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Milton Mass.

The Brahmin Rough Riders of New England

Some people believe that the Rough Riders were almost all cowboys from out West. After all, it had earned the nickname “The Cowboy Regiment.”

But that wasn’t entirely the case, as you shall see. Brahmins from New England with refined backgrounds also joined the Rough Riders.

Men from every New England state volunteered for Teddy Roosevelt’s U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry, better known as the Rough Riders. Massachusetts had as many as 25. As a matter of fact, the actual commander of the unit, Leonard Wood, hailed from New Hampshire. Frederic Remington featured Woodbury Kane from Rhode Island in his famous painting of the immortal charge up San Juan Hill.

Col. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders on top of San Juan Hill.

Roosevelt had four recruiting stations out West, in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and the Oklahoma/Indian Territories. He had vast experience in the West and knew the cowboys already knew how to ride and shoot. But Roosevelt knew another target-rich area full of ready-for-action men: His wealthy, pedigreed friends throughout New York and New England.

Roosevelt put out the word. They responded in droves from polo clubs, boxing clubs, duck blinds, steeplechase courses, yacht clubs, Ivy League athletic fields and glee clubs. Many had graduated from Harvard.

One Rough Rider, James McClintock, who hailed from California, said they were in it for the adventure.

The Rough Riders are the stuff of legend, having generated a movie, a television show and, of course, a President. They were, however, one of the shortest lived units in American military history. They only existed for four months and 13 days before they disbanded.

Rhode Island Rough Riders

Woodbury Kane, Newport;Joseph S. Stevens, Newport; Norman Maxwell, Newport; Charles Hatch, Newport; Joseph F. Flynn, Cranston.

Rough Rider Woodbury Kane

Woodbury Kane, a classmate of Teddy Roosevelt’s at Harvard, was born in Newport, a cousin of John Jacob Astor IV. A noted yachtsman, he belonged to the New York Yacht Club and served on the crew of the Columbia in the 1899 America’s Cup Race. He was also a noted big game hunter.

After graduation, he lived the life of a bon vivant in Newport and New York. In April 1898 he and other East Coast friends joined the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry.

After enlistment, he, William Tiffany and other East Coast friends donated two $7,500 Colt machine guns to the unit. When the unit expanded to a thousand men he received a lieutenant’s commission.

While serving in the Rough Riders he was always noted for being dressed to a T, no matter the conditions. While leading K Troop in the charge on San Juan Hill, he was wounded in the forearm. Kane was awarded a citation for gallantry and promoted to captain.

He spent the rest of his life living the life of a dandy until a heart attack cut him down at the age of 46. His obituary noted he left no children, but he did leave his beloved polo pony.

Vermont

Ira A. Hill, Grand Isle; Wallace Batchelder, Chester.

Wallace Batchelder graduated from Chester Academy in Chester, Vt., before enlisting in the Rough Riders. He later fought in the Philippines under General Wood. After his service he returned to Vermont, where he became a lawyer and chaired the state’s committee to elect Roosevelt President of the United States in 1904. He later broke with Roosevelt, who in 1912 sent him a telegram telling him not to support any candidate who didn’t support Roosevelt. Batchelder replied he wouldn’t support Roosevelt.

New Hampshire Rough Riders

Dudley S. Dean, Laconia; Walter F. Hickey, Nashua; Leonard Wood, Winchester.

Leonard Wood was the actual commander of the Rough Riders; Teddy Roosevelt was his second in command.

A descendant of four Mayflower passengers, he trained as a physician at Harvard Medical School. He served as a major general in the Army. When he came to command the U.S. 1^st Volunteer Cavalry in Cuba, he was a seasoned Indian fighter in the West and had already been awarded the Medal of Honor. After the Spanish-American War, he served as Governor-General of the Philippines and contended for the Republican nomination for President in 1920.

Dean was an All American football quarterback for Harvard from 1888 to 1890. He participated in the charge on San Juan Hill. That was not to be his last military adventure. During World War II, he served as a lieutenant colonel In the U.S. Army Air Force. He was the executive producer of the play Winged Victory, which ran from November 1943 to May 1944. He lived until the age of 79, passing away in 1950.

Dudley Dean, football star

Dudley’s son John H. Dean played football for Harvard too. At Harvard, he befriended Joseph P. Kennedy and they spent summers together at Cohassett, Mass.

Maine

Guy Muncie, Calais; Harrison J. Holt, Portland; Frederick C. Wesley, Bangor.

Harrison Holt graduated from Phillips Andover and Harvard. Upon his Harvard graduation in 1898 he enlisted with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. After the war and some business ventures in Mexico he joined the New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser as a reporter. Later in life he wrote novels and detective stories, including The Calendared Isles, a Romance of Casco Bay (read it here) and Midnight at Mears House.

Connecticut

Edward C. Hall, Wallingford.

Unlike most of the Ivy League Rough Riders, Edward Hall graduated from Yale, not Harvard. Upon graduation in 1894, he went to work for Westinghouse and did a brief stint at a North Dakota ranch before enlisting with the Rough Riders. After the war he joined General Electric in Lynn, Mass., then transferred to the Schenectady office, where he died in 1912.

Massachusetts

Harry A. Curtis, Boston; Prescott H. Belknap, Brookline; John D. Hubbell, Boston; Rufus K. Thomas, Boston; Wellman H. Saunders, Salem; John P. Gardner, Boston; Guy H. Scull, Boston; Harry A. Davis, Boston; Francis B. Crowninshield, Marblehead; William H. Mitchell, Salem; Winslow Clark, Milton; Edward F. Donnelly, Boston; Michael F. Hogan; William T. James, Fitchburg; Arthur M. Leroy, Boston; Raymond Morse, Springfield; Edward A. O’Brien, Charlestown; William J. Tudor, Boston; Harry C. White, Somerville.

Francis Boardman Crowninshield, another Harvard graduate, went on to become a noted international yachtsman. He fought with Troop K of the Rough Riders and took part in the charge up San Juan Hill. In 1900, he married Louise DuPont from the famous chemical family. In 1911, he won the King of Spain’s Cup in Spain, now among his many trophies at the Eastern Yacht Club in Marblehead, Mass.

Rough Riders. Image courtesy New York Public Library.

About the author of this story: Leo Caisse of East Providence, R.I., passed away in 2020. He published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and he lived in East Providence, R.I.

This story updated in 2022.

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The Missing Kennebunkport Mural of the WPA

Towns and cities across America are dotted with WPA-era murals. Many of them pay tribute to the working classes of America. But not Kennebunkport. It had its WPA mural torn out of the local post office because critics thought a beach scene inappropriate for the town.

The Kennebunkport mural before its removal

Franklin Delano Roosevelt designed his Works Progress Administration program to lift the country from the Great Depression. It created millions of jobs for unemployed men and women. His jobs program included 5,000 artists commissioned to create works of art – many of them on the walls of post offices and other government buildings.

Kennebunkport Mural Fight

Exactly why people despised the Kennebunkport mural depends on when and who spoke about it. Two authors led the public crusade to have it removed. Booth Tarkington, an Indiana novelist and playwright, summered in Kennebunkport. Kenneth Roberts, a Maine writer of historical novels, speculated in Florida land.

Tarkington, an outspoken critic of FDR and his New Deal, acted as point man on the crusade against the mural. (Tarkington also hated automobiles). Roberts then got involved to give a local face to the fight.

Maine U.S. Sen. Wallace White, Senate minority leader, brought the matter to the floor of the Senate. He moved to allow the mural’s replacement four years after its installation.

“The mural is a picture, which, to speak frankly, depicts a number of fat women, scantily clad, disporting themselves on a beach,” White said.

“It has been an offense to the citizens of that community ever since it was placed in the post office. In fact, it has been so much of an offense that the people of the community raised something in excess of $1,000 to have painted a mural which depicts historically the seafaring and shipbuilding activities of the community.”

The Kennebunkport Post Office, built in 1940.

No Bulges Here

Maine’s other U.S. senator also weighed in. “Our only objection was that the murals depicted feminine forms absolutely foreign to the great state of Maine. Our Maine women do not bulge fore and aft in this unsightly manner,” said Ralph Owen Brewster.

Then he added, “Our womenfolks bulge in only the most delightful ways.”

The $1,000 fund, raised by New York architect Charles Ewing, would pay for the new mural if the government would OK the removal of the first.

Tarkington added more fuel to the fire. He insisted the figures in the picture had no clothes on. “It includes several figures both male and female. The central figure is a bumpy looking male with an old automobile tire around his waist as a life preserver. The ladies are all bumpy, too, and very ugly. The beach in the picture looks like Coney Island. Why should Kennebunkport have to have a Coney Island mural in its post office? It isn’t a summer resort. There isn’t even a beach. The beach is across the river at Kennebunk.”

There were actually no nudes in the mural, which underscores one of the odder aspects of Tarkington taking on the role of art critic. He was, by this point in his life, blind.

Still others said the people in the mural looked to be inspired by images of Russian peasants. They hinted at potential Communist sympathies on the part of the artist.

Squealing Dowagers

The artist was Elizabeth Tracy Montminy, known as Tracy Montminy. The Boston woman had recently graduated from Radcliffe when she painted the mural in 1941. It was the fifth and final mural she would paint for the WPA. She had painted four others in Saugus, Milton and Medford, Mass, and Downers Grove, Ill.

Tracy Montminy

But only “Bathers” in Maine attracted any controversy. Montminy defended her work. She described the mural as showing “a Renaissance influence in which the arabesque predominates.”

She chalked up the controversy to “the squealing of some cachectic dowagers.”

Nevertheless, President Harry Truman in May of 1945 signed the budget bill allowing for the removal of the mural. “Eviction Order for those Fatties of Kennebunkport Post Office Wall Signed,” announced one headline. Within a month, the post office had the mural removed.

The second Kennebunkport mural.

The mural that now graces the Kennebunkport post office shows Kennebunkport Harbor in the 1830s. An artist named George Grant painted it.

The mural’s whereabouts today is unknown. It ended up somewhere in Washington, D.C. The painting of the ships that replaced still resides in Kennebunkport’s post office.

This story about the Kennebunkport mural was updated in 2021. Image of Tracy Montminy By Columbia Tribune – Original publication: ca. 1940s unknownImmediate source: http://www.columbiatribune.com/arts_life/ovation/who-were-the-montminys/article_b7200ad7-ef5a-5018-be18-9eabc243c6f0.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51160512. Second Kennebunkport mural and Kennebunkport Post Office by Jimmy Emerson DVM via Flickr, CC by 2.0.

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John Andrews Informs Philadelphia of the Trouble with Tea in 1773

John Andrews regularly wrote to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia with the latest news, gossip and scandal in Boston in 1773. For the month of November and December there was no hotter topic than tea.

The trouble with tea, of course, culminated in the Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773.

It first crops up in a November 29 letter, when Andrews worries that tea arriving in port will spell trouble:

John Andrews wrote to his brother-in-law about the dramatic events of the Boston Tea Party

“[Captains] Hall and Bruce arriv’d Saturday evening with each an hundred and odd chests of the detested Tea,” he wrote. “What will be done with it, can’t say : but I tremble for ye consequences should ye consignees still persist in their obstinacy and not consent to reship it.”

The people had softened a bit, he wrote, and seemed willing to offer the tea to local authorities for safekeeping. But, he believed, “from the present dispositions of ye people,” that the only alternative was to send it back to London.

“Ye Bells are ringing for a general muster, and a third vessel is now arrived in Nantasket road,” he wrote. “Handbills are stuck up, calling upon Friends! Citizens! and Countrymen!”

The People Arm Themselves

A few days later, on December 1, he notes that opinions about the tea are hardening. People are also arming themselves. The consignees had all moved to the fort at Castle Island, because they still refused to take the tea back.

The fort at Castle Island in 1776

“Its not only ye town, but the country are unanimous against the landing it, and at the Monday and Tuesday Meetings, they attended to the number of some hundreds from all the neighboring towns within a dozen miles,” he wrote. “[It] would puzzle any person to purchase a pair of pistols in in town, as they are all bought up, with a full determination to repel force by force.”

John Andrews Spreads the News

Finally, two days after the Tea Party, John Andrews spread the word to his brother-in-law in Philadelphia. Discoverers of the letter many years later noted that it must have carried hot news when it arrived. The tattered letter showed the wear and tear of having passed through many hands.

“However precarious our situation may be, yet such is the present calm composure of the people that a stranger would hardly think that ten thousand pounds sterling of the East India Company’s tea was destroy’d,” Andrews wrote. And yet he called it “a serious truth” that Boston will feel “the whole weight of ministerial vengeance.”

But, he pointed out, most people think Boston stands an equal chance of receiving troops whether they threw the tea in the harbor or not. “Had it been stored,” wrote Andrews, “we should inevitably have had ’em, to enforce the sale of it.”

He characterized the Tea Party as “transacted with the greatest regularity and despatch.”

The General Muster

Andrews then described the dilemma in which William Rotch (the owner of two ships transporting the tea) found himself. Under British law, he had to unload the tea within 20 days and pay customs duties. But if he didn’t, Gov. Thomas Hutchinson wouldn’t let him leave the harbor.

[He] “exposed himself not only to the loss of his ship but for ye value of the tea in case he sent her back with it, without a clearance from the custom house.” Andrews explained “ye admiral” kept a ship in readiness. He would “make a seizure of it whenever it should sail under those circumstances.”

Rotch therefore “declin’d complying with his former promises, and absolutely declar’d his vessel should not carry it, without a proper clearance could be procur’d or he to be indemnified for the value of her.”

Interior of Old South Meeting House

Then, wrote Andrews, ‘when a general muster was assembled, from this and all ye neighbouring towns, to the number of five or six thousand, at 10 o’clock Thursday morning in the Old South Meeting house. There, “they pass’d a unanimous vote that the Tea should go out of the harbour that afternoon, and sent a committee with Mr. Rotch to ye custom house to demand a clearance.”

The customs collector told them he had no power to give them a clearance unless they paid duties. “They then sent Mr. Rotch to Milton, to ask a pass from ye Governor, who sent for answer. Hutchinson told them that “consistent with the rules of government and his duty to the King he could not grant one without they produc’d ‘a previous clearance from the office’.”

Thomas Hutchinson in 1750.

Prodigious Shouts

“By the time he return’d with this message the candles were light in [the meeting] house, and upon reading it, such prodigious shouts were made, that induc’d me, while drinking tea at home, to go out and know the cause of it,” wrote Andrews. “The house was so crowded I could get no farther than ye porch, when I found the moderator was just declaring the meeting to be dissolved.”

That caused another general shout, outdoors and in, and three cheers, wrote Andrews. “What with that, and the consequent noise of breaking up the meeting, you’d thought that the inhabitants of the infernal regions had broke loose.

“For my part, I went contentedly home and finish’d my tea,” wrote Andrews. Soon he learned what went on. But, “still not crediting it without ocular demonstration, I went and was satisfied.”

The Destruction of the Tea at Boston Harbor, Nathaniel Currier.

Griffin’s Wharf

“They muster’d, I’m told, upon Fort Hill, to the number of about two hundred,” he wrote. They then “proceeded, two by two, to Griffin’s wharf.” There, Capts. Hall, Bruce, and Coffin lay, “each with 114 chests of the ill fated article on board.”

Hall and Bruce only had tea, but Coffin had arrived only the day before. That vessel carried a large quantity of other goods. “They took the greatest care not to injure[the goods] in the least,” he wrote.

[Before] “nine o’clock in ye evening, every chest from on board the three vessels was knock’d to pieces and flung over ye sides. They say the actors were Indians from Narragansett. Whether they were or not, to a transient observer they appear’d as such, being cloath’d in Blankets with the heads muffled, and copper color’d countenances, being each arm’d with a hatchet or axe, and pair pistols, nor was their dialect different from what I conceive these geniusses to speak, as their jargon was unintelligible to all but themselves.”

The Unpopular Conner

“Not the least insult was offer’d to any person, save one Captain Conner,” wrote Andrews. Conner rented out horses, and was “not many years since remov’d from dear Ireland.” He “had ript up the lining of his coat and waistcoat under the arms.” Watching his opportunity, he “had nearly fill’d ’em with tea.”

Someone detected the theft, however, and the tea partyers handled Conner pretty roughly. “They not only stripp’d him of his cloaths, but gave him a coat of mud, with a severe bruising into the bargain,” wrote Andrews. [And] “nothing but their utter aversion to make any disturbance prevented his being tar’d and feather’d.”

“Should not have troubled you with this, by this Post, hadn’t I thought you would be glad of a more particular account of so important a transaction, than you could have obtain’d by common report,” wrote Andrews. “If it affords my brother but a temporary amusement, I shall be more than repaid for the trouble of writing it.”

The Cape Cod Tea Party

Finally, the next evening, John Andrews lets his brother-in-law know of the fourth and final ship carrying tea. It wrecked on Cape Cod. The patriots destroyed as much of its cargo as they could find.

Andrews wrote that he forgot to write about Captain Loring, in a brig belonging to Clark, “one of ye consignees.” He had come ashore at “ye back of Cape Cod.” A storm drove the vessel. It had “the last quota of tea for this place, being 58 chests, which completes the 400.”

Andrews added “some Indians were met on ye road to Plimouth, which is almost fifty miles this side of Cape Cod.”

He ended with a note that the ship carried lamps meant for Boston streets. He was sorry about it because, “We shall be deprived of their benefit in winter,” he wrote.

From: Letters of John Andrews esq., of Boston, 1772-1776.

Image of Old South: By Daderot – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=76947597.

This story last updated in 2021.

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The Dymaxion Car – The Futuristic Vehicle That Remains in the Future

R. Buckminster Fuller lived an adventurous, if unconventional, life. A philosopher, architect and futurist, Fuller is best known for his geodesic designs, including geodesic domes that have found many applications both in housing, industry and military. His Dymaxion Car, however, was not the success he had hoped.

Replica of a Dymaxion car.

The Dymaxion Car

“Dymaxion,” a Fullerism, blended the words dynamic, maximum, and tension. He used it to describe several of his designs, including his Dymaxion House and, in 1932, his Dymaxion car.

He managed to produce three prototypes in a Bridgeport, Conn., factory, and to display them at the 1933-34 Century of Progress World’s Fair in Chicago. It didn’t go well.

The Dymaxion Corporation factory at the defunct Locomobile dynamometer building, Tongue Pointe, Bridgeport.

The Dymaxion car was futuristic in virtually every sense. A three-wheeled, aerodynamically efficient car, Fuller designed it to bring elements of aircraft and boat design to automobiles. It had a thin metal skin made of aircraft aluminum and a canvas top. It had front-wheel drive. And it could carry 11 people, but was remarkably maneuverable. Fuller also believed it could travel at well over 100 miles per hour, though he never tested it above 90. As for fuel efficiency, it got a remarkable 30 miles per gallon.

Buckminster Fuller

Fuller was born in Milton, Mass., on July 12, 1895, a grand-nephew of Margaret Fuller and grandson of Unitarian minister Arthur Buckminster Fuller. An inventive child, he attended Milton Academy and Harvard College, though he didn’t fit in with the fraternity environment. Harvard expelled him twice.

Buckminster Fuller in 1910

He earned a machinist’s certification and worked as a mechanic in a Canadian textile mill. He also served in the U.S. Navy during World War I. In 1917, he married Anne Hewlett, and they had a daughter, Alexandra. She died of complications from polio and spinal meningitis before she turned four. Fuller went into a deep depression and, while walking along Lake Michigan in Chicago, considered suicide.

But then he had a revelation. A voice told him he had no right to kill himself, that he had to fulfill his role by converting his experiences to the highest advantage of others.

Dymaxion Car chassis

Fuller then began to work on his Dymaxion House. He wanted to design an energy-efficient house that could function off the grid and was easy to ship and assemble. Eventually, the U.S. Army ordered Fuller’s Dymaxion Houses for the Persian Gulf during World War II.

Dymaxion House at the Henry Ford Museum

Disaster

Fuller began working on his futuristic car with his friend Isamu Noguchi, a Japanese-American artist and landscape designer. Noguchi created plaster models to test their aerodynamic efficiency in a wind tunnel. Noguchi later took a road trip through Connecticut in a prototype car with playwright Clare Booth Luce and socialite Dorothy Hale.

Dymaxion Prototype 2 at the Harrah Collection of the National Automobile Museum in Reno.

In 1933, Fuller formed the Dymaxion Corp., set up shop in an old Locomobile building in Bridgeport and hired another friend, Starling Burgess, a naval architect. With a $5,000 investment from Philip and Temple Pearson, he hired 27 mechanics, some of them former Rolls-Royce employees.

They finished the first prototype in three months. But as you might guess, the Dymaxion Car was fairly unstable and susceptible to wind gusts. Fuller put it on display in the 1933 World’s Fair, and it went disastrously badly. The car crashed on a test track, killing its driver. Investor enthusiasm dried up after that and Fuller stopped Dymaxion production at prototype number three.

That’s artist Diego Rivera climbing into the Dymaxion Car in shirtsleeves.

But the failure did nothing to stop Fuller. He went on with his life as a prolific thinker, lecturer and writer. Among his books: The Operating Manual for the Spaceship Earth. And his ideas and concepts, such as his buckyballs, many of which struck people as odd, have nevertheless inspired modern designers in numerous fields. Even some of the ideas he was tinkering with in his car have shaped more modern automobile engineering. Though unconventional in many of his beliefs, he was no doubt one-of-a-kind.

End Notes

This story last updated in 2022. Images: Dymaxion car replica By Starysatyr – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32840885. Dymaxion building By Unknown – Hemmings Motor News http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2009/11/13/in-search-of-the-birthplace-of-the-dymaxion/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46578872. Black-and-white photo of Chicago World’s Fair By https://www.flickr.com/photos/saschapohflepp/ – https://www.flickr.com/photos/saschapohflepp/1922098141/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9753378. Dymaxion Prototype 2 By brewbooks from near Seattle, USA – 1934 Dymaxion, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32851253. Dymaxion House By Rmhermen at the English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1917827

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Thomas Hutchinson Tries To Get His Son a Job

Massachusetts’ former colonial Gov. Thomas Hutchinson lived in unhappy exile in England while the American Revolution raged in his native land.

He’d left Boston after suffering all kinds of abuse from the rebels. They ransacked his mansion, burned him in effigy and seized his country estate for use as an army barracks. HA widower, he left for England with some of his children and their families in the spring of 1774. Thomas Gage took over as governor.

A few weeks after the shot heard ’round the world, a distressed Thomas Hutchinson wrote a letter to the Earl of Dartmouth.

Thomas Hutchinson Writes

In the letter, written on May 3, 1775, he apologized for badgering the earl. He explained that his eldest children still lived in Massachusetts with their young children. They had left their estates because friends advised them to move to Boston due to “the danger from the rage of the people.” In Boston the British troops then under siege could protect them. But his estate in Boston, “which otherwise would have contributed to their support, is rendered of little or no value by the Boston Port Act.”

He then explained his other three children lived with him in London, but wished to return. His youngest son, however, wanted to settle in England. “He has flattered himself, and has been encouraged, that on his father’s account, he should obtain an appointment here, which would contribute to his support, and to his settlement in the world.”

Hutchinson then did a bit of groveling. “I know there were so many expectations of places in England whose pretences were superior to mine, that I despaired of any appointment for him here,” he wrote. But then he found out that Sir Thomas Milles had decided to quit as receiver general for the British Army.

So Hutchinson begged Lord North for that job for his son, he wrote. “His Lordship encouraged me that he would comply with my request as soon as sir T.M. could be provided for in England,” he wrote. But then he hadn’t learned that “Sir T” would get a new commission. That left little hope that his son would succeed him until next spring, because ships would not leave for Quebec (presumably to fight the war in North America) until then.

Plea for Relief

“If one of my children could be provided for, it would be a great relief,” he wrote. Hutchinson acknowledged to the earl that the government had assured him of support and provided it. But, he wrote, “the charge of living is so much greater in England than in America.” He avoided every unnecessary expense, he wrote. But the cost of moving his family and the cost of housekeeping exceeded his allowance by several hundred pounds.

Thomas Hutchinson

“I should be ashamed to mention this to your Lordship,” he wrote. However, he wanted to show he wasn’t asking with “an avaricious or accumulating view.”

“I remember, my Lord, that I applied for a discretionary leave to come to England,” he wrote. But he wouldn’t have done it if he’d known “it would be a prejudice to the public service.” ”

And then he referred to the death of his lieutenant governor, Andrew Oliver. (Oliver died on March 3, 1774.) saying he laid aside all thoughts of leaving. He had “anticipated every difficulty and hazard” he’d experience if the government didn’t send armed forces to protect him. If he’d known additional forces would arrive, he would have thought himself more secure. He would also have been able to have vigorously “opposed attempts up on the Constitution.”

“I pray your Lordship’s consideration of any case in all its circumstances, and am very respectfully, Thomas Hutchinson,” he concluded.

Aftermath

Did the earl help his son get a job? We don’t know. We do know Thomas Hutchinson died in England a bitter and lonely exile. He grieved for the loss of his daughter, Peggy, in 1777.

During his last years he wrote a history of the colony of Massachusetts, publishing two volumes in his lifetime. The third was published posthumously.

Today, the Trustees of the Reservation own a piece of Hutchinson’s estate in Milton, known as Governor Hutchinson’s Field. The National Park Service lists it on the National Register of Historic Places, and the public may visit.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Cracking the History of the Uncommon Common Cracker

Every so often when you’re looking through a book of old New England recipes, you’ll find one that calls for the common cracker. Well, there are plenty of common crackers around. Saltines come to mind.

But the common crackers these recipes call for are actually a specific type of common cracker. And these days, they’re anything but common.

vermont-common-cracker

If you dropped back in time, say 30 years, you’d know exactly what the recipe needs. Well into the 1970s, the common cracker was ubiquitous throughout New England.

But to get the full picture, you’d need to step back in time a bit further, to the days when fresh bread was not easy to buy and before science took over the business of baking. With preservatives and cellophane and cardboard packaging, today you can commonly eat crackers made anywhere in the world.

But in the early 1800s, that wasn’t the case. Baking science hadn’t evolved so, and the common cracker solved a problem for hungry families needing a staple that would keep for months.

Inventor of the Common Cracker

If you want to figure out who invented the first common cracker, you probably won’t have any luck. They went by many names and many bakers produced them, with small variations in size. The Boston Cracker in Massachusetts, the Portland Cracker in Maine, the Montpelier Cracker in Vermont, and so forth.

American crackers, themselves, first came into existence in Newburyport, Mass. — or so the story goes– in the bakery of Theodore Pearson. There he created pilot biscuits.

Sailors, soldiers, explorers and travelers have carried some variation of cracker with them for centuries, as far back as you can imagine. The Newburyport version of this was called hard tack (among other things).

Hard Tack

Hard tack consists of an unleavened water and flour baked to within an inch of its life. It will last virtually forever. Hard tack produced for the War of 1812 was stored and then brought out for use in the Civil War, for example, none the worse for wear. Soldiers and sailors preferred it only slightly to starvation.

But hard tack soon gave rise (forgive the pun) to more elegant crackers for domestic use. The addition of yeast, a rising period of 24 hours (and more) and a long period of kneading, followed by baking and drying, resulted in a puffy white cracker with a hard thick outer shell. Voila! The common cracker.

Preserved hardtack from U.S. Civil War, Wentworth Museum, Pensacola.

The ingenious yankees had dozens of uses for them. Many involved mashing. They commonly used them as thickeners for soup and chowder or mashed and eaten with milk. Later, they split them, buttered them, toasted them and gave them all sorts of toppings. And when potatoes began to take over the chowder, the crackers shifted to the side for crumbling in just before eating.

The folks at The Food Timeline suggest Artemus Kennedy, a baker in what is now Arlington, Mass., originated the common cracker. Kennedy, their research suggests, began baking the crackers at his bakery founded in 1805. He rode around the nearby country on horseback selling them. But no one knows where he got the idea for them.

Early Bakers

Another early baker who dabbled with the cracker was Josiah Bent, founder of the G.H. Bent company in Milton, Mass., in 1801. The company earned a reputation for making water crackers, which Bent prized for their ability to travel well on sea voyages. Bent’s water crackers are smaller than the common cracker, but he made other products as well. Bent definitely made a lot of hard tack for the government, as did Pearce, and the company revived that recipe for Civil War reenactors a century after the war itself ended.

The G.H Bent factory in Milton, Mass.

Perhaps the best known of the common cracker makers was Charles Cross of Montpelier, Vt., and his tireless horse. Charles and his brother Thomas, originally from New Hampshire, founded Cross Bakers in 1828. The business continuously operated for 151 years, evolving into C.H. Cross & Sons before going bankrupt in 1979. Then the firm and its Cross Crackers moved to Claremont, N.H.

In the early days, Cross used a horse-powered treadmill to run the machinery for his bakery. His horse alternated jobs, one day powering the treadmill, the next hauling crackers for delivery. Over time, Cross grew to have a crew of salesmen traveling throughout New England selling his crackers to stores.

But in his earliest days, Cross packed up the crackers and displayed them in barrels. And this is probably how we most associate with common crackers: stored in a barrel that served as a centerpiece of the country store where they were sold. Visitors to the store would be invited to pull up a seat, crack open a cracker and put a piece of cheese on it. In this setting, men resolved the issues of the day, shared news and settled arguments.

Then the barrels disappeared. And as the humorist John Gould wrote, “everything has been on the skids since the common cracker declined.”

Julia Child

The common cracker had a new lease on life given to it by Julia Child, who gave them her stamp of approval for use with chowder. She became rather famously obsessed with cracking the recipe, which she eventually did.

Should you need a common cracker today, there are two companies still selling them: the aforementioned G.H. Bent, known as the Bent Cookie Factory, which has continuously operated since 1801; and Vermont Common Foods, which wholesales them and has a nice collection of recipes for how to cook with them. The company acquired the Cross cracker equipment, which it uses to make them today.

You can order the Vermont Common Cracker from the Vermont Country Store. Click here. This story was updated in 2021.

Images: GH. Bent Co. By Jameslwoodward – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7907262. Hard tack By Infrogmation of New Orleans – Photo by Infrogmation, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4615956

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