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Why Glenn Miller Has a Memorial Stone in a New Haven Cemetery

Swing bandleader Glenn Miller was born in Iowa, grew up in the Midwest, got famous in New York City, lived in New Jersey and went missing in a plane somewhere over the English Channel during World War Ii.

So why is there a memorial stone to Miller in New Haven’s Grove Street Cemetery?

The short answer: I Sustain the Wings.

The longer answer: From March 27, 1943 to June 19, 1944, Glenn Miller and his musicians were ubiquitous in New Haven. They were there to put a spring in the steps of Air Force cadets on the Yale campus — and to lift the spirits of a country gone to war.

The Glenn Miller Story

In 1942, swing bandleader Glenn Miller dominated the radio waves as the most famous and the best paid musician in the country.

He was born March 1, 1904 in Clarinda, Iowa, but his parents moved around the Midwest during his childhood. He dropped out of the University of Colorado at Boulder to pursue a music career – playing the clarinet and the trombone.

For many years he struggled until he realized his strength lay in arranging and composing. He finally found success in 1938 with a big band that had a unique sound. The lead clarinet played the melody along with a tenor saxophone, and three other saxophones harmonized. People called it ‘sweet’ swing.

Swing was king, and Glenn Miller had the most lucrative swing band in America. It pumped out a string of hits – In the Mood, Pennsylvania 6-5000, Moonlight Serenade and Little Brown Jug. His Chattanooga Choo-Choo earned the first gold record ever. Miller appeared in Hollywood films, played at Carnegie Hall and made as much as $20,000 a week.

You’re In the Army Now

Glenn Miller sacrificed a great deal when he decided to join the war effort. He gave up millions to lift the morale of young men facing suffering and death far away from home.

“I, like every patriotic American, have an obligation to fulfill,” he said when he enlisted as an army captain (later a major) in 1942.

Historian Lawrence Erenberg wrote that Glenn Miller not only created a model of patriotic duty, but infused Depression-era swing music with a national purpose.

“His story highlights the powerful role that swing played in World War II and helps explain what American soldiers were fighting for,” wrote Erenberg.

Miller reported to the Army Specialist Corps, but transferred to the new Army Air Forces. There, the military brass accepted his proposal to run ‘a modernized Army band.’

Many talented musicians had joined the Army Air Corps. They included 19-year-old Henry Mancini, along with musicians from the Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Symphony and the NBC Symphony. Miller managed to snatch them up quickly by cutting through red tape and improvising procedures.

When he started with a marching band in Alabama, senior officers resisted Captain Miller’s innovation.

A scene in The Glenn Miller Story actually happened in New Haven. An officer reprimanded Miller for playing the St. Louis Blues March for a cadet drill.

Miller, played by Jimmy Stewart, replied, “Tell me, Major, are you still flying the same planes you flew in the last war?”

I Sustain the Wings

In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor the U.S. military had to quickly recruit, train and mobilize millions of civilians for war. Colleges turned their campuses over to the Army and Navy to train young men in a multitude of skills, from repairing airplanes to operating radar.

Air Force cadets marching past a statue of Nathan Hale at Yale.

At Yale 3,000 cadets moved into half the residential halls, sandbagged in case of attack. In late March 1943, Glenn Miller and the 418^th Army Air Force band joined them.

Why Yale? Because the Air Corps wanted a crack unit to produce national radio broadcasts. Yale offered the closest location to Manhattan for a radio production unit big enough for shows featuring Miller’s band. Called I Sustain the Wings, the show made its first national broadcast on Sept. 18, 1943. (Listen to five minutes of it here.) The show, which played Saturdays, included narration, radio skits, swing music and vocal numbers.

The Yale Band

Months before the first radio broadcast, Glenn Miller and his musicians made their presence known in New Haven. People stood on the sidewalks outside the rehearsal hall on Temple Street to listen to the music. Or they’d watch the band march to New Haven Green.

Miller didn’t just have a band. He had a 42-man marching band, a 19-man dance unit, jazz combo, radio unit and a string ensemble. And they played everywhere — East Hartford, Hartford, Meriden, Middletown, New London, Norwalk, Stamford, Wallingford and Westville.

On the morning of April 1, 1943, the band marched on New Haven Green for review formations. It continued to do so four mornings a week. On May 20, 1943, Miller activated the orchestra, which played its first concert nine days later.

In July 1943, the first of six I Sustain the Wings broadcasts from Woolsey Hall began, narrated by Sgt. Broderick Crawford.

Miller’s musicians played at enlisted men’s dances at Yale, war bond drives in Woolsey Hall and at New Haven Airport. They played at a recruiting show at the Shubert Theater, and a wedding in a Yale chapel. They played at the New Haven Arena, the Yale Drama School Theater, the Yale Bowl, the Roger Sherman Theater and the Loew’s Pole theaters. People started calling the musicians ‘the Yale Band.’

Opera singer Eileen Farrell was there, and remembers Glenn Miller and his band playing for the officers every day at lunch. She once took the train from New York with Rose Marie and Zero Mostel to perform at a bond rally on the football field. When they got there, she wrote, “Glenn Miller and his band were being driven around the field in jeeps, playing American Patrol as the soldiers performed a marching drill.”

Death in Europe

In 1944, Glenn Miller took his musicians overseas to entertain the troops. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle said, “next to a letter from home, that organization was the greatest morale builder in the European Theater of Operations.”

On Dec. 15, 1944, his small plane went down somewhere over the English Channel. His death sealed his music in the national consciousness as the soundtrack for World War II.

In 1993, local resident and Glenn Miller devotee Peter Cofrancesco held a memorial service for Glenn Miller in Grove Street Cemetery, the final resting place of Eli Whitney, Noah Webster and Walter Camp.

He spent his own money to buy a plot and granite memorial stone. Chiseled into the granite are the words “I Sustain the Wings – Sustineo Alas.”

Yale bands continue to play Glenn Miller’s music at concerts commemorating special events.

To see a video of Air Force cadets at Yale – to a Glenn Miller soundtrack – click here.

With thanks to Can’t Help Singing: The Life of Eileen Farrell By Eileen Farrell, Brian Kellow. And Swing Goes to War: Glenn Miller and the Popular Music of World War II by Lawrence Erenberg, Society and Consciousness During World War II. Images: Memorial stone By Noroton (talk) – Own work by the original uploader, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4670053; cadets at Yale, National Archives; Glenn Miller military photos, National Museum of the USAF. Grove Street Cemetery by Carol Highsmith, courtesy Library of Congress. This story was updated in 2023.

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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 2022.

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Pittsfield’s Frank Grant Fights Baseball’s Color Line in 1887

After Frank Grant lost his battle to play on integrated baseball teams, almost 50 years would go by before Jackie Robinson reintegrated the sport.

Grant played for six years on integrated minor league teams. Baseball historians considered him one of the best – if not the best – black ballplayer of the 19^th century.

But racism forced him out of the white leagues and into the Negro Leagues, where stars earned a fraction of their white counterparts’ pay.

Though his skin color created controversy during his playing days, the sports world forgot all about him after he retired in 1903. Buried in a pauper’s grave in 1937, historians have recently rediscovered the story of Frank Grant.

Frank Grant

He was born Ulysses Franklin Grant in Pittsfield, Mass., on Aug. 1, 1865 – a few months after the Civil War ended. He had eight brothers and sisters, six who survived to adulthood. His father, a farm laborer, died when he was four months old.

Bliss Perry

Frank Grant’s mother went to work as a domestic servant for Arthur Perry, a Williams College professor. His son, Bliss Perry, became a famous college English professor, novelist and editor of the Atlantic Monthly. In his autobiography, he wrote he was perfectly happy playing ball with Frank Grant and his brother Clarence.

In 1886, Frank Grant played for a minor league team in Meriden, Conn., that folded in mid-season for want of money. Then he signed with the Buffalo Bisons, a top-tier minor league team. He was one of five black players who played in baseball’s minor leagues.

The editors of Sporting Life disapproved of integrated baseball, asking, “How far will this mania for engaging colored players go?” An umpire openly admitted to calling close plays against teams that fielded African-American players.

In a game he played in Toronto on July 27, 1887, the local newspaper reported, ‘the crowd confined itself to blowing their horns and shouting ‘Kill the n—-r!”

Buffalo had good reason to hang on to Frank Grant, who the manager called an Italian and some described as a Spaniard. He led the league with 11 home runs, batted .340 and stole 40 bases. He also played second base brilliantly.

Baseball writer Sol White, who wrote the first book about the Negro Leagues, said, “In hitting he ranked with the best and his fielding bordered on the impossible. Grant was a born ballplayer.”

High Spikes

By then, white players from the Binghamton ball club threatened to strike if the team’s two black players weren’t released. The International League responded by banning black players from signing new contracts.

That wasn’t all. Playing for Buffalo, Frank Grant had to duck at the plate when white pitchers tried to bean him. White runners slid into second base feet first, aiming their spikes at Grant’s shins. (He took to wearing wooden shin guards and later playing the outfield.)

When he traveled to play in Louisville, Ky., he had to eat and room with the hotel’s black employees.

Frank Grant, circled, with the Buffalo Bisons.

But Frank Grant helped Buffalo win games. He also attracted many black fans, and he made a splash on the social scene. A New York newspaper featured an item about him.

He electrified Broadway recently by appearing in a blue corduroy coat, black and white striped trousers, yellow gloves, patent leather shoes with light drab gaiters, a slate colored fedora hat and a gold-headed cane.

Buffalo hung onto Frank Grant for the rest of the season, and for the next two, despite the International League’s new color line. The team did it by forming a new league. Buffalo’s white players, though, complained about playing with an African American, no matter how good. They refused to have a team picture taken with Grant in it.

Finally in 1889, Buffalo Bison management caved in to the players and released Frank Grant. Without him, the team collapsed and moved to Grand Rapids the next year.

Sol White’s ‘History of Colored Base Ball,’ 1907. Only five copies are known to exist.

Cuban Giants

In 1890, Frank Grant went to play for the Cuban Giants, the first African-American salaried baseball team. They weren’t Cuban and at 5’7” Frank Grant wasn’t a giant. But he hit like one.

Sol White explained why some teams called themselves Cuban. They wanted “to conceal the fact that they were just American Negro hotel waiters and talked a gibberish to each other on the field which, they hoped, sounded like Spanish,” he wrote.

But Frank Grant got caught up in the machinations of the early baseball teams and leagues, which routinely disassembled and reassembled.

The Cuban Giants moved to York, Pa., where they became the York Monarchs, an Eastern Interstate League team.

Their new rival, the Harrisburg Ponies, wasn’t pleased that the dominant Cuban Giants had joined the league. So the Ponies management pilfered Frank Grant from the Monarchs.

Jim Crow

The Ponies, though, wanted to join a higher minor league organization. They petitioned to the Atlantic Association for membership, but they had a problem. The Atlantic Association, like the International League, didn’t have any black players. The Ponies stood firm, and the Atlantic Association admitted them. Frank Grant was now the only African American player in the league.

But Jim Crow wasn’t going away. Grant had to live in a segregated boarding house in Harrisburg. Players on opposing teams refused to play against Harrisburg if Frank Grant played. When playing in Baltimore, he didn’t stay at Kelly’s Hotel with the team, but lodged and ate at the headwaiter’s home.

In Wilmington, Del., the Clayton House refused to accommodate the team because of Frank Grant. So they found another hotel with the understanding that Grant would eat with ‘the colored help.’

In 1891, he returned to the Cuban Giants. Then he joined the New York Big Gorhams, as good a team if not better than the Cuban Giants. For the next decade, Frank Grant jumped around, the Philadelphia Giants, the Colored Capital All-Americans and the Genuine Cuban Giants. He spent winters in Williamstown, Mass., and played with local clubs when the weather allowed. The Blackinton Co., a North Adams textile manufacturer, sponsored a team he played on.

The 1902 Philadelphia Giants. Frank Grant played on the team along with Sol White.

The Rest of the Story

After he retired from baseball in 1903 he lived the rest of his life in anonymity, working as a waiter in New York City, perhaps playing semipro ball in his spare time.

He died on May 27, 1938, and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Clifton, N.J., where he never lived.

On April 18, 1946, Jackie Robinson made his debut with the International League in a Montreal baseball game. The New York Times reported, “There have been other Negro players in the International League. ….Frank Grant played at second base for Buffalo and a Moses Walker caught for Newark in a game between those two teams on April 30, 1887.”

Though he never played in the Major Leagues, Frank Grant was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown in 2006.

Five years later, the Negro Leagues Baseball Grave Marker Project laid a headstone on his grave in the East Ridgelawn Cemetery in Section 14, Block B, Row E, Number 6.

Images: Frank Grant, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6140862; History of Colored Base Ball By Sol White(Life time: n/a) – Original publication: Sol White, History of Colored Base Ball. Philadelphia: H. Walter Schlichter, 1907.Immediate source: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/sol-whites-1907-history-colored-base-ball, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42882527.

With thanks to John Thorn, Fame at Last, from Thorn Pricks, and Frank Grant by Brian McKenna at sabr.org. This story was updated in 2022.

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Small Bells of Connecticut: One Town Made Sounds That Rang in Millions of Ears

The small bells rung by Salvation Army soldiers during the Christmas holidays are all made in Connecticut.

A Salvation Army bell ringer.

So is the small bell that rings when Clarence the angel gets his wing in the 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life..

And every business day, the New York Stock Exchange opens to the ringing of a small bell made in Connecticut.

They were all made by Bevin Brothers of East Hampton, Conn., the oldest maker of small bells in the United States.

Bevin Brothers is also the last surviving bell maker in Connecticut. The state that produced the Frisbee, the lollipop, the can opener, the box clock and the Mickey Mouse watch also once made nearly every small bell in the United States and Canada.

The Bevin Brothers Bell Shop.

During the 19^th century, nine out of 10 small bells were made in Connecticut, and most of them were made in East Hampton.

Why East Hampton?

It all started in 1808, when a soldier’s son and his indentured servants moved to East Hampton.

Small bells had been made in Connecticut since the colonial era. Initially, blacksmiths made iron cow and hand bells for farm and other purposes before specialists—mainly in sleigh bells—emerged in the early 19th century.

Sleigh bell production may have started with Capt. William Barton in the 1770s in Wintonbury (now Bloomfield), Conn. By 1800 James North, Jr., and Joseph Shipman had formed a partnership in New Britain to make sleigh bells. In 1803 Seth North, a brother of James, Jr., became sole owner and operated the foundry until 1840.

East Hampton in 1905

In 1808 William Barton, the son of the captain, moved to East Hampton (Chatham until 1915) and began making hand and crotal (sleigh) bells. His main achievement was to rediscover a sand-core casting process for a one-piece bronze bell with the pellet (rattle) inside instead of using a well-known two-piece soldering method that took more time to complete. His sleigh bells, ranging in size from one to four inches in diameter, could have various finishes, often had his initials and were sold by weight or by their amount and quality.

Barton left East Hampton for Cairo, N.Y., around 1826 to again cast bronze sleigh bells, stayed about 20 years, and then retired back in East Hampton. Several descendants carried on the bell business there until 1888, when the last Barton-connected company moved to Indiana. Notably, Jason Barton, a son of William, developed a cost-effective alternative to polishing each bell on a lathe by tumbling them in barrels of sand.

Apprentices

William Barton did not patent his method of making small bells. He believed that his knowledge of the craft should be shared with his many apprentices. Among them were William and Abner Bevin, who were indentured to Barton in the late 1820s.

The Bevin brothers, now including Chauncey and later Philo in 1838, established their bell factory in 1832 in East Hampton. The brothers made mostly sleigh bells that, over time, came to include more than twenty different sizes of mainly round-shaped or globe bells and, to a lesser extent, bevel or band bells that usually had only one slit (“throat”). They also produced cow bells, kettles and coffee mills.

New Kinds of Small Bells

As roads steadily improved and became more crowded with sleighs throughout the 19th century, the demand for sleigh bells increased. More than ever, they were needed as a warning for approaching pedestrians and other vehicles. Concomitantly, more competitors entered the market for small bells, especially in East Hampton.

Sleigh Ride by Currier and Ives.

Sleigh bell production concentrated in East Hampton as it offered several advantages for the new makers of small bells: inexpensive waterpower; access to roads, waterways and railroads for obtaining raw materials and distributing the bells; shared knowledge of production methods and marketing strategies—especially in the early decades. The new bell makers also had a readiness to develop newer types of small bells. An estimated 30 firms operated at some time during the century and by 1900 had made, perhaps, 90 percent of all small bells in the U.S. and Canada.

East Hampton, Conn., had so many foundries making small bells that it earned the nickname BellTown.

Competition

Nevertheless, competitive conditions had intensified in the last decades of the century, which forced many firms to close. By 1906 only six longtime firms remained: Bevin Brothers, East Hampton Bell Co. (started in 1851), D.W. Watrous (1865), Gong Bell Manufacturing Co. (1866), Starr Brothers Bell Co. (1882), and the N.N. Hill Brass Co. (1889).

Other sleigh bell makers also operated outside of East Hampton. These firms included: the Taylor Manufacturing Co. of New Britain (started around 1872), known for its Russian sleigh bells; the American Ring Co. of Waterbury, whose single and multiple-slitted stamped sleigh bells of Maj. George W. Tucker were probably produced around 1872; and the Chapman Manufacturing Co. of Meriden (1881), which made chime sleigh bells. The American Ring Co. became part of the Plume & Atwood Manufacturing Co. of Waterbury in 1894. The Chapman Co. suspended business in 1900 and the fate of the Taylor Co. is unclear.

Cars and Wars

The advent of the automobile in the late 19th and early 20th centuries drastically reduced demand for sleigh bells. The competing firms responded through innovations in production techniques and their product lines in an effort to stay in business.

N.N. Hill revolutionized production by stamping sleigh bells from sheet metal around 1885, as an alternative to the old casting process, which significantly lowered its costs.

After 1900, hydraulically operated forging machines became common in bell making, especially for toys. The Gong Bell firm started by producing a doorbell based on a gong, but became the first company in 1872 to make bell toys with its initial product—‘revolving chimes’ on cast iron wheels. In the early 1900s it created a foot-operated automobile bell, a precursor of the horn. The Watrous firm, starting in the early 1900s, also began making bell toys that often used cast iron figures to strike a bell or chime. The Gong Bell Company acquired Watrous in 1923, but dissolved it in 1927.

Over the next several decades the East Hampton firms had to contend with the Great Depression and metal restrictions during World War II and the Korean Conflict. They also dealt with foreign competition—especially from Germany and Japan. All of them, with one exception, finally succumbed to economic pressures.

Bevin Bells

The East Hampton Bell Co., which had become a subsidiary of Bevin Brothers, dissolved in 1943. The Starr Brothers firm went bankrupt in 1954. N. N. Hill could no longer compete by 1960, followed by the Gong Bell Company a year later. Gong Bell, which also had become a subsidiary of Bevin Brothers, had long been successful with its line of toy telephones that it initially invented in 1921. However, it failed to convert production from metal and wood to plastic.

Bevin Brothers still makes hand bells.

Since 1961 Bevin Brothers has remained—despite a devastating fire on May 27, 2012—the oldest small bell producer in America. Before the fire the company produced over one million small bells a year in more than 100 varieties, including its claim of the first bicycle bells. Currently, it still produces its traditional sleigh, cow and hand bells, but custom imprinting of small bells for businesses, schools, clubs, and athletic events represents the largest share of its activity.

* * *

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious cookies. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

About the author: Edward T. Howe is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, of Siena College near Albany, N.Y He has written academic articles about the bell industry in New York, incorporated villages in New York and Vermont, and nationwide taxation of the electric utility industry. This story was updated in 2022.

Images: Bevin Brothers Bell Shop by By Unknown author – Historic American Engineering Record, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40743178.

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6 Places That Became a Summer White House

The summer White House has featured in presidential life since John Adams returned to Quincy, Mass., to get away from the muggy heat of Washington, D.C.

Spending time away from the nation’s capital also allowed presidents to sense the country’s mood and to thank their wealthy donors. New England’s wealth and cool weather attracted presidential families in the days before air conditioning.

Here are places in each of the six New England states that became a summer White House.

The Thimble Islands, Branford, Conn.

A Thimble island

According to Connecticut legend, President William Taft spent part of a presidential summer on the Thimble Islands. The Thimbles are an archipelago of 365 small islands off the coast of Branford in the Long Island Sound.

The Branford Historical Society cautions that Taft probably only visited the Thimbles as a Yale student, though ConneticutHistory claims Taft had a summer home there for two years in the 1900s.

Rutherford B. Hayes did visit Branford as president. His grandfather was born in Branford, and his great-grandfather had built the Totoket Hotel on Main Street. In 1889, President Hayes came to Branford to see the hotel his great-grandfather built. The townspeople presented him with an axe made by his great-grandfather at a reception outside the hotel.

Totoket Hotel, photo courtesy the Branford Historical Society.

The Totoket Hotel has long disappeared, but you can still visit the Thimble Islands.

Bar Harbor, Maine

President Taft’s first summer White House in Beverly.

President William Howard Taft’s summer White House started out in Beverly, Mass. For four summers, his staff ran the government from borrowed offices in downtown Beverly.

Taft’s first hostess in the city got sick and tired of Secret Service interference, nosy tourists and the hubbub surrounding the president. She told Taft not to come back at all. She even threatened to tear down the house, located at Lynch Park. Instead, she cut it in pieces, floated it across the harbor to Marblehead and left Taft to move to a new house in the neighborhood.

Taft then announced with great fanfare in July of 1910 that he would make an extended trip to Maine. With stops planned for Eastport, Bangor, Ellsworth, Rockland and Islesboro, Taft would base his operations in Bar Harbor. There, he would stay on the 273-foot presidential yacht Mayflower, with its crew of 200.

Hancock House

A Summer White House in Maine

Taft first touched land in Eastport, then sailed on to Bar Harbor for a three-day stop.

He spent much of his time with wealthy summer residents. This caused a bit of a stir among the year-rounders, which Taft tamped down by giving a speech on the town bandstand.

“The three days that have passed in Bar Harbor will be red letter days in my life,” he told the crowd. “The air is like champagne in a Prohibition state, and without the uncomfortable consequences that follow imbibing that liquor.”

However, Taft’s visit to Mount Desert Island was not without trouble. He shot a 23 on a single hole during one round of golf when he got stuck in a sand trap. On the same course, the 300-pound-plus president tripped and sprained an ankle.

Taft at his summer White House

And, when he spoke to a crowd at the Hancock House in Ellsworth, pickpockets made off with hundreds of dollars from unsuspecting Mainers who came to hear him speak.

Most of the spots Taft visited are either gone or in private hands, but a few survive. The Bangor House Hotel is still at the corner of Main and Union streets, though it’s now housing. Taft participated in services at the stately Ellsworth Congregational Church. He took tea at the Jordan Pond House and the Kebo Country Club — the scene of Taft’s rough game — remains open to this day.

Hyannis Port, Mass.

The Kennedy Big House

The summer cottage that Joseph P. Kennedy rented in Hyannis Port in 1926 would eventually become the summer White House. Hyannis then (and now) belonged to the Irish Riviera.

The waterfront house had commanding views of Nantucket Harbor. Kennedy bought it in 1928 and set about enlarging and improving it for his growing family. It had six bedrooms and four servants’ rooms on the second floor, a wine cellar in the shape of a ship’s hull and a motion picture theater in the basement.

In 1956, Joseph Kennedy’s son John bought a smaller home of his own near the big house. In 1959, the youngest child, Edward, bought a house next to the other two in 1959. He sold it to his brother Robert and his wife, Ethel, in 1961, and later bought another home nearby.

John F. Kennedy used the compound as his headquarters for his 1960 campaign for president. He then used it as the summer White House during his presidency.

The Kennedy family at Hyannis Port, 1931

The main house was recently donated to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The compound can’t be visited, but it can be seen from the tour boats that leave from Hyannis.

To see rare photos of the Kennedy family at the Hyannis Port compound, click here.

Cornish, N.H.

Harlakenden House

Woodrow Wilson spent several weeks in the summers of 1913 through 1915 at Harlakenden, a country estate in Cornish, N.H. Wilson leased his summer White House from Winston Churchill – the American Winston Churchill, a writer who lost a race for governor of New Hampshire in 1906.

Harlakenden sat on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River. Cornish was the center of an art colony of about 100 artists, writers and politicians from about 1895 to the end of World War I. It stretched from Windsor, Vt., to Plainfield, N.H. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the central figure in the colony, which included Ethel Barrymore, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Isadora Duncan, Maxwell Perkins and Maxfield Parrish.

On Sept. 12, 1913, a play called Sanctuary: A Bird Masque was performed in Cornish with Wilson, his wife and the British ambassador in the audience. Miss Eleanor Wilson played the lead role and Miss Margaret Wilson sang the opening song, The Hermit Thrush. The play’s theme was the senseless slaughter of birds for frivolous purposes.

The occasion was the dedication of the Meriden, N.H., bird sanctuary – one of the first in the nation.

At the time, the Underwood Tariff Bill was in Congress . Bird-lovers everywhere wanted to ensure the bill included a ban on importation of bird feathers for decorative purposes. The play helped keep the heat on. Wilson returned from his summer White House early because the tariff bill had passed, with the language about birds intact.

Harlakenden burned to the ground, but the Cornish art colony survives as the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Newport, R.I.

Eisenhower House

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, decamped to the Naval Base in Newport, R.I. There he dealt with the crisis over school integration in Little Rock, Ark.

He also summered in Newport during his presidency in 1958 and 1960. At first in 1958 Eisenhower 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. So he moved to a mansion at Fort Adams for two summers in Newport.

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.

It now belongs to Fort Adams State Park, and you can rent it for weddings and social events. For more information click here.

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Plymouth Notch

Calvin Coolidge was 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.

Though Coolidge spent most of his adult life in Northampton, Mass., he often visited his family home. It is 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. In the summer of 1924, a dance hall nearby served as his office in the summer of 1924.

Today Coolidge’s birthplace and surrounding buildings are 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.

Brigadoon as a Summer White House

The Coolidge homestead is such a throwback to the way Vermont used to be that some people call it “Vermont’s Brigadoon.”

Coolidge and his sons in Plymouth Notch, 1916

Coolidge expressed his feelings about his home state in an eloquent speech that followed the disastrous flood of 1927.

“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.^”

Photo of the Thimble Islands by JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49575458.

This story about the summer White House in each state was updated in 2022.

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How the Italian Immigrants Came to New England

Italian immigrants put their stamp on New England as indelibly as any Puritan. New England, in fact, is the most Italian region in the United States.

Boston’s North End, 1909, by Lewis Wickes Hine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Today, the descendants of Italian immigrants make up more than 10 percent of the population of every New England state except Vermont and Maine. Any New Englander can recognize the voice of Joe Castiglione or the Magliozzi brothers. And tens of thousands attend the region’s 45 summer festas. They happen from Our Lady of Assumption in Portland to St. Bartholomew in Providence.

Italian Americans have undeniably influenced New England’s food history. Boston’s North End brought us Prince spaghetti, Pastene sauces and Dragone cheese. It also gave us the first Italian café, Café Vittoria, in 1929. Amato’s Italian delicatessen in Portland, Maine, claims to have originated the Italian sandwich. And, of course, Frank Pepe in New Haven invented the white clam apizza.

More recently John Bello of New Britain created SoBe beverages.

Italian-Americans

And yet Italian immigrants have contributed to American history and culture in ways that are typically – well, American. Italian immigrants sculpted the Lincoln Memorial. They frescoed the dome of the Capitol. And they founded the Bank of America, formerly the Bank of Italy.

S. Z Poli of New Haven built a chain of vaudeville theaters and Charles Ponzi of Boston’s North End discovered a new form of financial fraud. Bart Giamatti presided over Yale University and Major League Baseball. Providence’s Edward Valenti created the Ginsu knife and the infomercial.

Mike Eruzione of Winthrop, Mass., captained the U.S. Olympic team that defeated the Russians in 1980. And Filippo Mazzei, a physician friend of Thomas Jefferson, published a pamphlet that contained a familiar line. It read,

All men are by nature equally free and independent.

Jefferson then used it in the Declaration of Independence.

Beginnings

The first Italians were explorers, and not just Christopher Columbus. America got its name from an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci. He explored the east coast of South America from 1499 to 1502.

Giovanni Caboto

Venetian John Cabot – Giovanni Caboto — and his son Sebastian are the reason Americans speak English. That’s because Cabot first explored the mainland in North America in 1497 under the commission of English king Henry VII.

And Giovanni di Verrazano explored the Atlantic coast between Florida and New Brunswick.

Italians also fought in the American Revolution. Afterward, Italian immigrants came to the United States as political refugees, as missionaries and as explorers.

They came as well because of a need for their professional skills. In 1801, Philip Trajetta founded a music conservatory in Boston, the first in the United States. And beginning in 1871, Gaetano Lanza taught mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 40 years.

Scattered Italian families settled in Boston between the American Revolution and the Civil War, but the city didn’t attract large groups of immigrants then. There was too little land and too little commercial opportunity. Boston’s homogeneous and self-contained social life also made it forbidding to outsiders.

But 7,000 Italians fought in the Civil War, and six won the Congressional Medal of Honor. New York even recruited infantrymen from Italy for its 39^th regiment, also known as the Garibaldi Guard.

Then after the Civil War, New England’s mills and factories didn’t have enough workers, so they recruited immigrants from overseas.

A Wave of Italian Immigrants

An Italian immigrant family, 1911. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

From 1880 to 1920, an estimated 4 million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. Most came between 1900 and 1914, and most came from southern Italy and Sicily. Italian unification in 1861 had worsened conditions in the mother country. Plus the soil was exhausted, taxes and tariffs were high and young men were conscripted for seven years

In 1880 about a thousand Italian immigrant families came to Boston. They represented the first wave to the city bypassed by most Europeans, save for the Irish.

These immigrants didn’t speak English. They therefore had to take low-wage jobs and fell prey to labor brokers known as padrones. So they settled in ghettoes known as Little Italys. Those included Front Street in Hartford, Central End in Bridgeport, Shrewsbury Street in Worcester and the South End of Springfield, Mass.

Burlington, Vt., Portsmouth, N.H., and Portland also had Little Italys, but they since disappeared. The once-crowded tenements of the North End of Boston, New Haven’s Wooster Square and Providence’s Federal Hill have all gentrified.

Birds of Passage

About a third of the newcomers were birds of passage, workers who intended to stay until they saved enough money to reestablish themselves in Italy. It wasn’t easy. Italian men ended up working low-paying construction jobs, while women usually worked as seamstresses in garment factories. Many Italian immigrants led the fight for better pay and working conditions. Arturo Giovanitti, Joe Ettor and Carlo Tresca organized the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

Many blamed prejudice against Italian immigrants for the 1927 execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. And many Italians Anglicized their names to avoid the stigma of their ethnicity. For example, actor Ernest Borgnine of Hamden, Conn., was originally Ernest Borgnino. Steve Carell, a Concord, Mass., native, would have been Steve Caroselli had his father not changed his name.

World Wars

World War I abruptly ended the massive wave of Italian immigration to America. Then came the restrictive Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924. The Little Italys stabilized and prospered, and English became the predominant language. Italian Americans then started to get better jobs as civil servants and skilled tradesmen, though the Great Depression reversed many of their gains.

Henry Mucci in the Philippines by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

By the time the United States entered World War II, 600,000 Italians had not become American citizens. The government therefore declared them enemy aliens and required them to report regularly. At the same time, as many as 500,000 Italian-Americans served in the armed forces.

During the war, Italian-American servicemen earned the Medal of Honor. For example, Col. Henry Mucci of Bridgeport led Army Rangers on a daring raid of a POW camp that held survivors of the Bataan Death March.

Postwar Prosperity

The war, however, opened up good-paying jobs to Italian immigrants in defense factories. Then after the war many Italian-Americans took advantage of the G.I. Bill to attend college. In the post-war era, Karen Ignani of Providence became CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Samuel Palmisano, of Southport, Conn., was named president and CEO of IBM.

Because they prospered, Italian-Americans gained political power. Ella Grasso won election as governor of Connecticut, the first woman governor elected in her own right. Tom Menino served as Boston’s longest serving mayor, while Massachusetts elected Foster Furcolo, John Volpe and Paul Cellucci as governors. Even Maine had an Italian-American governor, John Baldacci, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy’s mother has Italian ancestry.

Rhode Island

Nearly one in five Rhode Islanders – 18.9 percent – claim Italian ancestry. That makes the Ocean State the most Italian in the country. In 1950, John Pastore became the first Italian American elected to the U.S. Senate. Donald Carcieri, Edward DiPrete and Gina Raimondo since won election as governor. Raimondo now serves as secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce

And who can forget Buddy Cianci, who for years served as the colorful mayor of Providence?

Gateway Arch to Atwells Avenue in Providence.

Johnston, R.I., the most Italian municipality in the United States, has 46.7 percent of its population claiming Italian ancestry.

Companies like the Silver Spring Bleaching and Dyeing attracted Italian immigrants to Providence’s North End in the 19^th century. Today, 36.7 percent of North Providence residents say they had Italian ancestors.

Famous Italian Americans from Rhode Island include comedienne Ruth Buzzi and novelist Peter Pezzelli. Rhode Island also produced Italian-American athletes — hockey players Jack and Dave Capuano and Olympic skater Marissa Castelli.

Connecticut

Frank Pepe’s pizzeria.

Today, Connecticut ranks as the second most Italian state in America after Rhode Island. A full 18.7 percent of the population claims Italian ancestry.

Roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven and North Haven are descended from Italian immigrants. Wooster Square, home of Frank Pepe’s white clam apizza, is a bastion of Italian culture and cuisine. And more than a quarter of the populations of seven Connecticut towns — Northford, North Branford, Oakville, Orange, Wolcott, Derby and Wethersfield — have Italian ancestors.

Stamford sent Andy Robustelli to the Football Hall of Fame and Bobby Valentine to the helm of the Boston Red Sox. Joe Castiglione of Hamden announces Red Sox games on the radio. And Rosa Ponselle of Meriden performed with the Metropolitan Opera during the 1920s and 1930s.

Massachusetts

In Revere, 35.7 percent of residents claim Italian ancestry, making it the most Italian city in Massachusetts. Massachusetts itself ranks as the fourth most Italian state in the country behind New Jersey. That’s because close to 14 percent of Massachusetts residents have Italian ancestry, with a half-million living in metropolitan Boston.

Famous descendants of Italian immigrants to Massachusetts include poet John Ciardi and artist Frank Stella. Massachusetts has also produced such Italian-American athletes as Rocky Marciano, Tony Conigliaro and Joseph Bellino. Aerosmith’s Joe Perry’s mother was Italian, and so was Jay Leno’s dad.

New Hampshire

Yes, New Hampshire ranks as the seventh most Italian state in the country. Nearly 11 percent of its residents say they have Italian ancestors. Salem, along the southern tier, has the densest population of Italian-Americans in New Hampshire at 15.7 percent.

This story was updated in 2022.

Image: Atwells Avenue By Zigamorph – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3996788.

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