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The History of the Maine Plantation

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Maine has a unique form of local government – an organized plantation – that exists nowhere else in the nation.  Viewed either as a municipality (Maine law) or as a minor civil division (U.S. Census Bureau), it can be found mainly in the northern and central parts of the state.

Rangeley Plantation lies on the south side of Rangeley Lake.

Organized plantations are created when county commissioners (since 1837) call for an organizational meeting to choose officers.  The minutes of the meeting and plantation boundaries are then sent to the Secretary of State.   Thereafter, at an annual meeting in March, eligible voters serve as the governing body to elect officers, raise revenue for expenditures and discuss other issues. A three-member board of assessors acts as the executive body, values property, approves expenditures and handles other business.  Plantations generally have the same powers and duties as towns and cities, but can enact ordinances only for state-approved purposes. Those include animal control, fireworks and unwanted material on private propert).  State legislators from towns represent their interests.

Matinicus Island, a Maine plantation

The First Plantation

In 1607 Popham (Sagadahoc) Plantation or Colony became the first English attempt at permanent settlement in New England, near the mouth of the Kennebec River in Maine.  It failed a year later (unlike the 1607 settlement in Jamestown, Virginia).  Following the establishment of fishing stations after 1610 by proprietors who could easily withdraw their support, more permanent settlements by families had emerged by the late 1620s.  Among the earliest plantations along the lower southern coast were Kittery (settled in 1623), incorporated as the first town in 1647; Wells (1622), incorporated as the town of Wells in 1653; and Agamenticus/Acomenticus (1636), incorporated as York in 1652 as the second town. Meanwhile, Native Americans destroyed various 17th century plantations including Kennebec (settled in 1654) in 1689 and New Dartmouth (1665) in 1688.

Site of the Popham Colony, once a plantation

Before 1751 these settlements were controlled by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.  In 1751 plantation freeholders (landowners) had the authority under Massachusetts law to hold a meeting to elect a moderator and clerk. They could also choose assessors of property and collectors of province and county taxes.  Thus, these organized plantations gained limited governmental powers.  After 1821, plantations often served as an intermediate step between an unorganized township (i.e., no local governmental powers) and an incorporated town. They had authority to provide some public services (e.g., policing, road maintenance, and education).

The Maine Plantation

Maine, still under the control of Massachusetts, finally became a state in 1820, while retaining its local governmental units.

Sturtevant Pond in the now-Town of Magalloway

In 1820 Maine had thirty-seven plantations, with nine of them becoming towns by 1840. Fifty years later, there were 78 plantations.  However, over the next hundred years, U.S. Census data showed their numbers steadily declined to 57 in 1970 and 30 currently.  U. S. Census data also indicates that 116 plantations existed at one time or another between 1870 and 1970, with Baring (Washington County) the last one created in 1961. Of these, 45 became towns and 41 deorganized and became unorganized townships.  Thus, not all plantations became towns.  Conversely, towns were incorporated without first becoming plantations.

The old schoolhouse at Coplin Plantation

All but three of the 30 plantations are located in the northern and central parts of the state. One half of the plantations are in Aroostock and Somerset Counties.  All of the plantations have relatively small populations residing in forested areas with various water bodies.  Population sizes range from 200 in Baring (Washington County) to five in Glenwood (Aroostock County).  Land areas range from 59.0 sq. mi. in Reed (Aroostock County) to 0.9 sq. mi. on Monhegan Island (Lincoln County).

Deorganization

Since the 19th century plantations have frequently deorganized, with 27 plantations approving this decision after 1970.  The trend has accelerated recently: Oxbow (Aroostook County ) in 2017, Codyville (Washington County) in 2019, Cary (Aroostock County) in 2019 and Magalloway (Oxford County) in 2021. The main reasons cited: rising property taxes, declining job opportunities and changing demographics.

Trying to harvest fish in Grand Lake Stream Plantation

Deorganizing a plantation is a time-consuming process that ultimately leads to a loss of decision-making by residents over local affairs, including having the state and county governments assume the provision of public services.  Nevertheless, if the afore-mentioned problems continue, then the future of these remaining entities becomes more precarious.

Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Siena College near Albany, N.Y.

Images: Coplin Plantation schoolhouse By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34201233.  Sturtevant Pond By Jim Pennucci from Hope, USA – 20090818-JAP_0035, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75761098. Rangeley Lake overlook By Doug Kerr – originally posted to Flickr as Rangeley Lake Scenic Overlook – Maine, CC BY 2.0. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12253715. Site of Popham Colony By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71452873.  Matinicus Island By Jim Kuhn – originally posted to Flickr as Harbor Low Tide Panorama (Matinicus Island, Maine), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7846479.

 

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Samuel Maverick Writes A Guide to the Wonders of New England – in 1660

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Samuel Maverick, as his name suggests, didn’t like to go along with the crowd. The Puritan crowd, that is.

He came to Boston sometime in the 1620s, before the Puritans arrived, and lived on Noddles Island in Boston Harbor. Noddles Island is now East Boston, which has a Maverick Square and a Maverick T stop.

Samuel Maverick, a firm Anglican and staunch royalist, saw amazing changes in New England during the first 30-some years of his residence. When he arrived, several hundred Europeans were scattered over 150 square miles of wilderness. By 1660, Maverick saw 86 towns that fielded militia, vast herds of livestock, an abundance of English fruit, and harbors bustling with many dozens of ships, some as large as 300 tons.

Other changes he didn’t like so much. He chafed under the Puritans’ rigid laws and suffered from their religious intolerance. Another Samuel Maverick – who may have been a descendant – shared his independent spirit in 19th century Texas. The Maverick name would brand movies and cars and sports teams into the 21st century.

east-boston

East Boston, 1841. The large building in the center is the Maverick Hotel.

Samuel Maverick

He was born in England around 1602, the son of the Rev. John Maverick, who later followed him to the New World.

Samuel arrived in Massachusetts when in his twenties. With another colonist named David Thompson he built a house on Noddles Island and fortified it with guns. Thompson died, and Maverick married Thompson’s widow, Amias. They had three children in addition to her son by David Thompson.

When Maverick started out in Massachusetts, fewer than 300 Europeans lived within a radius of 150 miles.  Then in 1630, John Winthrop and his band of Puritans arrived and started running the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Things would change dramatically in a few decades.

Maverick Guide to New England

In 1660, Samuel Maverick returned to England with a guide he wrote about New England. He intended to present it to King Charles II, along with his complaints about how the Puritans treated him.

He called the guide A Briefe Discription of New England and the Severall Townes Therein, Together with the Present Government Thereof. In it, he described 86 towns from Damariscotta, Maine, to Greenwich, Conn. Maverick described how New England had once had only a sparse population of scattered colonists. By 1660, however, almost all of those towns could field a militia (“a full Company of Foote and some Horse”).

boston map

Changes in the Boston shoreline from 1630-1675

When he first arrived in New England, he wrote, he found nothing but shacks save for three or four decent houses in Plymouth. Boston, which wasn’t even Boston then, was “a swamp and pound.” It grew into a “great Towne” with “two churches, a Gallant Statehouse & more to make it compleate, then can be expected in a place so late a wilderness.”

“Now to behold the handsome Houses & Churches in so many Townes as I have named is a wonder,” wrote Maverick.

Wonders

Farming and husbandry had flourished in every town he mentioned.

In 1626 New England had not a single head of cattle, nor horse, nor sheep, and very few goats or hogs. But less than 40 years later, New Englanders exported livestock to the Caribbean, consumed much of it themselves and provisioned the ships that called at New England ports.

Along with the livestock, “the great abundance of English Fruite, as Apples, Pears, Apricots, Plumbs, Cherries Musk-Mellons, Water-Mellons &c. is not to be beleeved but by those that have seene it,” wrote Maverick.

Massachusetts also had harbors filled with “great Shipps of Burthen” and “many Vessels…of all sorts and seizes,” he wrote. “And I am confident there hath not in any place out of so small a number of People been raised so many able Seamen and Commanders as there hath been.”

In southern New England, he wrote, “it is incredible what hath been done.”

The Puritan by August Saint-Gaudens. Samuel Maverick chafed under their intolerance

Majority Rule

As colonists carved towns out of the wilderness, the Puritans gained power at the expense of the minority Anglicans. They took over Maine, then largely Anglican, and they persecuted Thomas Morton, a free-thinking Anglican in Braintree. They cast out nonconformists, who often ended up in free-thinking Rhode Island.

The Puritans also created and enforced a set of laws that reserved privileges for members of the Puritan church, or freemen. Samuel Maverick was not one of them. As such, he couldn’t hold government office, but he had to pay taxes. He also couldn’t take communion and he couldn’t have his children baptized.

Nevertheless, Samuel Maverick prospered and contributed to the community’s defense. Contemporaries described him as a  “whole-souled, generous, hospitable man, of warm impulses and courteous behavior.” He was “a royalist and Episcopalian, living in a strongly fortified residence on Noddle’s Island,” according to A History of East Boston: With Biographical Sketches of Its Early Proprietors, and an Appendix, by William Hylsop Sumner.

puritan ban

Intolerance

Ironically, Maverick owned three slaves. His treatment of them is another story. Suffice it to say he felt he was the one denied civil and religious liberties.

By 1647, Maverick and others began to resent the colony’s rigid laws. He joined several others in a petition to end taxation without representation and to gain basic civil and religious rights.

They complained the colony did not base its laws on the fundamental laws of England. The government also denied them the same civic and religious privileges as the church members, or freemen. They protested they were entitled to those privileges as “freeborn Englishmen of sober lives and conversation.”

Maverick and the other petitioners threatened to take their complaints to England if the Puritans didn’t cave in to their demands.

And so the Puritans sent him to jail for conspiracy and perjury and slapped him with a steep fine. After 12 days he paid the fine and went free.

Successful Complaint, Failed Commission

Maverick wasn’t going to get any satisfaction in England while the English Civil War raged. Nor would he while Oliver Cromwell ruled the country. But when Charles II restored the Crown in 1660, Samuel Maverick headed straight for England to air his complaints about the Puritans to the King.

He brought with him the little book he’d written, outlining the lay of the land. A Briefe Discription of New England and the Severall Townes Therein, Together with the Present Government Thereof received the King’s attention. For centuries it rested in private hands, its existence unknown to but a few. Then in 1875 its owner put the book up for auction and the British Museum bought it.

charles ii

King Charles II

His little book convinced the king he needed to rein in his independent colonies. Maverick returned to New England in a position of authority as one of four commissioners. The King charged the commissioners with enforcing liberty of conscience and oaths of allegiance as well as forcing local militias to follow the King’s orders.

The commissioners couldn’t exercise their power, though, and Samuel Maverick moved to New York. He is believed to have died sometime around 1670.

Maverick’s Brief Description

Here are excerpts from his descriptions of 20 towns from Maine to Connecticut. (To see all 86, click here.)

Note his disapproval with how the Massachusetts Puritans took over Maine towns, originally settled by Anglicans like himself.  And he makes clear his disdain for the poor, weak and Dutch-friendly Plymouth Colony.

Map of New England, 1677

Maine

  • Pem˜a—Westward from Penobscott (which is the Southermost Fort in Nova Scotia) … is Pem˜aquid…many Families are now settled there… by vertue of [a patent granted by King James I] they hold the Islands of Monahegan and Damerells Coue, and other small ones adjacent Commodious for fishing.
  • Casco Bay.— In this Casco Bay are many scattering Families settled…[Col.] Alexander Rigby…[held the patent] and under this Goverment the People lived some yeares, till of late the Government of the Massachusits hath made bold to stretch its Jurisdiction to the midle of this Bay, and as lyeing in their way have taken in a dozen of Goverments more.

New Hampshire

  • Strawberry Bank. The Great House & Isle of Shooles.—Within 2 Myles of the Mouth is Strawberry Banke where are many Families, and a Minister & a Meeting House …This Strawberry Banke is part of 6000 acres granted by Patent about yeyeare 1620 or 1621, to Mr David Thompson, who with… assistance … went over with a Considerable Company of Servants and built a Strong and Large House, enclosed it with a large and high Palizado and mounted Gunns, and being stored extraordinarly with shot and Ammunition was a Terror to the Indians, who at that time were insulting over the poor weake and unfurnished Planters of Plymouth… all is at this day in the power and at the disposall of the Massachusitts. Two Leagues of lyes the Isle of Shooles one of the best places for ffishing in the land, they have built a Church here and maintaine a Minister.

Massachusetts

  • Newbury—… the Houses stand at a good distance each from other a feild and Garden between each house, and so on both sides the street for 4 Miles…
  • Salem—… very commodious for fishing, and many Vessells have been built there and (exceptBoston) it hath as much Trade as any place in New England.
  • Marblehead or Foy.—… the greatest Towne for ffishing in New England.
  • Lynne—… within the bounds of it are the greatest Iron works…
  • Cambridge—[In] Cambridge … is a Colledge a Master and some Number of Students belonging to it…

    boston-statehouse

    The Old State House in Boston

  • Boston—the Metrapolis of New England lying pleasantly on a plaine and the ascending of a High Mount which lyes about the midle of yeplaine, …It hath two handsome Churches in it, a handsome market place, and in the midest of it a Statehouse. In the Towne are fouer full companys of ffoote and a Troope of horse…The Towne is full of good shopps well furnished with all kind of Merchandize
  • Braintree—once called Mount Wolaston, … It subsists by raiseing provisions, and furnishing Boston with wood.
  • New Plymouth.—… This place was seated about yeyeare 1620 or 1621 by a company of Brownists, …[They] found this place and there settled liveing extream hardy for some yeares and in great danger of the Indians, and could not Long have subsisted, had not Plymouth Merchants …at Monhegon and Pascattaway … supplyed them…It is a poor small Towne now, The People being removed into Farmes in the Country.
  • Sandwich—a good Towne … which affords good store of Provisions, and some yeares a quantity of Whalebone made of Whales which drive up dead in that Bay.

Rhode Island

  • Rhode Island.— It is full of people haveing been a receptacle for people of severall Sorts and Opinions.
  • Warwick Providence.— I think they still keepe a seeming forme of Goverment but to litle purpose, none submitting to Supream Authority but as they please.

Connecticut

  • (Pequot Plantation, now Mystic and Stonington—Haveing gone through New Plymouth Goverment we come next to Connecticot Goverment. The first that was under this Goverment was Pequate
  • Hartford—From Withersfield to Hartford the Metropolis of the Goverment, it is about 3 Miles, it is a gallant Towne, and many rich men in it.
  • Springfield— This is the Massachusetts bounds. And above Springfeild 8 Miles is another Towne at first Intended but for a tradeing house with the Indians, but the gallant Land about it hath invited men to make it a Toune. This Connecticott River is a great River before yeTowne[which] is also in the Massachusetts bounds and under its Goverment although 8 Miles from it.

    new haven colony

    Woodcut of New Haven, 1786

  • Newhaven—This Towne is the Metropolis of that Goverment, and the Goverment tooke its Name from this Towne; … was the first built in those parts, many stately and costly houses were erected the Streete layd out in a Gallant forme, a very stately Church; but yeHarbour proveing not Comodious, the land very barren, the Merchants either dead or come away, the rest gotten to their Farmes, The Towne is not so glorious as once it was.
  • Milford—From Newhaven to Milford it is about 10 Miles, This Towne is gotten into some way of Tradeing to Newfoundland, Barbados, Virginia, So also hath some other Townes in this Goverment.
  • Greenwich—From Stamford to Greenwich…these two last Townes are under Newhaven Goverment, and there was another place begun and much done in it, but the Dutch came and tooke it by force, and since the people of this Towne call it New Chester…

The Rest of the Story

New England had no shortage of Mavericks, and it’s hard to tell who was the ancestor of the famous Maverick who moved to Texas as a baby. That Maverick, also Samuel, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, served as mayor of San Antonio, owned huge tracts of land and practiced law. He also had a few cows. He didn’t brand his cattle, and, according to lore, those who strayed into another rancher’s herd were called mavericks.

His grandson Maury Maverick coined the term ‘gobbledygook.’

This story was updated in 2022. Image of map of New England: By http://maps.bpl.org – A map of New England, being the first that ever was here cut … places, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27807459.

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Monhegan Murder Mystery: What Did Rockwell Kent Know?

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In 2013, Jamie Wyeth’s new portrait of Rockwell Kent on Monhegan Island, paintbrush and palette in hand, was exhibited at the Brandywine River Museum of American Art. (See it here.) In the background a body was falling off a cliff. The body belonged to Sally Maynard Moran, a former mistress of Kent. Wyeth denied he was suggesting Kent killed Moran in an unsolved Monhegan murder.

He explained it was simply part of his series about “untoward events that have occurred on Monhegan over the years and this, of course, is one of them.”

The Red House, watercolor by Jamie Wyeth

The Red House, watercolor by Jamie Wyeth, 1972

Rockwell Kent

Rockwell Kent was born 1882 in Tarrytown, N.Y., to a relatively affluent family. He studied at Columbia University and at the Art Student’s League. In 1903, he also had an apprenticeship with Monadnock painter Abbott Handerson Thayer.

Rockwell Kent

Rockwell Kent around 1920

Kent found inspiration in nature, and read deeply in the works of Transcendentalist philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

In 1905 he moved to Monhegan Island off the Maine coast, where he built several cottages and a large house at the water’s edge, known today as the Red House.

Success

His paintings of the island won critical acclaim. He moved on to paint other landscapes that inspired him: in Minnesota, Newfoundland, Alaska, Vermont, Tierra del Fuego, Ireland and Greenland.

In 1926, publisher R.R. Donnelley asked Kent to illustrate Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr. Kent, who loved maritime adventure, suggested Moby Dick instead. The publisher agreed, and Kent set about studying whaling lore and history. His illustrated an edition of Moby Dick, released in 1930, that sold out immediately.

He was also in demand as a magazine illustrator. Under the name Hogarth, Jr., he created whimsical pen-and-ink drawings for Vanity Fair, New York Tribune, Harper’s Weekly and Life.

Red Baiting

But Rockwell Kent became increasingly radical and outspoken during World War II. He took an increasingly active role in progressive politics, and he remained patriotic toward the United States.

Island Village by Rockwell Kent, courtesy Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

After the war he advocated friendship and peace with the Soviet Union. U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy targeted him during the red-baiting era, and his reputation suffered. Once one of the most famous, well-paid artists of his day, he was no longer in demand as an artist or illustrator.

Brewing Storm by Rockwell Kent. Courtesy Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.

In the summer of 1953, Sally Maynard Moran visited Monhegan. She stayed at one of the cottages the artist still owned, joined by his daughter, Mrs. Kathleen Finney, and her children. One day she announced she was going to take a walk. She was never seen again alive.

Three weeks after she disappeared, her body was discovered floating in the ocean off Portland Light.

“Mrs. Sally Maynard Moran, 49, New York society figure whose disappearance from the artists’ colony was a sensation last July, was murdered and thrown into the sea on the Maine coast, officials announced today,” reported the Chicago Tribune on Oct. 4, 1953.

Monhegan Murder

Pathologists had determined she died of blunt force trauma to the head. They said she couldn’t have fallen from Monhegan’s 100-foot cliffs, because her body would have had multiple bruises and fractures. The only other injury Sally Moran suffered was a broken arm.

Investigators learned two strange men were seen walking near the Kent cottage on the night of her death. An islander heard a voice shout, “Get your hands off me.”

Did Rockwell Kent have something to do with the murder of Sally Maynard? The rumor dogged him for years.

Monhegan's rocky shore

Monhegan’s rocky shore

The theory about the Monhegan murder had several flaws. One was that Kent was in New York at the time of Sally Maynard’s death.

Another was that she wasn’t murdered – at least according to her grandniece, Martha Wolfe of Winchester, Va.  The Kennebec County attorney general gave Wolfe copies of the cold case file in 2006. Wolfe then pored over the files and concluded her great-aunt’s death was an accident.

Kent and his wife believed she committed suicide because she couldn’t face leaving the island. They had gotten her a job as a secretary because her ex-husband’s business reverses lowered her alimony. Sally Maynard Moran had allen into despair and uncertainty, her psychiatrist told the Kents.

Kent and Wyeth

Rockwell Kent sold the Monhegan cottage after Sally Moran died. He never returned to the island. From his 40s on he lived and painted at the Adirondack farm he called Asgaard. He died of a heart attack in 1971.

Jamie Wyeth long found Kent fascinating. He collected Kent’s work and even bought a house owned by Kent on Monhegan. In 1972, he painted The Red House.

Then in 2013, the Brandywine River Museum of American Art in Chadds Ford, Pa., held the exhibit featuring Wyeth’s portrait of Kent, titled, Jamie Wyeth, Rockwell Kent and Monhegan.

This story about the Monhegan murder mystery was updated in 2022.

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Edward Hopper paints sunlight in New England

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Edward Hopper is known for his paintings of urban isolation, and yet he did some of his best loved work in rural and small town New England. From the time he was 29 in 1912, Edward Hopper spent nearly every summer in New England until his death in 1967.

Lighthouse and Buildings, Portland Head, Cape Elizabeth, Maine, 1927, courtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Lighthouse Hill, 1927, Dallas Museum of Fine Arts

He painted the dunes and cottages on Cape Cod, the rolling hills and farms of Vermont, the rocky shore of Maine, the tenements and fishing fleets of Cape Ann. And all along the coast he painted lighthouses.

Lighthouses had not yet become an artistic cliché. It was Hopper who made the lighthouse a representative and enduring American image, observed Carl Little in Edward Hopper’s New England.

Edward Hopper may have seen something of himself in the lighthouses. He was 6’5”, taciturn and an artistic loner. Preferring representational art, he stood apart from the abstract painters of his day. He explained why:

The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was born July 22, 1882, in Nyack N.Y., to a prosperous middle-class family that encouraged his interest in art.

He studied under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri at what became the Parsons New School of Design. To support himself, he went into illustration, which he hated. He took three trips to Europe to alleviate the tedium of commercial work. But in the end trips to Europe weren’t enough to inspire him back at his studio in New York City.  As he approached 30 he sank into depression, sitting for days at a time before his easel “in hopeless unhappiness, unable to raise a hand to break the spell.”

Gloucester Harbor, 1912

Gloucester Harbor, 1912

In 1912 he took his first trip to Gloucester, Mass., which broke that spell.

Leaving his train at the Gloucester station, he could walk to his lodgings downtown. He wandered around the city sketching and painting. The trolley allowed him to explore any neighborhood he wished. Today, visitors can see the same steps, sidewalks, houses and rocks he painted a century ago. (To take a self-guided Hopper tour of Hopper’s Gloucester, click here.)

The Coast

He spent the summers of 1914 and 1915 in Ogunquit, Maine, and returned to the coast again and again.

Blackhead, Monhegan, 1919. Whitney Museum of American Art

Blackhead, Monhegan, 1919. Whitney Museum of American Art

In 1916-1919 he went to Monhegan Island in Maine. There he carted around wood panels, usually 12” by 16,” and painted the rocky cliffs with thick, loose strokes.

He was back in Gloucester in 1923 for the city’s 300th anniversary celebration. That was the year he started painting in watercolor, an excellent medium for New England’s light. Painting next to him was fellow student Jo Nivison, who he married the next year. Jo modeled for many of the women in his paintings. – like Cape Cod Morning.

The Mansard Roof, 1923, Brooklyn Museum

The Mansard Roof, 1923, Brooklyn Museum

Edward Hopper once said all he wanted to do was ‘to paint sunlight on the side of a house.’  In Gloucester in 1923 he painted the superb The Mansard Roof, treating light and shadow  in a way that gave an inanimate structure life and motion. The Brooklyn Museum bought the painting, and a show of his watercolors then sold out. Hopper was in his 40s and coming into his own.

During his lifetime he painted more than 100 works from Gloucester, returning in 1924, 1926 and 1928.

Two on the Aisle, 1927, Toledo Museum of Art

Two on the Aisle, 1927, Toledo Museum of Art

Wheels

In 1927 he sold Two on the Aisle for $1,500, the most he’d ever sold a painting for, and he bought a car with the money.

The car allowed him to explore more of New England – Rockland and Portland in Maine, South Royalton in Vermont, South Truro on Cape Cod. On a visit to Portland in 1927 he painted one of his many lighthouses, Lighthouse and Buildings.

From 1930 to 1967, Hopper spent most of every summer on Cape Cod. He explained why in 1962:

I chose to live here because it has a longer summer season. I like Maine very much, but it gets so cold in the fall. There’s something soft about Cape Cod that doesn’t appeal to me too much. But there’s a beautiful light there — very luminous–perhaps because it’s so far out to sea; an island almost.

His wife called it a ‘wonderful land of bare green sandy hills.’

Corn Hill, 1930, McNay Art Museum

Corn Hill, 1930, McNay Art Museum

Cape Cod and Vermont

Instead of mansard roofs and cliffs, sand dunes and rolling hills made up the Cape’s landscape. Edward Hopper tackled that subject on his first summer on Cape Cod in 1930 with paintings like Corn Hill.

At first they rented houses in South Truro. Then in 1934, the Hoppers built their summer house in South Truro, a simple, shingled house.

First Branch of the White River, Vermont, 1938, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

First Branch of the White River, Vermont, 1938, Boston Museum of Fine Arts

The Hoppers also took side trips in the summer, to the Southwest, Mexico and Vermont. From 1935-38, they visited Vermont. In ’37 and ’38 they stayed in South Royalton, near White River Junction. There Edward Hopper painted some of his best watercolor landscapes.

Cape Cod Afternoon, 1936, Carnegie Museum of Art

Cape Cod Afternoon, 1936, Carnegie Museum of Art

In 1939 he painted Cape Cod Afternoon – an image of an imaginary place he pieced together from bits and pieces in the vicinity. A doorway came from Orleans, the billowing grass from South Truro.

Isolation and Solitude

Gas, 1940, Museum of Modern Art

Gas, 1940, Museum of Modern Art

His paintings began to explore the themes of isolation and solitude: There were more small houses, more interiors, more lonely people. And he continued to invent. Gas, like Cape Cod Afternoon, was a pastiche of elements he’d seen and sketched in different places.

Cape Cod Morning, 1950, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

Cape Cod Morning, 1950, Smithsonian Museum of American Art

In the late 1940s his creative juices dried up, and he told a friend he wished he could paint because he was tired of reading and going to the movies. Edward Hopper did paint Cape Cod Morning in 1950 with Jo, as was often the case, posing as the woman in the window.

He suffered health problems in the 1950s and painted only about five paintings a year in the 1960s. Then on May 15, 1967, he died.

Jo bequeathed his work, more than 3,000 pieces, to the Whitney Museum of American Art. She died 10 months later.


With thanks to Edward Hopper’s New England by Carl Little. This story about Edward Hopper was updated in 2023.

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The Legend of Faneuil Hall’s Golden Grasshopper Weathervane

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The truth is more interesting than the legend about the golden grasshopper perched above Faneuil Hall since 1742.

The real story links the golden grasshopper to tracts of land in Maine, includes a secret within its belly and a tale of theft and recovery.

The golden grasshopper

The golden grasshopper

According to the legend, the golden grasshopper weathervane was a gift from coppersmith Shem Drowne to Peter Faneuil. Faneuil, a wealthy merchant and slave trader, donated Faneuil Hall to Boston.

Legend further has it that Shem Drowne got discouraged by his many failures in colonial New England. He lay down in an open field, and upon waking saw a boy chasing a grasshopper. Shem watched and talked with the boy, who took him home to his wealthy parents. They gave him dinner and later adopted him. The golden grasshopper weathervane commemorated that turning point in his life.

The Real Story

The real story? Above London’s Royal Exchange a grasshopper weathervane perched, recognized around the world as a symbol of commerce. (It’s still there.) Peter Faneuil Hall built his hall on Boston’s then-shoreline, and he no doubt intended it as a symbol of commerce, a beacon to ships that put into Boston Harbor.

Peter Faneuil

Faneuil Hall became a hub of commercial activity, a launching pad for independence from Britain and a center of abolitionism. As one historian put it,

In old Faneuil, that guild temple of traders and aldermen, butchers and clerks, hucksters and civic magistrates, the spirit of the people conceived an embryonic nation.

Shem Drowne

Shem Drowne was born Dec. 4, 1683 in Eliot, Maine. His father, Leonard Drowne, was a shipbuilder from England. The family left Maine for Boston in 1699 to escape violence following King William’s War.

Cover of souvenir album of historic sites of Boston, shaped as beanpot, with illus. of Faneuil Hall. Courtesy Library of Congress.


Cover of souvenir album of historic sites of Boston, shaped as beanpot, with illus. of Faneuil Hall. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Shem Drowne married Katherine Clark on Sept. 18, 1712 in Boston. She inherited tracts of land in Maine known as the Pemaquid Patents. Shem gained power of attorney from the other heirs. He then went to court to eventually control what became known as the Drowne Claim, which encompassed Bristol, Bremen, Damariscotta, and parts of Newcastle and Nobleboro.  In 1746, he bought Monhegan Island in Maine for 10 pounds, 13 shillings.

He was also a coppersmith and Boston’s first tinplate worker, with a shop in the North End.

In 1716, Shem Drowne made America’s first documented weathervane, a gilded archer on top of the royal governor’s house. He created a rooster weathervane for the New Brick Church on Hanover Street. (It now sits on top of First Church in Cambridge.) He also made the copper swallowtail banner vane atop Old North Church in Boston.

In 1742, he made the copper grasshopper weathervane with glass eyes for Faneuil Hall. It was later gilded.

‘I shall vary as the wind’

In 1755, an earthquake threw the golden grasshopper to the ground, severing a leg. Boston selectmen voted to pay Shem Drowne’s son Thomas to repair it. Thomas made a time capsule with the words ‘food for the grasshopper’ on it. He placed it in the grasshopper’s belly with a note:

To my brethren and fellow grasshoppers, Fell in ye year 1753 (1755) Nov. 13, early in ye morning by a great earthquake by my old Master above. Again, like to have met with Utter Ruin by Fire, by hopping Timely from my Public Station, came of the broken bones and much Bruised. Cured and Fixed. Old Master’s son Thomas Drowne June 28, 1768, and Though I will promise to Discharge my office, yet I shall vary as ye wind.

Messages From Mayors

Since then, the golden grasshopper has been periodically refurbished, and new items placed in the time capsule, including historical newspapers, coins, and messages from mayors.

Faneuil Hall

Faneuil Hall 1789

The golden grasshopper became a symbol of Boston. According to another legend, three men who said they came from Boston asked for aid from Samuel Cooper, American consul in Glasgow. Cooper, a Bostonian, asked them what was on top of Faneuil Hall. One said a fish, one said a horse, the third said a grasshopper. He is alleged to have said to the third, “I will give you all the assistance you need, but the other men will have to walk to Boston.”

Shem Drowne died January 13, 1774.

The Golden Grasshopper Heist

Almost exactly 200 years later, someone stole the golden grasshopper. Paul Revere Carroll, a direct descendant of Paul Revere, was the police detective in charge of the case. He got a phone call from Plymouth County’s district attorney saying he had part of the grasshopper.

They met in Boston’s Park Square and the DA handed him a paper bag with the spire in it. He led police to the Faneuil Hall tower, where rags covered the rest of the golden grasshopper.

It turned out a steeplejeack who’d been arrested on drug charges had stolen it, but confessed to the crime in hopes of getting a plea bargain in his drug case. The grasshopper was regilded and replaced, but with a locking device so it couldn’t be stolen again.

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New from the New England Historical Society. Click here to order your copyt oday. 
With thanks to Faneuil Hall and Faneuil Hall Market: Or, Peter Faneuil and His Gift by Abram English Brown. Color image of Faneuil Hall: By Tony Fischer. This story was updated in 2020. 

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The Great 1938 Hurricane, A Once-In-A-Lifetime Storm

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The Great 1938 Hurricane took almost everyone by surprise. Sept. 21, 1938, was supposed to be a breezy fall day in New England. Few paid attention to the storm barreling up the coast.

At 12:30 PM, a 30-foot bank of what looked like fog rolled in toward Long Island. It turned out to be the storm surge, topped by waves 30 and 50 feet high.

By 4 pm, one of the most powerful and destructive hurricanes ever to hit Southern New England made landfall between Bridgeport  and New Haven, Conn. 

The damage was horrific. Estimates vary, but  at least 400 people died that day and maybe as many as 800. The Great 1938 Hurricane crossed over the tip of Long Island, slammed into New London and raced up the Connecticut River Valley at 50 miles per hour. It destroyed cemeteries, slammed boats into shore, uprooted entire orchards  and smashed structures into splinters.

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Erosion from the Great 1938 hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Trashed Infrastructure

The hurricane chewed away at roadbeds, like Shore Drive in Winthrop, Mass., above. It washed away railroad tracks, sent bridges downstream and downed electrical wires, leaving some New Englanders without electricity for weeks.

The hurricane wiped away entire communities, altered the shoreline of Long Island, washed away bridges, severed train service between New York and Boston and between cities in Connecticut and Rhode Island. It brought down 20,000 miles of power and telephone lines.

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The Great 1938 Hurricane pushed the Tulip onto land. Photo courtesy Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

In New London, Conn., high waters pushed a five-masted ship, Marsala, into a warehouse and started a fire that demolished a quarter-mile section of the city’s business district. The hurricane also tossed the lighthouse tender Tulip, pictured above, ashore.

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The Great 1938 Hurricane washed homes off their foundations. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Houses washed off their foundations, like the one above that landed in the Cape Cod Canal.

A Wild Ride

Perhaps the most astounding story of the storm comes from the Moore family of Westerly, R.I. As the storm grew stronger, the family tried to evacuate their beachfront home, but could not. As the ocean waves began surging into the house, Catherine Moore recalls her father bracing against the front door literally trying to hold back the ocean.

 

The family moved first to the second floor and finally to the third floor to stay above the storm surge, watching as house after house succumbed and neighbors were washed away. Finally, the waves overwhelmed their own house, lifting it off its foundation.

“Next thing I knew, we were floating,” Moore recalled. “We were on the water with the waves crashing over us, and part of the house still attached, one of the walls still attached to this piece of floor, and it almost acted as a sail.”

In all, 10 people clung to that bit of floor as it hurtled across the Sound to land in Connecticut. There the family stepped back on to land and back into their lives.

Damage From the 1938 Hurricane

Westerly, a bastion of quiet old wealth, never quite regained its prestige after the Great 1938 Hurricane. Charlestown, R.I., lost a bit more: 160 out of 200 homes were annihilated.

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Aftermath of the Great 1938 Hurricane in Hartford, Conn. Photo licensed under public domain by Wikipedia Commons.

The storm forced the Connecticut River over its banks, inundating cities and towns with floodwater. In Hartford, the river reached 35.4 feet, 19.4 feet above flood stage. Above, Bushnell Park in Hartford after the storm.

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The Great 1938 Hurricane submerged coastal towns under eight feet of water. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Parts of Falmouth and New Bedford, Mass., were submerged under eight feet of water.

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Rhode Island got battered by the Great 1938 Hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island got the worst of it. Parts of downtown Providence were under 14 feet of water, with people sheltering on the second and third floors of buildings. According to the National Weather Service,  a storm surge of 12 to 15 feet destroyed most coastal homes, yacht clubs and marinas on Narragansett Bay.

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The Great 1938 Hurricane inflicted tremendous damage on shipping. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Above, the steamship Monhegan sits at a pier in Providence after sinking during the hurricane. Two-thirds of the boats in New Bedford Harbor sank. Before the storm, 100 boats fished the waters between Point Judith, R.I., and New London. Afterward, the hurricane left only three.

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One of the 19,000 buildings destroyed by the hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Cost of the 1938 Hurricane

In New Hampshire, fire destroyed four buildings in Peterborough and wind blew down part of the Cog Railway on Mount Washington. And in Vermont, the storm caused a train derailment and uprooted maple trees and apple orchards. The hurricane blew the house pictured above onto railroad tracks.

As one of the most costly hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland, it caused damage later estimated at $308 million. A total of 4,500 homes were destroyed and 25,000 damaged. The storm destroyed about 26,000 automobiles and blew over 20,000 electrical poles. And high winds knocked down an estimated 2 billion trees in New York and New England, devastating forests.

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The storm soaked an unknown number of pants. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The dead filled funeral homes. Homeless refugees crammed into town halls, armories and fire stations. Clinics then ran out of typhoid vaccine. It took a week to restore power in Provincetown, and 200 men spent a week trying to open the roads to Newport, R.I.

The Clean-Up

Cleaning up timber damaged by the Great 1938 Hurricane took years.

The storm blew down so many trees that paper mills processed them for nine years.

The blowdowns posed a dilemma: What to do with enough woody debris to nearly fill Rhode Island? And how to do it quickly enough so it didn’t set off tremendous forest fires?

President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration to clean up the mess. It then took two years for the 50 CCC camps and 15,000 WPA workers in the region to finish the job.

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The Northern Kraft Paper Mill in Howland, Maine. In 1947, the mill still used wood cut from trees downed by the Great 1938 hurricane.

To see more newsreel footage of the Great 1938 Hurricane, click here.

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Read more about the 1938 Hurricane in “New England Weather,” just published by The New England Historical Society. Click here to order your copy today!

This story was updated in 2024. With thanks to The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns. If you’d like to read about a wild ride one family took during the storm, click here. If you’d like to read about another family’s ordeal stranded on a high floor in their house, click here. 

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