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Pemigewasset

6 Places With a Curse on Them

Curses were a fact of life in colonial America. With limited scientific knowledge, spiritual beliefs reigned supreme. And many believed that a curse was a real way of getting back at someone who did you wrong. Superstitious European settlers made them, and so did Indigenous people.

Here are six places upon which a curse has been cast.

The Curse of Charles Island, Milford, Conn.

Charles Island

Silver Sands State Park today has a beautiful ocean beach for a summer getaway on a hot day, and at low tide it’s fun to walk to Charles Island. But the history of the island has not always been so fun.

Europeans first noted the island in 1614. It was a summer destination for Ansantawae, chief of the local Paugussetts (an Algonquian tribe), which historically controlled vast swaths of land in Connecticut.

Charles Deal would eventually buy the island, giving the land its name. But to the Paugussetts the island had spiritual significance. Local history says that after the Europeans elbowed the tribe off the land, the Paugusetts put a curse on anyone who tried to build on it. And up to today, no structure has survived on the island very long.

The island also received two more curses. One came from the pirate William Kidd, who buried stolen treasure there in 1699. Authorities then dug it up and arrested him. Kidd cursed anyone who took his treasure.

And Charles Island was cursed once more by a group of five sailors who hid gold they had stolen from Mexican emperor Guatmozin. He cursed the thieves who took his gold and the gold, as well.

Saco Curse, Saco, Maine

On the Saco, Benjamin Champney

For years, Mainers wouldn’t go near the Saco River because of an old Native American curse.

The Saco, one of Maine’s largest rivers, starts in the White Mountains and empties into the ocean at Biddeford Pool. The Sokokis people lived near the mouth of the Saco.

In 1631, English colonists began settling a town called Winter Harbor (later Saco) in the Sokokis territory. Under the leadership of a great sachem, Squandro, the Native and the colonist lived side by side in peace.

That peaceful coexistence ended in the summer of 1675, according to legend.

The Sokokis were summering on what is now Factory Island in the river. An English ship anchored in the mouth of the river. Three sailors decided to launch a rowboat and explore the island. There they found Squandro’s wife and infant son in a canoe.

The sailors decided to test a belief that Indian babies were born knowing how to swim. They threw Squandro’s baby into the river.

According to one version of the story, Squandro’s wife dove in and saved the baby, but he died soon afterward. According to another, both wife and child drowned. And ccording to a third, Squandro also lost his unborn baby in the tragedy.

Squandro mourned for three days. Then he issued his curse. He commanded the spirits of the river to take the lives of three white men a year until they left the shores of the Saco. He also vowed revenge on the English. Squandro supposedly persuaded the Androscoggin tribe to attack Winter Harbor in an opening blow of King Philip’s War.

For centuries, Mainers wouldn’t go near the river until three people had died that year.

In 1947, the Maine Sunday Telegram declared the curse broken when no one drowned in the Saco that year.

Curse of the Bridgewater Triangle, Bridgewater, Mass.

Freetown-Fall River State Forest

Bridgewater, Mass., home to Bridgewater State University, is the center of a 200-mile area known as the Bridgewater Triangle.

Students of the paranormal have visited the area for decades looking for UFOs, Bigfoot and other such oddities. Many report unpleasant encounters with spirits, giant snakes and humanoids called pukwudgie. Evidence of ritualistic murders and animal mutilation have been found in Freetown-Fall River State Forest, and ghosts supposedly haunt some Bridgewater State buildings.

The Wampanoag people, prominent in the area, named the large swamp Hockomock, which means “place where spirits dwell.” They used it for hunting game and as a base of operations during King Philip’s War. And they cursed the colonists who took their land.

Colonial settlers, meanwhile, called it “Devil’s Swamp.” During the 21st century, people claim to have seen pterodactyl-like birds with 12-foot wingspans in the wetland.

One legend holds that a Wampanoag brave lost his wampum belt in the swamp, which caused the paranormal unrest in the area.

The Curse of Chocorua, Chocorua, N.H.

Mount Chocorua

Mount Chocorua has a distinctive rocky peak that towers over a picturesque lake. It’s said to be one of the most photographed mountains in the world.

It’s named after Chocorua, a sachem of a small band of Pequawket Indians. They had belonged to the Penobscot tribe, who lived mostly in Maine. When the Europeans began to settle the White Mountains, the Pequawkets joined with the Penacook confederation, who lived in New Hampshire along the Pemigewasset and Merrimack watersheds and near Great Bay.

One version of the legend goes that around 1720 Chocorua grew friendly with a family named Campbell that lived in Tamworth, N.H. Chocorua trusted them so much he left his son in their care when he had to go away. The son mistakenly ate some poison that the father, Cornelius Campbell, had left for predators. When Cornelius was away, Chocorua returned to find his son had died.

Campbell came home to find his wife and children killed. He suspected Chocorua, and pursued him to the top of the mountain. There Campbell wounded Chocorua with a gunshot. Chocorua then climbed to the highest boulder, raised his arms and shouted his curse:

“May the Great Spirit curse you when he speaks in the clouds and his words are fire! Lightning blast your crops! Wind and fire destroy your homes! The Evil One breathe death on your cattle! Panthers howl and wolves fatten on your bones!”

Then he leapt from the summit to his death.

Two years later, the body of Cornelius Campbell was found partially eaten by wolves. A plague destroyed the cattle in the area – said to be the victim of Chocorua’s curse.

Clawson’s Curse, Providence, R.I.

North Burial Ground, Providence

Clawson’s Curse derives its name from events that happened in 1661 near the North Burial Ground in Providence, R.I., in a thicket of barberry bushes.

John Clawson and Benjamin Herendeen were among the original white settlers of Providence, called 25 acre men. In early 1661, a local Indian named Waumaion attacked Clawson. He split open Clawson’s chin and chest with a blow from his ax.

Clawson did not blame the attack on the Indian, but rather was convinced that Herendeen had put the man up to the attack with lies about him.

Clawson would die of his wounds, but not before he supposedly placed an odd curse on the Herendeen clan. He wished that their faces would be marred with cleft chins and their lands overrun by barberry bushes.

Clawson was a hired servant to Roger Williams, and Williams oversaw the disposition of his estate following his death. Herendeen family genealogies, meanwhile, note that for several generations members of the family had pronounced cleft chins.

The Curse of Brunswick Springs, Brunswick Springs, Vt.

Brunswick Springs

Ripley’s Believe It or Not in 1984 called Brunswick Springs the Eighth Wonder of the World. From a single fountainhead gush six separate springs, each with a different mineral: iron, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, bromide and arsenic. The Abenaki Indians believed the springs to be a sacred spot with healing powers.

When a soldier was wounded in the French and Indian War, his Abenaki companions brought him to the springs so they could heal him. He recovered and later returned to the springs to bottle the water and sell it. The Abenakis objected to his profiting from the sacred waters. In the fight that followed, the soldier killed an Abenaki man and his baby. The baby’s mother put a curse on anyone who tried to profit from the spring.

Four enterprising businessmen ignored the curse and built successive hotels near the healthful springs. They built the first in 1860 and expanded it in the 1890s, when it burned to the ground. A second hotel collapsed into the river. A third hotel burned before it was finished, then burned again. In 1931, the land around the springs was used as a camp for the Civilian Conservation Corps. Today the land is protected from development as an Abenaki sacred site.

Images: Freetown-Fall River State Forest By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49870009. North Burial Ground By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57258608. Charles Island By Randal J. (RJFerret) – Self-photographed, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6010467.

This story last updated in 2021.

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Franklin Pierce Discovers the Body of Nathaniel Hawthorne in New Hampshire

In 1852, Nathaniel Hawthorne did the unthinkable: He wrote a campaign biography for presidential candidate Franklin Pierce.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Critics thought such hackwork beneath Nathaniel Hawthorne. He was, after all, the acclaimed author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables.

Nathaniel Hawthorne didn’t care. He had befriended Pierce during their student days in the 1820s at Bowdoin College, and he would be loyal to him until the end.

Pierce ran for president of the United States as a Northerner sympathetic to the South. As president, he appointed Nathaniel Hawthorne as the U.S. consul in Liverpool, a plum job that paid him well to do little so he could continue his writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Stands By His Man

Four years later, Pierce left office as one of the most reviled ex-presidents in history. He had tried to unify the North and South, but drove them further apart. Most of his friends, neighbors and political allies abandoned him, though Hawthorne never did.

While serving as consul in England, Hawthorne had traveled the countryside. He wrote a series of sketches called Our Old Home. Back home on July 2, 1863, he wrote the book’s dedication to Franklin Pierce.

It read, in part,

…it rests among my certainties that no man’s loyalty is more steadfast, no man’s hopes or apprehensions on behalf of our national existence more deeply heartfelt, or more closely intertwined with his possibilities of personal happiness, than those of FRANKLIN PIERCE.

His publisher, James T. Fields, begged him to leave it out. Nathaniel Hawthorne replied, “if he is so exceedingly unpopular that his name is enough to sink the volume, there is so much the more need that an old friend should stand by him.”

Hawthorne’s friend Ralph Waldo Emerson ripped out the dedication before putting the book on his library shelf.

White Mountains

Months later, Pierce’s wife Jane died. Nathaniel Hawthorne stood by the side of the lonely, grieving ex-president as she was laid to rest. Pierce noticed Hawthorne seemed in ill health and adjusted his collar to keep him warm.

In the spring of 1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne decided a trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire would be good for his health. Pierce agreed to go with him. Hawthorne’s wife Sophia told the ex-president he needed help getting in and out of carriages because of his weak eyesight and uncertain steps.

Franklin Pierce by Matthew Brady

The two friends left Boston together and traveled to Pierce’s home in Concord, N.H. They went to Dixville Notch once the weather was good enough.

On May 18, 1864, they returned through Plymouth. They turned in at the Pemigewasset Hotel, on the site of what is now a Plymouth State University dormitory.

Nathaniel Hawthorne took a nap, ate a bit of food and drank a cup of tea before going to bed. Pierce, in a letter four years later, described what happened next.

The Death of Hawthorne

“Passing from his room to my own, leaving the door open and so placing the lamp that its direct rays would not fall upon him and yet enable me to see distinctly from my bed, I betook myself to rest too, a little after ten o’clock,” he wrote.

“But I awoke before twelve, and noticed that he was lying in a perfectly natural position, like a child, with his right hand under his cheek. That noble brow and face struck me as more grand serenely calm then than ever before. With new hope that such undisturbed repose might bring back fresh vigor, I fell asleep again; but he was so very restless the night previous that I was surprised and startled when I noticed, at three o’clock, that his position was identically the same as when I observed him between eleven and twelve.

“Hastening softly to his bedside, I could not perceive that he breathed, although no change had come over his features. I seized his wrist, but found no pulse; ran my hands down upon his bare side, but the great, generous, brave heart beat no more.”

The body of Nathaniel Hawthorne was returned to Concord, Mass., where he was laid to rest. His pallbearers included Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier and Louis Agassiz.

Franklin Pierce was not among them.

With thanks to Dead Presidents. You can read more about Hawthorne’s milieu in Concord — their lives, their loves and their work — in American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. This story about Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce was updated in 2023.

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The 1936 Flood That Engulfed New England

The great 1936 flood began on March 11 with a downpour in New England that didn’t stop for 14 days. The rain then unleashed a flood that covered half of the Eastern United States. Pinkham Notch in New Hampshire recorded 22.43 inches of rain over the period.

Hartford underwater. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Hartford underwater during the 1936 flood. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Nobody in New England had ever seen anything like it. And nobody ever would again.

During two rainy weeks, the United States experienced two consecutive downpours, among the largest and heaviest in history.

And then a third downpour prolonged the destruction and misery.

Raging Torrents

Rivers turned into raging torrents from New Hampshire’s notches to the Long Island Sound. The Androscoggin rose to record levels in Auburn, Maine, and so did the Merrimack in Lowell, Mass. Also reaching never-before-seen heights: the Pemigewasset in Plymouth, N.H., and the Connecticut in Dalton, N.H., Montague, Mass., Hartford and Thompsonville, Conn.

The 1936 flood burst dams, wiped out roads, ruined businesses and washed away homes. As many as 200 people died and 14,000 left homeless.

The disaster prompted Congress to act. On June 22, 1936, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Flood Control Act of 1936. It empowered the Army Corps of Engineers to build hundreds of miles of levees, flood walls and channel improvements. The Corps dammed approximately 375 new major reservoirs.

In 1988, Joseph Arnold wrote in The Evolution of the 1936 Flood Control Act that the engineering projects had

…saved billions of dollars in property damage and protected hundreds of thousands of people from anxiety, injury, and death. They stand today as one of the more significant marks of our technical skill and humane spirit.

The 1936 Flood Begins

Ice did much of the damage. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Ice did much of the damage during the 1936 flood. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The worst possible weather combined to produce the 1936 flood: A warm front that stalled on March 11 followed an unusually cold, snowy winter. With that warm front came the first storm, centered on the White Mountains. It lasted until March 13 and dumped five inches of rain onto Maine, New Hampshire and parts of Vermont.

Weather forecasters had accurately predicted the 1936 flood, and ample warning prevented much loss of life. Ice jams on rivers caused most of the destruction.

The 1936 flood laid waste to mills, homes, factories and highway bridges. A tremendous volume of snow melt and rain water poured into ice-blocked channels of rivers and tributaries. Ice carried away bridges over the Kennebec and the Androscoggin rivers and washed out mills and railroad tracks in Maine near Bethel and Rumford. Ice sheared off a 5,000 sq. ft. section of granite from the Holyoke Dam. The Maine Central Railroad did manage to save its bridge above the Great Falls at Lewiston-Auburn by positioning cars full of gravel on it.

The Second Storm

A second series of torrential downpours from March 16-19 swelled the Merrimack and Piscataquog rivers. Eighteen feet of water flowed through downtown Hooksett, N.H., sweeping away utility poles, barns, houses, schools, stores, roads and railway embankments.

Nashua underwater during the 1936 flood

By March 18, the north branch of the Nashua River rose a foot every hour in Lancaster, N.H. Phoebe Lovely had to be rescued by rowboat from her home before floodwaters washed it away. The March 19 Clinton Daily Item reported, “It is a weird and awesome sight in Lancaster, today, as the town is virtually an island.”

In Nashua, N.H., the Souhegan River flooded factories and homes with eight feet of water. Families were evacuated by boat.

Manchester, N.H., was also underwater. Police worked around the clock evacuating families from their homes, snatching some from rooftops as the Merrimack washed away houses. The governor activated the National Guard to help police.

Zoo Rescue

The animal trainers at the zoo in Manchester had worked through the night of March 18-19 to save the animals, carrying small creatures across the road to a safer building. They bodily lifted two bears and two leopards to the top of their cages. But by 7:30 a.m. the waters had risen so fast the zookeepers took refuge on the building’s roof. As ice and debris battered the flimsy building, police spent hours trying to rescue them. Finally two civilians in a boat managed to row one, then the other to safety.

Drowning was a risk during the 1936 flood. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection

The 1936 flood badly damaged the giant mills owned by the bankrupt Amoskeag Industries, washing away any hope that the company could revive.

The Union Leader proclaimed, “Disaster and Death from Mountain Notches to the Sea.” In New Hampshire alone, 87 cities and towns suffered flood damage.

Death and Destruction

In Williamstown, Mrs. Hiram S. Drury dropped dead on March 18 as she watched raging flood waters pour through a ruptured dam. A six-mile ice-jam on the Connecticut River burst through a hydropower dam in Vernon. State police ordered the valley evacuated.

Two children, 5 and 7, were washed away by a swollen stream as they crossed a footbridge in Hancock. Harold Smith, a father of 12, drowned while trying to divert floodwaters from the lumber mill that employed him.

People watching the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Mass. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

People watching the Merrimack River in Lawrence, Mass., during the 1936 flood. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Merrimack floodwaters damaged mills from Manchester and Nashua in New Hampshire to Haverhill, Lowell and Lawrence in Massachusetts. The river rose 68 feet in Lowell, destroying businesses along the northern banks. Jack Kerouac’s father Leo lost his print shop to the floodwaters. The disaster consigned him to poverty and alcoholism.

Jack Kerouac later described the flood in his novel Dr. Sax as ‘an unforgettable flow of evil and of wrath and of Satan barging thru my hometown.’

Evacuees

In Andover, Mass., the Shawsheen rose halfway up first floor windows, and residents evacuated by canoe, motorboat and rowboats. The power went out for days, and doctors volunteered to immunize hundreds of residents against typhoid at the American Legian hall.

Amherst College President Stanley King got a phone call from a town selectman at 11 pm on March 18. The raging Connecticut River forced evacuation of the towns of Sunderland and Hadley. Massachusetts College had already agreed to take Sunderland. Would Amherst take Hadley, he asked?

Within two hours, cots and blankets were set up in the Amherst gym. The athletic director organized faculty and students with cars to drive the evacuees to the campus. And faculty wives staffed the cafeteria, making coffee and food for the flood victims.

Few of the Hadley residents spoke English, so Polish-speaking students interpreted for them. Students played with the children and entertained them with music. They stayed for nine days.

Downstream in Connecticut the Connecticut River flooded its banks along with the Farmington River. A 200-foot-wide dam in New Hartford, Conn., burst, releasing 8 million gallons of water and isolating the village of Satan’s Kingdom. Residents of the Farmington Valley had to flee for their lives.

Springfield

Floodwaters inundated Springfield, drowning 18 miles of mostly residential city streets. The city ordered people to evacuate, and 20,000 found shelters in schools, hospitals and a monastery. Those who stayed in their homes had to be evacuated from rooftops.

Looting began on March 20 when the power went out. Police had orders to shoot on sight.

When the waters receded, mud covered the city. But the Works Progress Administration provided much-needed jobs to clean up the city. The government hired 1,000 women to make clothing for the flood victims.

Hartford’s Worst Flood Ever

Property damage from the 1936 flood was tremendous. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Connecticut River floodwaters rose 38 feet in Hartford, a record that still stands. Food and medical supplies were stored at Hartford High School for safety, but had to be moved as the floodwaters rose relentlessly.

Southern New England Telephone’s central office on Trumbull Street was flooded with 20 feet of water. Firefighters tried to pump out the company’s building on Jewell Street, but abandoned their steam pump to the rising waters.

National Guard units patrolled the Hartford city streets along with the Coast Guard and police, rescuing citizens in rowboats and taking them to temporary shelters.

Not a single phone in the city worked. Switchboard operators came to work by rowboat to restore phone service. They then had to walk along an emergency catwalk from one building to the next.

The power went out, and surgeons performed operations at Mt. Sinai hospital under battery-powered searchlights. At the Bond Hotel, guests checking out were rowed from the staircase to the desk to settle up and then floated to the railroad station.

Many small merchants were wiped out. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The 1936 flood wiped out many small merchants. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Cleanup

When the floodwaters receded, buildings appeared in the middle of the street, barns upended and houses far from their foundations.

The flood wiped out many small businesses, and it destroyed pews and altars at St. Anthony’s Church in downtown Hartford. On March 24, a 28-year-old Hartford man, Charles Serafini, stepped into a deep pit on Van Dyke Avenue and drowned.

By then, the monumental cleanup of the 1936 flood had begun. Cellars were pumped out, buildings were inspected for safety and tons of debris were hauled away. Workers dynamited debris that collected next to the highway bridges.

On April 5, 1936, The Hartford Courant published a pictorial souvenir of ‘the Disastrous Flood of 1936.’ It said:

Hartford is slowly recovering from the most terrifying and spectacular experience in its history – a flood, the vivid impressions of which will live forever in the memories of those who saw and went through it.

This story about the 1936 flood was updated in 2023.

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