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Manchester Vt.

Six (And More) Mothers Who Left a Mark on History

Mothers have always had to balance competing demands, and some of those who did it best made history.

Mindful that Mother’s Day is around the corner, we bring you more than six New England mothers who left a mark on the region.

They include an African-American inventor from Connecticut, a Chinese-American laundress from Maine, a magazine editor from New Hampshire, a midwife from Vermont and a character from a widely-read book who was quite different from her popular image.

Mothers of Invention

Sarah Boone

On May 15, 1809, Mary Dixon Kies of Killingly, Conn., won a patent for her technique of weaving silk thread into straw to make straw hats — becoming the first woman in the United States to receive a patent. President James Madison signed Kies’ patent, and First Lady Dolley Madison wrote to congratulate her.

The people of Connecticut have been unusually inventive ever since David Bushnell invented a submarine for George Washington called The Turtle. Connecticut women – 44 of them – were among the 5,578 Connecticut inventors who obtained U.S. patents in the century after the U.S. Patent Law was passed in 1790.

From 1876 through 1890, the U.S. Patent Office ranked Connecticut first in inventions per capita every year but three, when Connecticut came in second.

At the 1876 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, the Connecticut Women’s Building featured 69 inventions by women, including Catherine Griswold’s skirt-supporting corset, Mary Ann Boughton’s cooking stove, Ann Harrison’s sleigh bells and Ellie Sperry’s check punch for banks.

Connecticut-born Eliza Murfey, a physician, took out at least 23 patents between 1870 and 1875 for railroad packings, used to lubricate rail-car axles to prevent derailments.

Sarah Boone, an African-American woman, received a U.S. government patent for an ironing board in 1892. She was born in Mississippi sometime around the end of the Civil War and moved to New Haven.

People had ironed on boards placed between two supports. Boone designed a hinged board with curved ends, making it possible to iron sleeves and dresses. She died in 1900, eight years after she obtained her patent.

Connecticut was still a leader in inventiveness in 2015, when it ranked eighth in the United States for total patents awarded.

Today you can see straw hats made by Mary Kies at the Bugbee Memorial Library in Killingly, Conn., as well as at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford.

Mother of the Year

Toy Len Goon receiving the Maine Mother of the Year Award.

Toy Len Goon was born Sept. 21, 1891 in a mud brick hut to peasant farmers in Guangdong Province. It was a far cry from the White House, where she would meet First Lady Bess Truman.

As a child she did backbreaking farm chores until the family’s land could no longer support all six children. At 10, Toy Len was given to a wealthy merchant family, where she worked as a servant and babysitter. They treated her kindly. At 12 she went to a girls’ school to learn to be a good Chinese wife.

She married Dogon Goon, who had been working in a laundry in Portland, Maine. In 1917 he was arrested as an illegal resident. He had to pay $1,500 in bail and to serve in the armed forces during World War I to avoid deportation. He was wounded and returned an amputee.

He went back to China to marry Toy Len. When his new bride arrived in Portland, she spoke no English. She worked in the laundry with Dogon. Over the next 13 years, they had eight children.

She managed to save $500 for a down payment on a three-story building in which they lived and started their own laundry.

Dogon died of gangrene in 1952, and Toy Len was left with eight children ages three to 16. She kept the laundry going and made sure all her children got educations, refusing offers to put them in foster care. All did well academically.

In 1957, a local newspaper reported her son Carroll was a physician, Richard a businessman, Edward a research chemist, Albert a lawyer, Josephine a mother, Arthur, a Navy veteran, studying electrical engineering. Doris was a court reporter and Janet a college student

When asked how she did it, Toy Len Goon said, “If there is harmony in the family, there is good in the larder and peace in the country.”

Toy Len Goon was named Maine Mother of the Year in 1952 by the American Mothers Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation. Then she won the national competition.

There were political motives for selecting her. At the height of the Cold War, she represented the superiority of democracy over communism as a Chinese immigrant small business owner and mother.

The week she took off to receive her award was her only vacation. She visited the White House where she met First Lady Bess Truman, and she was honored with a parade in New York’s Chinatown.

Shortly after receiving the award, she moved to Lynn, Mass., to be closer to her children. She died at the age of 101 in 1993.

You can see Toy Len Goon’s former laundry at 615 Forest Ave. in Portland and, while you’re at it, take Mom to the Great Lost Bear nearby for dinner.

Mother Goose

Mary Goose tombstone

Mary Goose, buried in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground, is often called the Mother Goose whose nursery rhymes have entertained children for centuries.

There’s a little bit of truth to the story – but just a little. The name ‘Mother Goose’ had been around since at least the 17^th and possibly the 10^th century in Europe.

In colonial Massachusetts, Mary Goose, born Mary Balston, married a wealthy landowner named Isaac Goose. They had 10 children. Mary died in 1690, and Isaac then married Elizabeth Foster of Charlestown, and they had six more children. They named one of their daughters ‘Elizabeth.’

In 1715, the younger Elizabeth Goose married a Boston printer named Thomas Fleet – by none other than Cotton Mather.

They had a son, which delighted Fleet’s mother-in-law. “Mother Goose, like all good grandmothers, was in ecstasies at the event; her joy was unbounded; she spent her whole time in the nursery, and in wandering about the house, pouring forth, in not the most melodious strains, the songs and ditties which she had learned in her younger days, greatly to the annoyance of the whole neighborhood–to Fleet in particular, who was a man fond of quiet. “

Fleet tried to quiet his mother-in-law, but failed. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, he decided, and in 1719 he published a book of nursery rhymes called Songs for the Nursery; or, Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children. It was a clever use of his mother-in-law’s name. In 1697, a French writer named Charles Perrault published a book called Contes de ma Mère L’Oye, or Tales of My Mother Goose.

By 1833, a copy of Fleet’s book survived and was republished as The Only True Mother Goose. A century later, Mary Goose was promoted as the real Mother Goose to attract tourists to the Granary Burying Ground — as if the graves of Paul Revere, John Hancock and Sam Adams weren’t enough.

The Granary Burying Ground is at Tremont & Bromfield Streets in Boston.

Mother of Thanksgiving

Sarah Josepha Hale

Sarah Josepha Hale, born Oct. 24, 1788, in Newport, N.H., influenced American fashion and taste as long-time editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the biggest women’s magazine before the Civil War.

She’s been described as a cross between Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. Sarah Josepha Hale made popular the Christmas tree, the white wedding dress and the Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie.

We might not celebrate Thanksgiving at all were it not for her. Before the Civil War, there were only two national holidays: Washington’s Birthday and Independence Day. Thanksgiving was only celebrated in New England, and each of the six states scheduled its own date to celebrate from October through January. Hale wrote letters to five presidents and editorials in her magazine urging Thanksgiving be celebrated as a national holiday. Finally Abraham Lincoln acquiesced, thinking the holiday would help unify the nation after the Civil War.

Among her many accomplishments are the poem Mary Had a Little Lamb and dozens of books. She helped with the founding of Vassar College, the restoration of Mount Vernon and the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. The Richards Free Library in Newport bestows the annual Sarah Josepha Hale Award on a New England writer. The first honoree was Robert Frost in 1956; poet Sharon Olds won it in 2016.

The Rising Sun Tavern, her father’s establishment and the site of her wedding, is located two houses north of the south Congregational Church in Newport, N.H. The Richards Free Library is at 58 N. Main St. in Newport. The New Hampshire Historical Society sells Sarah Josepha Hale bobblehead dolls online and at its museum store at 30 Park St. in Concord.

Mother of Industrial Psychology

Lillian Gilbreth

Lillian Gilbreth had 12 children, and two of them in 1948 wrote a book about her called Cheaper By the Dozen. The book described how she and her husband, Frank B. Gilbreth, used the time-and-motion principles they taught industrial clients to manage their large household.

She hated the book, which depicted her as a sweet, stay-at-home mom. She was anything but. Lillian Gilbreth was the prototypical working mom, balancing marriage, career and family.

It wasn’t easy to tell where the management company ended and family life began.

They turned their home near Brown University into a laboratory for motion study. The Gilbreths took photos of their children doing dishes to figure out how to do it faster. They spent a vacation on Nantucket finding the best way to pack soap for Lever Brothers.

The children listened to language lessons on the Victrola while taking baths, and learned Morse code after Frank painted the symbols on their walls and ceilings. He left funny messages in code for them to decipher.

Though Frank hadn’t gone to college, she held a doctorate from Brown. She was a pioneer in incorporating psychology in industrial planning and one of the most influential women in America.

She is credited with developing the modern kitchen, conceiving the ‘work triangle’ and inventing the foot pedal trash can, refrigerator door shelves and wall light switches.

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth ran an industrial psychology consulting firm, headquartered in Providence from 1912-19.

Frank died in 1924, but Lillian continued the company until her retirement in 1968, just before she turned 90.

You can still see the New England Butt Company building at 304 Pearl St., where the Gilbreths pioneered the first process flow charts and micromotion studies, or Brown University, where Lillian obtained her PhD in Applied Management. The family lived a half block from Brown, first at 71, then at 77 Brown Street. The Gilbreths’ Nantucket cottage, which had two buglights on the property, was on the extension of Hulbert Avenue behind the Jetties Beach tennis courts.

Mother Myrick

Taconic Mountains

Mother Myrick is both a 3,290-foot-high mountain and a candy store in Vermont. Not much is known today about the original Mother Myrick, but in the late 18^th century she was well respected by the locals.

Mother Myrick lived in Beartown, a now-abandoned settlement on the mountainside. She was a skilled midwife and healer, much like Maine’s Martha Ballard. She had many patients, according to local lore, which is how the mountain was named after her.

Mother Myrick Mountain, part of the Taconic Range, rises to the west of Manchester, Vt. It is covered with a stand of a rich natural hardwood forest, part of the Equinox Highlands.

Mother Myrick’s Confectionery is located nearby in Manchester Center. It began as a small fudge shop in 1977, selling buttercrunch toffee, caramels and chocolates. Today Mother Myrick’s makes cakes, tarts and breads. They offer free shipping for Mother’s Day on their signature Lemon Lulu Cake and Spring Celebration Bread.

Mother Myrick’s Confectionery is at at 4367 Main Street in Manchester Center, Vt.

Images: Mother Goose gravestone By Swampyank at en.wikipedia – Own workTransferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Mutter Erde using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4904213

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Six Historic Wealthy Enclaves – And the Scandals They Spawned

Face it, people who have a lot of money like to be around other people who have a lot of money. So they congregate in wealthy enclaves, whether year-round or seasonally. Those places then tend to attract scandal.

There are no shortage of these wealthy enclaves in New England. Here are six of them, and stories of the hijinks, scandal and outright odd behavior that helped make them famous.

Squam Lake

The Shepard Hill Historic District in Holderness, N.H., is one of a number of wealthy enclaves on Squam Lake. Made up of 17 summer retreats built between 1870 and 1921, it was one of the first developed as a summer colony. Those first summer cottagers consisted of wealthy alumni of Yale University. Over time many wealthy Massachusetts and New Hampshire families came to prefer Squam.

Gov. Ezekial Straw

In July of 1947, Squam became the center of national attention. Harry Ellis Straw owned a cottage on the lake. Straw was a wealthy Manchester, N.H. banker, grandson of New Hampshire mill owner and Governor Ezekial Straw. His adopted daughter Anne was a senior at Smith College.

Missing

On July 21, 1947 Anne disappeared from the Straw summer cottage. Anne was beautiful and, what’s more, rich. Due $7 million, the heiress’ disappearance shocked the state and the country. Police first suspected the obvious. A boat that Anne had been using was found adrift. Police called in a team from the U.S. Navy. Boats crisscrossed the entire surface of Squam for signs that she had drowned. Divers searched the bottom. But they found nothing and police announced they had ruled out drowning.

Anne had high spirits, and friends suggested she might have eloped or simply run away on a lark. Police theorized she might have been kidnapped. On July 28, police took a call: “I am Anne Straw. I am not dead or missing and I do not want to be annoyed by any further publicity,” the caller said.

Police tried to keep her on the phone to trace the call. She needed to contact her parents, the police told the caller. “All right. Goodbye,” she said, hanging up.

The search for Anne would continue far and wide until August of 1948 when two boys fishing snagged their line on a piece of red and black cloth. It was the pajamas Anne Straw had been wearing when she disappeared. Police recovered the body and learned the obvious truth. She had simply drowned a year earlier.

Manchester Village

Vermont’s Manchester Village dates to 1761, and early on it served as a crossroads town for travelers. Manchester Center replaced the village as the focus of economic activity following the American Revolution. Charles F. Orvis, however, saw potential for the village as a destination for vacationing New Yorkers. In the late 1800s it developed a thriving collection of cottagers.

Newspaper cartoon making fun of Daddy Browning and Peaches.

Then (and now) the Equinox House served as a centerpiece for much of the village summer activity. Among the many people who stayed there was New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Powell was black, but with light skin (the relevance of that will become apparent). He worked there in the summer of 1926 as a bellhop.

His memoir paints pictures of the colorful hotel scene. Among the regulars in the dining room was Robert Todd Lincoln who maintained a mansion at Hildene up the road. He wrote:

The son of Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln, drove up to the Equinox House nightly for dinner. He hated Negroes, and whenever a Negro put his hand on the car door to open it, Mr. Lincoln took his cane and cracked him across the knuckles. The manager asked me if, at a special increase in salary, I would take care of Mr. Lincoln’s car each night when it arrived. So promptly every day, when Robert Todd Lincoln’s chauffeured car rolled up with the son of the former President of the United States, I, whose father had been branded a slave, would open his door. And Mr. Lincoln, looking at my white hand, was satisfied. For this service I received $1 a day and $10 a week from the inn’s management.

Another of Vermont’s wealthy enclaves: Hildene.

Daddy Browning and Peaches

Powell was fortunate to be working at the Equinox when two more notorious guests arrived: Daddy Browning and Peaches.

Daddy Browning was 51-year-old New York developer Edward Browning. Peaches was 15-year-old Frances Belle Heenan. Daddy and Peaches met at a sorority meeting for girls in New York. In addition to being a millionaire, Daddy had a wide reputation as a pervert with an interest in young girls.

Peaches’ parents encouraged her daughter’s relationship with Daddy, and the two began dating all over New York City. The story prompted outrage. With decency leagues hot on their tracks, Peaches (with the blessing of her parents) married Daddy. The two lived with Daddy’s pet duck and Peaches’ mother.

Good for a C-Note

In 1926, the pair came to Vermont to avoid some of the mobs who had set on them in New York. Powell recalled it took an entire day for him and another bellhop to unload and unpack the four trunks and 26 pieces of luggage that the two brought with them.

The Equinox Hotel today

For their trouble, Powell recalled, Daddy had given Peaches a $100 bill to tip the bellhops with when they were done. Peaches tried to distract the boys by opening her robe and flashing them while she passed them a $10, but they insisted on the full $100.

Nevertheless, Powell recalled that they were good guests on the whole:

Sometimes he would give me $20 to get him cigarettes and sometimes $1 for working all night, serving at a party. But I never minded his capriciousness because at the end of the week he was always good for about $100.

By October their relationship had soured and they appeared in court for separation (divorce was only allowed in cases of infidelity). Peaches lost her bid for alimony, though she did develop a stage career. Two husbands later she finally got her due when Daddy died in 1934, and she won an interest in his estate.

Bar Harbor

Harbor Lane-Eden St. Historic District is one of the remaining wealthy enclaves belonging to Bar Harbor, Maine. It consists of 10 properties, nine of which include a surviving estate house and a historic wharf. The College of the Atlantic owns four buildings, now part of its campus.

Map of Bar Harbor

In its heyday, Mount Desert in Maine boasted hundreds of “cottages.” The island developed its reputation as a destination for the wealthy in 1840s when artists began visiting to paint its lofty peaks and scenic ocean vistas.

You’d need a book to tell all the scandals that touched on the tiny Maine peninsula ,home to the Acadia National Park and Bar Harbor. But one scandal played out at the mansion known as Anchorage (later Anchorhold) that dates to 1885 in the Harbor Lane Historic District.

Two Wealthy Enclaves

Rotten Row, the coach road in Hyde Park in London reserved for royalty, was the nickname given to High Street in Bar Harbor because J.P. Morgan – America’s answer to royalty – kept several of his mistresses there over the years.

J.P. Morgan in a retouched photo

Morgan inherited a small fortune from his father and turned it into an enormous fortune. His wealth placed him notoriously above the rules that governed most people. Bar Harbor and Newport, in their heydays, attracted much the same crowd. But they were very different places. In a nutshell, the summer guests at Newport cleaved closely to the traditions of society in New York and Philadelphia. Love was more openly in the air in Bar Harbor.

Edith Randolph

In 1890, Edith Randolph was Morgan’s primary lover. She also needed a husband — a wealthy one. Newspapers described Mrs. Randolph, who would soon own the Anchorage, as “popular in society.”

Lacking money of her own after the death of her first husband, she had started a flirtation with William Whitney, former secretary of the Navy. His wife, however, put a quick end to that. And so she strayed over to Morgan.

Edith insinuated herself into Morgan’s circle, even accompanying the family to his son’s funeral. But generally Morgan kept the Atlantic Ocean between Edith and his wife. While his wife was in Europe, he would visit Edith in New York or Bar Harbor and vice versa.

“About Mrs. R”

But Morgan had gotten lax, and Edith was hanging around while his wife was in town too often. Hence the wife’s notation in her diary: “Spoke to P. about Mrs. R.”

Morgan would have to break away from Edith. Edith needed a husband – a wealthy one. But fortune finally smiled on this unhappy threesome. It came in the form of the death of William Whitney’s complaining wife.

Bar Harbor from Bar Island. The town was once filled with wealthy enclaves.

One day, J.P. Morgan, William Whitney and Edith Randolph sailed off Acadia. Somewhere along the line Morgan passed the widow back to Whitney. The two married in St. Saviour’s Church in Bar Harbor in 1896. One gossip columnist reporting on the wedding noted, with some snark, that he was surprised to see Mr. and Mrs. Morgan not on the guest list.

Edith would suffer an unfortunate fate. Just two years after her marriage to Whitney, Edith was riding a horse in a fox hunt in South Carolina when she misjudged the height of a bridge. Her horse thundered under the bridge and bounced poor Edith’s head off the undercarriage, costing her both any chance at victory in the hunt and the use of her extremities.

Nook Farm

Nook Farm in Hartford is one of those wealthy enclaves that once attracted creative types. A neighborhood in the Asylum Hill section, it developed into a sort of colony for well-to-do writers beginning in 1858. John Hooker and Isabella Beecher Hooker, the founders, built a house there. And so did Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain as well as journalists, feminists, spiritualists, painters and activists.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

With the houses’ doors open to all, the community percolated with political discussion and, occasionally, scandal.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, of course, wrote the 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. For all the fury and social change that book helped cause, another book dragged Stowe personally into scandal.

Lady Byron

In the 1850s, Stowe had gotten acquainted with Anne Isabella Byron — Lady Byron — who had been married to British Poet George Gordon Byron. Lord Byron’s poetry was well-known and celebrated. Less spoken about was his proclivity for having sexual dalliances with anything that moved — including his half-sister.

Lady Byron

In 1869, Lady Byron, who had died in 1860, had been cast in a recent book as cold and calculating. Before her death, Lady Byron had unburdened herself to Stowe, telling all about her husband’s abusive and lying ways and his vast sexual indiscretions.

Stowe decided to set the record straight. She penned a defense of Lady Byron and submitted it to the Atlantic. With its level-headed editor away in Europe, and after much deliberation, the magazine published the article. The issue sold out, but the magazine’s readers left in droves.

They were shocked the magazine would print such filth, and disgusted with Stowe for producing it.

Undeterred, Stowe turned the article into a book: Lady Byron Vindicated. She claimed not to have read all the condemnations she received in the press, though she certainly knew of them.

Hunnewell Estates

In Wellesley, Mass., the Hunnewell Estates Historic District is one of those family-style wealthy enclaves. The Hunnewell and Welles families built the properties, and their descendants still occupy many of them.

Horatio Hollis Hunnewell did much to establish the district. He married into the wealthy Welles family, and then increased its wealth as a railroad man in the 1800s.

Hunnewell Gardens, one of Greater Boston’s wealthy enclaves

He was a great benefactor to the town of Wellesley and many institutions. As his wealth and family expanded, he built enormous homes for many of his children so his family would surround him.

HH’s namesake son, Hollis Hunnewell, livened up the family story. His life’s adventure carried an object lesson: If you intend to sleep around, better not marry a woman who enjoys punching people in the face.

Young Hollis lost his parents at a relatively young age. His father died when he was 14 and his mother when he was 20.

Armed with a Harvard degree, a sizeable fortune and connections throughout Boston, Newport and New York, young Hollis stole the heart of Maud Somerville Jaffray. Though not as wealthy as the Hunnewells, Maud’s family was well-to-do, and they encouraged their iconoclastic daughter in her wide range of athletic pursuits. At six feet tall, she could play tennis, ride horses, fence and box — and she could do them all well.

Marriage(s)

The couple married in 1891. The marriage then blew up 10 years later when Maud filed for divorce. She didn’t do it quietly. Newspapers repeated the charges against Hollis: infidelity, continual drunkenness and abusive behavior.

Maud had moved out. Newspapers uncharitably described her as “an Amazon.” In 1903, divorce secured, Maud married John Stansbury Tooker in Newport. Society raised its eyebrows, and one observer noted: “It was not a surprise.” Hollis, for his part, declined comment on his wife’s living arrangements during the divorce.

Newspapers again took note of Hollis’s second rush down the aisle at the end of 1903, commenting on the odd mating habits of the wealthy. Less than 50 minutes after learning that her divorce was final, Mrs. Arthur T. Kemp married Hollis and rushed from Newport to Wellesley. The news accounts noted that despite the divorce, Arthur and Hollis remained friends.

For his second wife, the press noted, Hollis had chosen a much smaller, demure woman.

Peace Dale

Peace Dale in South Kingston wasn’t so much about a group of families as it was about one family: the Hazards. South Kingston industrialist Rowland Hazard founded the village around 1800 and named it in honor of his wife, Mary Peace Hazard. For four generations, the Hazards made Peace Dale a harmonious and attractive community largely supported by the Hazards’ woolen mill and investment prowess.

Political cartoon about the Credit Mobilier scandal

Rowland’s son Rowland and his brother Isaac took over the mill, and leadership of the town, by the 1840s. Rowland, Jr., was probably best known for his political pursuits. A vehement opponent of slavery, he saw no reason not to mix politics and business.

In 1865, Rowland and Isaac invested several hundred thousand dollars in a finance company called Credit Mobilier of America. The company was an ingenious instrument established to finance the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad from Missouri to California.

At its heart, the arrangement was a simple scam. Union Pacific sought bids for work on the railroad paid for by taxpayers. It then hired itself to perform the work at inflated prices. Credit Mobilier and its investors provided the financing and were paid back from the overpriced contracts. If the Union Pacific failed, the railroad defaulted on its payments to the government. Its investors were shielded.

Peace Dale Congregational Church

Credit Mobilier Scandal

This system worked fine for all involved, until a sudden shift occurred. To make up for a shortage of funds, the Credit Mobilier bank was asked to take shares of the railroad in lieu of payment. Now, suddenly, the investors in Credit Mobilier had an interest in the railroad’s eventual viability. Led by the Hazards and Massachusetts Congressman Oakes Ames, the bank forced out the president of Union Pacific on the basis that he was crooked, and the matter was at loggerheads.

Union Pacific refused to give Credit Mobilier another contract and the bank refused to advance any money to Union Pacific. Faced with the scheme imploding, the two sides – after much arguing – agreed to put aside their differences for the greater profit and begin working together again. Ames was elevated to head the operation and was to hand out stock to fellow congressmen to keep the federal funds flowing.

Ames was inundated by members of Congress eager for a piece of the action. An investment would double their money with no risk. In one ironic side note, James G. Blaine, Maine’s notoriously corrupt representative in the House and later Senate, apparently saw how many ways this deal could go wrong. He passed up the chance to buy in. But it did him no good. He was erroneously accused of being an investor when the scandal flew apart in a long and painful congressional investigation.

In Defense

For his part, Hazard managed to avoid further disasters by refusing at one point to accept the role of president of Credit Mobilier himself. He published a long defense of his involvement; his arguments boiled down to several key points:

Bribery to obtain government support was never proved.
He personally entered into the bank after the bid rigging had taken place
The financing of the railroad was no dirtier than any other
The profits, while generous, were over stated by the critics of the scheme. And profitability didn’t equate to immorality.
The bank would have been a whole lot better off if it hadn’t adopted a scary-sounding, foreign name and instead retained its original name of: “Pennsylvania Finance Company.”

This story about historic wealthy enclaves was updated in 2022.

Images of wealthy enclaves: Equinox Hotel By Rolf Müller (User:Rolfmueller) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1352242. Hildene By Rolf Müller (User:Rolfmueller) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1352185. Bar Harbor By Brian W. Schaller – Own work, FAL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=85560366. Peace Dale Congregational Church By JacobKlinger – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21811504.

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How Alcoholics Anonymous Got Started in Manchester, Vt.

When the first airplane landed in Manchester, Vt., in 1929, two drunks tumbled out of the cockpit and lay on the ground. The pretty Vermont town would within five years become the center of the coincidences that led to the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Bill W., the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous, grew up seven miles away and attended high school in Manchester. His wife, who founded Al-Anon and Alateen, summered in Manchester. So did Ebby T., who sponsored Bill W. So did Rowland H., who sponsored Ebby T.

Bob S., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, is usually described as an Akron doctor, but he grew up in St. Johnsbury, Vt., 100 miles north of Manchester.

So it’s unsurprising that Alcoholics Anonymous preaches that there are no coincidences – they are simply God’s way of staying invisible.

Before Alcoholics Anonymous

Rowland Hazard passport photo

Rowland Hazard III was a scion of a prominent Rhode Island family that included a founder of Brown University, founders of textile fortunes, a philosopher, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Matthew and Oliver Hazard Perry. His Aunt Caroline Hazard was president of Wellesley University. His family ran the Peace Dale Manufacturing Company and the Solvay Process Co.

Rowland was born in 1881 in Peace Dale, R.I., the village founded by his family, now on the National Register of Historic Places.

He was a drunk through middle age. To cure his alcoholism, he went to Switzerland to consult famed psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung told him he was beyond a medical cure and needed a ‘vital spiritual experience.’

In 1931, Hazard went to a meeting in New York of the Oxford Group, a Christian fellowship group dedicated to the four absolutes: honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. The group preached personal change through confidence, confession, conviction, conversion, and continuance.

It helped him quit drinking.

Rowland bought a ranch in New Mexico, and from 1932 to 1936 he divided his time between New Mexico and Shaftsbury, Vt., near his family’s summer home in Manchester.

Rowland had a friend who was the son of a judge and a member of the Oxford Group. He told Rowland about a mutual friend who’d been arrested for drunkenness in Bennington, Vt., and faced six months in jail.

Manchester, Vt.

Ebby T.

Edward Throckmorton “Ebby” Thacher was descended from a family that arrived in America in 1635. Thomas Thacher was the first pastor of the Old South Meeting House in Boston. James Thacher was a Revolutionary War surgeon and historian.

Ebby’s grandfather made the family fortune in the railroad car business in Albany, N.Y. His father played golf in Manchester with Robert Todd Lincoln.

Ebby was kicked out of high school and went to work at the family foundry. Ebby lost his job when the foundry closed. The family fortune didn’t disappear, though, until he was in his 40s, so he had no problem finding money to support his habit.

By January 1929, 33-year-old Ebby was living in Albany and drinking with barnstorming pilots. He ran into his high school friend Bill Wilson at a party, and they decided to fly to Manchester the next day. Word spread that the first-ever plane would land in Manchester, and half the town came out to watch.

“All three of us had been pulling on a bottle of liquor,” recalled Bill. They landed on a bumpy meadow. “The delegation charged forward. It was up to Ebby and me to do something, but we could do absolutely nothing. We somehow slid out of the cockpit, fell on the ground, and there we lay, immobile. Such was the history-making episode of the first airplane ever to light at Manchester, Vermont.”

Three years later, Ebby had become the town drunk in Albany and an embarrassment to his brother, the city’s mayor. Ebby moved to the Battenkill Inn in Manchester, Vt., where he spent the next two years becoming that town’s drunk.

He was awaiting trial for drunkenness in Bennington when Rowland Hazard arrived. He asked the judge to bound Ebby over to him rather than send him to jail. The judge agreed. Rowland took Ebby to New York. In November of 1934, Ebby surrendered his life to God at the Calvary Episcopal Church mission. He sometimes fell of the wagon but died sober in 1960.

Bill W.

Bill Wilson

Bill Wilson was born in East Dorset, Vt., in 1895, the son of tavern owners. His mother and father both deserted him, and he was raised by his maternal grandparents.

His grandfather, Fayette Griffith, was a successful small businessman; a cousin became Vermont’s first millionaire. He doted on Bill but pressured him to excel at everything he did. Bill grew up tall, gawky, shy and insecure.

He went to high school in Manchester, where he met Ebby Thacher in 1911. Thacher lived across the street from the Burnhams, a well-to-do family summering from Brooklyn. Bill met Dr. Clark Burnham’s daughter Lois while sailing on Emerald Lake.

Two years later they were married. “She had social graces of which I knew nothing,” he said. “People still ate with their knives around me, the back door step was still a lavatory.”

Bill spent three years at Norwich University and then officers training school. He was called up and took his first drink while stationed in New Bedford, Mass.

He moved to New York, where he became a successful stock speculator on Wall Street. During the 1920s, he drank heavily – sometimes with Ebby.

Bill’s drinking ruined his career. By 1932 he was a hopeless drunk, though Lois stood by him.

Ebby, newly dry, visited him and told him about the Oxford Group. It didn’t help. In 1933, Bill was admitted to the Charles B. Towns Hospital for Drug and Alcohol Addictions – for the fourth time — with delirium tremens. He expected to die or go insane.

Ebby visited him and told him to put himself in the hands of God – or some kind of higher power.

As Bill tells the story, he was lying in his hospital bed and shouted, “I’ll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!”

Suddenly he saw a white light and felt ecstasy, then serenity. His doctor said, “Something has happened to you I don’t understand. But you had better hang on to it.”

He never drank again.

Bob S.

Dr. Bob Smith

On May 13, 1935, Bill Wilson took a business trip to Akron, Ohio. It didn’t go well, and he realized he was in danger of relapsing. He called a leader of the local Oxford Group, who put him in touch with a doctor named Bob Smith. Smith invited Bill to stay at his house and quit drinking for a month.

Smith grew up in St. Johnsbury, Vt., to an old New England family. His very religious parents took him to church four times a week. He vowed he’d never go to church when he grew up.

He began drinking at Dartmouth College and continued during medical school at the University of Michigan. He barely graduated. He drank while running a surgical practice in Akron, Ohio.

His wife got him interested in Oxford Group meetings, but they didn’t help. He checked himself into hospitals and sanitariums more than a dozen times, but couldn’t stop – until Bill Wilson rolled into town.

After a month of sobriety, Bob Smith went to a convention in Atlantic City. There he hit the booze hard. He returned to Akron on June 9, and Bill gave him a few drinks to prevent delirium tremens.

The next morning he drank a beer to steady his nerves for an operation. It was June 10, 1935, the day Bob S. had his last drink. It is celebrated as the anniversary of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Why Alcoholics Anonymous?

The identities of Bob S. and Bill W. were only revealed after their deaths, in 1960 and 1971, respectively.

Bill W. explained why anonymity was important to the group. “Anonymity isn’t just something to save us from alcoholic shame and stigma,” he said. “Its deeper purpose is to keep those fool egos of ours from running hog wild after money and fame at AA’s expense.”

When he died on Jan. 24, 1971, he left 475,000 admitted alcoholics, 15,000 Alcoholics Anonymous groups in the United States and 88 countries.

To see Bill discuss alcoholism, click here.

Photos: Bob Smith By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37884612

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The Green Book Guides African-Americans to Safety in New England (and Elsewhere)

African-Americans driving through New England from the 1930s to the 1960s carried the Green Book to guide them to friendly hotels, restaurants and service stations.

It was a time when they might find themselves in sundown towns, which banned minorities from within municipal limits after dark. The practice wasn’t limited to the Jim Crow South — it happened in New England, too.

James Loewen, a historian who researches sundown towns, found evidence of a sign in Connecticut that said, “Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark.”

Always alert to potential embarrassment or danger, African-Americans carried blankets, packed lunch and even toted cans of gasoline when they took to the road.

And they carried the Green Book.

The Green Book

Victor H. Green was an African-American letter carrier in New York City. Among his deliveries were Jewish guides that told Jewish readers what restaurants and hotels didn’t admit them. He asked his colleagues in the postal service to help him by asking around on their routes about good places to stay. He then published the first Green Book in 1936, focusing on metropolitan New York City.

The 10-page book, which sold for 25 cents, included listings for restaurants, service stations, hotels, tourist homes, taverns, liquor stores, beauty parlors, nightclubs, drugstores and tailors.

It included a quotation from Mark Twain on its cover:

Travel is fatal to prejudice.

Expansion

The Green Book expanded over the years to include every U.S. state. It also included advertisements for lodgings, for Ford automobiles and for service stations. During World War II, Victor Green suspended publication, but by 1949 it ran to more than 80 pages.

Esso (now ExxonMobil) promoted the Green Book because of the work of James ‘Billboard’ Jackson, the company’s first black marketing specialist. Esso sponsored the guide, telling its black customers it allowed them to ‘go further with less anxiety.’ African-American drivers could buy the Green Book and get maps at Esso stations. Shell, on the other hand, had a reputation for turning away black customers.

Green’s timing was good. African-Americans were buying cars as soon as they could afford them to avoid the indignities of traveling on trains or buses. The interstate highway system was still in the future, so motorists had to drive through unfamiliar towns where they might not be welcome.

Journalist George Schuyler, a Rhode Island native, explained in 1930,

…all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult.

Obsolescence

Green looked forward to the day people wouldn’t need the Green Book. In the 1949 edition he wrote,

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.

The year the Civil Rights Act passed, 1964, was the Green Book’s last. By then Civil Rights activists demanded equal access and discouraged voluntary segregation.

Jim Crow Bible

Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe

During the Jim Crow era, the Green Book was the Bible of black travel. Today it is a guide to a past that hasn’t completely vanished.

In the 1949 Green Book, for example, listings for the African-American neighborhood in Boston’s South End include eight hotels and guest houses, nine restaurants, a couple of barbers, the Savoy Nightclub (where Malcolm X once shined shoes) and a half-dozen tailors.

Charlie’s, one of the restaurants listed on Columbus Avenue, was where Sammy Davis. Jr., used to tap dance for change as a young boy. Charlie’s, now known as Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe, closed in 2014 but reopened under new ownership.

As New Haven revives the jazz that once made it a mecca for musicians, the 1949 Green Book limns the Dixwell neighborhood where Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday performed. There was the Phillis Wheatley Hotel, the Dr. M.F. Allen tourist home, the Belmont Restaurant, the Elks Nightclub and Lillian’s Paradise.

The Monterey Café, where owner Rufus Greenlee danced with Josephine Baker, lasted long enough to foster New Haven’s Hip Hop scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Providence

Most of the accommodations listed in the Green Book in New England were small hotels and tourist homes owned by African Americans. In cities, they were usually found in marginal or minority neighborhoods.

One notable exception was the Providence Biltmore, an elegant 19-story hotel in the middle of downtown. It was built in 1922 after the Providence Chamber of Commerce campaigned for a signature hotel where people could gather for important civic and cultural events.

The hotel had an open occupancy policy, accepting both black and white guests. But it took a step further by actually paying for a listing in the Green Book. Beginning in 1941, it simply reads, “Biltmore” under the heading “Providence.”

The Providence Biltmore closed in 1975, but reopened four years later after renovation and a landmark designation. It changed hands, underwent another renovation, changed hands again, and was renamed Graduate Providence.

Oak Bluffs

Today, the Town of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard is a resort community visited by such prominent African-Americans as Spike Lee, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In 1956, it provided even more of a reprieve for upper-middle-class African-Americans like Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote speeches on the porch of an Oak Bluffs cottage.

In 1948, Dorothy West wrote a novel about the town’s social life, The Living Is Easy. That year the Green Book listed eight places where cottages could be rented in Oak Bluffs. (You can watch an online documentary about Oak Bluffs for free here.)

The Shearer Cottage on Martha’s Vineyard catered to black vacationers starting in 1912. Charles and Henrietta Shearer built their wooden tourist home in the Highlands area of Oak Bluffs. Charles had been born into slavery but graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia, then worked as a teacher.

Shearer Cottage is still in business and still run by the Shearer family.

Ironically, the Green Book didn’t list the Shearer Cottage until 1963, along with such establishments as Brownie’s Cottage, Cinderella Cottage and Dunmere-By-The-Sea.

Rock Rest

Rock Rest in Kittery, Maine

One New England destination popular among African-Americans did not list in the Green Book: Rock Rest in Kittery, Maine. Clayton and Hazel Sinclair once owned the 2-1/2 story wooden Cape, running it as a guest house from 1946 to 1977. They advertised by sending postcards to their mailing list.

Clayton worked as a chauffeur in New York, Hazel as a ladies’ maid to a family that summered in Maine. When Clayton and Hazel decided to relocate, Clayton found a dilapidated house on Route 103 and Kittery and promised to fix it up. He did, and Hazel’s reputation as a cook drew enough guests to run Rock Rest as a business in the summer. Clayton Sinclair also worked in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Hazel catered in the off season. Today the house is on the National Register of Historic Places. On June 4, 2022, two historic markers were scheduled to be unveiled commemorating Rock Rest.

For an interactive map showing places listed in a 1956 Negro Travelers’ Green Book, click here. View the text of the 1949 Green Book, courtesy The Henry Ford, here.

Photos: Oak Bluffs by Elkman at Wikipedia, Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe by John Phelan at Wikipedia. Rock Rest By Robm154 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35858018.

This story was updated in 2022. If you enjoyed it, you may also want to read about New England’s sundown towns (which only allowed white people to stay after dark) here.

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Epitaphs Tell More Tales in New England’s Graveyards

The epitaphs in New England’s graveyards tell many tales. Carved into the chiseled stone are stories of people who lived long rich lives and babies who breathed only hours; lives tragically cut short by accident or misfortune and lives that grew weary.

Old Town Burying Ground, Sandwich, Mass.

Such a one was Roswell Stowell who died Dec. 2, 1875, age 60, in Chesterfield, N.H. His epitaph reads,

Let no one stand behind my grave,
Now that I am called to rest,
Nor shed a tear that I am gone,
For what I need is rest.

Rest from the weary load of care,
Rest from the wearing pain:
For Death shall ever be to me
An everlasting gain.

I know the road was bright and fair
Or once it seemed to be.
But it has changed so much of late,
It has few charms for me.

Soon Rotten

Mary Fowler probably wouldn’t have appreciated her epitaph upon her death at age 24 in Milford, Conn.

Molly tho’ pleasant in her day
Was suddenly seized and went away
How soon she’s ripe, how soon she’s rotten
Laid in her grave and soon forgotten.

Capt. E. Griffin, 1767, Madison, Conn., lies under this verse on his tombstone:

The Boreas’ blasts and Boistrous waves
Have tost me too and fro
In spite of both, by God’s decree
I harbor here below.

While I do now At Anchor ride
With many of our Fleet
Yet once again I must set Sail
My Admiral Christ to meet.

Another ship captain, Augustus N. Littlefield, who died at 75 in 1878 in Newport, R.I., had something else to boast about. His tombstone reads,

An experienced and careful master
Mariner who never made a call upon
Underwriters for any loss.

Ephraim Wales Bull, who developed the Concord grape, received no rewards for his effort — something his epitaph reflects:

Ephraim Wales Bull
The originator of the Concord Grape
Born in Boston March 4, 1806
Died in Concord September 26, 1895
He sowed, others reaped.

One epitaph in a Boston burying ground recounts the patriotic career of a Son of Liberty:

Here lies buried in a
Stone Grave 10 feet deep
Capt Daniel Malcom Mercht
Who departed this Life
October 23d 1769
Aged 44 Years.

A true son of Liberty
A Friend to the Publick
An Enemy to oppression
And one of the foremost
In opposing the Revenue Acts
On America

Editorializing

This epitaph is an artifact of the baby boom that populated the colonies:

Litchfield, Conn.
Here lies the body of Mrs. Mary wife
Of Dea. John Buel Esq. She died
Nov. 4 1768 AEtat. 90
Having had 13 children
101 grand-children
274 great-grand-children
49 great-great-grand-children
410 Total. 336 survived her.

And in Duxbury, Mass, a gravestone reads:

Asenath
Widow of
Simeon Soule
Died
Feb. 25, 1865
Aged
87 years, 11 mo.
19 days.

The Chisel can’t help her any.

Score-settling epitaphs were not uncommon. In Boston, one gravestone reads:

Here lies ye body of
Mrs. Ammey Hunt wife of
Mr. Benjamin Hunt
Who died Nov. 26, 1769
Aged 40 years.

A sister of Sarah Lucas lieth here,
Whom I did love most Dear,
And now her Soul hath took its Flight
And bid her Spightful Foes good Night.

Childrens’ Epitaphs

The many, many infants who died young sometimes inspired whimsical commentary:

Ezra Thayer Jackson died after 25 days in Plymouth, Mass., in 1783.
What did the Little hasty sojourner
Find so forbidding & disgustful in
Our upper World to occasion its
Precipitant exit.

In Manchester, Vt., a stone marked the grave of three children who died in 1821, 1823 and 1824:

Here in the dust 3 babes we
Sleep by our Father here
our Mother Brothers
Sisters dear have left us
alone to moulder here.

This epitaph was reported in Lincoln, Maine:

Sacred to the Memory of Mr
Jared Bates who Died Aug. the 6^th
His Widow aged 24 who mourns
as one who can be comforted lives
at 7 Elm street this village
and possesses every qualification for a good wife.

Before the American Revolution, epitaphs modeled after the medieval Edward the Black Prince’s were common. They said, essentially, “I may be dead, but you will be too.”

One such example is the tombstone of Daniel Noyes, who died in Newbury, Mass., on March 15, 1716 at the age of 42:

As you were, so was I
God did call and I did dy
Now Children all whos name is Noyes
Make Jesus Christ
Your only choyes.

Read more old New England epitaphs here.

With thanks to Over Their Dead Bodies, Yankee Epitaphs & History, by Thomas C. Mann & Janet Greene. This story was updated in 2022.

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