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Six (And More) Mothers Who Left a Mark on History

Mothers have always had to balance competing demands, and some of those who did it best made history.

Mindful that Mother’s Day is around the corner, we bring you more than six New England mothers who left a mark on the region.

They include an African-American inventor from Connecticut, a Chinese-American laundress from Maine, a magazine editor from New Hampshire, a midwife from Vermont and a character from a widely-read book who was quite different from her popular image.

Mothers of Invention

Sarah Boone

On May 15, 1809, Mary Dixon Kies of Killingly, Conn., won a patent for her technique of weaving silk thread into straw to make straw hats — becoming the first woman in the United States to receive a patent. President James Madison signed Kies’ patent, and First Lady Dolley Madison wrote to congratulate her.

The people of Connecticut have been unusually inventive ever since David Bushnell invented a submarine for George Washington called The Turtle. Connecticut women – 44 of them – were among the 5,578 Connecticut inventors who obtained U.S. patents in the century after the U.S. Patent Law was passed in 1790.

From 1876 through 1890, the U.S. Patent Office ranked Connecticut first in inventions per capita every year but three, when Connecticut came in second.

At the 1876 World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, the Connecticut Women’s Building featured 69 inventions by women, including Catherine Griswold’s skirt-supporting corset, Mary Ann Boughton’s cooking stove, Ann Harrison’s sleigh bells and Ellie Sperry’s check punch for banks.

Connecticut-born Eliza Murfey, a physician, took out at least 23 patents between 1870 and 1875 for railroad packings, used to lubricate rail-car axles to prevent derailments.

Sarah Boone, an African-American woman, received a U.S. government patent for an ironing board in 1892. She was born in Mississippi sometime around the end of the Civil War and moved to New Haven.

People had ironed on boards placed between two supports. Boone designed a hinged board with curved ends, making it possible to iron sleeves and dresses. She died in 1900, eight years after she obtained her patent.

Connecticut was still a leader in inventiveness in 2015, when it ranked eighth in the United States for total patents awarded.

Today you can see straw hats made by Mary Kies at the Bugbee Memorial Library in Killingly, Conn., as well as at the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford.

Mother of the Year

Toy Len Goon receiving the Maine Mother of the Year Award.

Toy Len Goon was born Sept. 21, 1891 in a mud brick hut to peasant farmers in Guangdong Province. It was a far cry from the White House, where she would meet First Lady Bess Truman.

As a child she did backbreaking farm chores until the family’s land could no longer support all six children. At 10, Toy Len was given to a wealthy merchant family, where she worked as a servant and babysitter. They treated her kindly. At 12 she went to a girls’ school to learn to be a good Chinese wife.

She married Dogon Goon, who had been working in a laundry in Portland, Maine. In 1917 he was arrested as an illegal resident. He had to pay $1,500 in bail and to serve in the armed forces during World War I to avoid deportation. He was wounded and returned an amputee.

He went back to China to marry Toy Len. When his new bride arrived in Portland, she spoke no English. She worked in the laundry with Dogon. Over the next 13 years, they had eight children.

She managed to save $500 for a down payment on a three-story building in which they lived and started their own laundry.

Dogon died of gangrene in 1952, and Toy Len was left with eight children ages three to 16. She kept the laundry going and made sure all her children got educations, refusing offers to put them in foster care. All did well academically.

In 1957, a local newspaper reported her son Carroll was a physician, Richard a businessman, Edward a research chemist, Albert a lawyer, Josephine a mother, Arthur, a Navy veteran, studying electrical engineering. Doris was a court reporter and Janet a college student

When asked how she did it, Toy Len Goon said, “If there is harmony in the family, there is good in the larder and peace in the country.”

Toy Len Goon was named Maine Mother of the Year in 1952 by the American Mothers Committee of the Golden Rule Foundation. Then she won the national competition.

There were political motives for selecting her. At the height of the Cold War, she represented the superiority of democracy over communism as a Chinese immigrant small business owner and mother.

The week she took off to receive her award was her only vacation. She visited the White House where she met First Lady Bess Truman, and she was honored with a parade in New York’s Chinatown.

Shortly after receiving the award, she moved to Lynn, Mass., to be closer to her children. She died at the age of 101 in 1993.

You can see Toy Len Goon’s former laundry at 615 Forest Ave. in Portland and, while you’re at it, take Mom to the Great Lost Bear nearby for dinner.

Mother Goose

Mary Goose tombstone

Mary Goose, buried in Boston’s Granary Burying Ground, is often called the Mother Goose whose nursery rhymes have entertained children for centuries.

There’s a little bit of truth to the story – but just a little. The name ‘Mother Goose’ had been around since at least the 17^th and possibly the 10^th century in Europe.

In colonial Massachusetts, Mary Goose, born Mary Balston, married a wealthy landowner named Isaac Goose. They had 10 children. Mary died in 1690, and Isaac then married Elizabeth Foster of Charlestown, and they had six more children. They named one of their daughters ‘Elizabeth.’

In 1715, the younger Elizabeth Goose married a Boston printer named Thomas Fleet – by none other than Cotton Mather.

They had a son, which delighted Fleet’s mother-in-law. “Mother Goose, like all good grandmothers, was in ecstasies at the event; her joy was unbounded; she spent her whole time in the nursery, and in wandering about the house, pouring forth, in not the most melodious strains, the songs and ditties which she had learned in her younger days, greatly to the annoyance of the whole neighborhood–to Fleet in particular, who was a man fond of quiet. “

Fleet tried to quiet his mother-in-law, but failed. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, he decided, and in 1719 he published a book of nursery rhymes called Songs for the Nursery; or, Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children. It was a clever use of his mother-in-law’s name. In 1697, a French writer named Charles Perrault published a book called Contes de ma Mère L’Oye, or Tales of My Mother Goose.

By 1833, a copy of Fleet’s book survived and was republished as The Only True Mother Goose. A century later, Mary Goose was promoted as the real Mother Goose to attract tourists to the Granary Burying Ground — as if the graves of Paul Revere, John Hancock and Sam Adams weren’t enough.

The Granary Burying Ground is at Tremont & Bromfield Streets in Boston.

Mother of Thanksgiving

Sarah Josepha Hale

Sarah Josepha Hale, born Oct. 24, 1788, in Newport, N.H., influenced American fashion and taste as long-time editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the biggest women’s magazine before the Civil War.

She’s been described as a cross between Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey. Sarah Josepha Hale made popular the Christmas tree, the white wedding dress and the Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie.

We might not celebrate Thanksgiving at all were it not for her. Before the Civil War, there were only two national holidays: Washington’s Birthday and Independence Day. Thanksgiving was only celebrated in New England, and each of the six states scheduled its own date to celebrate from October through January. Hale wrote letters to five presidents and editorials in her magazine urging Thanksgiving be celebrated as a national holiday. Finally Abraham Lincoln acquiesced, thinking the holiday would help unify the nation after the Civil War.

Among her many accomplishments are the poem Mary Had a Little Lamb and dozens of books. She helped with the founding of Vassar College, the restoration of Mount Vernon and the completion of the Bunker Hill Monument. The Richards Free Library in Newport bestows the annual Sarah Josepha Hale Award on a New England writer. The first honoree was Robert Frost in 1956; poet Sharon Olds won it in 2016.

The Rising Sun Tavern, her father’s establishment and the site of her wedding, is located two houses north of the south Congregational Church in Newport, N.H. The Richards Free Library is at 58 N. Main St. in Newport. The New Hampshire Historical Society sells Sarah Josepha Hale bobblehead dolls online and at its museum store at 30 Park St. in Concord.

Mother of Industrial Psychology

Lillian Gilbreth

Lillian Gilbreth had 12 children, and two of them in 1948 wrote a book about her called Cheaper By the Dozen. The book described how she and her husband, Frank B. Gilbreth, used the time-and-motion principles they taught industrial clients to manage their large household.

She hated the book, which depicted her as a sweet, stay-at-home mom. She was anything but. Lillian Gilbreth was the prototypical working mom, balancing marriage, career and family.

It wasn’t easy to tell where the management company ended and family life began.

They turned their home near Brown University into a laboratory for motion study. The Gilbreths took photos of their children doing dishes to figure out how to do it faster. They spent a vacation on Nantucket finding the best way to pack soap for Lever Brothers.

The children listened to language lessons on the Victrola while taking baths, and learned Morse code after Frank painted the symbols on their walls and ceilings. He left funny messages in code for them to decipher.

Though Frank hadn’t gone to college, she held a doctorate from Brown. She was a pioneer in incorporating psychology in industrial planning and one of the most influential women in America.

She is credited with developing the modern kitchen, conceiving the ‘work triangle’ and inventing the foot pedal trash can, refrigerator door shelves and wall light switches.

Frank and Lillian Gilbreth ran an industrial psychology consulting firm, headquartered in Providence from 1912-19.

Frank died in 1924, but Lillian continued the company until her retirement in 1968, just before she turned 90.

You can still see the New England Butt Company building at 304 Pearl St., where the Gilbreths pioneered the first process flow charts and micromotion studies, or Brown University, where Lillian obtained her PhD in Applied Management. The family lived a half block from Brown, first at 71, then at 77 Brown Street. The Gilbreths’ Nantucket cottage, which had two buglights on the property, was on the extension of Hulbert Avenue behind the Jetties Beach tennis courts.

Mother Myrick

Taconic Mountains

Mother Myrick is both a 3,290-foot-high mountain and a candy store in Vermont. Not much is known today about the original Mother Myrick, but in the late 18^th century she was well respected by the locals.

Mother Myrick lived in Beartown, a now-abandoned settlement on the mountainside. She was a skilled midwife and healer, much like Maine’s Martha Ballard. She had many patients, according to local lore, which is how the mountain was named after her.

Mother Myrick Mountain, part of the Taconic Range, rises to the west of Manchester, Vt. It is covered with a stand of a rich natural hardwood forest, part of the Equinox Highlands.

Mother Myrick’s Confectionery is located nearby in Manchester Center. It began as a small fudge shop in 1977, selling buttercrunch toffee, caramels and chocolates. Today Mother Myrick’s makes cakes, tarts and breads. They offer free shipping for Mother’s Day on their signature Lemon Lulu Cake and Spring Celebration Bread.

Mother Myrick’s Confectionery is at at 4367 Main Street in Manchester Center, Vt.

Images: Mother Goose gravestone By Swampyank at en.wikipedia – Own workTransferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by User:Mutter Erde using CommonsHelper., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4904213

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Six Revolutionary Forts

Scattered throughout New England are dozens of revolutionary forts. Some, like Fort Halifax in Maine, date to the French and Indian wars. Others, like Fort Washington in Massachusetts, rose during the American Revolution.

Revolutionary forts range from the extensive remains of Mount Independence in Vermont to mere traces of earthworks in Rhode Island. All are sited along waterways and harbors, making them pleasant summer destinations today.

Here are six revolutionary forts, one for each state. If you know of another revolutionary fort worth visiting, please mention it in the comments section.

Black Rock Fort

Black Rock Fort, one of the revolutionary forts captured by the British.

In early 1776, Connecticut built a three-gun log fort and blockhouse on a rocky point in New Haven Harbor. Called Black Rock Fort, it stood on the site of an old fort built around 1657.

In 1779, British general William Tryon and 2,600 troops ravaged New Haven, Fairfield and Norwalk in Connecticut. They captured Black Rock Fort after its 19 defenders ran out of ammunition. Then, when the British forces withdrew, they burned the fort’s barracks. They’d already torched manor houses, barns, ships and supply houses.

In 1807, the abandoned fort was rebuilt and named after Connecticut hero Nathan Hale. Fort Nathan Hale II was built during the Civil War, but saw no action. Named a historic site in 1921, it grew neglected and overgrown after World War II.

But then came the nation’s bicentennial and the reconstruction of Black Rock Fort and Fort Nathan Hale. Today they belong to Fort Hale Park, and they include a drawbridge, moat, ramparts, earthworks, powder magazines and bunker.

Fort Nathan Hale Park has a sandy beach, picnic tables and spectacular views of the harbor.

Connecticut is also home to Fort Griswold in Groton and Fort Trumbull in New London.

Fort Nathan Hale Park and Black Rock Park, 36 Woodward Ave., New Haven, Conn.

Fort Halifax

Benedict Arnold and his troops occupied this abandoned fort on the way to Canada.

At the outset of the French and Indian War, Maj. Gen. John Winslow built Fort Halifax where the Sebasticook River flows into the Kennebec. Winslow’s great-grandfather, Edward Winslow, came to Plimoth Plantation on the Mayflower.

The British built Fort Halifax as a series of fortifications along the rivers to prevent the French and Indians from attacking English settlements. (Other significant pre-revolutionary forts from that era: Fort Pownall in Stockton Springs, Maine, and Fort Frederick in Saint John, New Brunswick.)

Like so many revolutionary forts, the American rebels took over Fort Halifax from the British. They decommissioned it, but then Benedict Arnold used it as a way station for his troops on his failed expedition to Quebec.

revolutionary forts-inside-halifax-blockhouse

Inside the blockhouse at Fort Halifax.

A single blockhouse survives, the oldest blockhouse in the United States. The fort was gradually dismantled to build the Town of Winslow, Maine, which grew up around it. The townspeople used it as a boathouse, a storehouse, a cow barn and a chicken coop.

In 1987, the Kennebec River flooded and washed the blockhouse downriver. Searchers found 22 original pine timbers, and they were used to rebuild the blockhouse. Hundreds of people came to the rededication ceremony in 1988.

Today Fort Halifax belongs to a municipal park, open to visitors in the summer.

70-98 Bay St., Winslow, Maine

Fort Washington

Washington fortified here.

Fort Washington Park in Cambridge, Mass., contains the remains of the only surviving fortification built by Gen. George Washington during the Siege of Boston. It’s also the oldest surviving fortification from the American Revolution.

Diagram of Washington’s battery, courtesy Library of Congress.

In November 1775, Washington wrote to Joseph Reed, “I have caused two three gun half moon batteries to be thrown up for occasional use.” About 50 or 60 men could find protection behind the earthworks.

Washington had quickly realized his soldiers needed training to fend off the professional British forces. He ordered his men to build the small batteries as a way of training them to build larger fortifications. They later built a battery at Dorchester Heights in Boston, fortified them with captured cannons and forced the British to evacuate.

After the war, seven people held the property in common. They deeded it to the City of Cambridge in 1857 on the condition that it ‘shall forever remain open for light, air, and adornment.’ Today the fort belongs to a park, and it includes three cannon and grassy embankments.

95 Waverly St., Cambridge, Mass.

Fort Constitution

Fort Constitution saw action just before the Revolution.

Before 1632, the British built a stone fort, then called the Castle, in New Castle, N.H. It stood at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. The Castle protected Portsmouth Harbor and stored the colony’s munitions. Then the colonists renamed it Fort William and Mary around 1692.

In 1774, a rumor spread in Boston that the redcoats were on their way to seize powder from Fort William and Mary. Only a handful of troops manned the fort, and they reported to the royal governor, John Wentworth.

Paul Revere then rode 60 miles to Portsmouth in a less-famous ride to warn the patriots of New Hampshire.

Four hundred men mustered to attack the fort, guarded by six troops. They broke open the powder house and captured the British soldiers. They also took 100 barrels of gunpowder later used in the Siege of Boston.

Fort William and Mary was the only manned fort in New Hampshire during the American Revolution, but saw no action.

When it was rebuilt in 1808, it was renamed Fort Constitution. It’s the ruins of the 1808 fort that are still in evidence at the state historic site, open year-round. Fort Constitution is a great spot for picnics, though it is unstaffed and not pet friendly.

During the Revolutionary War, Fort No. 4 in Charlestown no longer existed, but General John Stark gathered New Hampshire militia at its site en route to the Battle of Bennington in 1777.

25 Wentworth Road, Off NH Route 1B at US Coast Guard Station, New Castle, N.H.

Fort Conanicut

Edward Bannister painted this landscape of Fort Conanicut.

Fort Conanicut, first built as Dumpling Rock Battery in 1776 near Jamestown, R.I., had eight 18-pound guns.

The British captured the battery in late 1776 after they landed at Newport. They then expanded it, building Beaver Tail Fort, Beaver Head Fort and Fort Conanicut. As the French drew near, the British spiked the guns and destroyed the battery. Then they retreated to Newport.

The French occupied Fort Conanicut until 1778, when the British fleet appeared. A hurricane damaged both fleets and the French abandoned the fort. They didn’t return until 1780, but then left for Yorktown in 1781.

In 1790, a tower was built on the site and called Fort Dumpling. The military abandoned the fort in 1824 and then dynamited it in 1898 to make way for Fort Wetherill. Rhode Island now runs the site as a state park.

Some remains of the earthworks still exist, and an interpretive sign explains the fort’s history. The park sits atop 100-foot granite cliffs, a favorite spot for viewing Tall Ship events and the America’s Cup races.

Fort Wetherill State Park, Fort Wetherill Road
Jamestown, R.I.

Mount Independence

One of the most extensive of the revolutionary forts, Mount Independence.

Mount Independence in Orwell, Vt., is one of the largest and least disturbed Revolutionary sites in America. After the abandonment of the fort, livestock grazed on land that held unmarked soldiers’ graves.

Fort Ticonderoga stands across from it on the other side of Lake Champlain.

Rebel soldiers built the fort on a mountaintop to prevent the British from invading from Canada. They began building in July 1776, a week after the return of the disastrous Arnold Expedition to Canada. They called it East Point or Rattlesnake Hill until July 28, 1776. On that day Col. Arthur St. Clair read the Declaration of Independence to the soldiers and then renamed the fort Independence.

A year later, the Americans retreated. British and German then occupied the fort until November 1777.

Today Mount Independence has a museum and six miles of hiking trails. The museum includes exhibits about the fort and artifacts such as timbers, a cannon and a powder horn.

Hiking trails pass the remnants of blockhouses, soldiers’ huts and a general hospital. Trails lead to the remains of the fort, the Great Battery and the Horseshoe Battery. Re-enactors also stage encampments and the Seth Warner Mount Independence Fife and Drum Corps performs at civic events.

6 miles west of State Route 22A, Orwell, Vt.

Images: Black Rock Fort by 2112guy – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3319905. Fort Halifax, blockhouse interior By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28017965. Mount Independence By Zeph77 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27483591. Revolutionary Re-enactors, By Zeph77 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27521852. Fort Washington By Daderot – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5275220. Fort Conanicut By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434654.

This story about revolutionary forts was updated in 2021.

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Six Historic New England Football Fields

Football, once called the Boston Game, was played on many historic New England football fields since the 19th century. And New England has made many contributions to the development of the sport.

As early as 1827, New England college students played an organized football game. New England jocks formed the first organized football club (there’s a plaque on Boston Common about it). The National Football League also played its first night game in New England.

But even more significant, a New England college was the birthplace of modern football and the modern football stadium.

New England even had an NFL championship before Tom Brady and Bill Belichick joined the New England Patriots – in fact, before they were born.

Here, then, are six historic football fields or their exact locations, one in each New England state.

Yale Bowl

Yale Bowl

Had it not been for an architect named Charles Ferry, the Superbowl might be called something else. Ferry designed the Yale Bowl Stadium as – well, the first bowl-shaped football field.

Fill was used from the field to form an elliptical berm around the stadium. Ferry designed the exterior in a neo-Gothic style, and acid was poured on it to make it look old.

For some reason Ferry failed to include locker rooms in the stadium; Yale football players must walk 200 yards from the Smilow Field Center. They enjoy the walk, but the New York Giants who played there in 1973 and 1974 did not.

The Yale Bowl was finished in 1914 with 70,896-seats and renovated in 2006 with 61,446. No stadium in the United States is older and larger than the Yale Bowl. It inspired the shape of the Rose Bowl, the name of post-season college football games and the name of the premier football contest in the world.

It isn’t just the modern stadium that began at Yale. So did modern football. A former Yale football star named Walter Camp set the rules for today’s game over the course of 15 years in the late 19^th century.

Whittier Field

Hubbard Grandstand at Whittier FIeld

The first organized intercollegiate football game in Maine was played in Lewiston between the Bates team later known as the Bobcats and the Tufts team later known as the Jumbos on Nov. 6, 1875.

But almost from the beginning, Bates has had a football rivalry with the Bowdoin Polar Bears, one of the oldest college rivalries in the country. It started when a Bates player wrapped the college’s garnet-and-white scarf around Bowdoin’s statue of a polar bear. Bowdoin players wrapped their black-and-white scarf around Bowdoin’s statue of a bobcat. But Bates students have soaked the scarf in gasoline and set it on fire after a football win.

Bates fans call their opponent “Blowdoin,” “Harvard rejects” and “plantation boys.” Bowdoin students taunt “dirty Lews,” referring to Lewiston’s poverty. Both sides call the other “safety school.”

All Bates-Bowdoin games take place on Bowdoin’s historic Whittier Field, which opened in 1896. It features a track where Olympic champion Joan Benoit Samuelson trained.

Boston Common

Amateur football played on Boston Common 1909, photo by Lewis Hine. Courtesy Library of Congress.

In the 18^th century, football started out in the United States as something like the medieval European sport of mob football. The game had unlimited players, and one of its few rules disallowed manslaughter and murder as ways to move the ball.

By the 19^th century, mob football moved to college campuses as an intramural sport. Each college played by its own rules. A Harvard tradition known as Bloody Monday started in 1827, with the freshmen playing the sophomores. Winslow Homer illustrated the game in an engraving called Class Day at Harvard University in 1858. The game often ended with injuries, so college administrators finally banned it.

By then, another version called the Boston Game grew popular at East Coast prep schools. It used a round, inflatable ball introduced in 1855. Graduates of Boston’s elite prep schools formed what some consider the first organized football club. They called it the Oneida Football Club.

The Oneidas played pickup teams from 1862-65 on Boston Common. In 1925, surviving members of the club dedicated a small stone monument on the Common that claims it never allowed a point. The inscription reads, “On this field the Oneida Football Club of Boston, the first organized football club in the United States, played against all comers from 1862 to 1865. The Oneida goal was never crossed.”

Dartmouth College Green

Football on Dartmouth’s green

In 1867, Dartmouth had its own version of football, called Whole Division. Seniors and sophomores played juniors and freshman in chasing after a ball. Every ambulatory student played the game.

Nine years later, three Dartmouth students put up rugby-style goal posts on the campus green for football games. The Dartmouth administration didn’t sanction the game and tore down the goal posts by commencement. One of the three students, Lewis Parkhurst, later donated the money for Dartmouth’s main administration building, Parkhurst Hall. The football team would later be called Big Green.

Dartmouth played its first intercollegiate football game against Amherst College in 1881, by a touchdown. The score: 1-0. That auspicious start for Big Green came before a crushing 53-0 loss to Harvard in 1882 and an even worse loss to Yale in 1884 by a score of 113–0.

The Cycledrome

The Cycledrome in Providence.

Providence Steam Roller was the first New England team to won the NFL championship — in 1928. The Steam Roller – not the Steamrollers – was so named as an unstoppable force of athletic prowess. It played in a stadium built for bicycle races called the Cycledrome.

The team was founded in 1916 by Providence Journal staffers, a judge and a real estate developer. It soon became a regional powerhouse and was considered the best independent team in the country. The Steam Roller began playing NFL teams in 1924. It did so well against them the owners decided to join the NFL in 1925. In 1928 the Steam Roller won the NFL championship with the best winning percentage in the league. Each player got a gold watch.

A peek into the Steam Roller’s finances in 1927 showed one of the team’s major expenses was 15 percent of the gate receipts to the Cycledrome. The NFL took 1 percent of gate receipts, visiting teams took $2,475 and the players – all of them — earned $1,972 in salary. That left the team almost $6,000 in the black that year. Financial difficulties eventually doomed the team at the end of the 1931 season.

The Steam Roller made history in 1929 in a November game scheduled against the Chicago Cardinals. A storm made the field unplayable. They decided to play a night game three days later on Nov. 6 at nearby Kinsley Park, which had just gotten lights. The ball was painted white and 6,000 people came to watch.

The two football fields are now parking lots. The Cycledrome is a parking lot and a Peter Pan bus station between I-95 and Rte. 1. Kinsley Park is a parking lot at the corner of Kinsley and Acorn streets.

Athletic Park

An early University of Vermont football team

At the intersection of Intervale and Riverside roads in Burlington, Vt., is a highway plaque marking the site of Athletic Park. It was located on the streetcar line between Burlington and Winooski. The University of Vermont’s football team played there from 1887 until 1906.

Vermont’s football history is otherwise limited. Only two players in the NFL even attended college in Vermont: Washington Redskins receiver Pierre Garcon played just one season at Norwich University before transferring, and Seattle Seahawks kicker Steven Hauschka graduated from Middlebury College.

Vermont high schools have produced only three NFL players: Joe Shield, Jason Foster and Bob Yates, according to the Burlington Free Press. Shield didn’t produce a single statistic in just three games for the Green Bay Packers in 1986, and Yates never started a game in five seasons as an offensive lineman for the Boston Patriots from 1961-65.

The third, Jason Foster, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneer, was known for receiving a 5 on the Wonderlic test, the second lowest score in NFL history. Wonderlic is an intelligence test in which a score of 10 suggests literacy.

Photos: Yale Bowl BBy Parkerjh – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=103979446. This story last updated in 2022.

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The Tungsten Light Bulb Scandal of 1908

John Allen Heany managed to fool some of the people with his tungsten light bulb, but he couldn’t fool General Electric.

In 1905, the electric industry was improving by leaps and bounds. Heany wanted to push it further forward.

Thomas Edison had created light bulbs with carbon filaments in 1879, but they were problematic. They tended to cloud the inside of the glass as they burned. A light bulb with a filament made of tungsten, with its incredibly high melting point, was the Holy Grail for manufacturers.

Yet the manufacturing technique to make a tungsten light bulb had yet to be perfected.

The Tungsten Light Bulb

John Allen Heany, owner of the Heany Lamp Company of New Haven, was hot on the trail of the tungsten light bulb.

General Electric was the 800-pound gorilla of the electricity world. The company conducted its own research, but also funded other inventors, usually buying out their companies if they were successful.

GE funded Heany’s promising research, but in December of 1904 the company’s faith in Heany flamed out. At the time, Heany lived in Pennsylvania where he had taught college-level science courses before venturing out as an entrepreneur.

Heany applied for a patent for his tungsten light bulb, and then brought samples to the GE offices. All failed miserably. Heany left, discouraged. After the visit, he sent a letter asking GE to return the bulbs. GE kept one.

John Allen Heany's light bulb (courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution)

John Allen Heany’s tungsten light bulb (courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution)

As the race intensified to see who would develop the tungsten filament, Heany emerged in 1908 with a winning light bulb. He claimed he based it on his 1904 patent, but GE – which backed other entries in the race to perfect the tungsten filament – had suspicions. If Heany’s bulb based on the 1904 design was working fine, why had it failed so miserably when he showed it to them?

As all this was going on, Heany tried to sell the patent to GE for $500,000.

3rd Time the Charm

The GE patent staff went to work. Three times they visited the patent office to review Heany’s various applications, and on the third time they found a flaw.

The patent office had accepted a submission from Heany on one of his applications dated and stamped January of 1905. The paper had a watermark, however, that didn’t come into use until later in 1906.

Clearly, the patent application for the tungsten light bulb had been updated, but made to look like the original submission.

With the warning flags raised, it didn’t take long for the patent office to zero in on the problem. The office had fraud in its midst. The patent office uncovered collusion between a patent examiner, Ned Barton, and Heany’s lawyer – Henry Everding.

The patent office fired Barton. Not surprisingly, Heany hired him and Barton went front and center to defend his new boss.

“I would be a fool to mix up in any matter such as this,” Barton said. But he soon caved. He pleaded guilty to fraud. Everding and Heany stood trial.

Eventually, Everding admitted his part in altering the patent douments. A jury convicted him.

Both Everding and Barton refused to implicate Heany. Others had no qualms.

No Bullet, No Patent

Witnesses from his own company testified that Heany had crowed about his infiltration of the patent office. A glassblower showed how bulbs supposedly patented in 1905 hadn’t been designed until years later. Nevertheless, Heany dodged the bullet and won an acquittal.

Following the trial the patent office took up the question of whether to invalidate Heany’s patents – now worth millions. Heany put up a fight, but refused to answer questions about his involvement in the patent rigging. In 1911 all the patents were invalidated.

Heany would go on to have a successful career as an inventor and business man. He won dozens of patents both in the U.S. and in foreign countries. During World War I he turned his skills toward developing gas mask technology.

He died at age 69 in 1946 in Hamden, Conn. — his home for 25 years – the fraud scandal of his youth well behind him.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Green Book Guides African-Americans to Safety in New England (and Elsewhere)

African-Americans driving through New England from the 1930s to the 1960s carried the Green Book to guide them to friendly hotels, restaurants and service stations.

It was a time when they might find themselves in sundown towns, which banned minorities from within municipal limits after dark. The practice wasn’t limited to the Jim Crow South — it happened in New England, too.

James Loewen, a historian who researches sundown towns, found evidence of a sign in Connecticut that said, “Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark.”

Always alert to potential embarrassment or danger, African-Americans carried blankets, packed lunch and even toted cans of gasoline when they took to the road.

And they carried the Green Book.

The Green Book

Victor H. Green was an African-American letter carrier in New York City. Among his deliveries were Jewish guides that told Jewish readers what restaurants and hotels didn’t admit them. He asked his colleagues in the postal service to help him by asking around on their routes about good places to stay. He then published the first Green Book in 1936, focusing on metropolitan New York City.

The 10-page book, which sold for 25 cents, included listings for restaurants, service stations, hotels, tourist homes, taverns, liquor stores, beauty parlors, nightclubs, drugstores and tailors.

It included a quotation from Mark Twain on its cover:

Travel is fatal to prejudice.

Expansion

The Green Book expanded over the years to include every U.S. state. It also included advertisements for lodgings, for Ford automobiles and for service stations. During World War II, Victor Green suspended publication, but by 1949 it ran to more than 80 pages.

Esso (now ExxonMobil) promoted the Green Book because of the work of James ‘Billboard’ Jackson, the company’s first black marketing specialist. Esso sponsored the guide, telling its black customers it allowed them to ‘go further with less anxiety.’ African-American drivers could buy the Green Book and get maps at Esso stations. Shell, on the other hand, had a reputation for turning away black customers.

Green’s timing was good. African-Americans were buying cars as soon as they could afford them to avoid the indignities of traveling on trains or buses. The interstate highway system was still in the future, so motorists had to drive through unfamiliar towns where they might not be welcome.

Journalist George Schuyler, a Rhode Island native, explained in 1930,

…all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult.

Obsolescence

Green looked forward to the day people wouldn’t need the Green Book. In the 1949 edition he wrote,

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.

The year the Civil Rights Act passed, 1964, was the Green Book’s last. By then Civil Rights activists demanded equal access and discouraged voluntary segregation.

Jim Crow Bible

Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe

During the Jim Crow era, the Green Book was the Bible of black travel. Today it is a guide to a past that hasn’t completely vanished.

In the 1949 Green Book, for example, listings for the African-American neighborhood in Boston’s South End include eight hotels and guest houses, nine restaurants, a couple of barbers, the Savoy Nightclub (where Malcolm X once shined shoes) and a half-dozen tailors.

Charlie’s, one of the restaurants listed on Columbus Avenue, was where Sammy Davis. Jr., used to tap dance for change as a young boy. Charlie’s, now known as Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe, closed in 2014 but reopened under new ownership.

As New Haven revives the jazz that once made it a mecca for musicians, the 1949 Green Book limns the Dixwell neighborhood where Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday performed. There was the Phillis Wheatley Hotel, the Dr. M.F. Allen tourist home, the Belmont Restaurant, the Elks Nightclub and Lillian’s Paradise.

The Monterey Café, where owner Rufus Greenlee danced with Josephine Baker, lasted long enough to foster New Haven’s Hip Hop scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Providence

Most of the accommodations listed in the Green Book in New England were small hotels and tourist homes owned by African Americans. In cities, they were usually found in marginal or minority neighborhoods.

One notable exception was the Providence Biltmore, an elegant 19-story hotel in the middle of downtown. It was built in 1922 after the Providence Chamber of Commerce campaigned for a signature hotel where people could gather for important civic and cultural events.

The hotel had an open occupancy policy, accepting both black and white guests. But it took a step further by actually paying for a listing in the Green Book. Beginning in 1941, it simply reads, “Biltmore” under the heading “Providence.”

The Providence Biltmore closed in 1975, but reopened four years later after renovation and a landmark designation. It changed hands, underwent another renovation, changed hands again, and was renamed Graduate Providence.

Oak Bluffs

Today, the Town of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard is a resort community visited by such prominent African-Americans as Spike Lee, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In 1956, it provided even more of a reprieve for upper-middle-class African-Americans like Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote speeches on the porch of an Oak Bluffs cottage.

In 1948, Dorothy West wrote a novel about the town’s social life, The Living Is Easy. That year the Green Book listed eight places where cottages could be rented in Oak Bluffs. (You can watch an online documentary about Oak Bluffs for free here.)

The Shearer Cottage on Martha’s Vineyard catered to black vacationers starting in 1912. Charles and Henrietta Shearer built their wooden tourist home in the Highlands area of Oak Bluffs. Charles had been born into slavery but graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia, then worked as a teacher.

Shearer Cottage is still in business and still run by the Shearer family.

Ironically, the Green Book didn’t list the Shearer Cottage until 1963, along with such establishments as Brownie’s Cottage, Cinderella Cottage and Dunmere-By-The-Sea.

Rock Rest

Rock Rest in Kittery, Maine

One New England destination popular among African-Americans did not list in the Green Book: Rock Rest in Kittery, Maine. Clayton and Hazel Sinclair once owned the 2-1/2 story wooden Cape, running it as a guest house from 1946 to 1977. They advertised by sending postcards to their mailing list.

Clayton worked as a chauffeur in New York, Hazel as a ladies’ maid to a family that summered in Maine. When Clayton and Hazel decided to relocate, Clayton found a dilapidated house on Route 103 and Kittery and promised to fix it up. He did, and Hazel’s reputation as a cook drew enough guests to run Rock Rest as a business in the summer. Clayton Sinclair also worked in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Hazel catered in the off season. Today the house is on the National Register of Historic Places. On June 4, 2022, two historic markers were scheduled to be unveiled commemorating Rock Rest.

For an interactive map showing places listed in a 1956 Negro Travelers’ Green Book, click here. View the text of the 1949 Green Book, courtesy The Henry Ford, here.

Photos: Oak Bluffs by Elkman at Wikipedia, Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe by John Phelan at Wikipedia. Rock Rest By Robm154 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35858018.

This story was updated in 2022. If you enjoyed it, you may also want to read about New England’s sundown towns (which only allowed white people to stay after dark) here.

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