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Liberty Tree

Dutch Elm Disease, the Nightmare on Elm Street

When Dutch elm disease first appeared in southwestern Connecticut, horrified New Englanders responded immediately to save their beloved elms, state agriculture experts wrote in 1935.

“Any disease that threatens the existence of the American elm strikes very deeply in the hearts of all New Englanders,” begins a 1935 pamphlet about the disease published by the Connecticut Agricultural Station.

A surviving New Haven elm

New Englanders have cherished the elm ever since Connecticut and Massachusetts colonists began planting rows of them in the 1750s.

In the mid-19^th century, village improvement societies planted thousands of the stately, fast growing trees. In the summer, their leafy branches formed a cathedral-like canopy over village greens and city streets.

But planting so many of one kind of tree created a monoculture that carried the seeds of its own destruction. The long rows of trees could not resist the pests and diseases that lurked in logs that came from overseas. So when Dutch elm disease arrived, it spread rapidly through those long lines of elms.

The Noble Elm

The map of New England is full of reminders of the elm’s glory days. Three cities – New Haven, Keene, N.H., and Waterville, Maine – call themselves Elm City. Worcester, Mass., has Elm Park. Elm Street in Manchester, N.H., functions as the city’s main thoroughfare. More towns in New England probably have an Elm Street than don’t.

Elm-lined street in Salem, Mass.

And it wasn’t just the manmade elm forests New Englanders loved. Individual trees reached iconic status, most notably, Boston’s Liberty Tree, a white elm. Massachusetts also had the Knight elm in Newburyport, the Howard elm in Ware and the Washington elm in Cambridge.

The Liberty Tree was an elm

In Providence, Elmo stood in front of Brown University’s Watson Institute until Dutch elm disease got it in 2003. Yarmouth, Maine, had a beloved champion elm called Herbie, which succumbed to the disease in 2010.

In 1758, an elm tree was planted in Wethersfield, Conn., which grew into the ‘most magnificent tree east of the Rockies.’

Writers waxed elegiac. New England’s elms, wrote Henry Ward Beecher, are ‘as much a part of her beauty as the columns of the Parthenon were the glory of its architecture.’’ Even the American Forestry Association found its poetic voice in a pamphlet: “On the rockbound coast of New England was founded a friendship between tree and man that has endured for more than three hundred years.

“…So deep became this companionship that when the settlers moved westward beyond the natural range of the elm, they took the tree with them to share their fortunes.”

Towns began naming Elm streets all the way to California.

The Enemy Within

At the height of their glory in 1937, America had 25 million elm trees. But their enemy — Dutch elm disease — had already begun burrowing beneath the bark. The trees just couldn’t resist them.

Dutch elm disease is caused by a fungus that attacks the tree’s circulatory system. Certain kinds of elm bark beetle spread it, mostly through the root systems.

Dutch Elm Disease

By the time America sank into the Great Depression, Dutch elm disease had struck in Cleveland. The silent killer had arrived in 1930 on a shipment of logs destined for an Ohio furniture factory. Within two years, Dutch elm disease was killing elm trees in New Jersey.

Connecticut, the gateway to New England, stood between the elm belt to the north and east and the territory where Dutch elm disease started to spread.

The first case of Dutch elm disease appeared in Connecticut in November 1933 in Glenville, where Westchester County in New York joins Fairfield County.

Herbie

Fearing the tree’s extinction, the U.S. Department of Agriculture quickly set up an office to fight the enemy in Stamford. USDA scouts hired men from President Franklin Roosevelt’s new Civil Works Administration to survey elms in Fairfield County.

FDR to the Rescue

Roosevelt, an ardent dendrophile, eventually put thousands of young men to work planting and saving trees as part of his New Deal. Later the Civilian Conservation Corps took part in the fight against Dutch elm disease.

In the fall of 1934 Connecticut began its own survey. Six men traveled the main highways into every town in the state. They inspected 90,000 trees and designated 1,977 as possible victims of Dutch elm disease. Only one had it. However, many of the trees were in poor health and thus susceptible to infestation.

The New England states formed committees to rouse public sentiment on Dutch elm disease. They advised citizens to cut dead or dying parts of trees and burn them, while keeping their healthy trees in good condition by watering, fertilizing and spraying them.

The Hurricane of 1938

For the next few years, federal workers employed by New Deal agencies scouted diseased trees, cut them down and burned them. But Congress only funded the fight against Dutch elm disease in fits and starts, so the disease spread whenever funding dried up.

The disease found another ally when the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 wiped out millions of trees. The storm barreled through New Haven, Hartford, Springfield and Keene. The storm blew down millions of trees, and for years the elm bark beetles feasted and multiplied on the elm blowdowns.

Woodpile cut from blowdowns from the 1938 hurricane.
Photo courtesy National Archives.

In 1941, Massachusetts reported its first case of Dutch elm disease.

World War II

But then the United States entered World War II, and fighting the Axis powers took priority over fighting Dutch elm disease.

New Haven Green. A 1900 guide, Trolley trips through New England, takes the reader to the corner of New Haven Green. “This plot, with its old elms, fluttering doves, three church spires, and the half-hidden rampart of the college beyond, lends to the city an unforgettable note of peace. It is the most characteristic public square in New England.”

By 1952, the disease had spread throughout New England. Nearly all of New Haven’s elms had died. The Wethersfield elm succumbed in 1953 after reaching 30 feet in circumference and a height of 100 feet.

During the war, however, the U.S. military discovered a nifty new pesticide called DDT. It sprayed the stuff on South Pacific islands to kill malaria-breeding mosquitos. After the war, municipalities began to spray DDT on elm trees to try to save them.

Silent Spring

But then in 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring came out. In the book, she not only warned of the dangers of DDT, she showed it didn’t kill the elm bark beetle.

“Hundreds of towns were killing thousands or millions of birds while not protecting their elms,” wrote Charles F. Wurster, founder of the Environmental Defense Fund.

Silent Spring had a huge impact, especially on New England’s college campuses, according to Thomas Campanella in Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm. When the Williamstown, Mass., tree warden tried to spray the town’s elms, Amherst students rocked his spray truck or lay down in front of it.

Silent Spring is still in pr int

In 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT. By the end of the 1970s, Dutch elm disease had wiped out much of New England’s manmade elm forest. According to one estimate, the disease had killed 40 million elms since its arrival in Cleveland in 1930.

Some towns, like Castine and Blue Hill in Maine, were lucky. For some reason, their elm trees escaped the blight.

The Liberty Elm

The elm needed a new approach if it was to survive. In 1967, the Elm Research Institute formed to ‘rally support from the private sector’ for Dutch elm disease research in Keene. The ERI, one of several organizations dedicated to saving the elm, has developed varieties of the tree it calls Liberty elms, more resistant to Dutch elm disease. By 2000, it had planted 250,000 Liberty elms.

Several other varieties and hybrids that resist Dutch elm disease are being developed. The USDA has found people can sometimes save infected trees by pruning and burning infected areas and injecting the tree with a fungicide.

Dutch elm disease, however, is still a threat today.

Surviving New Haven elm: By Msact – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=65161929; New Haven Green By Internet Archive Book Images – https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14592924868/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/trolleytripsthro01hart/trolleytripsthro01hart#page/n19/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43213194. Herbie, By Dudesleeper – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3924123. Silent Spring By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48694009. This story was updated in 2023.

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Joseph Dyar Speaks Too Freely of the Boston Tea Party

After heaving 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor on Dec. 16, 1773, the band of patriots who carried out the raid marched past British Admiral John Montagu, who had come ashore to witness the unrest.

Montagu could have put a stop to the tea party, but had not ordered any British response, he said, for fear of injuring innocents. Still he exchanged taunts with the passing mob – many dressed as Indians – warning that they would have to pay for their deeds.

While the complete list of the Americans who undertook the Boston Tea Party has never been found, Joseph Dyar long said he belonged to them. He also said his wife helped make the copper coloring that the patriots used to disguise themselves as Indians.

Joseph Dyar, Blabbermouth

Unfortunately for Dyar he made his claims too close to the ears of British soldiers. Dyar, a seafaring man from the North End of Boston, made ready to set sail in early 1774. The British, however, arrested him. The official charge: he had encouraged British soldiers to desert.

Dyar was sent to England aboard a vessel carrying Admiral Montagu. His family knew nothing of his arrest, assuming he had gone to sea as planned. Far from telling all about the Tea Party – if he actually knew it – Dyar did something quite different. He swore under oath that a British colonel tried to bribe him to frame John Hancock as the instigator of the Tea Party. He swore also that Admiral Montagu repeated the offer while taking him to England.

John Andrews was a Boston merchant who kept his relatives in Philadelphia informed of the goings on in Boston, He told them Dyar explained that his original statements about the Tea Party could be chalked up as his “being an artful fellow.” He also pretended “to know everything.”

Persuaded that he knew nothing, the British sent Dyar home in October of 1774. British officials conferred with Hancock and assured him that no one tried to frame him.

Not the Expected Outcome

Dyar was furious with the outcome. He demanded that the British pay for their efforts to bribe him. When that failed he announced he would restore his honor. Dyar proceeded to the Liberty Tree and confronted two British officers. He mistakenly thought they had participated in his arrest.

First Dyar tried to shoot them. Then he tried to attack them with a cutlass that he wrestled from one of them.

As Andrews recounted the fight, “Captain Montresor ran behind a cart to escape his fury.” (Montresor’s daughter would marry Ethan Allen.) Dyar then flung the pistols at him and run off flourishing the colonel’s cutlass, Andrews wrote. He then proceeded directly to Cambridge and went into the room where the Provincial Congress were sitting. “[He] told them he had got one of the swords that Lord North had sent over to kill them with,” wrote Andrews.

John Singleton Copley painted this portrait of John Hancock around 1771. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

The Provincial Congress denied Dyar the justice he sought. “When they came to know what he had been doing, they immediately sent for an officer and committed him,” wrote Andrews.

Dyar would go on to serve in the American Revolution, ferrying supplies to Long Island for the Continental Army. He was captured nine times by the British. He died in 1783 from the effects of beatings administered by his British captors.

This story last updated in 2021.

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The British Plot to Poison Boston in 1776

In the days leading up to March 17, 1776, Massachusetts was on edge. British troops, under siege for nearly a year, prepared to leave Boston. The people had many worries. Would the British commander, Gen. William Howe burn the city? Would he plunder it? Or would he change his mind and stay? But few if any suspected a British plot to poison Boston.

Lord Howe evacuating Boston (March 1776) Engraving by J. Godfrey

The British army, hemmed in by rebel cannons, had decided to yield its position and flee to Halifax. Howe and American general George Washington had reached a tacit agreement. So long as the British could leave unmolested, they would not destroy Boston.

The Plot To Poison Boston

But Howe began losing control of his troops. The general had tried to create an orderly process for seizing citizens’ goods the military could use. The soldiers had to issue receipts and certificates for future payment. However, others saw this as a sign that he condoned looting.

Soldiers began plundering stores and homes for anything of value they could find. Frustrated, Howe issued a proclamation:

“The commander-in-chief finding, notwithstanding former orders that have been given to forbid plundering, houses have been forced open and robbed, he is therefore under a necessity of declaring to the troops that the first soldier who is caught plundering will be hanged on the spot.”

Washington, meanwhile, waited impatiently for the British to depart. Concerned that Howe might be stalling while reinforcements arrived, Washington ordered his troops to continue building fortifications. On March 17, however, the British finally made good on their plans. An armada of ships, loaded with more than 9,000 soldiers and more than 1,000 loyalists, made their way to sea.

Dr. John Warren, whose brother Joseph had perished at Bunker Hill, made an assessment of the town after the British fled.

“The houses I found to be considerably abused inside, where they had been inhabited by the common soldiery, but the external parts of the houses made a tolerable appearance. The streets were clean, and, upon the whole, the town looks much better that I expected. Several hundred houses were pulled down, but these were very old ones.”

The Damage Done

The story in Charlestown, which the British had burned, was different. Almost nothing still stood, Warren reported, save for an occasional wall or chimney.

Other parts of Boston also bore the marks of the British occupation while under siege.

The British had turned the Old South Church into a riding school for officers. They had dragged Deacon Hubbard’s ornate pew outside and converted it to a hog sty. The parsonage was pulled down and burned for fuel, as was the Old North Chapel, dating to 1677, the steeple of the West Church and Boston’s celebrated Liberty Tree.

William Howe

The Common was disfigured and fortified, and Faneuil Hall fitted out as a theater, Warren noted. What cannon the British could not remove with them had been spiked (for the most part) and shells split and shot dumped into the harbor. The Americans would repair and recover much of what had been abandoned.

In total, damage amounted to £323,074. Washington informed John Hancock that the British officers who occupied his opulent home hadn’t harmed it. Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John, describing their house as “very dirty, but no other damage has been done to it.”

Shocking Discovery

But what Warren and fellow physician Dr. Samuel Scott found in the British medical supplies shocked them the most. In a workhouse used as a hospital, Warren discovered a cache of medicines. They could be highly useful in treating soldiers or citizens. However, Scott found that, upon leaving, the British had mixed arsenic into the medicines. He provided an affidavit to the Legislature.

“I, John Warren, of Cambridge, physician, testify and say, that on or about the twenty-ninth day of March last past, I went into the workhouse of the town of Boston, lately improved as a hospital by the British troops, stationed in said town,” he wrote.

In one room they supposedly used to store medicine, “I found a great variety of medicinal articles lying upon the floor,” he wrote. They’d packaged some and scattered the rest on the floor, he wrote.

Dr. John Warren by Rembrandt Peale, Harvard University Portrait Collection

“Amongst these medicines, I observed small quantities of what, I supposed, was white and yellow arsenic intermixed; and then received information from Dr. Daniel Scott that he had taken up a large quantity of said arsenic from over and amongst the medicine,” wrote Warren. He then described how Scott had collected it chiefly in large lumps and secured it in a vessel.

A Shocker

Warren then asked Scott to let him see the arsenic. He did, and Warren judged the lumps of arsenic to weight 12 to 14 pounds. Surprised, he looked at the medicine carefully. He judged them as popular and useful — without the poison.

“I advised Dr. Scott to let them remain, and by no means meddle with them, as I thought the utmost hazard would attend the using of them,” he wrote. The medicine stayed there.

This shocking news reached Massachusetts via the newspapers, and as the horror of the British plot to poison the returning colonists sank in, so did its significance as a propaganda weapon.

The affidavit was quoted and distributed throughout the colonies. It served as a useful message to reinforce public antipathy toward the British.

Thanks to History of the Siege of Boston by Richard Frothingham and The Siege of Boston by Allen French. This story was updated in 2022.

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