Munjoy Hill Archives - New England Historical Society

The Portland Rum Riot erupted on June 2, 1855, when the city’s Irish working-class residents found out something about their teetotaling, saloon-raiding mayor, Neal Dow. He had stashed $1,600 worth of booze at City Hall.

Neal Dow

At 5 p.m. that day, about 200 people gathered outside City Hall, hoping to see Mayor Neal Dow arrested. Dow had spearheaded passage of the Maine Laws, which outlawed alcohol exactly four years earlier. “Hypocrite,” cried the crowd.

By day’s end, the Portland Rum Riot would result in the death of one man and the wounding of seven others. It would cloud Dow’s political ambitions and end Maine’s first temperance experiment a year later.

War on the Irish

Neal Dow was born to a prosperous Quaker family in Portland on March 20, 1804. Even as a boy he hated alcohol with a passion. He hated slavery, too, believing rum and slavery fed off each other.

Dow had a point. Rum, slaves and sugar fueled the triangular trade among the Caribbean, the United States and Africa.

Back then, Americans drank three times as much as they do today. Dow said Portland had as many as 300 drinking establishments along the mile-long stretch from lower Congress Street to Munjoy Hill, an Irish working-class neighborhood.

Dow knew what he was talking about. After all, he had ordered raids on many of the illegal saloons.

How Neal Dow viewed the Irish

Dow at 23 had co-founded the Maine Temperance Society. From the 1840s, he was the bane of Irish immigrants who sold booze as he waged a fanatical war against their ‘notorious groggeries.’ Dow liked to give speeches painting lurid pictures of the rum-swilling foreigners who had just arrived in America.

In 1851, as mayor of Portland, Dow achieved his lifelong goal with the passage of the Maine Laws. They outlawed alcohol – except for medicinal, mechanical or manufacturing purposes.

Mayor Dow’s battle against alcohol created plenty of enemies. Portland’s large Irish population viewed Dow’s war on booze as a war on them. And in 1850, 11 percent of Portland’s population of 21,000 identified themselves as Irish immigrants.

Booze at City Hall

The Maine Laws allowed towns to appoint an individual to buy alcohol for medicinal purposes. In the spring of 1855, Dow had gone ahead and authorized the city to buy $1,600 worth of ‘medicinal and mechanical alcohol’ for distribution to pharmacists and doctors. Technically, he broke the law, which required the appointment of a committee. But no committee had been appointed.

Word got out that Dow had stored alcohol in the city vaults. The news spread quickly through Portland’s Irish population.

In Maine, any three citizens could ask a judge for a search warrant if they believed a crime had been committed. Irish representatives asked for, and on June 2 got, a search warrant from a local judge.

Portland City Hall, 19th century, scene of the Portland Rum Riot

That day, a small crowd began to gather outside City Hall. The men with the warrant showed it at the door and demanded entry so they could search the premises. The police refused them.

As more men got off work in the evening, they headed to City Hall. It soon became became clear the police wouldn’t cooperate with the court order. Men started milling about angrily and threatening to rush the building.

The Portland Rum Riot

Within a few hours, the crowd grew to as many as 3,000 people, mostly Irish. They then started throwing rocks at the building that contained the liquor. The Eastern Argus reported,

Occasionally during the evening, stones and brick-bats were thrown against the door of the liquor store (the storage area in City Hall), breaking the glass and sashes, and otherwise injuring the door.

Dow called out the militia and ordered them to shoot. During the melee, John Robbins, a 22-year-old sailor from Deer Isle, broke a hole in the door of the liquor vault and unlocked it. Instantly a volley of fire killed him.

Even as the crowd dispersed, the militia continued to fire. Seven more people were injured.

Tragically, Robbins was to have been married the next day.

Dow received plenty of criticism for ordering the militia to shoot, but he expressed no remorse for the Portland Rum Riot. He was acquitted on charges that he’d improperly obtained alcohol. But he lost re-election by a wide margin, and a year later Maine repealed the Maine Laws.

In 1861, at the age of 57, Neal Dow enlisted as a colonel in the 13^th Maine Infantry to fight the Civil War. He was wounded, captured and promoted to general.

Though he returned from the war a hero, the Portland Rum Riot ended Neal Dow’s political ambitions. He never again held public office, despite running for governor and for the presidency of the United States.

This story about the Portland Rum Riot was updated in 2023.

John Ford earned acclaim for movies filmed in landscapes that were vast, severe and rugged, like his personality. He also directed films considered sensitive and compassionate, and so was he. Winner of four Academy Awards for Best Director, John Ford was one of the most influential filmmakers ever.

John Ford

John Ford was born John ‘Jack’ Martin Feeney on Feb. 1, 1894 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. His father, John Augustine Feeney, arrived in Boston days before the June 1872 arrival of his mother, Barbara Curran, in Portland. Both were from Ireland. They married in 1875 and had 11 children. The family lived in the Irish-American Munjoy Hill neighborhood of Portland, where John Augustine ran a saloon, served as an alderman, farmed, fished and worked for the gas company.

Drunks, boxers and roustabouts in the tough Munjoy Hill neighborhood gave Ford his ideals of masculinity, later embodied in his friend John Wayne.

John Ford in 1915

Ford’s oldest brother Francis had drifted into film acting after serving in the Spanish American War. Francis took the stage name Ford from the automobile and moved to San Antonio, Texas. There he directed and appeared in Westerns for Newport movie mogul Thomas Ince, who died mysteriously on William Randolph Hearst’s yacht.

John Feeney followed his older brother to Hollywood, taking the name John Ford and working as his assistant. He would eventually eclipse his older brother’s considerable fame. He did it by directing such films as The Searchers, The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, Stagecoach and How Green Was My Valley. Ford was best known for Westerns starring John Wayne, though Henry Fonda, Maureen O’Hara and Ward Bond also appeared frequently in his films.

Over his career, Ford directed 140 films and won six Academy Awards. Famously tough on actors, he was described as the only man who could make John Wayne cry and once punched Henry Fonda.

1940s

His breakthrough film, Stagecoach, launched John Wayne’s career in 1939. The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley followed in 1940 and 1941, respectively. He won Academy Awards for Best Director for both.

Then during World War II, he made documentaries for the Navy, which won two Academy Awards. He was wounded in the arm filming the Japanese attack on Midway, and he also filmed the invasion of Omaha Beach. The latter never saw the light of day because the government didn’t want to show so many American casualties on screen.

After the war, he became an independent producer and directed The Fugitive and Fort Apache, both starring Henry Fonda.

He finished out the decade with another acclaimed film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, starring John Wayne.

Ireland

Ford directed several films with Irish themes. His most famous, The Quiet Man, featured John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara in a lush Irish setting. It included a famous fight scene and a score that O’Hara listened to during her final hours. Ford won an Academy Award as best director for the 1952 film.

Ford shot another film in Ireland in 1957, The Rising of the Moon, based on three Irish short stories. Then in 1958, he directed The Last Hurrah, starring Spencer Tracy, based on a fictionalized biography of Boston Mayor James Michael Curley.

Westerns

Ford called his 1950 film Wagon Master his all-time favorite because it came closest to what he hoped to accomplish. It inspired the television series Wagon Train.

Others consider his 1956 Western The Searchers, starring John Wayne, one of his best films. In 2008 the American Film Institute named it “The Greatest Western of All Time.” It featured the signature line, “That’ll be the day,” which inspired a song of the same name by Buddy Holly.

Critics consider The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, shot in 1962, the last great film of John Ford’s career. Again it starred John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart. Then in their 50s, they played cowboys in their 20s, but moviegoers didn’t mind and made it a box office success.

Ford’s health declined and he finished his last feature film, 7 Women, in 1966.

John Ford On the Set

He was famously irascible on the set. Described as a ‘tough, two-fisted, hard-drinking Irish son-of-a-bitch,’ he taunted and berated performers. He didn’t drink while filming, but afterwards would lock himself in his study, wrapped only in a sheet and go on a drinking binge for days — then vow never to drink again.

Those who knew him well said his rough exterior hid a soft heart.

John Ford in 1973.

During the Depression, when Ford was already a wealthy man, an unemployed Universal actor came to the studio and asked him for $200 to pay for an operation for his wife. An enraged Ford shouted, “How dare you come here like this? Who do think you are to talk to me this way?” He stormed out, but not before telling his business manager to give the man a check for $1,000 and sending him home in his own chauffeured car. Then an ambulance was waiting at the man’s home and a specialist flown in at Ford’s expense to perform the operation. The operations was a success, and Ford bought a house for the couple and pensioned them for life.

Ford died on August 31, 1973.

In 1998, a 10-foot bronze statue of Ford seated in a director’s chair was installed at Gorham’s Corner in Portland. Inscribed in the base are the words, ‘DIRECTOR “I MAKE WESTERNS.”’ The statue is part of Maine’s Irish Heritage Trail.

This story was updated in 2023. Image of John Ford, 1973, By Allan warren – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16706120.

Munjoy Hill

The Portland Rum Riot of 1855 Ends a Teetotaler’s Career