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Irish Americans

The Easter Rising Jolts the New England Irish

Just after noon on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, seven men stood on the steps of Dublin’s General Post Office and touched off the Easter Rising, Éirí Amach na Cásca in Gaelic.

One of the men, Patrick Pearse, read, “The Proclamation of a Free Irish Republic.” “In this supreme hour the Irish nation must . . . prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called,” he said.

The fighting then began.

About 1,200 armed members of Irish paramilitary groups, including the women’s Cumann na mBan, seized City Hall, the General Post Office, a telegraph office, the workhouse, the courts and a railway station. They barricaded the streets and proclaimed the Irish Republic.

A Dublin street barricaded during the Easter Rising.

The British responded with thousands of soldiers, artillery and a gunboat. After six days of street fighting, the rebels surrendered unconditionally. British forces rounded up 3,500 prisoners, sending 1,800 to internment camps. They quickly executed nearly all of the instigators, sparing one of them, Eamon de Valera, because he’d been born in the United States.

It was the latest in a long series of failed Irish rebellions against English Rule. There’d been 1641, 1798, 1803, 1879-1881, as well as guerilla skirmishes and Home Rule campaigns. Like the others, the Easter Rising would fail, at least in the short term. But unlike the others, the Irish would continue to fight and ultimately prevail. The Irish in America who supported the war effort made the difference. The British couldn’t get at them.

From Irish communities throughout the Northeast came lawyers, guns and money for the cause of Irish freedom. And after a bloody war for independence, the Irish Free State came into existence in 1921.

Easter Rising

The British had plenty of warning that Irish America would significantly aid the cause of Irish freedom. From New York, Patrick Ford, editor of the Irish World newspaper, warned the British, “You are now, unlike the past dealing with two Irelands. The Greater Ireland is on this side of the Atlantic. This is the base of operations. We in America furnish the sinews of war. We in America render moral aid.”

In Britain, Home Secretary Sir William Harcourt observed the Irish were in Ireland during former rebellions. “We could reach their forces, cut off their reserves in men and money and then to subjugate was comparatively easy,” he wrote. “Now there is an Irish nation in the United States, equally hostile, with plenty of money, absolutely beyond our reach and yet within ten days sail of our shores.”

Not all the Irish in America supported the Easter Rising, not at first. But many did. They hadn’t forgotten centuries of persecution nor the horrors of the Great Hunger. Still fresh were the memories of the famine ships, grinding poverty in American slums and bigotry embodied in the warning, “No Irish need apply.”

The shell of the General Post Office in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.

In some cases, an even more intimate connection existed between Irish New England and Ireland. James Connolly, one of the seven leaders of the Easter Rising, had lived and worked in Roxbury, Mass., for a time. Hartford police Det. Sgt. Daniel McAuliffe had had a childhood friendship with another Irish leader, Michael Collins.

One old New Bedford sailor, Henry C. Hathaway, had years earlier aided the cause of Irish independence. In 1869, as fourth officer of a whaling bark, Hathaway rescued the Fenian John Boyle O’Reilly from an Australian penal colony. O’Reilly had been recruiting men to a regiment of the Irish Republican Brotherhood when the British arrested him. After his rescue, he moved to Boston and advocated for the Irish community as editor of The Pilot.

John Boyle O’Reilly. Editor of the Boston Pilot, he died before the Easter Rising.

A Mass Movement for Irish Independence

Before the Easter Rising, the Irish in America didn’t all support a violent uprising against British rule. Two Irish American groups in Boston made the difference clear. The United Irish League of America, founded by the professional and business class, raised money to support a peaceful transfer of power under Home Rule. But Ireland would still belong to the United Kingdom. The Clan na Gael (Fenian Brotherhood), founded in 1867 by Irish working-class immigrants, supported violent rebellion to win Irish independence.

In the wake of the Easter Rising, American newspapers reported how Britain put Ireland under martial law and ruthlessly quashed any dissent. That solidified support in Irish America for an independent republic, turning it into a mass movement.

The execution of James Connolly, one of the seven leaders, proved especially provocative. Severely wounded in the street battles, he had but a day to live when British executioners tied him to a chair — he couldn’t stand up — and shot him to death. Connolly’s daughter Nora came to New England to speak about her father and raise money for the cause. She did an interview with the Boston Globe and met with Mayor James Michael Curley, who gave her a purse full of money.

The American Irish Rise Up

The Easter Rising sparked mass rallies throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut. In Massachusetts they rallied in Lawrence and Lowell, Fall River, North Attleboro, Brockton, Worcester, Chicopee, Springfield, Holyoke and Pittsfield.

Hartford held mass rallies and sent aid to the Republicans. So did New Britain, which sent rifles to Ireland.

A New Haven lawyer, John M. Sullivan, suffered in Kilmainham Jail after his arrest on the streets of Dublin. When Daniel McAuliffe returned from Ireland, the Hartford Police Department put him back on the force.

Branches of Friends of Irish Freedom formed throughout New England and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the cause.

The Boston Symphony Orchestra performed a free concert for Clan na Gael to raise money for widows and orphans. The concert opened with Beethoven’s march, “Dead Heroes.”

De Valera Comes to America

Eamon de Valera

In 1918, a majority of newly-elected Ministers of Parliament from Ireland refused to take their seats in London. Instead, they convened at Dublin’s Mansion House, declared Irish independence and elected de Valera president of the new Irish Republic.

The Irish war for independence would continue for another four years. In the meantime, de Valera spent a year and a half in the United States. He spoke to large crowds, seeking financial support and international recognition for an independent Ireland.

He spoke to crowds in Connecticut and Rhode Island, then to 50,000 at Fenway Park. The Massachusetts General Assembly received him warmly, and New Hampshire Gov. John Bartlett invited him to Manchester. He gave a speech at the Lexington Opera House in Kentucky and spoke to a crowd at Madison Square Garden in New York. For 18 months he received warm greetings by crowds, official welcomes, the freedom of cities and two honorary degrees.

The British couldn’t get to him.

On Dec. 6, 1921, the Irish Free State came into existence. More years of struggle followed, but Ireland was well on its way to becoming a republic — with the continued help of Irish America.

Historian Catherine B. Shannon described the Irish-American aid as essential. “Support from Irish America, unified by the brutal British suppression of the Easter Rising, ultimately proved crucial in the subsequent War of Independence from 1919-1921 that secured freedom for the twenty-six counties that now constitute the Republic of Ireland,” she wrote.

With thanks to: The Easter Rising: CT Ties to Bloody Irish Revolt of 1916, April 24, 2016, at 11:35 a.m. | UPDATED: December 12, 2018 at 4:47 p.m. Hartford Courant. Also to De Valera in the United States, 1919 by James P. Walsh, Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 73, No. 3/4 (September, December, 1962), pp. 92-107 (16 pages).

Images: Irish Republican Brotherhood flag By Fred the Oyster – https://flagspot.net/images/i/ie_1798.gif, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35369203

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Rosalind Russell Narrowly Escapes Waterbury

Rosalind Russell’s long career as a soignee actress with a flair for comedy almost came to an end in 1955, when she fled Waterbury, Conn., in the midst of Hurricane Diane.

She had paid a visit to her hometown for the premiere of her otherwise forgettable film, The Girl Rush. Her better films included The Women, His Girl Friday, My Sister Eileen, Gypsy and Auntie Mame. She also won a Tony award as Best Actress for Wonderful Town, a Broadway hit with music by Leonard Bernstein.

Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame

Unlike many actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the deeply religious Russell stayed married to one man her whole life. She took a long time to get around writing her autobiography, she explained, “because for thirty-five years I’d been married to one husband. (Thirty-five years? And she calls herself a movie star?)”

She titled her autobiography Life is a Banquet, after one of her most memorable lines as Auntie Mame: “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving.”

Rosalind Russell

She was born Catherine Rosalind Russell on June 4, 1907, a middle child of seven in a prosperous Catholic family in Waterbury. Her father had a lucrative law practice, and her mother worked as a teacher. “My mother was Irish and she was superstitious, if you’ll forgive the tautology,” she wrote.

Young Roz had a Catholic school education, and remained a devout Catholic her whole life. “My family was very Irish in the middle of New England Congregationalists–there was a great distrust of Catholics; we couldn’t go into their churches, they weren’t supposed to come into ours,” she wrote.

Rosalind Russell in 1945.

When she reached her teens her family moved to a 13-room Victorian house on Cracker Hill, where they had two servants. She attended Waterbury Catholic High, and even as a Hollywood movie star kept in touch with her favorite teachers. She then went to Catholic college, Rosemont in Pennsylvania and Marymount in Tarrytown, N.Y.

Trouble with Angels

Later in her career, she played mother superior in The Trouble with Angels, released in 1966. Before shooting began, a friend–a real mother superior–asked her to come to St. Louis to raise money for a Catholic girls’ school she was trying to build. Russell convinced Columbia Pictures to open the film in St. Louis and donate ticket proceeds to the school.

She herself cut her high school classes to go to local theatrical performances, of which there were plenty in Waterbury back then.

Russell lied to her mother about leaving Marymount for acting school. She told her she wanted to teach voice. Then she enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City to study acting.

Rosalind Russell’s name then appeared on the playbill of several summer stock productions, in a Boston repertory theatre company and in a minor role on Broadway. In 1934, she signed a contract with MGM. Her breakthrough came five years later when she played the classy, glamorous and funny Sylvia Fowler in the film The Women.

Cary Grant, Matchmaker

The Women established her as a comedienne and brought her to the attention of Frederick Brisson, a Danish film producer and friend of Cary Grant. Brisson sailed to New York from Europe in an ocean liner that played The Women in a continuous loop, which he half-ignored. He finally sat down to watch it and fell in love with Russell. “I’m either gonna kill that girl, or I’m gonna marry her,” he told a friend.

Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday.

Rosalind Russell worked on another film in which she combined glamour and wit, His Girl Friday, with Grant. They played fast-talking journalists with lines like, “I wouldn’t cover the burning of Rome for you if they were just lighting it up.” Grant was single at the time, and he and Russell dated during filming.

She didn’t know Brisson stayed in Grant’s guest house while they made His Girl Friday. Every morning on the set, Cary Grant would greet Russell with the question, “Have you met Freddie Brisson yet?” Finally Grant showed up one night to take her to dinner and dancing, but he had a stranger at his side. Freddie Brisson, of course.

Cary Grant acted as best man at their wedding in 1941. Three years later they had one son, Carl Lance Brisson.

The Brisson family: Mrs. Cleo Brisson, Lance, Rosalind Russell, Freddie Brisson.

Rosalind Russell Returns to Waterbury

In 1955, Waterbury lured Rosalind Russell back by renaming the State Theatre the Rosalind Russell State Theatre. The ceremony would coincide with the premiere of her latest film. She agreed.

“Wonderful Town” promotional poster.

“I rode in a parade in a white satin dress that was all beaded, with a matching little thing that sat on my head, being Princess Grace all over the joint,” she wrote.

The theatre manager who greeted her was blind drunk, she had to attend a dinner at ‘the great snob Waterbury Club.’ Her brother had to make a speech and a television crew had set up cameras on the Waterbury green.

“And then the storms washed everything away,” she wrote.

Hurricane Diane destroyed the bridge and the railroad, and it killed 55 people in Waterbury. Russell left for New York City in a rented car with an assistant and a driver, who she directed to New Haven. The Naugatuck River had overflowed, so they had to take a long, circuitous route

“It was a terrible night, and I’ve never been to Waterbury since,” she wrote.

Rosalind Russell died of breast cancer on Nov. 28, 1976, with Freddie Brisson at her side.

This story was updated in 2023.

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7 Fun Facts About the Boston Irish

George Washington famously acknowledged the Boston Irish on March 17, 1776, when he ordered new code words to pass through Continental Army lines. The password, “Boston,” was to be answered with “St. Patrick.” Then, of course, the army trained cannons from Dorchester Heights onto the occupying British, and they left in a hurry.

Boston has had an Irish population since the first four shiploads from Ulster arrived in 1718. But not until the potato crop began to fail in 1845 did the huge influx of Irish immigrants sail into Boston Harbor.

The potato famine wasn’t the only thing that brought the Irish to Massachusetts rather than, say, Virginia or Maine. Hunger and poverty pushed the Irish out of Ireland, but the promise of work pulled them to Boston.

The world’s largest Irish flag at Rowe’s Wharf in Boston.

In the Atlas of Boston History, Robert J. Allison explains that Irish immigrants came for jobs. Jobs in the Merrimack River Valley, the most industrial region in the Western Hemisphere. Jobs in Lowell, the biggest industrial city in the United States. And jobs in Boston, a manufacturing powerhouse that led the nation in distilling and refining.

The Atlas of Boston History isn’t just about the Boston Irish. Edited by historian Nancy Seasholes, it traces the history of Boston from the Ice Age to the present. It includes 57 full-color maps, along with illustrations, graph and text.

Here are seven more facts about the Boston Irish borrowed liberally from the Atlas of Boston History.

1. Coming from County Cork

Some Irish immigrants walked a hundred miles to reach Queenstown (now Cobh), their port of departure. Most came from the southwestern counties of Galway, Kerry, Clare and especially Cork. Many arrived so sick and destitute that people said they came in famine ships.

Where they came from. Courtesy The Atlas of Boston History.

2. Hives of human beings

In 1849, a ship from overseas brought cholera to Boston. Crowded, unsanitary housing caused an epidemic of the disease, from which the Irish suffered the most. Of the 611 people who died of cholera, 500 came from Ireland.

The city physician investigated the living conditions, and included his findings in the Report of the Committee of Internal Health on the Asiatic Cholera. He was especially horrified by the Fort Hill neighborhood (now the Financial District), which had the densest Irish population. He called it a “perfect hive of human beings, without comforts and mostly without common necessaries; In many cases, huddled together like brutes… sometimes wife and husband, brothers and sisters, in the same bed.”

Some dwellings had 100 people living in them with one sink and one toilet. Half Moon Place was the worst, walled in by tall buildings, Fort Hill and 14 overflowing privies. Boston had 586 cellars used as dwellings; they had neither light nor ventilation and as many as 15 people living in them. The average age of Irish life in Boston didn’t exceed 14 years, he wrote.

Neighborhoods to avoid. Courtesy The Atlas of Boston History.

3. Filling in nicely

Back Bay and the South End owe their existence to the Irish, for more than one reason. So many Irish flooded into the city that Boston’s political leaders grew concerned that their taxpaying Yankee political supporters would move to the suburbs. So they built two attractive residential neighborhoods to keep Yankees in the city: Back Bay and the South End.

Irish laborers filled in the mud flats in Back Bay so Yankee homes could be built. Irishmen also filled in South Cove (now Chinatown) and expanded the shoreline and docks in Charlestown and East Boston. They also built a new warehouse and docks along Fort Point Channel.

Back Bay

4. A way to find missing friends

Friends and relatives of Irish immigrants who arrived in Boston placed thousands of “Missing Friends” advertisements in the Boston Pilot, a national Catholic newspaper.

Newcomers to Boston did it to find family who had come over earlier. Sometimes relatives and friends in Ireland placed ads to find immigrants in America they’d lost touch with. Or sometimes they advertised to find another immigrant who moved elsewhere to find work.

The map of Ireland that showed which counties Irish immigrants came from is based on that information.

5. Third Place

Irish immigrants made Boston the third-biggest city in the country in 1850, behind New York and Baltimore. The city had slipped to fifth place in 1840, but the Irish helped it climb into third.

Boston went from having a minority of foreign born residents to having a majority between 1845 and 1855. By then, 42.5 percent of the population of Boston was Irish.

Courtesy The Atlas of Boston History

6. Bring on the brawn

Boston Irish offered a vast pool of cheap labor to Yankee businessmen, and they fueled a manufacturing boom. Irish workers churned out steam engines, industrial furnaces, pianos, organs, refined sugar, candy, iron rails and ale and spirits.

Boston Irish laborers

Ready-made clothing makers, centered in and near the heavily Irish North End, challenged New York City, the top garment producer in the United States. And Boston shipyards made the clipper ships and steamers that carried to market New England’s products—especially textiles and shoes. Irish dockworkers and teamsters hauled the fruits of Irish labor into warehouses and onto ships that the Irish helped build.

7. McGinniskin was the first

In 1851, Boston hired the first Irish cop in U.S. history, a quiet and respectable 42-year-old laborer named Barney McGinniskin. Boston’s Yankees objected strenuously, and held meetings (including at Faneuil Hall) to protest his appointment. One alderman complained Boston set a dangerous precedent because the ‘Irish commit most of the crime.’

McGinniskin served for three years until the political winds changed. The anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know-Nothings elected a Boston mayor and McGinniskin got fired from his job in 1854.

Images: Largest Irish flags By John Hoey from Framingham, MA, United States – World’s Largest Irish Flag (1), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411665 and https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411658; all maps from The Atlas of Boston History by Nancy Seasholes. Back Bay by By Rick Berk – https://www.flickr.com/photos/rickberk/2848634125/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10986897. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Noble Spud: 7 Fun Facts About the Potato

The potato wasn’t always a beloved staple throughout the world, a cherished tradition mashed with gravy at Thanksgiving and fried to a crisp at McDonald’s.

Potatoes weren’t served at the White House until Thomas Jefferson got elected president. The French actually made growing them illegal. And for decades, New Englanders thought them only fit for livestock.

Here, then, are seven fun facts about the noble spud.

1. Sweet potatoes got (back) here first.

The first sweet potato came to Europe in the 1600s on a Spanish ship. They were originally cultivated in South and Central America, and even in what is now Louisiana and Georgia

Spanish farmers grew them and sold them in England, where the grateful English thought they had aphrodisiacal qualities.

Botanical illustration of North American sweet potatoes c.1843-1846; Pomme de terre d’Amérique

In the 16^th century, “potato” meant “sweet potato,” but then its identity got mixed with the white, or Irish, potato in the 17^th century. Old English cookbooks that refer to “potatoes” generally mean “sweet potatoes,” but sometimes it isn’t clear.

English cookbook author Hannah Glasse, for example, includes several recipes for “potato pudding” in her 1747 The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. One recipe instructs the cook to beat the potatoes and add butter, white wine or an orange, and sugar. She means sweet potato, right? You would think.

Virginians began planting sweet potatoes in 1648, well before the white, or Irish, potato. Sweet potatoes didn’t really arrive in New England until 1764. For an entire generation – 70 years – New Englanders viewed sweet potatoes as a luxury item, according to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink.

2. People called it ‘the Devil’s apple.’

In Europe at first, only Irish and Spanish people ate the white potato, which also came to Europe from the New World on Spanish ships. Everywhere else in Europe, they fed it to their farm animals. Some even feared it was poisonous, which is how it got the nickname “the Devil’s apple.”

By about 1750, farmers all over New England were planting the lowly spud. But for a long time the potato was just food for livestock and the poor.

Caricature of a potato-earing immigrant

Then, during his presidency, Thomas Jefferson served French fries at the White House. He had learned about them in Paris while serving as minister to France. After Jefferson elevated the potato’s status, a flood of immigrants from potato-eating countries, notably Ireland, boosted the popularity of the white potato.

Still, it took a while for the mashed potato to take a central role in the Thanksgiving feast. In 1827, the godmother of Thanksgiving, Sarah Josepha Hale, didn’t mention potatoes when describing 23 classic New England Thanksgiving foodstuffs. But taters eventually made their way to New England cuisine, in chowders, stews, stuffings, boiled dinners and tots.

By the late 19^th century, another New England author, Mary Ellen Chase, wrote that 99 out of 100 Maine families would have stared incredulously at a dinner without a potato. And in 1896, cookbook author Frannie Farmer called it “preeminent among the vegetables.”

3. France once banned the cultivation of tubers.

Unlike the Spanish and the Irish, the French in the 18^th century despised the potato, thinking it caused leprosy. In 1748 the French government made it a crime to even plant potatoes.

But then a French pharmacist named Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was taken prisoner during the Seven Years War (1756-63). Prison food consisted largely of potatoes, which didn’t give him leprosy and, in fact, sustained him until his release.

Antoine-Auguste Parmentier, By François Dumont

Back in Paris, Parmentier promoted the benefits of the potato. He served potatoes at dinners for influential guests, gave potato flowers to Marie Antoinette and published papers about the virtues of the spud. Thomas Jefferson, while representing the American revolutionaries in France, became pro-potato after sampling pommes frites.

4. The first U.S. spud was planted in a New Hampshire town.

A persecuted minority, the Ulster Scots-Irish, brought the white potato to an ungrateful (at first) New England in 1719. The year before, the Rev. William Boyd sailed from Ulster to Massachusetts to ask for land for the unfortunate Scots-Irish families. He probably figured the Puritans would sympathize with another group of persecuted Protestants.

Boyd brought a petition signed by the heads of 319 families, all but four of whom could sign their names. Gov. Samuel Shute liked the idea. He envisioned Scots-Irish pioneers settling on the frontiers of Maine and New Hampshire, buffering the colony from hostile French and Indians.

The First Parish Church in East Derry, N.H.

In the summer of 1718, five ships of Scots-Irish immigrants from Ulster arrived in Boston to an uncertain welcome. The Puritan leaders did sympathize with their fellow Protestants. But the newcomers came from an impoverished land, and many Puritans questioned whether they could support themselves. And so the Puritans encouraged them to move along.

Some of the immigrants who arrived that summer of 1718 came as congregations led by clergymen. One congregation had the Rev. James McGregor as its leader.

A group led by McGregor soon settled in Nutfield, N.H., which later became Londonderry. McGregor planted the first potatoes in America. He brought seed potatoes from Ireland and planted them in Londonderry Common Ground (Derry today). They are acknowledged to be the first potatoes planted in the United States.

5. Schoolchildren in Maine take Potato Vacation.

In the 1940s, the state of Maine produced more potatoes than any other state. Most of them grew in Aroostook County, which is larger than three U.S. states (Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware, if you’re wondering).

Aroostook County, known in Maine as “The County,” borders Canada and has a strong Acadian tradition. Some bilingual residents speak Acadian French and celebrate the annual Ploye Festival. The County also has a Potato Blossom Festival, honoring its biggest cash crop.

Children gathering potatoes on a large farm near Caribou in 1939. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

Potato planting began in Aroostook County by white settlers in the early 1800s. Aroostook soil, geologically different from the rest of New England, is well drained and fertile. Combined with the cool climate and 40 inches of rain a year, the County has ideal conditions for growing potatoes.

The arrival of the railroad in the late 1800s created Maine’s Potato Empire. Maine in general and Aroostook County in particular were the leading producer of potatoes in the United States until 1950. The decline of the Potato Empire came about because of competition from Idaho and western farms that benefit from federally subsidized irrigation projects. Mechanization and consolidation of farms into corporate agriculture didn’t help, either.

Children taking a Potato Vacation in the County, 1939. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The County’s potato production now amounts to a quarter of its peak. Still, Aroostook County still produces more potatoes than any other county in the United States, and schoolchildren still take a Potato Vacation in the fall to harvest potatoes.

6. Mr. Potato Head wasn’t always plastic.

Brooklyn-born George Lerner invented Mr. Potato Head, but he only designed the facial features. Kids originally used them with real potatoes.

Mr. Potato Head from Toy Story in the Pixar Play Parade

Lerner began making Mr. Potato Head in 1949, but he didn’t get much attention until Providence-based Hasbro started to market him nationally in 1952. As the first toy advertised on television, Mr. Potato Head was wildly successful. Hasbro sold 1 million the first year. Mrs. Potato Head came along in 1953, then Brother Spud and Sister Yam. Soon the family had Spud-ettes: a car, a boat-trailer, a stroller, pets.

Mr. Potato Head went plastic in 1964 after the government issued new safety regulations — the pieces were too sharp). Parents complained about rotting spuds.

7. The spud got banned from NYMEX.

In the 1970s, traders, speculators and even potato inspectors often manipulated the market for Maine potatoes. In 1976, the potato got banned from the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) because of a swindle in potato futures contracts. Millions of pounds of Maine potatoes rotted in warehouses that year because two groups of millionaires played chicken with the potato.

J.R. Simplot

It started when J.R. Simplot decided he’d manipulate the potato price on NYMEX. Simplot supplied half of McDonald’s French fries and sometimes bought as much as half of Maine’s potato crop. His Idaho license plate read MR SPUD.

In 1975, Simplot thought Maine potato prices were too high. So he formed a group to sell Maine potatoes short. To sell short you sell contracts to buy at a high price and then buy low later to cover your obligations.

The contracts would come due on May 17, 1976. But two produce wholesalers, Casper Mayrsohn and Harold Collin, got wind of Simplot’s scheme. They formed their own cartel and started buying potatoes to drive the prices up.

Warehouse belonging to J.R. Simplot, the man who started the Maine potato war.

In April 1976 Simplot realized the potato crop would be smaller than expected. That would drive prices up, an outcome he did not desire. So he tried to create the impression of a potato glut. He started shipping potatoes in roller cars — train cars filled with produce with no customers. Traders viewed roller cars as an indicator of excess produce.

Mayrsohn retaliated by buying up potatoes, along with all available cars on the Bangor-Aroostook Railway. Up to the final day of trading, Simplot kept selling and Mayrsohn kept buying.

By then, Simplot had promised to sell 100 million pounds of Maine potatoes while only about 50 million pounds existed. Needless to say, he defaulted, violating the sanctity of the contract upon which futures exchanges depend. Simplot’s default damaged NYMEX’s reputation so badly that regulators wouldn’t let it trade potato futures anymore.

If you enjoyed this story, you may want to buy the New England Historical Society’s newest book, A History of the Irish, As Told by Their Food. Available now from Amazon. (Click here.)

Images: J.R. Simplot By http://www.simplot.com/company/origins_founder.cfm, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17616524; Mr. Potato Head by Loren Javier via Flickr, CC By-ND 2.0 Generic. This story was updated in 2023.

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Al Capp Invents Sadie Hawkins Day — Sort Of

Centuries before Al Capp started the Sadie Hawkins Day fad in his Li’l Abner comic strip, women in Scotland and Ireland asked men to marry them during Leap Years.

At least, that’s how the story goes.

The inspiration for Sadie Hawkins Day

Legend has it that in Ireland in the 5^th century, St. Brigid complained to St. Patrick that Irish women had to wait too long to marry. (Irish men being notoriously slow to propose.)

St. Patrick responded by declaring that women can ask men to marry them every four years on February 29.

That probably isn’t true, but it is an old Irish tradition that women ask men to marry them on February 29. Supposedly, Irish immigrants brought the custom to New England.

Long before that, Irish monks brought it to Scotland. In 1288, the Scots enacted a law that allowed a woman to ask a bachelor to marry her, but only in a Leap Year. He would be fined one pound if he refused.

Sadie Hawkins Day

It wasn’t until 1937 that New Haven native Al Capp included the Sadie Hawkins gag in Li’l Abner. moving to November the day women catch a husband. Capp never specified which day in November. Sadie Hawkins Day first ran on Nov. 15, 1937, but over the years Capp featured it between November 19 and November 30.

“It happens on the day I say it happens,” Capp once said. Every year, he claimed, he received tens of thousands of letters from colleges, communities and church groups as early as July asking what day will be Sadie Hawkins Day so they could plan a dance.

In the comic strip, it started as a desperate ploy by Hekzebiah Hawkins, the first mayor of Dogpatch (which Capp used to say was based on Seabrook, N.H., where he had a summer home).

Al Capp self portrait

Hawkins wanted to marry off his homely daughter Sadie. He declared a footrace would be held on Sadie Hawkins Day, and unmarried women who caught eligible men had to marry them, ‘and no two ways about it.’

National Fad

Sadie Hawkins Day dances quickly became a national fad. In 1939, Life magazine reported girls chased boys in 201 colleges.

By 1949, Capp estimated 50,000 organizations sponsored Sadie Hawkins parties and dances.

Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, held a Sadie Hawkins Day dance in November 1947. A proclamation stated that all the Bates ‘gals what ain’t dated but craves somthin’ awful to be can ask any unhitched man to go to dance Saturday.’ Men had to accept, ‘no two ways about it.’ The gals had to pay the admission, two cents for every inch of the man’s waistline.

The University of Vermont created a Sadie Hawkins-like event called MERP — “Men’s Economic Recovery Program.” For a week, women paid their dates’ expenses.

Scragg Shag

In 1948, the Arthur Murray Studios on Boylston St. in Boston staged a Sadie Hawkins Dance, introducing new dances based on the comic strip, including “The Skunk Hollow Hop, “The Daisy Mae Whirl,” “The Scragg Shag,” “The Shmoo Shlide,” and the “Li’l Abner Dip.”

The entire city of Dover, N.H., celebrated Sadie Hawkins Day on May 2, 1951, and Al Capp showed up for it. He said his wife’s kinfolk came from Dover. Mayor Fred Smalley greeted Capp wearing glow-in-the-dark suspenders, patched overalls and a marryin’ suit with a belt in the back. There was a parade, a poster contest and a square dance at City Hall, with plenty of costumes based on the comic strip characters.

Li’l Abner would continue until 1977, but Sadie Hawkins Day began to return to its roots during Leap Year. In 1952, the Harvard Club of Quincy, Mass., staged a Leap Year Sadie Hawkins dance featuring men in drag playing the Dogpatch character Daisy Mae.

Proclamation

The original Sadie Hawkins proclamation read:

KNOW ALL DOGPATCH MEN who ain’t married by these presents, and ‘specially Li’l Abner Yokum:

WHEREAS there be a passel o’ gals what ain’t married up but what craves somthin’ awful to be.

And WHEREAS these gals’ pappies and mammies have been shoulderin’ the burden of their board and keep for more years than is tolerable.

And WHEREAS they is plenty of young men what could marry these gals but acts ornery and won’t.

IT IS HEREBY PROCLAIMED AND DECREED that Saturday, Nov. 19, 1940, shall be known as SADIE HAWKINS DAY

WHEREAS a foot race will be held, and all unmarried gals who chase unmarried men — and catch them — have got to be married up wif each other, and no two ways about it.”

This story about Sadie Hawkins Day was updated in 2020.

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John Andrews Informs Philadelphia of the Trouble with Tea in 1773

John Andrews regularly wrote to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia with the latest news, gossip and scandal in Boston in 1773. For the month of November and December there was no hotter topic than tea.

The trouble with tea, of course, culminated in the Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773.

It first crops up in a November 29 letter, when Andrews worries that tea arriving in port will spell trouble:

John Andrews wrote to his brother-in-law about the dramatic events of the Boston Tea Party

“[Captains] Hall and Bruce arriv’d Saturday evening with each an hundred and odd chests of the detested Tea,” he wrote. “What will be done with it, can’t say : but I tremble for ye consequences should ye consignees still persist in their obstinacy and not consent to reship it.”

The people had softened a bit, he wrote, and seemed willing to offer the tea to local authorities for safekeeping. But, he believed, “from the present dispositions of ye people,” that the only alternative was to send it back to London.

“Ye Bells are ringing for a general muster, and a third vessel is now arrived in Nantasket road,” he wrote. “Handbills are stuck up, calling upon Friends! Citizens! and Countrymen!”

The People Arm Themselves

A few days later, on December 1, he notes that opinions about the tea are hardening. People are also arming themselves. The consignees had all moved to the fort at Castle Island, because they still refused to take the tea back.

The fort at Castle Island in 1776

“Its not only ye town, but the country are unanimous against the landing it, and at the Monday and Tuesday Meetings, they attended to the number of some hundreds from all the neighboring towns within a dozen miles,” he wrote. “[It] would puzzle any person to purchase a pair of pistols in in town, as they are all bought up, with a full determination to repel force by force.”

John Andrews Spreads the News

Finally, two days after the Tea Party, John Andrews spread the word to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. Discoverers of the letter many years later noted that it must have carried hot news when it arrived. The tattered letter showed the wear and tear of having passed through many hands.

“However precarious our situation may be, yet such is the present calm composure of the people that a stranger would hardly think that ten thousand pounds sterling of the East India Company’s tea was destroy’d,” Andrews wrote. And yet he called it “a serious truth” that Boston will feel “the whole weight of ministerial vengeance.”

But, he pointed out, most people think Boston stands an equal chance of receiving troops whether they threw the tea in the harbor or not. “Had it been stored,” wrote Andrews, “we should inevitably have had ’em, to enforce the sale of it.”

He characterized the Tea Party as “transacted with the greatest regularity and despatch.”

The General Muster

Andrews then described the dilemma in which William Rotch (the owner of two ships transporting the tea) found himself. Under British law, he had to unload the tea within 20 days and pay customs duties. But if he didn’t, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wouldn’t let him leave the harbor.

[He] “exposed himself not only to the loss of his ship but for ye value of the tea in case he sent her back with it, without a clearance from the custom house.” Andrews explained “ye admiral” kept a ship in readiness. He would “make a seizure of it whenever it should sail under those circumstances.”

Rotch therefore “declin’d complying with his former promises, and absolutely declar’d his vessel should not carry it, without a proper clearance could be procur’d or he to be indemnified for the value of her.”

Interior of Old South Meeting House

Then, wrote Andrews, ‘when a general muster was assembled, from this and all ye neighbouring towns, to the number of five or six thousand, at 10 o’clock Thursday morning in the Old South Meeting house. There, “they pass’d a unanimous vote that the Tea should go out of the harbour that afternoon, and sent a committee with Mr. Rotch to ye custom house to demand a clearance.”

The customs collector told them he had no power to give them a clearance unless they paid duties. “They then sent Mr. Rotch to Milton, to ask a pass from ye Governor, who sent for answer. Hutchinson told them that “consistent with the rules of government and his duty to the King he could not grant one without they produc’d ‘a previous clearance from the office’.”

Thomas Hutchinson in 1750.

Prodigious Shouts

“By the time he return’d with this message the candles were light in [the meeting] house, and upon reading it, such prodigious shouts were made, that induc’d me, while drinking tea at home, to go out and know the cause of it,” wrote Andrews. “The house was so crowded I could get no farther than ye porch, when I found the moderator was just declaring the meeting to be dissolved.”

That caused another general shout, outdoors and in, and three cheers, wrote Andrews. “What with that, and the consequent noise of breaking up the meeting, you’d thought that the inhabitants of the infernal regions had broke loose.

“For my part, I went contentedly home and finish’d my tea,” wrote Andrews. Soon he learned what went on. But, “still not crediting it without ocular demonstration, I went and was satisfied.”

The Destruction of the Tea at Boston Harbor, Nathaniel Currier.

Griffin’s Wharf

“They muster’d, I’m told, upon Fort Hill, to the number of about two hundred,” he wrote. They then “proceeded, two by two, to Griffin’s wharf.” There, Capts. Hall, Bruce, and Coffin lay, “each with 114 chests of the ill fated article on board.”

Hall and Bruce only had tea, but Coffin had arrived only the day before. That vessel carried a large quantity of other goods. “They took the greatest care not to injure[the goods] in the least,” he wrote.

[Before] “nine o’clock in ye evening, every chest from on board the three vessels was knock’d to pieces and flung over ye sides. They say the actors were Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appear’d as such, being cloath’d in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper color’d countenances, being each arm’d with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols, nor was their dialect different from what I conceive these geniusses to speak, as their jargon was unintelligible to all but themselves.”

The Unpopular Conner

“Not the least insult was offer’d to any person, save one Captain Conner,” wrote Andrews. Conner rented out horses, and was “not many years since remov’d from dear Ireland.” He “had ript up the lining of his coat and waistcoat under the arms.” Watching his opportunity, he “had nearly fill’d ’em with tea.”

Someone detected the theft, however, and the tea partyers handled Conner pretty roughly. “They not only stripp’d him of his cloaths, but gave him a coat of mud, with a severe bruising into the bargain,” wrote Andrews. [And] “nothing but their utter aversion to make any disturbance prevented his being tar’d and feather’d.”

“Should not have troubled you with this, by this Post, hadn’t I thought you would be glad of a more particular account of so important a transaction, than you could have obtain’d by common report,” wrote Andrews. “If it affords my brother but a temporary amusement, I shall be more than repaid for the trouble of writing it.”

The Cape Cod Tea Party

Finally, the next evening, John Andrews lets his brother-in-law know of the fourth and final ship carrying tea. It wrecked on Cape Cod. The patriots destroyed as much of its cargo as they could find.

Andrews wrote that he forgot to write about Captain Loring, in a brig belonging to Clark, “one of ye consignees.” He had come ashore at “ye back of Cape Cod.” A storm drove the vessel. It had “the last quota of tea for this place, being 58 chests, which completes the 400.”

Andrews added “some Indians were met on ye road to Plimouth, which is almost fifty miles this side of Cape Cod.”

He ended with a note that the ship carried lamps meant for Boston streets. He was sorry about it because, “We shall be deprived of their benefit in winter,” he wrote.

From: Letters of John Andrews esq., of Boston, 1772-1776.

Image of Old South: By Daderot – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76947597.

This story last updated in 2021.

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