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Nathaniel Hawthorne

A Multitude of Salem Witch Trials Descendants

If someone asked if you knew of any famous Salem witch trials descendants, you might come up with Nathaniel Hawthorne. The 19^th-century author you studied in high school famously changed his name from Hathorne. He wanted to distance himself from his great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, who helped sentence 20 innocent people to die.

But did you know that Hawthorne had neighbors in Concord, Mass., who were also Salem witch trials descendants? Louisa May Alcott and her sisters Anna, Elizabeth and May were the great, great granddaughters of Judge Samuel Sewall. Sewall later apologized for his role in the witch trials, though it didn’t help him get a date.

Samuel Sewall

In fact, plenty of Salem witch trials descendants achieved fame and fortune. If you throw in cousins and nephews, more than half the U.S. presidents had a blood connection to someone involved in the events of 1692-93.

The sheer numbers of people involved explains the abundance of famous Salem witch trials descendants. Gov. William Phips appointed a Court of Oyer and Terminer to deal with the witchcraft accusations in February 1692. Nineteen were hanged on Proctor’s Ledge, one was pressed to death and five died in jail. By May of 1693, hundreds of accused witches filled Massachusetts jails. Then the colony finally came to its senses.

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William Towne

William was probably lucky to have died before three of his daughters were accused of witchcraft. He and his wife Joanna arrived in Salem with their six children in 1637 and then had two more. Mary Towne Eastey and Rebecca Towne Nurse died on Proctor’s Ledge, while Sarah either escaped or got released. Sarah later won restitution – three gold crowns – for her sister’s deaths.

The William Towne descendants include baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb, Mary’s sixth great grandson. Vincent Price was Rebecca’s seventh great grandson and Mitt Romney the eighth.

Clara Barton was a third great-granddaughter of Sarah.

Lucille Ball, one of the Salem witch trials descendants, and Desi Arnaz, who was not.

Lucille Ball was a direct descendant of their brother Joseph, and of another accused witch: Rachel Vinson, who survived the trials. So did Lucy’s eighth-great aunt, Mary Perkiins Bradbury, who escaped after her conviction and imprisonment..

Grace Coolidge was the seventh great-granddaughter of another Towne brother, Edmund, as well as convicted (and hanged) witch George Jacobs. Jacobs’ sixth great-grandson – William Howard Taft — also made it to the White House.

Grace Coolidge, official White House portrait. Both she and her husband were Salem witch trials descendants.

One Witch, Many Salem Witch Trials Descendants

Probably no witch trials judge or victim had more famous relatives than George Burroughs. The only minister executed for witchcraft, he was smart, athletic, good-looking and catnip to the ladies. Cotton Mather hated him.

Drawing of the execution of George Burroughs, ca. 1900.

Before the unpleasantness of 1692-93, Burroughs preached in Salem. But then he left for a congregation in Falmouth (now Portland) because of a salary dispute (he didn’t get paid). In April of 1693, Massachusetts officials arrested him in Maine as he ate dinner with his family. The court swiftly convicted him.

As he stood on a ladder at Proctor’s Ledge, George Burroughs recited the Lord’s Prayer—something witches supposedly couldn’t do. But the hangman launched him into eternity anyway. The crowd that came to see the show then grew uneasy about the next four hangings scheduled that day.

Cotton Mather

Sitting above them on horseback, Cotton Mather told them Burroughs had received a fair trial. Besides, said Mather, he wasn’t really a minister but the devil transformed into an angel of light. The crowd calmed down and watched four others die.

Burroughs, who had nine children, had a famous descendant. His sixth great grandson, Walt Disney, invented Mickey Mouse along with Maleficent, the witch in Sleeping Beauty. Burroughs also had a mess of distant cousins, including 21 presidents. (If you care: both Adams, Bushes, Roosevelts and Harrisons; Washington; Jefferson; Taylor; Nixon; Ford; Carter; Taft; Coolidge; Harding; Hayes; Hoover; Cleveland.)

George H.W. Bush

He also had a distant relationship to a presidential assassin. Burroughs was the 11th cousin nine times removed from Lee Harvey Oswald. Other of his hundreds of famous relatives include Marilyn Monroe, Benedict Arnold, James Taylor, Princess Diana and Bill Belichick.

Alexander McQueen

When British fashion designer Alexander McQueen learned that his ancestor, Elizabeth Howe, had been hanged for witchcraft, he did what fashion designers naturally do: designed a line of clothing inspired by the Salem witch trials. He called his Autumn–Winter 2007 ready-to-wear collection, “In memory of Elizabeth Howe, Salem, 1692.”

Alexander McQueen

McQueen unveiled his collection on a runway with a blood-red pentagram in a pitch-dark room. Critics called his shimmering gowns over the top and theatrical. Some of them, though, now belong to museum collections, including the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem.

Art Imitates Life

Several other creative people have used their connections to the Salem witch trials in their work. Author Eve La Plante, for example, wrote a biography of her ancestor, Samuel Sewall.

And Sarah Jessica Parker played a ditzy witch in the Walt Disney film Hocus Pocus. Her 10^th great-grandmother, Esther Dutch Elwell, stood accused of ‘wickedly and feloniously sundry acts of witchcraft upon the body of Mrs. Mary Fiche.’ Esther got off, though. She had another famous descendant, Norman Rockwell.

Sarah Jessica Parker

More Salem Witch Trials Descendants

Susannah North Martin died on Proctor’s Ledge because the court thought it found a witch’s tit on her body. She had several descendants in high places: her fifth great-grandson, Chester A. Arthur, served as the 21st U.S. president, and her eighth great-grandson served as the 46th vice president — Dick Cheney. Susannah’s descendants also include Burl Ives and Mickey Rourke

Lucille Ball’s ancestor Rachel Vinson spent months in the Ipswich jail, cold, sick and weak, after her arrest for witchcraft. She survived and won her release. Rachel also had a famous fourth great-grandson, Millard Fillmore, elected as president of the United States. Another descendant succeeded in entertainment: Richard Gere.

Humphrey Bogart’s sixth great-grandmother Ann Pudeator, stood accused of forcing a girl to sign the Devil’s Book, causing a man to fall out of a tree and turning herself into a bird. For those crimes, she hanged.

Humphrey Bogart in 1940

Ernest Hemingway was a distant cousin of Samuel Wardwell, an eccentric carpenter hanged for the pact he’d made with the devil 20 years earlier.

Kyra Sedgwick, related to practically every famous English-speaking person in history, had a distant relationship to William Stoughton, chief judge of the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

Many thinks to www.famouskin.com. Image of Sarah Jessica Parker By Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=72675978. Alexander McQueen By Ed Kavishe / fashionwirepress.com – E-mail to [email protected] by Ed Kavishe,https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9682401. This story last updated in 2022.

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The Curse of Humphrey Atherton

Humphrey Atherton had far more power and influence than the Quakers he persecuted in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 1650s.

At least one of his victims, Mary Dyer, has gone down in history as a courageous woman whose stand against religious intolerance cost her her life.

Her statue stands in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse, and schoolchildren learn of her martyrdom to this day.

Statue of Mary Dyer in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

As for Humphrey Atherton, he is remembered mostly for his violent death, said to result from a curse placed on him by one of his victims.

Humphrey Atherton

He was born in England sometime around 1608 and came to Massachusetts during the Great Migration of Puritans. He brought with him his wife, who he had married when they were both 15. They had three children, and would have nine more.

Puritans arrive in Massachusetts, ‘Arrival of Winthrop’s Company in Boston Harbor’ by William Formby Halsall, ca. 1630.

Humphrey Atherton quickly rose to power in the young colony. He won election as selectman and treasurer and eventually served as Speaker of the House. For many years he served as a justice of the peace. He officiated over many marriages, including that of Myles Standish, Jr., and Sarah Winslow.

Atherton belonged to the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company and organized the first militia in Dorchester. He became the highest ranking military officer in New England. As major-general in the Suffolk Regiment, his responsibilities included subduing Indians and catching criminals, like Quakers.

Humphrey Atherton also served as a member of the Court of Assistance. That gave him the power to prosecute criminals and heretics. He embraced that power with gusto.

He played a major role in the capital punishment of at least one witch, Mrs. Ann Hibbins. She later appeared as Mrs. Hibbins in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

Quakers especially resented Humphrey Atherton’s insult toward Mary Dyer. As her body dangled from the noose, Atherton supposedly said, “She hangs there like a flag.”

Mary Dyer headed to the gallows.

Death

According to legend, Wenlock Christison, the last Quaker sentenced to death, had an exchange with Humphrey Atherton.

Joseph Besse, an English Quaker who chronicled the sufferings of Quakers, wrote about it.

Humphrey Atherton said to Christison, “You pronounce woes and judgments, and those that are gone before you pronounced woes and judgments; but the judgments of the Lord God are not upon us yet.”

Christison then told Atherton he would face God’s judgment. Christison, however, won a reprieve.

On Sept. 16, 1661, Atherton drilled his militia with ‘much pomp and ostentation.’ He then rode his horse home through Boston Common. He came to the place where officials released Quakers from a cart after they whipped them.

His horse suddenly shied, and threw Humphrey Atherton with such violence that he died instantly. Wrote Besse:

His eyes being dashed out of his head, and his brains coming out of his nose, his tongue hanging out at his mouth, and the blood running out at his ears.

Men took up his body and brought it into the courthouse where he had sentenced Quakers to death. “His blood ran through the floor,” wrote Besse, “exhibiting to the spectators a shocking instance of the Divine vengeance against a daring and hardened persecutor.”

Afterward

Humphrey Atherton’s remains now lie in the Old North Burying Ground in the Dorchester section of Boston. Harlow Elliot Woodword, in Epitaphs from the Old Burying Ground in Dorchester, wrote that Quakers ‘believed his horrible death to be God’s visitation of wrath.’

The tomb of Humphrey Atherton.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow included the curse of Humphrey Atherton in his play, John Endicott.

His descendants include rocket scientist Robert Goddard, suffragist Susan B. Anthony, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson and actress Raquel Welch.

Images: Tomb of Humphrey Atherton By Ishtar456 – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11255440. This story was updated in 2023.

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An 1839 Romance Novel Rescues Seth Warner From Obscurity

Green Mountain Boy Seth Warner might have been a forgotten Revolutionary War hero had he not appeared in an 1839 romance novel. The story had it all: heaving bosoms, manly countenances, hardy sons of liberty, deadly strife and shocking racist descriptions of Indians.

Seth Warner for decades was the unsung hero of the Battle of Bennington, rescuing New Hampshire’s John Stark from a rout. He also led a successful rearguard action at the Battle of Hubbardton.

Stark got all the plaudits for Bennington (actually fought in Walloomsac, N.Y.). But then, 52 years later, New England’s best-known novelist wrote a popular adventure story featuring the noble, brave and handsome Charles Warrington – Seth Warner. “Warrington” fights gallantly at the Battle of Hubbardton and gets the girl, aka the “rosebud in the wilderness.”

The author, Daniel Pierce Thompson, not only rescued Seth Warner from obscurity, he stamped the Green Mountain Boys on the national consciousness. He also probably taught Danielle Steele a few tricks.

General Stark at the Battle of Bennington (NYPL). No Green Mountain Boy in the picture.

Battle of Bennington

At the Battle of Bennington on Aug. 16, 1777, John Stark’s patriots routed a detachment of soldiers fighting under British Gen. John Burgoyne. After the redcoats retreated, the patriots’ discipline broke down. The men scavenged for valuables among the captured and killed troops. Some laid down and rested, while other tended to the wounded.

But then a second detachment of Burgoyne’s troops arrived and began to pummel the patriots. Stark came close to calling for retreat when Seth Warner arrived with 350 fresh troops and supposedly said, “Stand to it, my lads; you shall have help immediately.”

Bennington helped turned the tide of war. Casualties convinced the Indians to abandon the British. They also contributed to Burgoyne’s loss at Saratoga, which convinced the French to join the patriot war effort.

Stark won renown as the hero of the Battle of Bennington, and people in New Hampshire can still quote his words at Bennington, “”There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!” (They also remember Stark’s other famous quote, “Live Free or Die!”)

Decades after the Battle of Bennington, several prominent Vermont writers thought Seth Warner deserved more credit for saving the day. Daniel Pierce Thompson belonged to that group. And so he wrote a romance novel, The Green Mountain Boys.

You can still buy the book!

Fictional Seth Warner

The author introduces Seth Warner as Charles Warrington, in the full bloom of vigorous manhood. He opens the novel as a Green Mountain Boy captain, evading the Yorkers who seize the property of settlers with grants from New Hampshire.

The “maliciously smiling” Yorkers declare Warrington an outlaw, “poltroon,” “audacious scoundrel” and “bold rascal.: ‘Warrington’ at the same time cautions, “the storm of a new war is gathering over us.” (That would be the American Revolution.)

There’s a girl, of course – a “rosebud in the wilderness.: Warner/Warrington, though, can’t yet storm the citadel of her womanhood because there’s a”‘hedge about her too high for his leaping.”

The Green Mountain Boy roams the woods one day when he stumbles across “a young lady of the most interesting exterior” attempting to escape a rude fellow who grasped her garment.”

“Back, ruffian, back!” exclaims Warrington. “Unhand the lady, or you die on the spot!”

One can only imagine Seth Warner rolling over in his grave.

Green Mountain Boy

In the novel, traitors leer, maidens blush, rapiers deliver finishing blows and redcoats retreat like scampering satans. Indians fare poorly; the good ones are still savages or red scamps, the enemies are hell-hounds.

The author skips over the Battle of Bennington, but pours on the purple in describing the Battle of Hubbardton.

Statue of Seth Warner

Observers gaze in “silent awe” upon the “grand and thrilling spectacle.” The maidens, of course, watch with heaving bosoms as the Green Mountain Boys “unflinchingly engage in deadly strife” with the “gorgeous and disciplined bands of their outnumbering foes.” The “fires of a thousand death-tubes blaze fiercely.”

The British bring reinforcements, though, and in stilted language one observer says, “There is no hope, then, that our troops can long withstand this fresh and formidable onset.”

One of the characters asks if a colonel died in battle by saying, “Has that noble fellow then indeed been added to the honored catalogue of martyrs in our glorious cause?” (“Did he die?” would have served the purpose just as well.)

Seth Warner Gets Deathless Laurels

Daniel Pierce Thompson skips the Battle of Bennington, perhaps because the novel approached 400 pages. So when “nature was again enrobing herself in the leafy glories of summer,” he quickly summarizes the battle. It “immortalized the name of the Roman Stark” and “covered the Green Mountain Boys with deathless laurels.”

Warner/Warrington gets the girl in the end. At their wedding he wears his lace-trimmed uniform, she is “richly and tastefully dressed” in an array of spotless white. They utter their vows in tender pathos. Then the ultimate Green Mountain Boy, Ethan Allen. Two more Green Mountain Boys marry their blushing maidens. Then they all presumably live happily ever after.

You can read the whole book here.

Daniel Pierce Thompson

His action and adventure stories sold well into the 1900s, but Daniel Pierce Thompson had day jobs as well. A Montpelier lawyer, he also held a number of political posts including probate judge and secretary of state. He cofounded the Vermont Historical Society and joined the Republican Party early in its life.

Daniel Pierce Thompson

Thompson was famous in New England for his novels through the 1840s and 1850s until Nathaniel Hawthorne eclipsed him. He died in 1868. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was descended from him.

This story updated in 2022.

Images: Statue of Seth Warner By Jkb24 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61464961.

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Six New England Places To Learn About Irish History

Outside of Ireland, New England may be one of the best places to explore Irish history. After all, many people of Irish ancestry live here – and we do love our history.

Massachusetts and New Hampshire have special claims on Irish history. More than one in five residents of each state claims Irish ancestry. And about 18 percent of people living in Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont have Irish ancestors. Connecticut may be the least Irish state in New England, with only 16.6 percent of its people claiming Irish ancestors. But still, it’s in the top ten, with only Delaware claiming slightly more.

We have already brought you six Irish landmarks in New England, but many of them are closed in the winter. So in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we bring you six more places where you can learn about Irish history. Even if it’s cold outside.

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum

Learn about the most tragic chapter in Irish history at the Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum

Between 1845-52, half of all immigrants to the United States came from Ireland. A potato blight and English oppression caused mass starvation, disease and death.

The Irish came to the U.S. in vessels called famine ships. If they didn’t die of disease or hunger aboard the ships, they crowded into slums when they arrived. At Quinnipiac University, Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum in Hamden claims the largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials about that tragic episode in Irish history.

The exhibit “Making America: The Irish in the Civil War Era” ends on March 17. The work of Irish immigrant John Mulvany, a sketch artist during the Civil War, accompanies the exhibit.

3011 Whitney Ave, Hamden, Conn.

Burnham Tavern

Both Revolutionary and Irish history can be found at the Burnham Tavern.

During the American Revolution, some of the most notable fighters on both sides had Irish ancestry. Two – Henry Knox and John Sullivan — served as Washington’s generals. Another, Jeremiah O’Brien, fought the first naval battle of the American Revolution.

On June 12, 1775, Jeremiah O’Brien led a group of Machias men – some armed only with pitchforks — in capturing a British schooner called the Margaretta. They planned the maneuver at the Burnham Tavern, today a National Historic Site. Visitors can learn the history of the battle and see some of the O’Brien family’s belongings.

Should you decide to explore Irish history in Machias, you’ll find a classic, picturesque Downeast town. And you can get the best blueberry pie in Maine and therefore the world at Helen’s.

Main Street, Machias, Maine

James Michael Curley House

The James Michael Curley house.

James Michael Curley, Boston’s ‘Rascal King,’ personified the big city political boss for the first half of the 20th century. He spent lavishly on parks and hospitals, which not only served his immigrant constituents but created jobs for them.

Curley first won election as mayor in 1914, and went on to win three more times. He also won as Massachusetts governor and congressman. But he went to prison twice, once for sitting in for a friend on a civil service exam and once for mail fraud. Curley embarrassed the Democratic Party, and he couldn’t get elected as a Democratic delegate to the 1932 convention. Somehow he went as a delegate from Puerto Rico.

Curley built a mansion in Jamaica Plain with shamrocks cut out of the shutters at 350 The Jamaicaway. He never quite explained how he managed to build it on a mayor’s salary. Today there are plans to open the house to the public on a regular basis. Until then, you can embrace Irish history by visiting James Michael Curley Park near Faneuil Hall.

1 Union Street, Boston, Mass.

First Parish Church, East Derry

The First Parish Church, where potato and Irish history were made.

The Scots-Irish arrived in New England at the invitation of the Massachusetts Puritans, who viewed them as a persecuted Protestant minority like themselves.

The Puritans didn’t exactly embrace the poor Scots-Irish who first arrived in five ships in 1718. They strongly encouraged them to push on toward the frontier (Maine and New Hampshire). The Scots-Irish settlers provided a convenient barrier to unfriendly French and Indians.

In 1719, a group of Scots-Irish settled Nutfield, which evolved into the towns of Derry, Londonderry, Windham, and part of Manchester. When they arrived, they planted the first white potato in North America.

A historic marker in front of the First Parish Church in historic East Derry notes the historic planting of the spud:

The marker reads, “In April 1719, sixteen Presbyterian Scotch-Irish families settled here in two rows of cabins along West Running Brook easterly of Beaver Brook. Initially known as Nutfield, the settlement became Londonderry in 1723. The first year, a field was planted, known as the Common Field, where the potato was first grown in North America.”

On April 12, Nutfield kicks off its 300th anniversary celebration, including a strawberry festival, a founders weekend and an old home day.

47 E Derry Rd, East Derry, N.H.

Governor William Sprague Mansion

Not just a Yankee monument, the Gov. William Sprague house also played a role in Irish history.

On New Year’s Eve 1843, Rhode Island textile baron Amasa Sprague went for a walk. His servant later found his body, shot and bludgeoned.

The rich and powerful Sprague owned several textile mills, including the Cranston Print Works and the Slater Mill. he had had a dispute with three Irish brothers who ran a saloon. One of those brothers, John Gordon, was convicted of his murder.

John Gordon’s real crime was to be Irish at a time when hatred of the Irish ran rampant. The judge had actually told the jury to pay more attention to Yankee witnesses than Irish witnesses.

Even though circumstantial evidence showed John Gordon hadn’t committed the crime, the state hanged him. After Gordon’s execution, Rhode Island banned capital punishment. Then in 2011, Gov. Lincoln Chafee pardoned him.

To trace the events in this sad chapter of Irish history, you can visit Cranston to see where Sprague and Gordon lived. Sprague lived in what is now known as the Governor William Sprague Mansion. The house, now a museum, was named for his son who also lived there.

Sprague died on the grounds of St. Mary’s Church in Cranston, a 100-year old building. His Slater Mill is now on the National Register of Historic Places. You can see a video at the mill in March.

And John Gordon lived above a general store and saloon that is now St. George Maronite Catholic Church.

Governor William Sprague Mansion, 1351 Cranston St, Cranston, R.I.

Battery Street Historic District

Burlington, Vt., has a lot of Irish history, especially along the waterfront.

Nathaniel Hawthorne visited Burlington in 1832 and published a sketch of the young city. He noted “the great number of Irish emigrants” to be found there. They were everywhere: “lounging” around the wharves,” “swarming in huts and mean dwellings near the lake,” and “elbow[ing] the native citizens” out of work. (You can read the whole sketch here.)

Burlington had lots of Irish immigrants – 30 percent in the mid-19th century. They first sailed from Ireland to Canada, then came down Lake Champlain on steamboats. Most settled near the steamboat wharf.

Irish laborers lived and worked along the industrial waterfront. Today, a section of that waterfront is known as the Battery Street Historic District.

You can join Burlington’s celebration of its Irish history on St. Patrick’s Day with an annual Irish Heritage Festival.

Battery Street Historic District: rough boundaries are Main, St. Paul, and Maple Streets, and Lake Champlain.

Irish History End Notes

Images: Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, By Jllm06 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50748374; Burnham Tavern By Unknown photographer – Reproduced from an original postcard published by G. W. Morris, Portland, Maine, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19769449; First Parish Church of East Derry By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24513489; Gov. William Sprague Mansion By Swampyank – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23861004; Battery Street Historic District By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8672750.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Champlain, the Irish Lake

Between 1840 and 1860, a great wave of Irish immigrants washed up on the shores of Lake Champlain. So many, in fact, that Vermont’s inland sea has been nicknamed the Irish Lake.

The reason, of course, was hunger and jobs. Though Irish Catholics had started arriving in Vermont in 1820, Champlain didn’t become the Irish lake until the potato famine of the mid-1840s.

Lake Champlain

They landed mostly in Burlington, which in 1850 had an Irish population of 30 percent. Tiny Georgia was 27 percent Irish that year – all young men, working on the railroad. Rutland had so many Irish the public school was called the Catholic school until as late as the 1920s.

In 1832, Nathaniel Hawthorne visited Burlington and published a sketch of the young city. He noted “the great number of Irish emigrants” to be found there. They were everywhere: “lounging” around the wharves, “swarming in huts and mean dwellings near the lake,” and “elbow[ing] the native citizens” out of work.

A steamboat on the Irish lake.

The Irish Lake

Some Protestant Irish and Scots-Irish came down the Irish lake in the 18^th century. Then in 1815 the Napoleonic wars ended, which caused an agricultural recession in Ireland. Irish farmers had done well during the wars supplying the British army with beef.

Times got hard for the farmers then, because the rise of textile mills meant they couldn’t supplement their incomes with homespun cloth.

The British government also wanted to populate the vast Canadian territory. So it imposed a heavy tariff on ships headed for the United States – where the Irish really wanted to go. And ships bound for Canada were only taxed lightly.

The Irish two-boater resulted from the cheaper fare to Canada – an Irish immigrant who first sailed to Canada, then came to the United States.

The Emigrants’ Farewell, engraving by Henry Doyle (1827–1893), from Mary Frances Cusack’s Illustrated History of Ireland

Lake Champlain

By 1830, the British army wouldn’t post any Irish soldiers close to the United States because so many deserted and jumped the border. Irish Catholics had already started coming down the Irish lake by steamboat from Canada to help build the Champlain canal.

Work on the canal, on railroads and in textile mills attracted Irish immigrants. Young women could get decent wages as domestic servants, and men with strong backs could find work in the quarries of Barre, Fair Haven, West Rutland, West Castleton and Proctor.

The first arrivals sent letters home to their families, telling them they could do well in the United States if they worked hard.

They’d leave Liverpool or Queenstown (now Cobh), Dublin or Sligo or Galway and arrive weeks later in Halifax or Quebec. Then from Quebec they’d take steamships down the Irish lake to ports of entry in Vermont. Burlington even had a customs house.

By 1830, 11 percent of the 3526 people in Burlington were Irish – so many that the bishop of Boston sent an Irish priest, Jeremiah O’Callaghan, to the city. He built St. Mary’s church in St. Albans, the first Catholic church in Vermont, St. Mary’s, in St. Albans in 1833.

Black 47

Irish famine victims, Bridget O’Donnell and her children, 1849.

By 1831, many of the Irish who arrived in Quebec on the famine ships had cholera. They had to stop at the quarantine station in Grosse Isle. Vermont authorities printed posters that said anyone with the disease couldn’t land on the shores of Lake Champlain.

In 1845, the potato crop failed, and then in 1846 it failed again. Two successive years of crop failure caused famine, which is how the year 1847 got the nickname Black 47. That spring the massive migration began, with slightly more Irish headed to Canada than to the United States.

The staff and facilities at Grosse Isle couldn’t handle the sudden influx of Irish immigrants, many of whom had come down with typhus. Neglected for days, 5,000 died in horrific surroundings. Grosse Ile today has the largest burial ground for famine refugees outside of Ireland.

Many of those who survived came down the Irish lake to settle. On the New York side of Lake Champlain, by 1850 Plattsburg was 15 percent Irish, Essex eight percent and Ticonderoga nine percent. On the Vermont side, Swanton was 16 percent Irish, St. Albans 17.5 percent and Middlebury 15 percent. Nearly one in three residents of Burlington had Irish ancestry.

The famine wave down the Irish lake continued until 1860, when the Civil War broke out. Many Irish immigrants served in the Union Army. Vermont’s population continued to grow, and the Irish assimilated, making their presence less noticeable.

But from 1840-1860, the Irish comprised the largest ethnic minority in the state, thanks to the Irish lake.

With thanks to Vincent Feeney, When Champlain Was an Irish Lake. Photo of Lake Champlain by By Hbbrown18 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48446678. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Historic Buildings With a Clerestory

The clerestory window makes a lot of sense in New England because of the short, short days during the long, long winter. The clerestory brings in much (and much-appreciated) light.

Technically, a clerestory is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level to bring in fresh air as well as light. Sometimes people confuse them with widows walks, at least from outside.

One can find a clerestory window in all kinds of buildings. Here are six historic buildings with a clerestory. If you know of another notable building with a clerestory, please include it in the comments section.

The Henry Knox house in Thomaston, Maine, has a clerestory.

West End Library, Farmington, Conn.

This mini-version of the Boston Public Library has something the BPL doesn’t: clerestory windows.

The National Park Service calls the old West End Library in the village of Unionville in Farmington, Conn., ‘an unusually intact example’ of the nearly 2,000 libraries Andrew Carnegie gave away. Today it looks much as it did when built in 1917: Even the toilet room in the basement is original.

Back around the turn of the century, cities and towns rarely supported public libraries with tax dollars (few, by the way, still do). Local library organizations had a hard time finding a place to store their books. So Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, gave away all of his fortune, mostly to libraries. He singlehandedly doubled the number of public libraries in the United States, giving away 1,689. Of those, 95 were in New England. All but three are still standing, including the West End Library in Farmington.

A nationally renowned architect, Edward Lippincott Tilton, designed the old West End Library, finished in 1917. Like many Carnegie libraries, the West End Library is a miniature version of a famous large library: in this case, the Boston Public Library. But unlike the Boston Public Library the West End Library has clerestory windows directly above the main arched windows in the front and back.

The building operated as library until 1968, when it became a senior center. Then in 1984 the town leased it to the nonprofit Unionville Museum.

The National Park Service called the library ‘a testament to small-town civic achievement.’ It has significance not just as a historic building but as a contributor to the character of the surrounding village of Unionville, a historic district since 1978.

15 School St, Unionville, Conn.

Tate House, Portland, Maine

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This house has a gambrel clerestory, once popular in New England. Now only two remain.

Capt. George Tate served as Maine’s last mast agent, overseeing the cutting and shipping of white pine trees to England for the Royal Navy’s masts. Tate may have thought the plum job set him up for life, but things began to go south for him.

Tate, born in 1700, moved with his family to the colonies around 1750s. He built himself a fine house in 1755 in what is now the Stroudwater Historic District, a section of Portland cut off from the rest of the city and containing many 18^th and 19^th-century homes.

The king’s first mast agent in Maine, Col. Thomas Westbrook, settled Stroudwater. He built some of the roads, a dam, a bridge, and sawmills and gristmills — in short, an early industrial village that thrived on the processing of white pine trees.

Tate brought paneling and wainscoating from England; the unpainted clapboard exterior disguises the lavish interior. The Tate House has a clerestory gambrel roof, once a common form of colonial architecture. Only one other survives in New England, in the Burnham Tavern in Machias, Maine.

But then in 1770 his wife Mary died at age 60. According to an entry on the findagrave website,

Mary Tate was killed by a booby trap set by her son William to catch thieves. William was convicted of her murder but was later pardoned by George III.

Then, of course, revolution broke out, in part due to resentment of the king appropriating the colonies’ white pine trees.

George Tate lived to be 94, dying in 1794. The house opens to the public in the warmer months.

1270 Westbrook Street, Stroudwater neighborhood, Portland, Maine.

Shaker Barn, Hancock, Mass.

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The clerestory in this barn let in light for milking cows and fresh air for preventing hay from combusting.

Shakers established Hancock Shaker Village in 1791, the third of 19 started between 1783 and 1836 Closed in 1960.

Built in 1820, the barn at the Hancock Shaker Village was probably the first round barn in the United States.

A model of efficiency and clever design, the barn has three levels, each with a specific use. The Shakers designed the big fieldstone barn for 52 cows, but it can hold 70. Once constructed, it attracted visitors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, who raced each other on foot inside the building.

After a fire, the Shakers replaced the conical roof with a clerestory that let in light and fresh air, which prevented the spontaneous combustion of wet hay.

A ramp takes wagons filled with hay to the third level; because the barn is round, the wagons never have to back up, they simple circumnavigate the barn and exit through the same door they entered.

From the third level, Shakers could pitch hay to the cows on the second level, where they were milked.

The cows’ heads fit into stanchions so they could feed while they were milked. At the cows’ rear ends, the Shakers built trap doors so they could easily shovel manure into the first level. They let it accumulate until they spread it on fields for fertilizer.

34 Lebanon Mountain Rd., Hancock, Mass.

Samuel Tenney House, Exeter, N.H.

The clerestory in this Georgian house came from an English pattern book.

The Samuel Tenney house at one time or another involved five well-known New Hampshire figures: Dr. Samuel Tenney, who tended wounded soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill; his wife Tabitha, the first best-selling author in America; Tristan Shaw, U.S. congressman; Ebenezer Clifford, inventive master carpenter; and Bradbury Johnson, builder-architect.

Samuel Tenney built the house around 1800 where the courthouse now stands. Born in 1748, he served as a surgeon to the army to the end of the American Revolution. George Washington appointed him acting surgeon general at Valley Forge. After the war he had a long and distinguished career as a judge, U.S. congressman, author and scientist.

Tabitha Tenney was the best-selling novelist in the country for the first half of the 19^th century. Her novel, Female Quixotism, poked fun at the illusions of romance. Published in 1799, the book was still in print when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Ebenezer Clifford and Bradbury Johnson together built several landmark buildings in Exeter, including the First Parish Church, the second Phillips Exeter Academy building and the Atknson Academy building. The two men creatively adapted designs from English pattern books as the gabled clerestory in the Tenney house shows. Clifford, by the way, built and designed a diving bell that he used in the Exeter River.

Finally, U.S. Rep. Tristran Shaw lived in the Tenney house in the early 19^th century. The house was moved to its current location on High Street to make way for the courthouse.

65 High St., Exeter, N.H.

Upper Rockville Mill, Hopkinton, R.I.

The clerestory in this Rhode Island textile mill let more workers work longer.

The Upper Rockville Mill, built in 1844, typifies the granite mill buildings that dotted Hopkinton, R.I., in the 19^th century. What’s different about the Upper Rockville Mill: It used water power well into the 20^th century, and didn’t stop making textiles until the late 1980s or early 1990s.

The Rockville Manufacturing Company built the big granite mill on a hill in 1844, and ever since it has served as the town’s most prominent architectural feature. Like many Rhode Island cotton mills, it had clerestory windows that allowed more natural light and usable work space in the mill’s attic.

Two years later the Seventh Day Baptists built a church, and from then on village life revolved around the mill and the church. Seventh Day Baptists owned the mill, and everyone who worked there belonged to the church. As many as half the workforce were women and children.

The mill made cotton yarn, cloth, fishing line, twine and cord. Since it relied on water power, it could never expand too much, but it could survive for more than a century.

Today the National Register of Historic Places lists the Upper Rockville for two reasons: It demonstrates the rise of the textile industry in New England, and how that industry created many mill villages in rural towns. In 1850, Hopkinton alone had more than a dozen mill villages.

332 Canonchet Rd., Hopkinton, R.I.

Christ Episcopal Church, Montpelier, Vt.

Christ Episcopal Church features a large round clerestory window ‘to the glory of Almighty God.’

The neo-Gothic Christ Episcopal Church reflects Montpelier’s growth and prosperity after the Civil War. The parish in 1868 replaced an old frame church built 30 years earlier with a substantial stone building. It had both a 100-foot tower and spire and a stained-glass clerestory window, a key feature in Gothic churches.

The building, though, suffered repeated damage. In 1903, a fire ruined the roof and the interior. Then in 1927 the flood that devastated Vermont also devastated the church, undermining its structural integrity. Though the parish repaired the church, it had to remove the spire in 1963. Then in 2015, a crane collapsed and crashed through the roof. Once again, the church required repair.

Today Christ Episcopal Church stands as one of five historic churches built in Montpelier between 1865 and 1873. All survive and belong to the Montpelier Historic District.

64 State St., Montpelier, Vt.

Images: West End Library By Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States – Unionville, Connecticut Uploaded by Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29970923; Round barn at Hancock Shaker Village: By Bestbudbrian – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51387903; Samuel Tenney House, By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25270039; Christ Episcopal Church By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18509487; Tate House By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28918831.; Upper Rockville Mill By Tmac02892 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6897440. This story was updated in 2022.

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