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7 Strange Things New Englanders Did During the Dog Days of Summer

Dogs were said to go mad during the dog days of summer, and New Englanders have certainly done strange things in the hot, humid weeks of July and August.

The ancient Greeks were said to have named dog days after Sirius, the dog star, when it rises ahead of the dawn. The Old Farmer’s Almanac reports they happen from July 3-August 11. The Anglican Book of Common Prayer considers them to run from July 6 to August 17.

Scholar Eleanor Long concluded the term ‘dog days’ arose because people associated hot, sultry days with sickness and madness.

A Rhode Island study showed that early belief had some truth in it. Among the state’s 1 million residents, there are 300 extra emergency department visits and 13 more deaths on days with a heat index of 95 degrees or more.

Here are some strange things New Englanders have done during the long, hot days of summer.

Enemas and Sherry

On July 26, 1788, Maine midwife Martha Ballard noted in her diary: “Dog Days begin this day.” Ballard linked the dog days with increased illness. She certainly seemed to visit more patients during them. Shortly after they began in 1788, she gave an enema of English mallow and chamomile to a dying child.
In 1915, a Boston doctor named John Bryant advised a cure for headache during the dog days, but only for thin, meat-eating patients. He wrote to the New England Journal of Medicine, noting that “the [thin] carnivore who perspires little or not at all suffers from headaches and prostration, while the herbivore sits placidly amid steams and puddles of perspiration…the carnivore must be induced to perspire.” He recommended judicious amounts of alcohol, not more than a sherry glass of claret, madeira, or other similar beverage, taken at the oftenest not more than once in every four hours.” If that doesn’t work, he wrote, the patient can take a shower.

Pine Cones and Witch Hazel

John Quincy Adams, the radical who wore trousers on his inauguration, actually took off his cravat during a hot August in Washington, D.C. In 1822, Adams complained of the dog days in a letter to his wife. “As the weather is subsiding from fever heat I have resumed my cravat; but you know there is always room, summer and winter, for ironical wags to make merry with my dress.”
Henry David Thoreau wrote that the dog days occurred during September 1859 in Concord, Mass. He spent the time watching pine cones ripen. “It is really a rich and interesting sight. How little observed are the fruits which we do not use! How few attend to the ripening and dispersion of the pine seed!” he wrote in his journal on Sept. 18, 1859.
Penobscot Indian women refused to gather medicinal herbs, roots and bark during the hot summer. Instead, they gathered witch hazel, sarsaparilla and sweet flag roots immediately before it got hot and pounded them into powder.
In 1889, the New England Medical Gazette recommended breast-feeding infants to lessen ‘the double peril of teething and dog days.’
Henry Bowditch, prominent Massachusetts physician, followed the Greek physician Galen’s practice of bleeding patients. But Galen advised against bleeding during the dog days.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Historic Fourth of July Celebrations

The Fourth of July has been celebrated with feasting, fireworks and festivity since Boston shot off cannons on the first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

The document wasn’t actually signed on the Fourth of July, as some of the signers weren’t even in Philadelphia that day. And John Adams thought the Second of July would be the day to remember, as that was when the Continental Congress voted for independence. The Fourth of July was the day the Congress adopted the document.

No matter. The first Fourth of July turned out to be cause for celebration year after year. Here are six of the oldest – and most historic – Fourth of July celebrations. If you know of another worth mentioning, please include it in the comments section below.

New Haven, Conn.

Yale College (left) and the State House.

In 1788, New Haven held a large and lavish Fourth of July celebration featuring a parade of working men grouped by their occupation. Cordwainers in a wagon made shoes as the parade wended its way from the long wharf to the Brick Meeting House. Blacksmiths made a hoe during the parade with anvil, hammer and bellows, while goldsmiths displayed a silver urn with 10 stars – one for each state that had adopted the Constitution.

According to a contemporary account, there were also sowers, reapers with sickles, thrashers with flails, butchers, barbers, distillers, bakers, tanners, curriers, leather dressers, stonecutters with chisels, cabinet makers, coppersmiths and braziers, watch and clock makers, coopers, painters, hatters with bows, weavers, tailors, boat builders, rope-makers wearing hempen girdles, shipwrights, a whaleboat with her crew, papermakers, printers, merchants, schoolmasters followed by their scholars, physicians, Yale College tutors, clergy, sheriffs, the common council, mayor, alderman, recorder, orator and high sheriff.

Roger Sherman, who signed the Declaration of Independence, attended the festivities. He heard Josiah Meigs, publisher of New Haven Gazette and Connecticut Magazine, read the Declaration of Independence and listened to a performance of a hymn composed by Barna Bidwell, a tutor at Yale College.

A feast was held at the Statehouse with at least one toast – to a model of the frigate USS Constitution. Patriotic toasts were probably drunk for George Washington and the veterans of the Revolution as well. After dinner came a ball. Outside, no doubt, there was plenty of noise. As a Yale student named Thomas Robbins wrote in his diary on July 4, 1796:

The students fired guns, etc., then came here and were very noisy, drinking toasts, etc.

New Haven over the years became the best place in the region to see fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Thomaston, Maine

Montpelier (Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views, New York Public Library).

Revolutionary War General Henry Knox led a Fourth of July celebration in 1795 that wasn’t the first in Maine, but it was certainly the grandest.

After the American Revolution, Knox relocated to Thomaston, Maine (then Massachusetts) where he built an estate and mansion, Montpelier.

Knox owned the better part of four counties in Maine, which he came by via his wife’s family. In 1795, with Montpelier finished, Knox came to Thomaston from Philadelphia. His mission was to develop the state. By 1795 he was busily building sawmills, kilns, quarries and brickyards to attract employees and tenants for his properties.

To promote the Maine endeavor, Knox opened Montpelier to any and all guests on the Fourth of July in 1795. The feast was legendary for its sheer size. Chicken, geese and an entire ox fed the crowds. More than 100 beds were made up for overnight guests. A delegation of Penobscot Indians, with whom Knox wanted peaceful relations, came and stayed more than a week. They finally left at Knox ‘s urging. He was annoyed by the length of their visit.

Knox would live barely 10 years after the celebration, and his plans for Maine met with limited success. Montpelier was torn down to make way for a railroad when the house fell into disrepair and no buyers could be found for it. Today no one will produce a feast for you, but you can visit a 1929 replica of Montpelier in Thomaston that operates as a museum.

Boston

The Old State House in Boston. The Declaration of Independence was read from the balcony.

Boston celebrated the first anniversary of the Declaration of Independence with joyful delirium.

The festivities began at dawn with a grand salute fired from cannon at Fort Independence and ships in the harbor. Gov. John Hancock proposed 13 toasts from the balcony of the Old State House, while cannons fired and Boston’s militia companies paraded, drilled and fired off their guns.

That day Boston established the tradition of Fourth of July oratory. It stemmed from the Boston Massacre speech delivered annually for 13 years commemorating that sad event. Rev. Dr. William Gordon of Roxbury preached a patriotic sermon to the General Court.

At night, a Col. Crafts illuminated the Boston Common. He ‘threw several shells, and exhibited a number of fireworks.’

Boston was the first municipality to officially designate the Fourth of July as a holiday, in 1783. And in 1929, Arthur Fiedler first took the podium to conduct the Boston Pops Orchestra’s performance of the 1812 Overture on the Esplanade. To this day, Boston celebrates with cannon, fireworks and church bells in one of the best attended Fourth of July celebrations in the country.

Portsmouth, N.H.

The Continental frigate Bonhomme Richard 9commanded by John Paul Jones) battling the HMS Serapis.

There is a legend about the first Fourth of July celebration in Portsmouth, N.H., that probably isn’t true.

The story has it that five young ladies of Portsmouth — Mary Langdon, Augusta Pierce, Caroline Chandler, Dorothy Hall and Helen Seavey — made an American flag from their best silk gowns, according to specification by John Paul Jones.

Jones supposedly sailed the USS Ranger from Boston to Portsmouth, where the Ranger had been built at what is now the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. The ladies presented him the flag. He then hoisted it on the Ranger. The record suggests, however, that John Paul Jones wasn’t in Portsmouth that day.

What did happen was that a Captain Thompson invited people to lunch on board a Continental frigate. Salutes were probably fired, church bells probably rung, and a toast to George Washington was probably drunk. In 1805, for example, Portsmouth gave Washington the following toast to ‘The memory of George Washington, Greater than Caesar–he would wear no crown, but that of the people’s love. ‘

Bristol, R.I.

The Bristol, R.I., parade.

Fourth of July observances have waxed and waned over the centuries, but not in Bristol, R.I. The town proudly claims to be the birthplace of the Fourth of July celebration.

The Bristol Fourth of July Celebration started in 1785 by the Rev. Henry Wight, newly hired by the First Congregational Church.

Wight had served as a soldier in the American Revolution, and he determined that Bristol should observe Patriotic Exercises on the Fourth of July. He led the ceremonies in 1785 with a speech calling for reflection on the veterans who won the war and celebration of the new nation’s freedoms.

For 40 years, Wight would continue leading these ceremonies. The Fourth of July has been celebrated every year in Bristol since.

Sometime in the early 1800s the now-2.5-mile Military, Civic and Firemen’s Parade began. In 1975, Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci started fighting with parade organizers. Under the rules, he wasn’t entitled to walk in the parade, but he did anyway.

Parade organizers sent him a letter in 1979 telling him not to show up in 1980, and the Bristol police chief vowed to arrest anyone who made a disturbance. Cianci showed up in a helicopter. So many parade-goers cheered him the police had to let him march.

In 1984, Cianci pleaded “no contest” to a charge of assault and skipped the parade. A clown dressed in a prison uniform, carrying a ball and chain, marched in his place. In 1989 he marched ahead of the marshal, prompting the parade chairman to say Cianci was rude and shouldn’t be invited back. In 1997 and 1998, he brought along an entourage of law enforcement officers squirting the crowd with water rifles, which got him dis-invited in 1999. He returned in 2009 after serving jail time for racketeering.

Today Bristol’s Fourth of July celebration officially starts on June 14th, Flag Day, and ends with the parade on July 4th. In between are concerts, fireworks, a drum corps show, a firefighters muster and a Fourth of July ball.

Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci marched in the Bristol, R.I., Fourth of July parade in 2009 after his conviction.

Bristol, Vt.

Coincidentally, the parade committee in Bristol, Vt., boasts that the Bristol Vermont Fourth of July parade is the oldest continuous parade in Vermont.

The parade committee is silent on when the parade first started, simply saying it has been going on for ‘decades.’ Bristol did host a parade for the nation’s Bicentennial in 1976. Today Bristol’s fireworks are said to rival Burlington’s, and the parade runs for an hour and a half.

In 1980, the Bristol parade featured the first annual Outhouse Race. Contestants participate in teams, with two runners and one rider who sits inside the outhouse frame. The outhouse frame must have a door for privacy. The race runs from St. Ambrose Catholic Church to the finish line at the traffic light, and there are usually three or four outhouses in each of the four heats.

For a youtube video of the outhouse race, click here.

Images: Old State House, Boston, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=221678; Bristol, R.I., parade: By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49912345; Buddy Cianci By Notyourbroom – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7211464; Bristol, RI, street scene By TwoSheds (talk) (Uploads) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12287639

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Jean-Louis Cheverus, the Catholic Priest Even the Puritans Liked

Boston, today that most Catholic of American cities, had no Catholic church within 300 miles when Father Jean-Louis Lefebvre Cheverus arrived in 1796.

Jean-Louis Lefebvre Cheverus

The 600 or so Catholics living in Massachusetts were mostly poor Irish and a few French. They were viewed as ‘an impure assemblage of idolators’ and priests were widely regarded as ‘vile imposters.’ Catholic teachings were ‘a hideous collection of impieties, absurdities and errors.’

Cheverus softened some of the anti-Catholicism that had possessed puritanical Massachusetts since the colony’s founding. The Puritans had fought Catholic influence in England for decades, and early colonists fought the Catholic French throughout the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

Cheverus spent 27 years in New England, during which time he impressed people with his learning, with his tact, with his sermons, with his simplicity and with his kindness toward the sick and the poor.

Cheverus left quite a mark on New England: in Cheverus High School in Portland, Maine; in Cheverus Hall, a dorm at Boston College, Cheverus Centennial School, in Malden, Mass., in the Archdiocese of Boston Cheverus Awards and in a book that rests on the shelves of the Boston Athenaeum, A memorial to Bishop Cheverus, with a catalogue of the books given by him to the Boston Athenaeum, by Walter Muir Whitehill.

Cheverus Arrives in New England

The priests who preceded Cheverus gave Puritan Boston good reason to look down on Catholics.

The first resident Catholic priest Boston was a disreputable French naval chaplain, l’abbe de la Poterie, who deserted when the French fleet left Boston Harbor at the end of the American Revolution. De la Poterie celebrated the first Catholic Mass in Boston in 1788. But he had been suspended from the priesthood in France, ran up debt in Boston and was relieved of his duties by Father John Carroll, who had begun to organize the Catholic church in America from Maryland.

The second resident Catholic priest in Boston was Father Rousselet, who had also been suspended from the priesthood in France. During Christmas Eve Mass in 1789, de la Poterie insisted on participating in the service, which sparked fisticuffs among the parishioners. The brawlers broke all the church’s furniture.

Then John Thayer arrived on his own accord. He was a wealthy Congregationalist minister who converted to Catholicism and was ordained a priest. He tried to take over from Rousselet. The Irish supported Thayer, the French supported Rousselet. As a result, only a few Catholics actually attended Sunday Mass.

Finally, the highly respected Father Francis Anthony Matignon arrived in Boston in 1792 and began to put things right. He wrote to his friend Father Cheverus and asked him to join him as a Catholic missionary.

Cheverus was 28 when he arrived in 1796. For four years he had been living in England, a refugee from the French Revolution.

Groaning in Spirit

Shortly after arriving in Boston, he began to travel New England to search out Catholics. In Massachusetts he went to Newburyport, Plymouth and Salem. In New Hampshire he traveled to Portsmouth, Claremont and Bedford.

He traveled by canoe and horseback to Maine, where he ‘groaned in spirit’ at the condition of the Catholics, according to his biographer, Andre Jean Marie Hamon. Cheverus dedicated the first Catholic church in Newcastle, and ministered to the Penobscot Indians in Old Town, who had been converted to Christianity but hadn’t seen a Catholic priest in 50 years. During his time in New England, Cheverus visited the Penobscot and Passamaquoddy Indians for three months every year.

Cheverus began to win over the Catholic haters. His delivered short, sweet and therefore popular sermons. He took care of the sick and buried the dead when yellow fever broke out in Boston.

Most Virtuous

Cheverus lived simply and read widely in English classic literature. He advised John Adams’ nephew, William Smith Shaw, on the founding of the Boston Athenaeum and donated some of his books to it.

After he’d been in Boston a year a Protestant came to him. “I did not believe that a minister of your religion could be a good man,” he said. “I declare to you, that I esteem and venerate you, as the most virtuous man that I have ever known.”

Protestant women of high social standing shared their troubles with him. He handled the financial affairs of widows, orphans, servants, the infirm and people naive about business. Cheverus invested their money judiciously and then brought them the interest.

John Adams

During a dinner in Boston honoring President John Adams, Cheverus sat next to him. “What most astonishes me, on this occasion, is, to see myself here, and to see you here,” Adams said.

When Cheverus started raising money for a church, John Adams made the first donation. In the fall of 1803, Baltimore Bishop John Carroll came to the dedication of Holy Cross, attended by both Catholics and Protestants.

Carroll named Cheverus the first Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Boston, and he was ordained on Nov. 1, 1810. There were three Catholic churches with priests in New England then: in Boston, in Damariscotta Mills, Maine, and in Pleasant Point, Maine.

Catholics revered him so much they named their children John after him. Even Protestants invited him to speak in their churches. In 1809, he went to New York City to dedicate St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Anti-Catholic Prejudice

Cheverus wasn’t beloved everywhere, nor were Catholics even liked. When he traveled to Northampton, Mass., he had a hard time finding a place to stay because of prejudice against Catholics.

Holy Cross Cathedral, designed by Charles Bulfinch and torn down in 1862.

He had gone to Northampton because two young Irish Catholic men were convicted of murder and condemned to death. They wrote to Cheverus, protesting their innocence and asked him to come give the funeral service for them. He ministered to them, and then stood in front of the mob that came to watch them hanged. He then scolded the horde.

Father Thayer, the Yankee priest, died in Ireland in 1810. He left his estate to Father Matignon, who told Cheverus to establish an Ursuline convent with the money. Cheverus brought 12 Ursuline nuns to Boston to educate Boston’s Catholic girls. In 1834, a mob of Know Nothings burned the convent to the ground.

Cheverus Returns to France

When John Carroll died in 1815, his successor asked Cheverus to come to Baltimore to serve as an auxiliary. He refused.

Then Father Matignon died three years later. By then Cheverus’ health was failing, and in 1823 Louis XVIII of France insisted he return to his native country. Though his parishioners protested, Cheverus decided to go back to France. He was named cardinal in 1836 but died shortly thereafter, aged 68.

William Ellery Channing, the foremost Unitarian minister of his age, held up Cheverus as an argument against anti-Catholicism.:

Who among our religious teachers would solicit a comparison between himself and the devoted Cheverus? . . . How can we shut our hearts against this proof of the Catholic religion to form good and great men? . . . It is time that greater justice were done to this ancient and widespread community.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Oldest Libraries in New England

Identifying New England’s oldest libraries is no easy task. In the early days of European settlement, book collections took many different forms.

Many New England libraries evolved over time from private collections to public institutions. Philanthropists founded some, while collective town actions resulted in others.

Many New England towns claim to have the oldest libraries in their state. In New Hampshire, for example, the Portsmouth Athenaeum was founded as a private library in 1817, 16 years before the Peterborough Town Library. But Peterborough, funded by taxpayers from the start, claims to be the oldest tax-supported library.

We decided to exercise our editorial prerogative and limit our list to the oldest libraries that lend books. So Peterborough in, Portsmouth out.

Here are six of the oldest libraries in New England, one in each state. If you have a candidate for oldest library, please mention it in the comment section below this story.

Scoville Library

Connecticut’s oldest library is in Salisbury.

The Scoville Memorial Library in Salisbury, Conn., started in 1771 when a local blast furnace owner named Richard Smith offered to buy 200 books from London. But the rest of the town had to chip in, and 39 people contributed. On the third Monday of every third month, patrons could borrow and return books. The library fined them for damaging books, usually by greasing – letting candle wax drip on the pages.

In 1805, another local philanthropist named Caleb Bingham donated the Bingham Library for Youth. Then Miss Harriet Church donated the Church Library. Town Meeting in 1810 voted to authorize selectmen to spend $100 to buy more books for the town library.

The library now claims to be the oldest publicly funded library in the United States.

Jonathan Scoville in the 1890s left $15,000 in his will to build a library for the town’s books, then kept in Town Hall. Miss Grace Scoville bought a tower clock, which still chimes on the quarter hour. Salisbury Cathedral in England sent the library a 15^th-century stone carving, which the library placed above the fireplace in the reading room.

The library has recently redesigned its interior and now has 30,000 items, including the original books, genealogy and history of the town. Incidentally, settlers came to Salisbury after the discovery of iron nearby, and during the American Revolution the government took over the iron works to cast cannon.

38 Main St., Salisbury, Conn.

Witherle Memorial Library

Maine’s oldest municipal library is in Castine.

The Witherle Memorial Library in Castine, Maine, began in 1801 as a private collection of books that only paid subscribers could use. The Town of Castine took over the library in 1827 and established it as Maine’s first municipal library in 1855.

Local ships chandlers George and Mary Witherle donated the money for the land and the building’s foundation. The building itself was finished in 1913. Today the library has more than 13,000 volumes and local history collections, including the story of Castine’s founder, Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin. It also includes the history of the Penobscot Expedition; books by and about Civil War journalist Noah Brooks; and the letters of Union Army soldier Henry Butler to his wife during the Civil War.

41 School St., Castine, Maine

Sturgis Library

Barnstable, Mass., has one of the oldest libraries in New England and the oldest US building used as a library.

The Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Mass., is the oldest building in the United States to house a public library. The original part of the library was built in 1644 as the house of Rev. John Lothrop (also spelled Lothropp or Lathrop).

Lothrop immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, having been imprisoned in England as an outspoken Puritan who advocated independence for congregations. He was pardoned after he agreed to leave for the New World. Lothrop landed in Plymouth and settled in Barnstable on Cape Cod in 1639, one of the town’s first settlers. In New England, Lothrop strongly supported the separation of church and state.

He married twice and had 13 children. Today his descendants number 80,000, including six U.S. presidents (the Bushes, Franklin Roosevelt, Millard Fillmore, James A. Garfield and Ulysses S. Grant).

One of his descendants, William Sturgis, made a fortune in the China trade. When he died in 1863, he bequeathed his family home, $15,000 and his books for a public library.

The first two rooms of the house were used for religious worship, so the Sturgis Library also has the distinction of being the oldest building in the United States used regularly for religious services. The Lothrop Room is quintessential early Cape, with wide pumpkin pine floorboards and a beamed ceiling.

It’s located on the Old King’s Highway, and has 65,000 books the Cape Cod History Collection, the most important collection of its kind in the United States; the Kittredge Maritime Collection, one of the finest maritime collections on the East Coast; and the Lothrop Genealogy Collection.

3090 Main St., Barnstable, Mass.

Peterborough Town Library

oldest libraries Town_Library,_Peterborough,_NH

Taxpayers started one of New Hampshire’s oldest libraries.

The Peterborough Town Library, founded in 1833, is the oldest taxpayer-supported free library in New Hampshire.

Unitarian minister Abiel Abbot had the idea for a collection of books owned by the people and free to everyone who lived in Peterborough. The State of New Hampshire made money available for it. A capital stock tax had been intended to build a state university, but it didn’t raise enough money. Hence, the state created a Literary Fund, and Peterborough decided to use it for books.

On April 9, 1833, Town Meeting approved the library on the principle that, like the public school, it deserved maintenance by public taxation. The people of the community should also own and manage it.

The town bought 100 books and put them in Smith and Thompson’s General Store, along with the post office. The postmaster acted as librarian until 1854, when the town appointed Miss Susan Gates to take care of the town library books. In 1873, the growing collection of books moved to Town Hall. Within two decades Peterborough had 6,000 books and not nearly enough room. So in 1893, the town gave the library own building designed by noted bridge engineer and summer resident George Shattuck Morison. The collection now includes more than 50,000 volumes.

2 Concord St., Peterborough, N.H.

Redwood Library

A great philosopher founded one of New England’s oldest libraries.

The Redwood Library and Athenaeum started off as a 45-member literary society founded by Bishop George Berkeley, the great Irish philosopher. Berkeley moved to Rhode Island in 1729 to start a college. The Company of the Redwood Library in Newport, R.I., was founded in 1747 for the purpose of ‘having nothing in view but the good of mankind.’

Newport merchant Abraham Redwood gave the library 500 pounds sterling to buy 751 used books from London.

When the British occupied Newport in 1776, they used the library as an officers’ club. Many of the books disappeared. In 1806, the library began advertising for their return, but didn’t get many back. In 1947, the library staff tried again and recovered 92 percent of the missing volumes or copies of them.

Peter Harrison, the first professionally trained architect in the United States, designed the building. He later designed Newport’s Brick Market and Touro Synagogue. Ezra Stiles, who later helped found Brown University and served as president of Yale, served as its most well-known librarian.

The Redwood Library and Athenaeum is the oldest community library still occupying its original building. Unlike the Peabody Library in Vermont, the Redwood is private. It began charging $10 for admission in 2016.

50 Bellevue Ave., Newport, R.I.

Peabody Library

Thetford, Vt., has one of the oldest libraries in New England because of George Peabody.

The Peabody Library in the Post Mills Village of Thetford, Vt., was built in 1867, making it the oldest active library in the state federation of public libraries. George Peabody gave it to the town as a gift.

In the first decade of the 19^th century, Peabody was a teenager from South Danvers, Mass., who wanted to visit his grandfather in Post Mills. Too poor to pay for a horse or carriage, he walked for 10 days He chopped wood for innkeepers along the way and slept in their stables. Once he arrived he then spent the winter with his grandfather and became close to his aunt and uncle.

By 1867 Peabody acquired great wealth and gave some of it away from his home in England. He gave the village $5,000 to pay for land, building construction and 1,500 volumes from a London book dealer. Peabody founded and endowed museums at Harvard, Yale, and Salem, Mass. He also gave a Peabody Conservatory of Music and Peabody Institute Libraries in Baltimore, Danvers, Newburyport, Mass., and Georgetown, Mass. The town of South Danvers renamed itself Peabody in his honor.

Today in Thetford the one-room library building still has a long wooden table and rows of white bookshelves. Two curved staircases lead to an open balcony. Everything in the building is original except for the carpet and the paint.

Today the library has 6,000 volumes, DVDs, audio, e-books and WiFi – which some people who don’t patronize the library use while sitting outside.

7922 VT Route 113 (Junction of Routes 113 and 244), Post Mills, Vt.

End Notes

Images: Scoville Library By Phinisi Stuart – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21632787; Sturgis Library By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22634220; Redwood Library, By slgckgc – The Redwood Public Library, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38248325; Peabody Library By Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States – Post Mills, VermontUploaded by Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29767643

This story about New England’s oldest libraries was updated in 2021.

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The Candlemas Massacre and the Salem Witch Trials

One week after two girls in Salem, Mass., begun having strange fits, the Candlemas Massacre wiped out the village of York in the District of Maine.

On a snowy night, a French and Indian war party traveled on snowshoes to the village outskirts and waited until just before dawn. Then they killed or captured about 150 people and burned almost all of their houses.

The Candlemas Massacre took place in the midst of King William’s War, one of the French and Indian wars fought intermittently in North America from 1689 to 1763.

The massacre would have an impact on subsequent events, including the Salem witch trials. It would also influence the next French and Indian War, known as Dummer’s War or Father Rales’ War.

Sorrowfull Tideings

The Rev. George Burroughs in nearby Wells described the Candlemas Massacre: ‘Pillours of Smoke, the rageing of the mercyless flames, the insultations of the heathen enemy, shooting, hacking… & dragging away others.’

He concluded with an accusation that foreshadowed the Salem witch trials:

The ‘Sorrowfull tideings’ from York, wrote Burroughs, showed ‘God is still manifesting his displeasure against this Land.’

Salem witch trial

York, Maine

English colonists had settled Maine under a charter granted to Fernando Gorges. York was successively known as Bristol, Agamenticus and, in 1642, as Gorgeana. Gorges died 10 years later. Massachusetts Bay Colony then absorbed Maine and renamed the settlement York.

Massachusetts officials wanted to push Maine’s boundaries beyond Casco Bay. However, New France – now Canada – claimed Maine too.

Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin

Gov. Edmund Andros in 1686 ordered a raid on the home of Baron Saint-Castin, a Frenchman who founded Castine, Maine. Saint-Castin retaliated by destroying the English fort at Pemaquid in 1689.

In 1692, Madocawando, sachem in the Penobscot band of Wabanakis, led the Candlemas Massacre. He had a reputation for his courage, his hatred of the English and his son-in-law – Baron Saint-Castin.

Early Warnings

The Candlemas Massacre didn’t take York by complete surprise.

Shubael Dummer, founder of York’s First Parish Congregational Church, resisted warnings to leave the village because of the dangerous unrest.

Wrote Cotton Mather,

Though solicited with many temptations to leave his place, when the clouds grew thick and dark in the Indian hostilities, and was like to break upon it, he chose, rather, with a paternal affection to stay amongst those who had been so many of them converted and edified by his ministry.

The residents of York may also have seen paper money, the first in North America, issued by Massachusetts to pay for the war with the French and Indians.

The Candlemas Massacre

Plaque marking the spot where the attackers left their snowshoes

On Jan. 24, 1692, Madocawando and French missionary Louis Pierre Thury led as many as 300 French and Wabanaki on snowshoes from Canada to York. Before dawn, they piled their snowshoes next to a large rock and crept into town. (A plaque marks the spot today.)

“The Inhabitants were in their unguarded Houses, here and there scattered, Quiet and Secure,” according to a contemporary account. Taking the houses one by one, the warriors killed the inhabitants and livestock, captured others and burned most of the buildings.

Indians shot Shubael Dummer at his own front door while he tried to escape on his horse. They stripped him of his clothes and mutilated his body. Then they captured his wife, Lydia, and their small son and forced them to march through the snow to Quebec.

“On the next Lord’s Day a full welted savage, purposely to deride the ministerial character of Mr. Dummer, put on his garments, and then stalked about in the presence of the distressed captives some of whom belonged to his church, to aggravate their feelings,” according to historian William Williamson.

Aftermath

When Indians burst into the Moulton house, four-year-old Jeremiah had hidden under the bed. Amid screaming and scuffling the Indians buried a hatchet in his mother’s head, then tomahawked his father. Jeremiah watched as the Indians scalped his parents. After they left he stayed under the bed until the house caught fire. He then ran from the house toward a group of men who turned out to be Indians. They tied him up along with the others.

Capt. John Floyd with a small group of militiamen rushed to the scene of the Candlemas Massacre from Portsmouth, N.H. They discovered about 18 houses burned, the remainder rifled and the dead lying about. The attackers left standing the gaol, the meeting house and the garrison.

Floyd and his men buried 48 people in a mass grave along with an unrecorded number of small children.

The Old Gaol in York

The captives were taken to Canada, where some were ransomed by Capt. John Alden Jr., son of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of the Plymouth Colony. The Indians set Lydia Dummer free, but separated her from her son. She traveled to Quebec three times to find him, but never saw or heard from him again.

Jeremiah Moulton

Jeremiah Moulton reappeared during Dummer’s War, named after Shubael Dummer’s nephew William, acting governor of Massachusetts. Some called it Father Rale’s War, after Father Sébastien Rale who led an alliance of Wabanaki Indians on the side of New France.

In 1724, Moulton led 200 men to the Wabanaki settlement of Norridgewock to kill Father Sebastian Rale and slaughter the Indians. The Englishmen succeeded in killing Rale and 80 Abenakis, including two dozen women and children.

Moulton returned to York and became sheriff. In 1719 he rebuilt the gaol with timbers left from the one that was left standing. Today it still stands, the last known public building of the colonial era.

Later in 1692, John Alden and John Floyd were accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials because of their involvement with the Candlemas Massacre. Both managed to escape execution.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Penobscot Expedition, America’s Forgotten Military Disaster

The Penobscot Expedition during the American Revolution was the worst naval disaster in American history until Pearl Harbor. That a huge force of men, ships and guns failed to take a small British fort in Maine has been largely forgotten.

The failed military maneuver also damaged Paul Revere‘s reputation. On Sept. 6, 1779, Lt. Col. Revere was placed under house arrest. He was charged with ‘unsoldierlike behavior … which tends to cowardice’ during the Penobscot Expedition.

Penobscot Expedition by John Thomas Serres

Penobscot Expedition

In 1779, British warships and troop transports sailed into Bagaduce (now Castine, Maine), on the Penobscot Bay. Seven hundred British troops built a fort to defend Canada, deny timber to the rebels and interrupt their privateering. Ultimately they intended to settle the outpost as a haven for Loyalists. The British planned to call it New Ireland.

Maine then belonged to Massachusetts, and the colony’s leaders soon got word of the British presence on its soil. Civilian officeholders of the commonwealth decided to force them out. They called up the militia and commandeered ships from the Massachusetts Navy, the Continental Navy and the fleet of privateers.

The Penobscot Expedition included 40 vessels, nearly 2,000 seamen and marines, 100 artillerymen, 870 militia and 350 guns.

Civilians planned the operation with little military input, and badly trained part-time soldiers carried it out. Commodore Dudley Saltonstall and Brigadier General Solomon Lovell had joint command of the expedition. Saltonstall was timid and indecisive, while Lovell had little field experience.

Paul Revere took charge of the artillery train. He didn’t have much military training, but he had repaired the guns damaged when the British evacuated Boston.

When the massive flotilla left Boston Harbor, everyone expected it to capture the garrison – even the British. They hadn’t taken into account the expedition’s shortcomings.

Arrival

The Penobscot Expedition on July 25, 1779 sailed into the harbor outside of Bagaduce. There stood an earthworks fort protected by three sloops in the harbor. Though the Americans seemed to have a decisive advantage, the British had more military experience. They also had a favorable geographic position and better coordination between land and sea forces.

The Americans took control of a small battery on an island off the coast. Then a force of 600 militiamen advanced along a steep bluff. Suddenly they found themselves within a few hundred yards of Fort George.

Revere wanted to storm the fort, but Lovell ordered a siege. Saltonstall refused to clear the harbor of the three British ships. For two weeks the militiamen sat outside the fort. Lovell wouldn’t attack the fort until Saltonstall attacked the fleet, but Saltonstall wouldn’t attack the fleet until Lovell attacked the fort.

Meanwhile, the dithering allowed the British to build up the earthen walls of the fort and request reinforcements.

Stone structure (reconstruction of a magazine, perhaps) at the site of Fort George.

Terrible Day

On Aug. 13, a British relief fleet arrived and Saltonstall ordered a retreat – up the Penobscot River.

“…[A]n attempt to give a description of this terrible Day is out of my Power,” Lovell later wrote.

Paul Revere

During the panic that followed, Adjutant Gen. Peleg Wadsworth gave Revere an order. Revere was to send his brig carrying artillery to help evacuate a schooner drifting toward the British fleet. Revere initially refused, then followed Wadsworth’s orders.

As the British bore down, the Americans burned and sank their own ships, then disappeared into the woods. Revere and the others made their way back to Massachusetts.

In the end, Americans lost all their ships but one, which the British captured. The Americans lost 470 men; the British only 13.

Commenting on the later exploits of John Paul Jones and the Ranger, Abigail Adams wrote on Dec. 13, 1779, “Unhappy for us that we had not such a commander at the Penobscot expedition.”

Court Martial

Recrimination followed the disaster. Dudley Saltonstall was court martialed and dismissed from the Continental Navy. He then turned to privateering.

A Massachusetts committee of inquiry investigated Paul Revere. Wadsworth charged him with disobeying his orders. Lengthy testimony also showed Revere’s arrogance had earned him enemies.

Though the committee didn’t rule one way or the other on his actions, the charges sullied Revere’s reputation. He tried to clear his name and demanded a full court martial. More than two years later, a military panel exonerated him.

If you enjoyed this story about the Penobscot Expedition, you might like to read about Benedict Arnold’s expedition to Quebec here. This story was updated in 2023.

Images: Fort George By Billy Hathorn – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34096704

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