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The Wallingford Tornado of 1878 Unleashes Terror on an Unsuspecting Town

The Wallingford Tornado of 1878 ranks as one of the worst natural disasters to ever strike Connecticut. It caused so much damage the ruined town center became a tourist attraction.

The town then was a burgeoning community of about 4,000 people along the Quinnipiac River. Many of its residents were Catholic immigrants who worked in two large silver factories.

The Wallingford Tornado wasn’t the only destructive tornado to hit Connecticut. The state has, along with western Massachusetts, a tornado alley that has experienced some of the worst damage in U.S. tornado history.

And in 1878, it took the Wallingford Tornado just moments to inflict terrible destruction on an unsuspecting town.

An empty shell left by the Wallingford Tornado. Photo courtesy New York Public Library.

Connecticut Tornado History

Connecticut ranks only 43rd in the United States for tornado frequency, and most Connecticut tornadoes are weak. But occasionally an intense tornado strikes, and the state’s dense population gives the weather system more opportunity to wreak havoc. A Connecticut tornado can cause as much damage as its Midwestern siblings.

The first record of a Connecticut tornado happened in 1648. The settlers didn’t have much to say about it, other than on June 14, a ‘great tempest’ toppled trees somewhere near Hartford.

Then on June 20, 1682, a tornado destroyed forests in southern Connecticut. In the worst hit town, Shelton, the tornado left scarcely a tree standing along a half-mile-wide path.

During the Four State Tornado Swarm of 1787, at least five tornadoes starting in New Britain struck Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, killing two in Wethersfield. The first went from New Britain to Coventry in Connecticut, while another traveled from Killingly to Mendon, Mass. A third struck northeast of East Windsor and the fourth injured two while moving from Northborough, Mass., to Framingham, Mass. The fifth hit Rochester, N.H.

The Worcester tornado of 1953, one of the 25 worst tornadoes in U.S. history, killed 90 people in a 90-minute terror spree.

And back in Connecticut in 1979, the Windsor Locks tornado was one of the most destructive in history, killing three people and causing millions of dollars of damage.

Damage caused by the Wallingford Tornado.

The Wallingford Tornado

The Wallingford tornado struck furiously around 6 pm on Friday, Aug. 9, 1878. The black funnel cloud appeared over Mt. Tom and hit the Community Lake and created a 200-foot-high water spout.

Then it headed for the center of town.

Wallingford was completely unprepared for the disaster. The Wallingford Tornado ripped up trees from their roots, destroyed orchards and tore down at least 40 houses and 50 barns. It caused a fire to start, but fortunately rain put it out quickly.

The Wallingford Tornado also took off the top two floors of the new brick schoolhouse, wrecked the windmill, a brick factory and the Catholic church. The collapsing buildings killed most of the victims.

All that took two minutes.

In the end, the storm killed 34 people, mostly Catholic, at the rate of one person every four seconds. The tornado severely injured another 28 people and inflicted minor injuries on 42.

The Wallingford Tornado also uprooted telegraph and telephone wires, cutting off communication. A 12-year-old boy named John Hoey rode on horseback to Meriden, the next town, to seek help. Within an hour of the tornado touching down, trains began to arrive with rescuers. Seven doctors came a half hour later and turned Town Hall into a hospital.

Aftermath

The Catholic Church buried 25 of the victims on Sunday, two days after the Wallingford Tornado struck. Ten thousand people came to the funeral.

Over the next few days, special trains carried thousands more sightseers to see the destruction. They could buy refreshments to help raise money for the survivors. Factories in New Britain closed to workers could travel to Wallingford to view the carnage.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Stop Thief! The Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves Chases Lawless Freebooters

Like many vigilante groups in New England, the Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves came about for good reason in Worcester, Mass., in 1795.

The young United States faced the serious problem of horse stealing. Not only did horses have considerable value, they contained, “the essential element within itself of putting distance between the flying fugitive and his pursuers.”

A precious commodity

It had been going on since the earliest settlements. Colonists squabbled with the Indians many times over horse stealing. And many cases of horse theft appear in court files.

For years, members of the Worcester Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves pursued miscreants who made off with their four-legged property. But why on earth did it last until 1976?

Horse Theft

During the American Revolution, horses were very valuable commodities, and stealing them for use in the war was not uncommon. Afterward, rootless veterans invaded the countryside looking for economic opportunity. Horses went missing, and law and order was in short supply.

But by the 1790s, farmers got fed up with trying to chase down their livestock. And farmers sensed that some criminals made horse stealing a full-time occupation.

In 1782, even before the war ended, the people of Northampton, Mass., established the Northampton Society for the Detection of Thieves and Robbers, probably the first in America. In Vermont, the Pownal Association to Counteract and Detect Horse Thieves and Robbers formed in 1789.

Over the next 10 years, similar societies formed in Woodstock and Glastonbury in Connecticut, and in Oxford, Mendon, Bellingham, Milford, Rehoboth, Seekonk, Pawtucket (now in Rhode Island) and Norton in Massachusetts. All developed mutual aid societies for the detection of thieves.

The Worcester society for the mutual aid against thieves at work.

The Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves

In 1795, a handful of men met in a Worcester tavern to fight the increase in horse theft. They formed the Association of Mutual Aid in Detecting Thieves The group started with 30 members and grew steadily afterwards. Isaiah Thomas mentions joining the organization in his diary. Later, members renamed it the Worcester Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves.

Its charter declared:

“Whereas, the practice of stealing has been so prevalent of late that it becomes necessary for the well disposed to unite in the most effectual measures for protecting their property against the hostile incursions of unprincipled individuals and lawless freebooters that infest our community.”

Typically, a handbill showing horseback riders pursuing a horse thief with a “Stop Thief” speech balloon advertised the vigilante group. It included the names of the committee members as well.

On Jan. 10, 1803, the association assessed members another dollar because they’d spent $19.47 pursuing the thief who sold Capt. John Pierce’s horse.

The Worcester society provided aid to victims of all kinds of theft — up to a point. In 1840, thieves robbed a store owned by Daniel and Benjamin Goddard. They received a bill for $17.86, half the cost of chasing the robbers. Daniel belonged to the association, Benjamin did not.

Rough Justice

More than 30 mutual aid societies existed in New England at one point, and they tended to cluster along the state borders. That was because if a thief made his way across a state line, lengthy extradition proceedings were required before he could be brought to another state for trial. Far easier to chase him down, retrieve the stolen materials and deliver him up for trial, with perhaps some rough justice applied along the way.

The Worcester Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves charged six shillings for membership. Members named an official “pursuing party” to chase down thieves. All members, though, had to join in a pursuit if asked by another member and shown evidence of a crime. Failure to help meant expulsion from the organization.

“Stop thief! Stop thief! A highwayman!” Courtesy New York Public Library digital collection

The association’s minutes, though, from 1795-1938 contain only infrequent mention of the actual pursuit of thieves and recovery of property. By 1860, when Worcester had an established police force, its main purpose appeared to be to hold a jolly banquet every year.

Jolly Banquets

The mutual aid societies functioned until the Civil War, and beyond in the western United States. Horse thieves grew into gangs, which used rather sophisticated methods to work their trade. Some members specialized in stealing. Others specialized in disguising the stolen animals by altering their appearance and any brand marks. Still others worked as salesmen who unloaded the stolen horses in the marketplace.

The rise of the modern police force put an end to the practical aspect of the societies in New England soon after the Civil War. However, they continued functioning much longer in the western states. In some instances, though, they persisted in New England as social organizations. The Worcester society met for more than 100 years, long after it had chased down any horse thieves.

But 10 years after the Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves dissolved, it revived itself. In 1905, when horse theft had long stopped plaguing the citizens of Worcester, it started up again ‘to preserve Worcester history.’ The tradition of jolly banquets continued.

Thanks to: Bullets, Badges, and Bridles: Horse Thieves and the Societies That Pursued Them by John K. Burchill and Picturesque Worcester: City and Environments by Elbridge Kingsley. This story about the Society of Mutual Aid Against Thieves was updated in 2022.

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Six Courageous Heroes From New England

Not all courageous heroes receive their due on Veterans or any other day. So many sacrifices have gone unheralded, so many men and women who risked their lives for their country were all but forgotten.

For all of New England’s courageous heroes and veterans, we mention these six on Veterans Day. One comes from each state. If you know of another courageous hero who deserves accolades, please share it in the comments section.

Henry Mucci, Bridgeport, Conn.

Henry Mucci, one of many courageous heroes who rescued POWs.

One of the most courageous heroes of World War II, Lt. Col. Henry Mucci led a daring rescue mission in the South Pacific.

Stationed in New Guinea during World War II, he created a new Army Ranger unit, the 6^th Ranger Battalion.

In October 1944, the Japanese held more than 500 mostly American survivors of the Bataan Death March in the Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines. Meanwhile, the 6th Army was marching toward Manila to liberate it from the Japanese. The American prisoners were in imminent danger of being massacred by the Japanese before their countrymen could save them.

Mucci received orders to save them.

On Jan. 28, 1945, Mucci led a march 30 miles through Japanese territory and rendezvoused with Filipino guerillas near the POW camp. A total of 378 rangers and guerillas faced 3,000 Japanese. Some of the guerillas didn’t even have weapons.

At dusk on January 30, the guerrillas set up ambushes along the highway. Mucci led the Rangers on a half-mile crawl across an open field to a ditch outside the POW camp. An Army Air Force fighter buzzed the Japanese to distract them.

The surprise attack lasted but half an hour. None of the Japanese troops or tanks got past the guerrillas along the highway. Many didn’t survive the strafing by the 547th Night Fighter Squadron. The Rangers liberated all but one of the 513 prisoners.

Cabanatuan POWs celebrate their liberation.

More than 500 Japanese troops were killed or wounded. Only two Rangers died and 21 Filipino guerillas suffered wounds.

Some prisoners, weakened from disease and starvation, couldn’t walk, so the Rangers carried them, sometimes two at a time.

More…

Henry Mucci came home to Bridgeport, welcomed as one of the war’s most courageous heroes. He received the Distinguished Service Cross.

A section of Route 25 between Bridgeport and Newtown was named the Col. Henry A. Mucci Highway. Additionally, a film, The Great Raid, was released in 2005.

To see a videos and photos of the liberation of Cabanatuan, click here, here and here.

Donald Skidgel, Bangor, Maine

Sgt. Donald Skidgel

Sgt. Donald Skidgel of Bangor, Maine, gave his life at the age of 20 to save others on a battleground in Vietnam.

He joined the Army in 1968 and soon rose to sergeant. On Sept. 14, 1969, his unit guarded a convoy near Song Be. The enemy began firing from hiding places in tall grass and bunkers.

Skidgel maneuvered off the road and started shooting, silencing one enemy position. Then he ran across 60 meters of bullet-raked ground and fired at other enemy positions.

Suddenly Skidgel saw the convoy’s command group coming under intense attack. He tried to draw the enemy’s attention by manning a machine gun while his driver steered through the hostile fire.

An exploding grenade knocked him onto the rear fender, but he staggered to his feet and continued firing. Finally, small arms fire killed him.

He saved the convoy command and inspired his fellow soldiers to defeat the enemy.

Donald Skidgel received the Medal of Honor posthumously.

On Oct. 15, 2011, the bridge on Route 2 over the Sebasticook River in Newport Maine was dedicated as ‘The Donald Sidney Skidgel Memorial Bridge.’

John Mihalowski, Worcester, Mass.

John Mihalowski

When Worcester, Mass., native John Mihalowski enlisted in the Navy in 1927, he couldn’t know he would play a key role in the greatest submarine rescue in history.

Mihalowski trained as a Navy diver and rose to chief torpedoman. As the U.S. entry into World War II loomed, he joined the crew of the U.S.S. Falcon.

On May 23, 1939, the Falcon raced from New London, Conn., to rescue the U.S.S. Squalus. The submarine sank during a test dive from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

Some of the men survived, but they probably wouldn’t last long because they had so little air. Besides, no one had ever survived a submarine sinking.

Once the Falcon reached the Squalus, Mihalowski and several other divers managed to make four dangerous, difficult trips to the sub in an experimental diving ball. At great risk, they carried all 33 survivors to the surface.

John Mihalowski received the Medal of Honor ‘for extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.’ Read more of the dramatic story of the greatest submarine rescue ever here.

The Kittery Historical and Naval Museum in Kittery has an exhibit dedicated to the Squalus rescue.

Alexander Scammell, Durham, N.H.

Alexander Scammell

George Washington thought Alexander Scammell one of the funniest men in the Continental Army. Washington enjoyed the company of the tall, handsome and charming soldier.

Scammell was born in Mendon (now Milford), Mass., but spent most of his adult career in New Hampshire after graduating from Harvard. He studied law in Durham, N.H., with John Sullivan, who became a general and a governor.

Alexander Scammell saw action even before the Revolution began. He seized the British flag during a raid on Fort William and Mary in New Castle, N.H., in December 1774.

He joined the 2^nd New Hampshire Regiment during the Siege of Boston and eventually joined Washington’s Army. Scammell remained with Washington as the British chased the shrinking American army through New Jersey. On Christmas night 1776, Alexander Scammell crossed the Delaware in Washington’s boat before the morale-boosting victory of the Battle of Trenton.

A week later, he distinguished himself at the Battle of Princeton.

Alexander Scammell saw the American forces being badly beaten and, in a daring move, rode to the fore to lead a charge against the enemy. Washington rode up moments later. They rallied the troops, turning a defeat into victory and putting the British on the defensive.

Scammell didn’t survive the war. He died from his wounds during a skirmish before the Battle of Yorktown.

Alexander Scammell’s portrait hangs at the New Hampshire Statehouse, along with dozens of other portraits of military heroes. They belong to the Collections of the New Hampshire Statehouse & State Library. Scammell’s likeness may be viewed in the Visitor’s Center, Rooms 118 and 119. Fort Scammell in Casco Bay, Maine, and the Alexander Scammell Bridge over the Bellamy River near Durham were named after him.

Esek Hopkins, Scituate, R.I.

Esek Hopkins

Esek Hopkins, born in 1718 in Scituate, R.I., had sailed to nearly every part of the globe by the time the American Revolution broke out.

On Dec. 22, 1775, the Continental Congress appointed him to head America’s infant navy. He ignored his orders to head to the Chesapeake Bay, and took eight merchant ships outfitted for war to the Caribbean.

He defied orders because he risked annihilation of his small fleet in the Chesapeake. Hopkins decided instead to divert the British Navy from the American coast and capture a prize.

On March 3, 1776 Esek Hopkins launched the Battle of Nassau in the first U.S. amphibious landing. Sailors and marines captured munitions and two ships, while severely injuring another. Hopkins received praise by some, condemnation by others for the bold stroke.

Esek Hopkins got no medals during the war. He had a hot temper and criticized Congress, which did not view him as one of the war’s courageous heroes. Finally, Congress relieved him of his command in July 1778.

Esek Hopkins’ home in Providence is now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Willie Johnston, Derby, Vt.

Willie Johnston

Willie Johnston of Salem (now Derby), Vt., received the Medal of Honor as the youngest and one of the most courageous heroes of the Civil War.

When his father enlisted in the Union Army in December 1861, 11-year-old Willie begged to join him as a drummer boy. He mustered into the 3d Vermont Infantry Regiment on May 1, 1862, and soon saw action.

During the Seven Days Battles near Richmond, Va., the Confederate Army drove the Union Army down the Virginia peninsula. Many men threw away their guns to lighten their load while retreating. Willie hung on to his drum and brought it safely to Harrison’s Landing.

As the only drummer boy left with a drum, he was given the honor of drumming for the division parade. President Abraham Lincoln heard the story and recommended the boy receive a medal. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton presented the Medal of Honor on Feb. 15, 1864, when Willie was 13 years old – for something he did when he was 11.

Willie Johnston mustered out of the army on Dec. 30, 1864, the second-ever recipient of the Medal of Honor.

You can see Willie Johnston’s drumsticks and a photograph of him at the Fairbanks Museum in St. Johnsbury. A statue of him stands in Santa Clarita, Calif., and a book, Mr. Lincoln’s Drummer, came out in 1995.

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New England Colonists Thunderstruck by the Lightning Storms of 1768

Terrific lightning storms unsettled New England colonists during the summer of 1768, when rising tensions with Great Britain led to conflict and violence. But unlike the Puritans of a century before, the colonists didn’t view the lightning as a message from God.

Benjamin Franklin

The Age of Enlightenment had arrived, and reason and analysis won over superstition and traditional authority. Or at least began to.

So even as Sam Adams was proselytizing for rebellion against the King, inquiring minds tried to analyze the severe lightning that struck that summer. They were continuing the scientific analysis that Ben Franklin had started. He’d conducted his famous kite experiment 14 years before then.

The 1768 Lightning Storms

The tremendous lightning storms in the summer of 1768 came as the Townshend Acts passed in 1767, took effect and colonists in British North America resisted them.

In February 1768, Sam Adams circulated a letter among the colonies opposing the Acts, calling them taxation without representation.

Agitators in Boston harassed customs inspectors, and in May a British warship with 50 guns sailed into Boston Harbor. In July, Gov. Francis Bernard dissolved the General Court.

Harvard’s second Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, John Winthrop. Courtesy Harvard Art Museums.

On July 2, lightning struck Hollis Hall at Harvard College. In a letter to the editors of the Boston Chronicle, John Winthrop wrote that what happened supported the view that lightning was electricity. He described how the violent thunderstorm beat down a chimney top, shattered woodwork and windows and tore several feet of brickwork. Several students felt a blow, which they compared to an electric shock. One students was thrown from his chair, perceiving neither the flash nor the thunder.

And then Winthrop described the lightning rod, which Franklin had invented in 1749:

In my house, that has such an apparatus fitted with bells to give notice of the passage of the lightening along the rods, the bells began to ring as soon as the first thunder was heard at a distance.

The bells continued ringing briskly for about an hour, he wrote. The lightning “frequently flashed from one bell to the other, and with cracks loud enough to be heard in the farther part of the house.”

Boycott

In August, Boston merchants agreed to boycott British goods until the repeal of the Townshend Acts. Tremendous thunderstorms struck from Salem, Mass., to Norwalk, Conn., on the afternoon of August 1. In Roxbury, Mass., lightning shattered a window. In Boston, it knocked a clock case into fragments on a Winter Street home. It also threw clothes around a room in a Water Street home and melted a pewter plate on a mantel in Temple Street. It stunned two children, who recovered.

That storm extended to Connecticut, where lightning knocked over a tree in Hartford, killing two cows, and set a barn in Norwalk on fire.

The fierce lightning flashes inspired a citizen in Salem, Mass., to send a poem to the Essex Gazette:

What grumbling Noise comes thro’ the yielding Air!
Is it the Cannon’s Roar! The Din of War?
No! — ‘Tis the Voice of God; he Thunder rolls,
And flashes Lightnings to the distant Polls.

British warships arrive in Boston Harbor.

Sulfur and British Soldiers

In September, 4,000 British soldiers arrived to keep order and set up permanent residence in Boston. A few weeks before the British began their military occupation, lightning tore a large oak tree to pieces in Wrentham, Mass.

But the next evening, September 8, brought the weirdest lightning strike of all.

It struck Daniel Mann’s tavern, where ladies and gentlemen sat around a tea table. A flash of lightning came into the room, followed by an explosion, apparently as loud as the discharge of a cannon. Large sparks were seen, and the air in the room smelled like sulfur, which gave one person an intense headache. A windowpane broke, a clock injured, the ceiling and floors damaged. One man felt a violent shock on top of his head, another felt pain in his shoulder and found his coat scorched.

“All the inmates were filled with terror,” reported Essex historian Sidney Perley in Historic Storms of New England.

In Rehoboth, Mass., lightning killed a 10-year-old boy. A barn in Mendon, Mass., burned to the ground when struck. In Uxbridge, lightning tore up the heart and floor of a house and stunned several family members.

“This shower was not as local as thunder showers generally are,” Perley wrote, “but it extended over a large territory, and the lightning was sharper and more frequent and disastrous than it was remembered to have been before in many parts of the region.”

This story was updated in 2022.

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Alexander Scammell, the Lovesick Revolutionary War Hero

On a June night in 1777, Gen. Alexander Scammell poured out his heart in a letter to Abigail Bishop of Mistic, Mass. He had marched to Fort Ticonderoga, where the Continental Army hoped to fend off a British attack. He told her he was concerned about the sufferings of his men, he disliked court-martial duties and he longed to marry her.

Alexander Scammell

For four long years, Alexander Scammell pleaded with Abigail Bishop to marry him. He was a battlefield hero, a rising star in the Continental Army and a favorite of George Washington. The thought of his possible future happiness with her sustained him through the hardship and fatigue of war.

Abigail Bishop refused to marry him until he left the army. She led a life of privilege in Mistic (now Medford), where her parents hosted Washington, John Adams and John Quincy Adams. At times she raised his hopes. At others, she dashed them.

In the end, Abigail Bishop drew a line in the sand. She wouldn’t consider marrying Alexander Scammell unless he quit the army. Scammell, torn between his love for her and his love for his country, couldn’t have both.

Abigail and Alexander

Abigail Bishop was born Oct. 5, 1753 in Mistic, the daughter of John and Abigail Tufts Bishop. Her mother was an intimate friend of John Adams’ wife, her cousin Abigail. The Bishops lived in a big house on High Street, where Alexander Scammell probably met Miss ‘Nabby’ while visiting her parents.

Alexander Scammell was handsome, dashing, tall for his era at 6’2” and unusually likable. He was a member of George Washington’s inner circle, one of the few who could make him laugh with his stories and jokes.

He was born March 27, 1747 in Mendon, now Milford, Mass., the son of a doctor and his wife who had emigrated from England. Alexander Scammell graduated from Harvard, taught school in Plymouth and Kingston, Mass., then did some surveying in New Hampshire and Maine, where he became a proprietor of the town of Shapleigh.

He then studied law under John Sullivan in Durham, N.H., joining him in the raid on Fort William and Mary in 1774. During the raid, Scammell hauled down the British flag flying over the fort, the first patriot to do so.

Alexander Scammell Goes to War

1790 watercolor showing Fort St. Jean in the background.

When he heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he joined the New Hampshire Regiment, part of Sullivan’s brigade, as a major. He probably met Abigail Bishop during the Siege of Boston.

After the British evacuated Boston in March 1776, Alexander Scammell’s regiment was ordered to provide reinforcements during what turned out to be the disastrous invasion of Canada. He sailed up the Hudson River to Albany and proceeded to Fort St. John. There he viewed the forts and fields where patriots had been killed.

Everything was in confusion, the cold was disagreeable and mosquitos drove him to distraction.

Abigail sent him a letter, a ‘dear epistle’ that gave him ‘a new flow of spirits’ though she accused him of insincerity. On June 2, 1776, he wrote back to her:

Tis cruel, my dearest, tis cruel to ever think I am insincere You wrong me to entertain the least Suspicion of that kind…I expect a warm Summer. But console myself with the Hopes of being so happy as to see you next Winter, which will richly make amends for the greatest Fatigues.

1775 map of Lake Champlain and upper Hudson River

Alexander Scammell was ordered to return to Fort Ticonderoga, where the Continental Army had staged the failed invasion. He arrived on May 20, 1776, after a severe, 100-mile march on foot, ‘through the woods in an excessive miry Road, wet, rainy weather accompanied with Snow and Hail.’

Disagreeable court-martial duties then consumed him, and he didn’t write to Abigail Bishop until June 8, 1776.

Torn

He told her how much he wanted to marry her, but he couldn’t leave the army:

Tho I should much rather be able to retire to enjoy the sweets of Liberty and domestick happiness, but more especially the pleasing Charms of your dear Company. But so long as my Country demands my utmost Exertions, I must devote myself entirly to it’s Service

Then he got mushy:

The tender moments which we have spent together still, and ever will, remain fresh in my memory—You are ever present in my enraptur’d heart—& a mutual return of Affection from you, I find more and more necessary to my Happiness—cherish the Love my dearest Nabby, which you have so generously professed for me—Altho I am far distant from you, still remember that I am your constant, and most affectionate admirerer.

As always, he begged her to write.

Washington

By August Alexander Scammell served as aide-de-camp to Gen. John Sullivan, and in September they went to New York to join Washington’s forces. A series of defeats sent Washington and his army on the run to New Jersey.

Scammell hadn’t heard from Abigail since he left Ticonderoga. On Oct. 29, 1776, he dashed off a quick note to her:

I have not had the Happiness of hearing from you since I left Ticonteroga. Nor had Opporunity to write to you since. My Passion flatters me that you have had no Opportunity of writing. I long for the happy moment when I can press you to my Heart. … My dear Girl write to me every Opportunity. A Letter from you would soften the Fatigues of War.

Alexander Scammell remained with Washington as the British chased the shrinking American army through New Jersey. On Christmas night, Alexander Scammell crossed the Delaware in Washington’s boat before the morale-boosting victory of the Battle of Trenton. A week later, he distinguished himself at the Battle of Princeton.

In Princeton, Scammell saw the British beating the American forces and, in a daring move, rode to the fore to lead a charge against the enemy. Washington rode up moments later. They rallied the troops in what turned into a striking victory that put British forces on the defensive.

Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware_by_Emanuel_Leutze,_MMA-NYC,_1851

Alexander Scammell crossed the Delaware with Washington.

Revived Romance

In early 1777, Alexander Scammell revived his romance with his dear Nabby by paying her several visits. On March 22, 1777, he followed up the visit with a love letter from Exeter, N.H. He was by then a colonel, raising a regiment in New Hampshire for the defense of Ticonderoga, which British General Burgoyne was expected to attack.

In his letter, Alexander Scammell begged her to change her mind and support her country by marrying him before he left for Ticonderoga. If she consented, he wrote, he would fly to her ‘on the wings of Love’ and they could enjoy nuptial bliss for a week or so before he took the field.

…as to myself I ever feel dejected when I am going from you…I cant feel happy when absent from my dearest Nabby. Heaven has certainly destined us for each other, else why should we be permitted to carry our mutual Affection to so a great a length. But cruel Fate, and a more cruel War has thrown an Obstacle in your way, but hope you will surmount it…pray consider the almost infinite Importance it is to me to call you my own before i march to Ticonteroga, how happy it will make me…consider me my lovely Girl, and enter into a noble Resolution to give your hand to the man, who loves you almost Adoration, before he takes the field to oppose our tyrannical foes,

He even appealed to her patriotism. “Consider how many young Ladies have immortalized their Characters by encouraging their Lovers to defend their Country,” he wrote.

She didn’t buy it.

Saratoga

The war took a turn for the worse at Ticonderoga. The British recaptured the fort in July 1777 and Alexander Scammell evacuated with his regiment. Two months later he was involved in some of the heaviest fighting of the war at the Battles of Saratoga.

General Burgoyne surrendering at Saratoga by John Trumbull.

The fall of 1777 was the last he heard from his love object. He spent the bitter winter of 1777-78 with Washington at Valley Forge, where he was appointed adjutant general of the Continental Army. He hoped for leave to visit Nabby in Medford, but his duties prevented him.

On June 28, 1778, Alexander Scammell distinguished himself once again in battle – this time at Monmouth. The British were evacuating Philadelphia, and Washington ordered Gen. Charles Lee to attack. Lee refused.

Washington and Scammell took command, rallied the troops and held the field. Washington said, ‘the man who inspired us to do our full duty was Alexander Scammell.’ He then ordered Scammell to arrest Lee.

Scammell’s battlefield exploits went unrewarded by Nabby Bishop. He wrote to her on Nov. 2nd, 1778, from Camp Fredericksburgh (now Pawling) in New York:

I am at a Loss how to address you, whether as the same intimate dear friend as formerly, or as one who has contracted an intimate acquaintance with some gentleman more deserving of your good Opinion than I am.

He implored her to tell him if she was engaged to someone else. And it not, he hoped,

…’that I may be so fortunate as to deserve your hand as a reward for all the Hardships, & Fatigues I have undergone in the service of my Country.

She didn’t write back.

Heartbreak

1790 view of Medford, Mass.

On the day after Christmas in 1778, Alexander Scammell wrote to Abigail Bishop from Camp Middlebrook in what is now Somerville, N.J. He was low in spirits. Though she hadn’t written him, a clear signal of her disinterest, he asked her one more time to marry him. And he used every argument he could think of. They weren’t getting any younger, he wrote, and he just knew Washington would give him leave if she agreed to marry him. Plus, they had a duty to get married. On top of that, the war neared its end.

Finally, he wrote, no one could make her happier than he could, and she was too nice to leave him hanging.

“I know you have a generous Soul. I conjure you by all the tender moments we have spent together to write me an answer to this I must urge & insist upon it,” he wrote.

She still didn’t write.

Fixed Determination

He had almost given up by the following spring. In April 1779, during a lull in the fighting. Scammell, then an adjutant general, wrote to his friend Col. Nathaniel Peabody. “I fear that the war will doom me to old bachelorism—however, content myself with this consideration, that there is enough of the breed already, though this consideration don’t (sic) fully correspond with my feelings on the OPENING of Spring,” he wrote.

Entrance to the encampment at Middlebrook, now a historic site.

On April 13, 1779, he tried a Hail Mary. He wrote to Nabby’s father from Camp Middlebrook, begging leave to trouble him with a letter. His ‘fixed determination,’ he wrote,

…has been ever since hostilities commenc’d to continue in the army so long as my bleeding country demanded my services, and to prefer my Country’s good to every self-interested consideration.

However, he wrote, his happiness depended on her. Though he was willing she should find someone else who would make her happy, he was still interested in her if she hadn’t.

He worried, he wrote, that the Bishops thought he was ignoring their daughter because he didn’t visit. But, he explained, George Washington wouldn’t give him leave because his duties as adjutant general. And he made one last, desperate attempt to win Abigail Bishop:

Your former Goodness and Generosity imboldens me to ask your and Mrs Bishop’s consent to marry Miss Naby, without being oblig’d to leave the army, provided she is willing. At the same time could wish you would not mention to her that I have wrote this Letter to you, as I have not previously obtain’d her consent to make this proposal, besides it might wound her delicacy, if she knew I had wrote you on the subject, and so frankly opened the State of our Courtship.

Dey Mansion

One Last Skirmish

On July 15, 1780, Scammell was at Washington’s headquarters in Preakness, the Dey mansion in Wayne, N. J. Washington was preparing for the Siege of Yorktown. Scammell nursed a broken heart, as Miss Nabby’s father wrote to him with the bad news. He wrote to her father again, thanking him. His hope had vanished, he wrote, and he hoped his daughter would bestow her hand on some worthy gentleman.

In May 1781, Alexander Scammell had command of a light infantry, the vanguard for the army’s march to Yorktown. On Sept. 30, 1781, he was scouting fortifications that the British had recently abandoned. He came upon a British cavalry patrol that he mistook for Americans.

When he realized his mistake he surrendered, but another cavalryman came up behind him and shot him in the back. The British paroled the wounded prisoner to a hospital in Williamsburg. Alexander Scammell died there on Oct. 6, 1781.

Afterward

Abigail Bishop married Dr. Archelaus Putnam of Danvers, Mass., on Nov. 12, 1786. He was 46, she was 33. Abigail Adams’ sister, Elizabeth Smith Shaw, wrote a letter to her niece suggesting Nabby Bishop married for money rather than love.

“Cupid I fancy got fast asleep in his Mothers Lap, and old Plutus, has yoked the dove,” she wrote to Abigail Adams Smith on Nov. 27, 1786.

Abigail Bishop Putnam had one daughter and one son who survived childhood. Archelaus Putnam died on April 14, 1800. She died in Medford on Dec 17, 1807. Her mother outlived her.

Read the love letters of Alexander Scammell to Abigail Bishop here and here. This story about Alexander Scammell was updated in 2023.

Image of Dey Mansion By Cmileo88 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11974191. The image of Middlebrook encampment entrance By Ekem at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38449076. Image of Alexander Scammell PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22608823.

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The Worst Tornado in New England History Strikes Worcester, Mass.

The Worcester tornado of 1953 struck without warning and cut a swath of destruction, at times a mile wide, through a half-dozen towns. It was the worst tornado in New England history, and one of the 25 worst tornadoes in U.S. history.

The worst tornado in New England history spent 90 minutes on the ground in Massachusetts from Petersham to Framingham.

For 90 minutes it stayed on the ground, traveling 48 miles from Petersham through Worcester to Shrewsbury, Southborough and Westborough. Finally it petered out over Framingham, having gobbled up everything in its way.

New England’s worst tornado blew down houses, threw cars out of parking lots, ripped trees from their roots. It grabbed bodies and entire houses and tossed them into Lake Quinsigamond. It snatched paper in Holden and dropped it in Eastham on Cape Cod. The tornado brought with it hailstones the size of baseballs and rained debris on Boston suburbs.

It officially killed 90 people, unofficially killed 94, injured 1,300 and destroyed 4,000 buildings. More than 10,000 people lost their homes.

In the end, New England’s worst tornado would change the way the National Weather Service ran the Storm Prediction Center to give more timely and accurate warnings of dangerous weather events.

Worst Tornado

The deadly twister belonged to an outbreak of tornadoes over the northern United States for three days, from June 6-9. A high-pressure system collided with a low-pressure mass over Nebraska, which generated tornadoes in Ohio, Michigan and Nebraska.

The Flint-Beecher tornado on June 8 — the worst tornado to strike Michigan — killed 116 people and injured 844. Seven other tornadoes in the Upper Midwest that day killed nine more people and injured 52 more.

New England’s worst tornado struck without warning.

The mass of cold air moved east overnight, dropping temperatures rapidly in New England. The cold front collided with warm air from the South, creating highly unusual conditions for a tornado in the northeastern United States.

National Weather Service forecasters in Boston knew a tornado was likely. But it was the first year the NWS forecast tornadoes, and the forecasters feared telling the public lest they cause panic.

Forecasters issued a severe thunderstorm watch for June 9 instead. So when at 4:25 p.m. the twister touched down near the Quabbin Reservoir in a Petersham forest, no one was prepared.

Fear at First Sight

Boaters on the Quabbin Reservoir first noticed the boiling clouds in the sky, which formed into three funnels. One dissipated, but twin funnels headed southeast.

At first they terrorized farm country. Near Barre a twister collapsed a two-story farmhouse and threw 18-year-old Barbara Knight and 11-year-old Eddie White hundreds of feet to their deaths. Eddie’s mother suffered a fractured spine. His older sister June survived, having been thrown through the air on a door and fallen back to earth safely.

The worst tornado moved through Rutland, killing two. Then it killed nine more people in Holden, where it wiped out the Brentwood subdivision and all but 12 of the 75 homes in White Oaks. A 12-year-old boy, Larry Faucher, struggled against the wind to bring his bicycle home, but the killer tornado picked him up before he made it and hurled him to his death in a field.

New England’s worst tornado left 10,000 people homeless.

The black storm cloud grew to a mile wide by the time it slammed into Worcester. Mrs. Virginia Harrison was the first of 60 people killed in in the city by the tornado. She was swept away with her stately home, which had just appeared in a Better Homes and Gardens photo.

Random Violence

No social class was spared. People were crushed to death in collapsing triple deckers or lost their homes in the fire afterward. A priest and two nuns were killed at Assumption College (now Quinsigamond Community College).

The Uncatena-Great Brook Valley neighborhoods suffered the worst destruction. Houses simply vanished and entire blocks of homes leveled. The tornado picked up a 12-ton bus and slammed it against the Curtis Apartments, killing two and dropping the buildings’ blueprints in Duxbury, Mass. At the Brookside Home Farm, a dairy, six men were killed and the herd of 80 Holstein cows wiped out.

Winds reached speeds of 335 mph, among the highest ever recorded. The tornado caught up people on the street and hurled them to their deaths. Or it tossed around cars and mangled the people inside. It plucked people out of their shattered homes or impaled them on flying debris.

Someone found a wedding dress in Worcester hanging from a telephone wire in Natick. A chunk of mattress found floating in the Massachusetts Bay, 100 miles away.

Winds as high as 335 mph made the June 9, 1953 twister the worst tornado to strike New England.

Still More

Still that wasn’t the end of it. The worst tornado turned east and barreled through Shrewsbury, killing 12, through Westborough, killing six, and through Soutborough, where it claimed three more victims. It crushed them in the collapse of the Fayville Post Office.

The worst tornado had company in New England that day. A smaller tornado struck Sutton, Northbridge, Mendon, Bellingham, Franklin, Wrentham and Mansfield, injuring 17. A still smaller twister injured several people in Fremont and Exeter in New Hampshire, and others caused minor damage in Colrain, Mass.

New England’s worst tornado destroyed 4,000 buildings.

Quelling Panic

People at first thought the Soviet Union had launched an attack on Massachusetts — or maybe it was a side effect of the nuclear testing in the Southwest.

The National Guard came out to quell panic and to help search for bodies and find the still-living under rubble. Several small children were found under the bodies of dead parents. Husbands and wives were found dead together, locked in a final embrace.

worst-tornado-robert-stoddard-john-kennedy

Worcester industrialist Robert Stoddard and John F. Kennedy before take-off in a helicopter to inspect the damage from New England’s worst tornado.

The tornado damaged the Norton Co., Worcester’s largest employer, shattering every window and tearing off the roof. But the company continued operations, employing 5,700 local people making grinding gears and abrasives.

On June 10, a young U.S. senator named John F. Kennedy came to inspect the damage from the storm.

Eight days after the worst tornado struck New England, the U.S. government reorganized the Storm Prediction Center and implemented a national radar system to spot storms. Until the Joplin, Mo., tornado of 2011, no storm since killed more than 100 people.

Photos of the worst tornado damage courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection, except for the photo of “Robert Stoddard and John Kennedy” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia. For a slide show of the Worcester tornado, click here. This story was updated in 2022.

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