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How the Real Miss Rumphius Decorated Maine With Lupines

There was a real Miss Rumphius who lived in Christmas Cove and secretly planted lupine seeds to adorn Maine’s roadsides and meadows.

The fake Miss Rumphius was the subject of a 1982 children’s book written by Barbara Cooney.

The real Miss Rumphius is at least partly responsible for the gorgeous show of lupines throughout Maine’s countryside in early summer. The wildflowers thrive in Maine, but they aren’t native to the state. How they got there and spread in such profusion is a mystery explained only by – well, an old lady who was the real Miss Rumphius.

Lupines in Maine

The Real Miss Rumphius

Hilda Edwards arrived in South Bristol, Maine, from Bristol, England, in 1904, at the age of 15.

There were no roads to Christmas Cove. Hilda Edwards had to take a train to Newcastle and then a mail launch down the Damariscotta River.

Her uncle, Smith College professor Harry Norman Gardiner, had invited her to stay in his remote cottage on Jupiter Knoll at Christmas Cove. Explorer John Smith had named the inlet after discovering it on Christmas Day.

Christmas Cove in 1906

Hilda Edwards graduated from Smith in 1912 and in 1915 married Talbot Faulkner Hamlin. He was a professor and librarian at Columbia University and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Benjamin Henry Latrobe.

Like Miss Rumphius, Hilda Hamlin traveled widely, though with her husband and three sons.

After leaving her husband in Paris in 1926, she audited courses at Smith, but still came to the little cottage on Christmas Cove in summertime. She began planting lupine seeds imported from her native England. Every August she cut bundles of lupine stalks and shook out their seeds over a wider space.

Then she began putting seeds in her pocket when she walked to the post office and strewing them along the roadside. She did it in secret, rarely telling anyone about her lupine obsession. Some friends knew. The real Miss Rumphius didn’t drive, and when friends gave her a ride they’d catch her tossing lupine seeds out the window. They called her ‘Hilda Lupina’ or the ‘Lupine Lady.’

Lupine Lady

More lupines

Lupinus polyphyllus are three to six feet tall and stand erect, with leaves below the flower stalk. Their two-foot-long, spiky flowers are blue, purple, rose and white. Lupines were planted in Europe to stabilize soils and to feed animals, but they’re considered a problem in Lithuania because they crowd out forest herbs. Bears like to eat their roots.

Researchers say they arrived in Maine sometime around 1950 – when the real Miss Rumphius entered her 60s — and spread along the Maine coast.

“Many a motorist with a botanical eye pulls into a gas station for an explanation of the display,” wrote W. Storrs Lee in a 1971 article for Yankee magazine. He had visited Hilda Hamlin for an interview, noting the spectacular display of lupines along Route 129. He also noted a handwritten sign next to a woodpile: “If friends of Hilda Hamlin would tote a few sticks of wood to her cottage, they would be doubly welcome.”

Secret Garden

Hamlin, not yet immortalized as Miss Rumphius, kept her gardening a secret from the world. There’d been one exception, wrote Lee. She was on her way to the post office when a ‘regular old-time school marm’ stopped her Model T and asked her to explain the origin of the lupines.

Hamlin replied,

At the end of the road lives a queer old bird who has so many hundreds of lupines on her land that she has acquired the habit of cultivating the seed when it opens.

The old schoolmarm said she’d like to shake her hand. “Shake,” said Hamlin. “I am Hilda Lupina.”

Yankee , in a subsequent edition, published an editor’s note: “Mrs. Hamlin was overwhelmed with hundreds of letters and almost as many visitors following publication of the original article in the June, 1971, Yankee; most of the correspondents and callers begged for sample seeds. Out of deference for Mrs. Hamlin’s advanced years, the editor feels called upon to remind would-be roadside gardeners that “Hilda Lupina” is not in competition with Burpee and other seed suppliers, and, happy as Hilda is with her fan mail, she is no longer up to distributing souvenir seeds of receiving and entertaining hordes of callers at Jupiter Knoll.”

Barbara Cooney

Barbara Cooney was an award-winning children’s book writer who lived in Damariscotta, Maine, about 20 miles from Christmas Cove. In 1982 she wrote and illustrated the book, Miss Rumphius, about a fictional woman named Alice Rumphius who lived a life of travel and adventure before retiring to her cottage. The story begins,

“Miss Rumphius, The Lupine Lady lives in a small house overlooking the sea. In between the rocks around her house grow blue and purple and rose-colored flowers. The Lupine Lady is little and old. But she has not always been that way.”

Miss Rumphius shared the 1983 National Book Award for Children’s Books. The National Education Association named the book one of its “Teachers’ Top 100 Books for Children” in 2007. Spellbound Productions made the book into an 18-minute film in 2000, and the Maine Library Association named its Lupine Award after Miss Rumphius.

Part of the book’s appeal lies in one of its last paragraphs, in which Miss Rumphius tells her niece: “You must do something to make the world more beautiful.”

Images: Miss Rumphius book cover By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2629786; Lupines By Theendofforever at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6755546. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Historic Post Offices

New England is dotted with historic post offices, from simple clapboard buildings to grand Beaux Arts palaces. In the earliest days of European settlement, the mail was delivered to coffeehouses and taverns.

In 1673, mail delivery was improved with the creation of the Boston Post Road, along which post riders carried letters and guided travelers. The Continental Congress established the U.S. Postal Service shortly after declaring independence.

New England is the site of the first post office, the oldest continuously operating post office and the second oldest continuously operating post office.

Many post offices moved from building to building and became something else. Sadly, the first post office in the United States was paved over and built up with modern commercial buildings.

Here are six historic post offices, one for each state. If you know of another, please mention it in the comment box below.

Greenwich Post Office

Restoration Hardware

The historic post office in Greenwich, Conn., is now a luxury retail store that sells items for historic restoration.

It was built in 1915, one of the last of the era when government buildings were designed by private architects and intended to raise the design standards of federal buildings outside of Washington, D.C.

The post office was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places because it is ‘an inspired example of urban design.’ The federal government sold it in 2012 to Peter Malkin, who owns the Empire State Building and chairs the board of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Malkin rented the building to Restoration Hardware, which describes itself as ‘a curator of the finest historical design the world has to offer.’ The interior of the post office was completely gutted to accommodate the store, proving that historic preservation doesn’t necessarily begin at home.

The Greenwich Post Office is part of the Greenwich Avenue Historic District, which includes 162 structures, mostly commercial and municipal buildings.

310 Greenwich Ave., Greenwich, Conn.

Castine Post Office

The Castine Post Office is the second-oldest continuously operated post office in the United States, according to the USPS historian. In 1833, the federal government began leasing the building, built in 1817, and later bought it.

Castine is a picturesque seacoast town listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was settled by Europeans seven years before the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth. Its public library is the oldest in Maine.

43 Main St., Castine, Maine

Old Fairbanks Tavern

The current neighborhood of the Fairbanks Tavern

A tavern run by Richard Fairbanks became the first post office in the United States. The Puritans had brought with them the European practice of delivering mail to coffee houses and taverns. On Nov. 6, 1639, the General Court ordered that the Fairbanks tavern was the place ‘for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas.’ Fairbanks was to take care that they be ‘delivered or sent according to their directions.’ He was given a penny for every letter he delivered.

Benjamin Franklin, a Boston native, became the first postmaster in the United States in July 1775 under the Continental Congress. He served for fewer than four months.

The Old Fairbanks Tavern is located approximately at 244 Washington St., Boston, once known as ‘Newspaper Row.’

Former Santuit Post Office

If you’re looking for a historic post office building in Massachusetts, head to Cape Cod. The Santuit Post Office in Barnstable is a typical seaside cottage except that it served Santuit Village as a post office from 1846 to the 1970s. It’s now a private home on Main Street.

Hinsdale Post Office

Hinsdale Post Office

The clapboard post office in Hinsdale, N.H., celebrated its 200^th birthday in 2016. It’s the oldest continuously operating post office in the United States.

Nathan Babbitt appointed himself Hinsdale’s first postmaster in 1815 and had the building constructed the next year. The post office tucked in a corner of what was then a general store. Eventually the post office took over the entire first floor. The original brass postal boxes date from the 19^th century.

In the early 20^th century, the post office survived a fire that destroyed Town Hall next door.

It marked its bicentennial with a celebration that included music, a cake, tote bags and T-shirts.

13 Main St., Hinsdale, N.H.

Providence Post Office

U.S. District Courthouse

As in Greenwich, Conn., the Providence Post Office was designed by an architectural firm. Clarke & Howe of Providence won the design competition. Their Beaux Arts building was considered ‘artistic’ and ‘excellently planned for its purpose.’

Congress authorized $1 million to be spent on the building, which was also a courthouse and customs house. It was finished in 1908 and lauded as one of the finest federal buildings outside Washington, D.C. The post office and customs operations were relocated and the building became the U.S. District Courthouse.

Providence has another historic post office: the oldest automated postal facility. Built in 1960, it was the first to use machines to sort the mail. It’s still in operation.

The ‘first automated post office’ was honored with a stamp in 1960 over the objections of the Citizens Stamp Advisory Committee, which called it ‘obviously self-serving.’ The stamp, however, proved popular.

Kennedy Plaza, Providence, R.I.

Grafton Post Office

Former Grafton Post Office

The old post office in Grafton, Vt., is part of a small cluster of buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1855 for the town’s third postmaster. The little clapboard building was used as a post office for 103 years, until 1958. In 1938, it was lifted from its foundation by flooding caused by the Great New England Hurricane and moved to a new foundation.

The Grafton Historical Society bought the historic post office in 1962 and ran it as a museum until 1978. Now the society leases the building.

205 Main St., Grafton, Vt.

Images: Castine Post Office, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=696891; Santuit Post Office, By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52892609; By User:Magicpiano – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26869304; Grafton Post Office By Samturgeon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21064003.

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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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Married to a Murderer, H.W. Mudgett

Clara Lovering eloped with 17-year-old Herman Webster Mudgett before a New Hampshire justice of the peace in 1878. She didn’t expect him to abandon her and the son born two years later.

Clara Lovering Mudgett

Nor did she realize until later that she was lucky to escape the marriage alive.

Herman Webster Mudgett, aka Dr. H.H. Holmes, lured victims into an elaborate ‘murder castle’ during the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. He may have killed as many as 200 people, though he admitted to only 27. He also ran elaborate life insurance scams, which led to his arrest and conviction.

Clara Lovering was a beautiful young woman from a prominent family in Loudon, N.H. It wasn’t until he was caught in Boston 16 years later that she learned the truth about the man she loved.

H.W. Mudgett

Herman Webster Mudgett was born in Gilmanton, N.H., on May 16, 1861, a month after the Civil War broke out. His parents, Levi Horton Mudgett and Theodate Page Price, were devout Methodists and strict disciplinarians. Levi, a farmer and a violent alcoholic, beat his children and locked them in the attic when they misbehaved.

Herman Mudgett

Herman was a mama’s boy who spent a lot of time reading Edgar Allan Poe and Jules Verne. He also liked to invent things.

Young Mudgett stood out at school, Gilmanton Academy, as a small, odd and unusually bright boy. On his way to school he had to pass the office of a village doctor who left his door unlocked.

Mudgett’s schoolmates found out he was afraid of the doctor’s office and dragged him to it, he later claimed ‘struggling and shrieking.’ They brought him face-to-face with a grinning skeleton.

“It was a wicked and dangerous thing to do to a child of tender years and health, but it proved an heroic method of treatment, destined ultimately to cure me of my fears, and to inculcate in me, first, a strong feeling of curiosity, and, later, a desire to learn, which resulted years afterwards in my adopting medicine as a profession,” Mudgett claimed — from his prison cell.

Gilmanton Academy

More likely, wrote Erik Larson in The Devil in the White City, ‘far from struggling and shrieking, he merely gazed at the skeleton with cool appreciation.’

Trouble seemed to follow him even as a boy. His only friend died from a fall when they were playing alone in an abandoned building. And he developed a hobby of dissecting animals.

Clara

Herman Mudgett developed courtly manners, a dapper wardrobe and a winning way with women. He graduated high school at 16, and got a job as a teacher in Alton, N.H. There he met Clara Lovering, whose father represented the district in the New Hampshire state Legislature.

Clara was intensely attracted to Herman, but bothered by his insistence on sex. After courting for more than a year, they eloped on July 4, 1878.

She gave birth to their son, Robert Lovering Mudgett, in 1880 in Loudon, N.H. By then Herman Mudgett tired of teaching and went to work as a clerk in a Concord, N.H., grocery store. For a year he lived in Concord while his wife lived with his parents in Gilmanton. He decided he wanted to be a doctor. Clara agreed to support Herman through medical school.

Gilmanton, N.H., in 1910.

He enrolled in the University of Vermont‘s medicine program in Burlington, frequently visiting his young family. Clara supported him ‘doing services to various people’ (probably sewing), according to newspaper reports.

After a year Herman Mudgett transferred to the University of Michigan, a medical school that emphasized dissection. She joined him in Ann Arbor, but after a year they decided she’d be better off at home in New Hampshire.

His Michigan professors recalled him as a roue who breached his promise with a widow from St. Louis. He stole cadavers, mutilated them and tried to collect insurance money by saying they died in an accident.

During the summer of his junior year he took a job as a traveling salesman for a book publisher in Northwestern Illinois. He kept the proceeds and fell in love with Chicago.

Life After Medical School

Herman Mudgett graduated in 1884 and set out to find a place to practice. He tried Portland, Maine, where he got another sales job. In his travels he discovered Mooers Forks, N.Y., where he was hired as a grade school principal. He corresponded with Clara by mail, and he visited her several times. He contributed little to support his family.

In Mooers Forks, he was rumored to have caused the disappearance of a boy seen in his company. He also plotted – but didn’t execute – an elaborate life insurance fraud involving a cadaver.

In October of 1888, he visited Clara and Robert at home and told them he had business in Chicago. He didn’t want her to join him. That may be because he had already married another woman. Clara took him to the train station in Concord, and didn’t see or hear from him again for six years.

Clara decided she would have to support herself and her young son. She learned dressmaking in Concord, then set up a successful shop in Tilton.

“There is a modest little tin sign tacked on a simple white building on Main st. opposite the hotel, right in the center of this seminary village, which reads, “Mrs. C.A. Mudgett, Dressmaking,” reported the Boston Globe. She lived in an apartment above the store with her son.

Torture Chamber

Meanwhile, Herman Mudgett was working insurance scams around the country. According to the Boston Globe, “On one occasion Holmes insured his own life for $20,000. Then he went to a hotel in Rhode Island, wearing a beard. He got a body, took it two miles from the hotel, cut the head off, and buried the rest. He shaved, went to the hotel, registered under a new name and asked for Holmes. They said he had gone out, but was staying at the hotel. The swindler took the head, charred it in the hotel furnace and tried to identify it as his own. This particular scheme fell through.”

Mudgett’s torture chamber, or “castle,” in Chicago

Mudgett moved to Chicago and began calling himself Dr. Henry Howard Holmes. He bought a pharmacy, and the owner mysteriously disappeared. Across the street he built a three-story building with living quarters, torture chambers, trapdoors and chutes into the basement kiln. During the Columbian Exposition he opened his home as a hotel for unlucky visitors to the fair. He seduced his female guests, swindled them, killed them and burned their remains.

He also married a third women without divorcing Clara or his second wife.

Mudgett was finally jailed in St. Louis for selling mortgaged goods. He brought a fellow inmate in on one of his schemes. When Mudgett failed to deliver, the inmate tipped off authorities.

Returned Wanderer

In early October 1894, Clara Mudgett got a typewritten letter that her husband sent to his brother in Jamaica Plain from Indianapolis. He explained he was in a train wreck that fractured his skull, then confined in a Minneapolis hospital where he completely forgot who he was. He gradually came to his senses and worked so he could earn enough to come home, set up a business and support his wife and child.

Clara wrote to him, and he responded he was leaving Chicago for Tilton via Montreal. He then sent her a letter from Montreal where he said he was detained on business.

Mudgett was actually hiding out in Burlington, renting a house with the wife of an accomplice he had murdered. He tried to kill her by planting a bottle of nitroglycerine in the basement and asking her to bring it to him. She wisely refused.

One day he went to pick up his mail in Burlington and saw Pinkerton detectives in the post office. He quickly disappeared.

Homecoming

At noon on Monday, Nov. 5, 1894, Herman Mudgett arrived in Tilton by train and found out where Clara and 14-year-old Robert were living. ‘The home-coming was a joyous one for the wife,’ reported the Globe. “The wife hugged and kissed the returned wanderer, wept over his narrow escape from death and long illness, desiring no further explanation of his absence, satisfied with his being home at last and for always, for he had told her so.”

They had a festive family dinner, and then he went to visit his parents in Gilmanton for a few days. He returned to Tilton for about a week, then said he had business in Boston. But Pinkerton detectives were on his trail, and arrested him on Saturday, November 17.

A Boston Globe reporter came to Clara’s house and asked her about her married life. She told him, then asked why. When the reporter told her of her husband’s arrest, she burst into tears and said, “Perhaps he has another wife, too, somewhere.”

Moyamensing Prison. The execution of H. H. Holmes, scene while he was making his final address. Sketched in the Prison by Newmar, Times artist. From Holmes’ Own Story (1895) by Mudgett, Herman W. https://archive.org/details/HolmesOwnStory1895

Mudgett was tried for murder in Philadelphia and hanged on May 7, 1896. Robert became a certified public accountant and city manager of Orlando, Fla.

At the age of 46, Clara Lovering married John Peverly and moved to Vallejo, Calif. She lived to be 95 years old, dying on March 9, 1956. She is buried in Canterbury, N.H.

This story was updated in 2023.

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William Mitchell Kendall: The Man Behind the Post Office’s Famous and Unofficial Motto

William Mitchell Kendall never delivered a single piece of mail, but he gave the United States Post Office its most famous motto.

Born in 1856 in Jamaica Plain, Mass., to a prominent family – the nephew of astronomer Maria Mitchell – Kendall trained at Harvard and MIT. In 1882 he joined the New York architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the preeminent design firm of its day.

Mail Carrier in Woodstock, Vt. (Library of Congress)

The principles – Charles McKim, Stanford White and William Mead – were men about town, flashy and larger than life. Their focus was more on broad architectural statements, not on minor details. But they hired the best draftsmen in the world. Kendall was a detail man, credited with smoothing and polishing the work of the firm’s other architects.

William Mitchell Kendall, Partner

Stanford White died in 1906 in an explosive murder, and Kendall rose in the firm to fill his shoes as partner. But he had none of White’s panache or flair for high living. By then the work of the firm began to decline in originality. Mosette Broderick, author of When Architecture Could Fashion a Nation, noted that the firm’s work began to look like a parody of its earlier designs.

“Kendall was a mean, small-minded man who took precedent as his only cue,” she wrote. “They began repeating themselves in the 1890’s, and you can spot the details on their later buildings lifted directly from their earlier ones.”

Sketch of William Mitchell Kendall.

Nevertheless, American institutions clamored for the Beaux-Arts architectural style that the firm executed. Cities, universities, railroads and libraries filled the firm’s schedule with demands for public buildings.

McKim, Mead & White’s style reflected the chip on the American shoulder as the nation emerged as a world power starting in 1880. The firm’s buildings had rich decorations with grand arches and entryways, facades laden with sculptural ornamentation and detailed design.

Kendall’s work can be seen throughout New York and New England. He contributed to the design of the Boston Public Library.

Boston Public Library

He designed the Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vt., as well as the city’s City Hall. Kendall designed the canopy that sits atop Plymouth Rock. Kendall also designed the Arlington Memorial Bridge, complete with its gold statues, that crosses the Potomac River between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Neither snow nor rain

Perhaps his most lasting contribution to American culture however, is found in New York City where he designed the James Farley Post Office. Originally named the General Post Office, the building opened in 1912. It gave the postal service its unofficial motto: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

James A. Farley Building

The line is translated from the work of Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote a similar line describing the courier system in ancient Greece. It was a logical fit with Kendall’s grandiose style, and he ordered it inscribed on the facade of the building. And ever since the motto has been associated with the U.S. Postal Service.

Kendall would continue working right up to his death in 1941 in Bar Harbor, Maine, at the age of 85. His later works can be found in several European cemeteries, in the form of memorials to the World War I war dead.

Images: James Farley post office By Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK – Old Post Office, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64140947. Sketch of William Mitchell Kendall The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “William Mitchell Kendall.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. This story last updated in 2022.

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6 of the Oldest General Stores in New England

General stores had their heyday between 1820 and 1860, when income was rising and the population was growing. Like the Hope General Store, they generally stood at crossroads. They were informal, though some might say bare bones, with bare wood floors, a hodgepodge of goods along wooden shelves, a cat cuddled up by the stove, and smells of apples, cheese, coffee and tobacco.

General stores served as centers of town life, where regular customers exchanged gossip and opinions. The storekeeper often doubled as postmaster and provided a link to the outside world. He likely educated himself from the books and magazines he carried and from his buying trips to big cities. The townspeople generally respected him.

Dozens of the old general stores survive in New England. Visitors often comment they remind them of a Norman Rockwell painting, with a smell of apples and coffee.

General stores have experienced something of a revival. The Wall Street Journal called them ‘one part country store, one part concept shop’ with a personal take on merchandise and serving as an informal community center.

The exact age of a general store is often hard to determine. Records are sketchy and claims sometimes exaggerated. And one general store that dates to 1788 – Gray’s, in Little Compton, Rhode Island – has an uncertain status. It closed in 2012 when its owner died, but then reopened as an antiques shop.

If you know of any great old general stores in New England, please add it to our comment section.

Colebrook Store

The Colebrook Store

The Colebrook Store is the oldest continuously operating general store in Connecticut. Founded in 1812, it operated until 2007, when it closed down. In December 2014 it reopened under the new management of Jodi Marinelli.

The store is just a stone’s throw from Town Hall in the center of Colebrook, a town in Litchfield Country. It was owned by Martin and Solomon Rockwell, one of the founding families of Colebrook. Julius Rockwell became a judge and, in 1854, a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. The Rockwells also built the Colebrook Inn, which houses town offices and the historical society.

The Colebrook Store changed hands several times. In July 2007, owner Lora Murphy put out a sign that said, ‘closed for vacation.’ She never reopened.

In 2003, the Colebrook Preservation Society bought the building for $85,000. Five years later, Marinelli signed a lease on the building and moved with her family into the second floor above the store. Today the store serves breakfast and lunch, and sells groceries, candy, baked goods and knick knacks.

It’s located at 559 Colebrook Road in Colebrook, Conn.

Hope General Store

At the Hope General Store you can get much of what you need and learn most of what’s going on in the small farming community of Hope, Maine.

The store sits at the crossroads at the center of town, just outside of Camden. There’s a blacksmith across the street and a carpenter next door. Built in 1832, it’s been a Grange hall, an antique store, and a post office.

The closing of the store in the late 1990s left a hole in the town, but a new owner brought it back to life as a year-round business. In 2014, another new owner put in new heating and cooling systems and a generator, but kept the small town magic of the store. An updated menu features sandwiches made with brie and caramelized onion, and the beverage selection runs from champagne to Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Also for sale: the requisite penny candy, maple syrup, candles, and local honey.

The Hope General Store is at 449 Camden Rd., Hope, Maine.

Davolls General Store

Davoll’s General Store

Davolls is at the mercantile center of the Russells Mills historic district in Dartmouth, Mass., down the road from the fire station. Its owners included a series of prominent Dartmouth families: Howland, Russell, Allen, Slocum, Tucker.

William Howland bought the building in 1792, and opened a general goods shop. In the latter half of the 19th century it was known as Slocum’s until the Davoll family bought it in the early 20th century. Wilfred and Virginia Morrison and their daughter Beverly bought it in 1974. Wilfred told the New Bedford Standard Times, “We stand around and solve all the problems of the world.”

The family sold the store in 2016 to Kim Arruda and Jim Chouinard. The couple then spent a year and a half renovating it. They found boat knees and a felt hat from the nineteenth century inside the walls of the old building. Today they sell penny candy, maple syrup, bread, jewelry and beach towels – among other things — from the freshly painted store right next to the Wild Honey Café.

Davoll’s is at 1228 Russell’s Mills Road, Dartmouth, Mass.

Old Country Store and Museum

The Old Country Store and Museum is on the far right

The Old Country Store and Museum in Moultonborough in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region may be the oldest general store in the country. The Holden family, which runs the historic store, has records dating to 1781. It has also been home to a library and the post office. Town Meetings used to be held at the store.

Town founder Jonathan Moulton was deeded the land on which the store stands for his service in the American Revolution. He sold it to Samuel Burnham, ‘with barn frame thereon,’ in 1777, who sold it in 1779 to a trader named George Freese. Records show Bradbury Richardson worked for Freese in exchange for goods in 1781. A map of New Hampshire printed in 1784 shows the store as the only building in that part of Moultonborough.

Today it’s a Lakes Region tourist attraction. A wooden Indian stands guard at the entrance to the store chockablock with merchandise: bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, bomber hats, t-shirts, shoes, candles, cookware, maple syrup and toys.

The Old Country Store and Museum is at 1011 Whittier Highway, Moultonborough, N.H.

Brown & Hopkins Country Store

“A Destination for Generations,” boasts the owner of the Brown & Hopkins Country Store. She is named neither Brown nor Hopkins, but Elizabeth Yuill, and she bought the store in 2004.

Located on Putnam Pike, which runs through the village of Chepachet in Glocester, R.I., the store is crammed with primitive country wares. It also features a penny candy display on a 24-foot pine checkout counter from the nineteenth century.

A Timothy Wilmarth built the wooden building, now painted green, as a home and a hattery. It became a general store in 1809 when Ira Evans bought it, and it’s been one without interruption ever since.

Mr. Brown and Mr. Hopkins (James and William) gave the store its present name when they bought it in 1921. For years they sold utilitarian items like brooms, long underwear, rifles and coffee.

Then in the 1970s, country decorating became the rage and the store went into the business with a vengeance. It still sells reproduction country furniture and accessories, as well as clothing, local foods, a grab-and-go café, and, of course, candles.

1179 Putnam Pike, Chepachet, R.I.

Dorset Union Store

Dorset Union Store

On the outside, the Dorset Union Store looks the same as it did in 1816, the year it opened. And it still has the same bell above the door that announces customers, the way it did two centuries ago.

The store presides over Dorset Green in the center of the town, which overlooks the Taconic Mountains. Not surprisingly, the Dorset Union store belongs to the Dorset Historic District, notable for its uniform white clapboard buildings. Some of the sidewalks are made of marble from the nearby quarries.

During a hiatus from 1955 to 2007, the store was called Peltiers, but new owners restored the original name. They also expanded the wine room and added a bakery and deli. You can buy fresh produce as well as Vermont products at the store, or grab a sandwich and eat outside at a picnic table on the green.

Dorset Union Store, 31 Church St., Dorset, Vt .

Photos: Colebrook Store By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/connecticut/national_register/colebrook_center.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29560503;Davolls General Store By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimeadia.org/w/index.php?curid=9112639; Dorset Union Store and Brown & Hopkins Country Store courtesy Google Maps.

This story about general stores was updated in 2022.

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