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Providence RI.

Elphage Daignault architect of the Sentinelle Affair

The Sentinelle Affair: Keeping The French in Franco American

In 1919, the Federation of Canadian Catholic Churches in America decided to tackle the need for better schools. Catholic parish schools adequately served younger students. But for high-school age students, the existing institutions were deemed inadequate.

The Federation intended to change that with a series of state-of-the-art high schools, and it would start in Woonsocket, R.I. At times, Franco Americans made up more than three-quarters of the Woonsocket population, many drawn from Canada by the vibrant mill economy.

Elphage Daignault, architect of the Sentinelle Affair, and his wife

The Providence Catholic Diocese unveiled plans for the Mont Saint Charles Academy in Woonsocket with fanfare. The Franco-American population embraced this proposal for a fine new school. But as fundraising for the school began, rumors began to circulate. The new school would conduct classes in English only. French would only be taught as a separate language course.

The decision to push Franco-American students through an English-speaking school touched a nerve and ignited the Sentinelle Affair. The Sentinellists decided to preserve the French language in the church, community AND schools..

At the center of the Sentinelle Affair stood Elphege J Daignault. As the controversy raged from 1923 through 1929, Daignault earned a reputation as a savior of French-Canadian culture – or an agent of Satan, depending on your point of view.

Daignault – born in Woonsocket in 1879 — studied at college in Montreal, Boston and New York. From 1922 to 1936 he served as president of the Canado-American Association.

Elphege Daignault and the Roots of the Sentinelle Affair

mont-saint-charles-academy-which sparked the sentinelle-affair.

Mont Saint Charles Academy Postcard

In the 1920s, the French language was under assault in states around the country. Many enacted English-only laws to discourage immigrants from retaining their native tongues in their new home in America.

Italian communities had founded the Knights of Columbus, closely aligned with the Catholic Church, to defend against attacks on Italian culture. The Franco-American community followed up with the Order of the Crusaders to serve the same purpose. A secret society, it worked to counter anti-Canadian bias.

By the time of the Sentinelle Affair, Elphege Daignault had already made himself a thorn in the side of the Providence Diocese of the Catholic Church. In 1914, he led a group that forced Bishop William Hickey to remove the French Marist Fathers from the Sainte-Anne Parish of Woonsocket and replace them with a local, native Franco American.

The plans for the English-only high school outraged Daignault and his supporters. A lawyer, judge and politician, Daignault opened up two lines of attack on the plan. He sued in state courts, accusing the church of improper use of funds by soliciting donations from Franco-American Catholics. The funds were used for projects that not only didn’t specifically serve their community, but actively undermined the community by attempting to snuff out the French language and culture.

Daignault argued the church method of pooling all donations did not comply with the terms under which it solicited them.

He took a second tack, filing appeals with the Vatican asking it to intervene in the matter and to halt the Anglicization of church schools.

La Sentinelle is Published

In addition to trying to win his case in the courts of the Vatican and Rhode Island, Daignault also decided to turn to the court of public opinion. To promote his point, Daignault took an active role in running a Woonsocket newspaper: La Sentinelle.

While many Franco-Americans supported Daignault’s views, they generally were not as hostile and direct while challenging the church.

He accused his enemies of murdering the French culture and of operating deceitfully.

He also turned the fight into an ethnocentric attack on Irish-American Catholics, a prominent force in the American Catholic Church. Irish clergy, he contended, were “national assassins.” And he called their French Catholic supporters traitors to their people. The church had embraced the unstated goal of Irish domination. Daignault also mocked the Irish for embracing the language of their oppressors – the English.

Daignault’s megaphone grew as newspapers in Holyoke, Mass. and Nashua, N.H. echoed his editorials, which he sometimes signed and sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Blaise Juliet.

Opposition to Daignault

Daignault’s voice was not the only opinion found in the Franco-American press. His critics voiced their opposition in newspapers in Manchester, N.H., as well as Holyoke, Woonsocket and Lawrence in Massachusetts.

They accused Daignault of trying to foment a modern crusade and creating controversies where none existed. He vilified his enemies, they charged, by challenging their patriotism simply because they disagreed with him.

Even many who agreed with Daignault could not support his vitriolic attacks on the church.

Taking the Fight to New Hampshire

Far from backing down, Daignault took his campaign to Manchester, N.H. In that state the language issue also simmered as Bishop George Albert Guertin worked to modernize New Hampshire’s Catholic schools. Guertin also planned to limit the speaking of French to just language classes.

Daignault attacked popular Franco-American priest P.J. Ernest Devoy, an advocate for education. Devoy, he charged, was bilingual but never used French in his official capacity. Daignault called it a “diabolical” practice.

But there was growing weakness in Daignault’s campaign. He could draw a sizable crowd to rallies, but regular Catholics were wary of his attacks on the church.

Then the Franco-American Catholic Federation in 1924, at its annual meeting at Willimantic, condemned Daignault’s tactics.

He lost his court challenges in the Rhode Island courts. His requests to the Vatican yielded no support. Finally, the machinery of the Catholic Church stopped tolerating his dissent.

In 1928, the Vatican declared it would hear no more from Daignault. The church authorized Bishop Hickey to excommunicate Daignault and 62 of his followers. Daignault then attempted two more Hail Marys. The Rhode Island Supreme Court threw out his final lawsuit. And when he sought legal protection within the Vatican courts against excommunication, he failed.

Finally, in January of 1929, Bishop Hickey delivered a message to Daignault and his supporters. If they did not renounce their position and repent before Easter, he would then bar them from entering any Roman Catholic Church.

Daignault caved. He publicly promised to seek forgiveness from the church authorities. He also apologized so the church would readmit him. Hickey called it the “greatest consolation I have had since the unfortunate movement was launched.”

The End of the Sentinelle Affair

The church defeated Daignault, but it did not completely silence him. He continued writing articles urging Franco-Americans to retain their culture. Then in 1933, a stroke slowed him substantially, and in 1937 he died of a heart attack.

This story updated in 2022.

Thanks to:

The Sentinel Affair (1924-1929) and Activist Survival: The Franco-American Experience in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, by Richard Sorrell. The Sentinelle Affair: A Study in Multilingual Language Practices, by Jason Peters. Elphège J. Daignault et le mouvement sentinelliste à Manchester, New Hampshire, by Robert B. Perrault. And Rhode Island and Connecticut newspapers.

Image: Mme et M. Elphège Daignault : d’après la photographie originale de l’agence photographique Pacific and Atlantic.

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Six Paintings of New England Spring

Artists have probably created far fewer New England spring paintings than of any of the three other seasons. After all, New England has so little spring. The cold gray months morph into mud season and then black fly season. And then, suddenly, it’s the Fourth of July and summer.

And yet New England’s artists have managed to capture what is appealing about the brief New England spring. Maple sugaring. Apple blossoms. Bird’s nests. Brilliant, clear light on sunny days. Romantic moonlit nights.

So here are six paintings of New England spring, one in each state.

New England Spring by Moonlight

May Night by Willard Metcalf. National Gallery of Art.

Willard Metcalf painted May Night, one of his best works, while at the Old Lyme artist colony in Connecticut.

Metcalf was born into a working class family in Lowell, Mass., in 1858. He began painting at 16 and opened a studio in Boston at 18. Early success allowed him to study in Europe for five years.

He then moved around the Northeast, teaching and painting portraits and illustrations. Then he moved to Gloucester, Mass., and devoted himself to landscape painting. His friend Childe Hassam encouraged him to join the Old Lyme artist colony, where he could find high thinking and low living.

May Night depicts the home of Miss Florence Griswold, who founded the Old Lyme colony. In 1907, Metcalf won the Corcoran gold medal for it, along with a $3,000 purchase price. But Old Lyme probably lost its charm for him when his wife ran off with one of his students that year. The painting now belongs to the National Gallery of Art.

Metcalf then spent time at the Cornish Art Colony in New Hampshire, where he painted many landscapes of the changing seasons. One critic called him “the poet laureate of the New England hills.”

The Corcoran Gallery held a major exhibition of his work in 1925, the year he died of a heart attack at age 66.

Spring on a Farm

Spring, by Winslow Homer. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

Winslow Homer, born in Boston, Mass., in 1837, learned watercolor at his mother’s knee. He apprenticed to a lithographer for a few years, but hated it. For the next 20 years he illustrated life in Boston and rural New England as well as battlefield scenes during the Civil War.

He then moved to New York, but traveled frequently, painting all the way. In the spring of 1878 he produced 50 watercolors, admired for their fluidity and sparkle. Spring, painted on a farm, is one of them.

Homer eventually grew reclusive around 1880. His family owned an estate on Prout’s Neck in Maine, and Homer moved into the carriage house. He painted the sea in Maine, traveling to the Caribbean during the winter and sometimes to the Adirondacks.

Though he also painted in oil, Winslow Homer knew he’d done something transcendent with his watercolors.

“You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors,” Homer once said. He hung some of his exquisite watercolors on the walls of the rental cottages. Now they’re in museums or private collections. His 1878 watercolor Spring belongs to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

‘As if the year were all springtime’

Still Life with Robin’s Nest by Fidelia Bridges. Private Collection.

Fidelia Bridges, born in 1834, was one of the very few women artists who could support herself with her work. She only painted birds and plants, which she rendered with exquisite detail and a poetic sensibility.

She ‘paints as if the year were all springtime,’ wrote one critic.

Bridges was often lonely and sad, but her exquisite paintings convey a lyrical joy in the birds and flowers she loved.

Fidelia Bridges was the daughter of a Salem sea captain who plied the China trade. Her parents’ death when she was 15 impoverished her family, but wealthy patrons allowed her to study art in Philadelphia and Europe.

She painted some of her best works in Stratford, Conn., along the Housatonic River. She also sold her work to Louis Prang, who invented the American Christmas card in Boston. For a time she worked as governess for Mark Twain’s children.

Girl on Rock

Spring by Maxfield Parrish. Illustration for Life magazine, 1922 Easter edition

The landscape of Vermont and New Hampshire inspired Maxfield Parrish in 1922 to create lush, romantic paintings like Spring.

Parrish belonged to the Cornish Art Colony from 1898, when he and his wife built a house in Plainfield, N.H. He downplayed his own abilities, calling himself “commonplace” and “a mechanic.”

He used an ancient technique to paint, starting with a monochrome underpainting and then layering transparent glazes. It made him rich and famous. His 1922 painting Daybreak was the most popular art print of the 20^th century, appearing in one out of every four households.

His painting Spring appeared as the Easter cover art for Life magazine April 6, 1922. Parrish then got sick of painting lissome nymphs in outdoor settings. No more girls on rocks, he told the Associated Press in 1931. From then until his death in 1960 he abandoned illustration and painted landscapes.

Apple Trees in a Meadow

Apple Trees in a Meadow by Edward Bannister. High Museum

Edward Bannister stunned the judges of the art competition at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. When he came to receive his gold medal, they were astonished to discover they’d awarded it to an African American.

After winning the prize he prospered as an artist, working out of his studio in Providence, R.I.

Bannister credited his wife, Christiana, with everything he accomplished. She ran several hair salons and told him to devote himself to his painting. Once his paintings started to sell, they spent summers in a cottage on Narragansett Bay. He often painted en plein air.

In 1890, Bannister painted Apple Trees in a Meadow, a familiar sight during the New England spring.

Bannister died in 1901, and his work fell into obscurity. He has since been rediscovered. Apple Trees in a Meadow now belongs to the High Museum in Atlanta.

New England Spring, Vermont Style

American Forest Scene–Maple Sugaring by Arthur Tait

You may well recognize this lithograph as a Currier and Ives, originally sold as a cheap and popular print but now quite collectible.

Nathaniel Currier started off in Boston but eventually moved to New York. Once he hit on the formula of dramatic scenes of newsworthy events, he was on his way. He teamed up with James Merritt Ives and they expanded into scenes of city life, portraits, politics, boats and landscapes.

The firm made prints from the work of the most celebrated artists of the day: Eastman Johnson, George Inness and Thomas Nast. It also employed its own artists, like Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, who specialized in sporting scenes.

New England winter scenes proved especially popular. Snow, however, is not unknown during a New England spring.

Arthur Tait, a British-American artist, painted American Forest Scene—Maple Sugaring. Though he lived in New York, we’re choosing to call this a Vermont scene, as it produces more maple syrup than any other state.

Currier and Ives lasted 72 years before going out of business.

This story updated in 2022.

Images: Spring by Parrish, Plum Leaves via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0; Robin’s Nest (1863, private collection) public domain PD-US.

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Italian Thanksgiving, or How One Ethnic Group Resisted American Food

The Italian Thanksgiving in New England was and still is a piece de resistance – a masterpiece of Italian and American cooking. It’s also a result of Italian cooks who successfully resisted do-gooders trying to Americanize their food habits.

An Italian Thanksgiving in the Italian cities like Waterbury, Conn., or Providence, R.I., or Revere, Mass., typically started out with antipasti – thin slices of prosciutto, salami, mortadella along with black olives and crusty bread. Soup followed, maybe escarole or dumpling, and lasagna or ravioli. Then came the turkey, stuffed with Italian sausage, brown gravy, potatoes, squash and cranberry sauce, washed down with homemade wine or soda for the children. And then finally dessert! Pie, torrone, spumoni, panna cotta, candy almonds, hazelnuts – topped off with roasted chestnuts.

That was not what social workers had in mind for the new arrivals from Italy. They wanted to Americanize the Italian immigrants who lived in the crowded North Ends and Little Italys of New England. And they took special aim at their dietary preferences – without much success.

“The reformers could not budge Italians on culinary matters,” wrote Harvey Levenstein.

Fortunately.

Boston’s North End today

Lacking Nutrition

Between 1880 and 1920, four million Italian immigrants came to the United States, more than any other ethnic group. Many settled in New England, still the most Italian region in the country.

Most came from Southern Italy to escape extortionate taxes, disease, failed crops and the ravages of the Messina earthquake, which killed 10,000 Sicilians. They were often unskilled, illiterate and dirt poor. When they arrived in the United States, they crowded into tenement slums where tuberculosis ran rampant.

Reformers in the 1890s believed they could help the immigrants living in slums by teaching them sanitation, personal hygiene and household economics.

And they blamed Italian food, in part, for Italian troubles.

“They easily fall victim to tuberculosis, they crowd together in unhygienic tenements, and the food to which they are accustomed seems to lack nutrition sufficient to enable them to fight with vigor the difficulties besetting them,” according to an 1899 report of the Family Welfare Society of Boston.

Robert Woods, who ran the South End House in Boston, attributed an increase in death rates among Italian immigrants in 1904 to crowded tenements and ‘their over-stimulating and innutritious diet.’

new-haven-garment-workers-wooster-square

Welcome to New Haven’s Little Italy, Wooster Square

Poison Tomatoes

Throughout the 19^th century, Americans viewed the tomato, a staple of Sicilian cuisine, as dangerous. In 1880 the tomato’s reputation fell even further when scientific research revealed they caused cancer. Though that finding was quickly disproven, many continued to believe the tomato safe only in very small quantities.

Experts also tried to discourage the Italian love of fruits and vegetables. They didn’t know vitamins were a thing, and believed produce mostly consisted of water and cost too much. Good Housekeeping declared pork, a key ingredient in Italian sausage meat, as unhygienic. Spicy foods damaged the stomach, had no nutritional value and led to the excessive consumption of alcohol they thought. And garlic – Oh! The horror!

Reformers of the era believed food was more nutritious when cooked separately. A pamphlet for Italian immigrants warned that ‘it wasn’t right’ to cook meat, cheese, beans and macaroni together. Some people referred to their soups and stews as ‘pig wash.’

Pasta alla norma, a traditional Sicilian dish. Hardly pig wash.

The Local Store

The reformers were no match for the tidal wave of Italian immigrants and the food they brought with with them.

In Boston’s North End, Italian food became available by 1874, when Pietro Pastene opened a grocery store at 229 Hanover Street. Another Italian immigrant, Alessandro Badaracco, had moved to Boston before the Civil War and ran the biggest fruit business in the city. John Ponte started the Boston Macaroni Co. in 1890, and Prince followed soon after.

Reformers figured they could change Italian cooking habits by changing their shopping habits.

In 1911, Eva White, the head of Peabody House in Boston, complained about Italians shopping in such shops. “No matter what inducements the larger stores of the city offer they will trade with none but their own people.”

Shopping local in Boston’s North End, 1909, by Lewis Wickes Hine. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

No Takers for Cooking Schools

Settlement houses held cooking classes for immigrants to teach them economy and proper food preparation. In the 1890s, the Denison House cooking school was popular among the Irish residents of Boston’s South End. But then when the Italians moved in and the Irish moved out, the cooking school attracted few students. The same thing happened with the Bennet Street settlement house in the North End. Irish immigrants flocked to its cooking school, but when the Italians moved in the cooking school had to close for lack of interest.

One despairing social worker commented in a report, “Not yet Americanized; still eating Italian food.”

U pizz’ di creanze

For their part, Italian immigrants viewed American food as disgusting. Doctors complained about Italians who refused admittance to hospitals because they thought the food unfit to eat.

Italians also attached great importance to the family rituals associated with eating Italian food.

Joanna Clapps Herman, who grew up in an Italian family in Waterbury, Conn., described one ritual: u pizz’ di creanze, the piece of politeness.

“If the last piece of anything is eaten, all the customs of politeness have been violated,” she wrote in The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America. “It means that the host hasn’t provided enough for all their guests to have as much as they wanted,” she explained. “It means that the guest is demonstrating this fact publicly. No matter how much the host presses her guests, no one is to take it.”

Instead of abandoning Italian food, Italian Americans simply added American ingredients to a traditional Thanksgiving for a belly-busting feast.

An Italian Thanksgiving

Ed Iannuccilli described his grandparents’ Italian Thanksgiving in their second-story tenement in Providence. They had come to the city from Italy in 1910.

“They may have been comforted when they learned that they shared something with those early settlers who long ago also arrived with fear, expectation and hope,” Iannuccilli wrote in the Providence Journal.

Their Italian Thanksgiving began after a thankful prayer. Then antipasto, hot dumpling soup and lasagna before Grandfather proudly carried in the turkey. And then a couple of fruit pies, torrone, nuts and chestnuts for dessert.

The feast may have been Italianized, wrote Iannuccilli. “But it was now clearly American.”

Here is a menu the DeFinis and Diioria families from Norwalk, Conn., still serve (thanks to Brooke Dojny):
Cold Antipasti
Ravioli Soup
Home-Style Lasagne
Roast Turkey with Bread Stuffing and Homemade Gravy
Mashed Potatoes
Candied Sweets
Boiled Diced Turnips
Green Beans Almondine
Steamed Broccoli
Sausage-Stuffed Mushrooms
Date-Nut Bread
Italian Bread
Green Salad
Chocolate Cream Pie
Apple Pie
Pumpkin Pie

Need some new ideas for your Thanksgiving feast? How about trying something old — and authentic — from the New England Historical Society’s latest ebook. Available from Amazon (click here).

Old school Italian Thanksgiving by Paul Altobelli, creative commons license. Boston North End By Ingfbruno – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27355267; Pasta alla Norma By Paoletta S. – Pasta alla Norma, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4992962.

With thanks to The American Response to Italian Food, 1880-1930, by Harvey Levenstein in the Food in the USA reader. This story last updated in 2022.

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Seven Fun Facts About John Hay, Winner of All of Life’s Great Prizes

The name “John Hay” pops up frequently in American history, especially during the second half of the 19^th century.

John Hay was one of President Abraham Lincoln’s two secretaries, or “Lincoln’s boys.” A John Hay also ran the New York Tribune, the biggest and most influential U.S. newspaper of its day. Another John Hay served as U.S. secretary of state under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. And still another belonged to an elite literary circle, an author of bestselling fiction and poetry.

Actually, they were all the same person.

John Hay, by John Singer argent

John Hay during his lifetime won political influence, great wealth, literary renown and the love of his family and friends. With the exception of a tragedy that befell him in 1901, everything went his way. Shortly before he died in 1905, he acknowledged that he had won “all of the great prizes” in life.

He may, in fact, have spent more time in the White House than any of his contemporaries, first as Abraham Lincoln’s personal secretary and last as Theodore Roosevelt’s secretary of state.

Though he grew up in the Midwest, John Hay had a foot in New England. He graduated from Brown University, where the library bears his name. He also had a summer home in Newbury, N.H., called the Fells.

John Hay

His mother’s family came from Assonet, Mass., and her father had graduated from Brown. He died while moving his family west, and Hay’s mother taught school in Salem, Ind. There she met and married Hay’s father, a country doctor. Their son John was born there on Oct 8, 1838, but they moved to Warsaw, Ill., when he was a young boy.

By sheer chance, John Hay got the job as Abraham Lincoln’s secretary. After Lincoln’s assassination, he embarked on a diplomatic career. He traveled widely, learned four languages and made influential friends.

John Hay in 1862

Hay kept his hand in politics and in writing. He and John Nicolay, Lincoln’s other secretary, wrote a 10-volume biography of the president that no one has surpassed.

In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes named him assistant secretary of State. Two decades later, President William McKinley named him U.S. secretary of state. Theodore Roosevelt kept him on in the job after McKinley’s assassination. John Hay died on July 1, 1905.

Here are seven fun facts about John Hay

John Hay, A Great Wit

His contemporaries called him the best letter writer and best dining companion they knew. His letters ‘come nearer than any others to Byron’s, which are the best in English,’ wrote William Roscoe Thayer in The Life and Letters of John Hay. “He was at his best at a dinner table or in a drawing room, and in neither place have I ever seen anyone’s best that was better than his,” wrote Roosevelt.

A sampling of his letter reveals a playful and sophisticated wit.

“Of all vices I hold patriotism the worst when it meddles with matters of taste,” he wrote to William Dean Howells in 1882.

In criticizing French writer Alphonse Daudet to Henry James, Hay wrote, “The “Evangeliste” is dreary, the work of a genius smitten with locomotor ataxia; (if I had known that word was so long, I should never have begun upon it).”

”Dear Reid,” he wrote to his former editor Whitelaw Reid, “It is painful, but I must tell you. My wife says, when you come to the house, that you have got to hold the baby.”

Hay-Adams Hotel

Hay’s best friend was John Quincy Adams’ grandson, historian Henry Adams. Together with their wives and geologist Clarence King (who led a double life married to an African-American woman in New York City), they socialized frequently and called themselves the Five of Hearts.

When Adams in 1880 anonymously published a best-selling novel called Democracy, people speculated that the Five of Hearts had collaborated on it.

Adams and Hay were so close they built adjoining mansions on Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. Eventually, a luxury hotel known as the Hay-Adams replaced the two houses.

Henry Adams lived on the left, John Hay on the right. Image courtesy Colgate Public Library.

Three Funerals

John Hay attended the vigil of three presidents, all of whom he knew well. He stood next to Lincoln on his deathbed.

John G. Nicolay, Abraham Lincoln, John Hay

His friend James Garfield, when elected president, had asked him to serve as his private secretary. Hay chose instead to work as an editor for the New York Tribune, supporting Garfield’s policies. Then a deranged office seeker shot the president in a Washington, D.C., railroad station. Hay covered Garfield’s 79-day slide into death.

Twenty years later, an assassin killed another presidential friend. When William McKinley ran for president, Hay gave his campaign $4,000 a month. McKinley named him his secretary of state, and trusted him implicitly in foreign affairs.

When an anarchist shot McKinley in Buffalo, John Hay visited him at his bedside. After McKinley’s funeral, Hay wrote to a friend, “what a strange and tragic fate it has been of mine—to stand by the bier of three of my dearest friends, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, three of the gentlest of men, all risen to be head of the State, and all done to death by assassins.”

The Great Chicago Fire

John Hay was working for the New York Tribune in 1871 when Mrs. O’Leary’s cow allegedly kicked over a lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire.

His editor, Whitelaw Reid, sent him to Chicago. Two days after the fire broke out, Hay arrived after in the devastated city after a 38-hour train ride. He described the smoldering ruins, interviewed the victims and visited Mr. O’Leary as he watched the cow through the window.

The Great Chicago Fire by Currier & Ives

Hay’s versatility as critic, reporter and editor pleased Reid so much he gave him a raise to $65 a week. That made him one of the highest paid editorial writers in the country, which annoyed Mark Twain, who also wrote for the New York Tribune.

Layabout

His diplomatic career began when he was in his 20s and lasted until his death at the age of 66. He negotiated 50 treaties, including the treaty that gave the United States canal rights to the Isthmus of Panama. He also gets credit for fashioning the Open Door Policy.

Despite his many accomplishments, he had a tendency to laziness and hypochondria. After he married Clara, he wrote a letter to a friend saying, “I do nothing but read and yawn.” He complained to John Bigelow, U.S. ambassador to France, that he was ‘growing more indolent and scatterbrained day by day.’ And in a letter to Henry Adams, he wrote in 1895 that ‘time goes by imperceptibly in indolence and solitude, and there’s nothing to do, or think, or write about. I have developed two or three more mortal disease…’

Hay’s best friend, Henry Adams

He also visited doctors frequently for advice about his imagined illnesses. When doctors prescribed rest, he readily followed their orders.

Lucky Fellow

He had an abundance of luck throughout his life. The best stroke of good fortune that befell him was to graduate from Brown without an idea of what to do with his life. So he went to work for his Uncle Milton, a lawyer with an office next door to Abraham Lincoln’s.

Along with his good friend John George Nicolay, Hay threw himself into Lincoln’s campaign for president. Lincoln then brought them both to Washington, where they roomed together in a shabby bedroom in the White House. Lincoln visited them at all hours of the day and night. The unparalleled access to the president informed the 10-volume biography the two “Lincoln’s boys” wrote together.

Clara Stone

His luck continued in love. He courted and in 1876 married Clara Stone, daughter of a wealthy Cleveland industrialist. By all accounts the marriage was a happy one, and they had four healthy children. His father-in-law gave him fabulous mansion and a job in Cleveland managing his considerable investments, which Hay, it turned out, was good at. The job gave him plenty of money and freedom to travel.

The only time his luck ran out was in 1901, when his son Adelbert died at the age of 24. The young man had just been appointed McKinley’s personal secretary when he fell 60 feet to his death from a New Haven hotel window.

Grandchildren of John Hay

Two of his grandchildren achieved fame in their own right. His daughter Helen married Payne Whitney, son of another Cabinet member, William Whitney. President Eisenhower named Helen’s son John Hay Whitney ambassador to the United Kingdom, 60 years after his grandfather held the post.

Helen’s daughter Joan Whitney Payson in 1962 bought an expansion baseball team, the New York Mets, and brought Willie Mays back to New York.

Joan Whitney Payson

With thanks to All the Great Prizes: The Life of John Hay, from Lincoln to Roosevelt by John Taliaferro, Also to The Statesman and the Storyteller: John Hay, Mark Twain, and the Rise of American Imperialism by Mark Zwonitze and William Roscoe Thayer in The Life and Letters of J0hn Hay, Volume 2.

Images: Joan Whitney Payson By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49601215. This story was updated in 2021.

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James Edgar Invents the Department Store Santa on a Whim in 1890

The world’s first known department store Santa Claus owned his own store and paid his employees good wages. He gave them shares in the business, and even closed early four nights a week so they could spend time with their families.

His name was James Edgar, and the people who knew him in 19^th-century Brockton, Mass., described him as big, jolly, generous – and a world-class show-off. He donned a Santa suit one December day in 1890 and greeted children in the aisles of his store. Soon he had to order a second Santa suit from his tailor and put his nephew in it to play Santa.

Years later, an old man remembered the magic of seeing James Edgar dressed up as the first department store Santa. Today, an actual department store might seem just as magical – especially if its employees were treated like James Edgar’s workers.

James Edgar

James Edgar had an old-fashioned business philosophy. “I have made a barrel of money, and I have spent it as freely as I have made it,” he once said. “Thousands of it goes back to the people from whom I made it, for I fully believe in that kind of an exchange.”

Department Store Santa

Though a shrewd and successful businessman, James Edgar probably had no idea what he started when he stepped onto the floor of The Boston Store wearing his new Santa Claus suit. He usually dressed up as a clown at Christmas and wandered the store after school let out. Sometimes he picked out a little girl to present with a new doll.

But he dressed in costume on the Fourth of July. He dressed up as George Washington or Uncle Sam or a Scottish Highlander for the thousands of children he invited to his annual Independence Day picnics.

He admitted he made himself ridiculous to many people. But he liked children and he thought they should have a chance to meet Santa.

Edgar got his idea for his Santa suit from a Thomas Nast cartoon.

Soon after his first gig as a department store Santa, parents and children lined up outside his store to see him. They came from Boston, from Providence, even from New York.

A small boy named Edward Lowery Pearson happened to visit The Boston Store on the day James Edgar dressed up as Santa. In 1976, then in his 90s, he described the experience to Modern Maturity magazine.

“You just can’t imagine what it was like,” Pearson said. “I remember walking down an aisle and, all of a sudden, I saw Santa Claus. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and then Santa came up and started talking to me.

“It was a dream come true.”

Within a decade, every major U.S. city had a department store Santa. Other department stores, like R.H. Macy’s and J.H. Parkinson’s, claimed they’d had a Santa earlier than 1890. But Santa historians note James Edgar was the first department store Santa with a known identity – and that he inspired major department stores to hire Santa next Christmas.

The Dry Goods Business

When James Edgar came up in business, the modern department store was just coming into existence.

Born in Scotland in 1843, he was apprenticed as a boy to a cloth merchant – then known as a linen draper. He worked long, grueling hours for $50 a year. He resolved that if he ever had ‘boys’ of his own, he’d treat them better than he’d been treated.

At the age of 22 he immigrated to St. John, New Brunswick, but didn’t think much of his prospects there. So he pawned his watch for a ticket to Boston and got a job for $12 a week – more than he’d ever made in his life. He decided to stay in America.

In Boston he worked at the Hogg, Brown & Taylor dry goods store. The term ‘dry goods’ comes from colonial New England merchants, many of whom were ship captains, who mainly imported calico and rum. They sold calico from one side of the store – the dry goods side – and rum from the wet goods side. “Wet goods” fell away, but dry goods stayed and evolved into the department store.

Edgar worked in Providence for several years, married a Canadian nurse named Annie McLeod. They had a daughter. In 1878 James Edgar and George W. Reynolds started The Boston Store (a common name back then) in the Town of Brockton.

Brockton, with a thriving shoe and leather industry would soon become a city. In 1883, Thomas Edison threw a switch in Brockton to have a three-wire underground electrical system, and the next year Brockton had the first electrically operated fire station.

James Edgar embraced the city’s spirit of progress, and put electric lights and cash registers into The Boston Store. He created the Edgar Layaway plan, in which money laid away earned 4 percent interest.

Before he dressed as Santa, Edgar put on a clown costume.

Edgar Plays Department Store Santa

It was an era of cutthroat competition, and Edgar believed in the power of advertising and promotion. He offered coupons, and he marked down dresses to 39 cents from $1.39. Once he threw pennies off the roof of the store.

Edgar insisted on treating the poorest customer with the same courtesy as the richest. He said he hired the best help available and paid them the best wages.

“I make it possible for them to own their own homes, even if I live in an upstairs tenement to save a few dollars,” he said.

He did live in a second-floor apartment in Brockton, but he also owned a summer home in nearby Lakeville. The Boston Store was doing well until it burned down in 1886. He rebuilt. When his partner died, he bought out his estate.

His employees didn’t leave until they died, and on Feb. 1, 1899 he made 25 of them stockholders in the store.

When he reached his 60s he still had plans to expand. He built a new, concrete department store in 1906. It had 149 clerks, 52,000 square feet and nearly 20,000 people came to shop on its busiest day. But he had suffered a stroke, which partially paralyzed him. Then in 1909 another stroke killed him.

A James Edgar promo piece

Remembering James Edgar

Eighty-seven years after that first Christmas, Edgar Pearson still remembered James Edgar.

“That was many, many Christmases ago,” Pearson said. “But I still say God bless James Edgar. He gave me a memory I have treasured all my life. … What a wonderful person he was.”

Today Brockton still remembers their first department store Santa. Children can still play in James Edgar Playground, donated to the city by his daughter Eva.

The city also celebrates the annual Santa Hat Challenge, where hundreds of people don red hats to pay tribute to Edgar.

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

With thanks to Department store Santas owe paychecks to Col. Jim Edgar, Bob Cubie, Brockton Enterprise and Santa Claus aka James Edgar by Robert A. Kane. This story last updated in 2022.

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The New England Defenders of the Alamo

Among the defenders of the Alamo, at least eight came from New England to start a new life. Those lives were cut short, like all the others besieged for 13 days in the old Spanish mission.

This is the story of those men who traveled from every New England state for a piece of land to support a home and a family.

Gone To Texas

After the Mexican Revolution of 1824, the Mexican government offered very generous land grants to people to come and settle in the region of Texas. The government offered the grants on condition the recipients become Mexican citizens and adopt Catholicism.

This project succeeded so well that within a few years Americans outnumbered Mexicans in Texas. As many as 135,000 U.S. citizens made the move.

In fact, so many left their homes in the States that when they didn’t pay their taxes the tax rolls commonly noted GTT, “Gone to Texas.”

As you will see, many of these men made their way to Texas via New Orleans. They did it because the river network was the easiest way to travel among the states. If you could connect with the Ohio River you could then connect with the Mississippi and then on down to New Orleans and, finally, across into Texas.

The Americans in Texas began to petition the Mexican government to change the requirements for the land grants. When that failed, they really started to agitate.

The Alamo

General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna moved the Mexican Army into Texas to quell the unrest and bring the Americans to heel. It culminated in a 13-day siege at the Alamo, a makeshift fort that had once served as a Spanish mission.

About 100 men had been stationed at the Alamo. Before the siege began, William Travis and James Bowie, who would eventually co-command the fort, arrived with some reinforcements.

The siege began on Feb. 23, 1836, when Santa Anna marched 1,500 Mexican troops into San Antonio. He raised a blood-red flag demanding unconditional surrender. In response, the defenders of the Alamo fired off an 18-pound cannon, which volunteer militiamen – including two from New England — had dragged all the way from New Orleans.

The two sides skirmished for 10 days. Travis knew the garrisoned men couldn’t stand up to the Mexicans, so he wrote letters to Texas and the United States begging for supplies and reinforcements.

He sent his final and most famous appeal for help to the people of Gonzales, Texas, addressed “To the people of Texas and all Americans in the world.”

I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch.

New England Defenders of the Alamo

Travis gave the letter to a Rhode Islander named Albert Martin, who commanded the regiment from the town of Gonzales, 70 miles to the east. Martin carried the letter to Gonzales, and then returned to the Alamo with his regiment. Among the men who would earn the title of the ‘Immortal 32,’ was a fellow New Englander, John Flanders.

The Gonzales Regiment sneaked through enemy lines after dark and made it back into the Alamo.

The Mexican Army finally began to move on the Alamo in the early hours of March 6. The defenders fended off two attacks, but couldn’t withstand the third.

Among the last of the Alamo defenders to die were the Invincibles, artillerymen who manned 12-pound cannons from the chapel.

Santa Anna’s army spared none of the defenders of the Alamo. In the end, between 182 and 257 men died in the battle, while about 600 Mexican troops were killed or wounded. The Mexicans spared a few civilians, who told the story of the Alamo.

The Fall of the Alamo, by Robert Jenkins Onderdonk.

Santa Anna’s cruelty inspired more men to join the Texan Army. Less than two months later, the Texans defeated the Mexican Army at the Battle of San Jacinto.

Following are descriptions of the eight defenders of the Alamo.

Albert Martin, Rhode Island

Albert Martin, was born in Providence, R. I. in 1808. He attended the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy in Connecticut which would later move to Vermont and become Norwich University. He left Rhode Island in 1832 with his family and set up a business in Tennessee. From there he and his family migrated to New Orleans, where they set up yet another family business in 1835.

Albert moved to Texas and set up a branch of their general store in Gonzales, Texas, Martin, Cofflin & Co. While there he joined the Gonzales Rangers and the Old 18. When at the Alamo, he was selected by Col. Travis to carry out his famous letter to Gonzales. In response, Martin and 32 men returned to the Alamo. All perished.

It should be noted that a cenotaph was erected and may still be seen, at the North Burial Ground, in Providence, to Martin and the defenders of the Alamo.

Albert Martin’s grave marker in Rhode Island.

Miles de Forest Andross, Vermont

He was born in 1809, in Vermont. He married Elizabeth Peabody in 1822 and had two children. Later he made his way to Texas and died with the other defenders of the Alamo. His name appears on the Alamo cenotaph in San Antonio, Texas.

Robert Cochran, New Hampshire

He was born in Pembroke, N.H., in 1810. He went to New Orleans and then on to Texas. At the Alamo, he was assigned to Captain William Carey’s artillery company and died among the defenders of the Alamo on March 6. Forty years after his death a tiny county in Texas — Cochran County, pop. 3,127 in 2010 — was named for him.

John Flanders, Massachusetts or New Hampshire

He was born in either Salisbury, Mass., or Newton, N.H., in 1810. Flanders was working for his father when they argued over a mortgage. John Flanders wanted to foreclose on a widow, and his father wouldn’t let him.

John Flanders, too, went to New Orleans and then on to Texas. He joined the Gonzales Rangers and was one of the immortal 32 who sneaked into the Alamo to aid the defenders in response to the plea from Col. Travis.

William D. Howell, Massachusetts

He was a medical doctor and had a practice in New York. He too made his way to New Orleans and joined the New Orleans Greys. They became members of Capt. William Brazeby’s infantry company.

Amos Pollard, Massachusetts

He was born in Ashburnham, Mass., in 1803 and grew up in Surrey, N. H. He graduated from the medical school at the Vermont Academy in Castleton, Vt. Married in 1828 to Fanny Parker, they had one daughter. His wife passed away in 1831.

He served as the chief surgeon at the Alamo and set up a hospital within the compound. Historians say he probably died defending the hospital.

He, William Travis, Jim Bowie and David Crockett were the only defenders of the Alamo to have their portraits painted in their lifetimes.

Gordon C. Jennings, Connecticut

He was born in 1780 or 82 (that too is disputed) in Windham, Conn. But whatever the date, he was the oldest of the defenders of the Alamo. He moved from Connecticut to Missouri then on to Texas. He served as a member of Captain William R. Carey’s artillery company. Carey called his unit the ‘Invincibles,’

William Linn, District of Maine

He lived in Boston for a while and then moved to New Orleans. There he joined the New Orleans Greys, two companies of volunteers who supported Texas independence. The Greys later merged with Balzeby’s Infantry.

Leo Caisse, the author of this story, passed away in 2020. He had published the book, The Civilian Conservation Corps: A Guide to Their Works in Rhode Island. He also published a number of historical articles, including Ears On the World in America in World War II Magazine, October, 2017. Leo earned a B.A. and M.A. in American History from Providence College and lived in East Providence, R.I.

Image of William Martin’s grave marker by Swampyank – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22024069. This story last updated in 2022.

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