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Lowell Mass.

Boston’s J. Wright Boott – A Tale of Orchids and Insanity

In March of 1845, J. Wright Boott wrote a letter to his old friend and business partner, John Amory Lowell; with it he enclosed his will and wrote that he planned to kill himself. ‘Please don’t think any less of me,’ he added.

For J. Wright Boott, life had become unbearable. But exactly why it happened spilled out into a debate that ran for years between prominent Boston families. One camp held that he had been harassed to the point of despair by two of his siblings. The other said his end resulted from insanity – that his mental condition had gradually deteriorated from mildly peculiar to outright madness.

National Park Service artwork, Kathleen Konicek-Moran

J. Wright Boott

The story starts in 1817 when Boott was 31. Boston businessman Kirk Boott died, leaving an estate worth $280,000 (more than $4 million today). For Boott’s son and business partner, J. Wright Boott, the receipt of such a fortune might seem like a great gift. But the burden of managing the estate and looking after his siblings proved too much to handle.

Kirk Boott came late to the scene of Boston Brahmins. He arrived in Boston from England in 1783 and set up business as a wholesaler. His connections in England and the unquenchable appetite for European fine goods in New England combined to quickly make him a wealthy man.

Boott built for himself a mansion in Boston’s Bowdoin Square (at roughly the corner of Bowdoin and Cambridge Streets). He brought his two oldest sons, J. Wright and and James, into his business and renamed it Kirk Boott & Sons.

In 1817, as Kirk died, the fortunes of the Boott company took a turn for the worse. Boott had profited throughout the War of 1812. But after the war, America dropped tariffs against English goods. The Boott company found that its inventory on-hand could now be imported at lower cost.

The merchants that it sold to struggled to pay for their goods, and many failed. Back in England, an uncle of the Bootts’ declared bankruptcy, owing the firm £10,000. All of this drained the value of Boott’s inheritance, and for the next 20 years he struggled to manage the expenses of his younger siblings. He launched them into business and marriage.

Time To Retire

By 1830, Wright Boott prepared to retire from active business. He had backed his two brothers-in-law in a foundry that nearly bankrupted him, and he had worked with his partner, James A. Lowell, in a short-lived wholesaling partnership.

In 1822, he had personally invested in the Merrimack Manufacturing Company. His younger brother Kirk moved north to help establish the City of Lowell. Backed by Boston’s wealthy families, enormous fortunes grew from the Lowell mills.

Kirk Boott

The younger Kirk Boott encouraged his brother to take a more active role in operating the mills, but Wright declined. He had only one true passion left: his plants. Boott, who had collected and grown plants for many years, embraced the orchid craze sweeping the country. When relatives would travel to England they would send special plants back for Boott. He even discovered a plant in New Hampshire’s White Mountains named for him: Rattlesnake or Boott’s Root (Prenanthes boottii).

Boott’s collection was a large and acclaimed one among Boston’s horticulturalists. In her book So Fine a Prospect: Historic New England Gardens, Alan Emmett notes that his flowers were included in the Massachusetts’ Horticultural Society’s first exhibit in 1834 at Faneuil Hall. Though he became less active in the society, his plants were so well known they were still being featured in the society’s publications.

Family Feud

In his 50s Boott began withdrawing from society. His mother moved to England. Boott, living alone in the mansion at Bowdoin Square, grew increasingly irascible.

Then the family finally imploded. Boott’s younger sister Elizabeth had married Edward Brooks – an heir to an enormous fortune of his father, Peter. The Brookses were well-connected among Boston elites.

Brooks did not get along with J. Wright Boott. One day in 1844 Elizabeth visited Wright at the family mansion and took offense at two of her nephews, also visiting. At noon she encountered the boys still lounging over breakfast, reading newspapers and smoking cigars. They rudely ignored her.

Elizabeth wrote to her mother complaining of the situation. That infuriated Boott, who believed Elizabeth was needlessly agitating the family. When he ignored both her and her husband at a family gathering, Edward Brooks took offense.

Finally, Brooks said, he would no longer tolerate Wright Boott’s rudeness. He wrote to Wright’s siblings and told them he and Elizabeth would no longer associate with them if they remained on friendly terms with Wright. They declined, preferring to remain neutral.

His only ally in the fight was Wright’s youngest brother, William, who had quarreled with Wright.

William and Wright Boott

William and Wright had been fast friends, though William had a reckless streak. He had a history of ingratiating himself with Wright when he needed money, but criticizing him behind his back for his temper. Much of his inheritance had been spent on travels in Europe. In 1834 he had been arrested for participating in a duel, and Wright stood by him.

Finally, though, the two brothers fought and William moved out of the family mansion. The house was now occupied by Boott and his widowed sister. They barely spoke, if at all. Boott was convinced she had allied herself with the Brooks’ against him, and forbade them from visiting.

John Amory Lowell

The mansion was part of the Kirk Boott estate, and it had been left for his widow’s use for as long as she lived. However, having moved to England with another of her sons, Boott’s mother consented to have the house and its contents sold, the proceeds to be distributed in line with the terms of his father’s will.

At the sale, Boott learned that he needed his brothers and sisters to sign off on the deed. They refused, until Boott provided an accounting for how he had handled their father’s estate. The estate had long been settled. In 1833 all parties had agreed that Boott had settled affairs and they had no claims against him. Now, however, egged on by Brooks, the family wanted more proof.

The accounts were presented and, it turned out, they showed Boott had given his brothers and sisters more than they were actually entitled to. Brooks was not satisfied the accounts were correct, but he got no chance to challenge them before Boott killed himself.

Dueling Pamphlets

Before he died, Boott rewrote his will. He left the major portion of his fortune to his sister Anne, with whom he had never quarreled. Brooks, William Boott and his sister Mary challenged the will, but they soon dropped the case. Word had spread that Boott had been hounded to suicide by his hostile siblings, and Brooks suspected Lowell, Boott’s executor, was behind the stories and decided to make his case public.

In 1847 he published a 250-page, wide-ranging attack on Lowell and Boott: A correspondence between Edward Brooks and John A. Lowell. It laid out his position that Boott had mismanaged his father’s estate and invested it for his own purposes. He bluntly stated that Boott was insane, and generally aired out the family linen.

Lowell, however, was not one to shy away from a fight. To defend the honor of his friend and business partner, in 1848 he published Reply to a pamphlet recently circulated by Mr. Edward Brooks, which came in at 224 pages. It was a well-argued and thorough rebuttal that tended to clear his name and Boott’s name, and establish that Boott, while difficult, was probably sane. He pointed out that he had offered to have an open trial on either the issues of Bootts’ use of the funds or his insanity, but the family declined to proceed.

Now looking either foolish, dishonest or both, Brooks dredged the whole story up again with a rambling 836-page rebuttal, An Answer to the Pamphlet of Mr. John A. Lowell. Published in 1851, a full six years after Boott’s suicide, it did little to clarify matters.

Legacies

The one thing John Lowell did get out of the whole affair was Boott’s collection of orchids and other plants, which he left to him. Lowell displayed and eventually passed them on to other collectors. The Boott mansion, meanwhile, was demolished to make way for the Revere House Hotel. That, in turn, burned down in 1912.

Kirk Boott’s greatest legacy, apart from orchids, was his son Kirk’s participation in the founding of Lowell, where the Boott Mills still exist today.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Stedman Hanks Warns of the Perils of the Black Valley Rail Road

Stedman Hanks had two passions in life: stopping the twin evils of liquor and slavery. He lived long enough to see one goal through, but not the other.

Hanks began his career as a controversial minister, but abandoned the pulpit to persuade sailors not to drink. He started to write stories about the Black Valley Rail Road, an allegorical alcoholic train ride to destruction. The stories sold, too.

Hanks

Stedman Hanks

Born Sept. 11, 1811 in Mansfield, Conn., Hanks graduated from Amherst College and Andover Theological Seminary. In 1840, when the First Congregational Church of Lowell outgrew its building, a group split off to start a second: John Street Congregational Church.

John Street Church

The group of founders chose Hanks as their first pastor. Though young and dynamic, he let his sermons stray away from “pure religion” into social and political issues. And he could be downright caustic when the time called for it.

He quickly irritated the more conservative members of the church. They labelled the church “Texas,” according to Pastor George Johnson, who followed Hanks. They referred to the discussions at the time of whether the Republic of Texas should join the union. It had become a haven for slaveholding southerners and had especially liberal regulation of alcohol.

The critics sneered the talk from the pulpit of the John Street Church was all about “rum and niggers,” Johnson reported.

A group of 20 churches convened a meeting to discuss whether Hanks should be dismissed. The church deacons agreed he should go. But the women of the new church disagreed. By a vote of 97 to 13, they supported Hanks and, thus, he stayed in the pulpit.

Fame

Ironically, Hanks was not nearly as radical as other anti-slavery advocates who joined with William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison’s demand for immediate freedom for all slaves was a minority view. Hanks leaned more toward the school that wanted to gradually and peacefully eliminate slavery.

Once Hanks returned to the pulpit, he never looked back. For 12-1/2 years he worked to end the two evils of slavery and alcohol. Hanks built what was at one time the largest Sunday school in Massachusetts. He also built a 700-person Cold Water Army of young people who had sworn off alcohol. Hanks published a song book for young people to sing promoting virtuous living.

A Cold Water Army soldier gives a cheer for “Bright Water.”

Hanks’ reputation grew to national stature as he travelled on speaking tours. In October 1852, he gave up the pulpit and went to work as corresponding secretary for the Boston Seaman’s Friend Society.

This religious society existed to minister to sailors. Sailing was one of the few vocations where black men were treated with some degree of equality, since sailors were worldlier and tended to judge men by their skills. While Hanks continued giving anti-slavery speeches, he now turned more attention to the temperance movement. And if convincing sailors to give up drinking (and swearing) seems like a tough task, it was.

The Boston Seaman’s Friend Society helped these shipwrecked sailors in 1898, pictured at the Seamen’s Chapel in Vineyard Haven, Mass.

Still, Hanks persevered. The society began a campaign to outfit ships with a library of books for the betterment of the sailors. Collecting donations, Hanks and the society began sending books to sea so that sailors could read lessons to improve their lives.

Hanks’ favorite tool was the allegory – a story with a message embedded in it. And he wasn’t subtle. His books for sailors, Light on the Ocean and Sailor Boy, were compiled from his short stories published in Sailor’s Magazine. They featured heroic fates for brave and sober sailors and ignominy for faithless drunkards.

The Black Valley Rail Road

But his most lasting work dealt with the evils of liquor in the fictitious Black Valley. It was a collection of tales of the Black Valley Rail Road published in book form in 1871, two years after Hanks moved his home from Lowell to Cambridge. The railroad represented the road a man put himself on when he started drinking.

Each stop marked a further descent into alcoholism, starting with relatively harmless towns like Sippington, Medicineville and Tipplerton. The rail line proceeded through darker and more dangerous addresses: Brothelton, Fightington, Prisonton and Robbers Den. Finally the train moved through Idiot Flats, Maniacville, Horrorland and ended in Destruction.

Illustration of the Black Valley Rail Road

His book tells the misery of the people inhabiting the valley until they are introduced, against their instincts, to the benefits of water.

The Black Valley Road stories reached millions. Temperance associations looking to build their Cold Water Armies found them effective recruitment tools.

Hanks died in 1889 with the temperance movement still years away from implementing national prohibition.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Louis Sockalexis, The Indian Athlete With the Tragic Flaw

Louis Sockalexis broke a different color barrier in baseball 50 years before Jackie Robinson started for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

He was a red man. And unlike Jackie Robinson, he couldn’t handle the taunts and insults, the war whoops in the stands and the racial jeers.

Sockalexis had a sensational start to his Major League Baseball playing career, dubbed a ‘wonder’ and ‘the most talked about’ young player on his team.

But he would only play 97 games in the Major Leagues, spend time in jail and die young.

After his playing days ended, he was arrested for vagrancy in Holyoke, Mass. Unshaven, with toes protruding from his shoes, he explained his downfall:

They liked me on the baseball field, and I liked firewater.

Louis Sockalexis

On Oct. 24, 1871, Louis Francis Sockalexis was born a member of the Penobscot tribe in Old Town, Maine, where both money and jobs were scarce. He was the son of Francis Sockalexis, a logger who became governor, or chief, of the Penobscot tribe, and Frances Sockbeson Sockalexis. He grew to six feet tall and excelled at sports.

Sockalexis at Holy Cross

In the summer of 1894, Louis Sockalexis played outfield for a baseball team sponsored by the Poland Spring Resort. One of his teammates was Mike ‘Doc’ Powers, a summer visitor to Maine and captain of the baseball team at the College of the Holy Cross. He persuaded Louis, a Catholic, to enroll in the Jesuit school.

He tried out for Holy Cross’s baseball coach, Jesse Burkett, a future Hall of Famer who played for the Cleveland Spiders. Burkett offered the 24-year-old Sockalexis a full scholarship. He rewarded Burkett with outstanding play for two seasons, batting over .400. He once stole six bases in a game against Brown and is credited with setting a world’s record for the longest baseball throw – 138 yards.

Burkett moved to Notre Dame, and Louis Sockalexis followed him. In the spring of 1897, Burkett helped him get a contract with the Cleveland Spiders.

He made a splash.

Deerfoot of the Diamond

“I unhesitatingly pronounce him a wonder,” former New York Giants Manager John Ward told the Sporting Life.

His Indian heritage and outstanding play was catnip for sportswriters. They called him the ‘Deerfoot of the Diamond’ and ‘Chief of Sockem.’

When he hit a game-winning home run for the Spiders’ first victory of the season, a newspaper headline read, ‘Indians Hang One Little Scalp on Their Belts.’

The team went on a tear, led by Sockalexis’ hitting heroics. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported ‘a visibly larger percentage of women than usual’ came to the ballpark when he played. Fans also came to jeer at him with war whoops and war dances.

He cheerfully shrugged off their taunts — he claimed.

Wild Bird

Off the field, Sockalexis liked to drink and carouse at night. A teammate called him a ‘wild bird.’ In early July, a foot injury hampered his play. How he got it is unclear. According to some accounts, he jumped or fell from the second-story window of a brothel. According to others, he injured his foot while running the base paths.

His drinking caught up with him, his play clearly suffered and his boosters in the sporting press turned on him. Suddenly Louis Sockalexis fit all the stereotypes of the drunken Indian. When he made a fielding error, he was called ‘a wooden Indian.’ In late July, the Plain Dealer reported, management couldn’t control him anymore.

Sockalexis’ demeanor changed; he grew angry and sullen. He spent the end of the 1897 season on the bench.

And then he spent most of the 1898 season on the bench.

The 1899 Spiders, worst team ever in baseball. Sockalexis wasn’t good enough for them.

In 1899, most of the Spiders were sold to St. Louis, except Sockalexis. He stayed behind with the Spiders, who won only 20 games that year with a team made up of rejects, prospects and semipro players.

Early in the season, the Plain Dealer reported, ‘the big Indian seems to have come to his senses.’ But then his play quickly deteriorated. On May 13, he twice fell down drunk in the outfield.

The once promising star wasn’t even good enough to play for the worst team in baseball, and the Spiders released him.

Last Years of Sockalexis

Louis Sockalexis played minor league ball for a few months, then dropped out of the game. Over the next two years he was arrested and jailed for drunkenness, public disturbance and vagrancy. He returned to baseball in 1902, playing for a Lowell, Mass., team, and in 1903, playing for Bangor.

He returned to the reservation in Old Town, where he coached teams and piloted a ferryboat. In 1913, he joined a logging team. He died of a heart attack on Dec. 24, 1913, only 42 years old.

The Indians

The evolution of Chief Wahoo

Back then, baseball teams changed their names frequently. The leagues had merged, and Cleveland’s American League team was known as the Naps, after their best player, Nap Lajoie. But Lajoie had been traded, and the team needed a new name. In 1915, the team’s owner asked local sportswriters to come up with one.

They settled on the Indians. Perhaps they remembered that brief period of excitement when Louis Sockalexis made his major league debut nearly 20 years earlier. Perhaps they were thinking of Boston’s miracle Braves, who won the World Series the year before. At any rate, the Indians adopted the image of Chief Wahoo as their logo.

The grinning, dark red caricature has come under criticism recently, much like the name of the Washington Redskins. The team tried to deflect its critics by saying the team was named in honor of Louis Sockalexis.

Louis Sockalexis was voted into the American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000. And in 2021, the Indians changed their name to the Guardians.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Colonial Slade Mill Starts a Spice Empire in Revere, Mass.

When David and Levi Slade went into business with their father at his Slade mill in 1837, they had an idea. In addition to grinding corn and tobacco, why not grind spices – which were mainly sold in bulk and had to be processed at home?

The boys ground a test batch – a half a barrel of cinnamon – and carried it to the markets in Boston. Turned out people liked the labor saving convenience of having spices preground and delivered in small amounts, and the Slades were in a new business.

David and Levi came to the spice business via their father Henry. The Slade’s Mill was on the border of Chelsea and Revere, and it was the surviving portion of the original mill built in 1735 at the request of the citizens of Chelsea. Over the years, the mill changed hands several times and was destroyed by fire, but it always fulfilled its initial mission of standing ready to grind the corn of any citizen of Chelsea. In exchange for grinding the corn, the mill owner received a “Miller’s Dole” – a percentage of the corn he ground.

The Slade Mill

The mill was one of several tide mills dotting the New England coast – an innovation that some say originated in the area. Tide mills worked by using a set of flood gates. When the tide surged in, the flood gates swung open to allow the ocean water to fill the marsh and mill pond. When the tide turned and began to exit the marsh, the gates closed, trapping the water. From this impounded water the mill drew off a steady stream to turn its machinery – similar to the way a mill on a river used the flow to drive its works.

David Slade

In 1775 the mill provided a footnote to the American Revolution. One of the earliest naval engagements of the war took place near the mill, and its gates prevented the British from sailing up Mill Creek and coming within firing range of Chelsea.

Henry Slade had bought into the mill in 1827, and the innovation introduced in his time was the grinding of tobacco into snuff to supplement corn. As Henry’s children David, Levi and Charles took an interest in the business, they – especially David – wanted to let their new ideas and ambition increase the business.

For one year, Henry turned the mill over to the hard-working David, who increased the mill’s profits to $500 until the older generation stepped back in. But soon David took charge again, creating the D & L Slade Co. with brother Levi. It would for more than 100 years turn out spices for New England home and professional kitchens.

Counterfeiting

In popularizing the grinding of spices, Slade actually introduced into the spice trade an expanded opportunity for crooks to begin selling fake spices. Counterfeiting was long a problem with spices, as the legend of the Connecticut nutmeg highlights, because they commanded such handsome prices.

Spices already ground afforded counterfeiters an easier way to profit. Rather than having to fake an actual spice, the counterfeiters could simply adulterate the spice with a filler or other substance when they processed it and boost profits this way.

Slade, with his insistence on purity, turned this practice to his advantage. He used the dependability of his mill and his family’s reputation for honesty as a marketing tool to set the company apart from competitors. From 1850 to the mid-1900s Slade became the largest spice company in New England with trading partners around the world and a factory and offices in Boston.

And Then, Bell’s

In 1918 Slade would make the investment that keeps its legacy alive today. It bought out the Bell’s Seasoning Company. In 1867, William Bell had begun selling his blend of poultry seasoning through his market in Boston. Bell had started as a grocer in Lowell, Mass. before moving south to Boston where he could buy spices directly off the ships arriving in port.

Over the next 40 years Bell continually expanded the popularity of his Bell’s Seasoning – a blend of rosemary, ginger, oregano, sage and marjoram – until his sudden death at age 76. Sensing opportunity, Slade purchased the brand, but wisely did nothing to change the name or formula. Instead, he incorporated Bell’s into his own lineup, which had expanded to baking powders, cumin, pepper and a wide range of spices. The company promoted them in its own cookbook.

The Slade name finally disappeared from the grocery shelves in the 1970s when the Slade family sold the company. Only the Bell’s brand name remains today – touted by a wide range of cooks as still the best poultry seasoning for a Thanksgiving turkey.

The Slade Mill, though, still lives on. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, its owners converted it to apartments in 2004.

Hat tip to: The Spice Mill on the Marsh by Thomas P. Smith. This story was updated in 2022.

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Dr. Calvin Cutter and the New Hampshire Baptists who ‘Murdered’ his Wife

In 1835, the Baptists in Nashua, N.H., grew in numbers so fast they began planning a second church in the city. The pastor was overjoyed that his flock had multiplied so. Calvin Cutter, a young doctor, supported the project enthusiastically.

Before all was said and done, however, the new building would generate such hostility and acrimony that Cutter grew convinced the Baptist Church had killed his wife. He took his grudge against the Baptists on the road and to a bizarre tombstone inscription.

Calvin Cutter

Nashua

Nashua, then called Dunstable, enjoyed a boomtime in 1835. The Middlesex Canal, opened in 1803, allowed the city to trade with the cities and ports of Massachusetts, especially after expansion of northern access to the canal in the 1820s.

New Hampshire producers could easily and affordably export raw materials. But more importantly, to a group of forward-thinking residents, they could now create a manufacturing center along the lines of the prosperous new city to the south, Lowell, Mass.

Powered by the Mine Falls on the Nashua River, Nashua Village was created and a wide variety of industries sprang up almost overnight. The activity brought a great influx of people to the area. Powered by America’s Second Great Awakening, demand grew stronger than ever for new churches, built upon the Baptist and Methodist traditions.

Prior to 1819, establishing a new church was difficult. The laws in New Hampshire allowed the dominant church in a town to tax residents for the construction and maintenance of a church, as well as to pay the salary of a preacher. That meant, for many of the smaller sects, members paid for a church they neither wanted to attend nor support.

The 1819 Toleration Act passed by the New Hampshire legislature put an end to this practice. Churches were all to be treated equally and supported through voluntary contributions.

Calvin Cutter, Baptist

In 1822, a group of industrious men that included the father of the first mayor of Nashua formed a Baptist society. Over the next 10 years, meeting in private homes and other temporary spaces, their numbers grew. Then in 1833 they finally opened the doors of their new church, the First Baptist. Membership would quickly swell to more than 500 members.

With the rapid growth, talk turned to the idea of a Second Baptist church, more conveniently located for some parishioners. Dr. Calvin Cutter, an enthusiastic proponent, readily put up funds for the church.

The Second Baptist Church was erected in 1836 on Chestnut Street at a cost, some said, of $30,000. A congregation of 30 members left the First Baptist Church to launch the new church. The Rev. Dura Pratt of the First Baptist preached the inaugural sermon.

The booming economy of 1836 quickly shriveled, however, with the financial panic of 1837 and 1838. At the startup of the second church, several members did not buy the stock used to raise funds for the building. Dr. Cutter said Pratt and others asked him to borrow money to pay their shares, with the promise that they would pay him in a year’s time.

By the time a year passed, the men refused to pay. They said they never promised the funds in the first place. For Cutter, the loss was steep. His property was seized to pay the loans for the project and he and his wife were excommunicated from the church. The Baptists sold the Second Baptist Church to a Methodist congregation for less than half what it cost to build.

Things Get Nasty

The First Baptist Church, which had taken in those members who had left for the Second, declared that both the Cutters had threatened to destroy the church if they weren’t made whole. Further, they charged Caroline Cutter had lied in church when she read out the charges against the men she said owed the money for the outstanding shares.

The Cutters also brought forth a somewhat more serious charge, as well. Pratt, they said, had bought shares in the church at a discount for himself and resold them at full price to mill girls.

The Death of Caroline Cutter

Caroline Cutter couldn’t handle the stress, according to Dr. Cutter. She died in 1841, only 33 years of age and leaving one young daughter behind.

The Milford Baptists didn’t want to intervene in a dispute with another church and they grew tired of Cutter pestering them and badmouthing the church. One church deacon declared, “they’ve got Cutter down. Best to keep him down.”

Dr. Cutter did not turn the other cheek, however. He published all the allegations in a pamphlet, Murder of Caroline H. Cutter by the Baptist Ministers and Baptist Churches:

In the case of Mrs. Cutter, Pratt and the church intentionally and maliciously destroyed her character and standing in the church and society — they with malicious intent destroyed her peace of mind, her happiness. They thus impaired her health, caused suffering and sickness, and destroyed her life. As their acts were deliberate and malicious, pursued without mitigation or relaxation while she lived, it is as clearly a case of murder as if they had given arsenic to effect their purposes.

Going Public

He took his allegations public further by giving speeches condemning the church, expanding his charges to sexual and political misconduct.

One flyer advertising a speech read:

Baptist Controversy! Progress Reported: This Evening, at the [blank] Hall, There Will be an Exposure of the Cheating, Lying, Condemning Persons Unheard, and Fornication and Adultery Countenanced by the Members of the Nashua Baptist Church … The Secret Doings of D.D. Pratt, in 1837–38, to Break Down the Democratic Party in Nashua, and Charles G. Atherton, Will be Exposed.

Another:

Truth! truth!! “Tell the truth and shame the devil.” At the town hall in [blank] [blank] evening. Dr. Cutter will give his annual exposition of the pious doings of the religious Baptists.

Moving On

After several years, Cutter did move on with his life. He dedicated only a small part of his time to attacking the church and Pratt, who would remain the pastor at the First Baptist Church for 22 years.

In the years after he left Nashua, Cutter would write a textbook, Cutter’s Physiology, used to train students of medicine. It would sell several hundred thousand copies, and Cutter traveled the country lecturing on new techniques in medicine.

Cutter also became an active and outspoken abolitionist who served as a battlefield surgeon during the Civil War. During the battle of Bull Run, his belt buckle was nicked by a shot, and he was briefly taken prisoner.

Throughout his diverse life, however, he never dropped his dispute with the Nashua Baptists. He made sure no one would ever forget it, for he had it chiseled onto his wife’s tombstone:

Caroline H. wife of Calvin Cutter, M.D. Murdered by the Baptist Ministry of the Baptist Church as follows…Sep’t. 28, 1838; aged 33She was accused of lying in church meeting by the Rev. D. D. Pratt and Deacon Albert Adams Was condemned by the church unheard. She was reduced to poverty by Deacon William Wallace When an ex parte council was asked of the Milford Baptist Church, by the advice of their committee, George Raymond, Calvin Averill, and Andrew Hutchinson They voted not to receive any communication on the subject. The Rev. Mark Carpenter said he thought as the good old Deacon said, “We’ve got Cutter down and it’s best to keep him down.” The intentional and malicious destruction of her character And happiness as above described destroyed her life. Her last words upon the subject were “Tell the Truth and The Iniquity will come out”

You can find it in the Elm Street Cemetery in Milford, N.H.

This story was updated in 2022.

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In 1915, Independence Day Was Americanization Day

“What is Americanization?” Future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis posed the question to a packed audience at Faneuil Hall in Boston marking the country’s first Americanization Day on July 4, 1915.

Nearly two decades of increasing immigration caused the attempt to crowd out Independence Day with Americanization Day starting in 1915. The influx of immigrants, largely from southern and eastern Europe, had been a sore spot for many Americans.

Laborers perceived that wages were being held down by the influx of non-Americans. Businesses feared immigrants might help increase acceptance of socialism, and they worried that factory production was suffering because immigrant workers were not fluent in English.

Americanization Day

This stew of issues and ideas was manifesting itself in a number of ways. In 1894, a group of Harvard graduates formed the Immigration Restriction League. This group lobbied for restrictions on immigrants in terms of raw numbers, and in terms of who could enter the country. It wanted literacy tests as a condition of admission.

The Boston-based group blamed “Jews, Jesuits, and Steamships” for thwarting its efforts to slow immigration.

Later, the North American Civic League for Immigrants grew out of the Young Men’s Christian Association in 1907. It rapidly expanded outside New England to New York and other growing industrial cities. The group morphed into the Committee for Immigrants in America, which found support from business leaders.

Rather than focusing on limiting immigration, the CIA focused its efforts on training and educating immigrants and assimilating them. In 1912, the issues of immigrant assimilation got a boost from the Bread and Roses Strike in Lawrence, Mass.

The Bread and Roses strike.

The textile mills reduced salaries, driving the largely immigrant workforce into the welcoming arms of the labor movement while highlighting the plight of immigrant workers.

Against this backdrop, the CIA in 1915 decided to establish a campaign to unify new and old Americans. So it chose the Fourth of July celebrations as a venue. Long a raucous celebration, the Americanization Day movement set about to reshape the day around themes of immigrants embracing American culture.

Across the country, immigrants and nonimmigrants gathered to sing patriotic songs, recite the Pledge of Allegiance and listen to speeches.

Brandeis

Louis Brandeis in 1915 was then well-known as a reformist lawyer and the son of immigrants. He delivered the keynote speech. on Americanization in Boston, explaining what Americanization Day meant. Immigrants, Brandeis insisted, needed more than just the freedom afforded Americans. They also needed access to education, good wages and leisure time.

Louis Brandeis

He also took the opportunity to argue for immigrants’ right to retain some of their cultural independence from their home countries. By saying so, he gave a nod to his personal affection and support for Zionism.

Americanization Day did not take hold, though the sponsoring organizations and industrialists carried on their work. In some places, it morphed into Loyalty Day, still celebrated in Rutland, Vt.

Efforts continued in other ways to Americanize immigrants, such as English and citizenship classes. The debate over immigration, meanwhile, took new shapes, both peaceful and not peaceful.

This story was updated in 2021.

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