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Mark Twain

Equity, Maine Meets the New England Divorce Reform League

The New England Divorce Reform League sprang up in the late 1800s in response to a divorce crisis in the country. The Civil War was hard on marriage. Men left their families for long periods. Many returned with mental as well as physical injuries (not to mention sexually transmitted diseases, in some cases). Thatsad state of affairs began showing up in divorce records.

In the years after the Civil War, divorce rates began to skyrocket nationwide. From 1850 to 1880, divorce rates in Massachusetts increased from one in 41 marriages to one out of every 21 marriages. The other New England states showed similar increases.

Divorce Reform

The problem touched off debate about when to allow divorce and when not to. It also raised the question of where people could get a divorce.

Puck cartoon from 1900 highlights the national debate over divorce.

What if a couple resided in separate states? When was a spouse (usually the man) guilty of desertion?

Divorce laws varied widely from state to state. Adultery, abandonment, cruelty and simple incompatibility were all reasons for divorce in certain states. Connecticut maintained what it called an omnibus divorce law, which essentially allowed a judge to grant a divorce for whatever reasons he deemed acceptable. And judges were inclined to grant divorces when lawyers asked for them. The only way to stop a divorce was for one party to contest the divorce – a rare occurrence.

Social critics argued that easy divorce led to casual marriages. The president of Yale College tackled the issue head on. Theodore Woolsey was known more for an interest in international law and Greek, but Woolsey dove into the thorny topic of divorce, publishing essays on the topic in 1868 and 1869. The linchpin of Woolsey’s position was that adultery should be the only acceptable reason for divorce.

In the southern states, the removal of governments following the Civil War brought tremendous changes to divorce customs, as well. In most of the South before the war, an act of the legislature was needed to end a marriage, following Church of England customs. That would change after new reconstruction era governments took power.

The West, meanwhile, had a hodge-podge of divorce laws. Couples often entered into common-law marriages, simply by cohabiting and declaring themselves married. Divorces were often also informal, do-it-yourself affairs.

William Dean Howells

William Dean Howells tapped into the national angst over the state of marriage in 1881 with a best-selling, serialized novel — A Modern Instance. It was the first American novel to examine divorce. In the book, Marcia Gaylord, the most desirable young girl in the fictional town of Equity, Maine, falls for Bartley Hubbard, a thoroughly modern man. The couple then run away from Maine to Boston. In doing so they leave behind the guiding forces of family and religion to live a life governed now by greed and charm. The marriage ends with a divorce. The book leaves Bartley dead and Marcia cloistered, sorrowfully, in her childhood home of Equity.

Howells had come to Massachusetts in 1860 and served as editor for the Atlantic Magazine. He summered in Maine and wrote more than 100 books in his lifetime. His great friend Mark Twain claimed that he was himself the model for Bartley Hubbard. That was something of an insult since Hubbard is an immature, frivolous fellow whose good looks are only rivaled by his scoundrel’s streak.

William Dean Howells

In Howells’ view, the blame for divorce could be placed upon modern capitalism and greed. He also faulted the failure of society to embrace religion and the importance of family and breeding.

Everyone had an opinion on divorce, but divorce rates still escalated. Woolsey, who moved on from Yale, gathered a group of ministers and founded the New England Divorce Reform League.

The goal of the reform league (which later became the National Divorce Reform League) was to establish stricter, standardized laws for divorce across the country. Lobbying in Connecticut had led to the repeal of the omnibus divorce laws, but states elsewhere were still permissive. Indiana, Illinois, South Dakota and Rhode Island had a long history of taking turns becoming divorce mills. They would allowing out-of-staters to come, establish brief residency and win an easy divorce.

Failure

Ultimately, the League failed in its efforts, collapsing in 1908. Historians judge the league and its supporters made a key mistake in tackling the issue. They didn’t recruit feminists to aid their campaign. Women had as big a stake in divorce as men, maybe bigger, but the reform league did not choose to represent women’s interests in their campaigns. The movement came in an era when women were solidifying legal gains that gave married women more rights and greater control over their own property.

Though the league conventions and events were open to women members, it was slow to tackle the divorce laws that favored men in settling financial affairs. Outspoken women activists of the era such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton turned their criticism on the divorce reform movement, helping quell its momentum. She and others did not believe male reformers would adequately protect women’s interests in child custody and property rights, and so the divorce reform movement landed on the scrap heap of history and the quickie divorce survived.

This story was updated in 2022.

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How the Mark Twain Library Started With Books He Defaced

The Mark Twain Library in Redding, Conn., started with 200 books donated by local resident Mark Twain – books he’d scribbled over with comments, praise, criticism and corrections.

Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens

He read widely, which you’d expect from a writer, and his books include novels, biography, poetry, history and adventure.

He donated books he liked, books that didn’t belong to him and books he hated. You might wonder why someone who started a library in his own name would want to fill it with lousy books. But Mark Twain, never short of words, had a reason:

“The exquisitely bad is as satisfying to the soul as the exquisitely good,” he wrote. “Only the mediocre is unendurable.”

The Mark Twain Library

Mark Twain left his house in Hartford in 1891 when he suffered financial reverses. He and his family traveled in Europe, where he raised money lecturing and lived more cheaply. He didn’t return to the house after his 24-year-old daughter Susy died because he couldn’t bear the reminders of her.

Stormfield, Twain’s house in Redding

Two years before he died in 1910, Mark Twain moved to a villa he built in Redding, Conn. He called it Stormfield because his book, Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven, paid for it.

Five months after he moved in, he and his neighbors formed the Mark Twain Library Association. He raised money for it by charging his houseguests to retrieve their luggage. He also prevailed upon them to donate books as well. His daughter Clara, an opera singer, held a benefit concert for the library.

The Mark Twain Library

In classic fashion, Twain announced that a local farmer, Theodore Adams, would donate the land for the Mark Twain Library. Theodore Adams hadn’t actually agreed to donate the land yet, but he did anyway.

Twain’s youngest daughter Jean lived with him in a farmhouse on the Stormfield property. When she died tragically – most likely of an epileptic seizure – Twain sold the land and gave the $6,000 proceeds to build the Jean L. Clemens Memorial Building.

His daughter Clara donated several thousand more books from the family library after Mark Twain died in 1910.

Marginalia

Mark Twain couldn’t keep his opinions to himself, and recorded them in the margins of his books. He disagreed with President William McKinley’s imperialism in a book called The Philippine Problem. The author wrote McKinley became convinced that ‘it was the will of the people’ that the United States “should acquire the Philippines.’ Twain would have none of it. He scribbled, “If McK had opposed it, these empty heads would have applauded that. He put imperialism into them, and they responded.”

Twain mocked a book called Saratoga 1901 by Melville Landon. Calling it ‘The Droolings of an Idiot,’ he noted the stolen jokes throughout and on page 104 wrote, “Hear this humbug, this sham, deliver himself.”

Twain carried on a running debate with a woman named Mary Somerville throughout her memoits. On page 125, the author described how she smuggled some antiquities out of Pompeii. Twain wrote, “Evidently Mrs. S. thinks there are kinds of immorality which are not immoral.”

Grammar

Mark Twain was a stickler for good grammar, and even rectified his friend Rudyard Kipling’s grammatical errors in his books. Robert Louis Stevenson stood corrected by Twain, as well.

He criticizes an author for writing, “A long procession of angelic beings move in procession” by noting sarcastically, “of course a procession moves in procession.”

Lew Wallace, an Autobiography, by the Civil War general who wrote Ben Hur, did not impress Twain. In the inscription, he wrote, “The English of this book is incorrect & slovenly & its diction, as a rule, barren of distinction. I wonder what “Ben Hur” is like.”

What Did He Like?

Not every book donated to the Mark Twain Library contained the author’s acerbic comments. He admired the poet Robert Browning, for example, and he marked up the poems with cues to help him read them for the most dramatic effect.

Twain also liked The Arctic Traveller by Hans Hendrik, an adventure story. “A very valuable book – and unique,” he wrote.

Books that belonged to his daughters had loving inscriptions in them. His daughter Jean loved animals, and his library includes her books about wildlife. Birds of Eastern North America, is inscribed, “To Jean Clemens with her Father’s love.”

The books are still at the Mark Twain Library, but you can see some of his comments here.

The Mark Twain Library can be found at 439 Redding Road, Redding, Conn.

This story last updated in 2022.

Image: Mark Twain Library By Aab254 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71297666.

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Six Presidential Houses in New England

Before presidential libraries, there were presidential houses, and every New England state has at least one.

Massachusetts, of course, was the birthplace of the most presidents: the two Adamses, John F. Kennedy and George H.W. Bush. You could almost count Calvin Coolidge, as he lived in Northampton for years, and even George Washington spent nearly a year in Cambridge as commander in chief of the colonial military.

Coolidge, though, was born in Vermont, and New Hampshire gave us Franklin Pierce. No president came from Rhode Island, though Dwight Eisenhower spent considerable time in Newport. And if it weren’t for the Bushes, Connecticut and Maine would have little claim to presidential roots.

So in celebration of President’s Day, we bring you six presidential houses. If you know of another, please mention it in the comments section.

37 Hillhouse Ave.

37 Hillhouse Ave., where President George W. Bush lived for two years.

The housing shortage after World War II forced Yale University to convert an Italianate mansion into housing for married student veterans. George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara lived there while he studied at Yale and they started their family. George W. Bush lived there until he was two, and then the family moved to Texas.

The elder president had left Yale as a sophomore to serve in the Navy. Of his living conditions, he wrote, “Not to make too much of the postwar housing shortage, but there were a dozen other veterans’ families sharing the house with us — each with one child, except for Bill and Sally Reeder, who had twins. That made 40 in all.”

It couldn’t have been that much of a hardship. Both Mark Twain and Charles Dickens described Hillhouse Avenue as ‘the most beautiful street in America.’

Today, Yale uses the building for its Economics Department.

Walker Point

The main house of the Bush compound at Walker Point.

Americans grew familiar with the Bush compound during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, who held news conferences while staying there. His son, George W. Bush, also stayed at the home during his presidency. So did a half dozen world leaders — and George H.W. Bush’s political opponent, former president Bill Clinton.

The Bush family has used the Walker Point estate since the days of George H.W. Bush’s great-grandparents.

Walker Point juts out into the Atlantic Ocean in Kennebunkport, Maine, and includes a large Shingle Style house, eight other residences, tennis courts, a dock and a sports field. Though the Bushes still own it, tourists enjoy the scenic drive along Ocean Avenue, where they can glimpse the property.

Peacefield

One of many presidential houses in Massachusetts, both Adams lived at Peacefield in Quincy.

Massachusetts has produced more presidents than any other New England state and can claim the most presidential houses: John and John Quincy Adams, who lived at Peacedale in Quincy. John F. Kennedy, of course, was born in Brookline, summered in Hyannis Port and lived in Boston. George H.W. Bush was born in Milton, but his family soon moved to Greenwich, Conn.

Massachusetts also has quite a presidential houses known as summer White Houses. Calvin Coolidge, who lived the greater part of his life in Northampton, spent a summer in Swampscott. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama summered on Martha’s Vineyard. Less well-known summer visitors include Franklin Pierce, who spent time in Andover, Mass., and Grover Cleveland, who vacationed in Marion and Bourne on the South Shore. Cleveland’s summer home in Bourne, Gray Gables, was torn down but rebuilt to resemble the original.

William Howard Taft summered twice in Beverly until his hostess floated her house to Marblehead to discourage him. (She didn’t like the crowds he attracted.)

We won’t even count the presidents who lived in Massachusetts while attending Harvard. Okay, we will: the Adamses, Kennedy, Obama, both Roosevelts and Rutherford B. Hayes.

But since two presidents lived most of their lives in Quincy, we chose Peacefield, the Adams Family homestead. Built by a Loyalist in 1731 and abandoned during the American Revolution, John and Abigail bought the house in 1787. They lived in London at the time, and found the house disappointing when they returned. Abigail said it looked like ‘a wren’s nest.’ But she spent years renovating and expanding it while John attended to his political duties.

John Quincy Adams also lived at Peacefield, as did his son, the statesman Charles Francis Adams and his grandson, historian Henry Adams.

Peacefield today belongs to the U.S. government as the Adams National Historical Park. It comprises 11 buildings, including the birthplaces of John and John Quincy Adams.

For more information, click here.

Franklin Pierce Homestead

The Pierce Homestead, one of two presidential houses in New Hampshire where Franklin Pierce lived.

Franklin Pierce grew up in the gracious home his father built after serving in the American Revolution. He may even have been born there in 1804, the year his father built the house.

Benjamin Pierce had bought 200 acres in Hillsborough, N.H., after the new state turnpike opened nearby. Benjamin Pierce ran a tavern, and on Christmas Eve in 1824 hosted a dinner for 21 Revolutionary War veterans. Franklin probably attended — or helped serve — the dinner. Benjamin Pierce later served two terms as New Hampshire’s governor.

Franklin lived in the family home until for 23 years until 1834, when he married. He had spent seven years away at school, college and law study in Portsmouth.

His wife, Jane Appleton, didn’t like Hillsborough, and they moved to Concord. Benjamin Pierce died in 1839 and left the house to his son-in-law. Franklin’s sister, Elizabeth, married John McNeil, Jr., a general in the War of 1812.

After his disappointing single term as president, Franklin Pierce briefly returned to his childhood home in Hillsborough.

New Hampshire actually has two Franklin Pierce presidential houses: the one in Hillsborough, and the Pierce Manse in Concord, also a house museum. For more information, click here.

Eisenhower House

Eisenhower House, one of Rhode Island’s presidential houses.

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife Mamie summered in Newport, R.I., during his presidency in 1958 and 1960. At first in 1958 he stayed at the Naval War College on Coasters Harbor Island, but he wanted to be closer to the golf course at the Newport Country Club. He moved to a mansion at Fort Adams.

Now called Eisenhower House, it was built in 1873 for Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt, a Civil War artillery officer. The house has stunning views of Narragansett Bay and Newport Harbor.

Another of Rhode Island’s presidential houses, Hammersmith Farm, was the site of John F. Kennedy’s marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier. As president, Kennedy occasionally visited the farm, still in private hands.

Eisenhower House is now part of Fort Adams State Park and available for weddings and social events. For more information click here.

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Birthplace of Calvin Coolidge, one of several presidential houses in Plymouth Notch.

Calvin Coolidge’s birthplace is such a throwback to the way Vermont used to be that some people call it “Vermont’s Brigadoon.” Coolidge cannily used it as a backdrop to hone his image as a thrifty Yankee.

Coolidge was actually sworn in as president of the United States while vacationing at his boyhood home in Plymouth Notch, Vt.

His father, a notary, swore him in at 2:47 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1923, hours after President Warren G. Harding died.

Coolidge often visited his family home, a modest white frame farmhouse in the classic New England style of big house, little house, back house, barn.

The Secret Service detail assigned to him slept in tents on the property and a dance hall nearby served as his office in the summer of 1924.

Today Coolidge’s birthplace and surrounding buildings comprise the Calvin Coolidge Homestead District, which includes the Cilley General Store, the Post Office, the Wilder Restaurant (serving lunch), the church, several barns, the dance hall and the Plymouth Cheese factory. For more information click here.

Click on the image to buy the ebook from Amazon. Paperback version now available.

If you really want to know what a president and first lady were like, find out what they ate. The New England Historical Society’s new book, Eat Like a President, tells you about the six New England presidents, their servants, their families, their friends and how they struggled to make the White House presentable for public entertainment. Click here to buy the ebook; here for the paperback.

Images: Graves-Gilman House By Eumenes12 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5447836. Walker Point, By Zollernalb – own work, eigene Arbeit, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2730841. Franklin Pierce Homestead By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20697770. Plymouth Notch By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34788716. Peacefield by By Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3162095.

This story about presidential houses was updated in 2023.

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Six of New England’s Most Famous Writers Houses

New England is dotted with famous writers houses, a testament to the Puritan ideal of literacy and the region’s many publishing houses.

Some writers, like Rudyard Kipling, were born elsewhere, but wrote prolifically while living in New England. Some, like Robert Frost, made use of their surroundings in their work.

It wasn’t easy to select just six writers houses, one for each state. Some are blindingly obvious, while others may surprise you. All can be visited.

If you know of writers houses worth mentioning, please share them in the comments section.

Mark Twain House

Hartford had the highest per-capita income in the United States in 1871 when newlyweds Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and his wife Olivia moved there to be near his publisher.

Of Hartford, Mark Twain said, “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, this is the chief… You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here.”

In 1873, Twain began building the house described as ‘part Mississippi steamboat, part medieval fortress, part cuckoo clock.’ He lived in the lavish, Gothic Revival mansion for 17 years, the happiest of his life. It was in that house that he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Mark Twain in 1871

He also socialized with the many authors who lived nearby, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, William Dean Howells and Thomas Bailey Aldrich.

Twain made some bad investments and in 1891 moved to Europe where the cost of living was cheaper. He lost more money in 1893 and went on the lecture circuit to earn it back. “The lack of money is the root of all evil,” he wrote.

Daughter Susy died in 1896, and the Clemens couldn’t bear to return to the house. After it was sold, it became a library, an apartment house and a school. The house was going to be torn down, but preservationists saved it in 1929.

The Mark Twain House is now a museum open to visitors.

351 Farmington Ave., Hartford.

Wadsworth-Longfellow House

The Wadsworth Longfellow House in 1910

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, like most Mainers, knew a good story when he heard one. And while his poems have been criticized for pandering to popular sentiment, they were never boring.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Longfellow’s best known home is probably in Cambridge, Mass. There he lived in the same house Gen. George Washington had headquartered while commanding the Continental Army.

The Wadsworth-Longfellow House in Portland, Maine, can lay greater claim to inspiring Longfellow. Portland was where he was born and grew up before heading off to Bowdoin College. And it was where he first would have heard many of the stories that he later immortalized in his poems about New England figures such as Miles Standish and Paul Revere.

Today the house is open as a museum in the heart of Portland.

489 Congress St, Portland.

The Homestead

The Homestead

It isn’t easy to select just one of Massachusetts’ many writers houses, but we chose the one the author rarely left: Emily Dickinson’s The Homestead in Amherst, Mass.

Retouched daguerrotype of Emily Dickinson

The Homestead was built in 1813 by Emily’s grandfather, Samuel Fowler Dickinson. He lost his money and sold the house, but his eldest son Edward bought half of it back in 1830. Emily was born in The Homestead on Dec. 10, 1830.

Edward Dickinson had his own money troubles. He sold his share of the Homestead and moved his family away for 15 years. By 1855 he had earned enough to buy back the whole house. In 1856, Edward began building The Evergreens next door as a wedding gift to his son Austin.

Emily became increasingly reclusive and started to communicate with visitors through closed doors, though she tended the flower garden and visited her brother next door. After she died in 1886, her sister Lavinia found her poems in a locked chest. Austin’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, along with family friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, edited Emily’s poems and took them to a publisher.

Emily Dickinson’s house was home to Lavinia until she died in 1899. Eventually it was sold to the trustees of Amherst College and used for college housing. In 2003, it was combined with The Evergreens as the Emily Dickinson Museum.

Visitors can take guided or self-guided tours through the Emily Dickinson Museum from April through December.

280 Main Street, Amherst, Mass.

Robert Frost Farm

The Robert Frost Farm

Travelers passing through Derry, N.H., can be forgiven for looking at the passing countryside and wondering, ‘Whose woods are these? I think I know.’ For they may be looking at the Robert Frost Farm.

Robert Frost

New Hampshire’s most famous poet lived on his farm in Derry from 1900 to 1911. The farm was a gift of Frost’s father, and the young poet struggled financially while he lived there. He began building a reputation, working the farm by day, writing by night and teaching at nearby Pinkerton Academy.

Frost, it turned out, was a horrible farmer but a wonderful poet. His Derry years shaped many of the works that would later win him fame for their crisp depictions of the New England spirit.

Frost famously read his work at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy and would die at age 88 before the president was assassinated.

The Frost Farm is now open to visitors who may walk the grounds. They can wonder which tree was the inspiration for Tree at My Window and scores of other poems that Frost wrote during his time in New Hampshire.

122 Rockingham Rd, Derry, N.H.

Fort Adams State Park

Fort Adams State Park just barely qualifies as one of the writers houses.

It’s easy imagine that Newport in its heyday might form a lasting impression on a teenage boy arriving in the city from the west, out for the first time on his own.

That certainly was the case with playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. Wilder bunked in the barracks at Fort Adams, serving for three months in the Coastal Artillery Corps, before he headed off to college and on to a successful career.

Thornton Wilder, Yale graduation photo

The plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth earned Wilder Pulitzer Prizes, and his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey won the National Book Award.

For his final novel, Wilder let his mind wander back to 1926 Newport. Theophilius North was his last novel. It chronicled the whimsical adventures of a young man navigating through all strata of Newport society, solving problems for others along the way. Humorous and light, critics praised Wilder’s ability to retain a positive outlook even as his life was winding down.

Wilder would die two years later at his home in Hampden, Conn.

Fort Adams, where he had his short Rhode Island stay, is part of Fort Adams State Park at the mouth of Newport Harbor.

90 Fort Adams Drive, Newport, R.I.

Naulakha

Rudyard Kipling wrote some of his best work while living in Dummerston, Vt.: Captains Courageous, the Jungle Books and a book of poetry that included Gunga Din and Mandalay.

Why Vermont for the British-Indian writer? He loved the fall foliage, the snow and the sound of sleigh bells, and his new wife Caroline Balestier had grown up in Vermont. In 1893, they built a South Asian Indian bungalow in the American Shingle style next to her brother’s home. They called it Naulakha after a book he wrote about a precious Indian jewel. .

The house, which is only one room deep, has views of the Connecticut River and Mount Monadnock.

Kipling in his library at Naulakha

Kipling doted on his two young daughters and wrote prolifically in the seclusion of Vermont. British writer Arthur Conan Doyle brought his golf clubs for a visit and taught Kipling to play the game.

A feud with his brother-in-law drove the Kiplings from Vermont in 1896. The Holbrook family for many years owned Naulakha. Today Naulakha is owned by The Landmark Trust USA, which rents it out to vacationers for about $450 a night.

707 Kipling Road, Dummerston, Vt.

Images: Mark Twain house By Cliff – Flickr: Mark Twain House and Museum, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16488910; Robert Frost Farm By grongar – Robert Frost HouseUploaded by Vux, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13817084; Fort Adams By David (dbking) from Washington, DC, USA – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1468534.

This story about writers houses was updated in 2021.

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The Mark Twain Burglary Goes Comically Awry

The Mark Twain burglary of 1908 is remembered for the witty notice the author tacked onto his dining room door for the next home invader. However, the reminiscences of the burglar – a Mark Twain devotee – had their own entertainment value.

Mark Twain

In the fall of 1908, Mark Twain was a widower with two grown, unmarried daughters. He had just built an Italianate mansion in Redding, Conn., where he enjoyed a respite from his labors in New York City.

Stormfield, Twain’s house in Redding

Henry Williams and his partner Charles Hoffman decided to rob the Twain mansion. On Sept. 17, 1908, they boarded a train from New York for Redding to do just that.

Years later, Williams wrote an account of the botched Mark Twain burglary that was worthy of Twain himself.

Mark Twain Burglary

It was dark, wrote Williams, and when they got off the train at Redding Station they weren’t sure of the way. So they knocked on a farmhouse door to ask directions. Wrote Williams,

This was the first mistake which I made that night. The farmer, seeing that we were strangers, came out and directed us on our way, lantern in hand.

They reached the Twain mansion, where the lights were ablaze, so they waited for it to go dark. Hoffman climbed through an unlocked kitchen window and then opened the door for Williams. “I entered by the front door like a gentleman,” he wrote.

1909 newspaper photo of Isabel Lyon

They found the heavy, old-fashioned oak sideboard where the family silver was kept. On top of it was a brass bowl. Williams put the bowl on the floor, as it had no value to them and they had plans for the sideboard. That was their second mistake.

The sideboard was locked, and they didn’t want to make a noise breaking it open. So they carried the sideboard out of the house and 500 feet down the road, where they broke it open and emptied the silver into a black bag. Then they returned to the house to see what else they could steal:

When we entered the dining room the second time, my partner, walking rather carelessly, stumbled and fell heavily over that brass bowl.

In the stillness of the night it seemed to me as if an earthquake had suddenly struck the house. Such a noise that rolling brass thing made!

Twain’s secretary, Isabel Lyons, came down the stairs and said, “Hello.”

No. 3

Williams and Hoffman turned and ran – and made their third mistake. Had they walked to Danbury, they probably wouldn’t have been caught, he wrote. Instead, they decided to walk to Bethel and wait for the early train to New York. A passenger who had heard of the Mark Twain burglary spotted them in the smoker and, suspecting they were the culprits, notified the sheriff when the train stopped at the next station. There, the deputy sheriff and a posse of farmers had assembled.

Wrote Williams,

A dozen men, armed with pitchforks, shot guns, clubs, and other weapons, boarded the train just as it was pulling away from the platform… they entered the smoker by the rear door. My partner, seeing the armed men entering and that we were greatly outnumbered, jumped up from his seat and ran quickly to the front platform, where he succeeded in dropping off from the rapidly moving train.

The posse turned on Williams, who pulled out his revolver and began to blaze away at the ceiling to cause a panic. In the melee that followed, he shot the sheriff in the leg before a blackjack knocked him unconscious.

Hoffman was caught, and the two burglars were handcuffed together and marched to the farm where they had asked directions the night before:

The old farmer came out of the house and, recognizing us as we drew near, greeted us with a sneer and snicker, saying: “Wall, boys, glad t’see yer ag’in!”

Close the Door, Please

That day, Twain wrote a note ‘to the next burglar’ and had it permanently attached to his dining room door.

NOTICE.

To the Next Burglar:
There is only plated ware in this house now and henceforth.
You will find it in that brass thing in the dining room over in the corner by the basket of kittens.
If you want the basket, put the kittens in the brass thing.
Do not make noise – it disturbs the family.
You will find rubbers in the front hall by that thing that has the umbrellas in it – chiffonier, I think they call it, or pergola, or something like that.
Please close the door when you go away.

Very truly yours,
S. L. Clemens

While languishing in prison, Williams at least had the satisfaction of knowing the burglary provided a new subject for the humorist. He wrote in his memoirs,

…while dedicating the little new library which he had founded for the residents of the town of Redding, Mark Twain took occasion to make characteristic fun of the affair as follows:

“I am going to help build this library with contributions – from my visitors. Every male guest who comes to my house will have to contribute a dollar or go away without his baggage. If those burglars who broke into my house recently had done that, they would have been happier now; or if they had broken into this library, they might have read a few good books and led a better life. Now they are in jail, and if they keep on they will go to Congress. When a person starts down hill, you can never tell where he is going to stop…”

Happy Ending to the Mark Twain Burglary

The story has a happy ending. Though the burglar served 10 years in the Connecticut State Prison, he rebuilt his life afterward. On Dec. 28, 1924, the New York Times printed an interview with him. He said,

Since my release from prison some nine years ago, I had the privilege and pleasure of meeting the only living member of Mark Twain’s family, Mrs. Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch. It is to the generosity and practical assistance of Mark Twain’s talented daughter that I owe my real chance to make good and to become a useful and law-abiding citizen and member of the society I hated and fought so long.

This story last updated in 2024.

3 comments 2.7K views

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 2023. 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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