Tag:

middletown

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.

0 comment 659 views

Six More Artist Homes In New England

The creative spirit that moves people to sculpt and paint also tends to inspire an interesting artist home. Lucrative commissions in the days before the income tax meant some artists could live in country estates befitting a Gilded Age gentleman.

New England has quite a few artist homes now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We bring you six artist homes, one in each New England state. They all open to the public, at least seasonally.

Weir Farm

J Alden Weir studio. You can also visit the artist home on the Wilton farm.

Weir Farm, the home of J. Alden Weir, was a magnet for American artists such as John Twachtman, John Singer Sargent and Albert Pinkham Ryder. It probably helped that the farm was only 20 miles from the Cos Cob art colony in Greenwich.

There are two stories about how J. Alden Weir ended up owning the Weir Farm in Wilton, Conn. One is that Weir had a Manet painting that a collector wanted so badly he offered Weir $10 and his farm for it. According to the other, his wife’s family owned the farm.

As an art student in Paris, J. Alden Weir hated the new school of painting known as French Impressionism, until he didn’t. Eventually he became one of the most beloved American impressionist.

He was born in 1852, the 14^th of 16 children, the son of Robert Walker Weir, who taught drawing at the Military Academy at West Point.

Weir befriended many other painters, eventually co-founding The Ten, a group of artists unhappy with the conservative U.S. art establishment.

Nocturne: Queensboro Bridge by J. Alden Weir. Courtesy Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Weir’s paintings are on display in major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. The 60-acre grounds of Weir Farm National Historic Site open every day of the year to visitors. The farm also has an ongoing artist-in-residence program. Look for Weir Farm on the back of quarters issued in 2020.

Weir Farm National Historic Site, 735 Nod Hill Rd, Wilton, Conn.

Winslow Homer Studio

Where Winslow Homer painted and lived.

Winslow Homer, one of the greatest U.S. artists of the 19^th century, left the bright lights of New York City for Prout’s Neck, Maine. Then in his mid-40s, he moved partly to be near his family, partly to work in solitude and partly to paint the sea.

His family owned an estate on Prout’s Neck, and Homer moved into the carriage house. He painted the sea in Maine, traveling to the Caribbean during the winter and sometimes to the Adirondacks.

Though he also painted in oil, Winslow Homer knew he’d done something transcendent with his watercolors.

‘You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors,” Homer once said. He hung some of his exquisite watercolors on the walls of the rental cottages. Now they’re in museums or private collections.

artist-home-winslow-homer-salt-kettle-bermuda

Salt Kettle, Bermuda, by Winslow Homer. Courtesy National Gallery of Art.

Maine architect John Calvin Stevens transformed the carriage house into a studio and designed the Winslow Homer house. He took as payment a painting, Afternoon Fog. The Portland Museum of Art bought the studio in 2006, restored it and now offers tours in the summer months.

Winslow Homer Studio, 5 Winslow Homer Rd., Scarborough, Maine

Chesterwood

The house that Daniel Chester French built in Stockbridge, Mass.

Daniel Chester French, like his contemporary Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was no starving artist. He won lucrative commissions, including one for the Lincoln Memorial, and could afford a summer artist home — an estate, really, called Chesterwood.

He bought the Stockbridge, Mass., farm in 1896, and had a studio built on the property. Then in 1901, he rebuilt the farmhouse. For the rest of his life he divided his time between New York and Stockbridge, but used his Chesterwood estate as his primary workspace.

Born in Exeter, N.H., his family moved to Concord, Mass., when he was xxx. His father befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott. Young Daniel took art lessons from Louisa May Alcott’s little sister, May. She encouraged him to study art.

artist-home-lincoln-memorialartist-home-lincoln-memorial

The Lincoln Memorial, courtesy National Park Service.

He launched his career by winning the commission to design the Minute Man statue in Concord.

Other works include The John Harvard Monument, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Mass. Commodore George H. Perkins monument at the New Hampshire State House

The statue of General Joseph Hooker in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation now runs the home as a museum and sculpture garden.

Chesterwood opens weekends in May.

Chesterwood, 4 Williamsville Rd, Stockbridge, Mass.

Saint-Gaudens National Park

Augustus Saint-Gaudens home in Cornish, N.H.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the center of the Cornish colony, which included 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. President Woodrow Wilson rented a summer White House there, among such artistic luminaries as Ethel Barrymore, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Isadora Duncan, Maxwell Perkins and Maxfield Parrish.

Saint-Gaudens, born in Ireland, emigrated with his family to New York City in 1848 as a baby. Apprenticed as a cameo cutter, he eventually won lucrative commissions for public statues. Some of his most famous work includes an equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman in Central Park, a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and the gold double eagle $20 coin.

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, on Boston Common.

His masterpiece, the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, took him 14 years to create. The bronze bas relief commemorates the African-American 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment and its leader, Robert Gould Shaw, who died in battle. Since 1897 years it has stood across from the Massachusetts Statehouse on Boston Common.

Today Saint-Gaudens artist home, studio and gardens belongs to the National Park Service as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park. The park service has some of his sculpture on display, as well as reproductions of some of his masterpiece.

Saint-Gaudens National Park, 139 Saint Gaudens Rd., Cornish, N.H.

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, an artist home and snuff mill.

The Gilbert Stuart birthplace is unusual for an artist home, mostly because it’s also a snuff mill.

Gilbert Stuart’s father, Gilbert Stewart, was a Scottish immigrant who worked in the first snuff mill in America. His mother, Elizabeth Anthony Stewart, belonged to a prominent Middletown, R.I., family that owned large tracts of land. The house-and mill had stood in Saunderstown, R.I., for five years when Stuart was born in 1755. Stuart only lived there for six years because his family moved to Newport.

Gilbert Stuart showed early promise and studied painting in England, where he made a name for himself at 26 with his painting The Skater. His work commanded high prices in England, but he spent money carelessly and almost ended up in debtor’s prison.

The Athenaeum, by Gilbert Stuart

His most famous work, the portrait of George Washington, has appeared on the U.S. dollar for more than a century. He painted many famous people of the day, including John and Abigail Adams.

He died in 1828, leaving his wife and daughters so poor they couldn’t afford a gravesite. They buried him in an unmarked grave in the Old South Burying Ground.

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, 815 Gilbert Stuart Rd, Saunderstown, R.I.

Rokeby

An artist home for several painters, Rachael Robinson Elmer and her parents.

Rokeby, the artist home we chose in Vermont, was also a prominent stop on the underground railroad.

Rachael Robinson Elmer was born at Rokeby in Ferrisburgh, Vt., the granddaughter of Quaker abolitionists, on July 28, 1878.

Her father, Rowland Robinson, was an author and illustrator, and her mother, Anna Stevens Robinson, was a painter. They encouraged her interest in art, and let teenaged Rachael study art in New York City for three summers. She fell in love with New York City as a young girl and moved there after graduating from Goddard College. Rachael continued to take art classes, and Childe Hassam taught her to paint scenes of city life.

artist-home-rachael-robinson-elmer-trinity

Trinity Church and Wall Street by Rachael Robinson Elmer.

Rachael succeeded as a commercial artist and married an older man named Robert Elmer. She painted 12 “Art Lover’s New York” postcards showing famous scenes around the city and published them in 1914. They sold like wildfire, and other artists began producing impressionistic postcards. She was said to have changed postcards forever.

She died in 1919 in the flu pandemic of 1918 at the age of 40.

Today Rokeby is a historic farm property and museum that includes a 1780s farmstead, eight agricultural outbuildings with permanent exhibits, and hiking trails that cover more than 50 acres

Rokeby, 4334 U.S. Route 7 in Ferrisburgh, Vt.

End Notes

If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about an artist home you can sleep in n each New England state here.

Artist Home images: Weir Farm studio By Noroton – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4960283; Winslow Homer studio By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28919316; Chesterwood by I, Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2414120; Augustus Saint-Gaudens artist home, By Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35171636; Robert Gould Shaw Memorial By Carptrash at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27154774; Gilbert Stuart birthplace By Gibbystuart – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40114851; Rokeby By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11310696.

0 comment 396 views

Varick Frissell: the New England Filmmaker Who Died in the Biggest Hollywood Disaster Ever

In 1930, Varick Frissell traveled north to Canada to make the deadliest movie ever. Twenty-six people would die in the filming, including Varick Frissell himself.

The dramatic film dealt with the friendship and rivalry of two men aboard a fishing vessel in White Bay in Newfoundland. One of the characters thinks he’s a jinx.

As the story plays out, the men must survive the wreck of their ship, the Viking, during the Canadian seal hunt. They then have to struggle to survive while marooned on the ice.

Boston to Canada

Movie Poster for the Viking

Frissell was born in Boston in 1903 into a well-off banking family. He graduated from Yale, and spent time volunteering doing charity work in Newfoundland. On his travels north, Frissell shot footage for two documentary films, The Lure of Labrador and The Swilin’ Racket (a local term for seal hunting).

The films were well-received. The Paramount movie studio then offered to fund a commercial version of the films that would highlight the lives of the fishermen. By 1930, Frissell had completed most of the filming on the movie, with the working title White Thunder. But Frissell wanted to add a few more scenes of the ship at sea.

Varick Frissell

So he and a movie crew traveled to Newfoundland and boarded the Viking to shoot the final frames on White Bay.

It was March 15, 1930. Crew and passengers aboard the ship Viking reported concerns about the way blasting powder was being handled. Some had spilled on deck, and men were smoking near it. As most of the people on the boat were below decks attending a church service and singing Nearer My God to Thee, Frissell was on deck fastening a danger sign to the deck house that stored the explosives.

White Bay, Newfoundland

Frissell and two others had been filling canisters with powder, anticipating that they would be blasting the following day. Ships working in the waters off Newfoundland carried powder to blast through ice jams when they got caught up in them.

Varick Frissell’s Final Moments

A witness later said that one of the men working with the powder was smoking a pipe when an ash fell into some spilled powder. The explosion at the stern of the ship split its hull and toppled the masts. Nine casks of kerosene caught fire. The 27-year-old Frissell was last seen trapped in the rigging of the fallen mizzen mast, shouting for help.

Bernt Balchen’s plane on the ice in Greenland after a rescue.

Word of the disaster reached the United States, and the number of dead was, at first, unclear. A Connecticut short wave radio operator reported that a priest in Newfoundland had radioed that Frissell and the movie crew survived. Newspapers across the country carried the headline: “Frissell Safe.”

However, as survivors began to reach land the fate of Frissell became clearer. One-hundred eighteen passengers and crew on the ship managed to escape to the Horse Islands by walking across the ice. They were rescued by other fishermen, but Frissell was not among them.

Frissell’s father hired daredevil pilot Bernt Balchen, who had experience flying Arctic expeditions, to search for his son. But no signs of Varick Frissell ever surfaced.

Disaster Sells Movie Tickets

In 1932, the studio released Frissell’s film under the title The Viking. The film’s producers used the disaster to promote the release of the film. Newspaper ads and movie posters noted: “This is the picture that cost the lives of Varick Frissell and 25 others in the Sealer Viking Disaster.”

Howard Hughes in 1938.

Howard Hughes promoted the opening of his new chain of movie houses with billboards that announced: “26 men died to open the Hughes-Franklin Studio Theatres.” Critics called the promotion “a hideous attempt to commercialize” the Viking disaster. Hideous but probably quite successful.

The Viking burned to the waterline in the disaster, and it sank. Frissell’s body was never found. A grave memorial for him is located in Middletown, R.I. You can watch The Viking online here.

Image of Varick Frissell: By Screenshot – White Thunder (film) DVD (2002), screen capture made using Snap N’ Drag software, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48496507. White Bay By Adavyd – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91575485.

This story was updated in 2021.

1 comment 484 views

Six Lovers Leaps in New England

Lovers leaps are nearly always found in isolated spots where a fall could kill you. They tend to inspire tales of romantic tragedy, often involving a star-crossed Indian maiden (beautiful, of course) and her lover. Sometimes, though, the stories may surprise you.

The United States has 25 designated lovers leaps, including ones in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine. We had little difficulty, however, finding lovers leaps in New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island.

Do you know of another lovers leap, other than the six listed below? If so, please mention it in the comments section.

Lovers Leap Bridge, New Milford, Conn.

Lovers Leap Bridge

Lovers Leap Park includes about 140 acres along the Housatonic River and a high cliff that inspired several legends. According to one, an Indian princess named Lillinonah fell in love with an Englishman. When her lover left her and didn’t return, the despairing princess paddled her canoe over the Great Falls. But then, just as she entered the rapids, he reappeared. When he tried to save her they both drowned.

A second version has the two lovers forbidden to see each other, so broken-hearted and distraught they jumped off the high cliffs together.

The Housatonic widens at one point into a lake today called Lake Lillinonah. In 1895, the Berlin Iron Bridge Company built Lovers Leap Bridge, well after the mythical lovers died.

Lovers Leap Park straddles the Housatonic Gorge near Connecticut Route 67 and Connecticut Route 202.

Lovers Leap Park, Bangor, Maine

The Kenduskeag Stream in Bangor

Bangor, Maine, has a lovers leap along the scenic Kenduskeag Stream Trail, which cuts through the center of the city.

Someone thoughtfully put an informational sign along the cliff known as Lovers Leap. Not surprisingly, it tells the story of a beautiful Native American maiden who fell in love with a handsome young settler. “After she was denied permission to marry him by her chieftain father, the couple leapt off the cliff hand-in-hand rather than live their lives apart,” the sign says.

Old postcards featuring the lovers leap name the young woman Tahalta or Tahiti, and the young man Shawano.

People have actually fallen off the cliff. And other parts of the Kenduskeag have inspired romance. In 1882, The History of Penobscot, Maine, described a poem carved into a tree along the river:

Of lovely Sophia’s eyes beware, / Mirth and mischief mingle there; / I with her have careless laugh’d, / Nor fear’d shy beauty’s dangerous shaft; / But pensive now I linger here, / To trace a name forever dear.

Remnants of old mills dot the banks of the Kenduskeag Stream, and one can see the more prosaically named Shopping Cart Rapids from Lovers Leap.

The image shows a more benign section of the Kenduskeag Stream, behind Bangor’s post office. Another local legend claims that section of the waterway inspired Stephen King’s IT.

Purgatory Chasm State Reservation, Sutton, Mass.

Lovers leap in Purgatory Chasm, Mass.

There’s little love in the story of the lovers leap in Sutton, Mass. The leap is a narrow 70-foot-deep chasm, with about two miles of hiking trails around it.

The legend has an Algonquin Indian woman killing a white settler and walking away from her crime. She ran into another settler and tried to run away. When he grabbed her, she called out to her god Hobomoko for help. The settler then revealed himself as Hobomoko, took her by the waist and flew to the site of Purgatory Chasm. There he stomped his feet and swung his tomahawk, forming the 70-foot-deep chasm. Then he threw his victim into it.

Geologists, on the other hand, say a glacier let loose meltwater, which ripped apart blocks of bedrock 14,000 years ago.

Massachusetts made Purgatory Chasm a state park in 1919. Since then, Purgatory Chasm has inspired a poem, a song and a novel.

Lovers Leap, West Derry, NH

Lovers Leap in West Derry, N.H.

Beaver Brook in West Derry, N.H., has a stone arch bridge over it, built by the Manchester and Lawrence Railroad in 1848. For years people called it Lovers Leap Bridge, assuming it had to do with the usual Indian maiden flinging herself off it after the usual doomed love affair.

But that’s not it, according to a 1915 account reported in the Derry News. The story goes that an Indian chief in Derry (then Nutfield) called Flying Cloud had a beautiful daughter named Bright Eyes. She had many suitors, but the only one she loved was White Feather. White Feather, though, came from a different tribe, and her father hated him. One day he discovered them together by the stream now called Beaver Brook.

Flying Cloud ran after White Feather with a tomahawk, but the young man picked up Bright Eyes and carried her down the hill toward Beaver Brook. He reached his canoe, and they paddled toward Nassana (now Nashua), where his tribe had camped.

Eventually, Flying Cloud sent an ambassador to make peace with the young couple, and they all lived happily ever after.

The story is at best improbable, especially since it identifies White Feather as a Sioux, not exactly a tribe that hung out in New Hampshire. But you can hike to Lovers Leap Bridge along the 3.6 mile Derry rail trail.

Purgatory Chasm, Middletown, RI

Purgatory Chasm, a Rhode Island lovers leap.

In New England you can often find the same thing in two states. Such is the case of the other narrow, deep Purgatory Chasm in Middletown, R.I. The story of the lovers leap, however, is different.

Legend has it that a beautiful young heiress had received the ardent affection of a young man who was her social equal. She shared his feelings but hid them from him.

One day they stood on the edge of Purgatory Chasm and he begged her for some show of love. She told him he could prove his devotion to her by jumping across the chasm. The young man leaped across the divide, tipped his hat, praised her looks, condemned her character and then dumped her. She never saw him again, and went into mourning for the rest of her life.

Like the Purgatory Chasm in Massachusetts, a glacier formed the one in Rhode Island. It overlooks the Sachuest Beach, which interests geologists because of its peculiar elongated pebbles. The hike from the parking lot on Tuckerman Avenue to the chasm is short, only three-tenths of a mile.

Lovers Leap, Cavendish, Vt.

The Black River in Cavendish, Vt.

The Black River carves out a ravine in the lower part of Cavendish, Vt., creating falls, rapids, caves and romantic scenery. Lovers Leap rises at a turn in the ravine. Locals tell a legend about it, but it has nothing to do with love — well, at least, the love between people.

The story goes that two young farmers went to the Lovers Leap to gather some rocks for a foundation wall. They began to quarry when one of the farmers lost his balance and stumbled down the cliff. His companion looked over the edge, expecting to see a mangled corpse. However, the victim was crawling up the side of the precipice. “Are you hurt much?” the first farmer shouted.

The victim slowly and painfully stood, then began to search his pockets. A look of grave concern crossed his face. “Waal, I ain’t hurt much, but I’ll be durned if I haven’t lost my jack-knife.”

Lovers leap state park conn. By Jllm06 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56688546; Lovers Leap Bridge By RHSHAW57 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22394866; Kenduskeag Stream Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=970222; Purgatory Chasm By Dale E. Martin (Martinde) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5027847; West Derry postcard, Derry Public Library by Creative Commons 2.0; Purgatory Chasm, Newport, by Paul Irish, Creative Commons 2.0; Stereoscopic view of the Black River courtesy New York Public Library.

1 comment 895 views

River Gods of the Connecticut River Valley Create A World of Their Own

During the 150 years before the American Revolution, a series of aristocrats known as the River Gods ruled the Connecticut River Valley.

Their domain had its own economy and culture, which eventually resembled England more than settlements to the east or the west. The River Gods owned vast farms and shipyards, traded with the West Indies and fed the coastal cities with their produce and meat.

They supported a large class of artisans who fed their thirst for status by building large houses with elaborate doorways. The craftsmen filled the River Gods’ houses with fine furniture, paintings, textiles and ceramics. When they died, elaborate headstones marked their graves to show their prominence in life.

John Adams, on a visit to Middletown, Conn., in 1771, rhapsodized about Connecticut River Valley. “When I first opened into the Town which was upon the Top of a Hill, there opened before me the most beautiful Prospect of the River, and the intervals and Improvements on each Side of it,” he wrote. “…[A]nd on the right Hand is a fine level Tract of Land as rich as the Soil of Egypt.”

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow (1836) by Thomas ColeView from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow (1836) by Thomas Cole

The River Gods

Many of the River Gods already had standing and wealth when they arrived in the Connecticut River Valley. William Pynchon, the first of the River Gods, came to Massachusetts in 1630 as a prominent member of John Winthrop’s party. He owned a plantation in Roxbury, Mass., originally ‘Rocksbury’ because of the stony soil.

Pynchon didn’t like farming among rocks, so in 1636 he moved west and founded Springfield on the boulder-free meadows on the Connecticut River banks.

He started a naming trend that described the grassy meadows that attracted more settlers: Enfield, Bloomfield, Longmeadow, Hatfield and Greenfield.

Pynchon probably heard about the River Valley’s fertile open lands from Edward Winslow of Plimoth Plantation. Indians had come to Plimoth and Boston in 1631 to hype the Connecticut River to the Puritans. The Indians wanted to trade with the English settlers, and they viewed the English as potential allies against the Pequots.

Edward Winslow

Intrigued, Edward Winslow visited in 1632 to check out the Indians’ claims, and wrote a report about the Valley.

Other families followed William Pynchon to the lower part of the Connecticut River. When the new settlers divided up land, they did it according to status and wealth. The wealthiest 10 percent along the Connecticut River got between 30 and 40 percent of the land. The poorest 50 percent got 10 to 20 percent of the land. (By today’s standards, that level of equality is remarkable).

Prosperity

Agriculture flourished in the red sandstone-based soil, unique to New England. The River Gods produced more than enough for themselves, so they sold the surplus to Boston at a high profit. They came to dominate local business and politics, ran the local militias and chose the ministers.

Pynchon, for example, owned a quarter of the land, a grist mill and the town’s store. He chose the town’s minister, traded furs and shipped surplus produce and livestock down the river. He and his son ran what became Hampshire County like a colony within a colony.

William Pynchon

In addition to the Pynchons, the River Gods who came to dominate the Massachusetts river towns in Hampshire County included Ashleys, Dwights, Partridges, Porters and Williamses. Some of the more prominent River Gods in Massachusetts:

Oliver Partridge, born in Hatfield (1712-1792). Military commander, congressman and patriot.
Timothy (1752-1817) and Theodore Dwight (1764-1846). Both born in Northampton. Timothy IV was a minister, author and president of Yale. Theodore was a journalist, editor of the Hartford Mirror and the New York Daily Advertiser.
Ephraim Williams, Jr., born in Newton (1715-1755). Later moved to Stockbridge. Soldier and benefactor of Williams College.

Springfield originally belonged to Connecticut, but Pynchon managed to move it to Massachusetts after a dispute with Connecticut’s leaders. In his absence, River Gods in Connecticut emerged as families of merchants and ministers that intermarried. They included Allyns, Chesters, Hamlins, Pitkins, Talcotts, Welleses and Wolcotts. A few of the best known Connecticut River Gods:

Oliver Wolcott (1726-1797), born in Windsor, signer of the Declaration of Independence, congressman, governor and general under George Washington.
Joseph Talcott (1669-1741), born in Hartford, governor of the Connecticut Colony.
Thomas Welles (1594-1660), born in England, moved to Wethersfield, governor, deputy governor, treasurer and secretary of the Connecticut Colony.

Peace

Wars between the French and Indians limited the settlement of Connecticut River towns in parts of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and even in Connecticut.

Between 1675 and 1678, for example, King Philip’s War wiped out Deerfield and Northfield in Massachusetts, and Suffield and Simsbury in Connecticut. After that, Indians frequently raided many of the surviving Massachusetts river towns.

It wasn’t until the French and Indian wars ended in 1763 that settlers established towns in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Once they did, the towns grew quickly.

The Industrial Revolution was underway, and waterpower became an important reason to settle. The River Gods prospered from the Caribbean trade and shipbuilding. In fact, Connecticut River shipyards built more than 4,000 vessels in the 19^th century.

The farmers began to specialize. Wethersfield, Conn., for example, specialized in onions. Hadley, Hatfield and Deerfield concentrated on livestock. The River Gods of Glastonbury, Hartford and Windsor grew tobacco. And Enfield, Suffield, Longmeadow and Northampton grew so much wheat they earned the designation of New England’s first wheat belt.

More Like England

Lady Williams and Child, by Ralph Earl, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By 1771, the road from Windsor, Conn., to Hartford was settled like one continuous street, noted John Adams. A traveler named Samuel Davis wrote in 1789 that the churches in Suffield had steeples, unlike the ones between the coast and the Connecticut River. He noted the larger houses – the ones belonging to the River Gods – had been painted.

After the American Revolution, travelers noted the valley resembled England more than any other part of the country.

But the River Gods created their own unique culture, filling their houses with clocks and paintings, richly hung beds, upholstered chairs, mirrors and silver. They hired artisans to produce elaborate doorways, vine-and-leaf carved chests (known as Hadley chests), decorated board chests, baroque-style iron door latches and portraits in the style of Ralph Earl.

The River Gods, though, didn’t take on an identity the way the Boston Brahmins did. Part of that had to do with the political division of the Connecticut River Valley. To the south, the boundary between Connecticut and Massachusetts divided the River Gods. To the north, the river itself divided New Hampshire and Vermont.

A Common Character?

Timothy Dwight, one of the Massachusetts River Gods

In 1806, Yale president Timothy Dwight visited the Connecticut River Valley on horseback. “The inhabitants of this valley … possess a common character, and in all the different states resemble each other more than their fellow citizens who live on the coast resemble them,” he wrote.

At the time, however, the local culture was on the wane, wrote William Hosley, Jr., in his introduction to The Great River, Art & Society of the Connecticut Valley, published in 1985 to commemorate the 350^th anniversary of the settlement of the Connecticut River Valley.

“Regional culture may have been more apparent in its decline than while it flourished,” wrote Hosley.

Images: Dwight House By Historic-Deerfield – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17941799

With thanks to The Great River, Art & Society of the Connecticut Valley, published by the Wadsworth Athenaeum. This story was updated in 2023.

9 comments 1.5k views

George Berkeley, World-Famous Philosopher, Moves to the Wilds of RI in 1729

Bishop George Berkeley was a world famous Anglo-Irish philosopher by the time he stepped onto dry land in Newport, R.I., on Jan. 23, 1729.

Berkeley famously asked the question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” His answer: Yes, because God heard it.

George Berkeley by John Smibert

Not every 18th-century philosopher agreed with Berkeley’s argument that reality isn’t separate from perception. But today philosophy professors rank him up there with his contemporaries, David Hume and John Locke.

So what was he doing in colonial Rhode Island?

He came to America because he intended to open a college in Bermuda. He believed the Protestant religion had lost ground, and America was the likeliest place to make up for what was lost in Europe.

George Berkeley

George Berkeley was born in his family castle in County Kilkenny. By the time he arrived in Rhode Island, he had already established a lasting reputation as a philosopher, taken holy orders in the Church of Ireland and been named Dean of Derry.

George Berkeley and his new wife bought a farmhouse in Middletown, R.I. When he enlarged the home he called Whitehall, he remodeled the door case in Palladian style. By doing so he introduced Palladianism to America.

Trinity Church, on Queen Anne Square in Newport, R.I., founded in 1698. The current building was built in 1726.

Berkeley in America

While Berkeley awaited funds for his college to arrive, his wife gave birth to a son, who survived, and a daughter, who didn’t. They buried Lucia Berkeley in the Trinity Church yard in Newport.

While in America, Berkeley wrote a book, preached at nearby churches and founded the Philosophical Society, which became the Redwood Library. Fittingly, he also wrote the poem, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way.

The Redwood Library, courtesy Library of Congress.

The money for his college never arrived, so he departed for England in September 1731. He gave his library and Whitehall to Yale College, stipulating the income from the property support three Yale scholars. Yale named one of its colleges after him.

Yale rented the building as an inn for many years. The portrait painter Gilbert Stuart’s grandfather ran it and Dr. Alexander Hamilton stayed there.

Whitehall today

Whitehall fell into a state of neglect until 1899, when the Colonial Dames of America got a 999-year lease on it. They commissioned Norman Isham to restore two rooms. Today it is the Whitehall Museum House, at 311 Berkeley Ave.

For information about visiting hours in the summer, call 401 846-3116 or email [email protected].

And yes, Berkeley, Calif., was named after Rhode Island’s prominent visitor.

Images: Whitehall By JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ MD – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23611134. Trinity Church By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21777526. This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 312 views

Newer Posts

Older Posts