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Henry Cabot Lodge

JFK One-Liners: Presidential Wit and More

President John F. Kennedy managed to seduce reporters with witty retorts to their questions during presidential news conferences. Many JFK one-liners are still remembered, such as his observation that “Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”

His childhood friend Lem Billings remembered his sense of humor before he moved into the White House. “I’ve never known anyone in my life with such a wonderful humor — the ability to make one laugh and have a good time,” Billings once said.

Lem Billings and the future president. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

Here, then, is a collection of JFK one-liners from well before and during his presidency.

Early JFK One-Liners

His mother, Rose, remembered him as a funny little boy. He once said to her, “Daddy has a sweet tooth, hasn’t he? I wonder which one it is.”

He also had a sharp tongue, which he directed at his mother. Rose didn’t show her children much warmth and took long trips away from her family. Just before she left on one journey, five-year-old Jack said, “Gee, you’re a great mother to go away and leave your children all alone!”

JFK in his first Communion suit. Image courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

In Sickness

Throughout his life, he suffered through a series of illnesses. At Harvard, he was rushed to the hospital with an illness the doctors misdiagnosed as leukemia. He wrote to a girlfriend.

Took a peek at my chart yesterday and could see that they were mentally measuring me for a coffin.

He also had chronic back pain and several surgeries to correct it. After one unsuccessful operation, he wrote,

In regard to the fascinating subject of my operation, I …will confine myself to saying that I think the doc should have read just one more book before picking up the saw.

World War II

Kennedy joined the Navy during World War II and commanded a PT boat in the South Pacific.

The most famous JFK one-liner during his naval career wasn’t funny.

Kennedy aboard PT-109. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

A Japanese destroyer had rammed his boat in the Solomon Islands. Kennedy swam for five hours to an island, a wounded shipmate on his back. He held on to the man by clenching his lifejacket straps in his teeth. Kennedy carved a message for help in a coconut and sent it with a native.

NATIVE KNOWS POSIT HE CAN PILOT 11 ALIVE NEED SMALL BOAT KENNEDY

Rescued after seven days on the island, he came home a hero. As president, someone asked him how he got to be a hero.

“It was involuntary,” he said. “They sank my boat.”

Before the Japanese sank his boat, he had already grown disillusioned with the war effort. In a letter, he expressed his cynicism. “We are at a great disadvantage–the Russians could see their country invaded, the Chinese the same,” he wrote. “The British were bombed, but we are fighting on some islands belonging to the Lever Company, a British concern making soap.” And then:

I suppose if we were stockholders we would perhaps be doing much better, but to see that by dying at Munda you are helping to secure peace in our time takes a larger imagination than most possess.

After his boat sank, he had little use for the desk duty to which he was assigned.

“Once you get your feet upon the desk in the morning, the heavy work of the day is done,” he wrote to a friend.

His brother Robert joined the Naval Reserve in Boston while in his senior year of high school. Their parents had sent Jack a clipping of Robert taking the oath. He wrote to Robert, “The sight of you up there, just as a boy, was really moving, particularly as a close examination showed that you had my checked London coat on.”

Politics

After the war, Kennedy decided to run for Congress from the Massachusetts district once represented by John Quincy Adams.

His father spent lavishly on his House campaign and interfered with the decision making. When one of his campaign aides objected, Kennedy said, “I know you’re right about this, but Dad’s putting up the money and we have to let him win a couple.”

Congressman John F. Kennedy

On the campaign trail, he was late to a communion breakfast in Chicopee, Mass. He urged his driver to speed up, and he did. Kennedy than turned to his seatmate, Billy Sutton, and said,

Billy, if we get into an accident, you’ll have to remain conscious to that you can give our names, but more important than that, don’t forget to tell the reporters I was in a state of grace.

Once elected, he only lasted three terms in the House, which didn’t satisfy his ambition.

“We were just worms in the House–nobody paid much attention to us nationally,” he later said.

And so in 1952 he ran for Senate against incumbent Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., the incumbent. It was a classic Boston grudge match: Lodge’s grandfather had defeated Kennedy’s grandfather for the seat in 1916. “Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names,” Kennedy once said.

Though considered a long shot, Kennedy beat Lodge by about 70,000 votes, helped by his father’s cash. He spent five times more than Lodge on the campaign. Joe Kennedy had a one-liner of his own:

It takes three things to win in politics. The first is money, the second is money, and the third is money.

The Senate

Even before he ran for Senate, Jack Kennedy had his eye on the White House. He knew he needed a wife, and in 1953 he married Jacqueline Bouvier. She fascinated the public as much as he did. Once, as president, he introduced himself during a press conference in Paris.

I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it.

September 1953 Hammersmith Farm, Newport, Rhode Island Wedding of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier. Photograph in the Toni Frissell Collection, Library of Congress.

In the Senate, Kennedy grew into a political star.

Tip O’Neill once wrote that until Kennedy won election to the Senate, “You just couldn’t imagine that he was really going anywhere.”

In 1960, Kennedy announced his candidacy for president of the United States. He won the Democratic Party nomination, which prompted another JFK one-liner: “Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I’m the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House.”

His father again spent heavily on his son’s campaign. Kennedy acknowledge as much on the campaign trail.

“I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy,” he said: “’Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide’.”

When asked his favorite song, he replied, “I think ‘Hail to the Chief’ has a nice ring to it.”

President JFK One-Liners

Kennedy didn’t lose his sense of humor as president.

He defended his choice of his 35-year-old brother as attorney general. “I see nothing wrong with giving Robert some legal experience as Attorney General before he goes out to practice law,” he said.

JFK and his brother Robert. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

He said he liked the job.

I have a nice home, the office is close by, and the pay is good.

However, he faced serious challenges.

“When we (The Democrats) got into office, the thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were.”

He joked about his approval rating after a vacation in Florida.

“I’ve been back in touch with my constituents and seeing how they felt,” he said. “And frankly I’ve come back to Washington from Palm Beach, and I’m against my entire program.”

He had a rocky relationship with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. When asked why he didn’t fire Hoover, Kennedy said, “You can’t fire God.”

Last Words

Kennedy’s life ended on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas.

The First Lady and President arrive in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Photo courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.

His last words before an assassin’s bullet struck him were mundane, but ironic.

Nellie Connally, the wife of Texas Gov. John Connally, was traveling in the open limousine with him. “Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you,” she said.

“No, you certainly can’t,” he said.

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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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Mount Auburn Cemetery, a 19th Century Tourist Attraction

In 1846, 16-year-old Emily Dickinson made a rare foray outside of her Amherst, Mass., home to visit the biggest tourist attraction on the East Coast: Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Two years later, an estimated 60,000 people visited the famous pleasure (and burial) ground — a staggering figure for the day. During the 19^th century, Mount Auburn Cemetery ranked with Niagara Falls and Mount Vernon as a popular travel destination. And that was even before many of its famous dead were buried in it.

Mount Auburn Cemetery later inspired one of the most famous parks in the world.

19^th Century Tourist Attraction

Mount Auburn Cemetery was originally known (appropriately enough) as Stone’s Farm, 170 rolling acres between Watertown and Cambridge, Mass.

Built in 1831, it was designed by Henry Alexander Scammell Dearborn, son of Secretary of War Henry Dearborn and named for Dearborn’s friend Alexander Scammell. He had help from Jacob Bigelow, a physician who thought it unhealthy to bury people under churches. Alexander Wadsworth, cousin of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, also helped design it. Later he would be buried there.

Dearborn, a lawyer and horticulturist, designed Mount Auburn as an artful wilderness. It had winding avenues and paths and a tower on top of Mount Auburn for a panoramic view of Boston. The first rural cemetery in America, it had an arboretum and an experimental garden.

Back then, public parks didn’t belong in the American landscape. Mount Auburn Cemetery quickly became a 19^th century tourist attraction. Dearborn intended it that way. The cemetery and garden, he wrote, ‘will present one of the most instructive, magnificent and pleasant promenades in our country.’

Model Park

The rich came by carriage. The working classes came by streetcar. A slew of guidebooks, literature and personal travelers’ accounts then spread Mount Auburn’s fame as a pleasure ground. Today it has a mobile app.

Miscellaneous view of Mount Auburn Cemetery.

Landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing observed the hordes of visitors at Mount Auburn. He also noticed people came to Boston solely to see the cemetery. And he sensed the pent-up demand for public places where people could relax and socialize outdoors.

”The idea took the public mind by storm,” he wrote. Downing recommended Mount Auburn as a model for more public parks. He thought a nation that called itself a republic should encourage people of all social classes to mingle in public places.

“The true policy of republics is to foster the taste of great public libraries, sculpture and picture galleries, parks and gardens,” he wrote.

Downing then died in 1852 in a steamboat accident on his 37^th birthday. But he had paved the way for his partner, Calvin Vaux, and a young Frederick Law Olmsted. They designed New York’s Central Park, Hartford’s Bushnell Park and Springfield’s Elm Park.

Today, tourists still visit Mount Auburn Cemetery to walk winding paths in a picturesque landscape and to seek out the graves of the dead. The famous people buried there include people you’d expect: Nathaniel Bowditch, Robert Gould Shaw and Julia Ward Howe. Some of its inhabitants you wouldn’t expect: Bernard Malamud, Curt Gowdy and Joyce Chen.

Other notables also include Margaret Fuller, Harriet Jacobs, Winslow Homer and both Henry Cabot Lodges.

This story was updated in 2022. Miscellaneous view of Mount Auburn Cemetery By Daderot at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18516143. Featured image also By Daderot CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18003519.

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Derby, Vt., Harbors a Wealthy Kidnapper and Her Son, Allen Thorndike Rice

In 1860, wealthy kidnapper Elizabeth Thorndike Rice hid in Derby, Vt., with her son as her abusive ex-husband tried to find them. Henry Rice was hell-bent on recapturing their only child, 8-year-old Allen Thorndike Rice, and he was unlikely to share custody of him. After he reneged on their agreement to let Allen visit them alternately on school vacations, Elizabeth Rice hired several men to abduct him from his school in Nahant, Mass.

Allen Rice in costume for a party, much later in life.

Allen Thorndike Rice in costume for a party, much later in life.

She enlisted the help of a family friend and a chivalrous stranger in Derby, Vt., to escape from her husband and his small army of detectives.

Henry Rice was a wealthy Baltimore businessman and a gambler. He had begun to abuse his wife shortly after their marriage. Her health had failed and she refused to sign a will drawn up by him – a will that left all her money to him and his heirs.

For weeks, she and Allen hid out in the woods and in strangers’ homes, always ready to move on at a moment’s notice and several times coming close to discovery. Newspapers eagerly covered the celebrated custody case, with sightings of Allen and his wealthy kidnapper mother reported throughout New England.

Allen Thorndike Rice Kidnapped

Allen Thorndike Rice was kidnapped by several men who drove up to his school, carried him out and threw him into a carriage.

Future U.S. Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, 10, witnessed the abduction and later testified against one of the kidnappers.

Elizabeth Rice had paid the men to abduct Allen and bring him to her in Boston, where she disguised him as a girl. They quickly set out for a hotel in Stanstead, Quebec, with two other women.

The carriage driver returned to Boston and, under the influence of alcohol, gabbed about his journey.

Henry Rice’s detectives heard about it and headed for Stanstead, where they posed as salesmen, drovers and summer visitors. Sheriffs, constables and police throughout New England and New York were notified to be on the lookout for them.

Elizabeth Rice began to get nervous. She wrote to a trusted friend in Boston, William Dwight, asking if he knew anyone who could hide her and her son.

Dwight replied she should contact John Kelley, a prosperous merchant and hop dealer in Derby, Vt., just over the border. He also wrote to John Kelley and told him Mrs. Rice was a much persecuted woman. It would be a generous thing to do to, he wrote, to help her keep her child.

John Kelley to the Rescue

Elizabeth Rice found John Kelley in Derby. Kelley sent a team to Stanstead to bring them to Derby Center. All four were brought to his brother Daniel’s house, where they stayed a week.

Meanwhile, Kelley began to suspect strangers in town were Rice’s detectives. Rice had promised a reward of $500 for returning his child, and townspeople were aiding in the search. And then a clerk in his store heard a telegraphed message from one detective to another about clues in the search. They were getting close, and Elizabeth Rice was no longer safe.

John Kelley knew he had to do something, but what?

A village in Derby, Vt., where Allen Thorndike Rice hid out.

At dusk he hitched up his wagon, hid under the seat and had his clerk drive to his brother Daniel’s house. He had brought food and blankets, and took mother and son into the woods with his brother William. They spent 24 hours in the woods under William’s care. The next morning Henry Rice and his detectives came to John Kelley’s door.

That night, Kelley returned to the their hiding place in the woods undetected. He told them they must find a new hiding place with one of the few townspeople they could trust.

Under Cover of Darkness

It was a moonlit night, though clouds occasionally obscured the moon. They traveled stealthily through the woods and arrived at the main road. When the moon hid behind the clouds they dashed across the road. At one point they heard the voices of detectives looking for them.

They arrived at Alvin Robbins’ house and knocked at the door, but it was so late the inhabitants didn’t answer it for quite some time. Finally the door opened and Kelley asked Robbins to take in Elizabeth and Allen Rice. Robbins said he couldn’t because the house was filled with girls who picked his hops. Robbins’ wife, moved by the sight of the bedraggled, tired and wet mother and child, persuaded her husband to take them in.

They stayed for three weeks locked in a room that had a trap door in the floor covered by a rug. When anyone came to the house, they vanished into a hole under the cellar. To throw off suspicions that they were staying in the house, the Robbins had a party for the hop pickers.

Escape

Rice’s detectives hadn’t let up the hunt. They staked out John Kelley’s house to glean a clue about the fugitives’ whereabouts. Elizabeth at all times filled her pockets with cayenne, with which she intended to blind anyone who tried to catch her.

Alvin Robbins sent for Dr. Carpenter on the pretense that someone in the house was sick. Dr. Carpenter took messages back and forth between the Robbins and Kelley houses. In that way they came up with a plan to throw the detectives off their trail.

Kelley’s clerk, dressed as a woman, climbed into Dr. Carpenter’s wagon. Dr. Carpenter drove the wagon out of his barn at full speed and in view of the watchful detectives. The detectives harnessed their horses and followed.

About a mile toward Island Pond, the clerk got out and walked back to town. Dr. Carpenter stayed at a friend’s house that night. The following day he threw buckets of water over his horse to make it look as if it had been driven hard, and rode openly into Derby Center. The detectives assumed he had taken Allen to Island Pond, 20 miles away, and resumed their search there. Frustrated, they gave up and returned to Boston.

Aftermath

William Dwight and John Kelley came up with a plan to spirit Elizabeth and Allen Rice out of the country. Allen hid under the seat of a wagon and was taken to a train, which carried him to Biddeford, Maine. Elizabeth Rice took a separate train and met her son in Biddeford. They boarded a schooner, which intercepted an oceangoing vessel bound for Europe.

Elizabeth and Allen Rice settled in Germany and France. Elizabeth died in 1866 and Allen returned to America, where he lived with his father. Henry Rice died three years later, and Allen matriculated at Oxford. In 1877, he purchased the North American Review and dramatically expanded its circulation. He was named minister to Russia by President Benjamin Harrison, but died unexpectedly in May 1889 before assuming the post.

With thanks to Proceedings of the Orleans County Historical Society, for the Year Ending August 1888. For the story of Henry Cabot Lodge testifying against the kidnapper, click here. This story was updated in 2021.

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Henry Cabot Lodge–Statesman, Historian and Witness to a Kidnapping

One day in 1860, Henry Cabot Lodge was sitting on the porch of the little school he attended in Nahant, Mass., when a buggy came roaring down the road followed by two men in a trap.

The carriages stopped in front of the school, the men jumped out and rushed into the building. Moments later they came out carrying 8-year-old Allen Rice, followed by the headmaster and screaming children.

One of the men had muttonchop whiskers. He threw Allen into the buggy and off they galloped.

Henry Cabot Lodge wouldn’t see his classmate Allen Rice for another 20 years, when he was a rising U.S. congressman and Rice was editor of the North American Review, the first U.S. literary magazine.

Henry Cabot Lodge in 1890 by Johnn Singer Sargent

The Back Story

Allen’s mother was the former Miss Elizabeth Thorndike of Boston, a wealthy young lady who married Henry Rice of Baltimore. Before Allen was born she suffered such poor health her survival was questionable.

Charles Street Jail

Her husband drew up a will for her that gave all her property to him and, upon his death, his heirs. She refused to sign the will. He began to abuse her. She claimed at one time he tried to poison her. Finally, she went to Indiana and got a divorce. When she returned to Boston she was stunned to find a Massachusetts court had given custody of 8-year-old Allen to her husband.

The Rices drew up an agreement that Allen would stay with them alternately on his vacations from school. But then Henry wouldn’t let Elizabeth see her son.

So Elizabeth kidnapped the boy and spirited him away to Europe, dressed as a girl.

The Trial

When Allen was abducted, 10-year-old Henry Cabot Lodge was the only one who got a good look at the kidnappers. He was the scion of the Cabots, a Brahmin family that inspired the doggerel:

And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.

Two days after Henry saw the abduction, his father took him to the Charles Street Jail in Boston. There they met Allen’s father and some detectives. Henry had to walk down the jail’s corridors and look through the iron bars to see if he could identify the men who took Allen.

Henry Cabot Lodge stopped at the last jail cell and said, “That is the man who took Allen.”

The boy testified twice before grand juries and the panel indicted the kidnapperer.

The boy enjoyed the grand jury proceedings and the attention that came with it. But when called to testify in open court, he got nervous – especially because his father had taken ill and couldn’t go with him to the courtroom. John Ellerton Lodge promised his son a gold watch if he told the truth and behaved well.

On the day of the trial, Henry Cabot Lodge waited nervously in the witness room until he took the stand. Hundreds of eyes watched him as he swore to tell the truth. Despite the butterflies in his stomach, he told the story clearly and well.

Allen Rice in costume for a party.

Cross Examination

Then attorneys hired by Elizabeth Rice cross-examined him. They badgered him with questions, but he stuck to his story. Then they tried to confuse him. Finally the judge told the lawyers, “I think that will do. It is perfectly evident that the boy is telling the truth.”

Young Henry left the stand and went to sit with his mother in the witness room. Suddenly he started crying and said, “Oh! I made a mistake, I must go back.” He ran back into the courtroom and stood in front of the judge. “I made one mistake,” he said. “May I correct it?”

The judge said, “Certainly,” and the boy corrected his slight error.

Nickerson went to jail. Henry Cabot received a gold watch engraved with the date of the trial, which he wore for the rest of his life.

To read about how Elizabeth Rice abducted her son, click here. This story was updated in 2021.

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