New Milford, saying he wouldn’t give a speech because a bad accident had killed a man he esteemed. He met with an enormous crowd in Bridgeport, but asked to be excused from a scheduled speech because of the tragedy.

He boarded the Sylph and went home to Oyster Bay.

With thanks to A Bittersweet Journey: Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 New England Trip by James Blase.

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New England Witchcraft Trials: It Wasn’t Just Salem

Plenty of people in early New England were persecuted for witchcraft, and not just in Salem, Mass.

Witches had troubled the European colonists from the get-go. In 1635, Plymouth Colony made it a crime to “form a solemn compact with the devil by way of witchcraft.” As late as the 19^th century, women were persecuted for cursing butter churns, making animals sick and causing people to die.

“Examination of a witch” by Tompkins Harrison Matteson (1853)

Salem’s witchcraft hysteria was just the most spectacular (and certainly the most memorable) of the witch trials. Two hundred people faced charges, and 20 died at the executioner’s hand. But Hartford had its own mini-witch hysteria, as did many towns scattered throughout New England.

Connecticut Witchcraft Prosecutions

In Connecticut, witch hysteria took hold 45 years before Salem began its mass executions. The colony formally tried 43 people for witchcraft (Massachusetts tried 50.) Most were acquitted or escaped, but nine men and two women were executed as witches between 1647 and 1663. The first, a woman from Windsor named Alse Young, died, as the others would, on the basis of flimsy evidence. She went to the gallows on the site of the Old State House.

The witch hysteria peaked during the “Hartford Witch Panic.” It started in 1662 when a young Hartford girl died after claiming a neighbor, Goodwife Ayres, tormented her. In 1662, Goodwife Ayres and her husband sensibly skipped town.

More accusations followed for the next 50 years in the Connecticut River towns of Hartford, Windsor, Farmington and Wethersfield. Most, however, resulted in acquittals as Connecticut judges came to their senses.

By 1715, the law making witchcraft a capital offense was off the books, and the witchcraft hysteria died down. (Click here for more about the Hartford Witch Panic.)

The Witch No. 1, lithograph, J.E. Baker.

Disturbing Witches

Your chances of getting hauled into court for witchcraft got better if your neighbors didn’t like you. Often the people accused of dealing with the devil were shrewish or grouchy or arrogant. Sometimes they lived on a town’s margins, and took the blame for its misfortunes.

Eunice Cole of Hampton, N.H., was difficult, unlikeable and didn’t have much money. From 1656 to 1680 she went to court three times to face charges. She was in and out of prison for slanderous speech and familiarity with the devil. She did perform one near-magic feat: dying peacefully in her own bed at the age of 90. (Read more about Eunice Cole here.)

Just because a jury found you not guilty of witchcraft didn’t mean your persecution ended. A Boston jury exonerated Mary Webster of Hadley, Mass., but that didn’t stop her neighbors from disturbing her.

The Puritans believed ‘disturbing’ witches – beating or restraining them – prevented them from casting spells. Mary Webster’s neighbors dragged her from the house, hanged her from a tree until she nearly died, than buried her in the snow and left her. She survived, and spent the rest of her life known as ‘Half-Hanged Mary.’

Mary Webster was lucky compared to Susannah Martin of Amesbury, Mass. A neighbor first accused her of witchcraft in 1669. Susannah’s husband sued the neighbor for slander, and ultimately she was cleared of the charges. But the taint of the accusation lingered, and she was charged again during the Salem witchcraft hysteria of 1692. She died on the gallows at the age of 70 with three other accused witches. (Read about Susannah Martin here.)

Court of Oyer and Terminer

In Salem and nearby towns, officials began rounding up suspected witches even before Gov. William Phips ordered the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened.

William Phips

As the storm gathered, Philip English may have been a target because of his wealth. Essex County’s High Sheriff George Corwin had a nasty habit of seizing the property of accused witches and dividing the spoils with his deputies.

Corwin arrested Philip English’s wife Mary on April 18, 1692. Five weeks later, the Court of Oyer and Terminer was formed to investigate the disturbances in Salem. (Read more about it here.) The court quickly turned into a killing machine.

Philip English followed his wife to jail when a neighbor accused him of witchcraft. She said he pinched her and threatened to kill her if she didn’t touch his ‘Devil’s book.’ Philip and Mary English managed to flee to New York until the bloodshed ended.

Two hundred (perhaps a few more) were charged in what historians now believe was a massive case of petty jealousies and score settling. Nineteen died by hanging, one man was crushed to death and five people died in jail.

The Salem bloodlust

But then the Puritan leaders came to their senses and realized the witchcraft trials were a shocking case of government run amok — and an embarrassment. After the 20 alleged witches were executed in Salem, Mass., no one was indicted, convicted or executed for witchcraft in New England. One of the witch trial judges, Samuel Sewall, even apologized for his role in the witch hysteria. (Read about Judge Sewall here.)

Samuel Sewall.

Witchcraft After the Trials

That didn’t mean people stopped believing in witches. Rhoda Dustin was known as the Witch of Weare, N.H., but lived in an era when witchcraft prosecutions had died down. She was born in 1736, and with her husband ran an inn. The townspeople believed she could fly, inflict illness on people and curse butter churns so they wouldn’t make butter. Though they gossiped about her and tried to counteract her curses, she was never tried and died peacefully in Vermont in 1824.

Hannah Cranna, like Susannah Martin and Eunice Cole, was a shrew. But she was born nearly a century after the witch trials ended, in 1783. Hannah married Capt. Joseph Hovey, probably much older than she, and they lived in Monroe, Conn.

Hannah Cranna’s headstone.

No whisperings of witchcraft followed her until her husband died suspiciously. He went out for a walk one night and fell over a cliff in an area he knew well. People thought she’d cast a spell on him.

From then on, Hannah lived in poverty, and used her reputation for witchcraft to extort food and firewood from her neighbors. She never went to trial, though neighbors talked about her.

When she died, her neighbors ignored her wishes and buried her after sundown. When they returned to her house, it had gone up in flames, sealing the legend of Hannah Cranna, witch. (Read more about Hannah Cranna here.)

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Hartford Controversy of 1650: ’Afraid to venture our souls’

In 1656, the Hartford controversy cost Rev. John Russell his job.

During the 1650s the church at Hartford, Conn., was one of the most prominent congregations in the colonies. Built by Rev. Thomas Hooker, today regarded as the Father of Connecticut, the church was largely peaceful.

Rev. Russell depicted in the Frederick A. Chapman painting “The Perils of Our Forefathers”

Upon Hooker’s death in 1647, controversy began rattling the church. Hooker’s successor began toying with the idea of opening up church membership to more people.

The Hartford Controversy

Historian and author Rev. Cotton Mather wrote in his histories of America that the exact details of the Hartford Controversy were hard to tease out even at the time they were ongoing. Personal animus had overwhelmed the substance of the debate. But essentially it boiled down to whether the church should offer baptism to non-church members.

Prior to the Hartford controversy, a child was eligible to be baptized if his or her parents were deemed “in full communion” with the church. In other words, accepting of all major church doctrines.

A progressive movement developed that would allow a child to be baptized if the parents were merely upright, non-scandalous citizens. The church in Boston embraced the idea in 1657.

For conservatives, such as Hartford church elder John Goodwin, the idea was blasphemous.

Goodwin v. Stone

This set Goodwin against Rev. Samuel Stone, who had arrived in Hartford from England with Hooker. Stone had attempted to embrace the new, looser rules regarding Baptism. He had the support of a strong but vocal minority in his congregation.

The difficulty boiled over when Stone was accused of improperly baptizing some children. Stone sought to leave Hartford with his supporters and join the church at Wethersfield. The government denied this request.

Nevertheless, Stone’s philosophy was influential in Wethersfield. In fact, churches throughout Connecticut became embroiled, to a greater or lesser degree, in debating the “Hartford controversy.”

In Wethersfield, Rev. John Russell had assumed the leadership of the church following the death in 1648 of Rev. Henry Smith, its first leader.

Russell and Stone agreed on theology. But Russell failed to convince his congregation.

Russell had already been at odds with one of the leaders of his church, Lt. John Hollister. Russell had testified in a civil matter against Hollister.

The Hartford Controversy Fades, Finally

In 1656, their disagreements became a scandal that enveloped the entire town. Russell, with little explanation, excommunicated Hollister from the church. The decision probably related to the hotly debated Hartford controversy.

Hollister was a powerful man, however. He was the son-in-law of Richard Treat, who owned extensive lands and was well-connected in the Connecticut government.

With Treat’s support, Hollister gathered up signatures for a petition to the Connecticut government that was submitted in 1658. The petition excoriated Russell.

He was “rash and sinful.” They pleaded with the government for approval to hire a new minister and replace Russell.

“We . . . are afraid to venture our souls under his ministry.”

The Connecticut General Assembly did not authorize a new minister, but it did direct Russell to present his charges against Hollister. It’s not clear how the feud was resolved, but it is clear who lost. Russell sought and received a grant of land from Massachusetts and formed a new town, Hadley, with other church dissenters. The Hartford controversy faded away.

Another of Russell’s contributions to history was his decision to shelter two judges who had tried and condemned King Charles I of England. The Regicides were driven from England when the monarchy was restored. They hid with Russell until they died.

Thanks to: The History of Connecticut: From the First Settlement of the Colony by Gideon Hiram Hollister and The Hollister Family of America by Lafayette Wallace Case. This story updated in 2022.

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In 1634 John Stone Is Lost in the Connecticut Fog of War

In 1634, Pequot Indians captured a vessel commanded by English trader John Stone at the mouth of the Connecticut River. They killed him in retaliation for the death of a Pequot leader. It was the only time in Stone’s life he could be considered innocent.

John Stone

Stone was an independent trader who worked the New England coast. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony reviled him for his rowdy ways, which included excessive drinking, blasphemy, bullying and sleeping with married women. He was, however, from a well-connected British family (a cousin was governor of Maryland). So rather than punish Stone, the Puritans banned him on penalty of death should he return.

As a freelancer, John Stone was half trader and half pirate, traveling between England, America and the Indies. He wreaked havoc as he went. He was, at one point, even accused of cannibalism. Stone kidnapped Indians and forced them to guide his ship and wasn’t above trying to sell them. His actions offended both the Indians and the colonists, who needed Indian trade.

Trade War

As Stone took his small ship south into the mouth of the Connecticut River, he steered straight into a festering trade war. The Dutch West India Company had arrived in Connecticut in 1632, building a fort at the northeast corner of the Dutch New Netherland colony in the new world.

They built Fort Good Hope was at what is now Hartford. For a year the powerful Pequot tribe had exclusive rights to trade with the Dutch. But the arrangement angered other Indians in the area, notably the Narragansett.

Meanwhile, the English expanded into Connecticut with settlements of their own. They then stepped on Dutch claims and provided a competing trading partner that the Indians could deal with.

After a year of fighting, the Pequot leader Tatobem agreed that all tribes in the area could trade with the Dutch.

1685 map of New England

In 1634, however, the fighting continued and the Dutch stepped in with a rather ham-handed gesture. They kidnapped Tatobem and demanded ransom. After the colonists received the ransom, they delivered Tatobem back to the Pequot – already dead. Whether his murder was intended or not isn’t clear.

Revenge

This development infuriated the Pequot. According to custom, the Pequot should either seek revenge by killing a Dutch leader or demanding a heavy payment. And so John Stone entered the picture.

Accounts of Stone’s arrival in Connecticut vary. He headed south hoping to find friendlier relations with the English in Virginia. One story holds that he arrived at an Indian settlement under pretext of trade, but soon he and his crew grew drunk and violent. Another version holds that the Pequot simply identified Stone as the target of their revenge plan.

Either way, John Stone didn’t finish his journey south to Virginia. Instead, the Pequot murdered him in Connecticut. While the Dutch may have accepted this as just, the British saw nothing just about it. Stone was not Dutch. How could his murder be seen as fair exchange for Tatobem – who the Dutch had killed? The Pequot acknowledged the error and tried to make payment to settle the dispute, but the British had other ideas.

British Demands

The Massachusetts Bay Colony tried to use Stone’s death to its advantage, hoping to gain something useful from his otherwise noxious life. At a meeting with the Pequot, the British laid out their demands: They would hand over Stone’s murderers for trial, cede territory to Massachusetts, and trade only with the English in the future.

Thanks, but no thanks, the Pequot replied, though eventually they and other Connecticut Indian Tribes would have little choice but to trade almost exclusively with the British. While the Dutch viewed the Fort of Good Hope as merely an outpost on the fringe of their New Netherland Colony, the British were expanding aggressively into Connecticut.

By 1642, the Dutch maintained just 15 men at Fort Good Hope. The British, meanwhile, were building a new town called Hartford, which would soon swallow up the fort. The Dutch council that ran the fort would note in council minutes:

Whereas our territory on the Fresh River (Connecticut River) of New Netherland, which we purchased, paid for and took possession of, and which in the year 1633, long before any Christians were on the said river, was provided with a blockhouse, garrison and cannon, has now for some years past been forcibly usurped by some Englishmen and given the name of Hartford.

‘Beating with mattocks’

The Dutch complained they had protested the English presence, but to no avail.

…They moreover treat our people most barbarously, beating them with clubs and mattocks, even to the shedding of blood…[W]e have…chosen patiently to suffer violence and to prove by deeds that we are better Christians than they who go about clothed with the outward semblance thereof, until in its time the measure shall at last be full.

When British and Dutch officials finally drew compromise boundaries in 1650, Hartford fell well within British territory. The Pequot, meanwhile, had suffered significantly from the loss of Tatobem. His son Sassacus would take over leadership of the Pequot, but only after a power struggle that resulted in many members of the tribe leaving.

Thanks to: The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America by Scott Weidensaul. This story about John Stone was updated in 2020.

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The Wreck of the Greenfield Marks the End of the Connecticut River Men

In 1840, the river men who hitched their fortunes to ships like the Greenfield, which hauled freight up and down the Connecticut River, were in for a disappointing surprise.

Since the early days of colonial New England the river had served as a means of transporting raw materials and finished goods. Boats carried tons of cargo back and forth from Vermont, New Hampshire and Western Massachusetts to Hartford, Conn. and beyond.

In the age of sail, a long flat boat was used. It carried a single mast with a square mainsail down low and a smaller sail above for lighter winds. For extremely light wind, the flatboat had another topsail.

Connecticut River Men

Connecticut River steamboat

River men called spike-pole men worked the boats. When the wind was insufficient to propel the boat against the current – which it frequently was – the spike-pole men stepped in. Using poles 12 to 20 feet long, they would drag the boat forward by planting the spike end of their poles into the river bed and walking from forward to aft on the boat.

The age of steam put an end to the spike-pole men. Boats were fitted with steam engines in the early 1800s that could do the job faster. A single steam-powered river boat could tow one or more barges upriver and back.

By 1840, however, trains posed a new threat to the river men. The same steam power that could power a boat could also pull a train. The increasingly reliable trains could carry more cargo that the flat steamboats..

For river men, the race was on.

The Greenfield

Stockbridge, Allen, Root & Co. had formed in Greenfield, Mass., by combining two smaller concerns. The company’s business was groceries and freight hauling. One Monday in May of 1840, it sent its steam vessel Greenfield on a journey up river from Hartford to points in Massachusetts.

View of the City of Hartford by William Havell, 1841.

The steamer hauled four barges, and planned to connect a fifth. The vessel was a new one, an investment of $5,000 to $10,000. The company wanted to speed up shipping and become more competitive. The boat was narrow and drew little water to help it navigate canal locks. The engineer who built the vessel, with its twin boilers, was aboard to oversee how the new boilers would operate under the extreme load.

The safety of boilers was a major concern in the day. Some 14 percent of all steamship boilers exploded in the 1830s. Congress had passed laws, albeit weak ones, to improve their safety. But the explosions kept on.

Just south of Northampton, Mass. calamity struck: the Greenfield’s boilers exploded. They blew holes in the ship, sending it immediately to the bottom. Portions of the boilers were found in the fields on the side of the river.

Blown apart by the explosion were Capt. John D. Crawford, of South Hadley Falls in Massachusetts; engineer Alanson D. Wood, of Brattleboro, Vt., and William Lancey, the designer of the vessel, from Springfield, Mass.

Railroads Take Over

In all, some 30 men were manning the Greenfield and the barges it towed. Most escaped injury. Ebenezer Morse of Northampton had the good fortune to be standing directly beside one of the boilers when it blew. The explosion threw him high into the air. He splashed down into the river with barely a scratch.

Captain Crawford was a highly regarded river man with 10 years’ experience, but he and the company couldn’t escape all criticism.

Freight still gets carried along the Connecticut River. Photo from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division..

“Perhaps no blame should be attached to anybody,” the Northampton Gazette noted. “[B]ut we cannot refrain from believing from the best information we can obtain, that the boat was pushed harder than prudence and safety would warrant. It was a new boat, and there was an ambition to establish its reputation for speed.”

Reputation for speed or no, river men soon lost the race to the railroads as they expanded in the years ahead. The freight firm Stockbridge, Allen, Root & Co. would go out of business after the Connecticut Railroad Co. bought it.

This story was updated in 2021.

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When Pratt Met Whitney the Sparks Flew – Literally

Amos Whitney came from American industrial royalty. His father was a locksmith, his grandfather a blacksmith and another wing of the family included Eli Whitney of cotton gin fame. His friend Francis Pratt didn’t have his industrial pedigree, but showed an aptitude for mechanical things as a small boy.

Amos Whitney (l) and Francis Pratt (r)

Together they would build an aerospace company that straddled the globe.

Amos Whitney and Francis Pratt

Born in Biddeford, Maine, in 1832, Whitney apprenticed at age 13 to the Essex Machine Company in Lawrence, Mass., which built locomotives, steam engines and textile machinery.

By 1850 both Amos and his father had moved to Hartford, Conn., where they worked for the Colt Manufacturing Company.

Francis Pratt was five years older. Originally from Woodstock, Vt., he and his family moved to Lowell, Mass.. when he was eight. He apprenticed to Lowell machinist Warren Aldrich. His career then took him to New Jersey and back to Hartford, where he joined Colt in 1852 for two years.

These two young men rode the wave of industrialization to the same factory and formed a friendship. Pratt would leave after two years to become superintendent of the Phoenix Iron Works, headquartered in Phoenixville, Pa. Pratt had invented something called the Lincoln miller – a milling machine that sped up the process of machining metals. It pushed the industry forward by leaps and bounds.

A Lincoln miller built by Pratt & Whitney

At Phoenix, Pratt served as a contractor to Colt. And when he proposed that Whitney, then making $8 a day at Colt, join him at Phoenix for $2 a day, one can imagine he needed a bit of salesmanship.

No Standards

But the two did reunite under the Phoenix roof with Pratt as foreman and Whitney as machinist. It’s difficult to imagine today the standards that these two machinists operated under. There was virtually no standardization of parts in metal working. Bolt threads and widths varied from one plant to the next. The industry couldn’t even agree on a standard for measuring how long a foot was, or an inch.

Pratt and Whitney became leaders in the push to standardize parts and measurements, and they made great strides funding a device that would create a comparator for parts so they could be universally standardized.

But before those great successes, the two had their hands full at Phoenix, deluged with contract work from Colt. The firearms company was arming the North in the Civil War.

Nevertheless, in 1860, the two men formed a small joint venture in a single room at the Phoenix Plant. There they built a thread winder for the Willimantic Linen Company. Two years later, they brought in a financial partner. All three put up $1,200 to move more aggressively into supplying the arms manufacturing industry.

Pratt & Whitney Rise and Survival

In four years the company’s assets grew from that initial $3,600 to $75,000. In 1869 the Pratt & Whitney Company was formed with $350,000 in assets. By 1893 when it was again reorganized, it was worth $3 million.

Shown is a Pratt & Whitney R-2800-8 engine in a Goodyear FG-1 Corsair.

The company thrived by advancing standardization and by shrewd business practices. When the 1873 panic demolished most of the American economy, Pratt & Whitney survived because it had stretched its wings and gone abroad to Europe in search of contracts.

The company’s catalog filled hundreds of pages with parts, equipment and finished products ranging from sewing machines and guns to typewriters and bicycles. Mark Twain was an investor in one of the company’s typewriters.

Pratt travelled to Europe frequently and found outdated equipment still operating in the factories of Prussia and Germany. The $2 million worth of orders for machining equipment Pratt procured kept the company from collapse.

Whitney, meanwhile, was a workaholic and a fanatic for precision. He rarely took vacations (though he did travel for business). Whit, as the employees called him, would walk the floor of his facilities chatting with the workers and carrying a rasp, always on the lookout for a rough edge that needed smoothing.

Wasp Rotary Engine

Pratt & Whitney factory in East Hartford

Reorganized and merged many times over, the company would, in 1925, launch the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company. It built the Wasp rotary engine, the cornerstone of the company’s aircraft engine line that survives to this day. Many old Wasps are still flying.

By then, Pratt was long gone. He had died in 1902. Whitney had moved on. He retired from Pratt & Whitney in 1901 and moved back to Maine. But he remained active as treasurer in his son’s company and as an officer in the Gray Telephone Pay Station Company until he died in 1920.

William Gray, while working at Pratt & Whitney, had invented the first coin-operated telephone. Amos helped him commercialize the product.

This story was updated in 2023. Images: Pratt & Whitney factory by By DanielPenfield – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21841333. Wasp engine by By en:User:Cogset – English Wikipedia (former file name : Image:F4u-2005COCwaspFG1.jpg), CC BY 1.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1621042

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