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The Recent Rediscovery of John Leslie Breck, Boston Impressionist

John Leslie Breck was a gifted artist on the verge of fame when he took his own life at the age of 39. His sunny Impressionist paintings give no hint of whatever might have caused him to commit suicide.

There are, however, his other pictures: the nocturnes. Those canvases painted by moonlight suggest dark nights of the soul.

Breck brought Impressionism to Boston, but he died before the style took firm hold in America.

His many unsold paintings, which passed through his family, reappeared in several American museums starting in 2021 – for the first time in 120 years.

John Leslie Breck

He was born on a clipper ship in the South Pacific on April 10, 1860, the son of Joseph Berry Breck, a shipmaster in the China trade, and his second wife, Ellen Frances Newell.

John Leslie Breck was still a toddler when the Civil War broke out. His father volunteered for military service and advanced rapidly, ending his service as lieutenant commander. But shortly after the war ended, he came down with tuberculosis and died in San Francisco.

Poppies by John Leslie Breck

The couple had twin daughters who died in infancy and a younger son, Edward, born in San Francisco. Edward became a scholar, a journalist, a spy and a golf champion.

After the death of Joseph Breck, the family moved to Newton, Mass., and John Leslie attended Governor Dummer Academy for a while. In 1878, Ellen Breck brought her two sons to a gymnasium in Leipzig to study. John Leslie went on to study art at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.

He returned to the United States in 1882. His mother remarried the next year at the age of 43. Her second husband, Frederic William Rice, was a native of Newton, Mass. He was 10 years younger than she and only 10 years older than John Leslie. Frederic, though, died two years after the marriage. She usually accompanied her son on his travels.

Move to Giverny

By 1886 John Leslie Breck was studying at the Academie Julian in Paris. In the spring of 1887, he and some of his fellow students were trying to find someplace new to go in the summer. They decided to try Pont del-Arche and off they went. They had to change trains at Vernon, but from there they spied a lovely little village with white houses and a Norman church — Giverny. They came back the next day.

Farmhouses at Giverny by John Leslie Breck

Four years earlier, Claude Monet had moved to Giverny just as he started to find success as a painter. After a while, the artists who followed him there began to annoy him. He once said,

…When I first came to Giverny I was quite alone, the little village was unspoiled. Now, so many artists, students, flock here, I have often thought of moving away…

He had Breck to blame, for he promoted the village among his fellow American students.

It took just one summer for the nascent art colony to attract notice. That October, a critic for The Art Amateur recognized “quite an American colony has gathered, I am told, at Givernay [sic].” Along with John Leslie Breck, the anonymous critic mentioned Monet, Willard Metcalf and Theodore Robinson.

“ A few pictures just received from these young men show that they have got the blue-green color of Monet’s impressionism and ‘got it bad.'”

More Monet

Unlike the others, Breck stayed the winter in Giverny, and Monet invited him to paint in his garden. Monet said to him,

I won’t give you lessons….we’ll wander about the fields and woods and paint together.

And just as Monet did, he painted a series of haystacks.

Morning Fog and Sun by John Leslie Breck

But then he had a falling out with the great artist because he fell in love with his step-daughter, Blanche Hoschede. Monet forbade the relationship and Breck left Giverny.

By 1889, he was living in Paris with his mother.

Back in the USA

He returned to Boston in 1890, where he was called the head of the Impressionists. He held a one-man show credited with bringing Impressionism to Boston, which gave the old guard a chance to make fun.

Breck and his friend Ross Turner set up a studio in Turner’s home in Salem. A story in the 1890 Boston Transcript suggests the dim view the Boston establishment took of Impressionism. “Ross Turner and John Leslie Breck have returned to this country from foreign parts, and threaten to form a class for out-of-door work in painting at Salem during the month of June,” reported the Transcript.

[W]e may as well be prepared for anything and everything when he lets loose a flock of sweet girl graduates, duly inoculated with the impressionistic visual virus, whose landscapes may blend the charms of amateurishness with those of other kinds of incoherence, “till all is blue.”

In the Valley of the Seine by John Leslie Breck

That same year, he held a one-man show at the prestigious St. Botolph’s Club show. He did it with help from his friend Lilla Cabot Perry, another expatriate who had lived in Giverny and who Monet actually liked.

He returned to France around 1890-91 and painted in England for a while. Then he resettled in the Auburndale village of Newton.

John Leslie Breck in Venice

In 1897, he visited Venice with his mother and his brother, first stopping in Germany to watch his brother compete in a fencing competition. He showed his work in Berlin in 1897, then went to Venice. His time in Venice resulted in more than 25 paintings.

After Venice, little is known about Breck until he took his own life on March 18, 1899. His obituary stated a show of his work was scheduled to open the next day. But Royal W. Leith, in The Magazine Antiques, doubts anyone ever planned such an exhibit.

Giudecca Canal with Fish Baskets, by John Leslie Breck

[A]s Breck appeared to have taken his own life, his friends and family were at pains to dispel rumors of suicide by implying that he was looking forward to a bright future.

Some of those paintings were shown in the two memorial exhibitions after his death, the first at the St. Botolph Club in Boston and the second at the National Arts Club in New York.

Santa Maria Della Salute by Moonlight

A large-scale exhibition of Breck’s work, the first in 120 years, was held at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C., in 2021; then the Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis from Jan. 22-March 27, 2022; and the Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, May 28-Aug. 21, 2022.

Thanks to Anonymous, “Boston Art and Artists,” The Art Amateur, 17, no. 5, October 1887, p. 93, as quoted in R.H. Love, Theodore Earl Butler: Emergence from Monet’s Shadow, Chicago, Illinois, 1985, p. 59. Thanks also to Streets of Salem.

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The Hope and Despair of Acadian Exiles, 1755-1766

In the winter of 1755, two Marshfield, Mass., selectmen knocked on the door of the Michel family, seven Acadian exiles. They brought bad news: The two oldest sons, 23-year-old Francis and 15-year-old Paul, had to go into involuntary servitude. Francis would work for a farmer, Paul as a sailor, though he suffered from debilitating seasickness.

New England had no love for the French families living among them. But the French families — Acadian exiles — had no choice because the British had resettled them there by force.

Acadian Exiles

When the French and Indian War raged in Nova Scotia, French families refused to take a loyalty oath to the British ended up in exile. The Acadian refugees who landed in Puritan New England bore the stigma of their Catholic religion — and of their poverty.

Beginning in 1755, the British took nearly 10,000 Acadians from their homes and forcibly deported them to the British colonies and to England. They confiscated or burned the Acadian exiles’ houses and farms, and deliberately separated families.

The colonies, Massachusetts and Connecticut, treated the Acadian exiles like prisoners of war. They could not practice their religion, nor could they move from town to town.

The Michel family had more luck than most. They survived the disease-ridden voyage to Boston, and the family stayed together. The two eldest sons threw off their indentures and worked for wages. The town even helped feed and shelter them.

French and Indian War

Map of Acadia

For many years the French and British fought over Acadia. The region included Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, parts of southern Quebec and northern Maine.

By 1713 the British took control and demanded loyalty from Acadians. Most refused, earning the nickname “French Neutrals.” That posed a problem for the British, since the French far outnumbered them in Acadia.

Gov. William Shirley

Massachusetts officials also worried about the Acadians. Gov. William Shirley feared for the safety of Massachusetts merchants and sailors in Acadian waters. Usually three or four boats from Boston anchored there at a time.

In 1751, the French began to build Fort Beausejour in nearby New Brunswick. Shirley began recruiting forces to kick them out of Acadia. Troops that left Boston in May of 1755 captured Fort Beausejour in June.

Le Grand Derangement

Illustration of the Acadians listening to the deportation order.

On Sept. 5, 1755, the expulsion of the Acadians began. The British announced they would seize the homes and property of the French Neutrals. The Acadians called it Le Grand Derangement.

The British lured Acadian men into churches under false pretenses and then locked them inside. They seized others in their homes and their fields. Their wives and children had to feed them at gunpoint until ships took them away. The British took over their farms and livestock, pillaging and burning their homes to make sure they wouldn’t return.

Estimates vary, but the British rounded up as many as 10,000 Acadians out of a population of 12,000. On Oct. 8, 1755, they boarded ships provided by Thomas Hancock, uncle of John Hancock. The ships sailed to the 13 British colonies in North America and to France. Several thousand died of disease, starvation and drowning.

John Winslow, the second in command in Nova Scotia, described the scene. They “began to Embarke the Inhabitants who went verry solentarily and Unwillingly. the women in Great Distress Carrying Their Children In their arms.”

Others, he wrote, carried their decrepit parents in carts in scenes of confusion, woe and distress.

Acadian Exiles in Massachusetts

On Nov. 15, 1755 the first overcrowded ships filled with sick, hungry Acadian exiles arrived. There hadn’t been enough food for the journey and many died of smallpox or malaria.

A deportation ship

Nearly 2,000 Acadians sailed into Boston Harbor to be parceled out to the colony’s 98 towns. The General Court gave overseers of the poor the power to ’employ, bind out or support’ the Acadian families. That generally meant indentured servitude.

The first ship, the sloop Seaflower, entered Boston Harbor with 206 destitute Acadians aboard. They then continued to arrive until the French and Indian War ended in 1763. Once on shore, the colony treated them like convicts.

Thomas Hutchinson in 1750.

Some took pity on the Acadian exiles. As a member of the General Court, Thomas Hutchinson tried to keep families together and helped write letters petitioning the Legislature. He may have helped Joseph Michel write a letter asking that his sons be released from their indenture. In Westborough, Ebenezer Parkman (grandfather of historian Francis Parkman) befriended Simon Leblanc and gave work to his children.

More often the Acadian exiles were feared and hated. A letter to the editor of the Boston Gazette cautioned the Acadian exiles could escape in stolen ships. Or they could destroy the town or powder house, ‘heated with Passion and Popish zeal.”

If there were any Catholic priests in Massachusetts, they weren’t allowed to say Mass. Acadians who wanted to get married did so by laymen and hoped they could renew their vows in front of a French priest some day in the future.

Departation of the Acadians

Acadian Exiles

At first, the Acadian exiles had some freedom. Some took jobs as sailors and left for Canada. In response, the General Court passed a law in April forbidding Acadian exiles to work as sailors. Soon after, lawmakers ordered them to stay within the boundaries of their assigned towns.

Marbleheaders complained about the 37 Acadians they got stuck with. The exiles could escape by water, but the town would have to support them if they didn’t.

An Acadian fisherman named Belloni Melancon ended up in the frontier village of Lancaster. He apprenticed his son to an artisan to earn money, but the artisan beat him so badly he couldn’t use his arm for a month. Then the town got sick of supporting the destitute Melancons. Some townspeople took Belloni’s crippled wife from her bed and threw her into a cart.

Melancon then petitioned the General Court to let him move to Weymouth, where he could earn a living as a fisherman. The General Court allowed him to go to Weymouth and fish, and the state paid for his rent and wood.

On The Town

Thomas Hancock by John Smibert

The towns expected the General Court to reimburse them for the expense of keeping the Acadian exiles. The General Court in turn expected payment from Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia expected payment from Great Britain. Only Massachusetts helped pay to feed, house and clothe the Acadian exiles who couldn’t support themselves.

In Newton, only two of the 13 Acadian exiles could work, since most were children. The town billed the General Court for a six-month supply of food for them: 206-3/4 pounds of pork, 166 quarts of milk and 10 bushels of Indian meal to the Acadians.

In Methuen, Laurence Mius protested in the fall of 1756 that he worked for two months, but received only three rods of old cloth, two pounds of dried cod and a pound of pork fat. The overseer of the poor chased him with a poker and beat him so badly he spit blood for a day.

In Wilmington, John Labrador and his seven children lived in a house with no roof. He complained when the house flooded, and a town councilor told him to build a boat and navigate in it.

Not Wanted Here

Early on, Massachusetts officials tried to get rid of some of the refugees. Thomas Hancock outfitted a vessel to take some of them to North Carolina in May 1756. But the Acadian exiles overpowered the crew and forced their way back.

Massachusetts asked New Hampshire to take in some of the Acadians, but New Hampshire refused.

Some Acadian exiles were confined to the workhouse or hospital in Boston. But then in 1760, colonial troops returned from the war. The sick Acadian exiles were turned out of the hospital to make room for the sick and wounded troops.

In 1762, French forces occupied St. John’s in Newfoundland, galvanizing the Acadians. In response, the British rounded up more Acadians and put them aboard five English vessels headed toward Boston. But then the Massachusetts government refused them permission to land and sent them back to Halifax.

Map of deportation

Acadian Exiles in Connecticut

Acadian exiles began arriving in New London, Conn., in late 1755 and continued through the next year. In the end, 400 arrived in Connecticut and went to 50 different towns. Haddon received three, Hartford 13, Wethersfield nine, Farmington 14, and so forth.

A 76-year-old man and his seven grandchildren went to Woodbury in the winter of 1756. The malnourished, vermin-ridden cousins had been separated from their parents. The town’s overseer of the poor put the children to work for joiners and farmers.

On Jan. 2, 1757, four adults described as ‘skeletal,’ ‘naked’ and ‘having the itch, vermin, etc.,’ staggered into Woodbury for a joyous reunion with their children. The British sent the parents to Annapolis, Md. They then spent a year petitioning officials to let them reunite with their children.

War Ends

Under the Treaty of Paris of 1763, the Acadian exiles had 19 months to leave the British North American colonies for any French colony. They began petitioning to go home to Nova Scotia, to Quebec, to France, or to the French West Indies, specifically Saint-Domingue (Haiti).

However, they had to pay for their own transport.

In 1766, 900 Acadian exiles in Massachusetts gathered in Boston and decided to return to their native land. They marched 400 miles through the wilderness. Many died along the way. Then in Acadia they found the English had taken over their farms. They found new homes in the counties of Digby and Yarmouth.

Many found their way to Louisiana, where they are called Cajuns.

The Michel Family

Petition of Joseph Michel

The Michel family belonged to the lucky ones. A wealthy Marshfield landowner, Nathaniel Ray Thomas, supported them briefly. The town helped pay for wood for cooking and heating, let the family use a cow for milk and eventually paid for Joseph Michel’s funeral.

Michel then petitioned the General Court for help. He argued that Francis and Papul already had jobs and the indenture should be considered null and void. The General Court investigated and finally agreed with Michel. Since the Acadian boys were willing to work, they shouldn’t be forced into indenture, the Court decided. The family then stayed in Marshfield after the war ended.

End Notes

For an alphabetical list of the Acadians/French Neutrals exiled to Connecticut, click here.

For a list of the Acadians/French Neutrals exiled to Massachusetts – and to the specific towns they were parceled out to – click here and here.

Photos: Map of Acadia 1754 By Mikmaq – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1351882; Portrait of Thomas Hancock, By Cullen328 (Jim Heaphy) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18351503. With thanks to The Acadian Diaspora by Christopher Hodson and Le Grand Derangement 1755-1766, The Acadian Exile in Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Secretary of State.

This story was updated in 2023.

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The 1965 Drought, New England’s Worst Ever

It will probably be several centuries before the Northeast United States again suffers anything like the 1965 drought. It was the driest year of a 10-year dry spell that devastated farms and sent municipal leaders into a panic over the drinking supply.

There were actually two droughts: The agricultural drought, and the water-supply drought. Farmers tried to save their crops and fed their livestock in barns, while suburbanites were told not to wash their cars or take long showers.

There was a high pollen count, high fire danger and high prices for produce. Wells dried up. Rivers, ponds and reservoirs became stinking mud holes. The air was so dry foggy mornings disappeared along the coast.

According to climatologist W.C. Palmer, the 1965 drought was “such a rare event that we should ordinarily expect it to occur in this region only about once in a couple of centuries.”

The 1965 Drought

The 1965 drought actually occurred during 1961-69, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It began in 1960 in western Massachusetts, where precipitation was below average. Then in 1962 eastern Massachusetts dried up. The rest of the Northeast got little rain or snow.

From 1962 to 1966, 34 out of 46 months had below-average precipitation. The summer of 1964 was very dry. Overdrawn reservoirs weren’t replenished.

Then 1965 was the driest year on record since the late 19th century. The 1965 drought was most severe in northeastern Pennsylvania and southeastern New York. That year, Connecticut got only 29.45 inches of precipitation, far below the average of 46.15 inches. Maine was drier than in 1947, when fires destroyed nine communities and a quarter-million parched acres.

By July, communities were declaring water emergencies. Towns banned water use outside, but police and water departments were besieged by people calling to report neighbors who watered their lawns or washed their cars.

Sahara

Golf courses dug wells and dredged ponds. Fairways burnt up as watering was restricted to greens and tees. Brae Burn in Newton, Mass., “may as well be on the Sahara,” reported the Boston Globe. Brae Burn dug 20 test holes to find water. All were dry.

Part of the reservoir in Cambridge, Mass., oozed muck. In Norfolk, Mass., the 20-acre Kingsbury Pond was a stinking sea of mud. Commuters from the western suburbs in Boston rolled up their windows in summer to avoid smelling the stench of the Charles River. Usually water was discharged into the river to dampen the smell of the raw sewage that flowed into it. Not during the drought.

Herring couldn’t swim from the sea to fresh water to spawn. The Town of Pembroke, Mass., banned herring fishing and helped the fish upstream by carrying them in barrels. By fall, millions of herring spawned in fresh water couldn’t make it back to the sea in the dried-up streams. Trapped in ponds, the seagulls feasted on them.

Pastures, hayfields and cornfields were burned out by the 1965 drought. Dairy farms in Fairfield County, Conn., lost most of their pasture grass, and wells went dry for a third of them.

The honey crop in Vermont was smaller than usual. So was the blueberry crop in Maine. Shade trees, such as the Norway and sugar maple, were damaged. Along Rte. 2 between Concord and Cambridge, Mass., Red Pine needles turned brown.

Emergency

In July 1965, President Lyndon Johnson ordered a study to find out what the federal government could do to help New England. Cities and towns got loans of pumps and pipes to access the deepest arts of reservoirs. Some Massachusetts towns borrowed vintage World War II pipes from Fort Devens and Romulus Air Force Base to reach water beyond normal sources. It didn’t work. The pipe was too expensive to transport.

President Johnson

Rockport, Mass., got approval to use water from a quarry, so long as it was treated twice with chlorine. Also in Massachusetts, Randolph, Holbrook and Braintree banded together to get water from a gravel pit. Fitchburg hired a rainmaker.

The next month, 11 Massachusetts counties were declared drought disaster areas. More than a hundred Massachusetts towns restricted water. Hanover considered a moratorium on building permits. Sandy Pond beach was closed in Ayer after hundreds of dead fish floated to the surface, deprived of oxygen.

Scattered Relief

By September, some parts of New England got rain. In western Massachusetts, rain changed brown pastures to green and grass and alfalfa returning to some farms. Cranberry growers were skating by. Some reservoirs filled to capacity.

The 1965 drought eased in Northern New England except for coastal Maine. In Grand Isle County, Vermont, too much rain left standing water in fields.

Then temperatures dropped.

The water problem worsened in November because the cold locked precipitation above ground. In southeastern Massachusetts, a cold snap destroyed a quarter of the cranberry crop. Cranberry growers didn’t have enough water to flood their bogs and prevent the berries from freezing.

Test wells throughout New England reached record lows and nearly a dozen towns along the coast had to draw down their emergency supplies. On Nov. 1, 1965, the Quabbin Reservoir fell to 59 percent of capacity, a drop of 17 percent in 12 months.

Car washes, service stations and ski areas couldn’t get water.

The 1965 Drought Continues

Quabbin Reservoir after the 1965 drought

By April 1966, the rainfall shortage increased to nearly 37 inches since the drought started in 1963, reported the Boston Globe. That almost equaled a year’s supply of rain.

People thought the drought ended with heavy rain in July and persistent fog along the coast. A dry August ended that hope.

A Boston College scientist suggested detonating dynamite, creating tiny earthquakes, could end the 1965 drought. The disturbed soils would the presence of water and suggest areas for drilling, he said.

By October 1966, farmers said the drought had ended. But the water-supply drought had not. There wasn’t enough water in wells, water tables and reservoirs.

A wet spring in 1967 ended the drought. Above normal rain and snow from February to May filled the reservoirs. On April 25, 1967, Malcolm E. Graf, Massachusetts Water Resources Commissioner, stated the four-year drought, worst in New England history, was over.

Photo: Quabbin Reservoir By Solarapex at en.wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11535183. Cracked mud By Rosser1954 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90076337. This story about the 1965 drought was updated in 2022.

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Avis Linnell, Murdered by Her Minister, Inspires ‘An American Tragedy’

The 1911 murder of a 19-year-old music student, Avis Linnell, in the Boston YWCA was one of the most sensational crimes in New England history.

She was several weeks pregnant by a charismatic minister who had dumped her for a wealthier woman. For a while, the minister thought he had committed the perfect crime. He was wrong.

Avis Linnell

Avis Linnell was born in Hyannis Port on Dec. 19, 1891. She graduated from the high school in 1908, and from the Normal School in 1910.

She had “an exceedingly bright intellect which carried her through school with ease, of a lively and happy disposition, which endeared her to her friends,” according to the Sandwich Observer.

Avis had a soprano voice described as “angelic.” She sang in the choir at the small Baptist church in Hyannis that she attended with her parents and three sisters.

In 1908, a new preacher, Clarence Richeson, came to her church in Hyannis. People said the tall, handsome giant from Virginia was touched with mysticism. Avis fell in love with him, and he returned her feelings. On her 19^th birthday, he gave her a ring.

Richeson employed an energetic Southern style of preaching. The conservative Cape Codders couldn’t take his exuberance, so he resigned in 1910.

Boston

Clarence Richeson

Richeson got a job at the prestigious Immanual Baptist Church in Cambridge. He then convinced Avis to apply to the New England Conservatory of Music. She did, and in the fall of 1910, she moved to the YWCA in Boston.

In early 1911 Avis told her mother they had broken up. In March, Richeson announced his engagement to Violet Edmands, a well-connected, rich young woman from Brookline.

On Oct. 14, 1911, Avis Linnell was starting her second year at the New England Conservatory when she was found nearly dead on the floor of the YWCA bathroom. She died before an ambulance arrived. An autopsy revealed she was several weeks pregnant and that she had taken cyanide. Her death was ruled a suicide.

But several hours after Avis died, a YWCA matron called Richeson to tell him what happened. He said he barely knew her and demanded to know why she called him. The matron replied that he’d had lunch with her that day and ought to know.

Richeson may still have thought he was safe from suspicion. The matron told him Avis had not regained consciousness after she was discovered. But the crusading newspaper editor of the Boston Post, Edwin Grozier, brought him to grief. Grozier, who came up with the idea of the Boston Post cane, put his reporters on the story. They found Richeson had bought the cyanide from a druggist in Newton, Mass..

Suicide Ruled Out

The Post demanded a police investigation into the death of Avis Linnell. The medical examiner, Dr. Timothy Leary, ruled out suicide as a cause of death.

Excerpt from confession

Richeson was soon in the Charles Street Jail. On Jan. 12, 1912, he signed a written confession that he killed Avis Linnell. He had given her capsules laced with cyanide, telling her it would induce an abortion. He was indicted, convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair.

While in jail, Richeson tried to castrate himself. His lawyers sought clemency on the basis of insanity.

Massachusetts Gov. Eugene Foss then asked doctors to look into Richeson’s mental health. It turned out he had a family history of insanity, and as a boy he had received several blows to the head.

As a theological student he had asked three women to marry him. He had gotten caught cheating at college, and one of the trustees wrote to his father describing as deranged.

Dr. L. Vernon Briggs, director of the Massachusetts Society for Mental Hygiene, concluded Richeson had delusions, hallucinations, amnesic periods and delirium. Wrote Briggs,

He had exhibited signs and had had attacks of this disease for years, had been recognized as mentally unsound by several physicians who advised specialists in mental diseases to attend him.

Author Theodore Dreiser took a different view. He believed Richeson murdered Avis Linnell because he aspired to wealth and fame through a marriage to Violet Edmands. Dreiser wrote six chapters of a novel based on her murder, but then abandoned it to write about another murder. Eventually the story became the novel An American Tragedy.

Clarence Richeson died in the electric chair on May 21, 1912, and now lies buried near his family home in Virginia.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Johnny Kelley, Beloved Icon of the Boston Marathon

The day after Johnny Kelley won his first Boston Marathon in 1935, he showed up at 7:30 a.m. at his job in an Arlington, Mass., greenhouse.

He was a salt-of-the-earth Irishman from West Medford, Mass. By the time he ran his 61st — and last — race at the age of 84, he was the effervescent heart and soul of the Boston Marathon.

Johnny Kelley crosses the finish line in 1945. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

He inspired the nickname “Heartbreak Hill,” where he went from frontrunner to fifth-place finisher in 1936.

Kelley was 65, with almost 20 more Boston Marathons ahead of him when he said, “For me, the race these days is to try to beat the girls to the finish and to wave to all my old friends along the course.”

When he was 70 he said he was afraid to stop running. “I feel too good,” he said. “I want to stay alive.”

Johnny Kelley, Iron Man

He was born on Sept. 6, 1907, the son of a letter carrier and the oldest of 10 children. His family would form a large cheering section at his races.

He ran track and cross-country at nearby Arlington High School. At 20, he ran his first Boston Marathon, one of 285 male entrants, but he didn’t finish. Like the other runners, he took the trolley or bummed a ride to get to the race. The last time he ran, in 1992, 9,629 men and women ran for $418,000 in prizes, including a Mercedes-Benz for the winner.

Others have won more marathons — Clarence DeMar won seven – but Johnny Kelley holds the record for endurance. He won the Boston Marathon twice, in 1935 and 1945, finished second a record seven times and finished in the top 10 in 19 others.

Johnny Kelley with another runner courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Boston Globe reported his bitterest defeat came in 1936.

Kelley was a little cocky when he came up on a struggling Tarzan Brown, the mercurial Narragansett Indian who also won the Boston Marathon twice:

…as they approached the treacherous stretch of hills in Newton. Kelley gave Brown a tap on the back, which was all the fuel Brown needed to rekindle his fire to win the race. The late Globe sports editor Jerry Nason, who witnessed the incident from the press vehicle, saw it as the turning point of the race and dubbed it “Heartbreak Hill.”

“He named it after me,” Kelley said. “I didn’t mean to be fresh or anything when I tapped Tarzan Brown, and it was just a tap, but Nason said I should have never done that, because it wasn’t right. For 15 years, he kept reminding me about it until I told him, ‘Enough’s enough’.”

Kept Going

Tarzan Brown and Johnny Kelley both went to the Berlin Olympics in 1936. Kelley finished 18^th in the marathon. Brown didn’t compete because of a hernia, but got into a fight with Nazi brownshirts in a beer garden. Kelley would run two more Olympic marathons, the last in London at the age of 40.

In 1940, Johnny Kelley had a job as a security guard at a Boston Edison power plant and had just married Mary Knowles, a stenographer he met on the streetcar. Shortly after their second wedding anniversary, Mary collapsed and died three days later of cancer. Running, he said, helped him get through it.

Johnny Kelley got drafted in 1942, married briefly a second time and still ran the Boston Marathon. He went back to work at the power plant in mechanical maintenance.

He won his second Boston Marathon in 1945. In 1946, an undernourished Greek named Stylianos Kyiarides came from behind to beat him. Kelley graciously hugged Kyiarides at the finish.

He took up painting in his 50s, producing about 20 seascapes and landscapes a year and selling most of them. In 1972, he retired from Boston Edison and moved to East Dennis, Mass., with his third wife, Laura Harlow.

In 1991, at the age of 83, he fell into Laura’s arms after finishing the race. The two crashed to the pavement. He still hadn’t had enough. The next year it took him 5 hours and 57 minutes to finish the race, and he decided he needed to get home before dark. For the next two years, he only ran the last seven miles of the Marathon, starting at Heartbreak Hill. Finally, he retired in 1995.

No Money

He had run 112 marathons, winning one refrigerator, 22 diamond rings, 118 watches and no money.

In 1995, the first year of his retirement from running, he rode in a convertible at the head of the race as its grand marshal. Four years later, he was hospitalized with pneumonia and missed the race. He sent a tape to the champions’ breakfast before the race of his singing, Young at Heart.

Johnny Kelley in 1996

A 7-foot bronze statue of Johnny Kelley was unveiled in 1993, about a mile from the base of Heartbreak Hill on the Marathon course in Newton, Mass. The statue is actually two likenesses of Kelley: one of him as a 27-year-old winning the Boston Marathon in 1935, the other of him as an 84-year-old finishing his 61^st and last marathon. They hold hands as they break the tape crossing the finish line.

Johnny Kelley died at the age of 97 on Oct. 6, 2004 in a Cape Cod nursing home. He is buried in East Dennis, Mass., and his headstone reads, “Marathon Man.”

This story about Johnny Kelley last updated in 2022.

Image: Johnny Kelley in 1996 By unknown – Original publication: unknownImmediate source: https://archive.boston.com/sports/specials/obituaries/kelley/kelley_pictures?pg=9, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68969198.

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William Hull Tries To Save Nathan Hale, Then Himself

As a young man, William Hull redeemed his friend Nathan Hale’s image. As an old man, Hull desperately tried to repair his own.

William Hull

He was born June 24, 1753, in Derby, Conn., to a wealthy landowner Joseph Hull III and Eliza Clark Hull, a descendant of the Mayflower’s mate.

William Hull graduated from Yale College in 1772, where he befriended Nathan Hale.

William Hull and Nathan Hale

After graduation, they parted ways, both to teach school for a year. Hull studied law in Litchfield, Conn., with Tapping Reeve. His legal career was cut short when the American Revolution broke out and he was elected captain of a company from Derby. During the war, Hull revived his friendship with Hale, also a captain. They marched together from New London, Conn., to the Siege of Boston, and then to New York City.

There, Hale volunteered to spy on the British positions for George Washington.

Hull tried to talk him out of it. He asked Hale, Who respects the character of a spy? “Should you undertake the enterprise, your short, bright career, would close with an ignonimous death,” Hull said.

Hale, of course, was discovered with drawings and maps of key British fortifications (by Robert Rogers, no less). The British questioned him and hanged him the next morning.

He went to his death with dignity and composure. Before he was hanged, he said,

I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged that my only regret is that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.

Or he said,

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

A British engineer named John Montresor witnessed Hale’s execution. Later that day he carried a message under a white flag to Washington’s headquarters. Montresor told Hull about Hale’s impressive behavior and quoted his words on the gallows as: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Making a Hero

William Hull publicized those words and transformed Nathan Hale into a national hero rather than an obscure 21-year-old schoolteacher who failed in a disgraceful mission.

William Hull then rose to lieutenant colonel, having fought in eight key battles during the war, including White Plains, Saratoga and Stony Point.

He married a wealthy woman, Sarah Fuller, and moved to Newton, Mass. Hull raised a family, including a nephew, Isaac Hull, who he adopted as a son. He had a distinguished legal career as judge, lawmaker and member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts.

Michigan Governor

In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson appointed William Hull governor of the new territory of Michigan. Seven years later, with the War of 1812 looming, President James Madison wanted to appoint him brigadier general of the newly created Army of the Northwest to defend the territory from British and Indian attacks. Hull was nearly 60 years old and declined. Another man accepted the post, but he fell ill and Hull reluctantly took his place.

Hull’s army was undisciplined and communication was poor. He made an early blunder because he didn’t know war had been declared. He sent a schooner full of supplies and plans for an attack up the river to Detroit, where the British, who did know war was declared, captured it.

Believing his Army vastly outnumbered, Hull then committed a near-fatal blunder. He surrendered Fort Detroit, fearing an Indian massacre of women and children. He took the blame for the ignominious retreat.

The surrender at Detroit

Hull’s grandson, theologian James Freeman Clarke, described what happened:

He probably foresaw that he must face a terrible ordeal. The whole country appeared to be roused against him, and Hull at once became the best-hated man in America. A court-martial was appointed.

William Hull, Vindicated?

Hull, found guilty of cowardice and neglect of duty, was ordered shot. Madison, however, pardoned him because of his Revolutionary service. He lived the rest of his life in Newton, Mass., trying to restore his good name.

He wrote two memoirs explaining his side of the story, which helped sway public opinion to his side. His supporters held a dinner in his honor in Boston in May 1825, shortly before he died. In June, the Marquis de Lafayette, touring the United States, visited Hull. He told him,

We both have suffered contumely and reproach; but our characters are vindicated; let us forgive our enemies and die in Christian love and peace with all mankind.

Some historians have argued Hull was unfairly made a scapegoat for the humiliating loss of Detroit.

William Hull died Nov. 29, 1825.

This story last updated in 2022.

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