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New England’s First Gas Light Company

The first gas light company in New England was authorized in Boston in 1822 — the same year Boston officially became a city. It became the second city to offer this type of illumination, after Baltimore in 1816. The Boston Gas Light Company operated independently until the Boston Gas Syndicate, a trust company, gained control in 1889.

Commemoration of the first U.S. street gas light, at the intersection of North Holliday Street and East Baltimore Street in Baltimore

As early as 1695, fire baskets, supplied with pine knots as fuel, lighted some of the busy street corners in Boston. Sometime afterwards, private lanterns appeared outside homes and stores. Not until March 2, 1774 did 200 to 300 lanterns– obtained from England by private subscription — finally light its streets. Nevertheless, these early lanterns- primarily reliant on oil as a light source – did not provide good illumination. They could also blow out when the weather turned windy and often remained broken.

Manufactured Gas

Manufactured (artificial) gas – produced through distilling coal in heated vessels (retorts) – subsequently offered a better alternative. David Melville of Newport, R.I., became the first person in the U.S. to produce artificial gas. He did it by burning wood and coal to light his home and street as early as 1806. Ten years later, “The Gas-Light Company of Baltimore” became the first company in America authorized to lay wooden pipes across city streets for centralized gas distribution to its customers.

Diagram of Double gas apparatus at Newport Light House, from David Melville’s 1817-1818 Meteorological Diary

Aware of what happened in Baltimore, a group of Boston businessmen (“The Association” or “The City Gas Company”) sought the right to establish a similar company. On September 4, 1822 Boston’s first Board of Aldermen granted a monopoly franchise for the City Gas Company to lay pipes across local streets. On January 22, 1823, the Massachusetts Legislature granted a charter of incorporation for the now-designated Boston Gas Light Company. Gov. John Brooks approved the charter. The private company had a capital stock (i.e., financial assets) of up to $75,000 for its operations. The charter, subject to approval by the mayor and aldermen, again asserted the right of the company to lay its gas pipes. Yet the city did not require the company to install public lamps.

A gas street light in South Boston, 2003

However, the infant company started slowly. A gas plant, in the North End neighborhood, was finally completed in 1828. The long delay, chiefly over a debate about oil as the fuel source for the manufactured gas, finally ended with an agreement to use a combination of coal and resin. For several decades, coal was imported from Newcastle, England and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Boston Gets Its First Gas Light

On Jan. 1, 1829, the first public street lamp was lit in Dock Square near Faneuil Hall. The price of artificial gas was expensive then at $5.00 per thousand cubic feet. It remained so until 1844 when it finally began to decline. Thus, there were only 180 gas lamps in the city by 1839. In addition to the city, other gas users included business firms and wealthy homeowners.

A gas light on Bunker Hill Street in Charlestown, 2012

Over the next 15 years, population growth and business activity outside the immediate city boundaries led to the formation of new gas light companies. They opened in Charlestown (1846); Roxbury (1852); Brookline, East Boston, Jamaica Plain, and South Boston (1853); and Dorchester (1854). Any overlapping issues (e.g., duplication of existing facilities) with the Boston Gas Light Company were settled through mutual agreements.

An electric street light on a gas pole, Commonwealth Avenue, Boston

In 1884 the Bay State Gas Company of Massachusetts announced its intent to acquire all the gas light companies in and around the Boston area. By 1889 it had gained control of the Boston, Roxbury and South Boston firms and placed them in a trust known as the Boston Gas Syndicate. Thus the Boston Gas Light Company ceased to be an independent entity.

On July 15, 1905 local financial interests successfully brought together the aforementioned firms, the remaining gas light firms, and other entities to form the Boston Consolidated Gas Company.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.

Images: The featured image, At Dusk (Boston Common at Twilight), is by Childe Hassam and can be seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. First gas lamp in Baltimore By LarryGrim – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49579890. South Boston gas light by City of Boston Archives via Flickr, CC by 2.0. Gas lantern on brick building, City of Boston Archives via Flickr, C C by 2.0 . Electric street light on gas lamp post, City of Boston Archives via Flickr, C by 2.0.,

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The History of Maine’s Foremost Toothpick Mill

Due to its plentiful supply of wood, Maine mills became the major producer of toothpicks in the decades after the Civil War.

After more than a century of dominating the toothpick industry, the popularity of toothpicks markedly declined in the late 20th century in America. Eventually, that led to the closure of the last toothpick mill in Maine in 2003.

The history of the toothpick – the oldest habit of dental cleaning by humans – can be directly traced to artifacts of 5,000 years ago. From ancient times until the 19 century, various civilizations across Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas used materials such as bone, slate, ivory, silver, gold, quill and wood to make a variety of handmade toothpicks. However, after the Civil War, a shift occurred in New England from craft to mechanical production of toothpicks.

The Toothpick Mill

While working in the import-export trade for his uncle in Pernambuco, Brazil in the late 1850s, Charles Forster (1826-1901) saw widespread use of toothpicks by the Brazilians. He then saw an opportunity to mass produce them when he returned to Boston. Lacking mechanical skills, he became aware in 1859 of a shoe-pegging machine (i.e., a mechanism for attaching soles to their upper parts) developed by Benjamin Franklin Sturtevant. By 1861 Sturtevant had granted Charlotte Bowman, Forster’s fiancé, the exclusive right to use his 1863 patent for making wooden toothpicks – a byproduct of shoe-peg innovation.

Forster then needed to create demand for his small, plain, pliable, flat (beveled at both edges) implement as debate swirled about its use in private and public settings. Allegedly, to stoke demand in Boston, Forster hired people to ask for toothpicks in restaurants (e.g., in the Union Oyster House), hotels, stationers and other retailers. More likely, his collaboration with Levi Tower, a well-known wholesaler, accounted for his marketing success. Still, Forster sold an estimated 16 million toothpicks in 1869.

Oxford County has a lot of trees.

Forster initially used willow and maple to make his toothpicks. He finally turned to white birch due to its flavorless taste and strong texture. However, a need for a plentiful supply of the wood forced Forster to relocate to Maine. He operated first in Oxford County, beginning in Sumner in 1870-71. Then he started four more mills in Oxford County: in Buckfield (circa 1872), Canton (1872-74), Andover (1875-1883) and Dixfield (1874). The Andover toothpick mill moved to Strong in Franklin County in 1883. The Dixfield and Strong mills – – Forster’s major operations — operated into the 20th century. He obtained his supply of white birch from large timber mills, farmers and jobbers.

A Strong, Maine, sawmill

A Lot of Toothpicks

Forster’s patent gave him a virtual monopoly on flat toothpick production. It allowed him to make an estimated 500 million annually by the middle of the 1870s. When the patent expired in 1880, new firms emerged in Maine, including one in Sebec (Piscataquis County) and one in Mechanic Falls (Androscoggin County), and other states. Forster then began searching for a competitive advantage. He soon teamed up with Charles Freeman, who obtained a patent for a machine to make a round toothpick in 1887. Another patent in 1891 for the toothpick itself left the points less prone to splinter. His seasonal male and female employees worked about eight months of the year in Strong and Dixfield. By 1897 they made an estimated 6.5 billion toothpicks.

Responding to increasing demand, Forster bought the J. W. Porter mill in Strong in 1897. From the 1890s onward, his toothpicks were marketed under the “Ideal” and “World’s Fair” trademarks. He sold them both domestically and in several foreign countries.

In 1904, following the death of Forster in 1901, his son Maurice founded the Forster Manufacturing Company in Dixfield and produced toothpicks under the “Gold Medal” brand. A third Dixfield mill, known as the Dixfield Toothpick Company opened in 1909. Both of these firms merged with the Berst Manufacturing Company in 1920, which the Diamond Match Company bought in 1946.

Felled by Floss

Meanwhile, the original company (known as the “Estate of Charles Forster” mill from 1901 to 1936) expanded. It acquired new mills and diversified into flavored toothpicks and other products. During World War II, the firm (now the Forster Manufacturing Company, Inc.) made tongue blades and applicators for the military. After the war, the company expanded its product line in East Wilton (Franklin County) to make ice cream spoons and cocktail forks. In Mattawamkeag (Penobscot County) it made clothespins.

However, by the 1990s other dental hygiene products and cheaper imports from China and Southeast Asia had eroded the toothpick market in America, including Maine. In 1995 Diamond Brands bought the Forster Manufacturing Company. When the Jarden Corporation acquired Diamond Brands in 2003, it closed the last remaining Forster toothpick mill in Strong. The firm was making 7 billion toothpicks annually — down from 20 billion in 1992. Thus, its self-proclaimed title as the “Toothpick Capital of the World” came to an end.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.

Images: Oxford County trees By Wolfpoint – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83369380. Toothpick By HuttyMcphoo – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2053238

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The Ashton Valve Company Saves Lives

The Ashton Valve company was born out of Henry G. Ashton’s desire to make boiler rooms a safer working environment.

In its 100-plus year history, the Ashton Valve company saved countless lives by producing safety and relief valves, gauges of all types, testing equipment, whistles, clocks and other steam-related products for railroads, marine ships and power stations.

Boiler Explosions

During the late 1800s people were dying at an alarming rate from boiler explosions.

In one year in the mid 1860s more than 1,000 people died due to boiler explosions, and even more were injured. In April of 1865, the paddle steamer Sultana, carrying Union prisoners back north from Confederate prison camps, exploded. More than 1,500 people died in the disaster.

The Sultana disaster, illustration in Harper’s Weekly.

Another explosion in July of 1894 at a lumber mill caused the death of four workers and did substantial damage to the mill. The pressure was probably over 500 pounds per square inch when the boiler exploded. The boiler ripped through the roof of the power house and flew through the air for 1,200 feet, passing over the mill and a number of houses at 80 feet in the air. Then it crashed into a nearby wood, levelling many trees and snapping one tree 28 inches in diameter.

Between 1885 and 1895, there were an average of 200 boiler explosions a year in the United States. In the following decade, there were 3,216 explosions, resulting in 7,600 deaths and countless injuries.

Ashton Valve Founded

Henry Ashton arrived in Boston in 1869 from East Dereham, England, with his wife, Emma, and his infant son, Albert. He had a basic education supplemented by a course in mechanical and steam engineering.

Henry Ashton

He worked for Hinkley Locomotive Works and the Eagle Sugar Refinery before inventing his lock pop safety valve in 1871. It was a breakthrough in boiler safety. Basically, the safety valve would close quickly after “popping,” saving a lot of steam. The boiler would then be able to get up to steam much quicker. Time is money, as they say.

Ad for an Ashton “pop” valve and steam gauge

Henry patented his idea and in 1872 started producing the valves with three other employees at 138 Pearl St. Burned out by the great Boston Fire of 1872, the company relocated to other Boston addresses until settling down at 271 Franklin St., its home for the next 27 years.

271 Franklin Street, Boston

The demand for its products grew. In 1885, the Railway Purchasing Agent journal quoted the company as stating “Ashton Valve has not discharged a man on account of any falling off in orders, nor run less than 10 hours a day during the last four years.”

Pressure Gauges

1892 was an important year for Ashton Valve, as it purchased the Boston Steam Gauge Co. and entered the pressure gauge market.

Ashton Valve steam gauge

“The reputation gained by nearly 20 years experience in the manufacture of safety valves and the widely recognized quality of the Ashton Valve company will be the only guarantee needed for the unsurpassed quality of the goods we shall put upon the market,” the company announced.

Before long, the company’s gauges commanded as much respect throughout the industry as its valves. The business continued to grow at a rapid pace with a reputation based on quality products. Its motto, “higher in first cost, but cheaper in the end.”

Death of the Founder

In 1895, the company was saddened by the death of its founder, Henry Ashton. His son, Albert, who had attended MIT, would play an important role in the daily operations of the company for the next 27 years.

Ashton Valve Company building in East Cambridge.

Despite adding a fifth floor to the Franklin Street facility in 1900, the company could not keep up with demand. So in 1907 Ashton Valve purchased a dirt lot in East Cambridge. It then contracted the Densmore and LeClear company to design a four-story, 45,820 sq. ft. building. Located at 161 First St., the building still stands today. It cost $67,000 in 1907 money for C.A. Dodge & Company to build, and it featured modern bathrooms and electricity throughout.

By 1922 Ashton Valve employed 250 workers. 1922 also saw the death of Albert Ashton, who had been running the company since his father’s death in 1895. The 1920s and 1930s represented the peak years for the company. And the profits were good. In 1916, it showed a profit of $182,234, and in 1919 $214,178–in the millions by today’s dollars.

Ashton Valve did make bubblers.

Then business slowed in the 1940s as diesel locomotives, the rise in gasoline usage and electricity as a power source quickly replaced steam. The steam era was coming to a close and the company suffered because it never ventured far from its steam-related products.

World War II

World War II brought major changes to the company and for the first time since 1871 it ceased to be a family-run business. In 1942 the Defense Plant Corporation bought the facility. The government set up the Defense Plant Corporation (DPC) in 1940 to finance the construction of new industrial facilities and the expansion of existing ones. From its creation on Aug. 22,1940 until June 30,1945 , DPC invested over $7 billion to increase the industrial capacity of the United States.

The No. 3 pop safety valve

A letter from the Ashton management to the shareholders explains how the DPC would affect Ashton Valve. Basically, the DPC would purchase the Ashton Valve factory and Ashton Valve would then merge with another valve producer, Crosby Valve. Crosby Valve would run the two companies at the Ashton facility.

Crosby/Ashton produced safety valves and relief valves for navy ships for the duration of the war. The safety valves used by the government ship builders were most likely the same valves Ashton had been selling to them since 1872. Then Ashton Valve had received government approval for the valve’s usage on military vessels. The valve design had not changed much since then.

An Ashton relief valve

After the war ended in 1945, Ashton and Crosby were both purchased by Dewey David Stone, a businessman who owned multiple companies including Converse Rubber. Both companies moved to Wrentham, Mass., in 1948. They occupied the old Winter Brothers tap and die factory. They continued to produce valves under the Crosby/Ashton name and gauges under the Ashton Valve name. The last gauges under the Ashton name were produced in 1978. The Wrentham factory was torn down in 2012.

Lintel over the old Ashton Valve building. Image courtesy Google maps.

Today the company is known more for its beautiful gauges that demand a high price on eBay than for its life saving safety valves. If you happen to be driving down First Street in Cambridge you can see the granite lintel on the building. It proudly states, “Ashton Valve 1907.”

End Note About the Author

Rick Ashton, the author of this story, has retired and lives on an island off the coast of Maine. “I am currently continuing my research on my ancestors and the Ashton Valve company they created, as well as enjoying reading and listening to music,” he said. “Probably the most enjoyable part of researching the company is the wonderful people I have met along the way. Their encouragement and help has made it a great experience. I do not miss work.”

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

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

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

Birth of the PT Boat

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

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

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

This is their story.

Devil Boats

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

PT boat logo

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

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

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

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

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

Mount Hope Bridge

Specht Tech

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

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

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

Lt. jg. John F. Kennedy in PT 109

Plenty Tough

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

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

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

A PT boat underway near Midway

Accidents Happen

Occasionally, things went wrong.

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

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

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

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

Melville Today

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

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

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

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

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

The PT boat in Battleship Cove

Melville Alumni

Here is an incomplete listing:

Anthony Akers, U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand

Paul Austin, Chairman of the Board, Coca Cola

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

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

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

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

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

John Clagett, author of 19 books

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

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

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

John Harllee, Chairman, Federal Maritime Commission

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

John F. Kennedy, U.S. President

Joe Kuharich, college football coach and head coach NFL teams

Elgar Laux, Vice Chairman, Chrysler Corp.

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

Henry Loeb, Mayor of Memphis, Tenn.

Carl Maddox, Athletic Director, Louisiana State University

Clinton McClain, player, New York Giants

Torbert MacDonald, U.S. Representative from Massachusetts

John N. Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General

Robert Montgomery, actor, President of the Screen Actors Guild

James Madden Newberry, founder of PT Boats, Inc.

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

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

Don Rickles, actor and comedian

Raymond P. Shafer, Governor of Pennsylvania

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

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

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

Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, millionaire

George Vanderbilt, millionaire

Byron White, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

End Notes

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

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

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The Butter vs. Margarine Wars Sweep Vermont in 1900

The 1900 U.S. Senate election in Vermont pitted Gov. William Dillingham against Congressman and Gen. William Grout. As the race got nastier, both candidates started slinging mud — or, more accurately, butter.

Consider the humble butter churn — a fixture of New England farmhouses. The earliest Pilgrims in America prized butter. It offered a way to preserve the fat in milk so they could use it during the winter. And so they churned their milk into butter, tucking it away for the cold months.

Over the next 250 years, butter-making technology scaled up dramatically. But by 1870 a new threat was emerging: margarine. At the Paris World Exhibition of 1866, the French government offered a prize to anyone who could develop a palatable, cheap, synthetic butter. A French chemist answered the call, and margarine was born in 1869.

Butter vs. Margarine

Ever since then, a wide variety of butter substitutes, made from animal fats or vegetable oils, have reached the markets as butter-like spreads that we commonly refer to as margarine. Margarine had several advantages over butter. It was cheaper, lasted longer and the products that go into margarine can be used for other purposes. So if margarine wasn’t flying off the shelves, manufacturers weren’t left with unsold surplus.

Mound of Butter by Antoine Vollon (National Gallery of Art).

Margarine also came along right about the time of the 1873 financial collapse and the recession that followed. That failure devastated the United States economy. To farmers, the arrival of a cheap alternative to butter that would worsen their misery was the last thing they needed.

Meanwhile, the invention of margarine inspired producers to slip fats and oils into a wide variety of dairy products. Consumers were buying “filled cheese,” which was cheese to which fat extenders had been added. And one company even tried creating whole milk by adding fat to skim milk.

Banning Margarine

The farmers looked for political help. Over the years, states and the federal government took a number of steps to protect butter. These regulations lasted all the way up until 1950. States initially tried to outlaw margarine, but these efforts proved unconstitutional. Massachusetts pioneered a law that prevented the sale of margarine that contained any coloring.

Margarine had a flaw: its color. In its raw state it was white. Butter, of course, had a slight yellow tint. The white color put off consumers, so states banned yellow margarine to discourage margarine sales. That law was tested in the courts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which found it constitutional. New Hampshire and other states took the idea even further, legislating that margarine had to have a p ink color.

Eventually, the demand for margarine during World War II would put an end to most of the protective laws. However, in 1900 the butter-margarine wars were still much on the minds of Vermont farmers.

The Politics of Butter

The issue would flare up in the election featuring General Grout and Governor Dillingham, two powerful Republican leaders. Grout was older, and a congressman. Dillingham was governor and a former congressman. As Dillingham saw it, Grout believed the senate seat was his by reason of his age. The seat had opened up when Sen. Justin Morrill died, and Grout assumed he should have it.

William Dillingham

Grout was a strong supporter of the dairy farmers in Washington. He had put forward legislation that would not only put a heavy tax on margarine, but it would also expand the requirement that margarine had to be uncolored. Instead of the matter being decided state by state, Grout’s proposal would make it a nationwide rule.

Dillingham tried to portray himself as equally supportive of the farmers. That’s when Grout made the startling charge that Dillingham not only wasn’t pro-butter, he was a paid operator for the margarine political machine.

Grout accused Dillingham of taking money from the “oleomargarine trust” to pay for his campaign. And, he pointed out, that Dillingham had not supported a bill in Congress that would have outlawed margarine. He implied that Dillingham had done so as a favor to his backers in the margarine industry.

Margarine Money?

William Grout

Dillingham fired back, defending his record as a butter protector. He had, he said, supported a law similar to the Massachusetts law preventing the sale of colored margarine. And if he was elected to the Senate, he pledged, he would gladly support Grout’s bill to tax margarine and ban colored margarine nationwide.

Dillingham’s supporters suggested that it would be best if he would just leave public life, which had rewarded him so well financially, and retire to his family farm.

Publisher O.L. French wrote in the Vermont Phoenix, “It seems to me your whole trouble arises from the fact that you have for years past had the idea that you had a first mortgage on Mr. Morrill’s place in the Senate when he should be through with it, and this idea has taken such complete possession of you that you (have decided) to foreclose.”

In the end, Governor Dillingham prevailed and was elected to the Senate. In one closely watch party caucus in Brattleboro, careful attention was paid to how the farmers voted. They narrowly sided with Dillingham.

Dillingham would serve in the Senate until 1923. Grout moved back to his farm and died in 1902.

If you enjoyed this article, you may like Mammoth Cheese Rolls from the Berkshires to Washington. This story was updated in 2022

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Rufus Porter, the Yankee Da Vinci

Rufus Porter left his mark on early New England homes with stencils on their walls and Scientific American on the coffee table. He had an astonishingly productive career, though his most cherished dream never materialized. He desperately wanted to fly gold miner to California in three days — well before the Wright brothers were a gleam in their father’s eye.

Rufus Porter

He was a classic Yankee of the early 19^th century, part peddler, part itinerant artist. part inventor. A descendant of early Puritan settlers, he took to the road selling what people would buy at the time.

He also founded Scientific American, invented the revolving rifle, and wrote a popular How-To book for artists.

Rufus Porter liked coming up with new ways to do things. As for getting patents and making money from his ideas, well, not so much.

Wall mural by Rufus Porter

Rufus Porter

He was born in West Boxford, Mass., on May 1, 1792. Two of his ancestors, John Porter and his wife Mary, immigrated from England during the Great Migration of Puritans. When John Porter died, he owned a vast property. It included the Massachusetts cities and towns of Salem, Danvers, Wenham, Beverly, Topsfield and Boxford.

Rufus Porter’s parents, Abigail and Tyler Porter, just had a farm, which they sold when Rufus was nine and moved to Maine. At 15, he became apprenticed to a shoemaker.

The shoemaking apparently didn’t take. He played the fife and fiddle for several years in Portland, enlisted in the militia during the War of 1812 and then painted drums and sleighs.

Rufus Porter married Eunice Twombly in 1815 and started a dancing school the next year in New Haven.

But by then he must have sensed a new American craze: portraits. To have someone paint your own, that is. Rufus Porter took to the road and began painting people’s portraits, in some ways a typical itinerant artist.

In other ways he wasn’t. He figured out how to quickly paint likenesses with a portable camera obscura: a dark box with a lens and a mirror that threw the sitters’ image onto a piece of paper.

No Likeness, No Pay

He’d come to town with his nephew Jonathan D. Poor and a camera obscura mounted on a cart decorated with flags.

Timothy Fuller

He passed out handbills, with announcements like this one from 1832:

The Subscriber respectfully informs the Ladies and Gentlemen of Haverhill and its vicinity, that he continues to paint correct Likenesses in full Colours for two Dollars at his room at Mr. Brown’s tavern, where he will remain two or three Days longer. (No Likeness, No Pay.)

He could paint a silhouette in 15 minutes and charged 20 cents. Sometimes he’d paint 20 portraits a day. He painted one famous likeness of Timothy Fuller, a Massachusetts congressman and Margaret Fuller’s father.

Somehow Rufus Porter managed to have 10 children despite all the time he spent on the road. He had six more with his second wife, though only one survived infancy.

Murals and Inventions

Later, he came up with a formula for quickly painting murals and stencils on the walls of farmhouses and village taverns. He shared his wealth of knowledge with a How-To book, called A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts, and Interesting Experiments. It went through four printings.

It was quite the thing to stencil your walls in 1829. That year a commentator wrote, “You can hardly open the door of a best room anywhere, without surprizing or being surprized by the picture of somebody plastered to the wall and staring at you with both eyes and a bunch of flowers.”

For a while Rufus Porter traveled with Moses Eaton, Jr., and together they decorated the interior of the Hancock Inn. He also painted murals on the walls of the Kent House in Lyme, N.H., the Birchwood Inn in Temple, N.H., the Damon Tavern in North Reading, Mass., and the Mural House in Green, Maine– to name a few.

Rufus Porter painted at least 160 murals on the walls of houses and taverns. He traveled to the mid-Atlantic, all the way to Virginia.

A Rufus Porter mural now at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Abnormally Busy

During his abnormally busy career, Rufus Porter started Scientific American in 1845. He sold it 10 months later, but stayed on as editor for another 18 months. He also contributed articles to the magazine for the rest of his life.

Rufus Porter invented many new things during his remarkable career, including clocks, railway signals, churns, a life preserver, a cheese press, and a revolving rifle. He patented only a fraction of his inventions, and sold the rights to his rifle to Samuel Colt for $100.

More Martha Stewart Than Wright Brothers

His real obsession, though, was building an airship. In 1849 he conceived of a dirigible that would take prospectors to California during the Gold Rush. Powered by steam, it would be 800 feet long and carry as many as 100 passengers.

Rufus Porter had already demonstrated scale models of his airship. He had such confidence in his invention that he asked for down payments of $50 for a $200 New York-to California fare on his aerial locomotive. A tornado destroyed his first airship, rowdy onlookers destroyed his second, and technical troubles tanked the third.

Rufus Porter died on Aug. 13, 1884, while visiting his son in West Haven, Conn.

People still paint in the style of Rufus Porter. You can visit the Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity during summer in Bridgton, Maine.

Images: Rufus Porter, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2988189. This story was updated in 2022.

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