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Provincetown

Arlo Guthrie Gets Arrested for Littering

A Thanksgiving dinner clean-up in 1965 launched Arlo Guthrie on a folksinging career, created an anti-war anthem and transformed an old church into a home for a local charity called the Guthrie Center.

Arlo Guthrie in 1979.

Guthrie’s story about his 1965 arrest for illegally dumping the remains of the Thanksgiving dinner became the cult classic song, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, or just Alice’s Restaurant.

The satirical monologue tells a story set in Great Barrington, Mass., where Alice Brock and her husband Ray lived in a deconsecrated church.

The church started out as St. James Chapel in 1829, and parishioners renamed it Trinity Church after expanding it in 1866. Alice had bought the small Gothic Revival building with $2,000 from her mother.

Alice was an artist, Ray was a woodworker and architect. The young couple was influenced by Jack Kerouac and the Beats. They both worked at the Stockbridge School, a boarding school from which Arlo Guthrie had graduated in Stockbridge, Mass.

The Stockbridge School in 1954.

Arlo Guthrie, Beatnik

Arlo Guthrie, the son of folksinging legend Woody Guthrie, dropped out of college after his freshman year and came to stay with Ray and Alice for a few weeks. The Brocks acted as surrogate parents to young people like Guthrie who camped out in the church to escape “Establishment pressures” and the draft.

The neighbors hated the “Beatnik commune.” They wrote letters to the editor complaining about it, and honked their horns and yelled when driving by.

Alice opened a restaurant in the back of a row of businesses on Route 7 in Stockbridge, but it isn’t clear if she’d opened it by Thanksgiving in 1965.

Original site of Alice’s restaurant.

Guthrie, 18, and his friend Richard Robbins, 19, joined Alice and Ray’s Thanksgiving dinner that year. Afterward, Alice asked the boys to take the trash to the town dump, but they found it closed. So they threw the trash down a nearby hillside.

Hours later, Stockbridge Police Officer William ‘Obie’ Obanhein called the Brocks. He told Alice he had just spent two very unpleasant hours going through the trash until he found an envelope with the Brocks’ name and address on it.

Alice ratted out Arlo Guthrie and Richard Robbins. Officer Obie (William Obanheim), who had modeled for Stockbridge artist Norman Rockwell, didn’t like the long-haired hippies. He decided to make an example of them. So he arrested the teenagers and put them in a jail cell. Alice, furious with Obie, bailed them out.

You can get anything you want

Alice’s Restaurant

On the day of their trial, Officer Obie brought detailed photos of the crime to the courtroom. In the song, Guthrie describes his exhibits as

…27 8×10 color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us.

Guthrie also described in the song how Officer Obie watched the judge walk to the bench with a seeing-eye dog.

The judge fined Guthrie and Robbins $25 each and told them to pick up the garbage. Later, Guthrie was drafted. He was disqualified from military service because he was “morally unfit,” having been convicted of littering. He was sent to the Group W bench, where, he says in the song,

I’m sittin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.

The chorus, ‘You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant’ begins and ends the song. Guthrie sang it live on WBAI radio in New York some time in 1967. It was so popular it became a staple of non-commercial radio pledge drives, and many classic rock stations play it every Thanksgiving. Pierre Robert on WMMR 93.3 in Philadelphia plays multiple versions multiple times over the holiday.

Alice’s Restaurant came out as an album in 1967, but the 18-minute, 34-second song was too long for a single. Later, Arlo Guthrie learned President Richard Nixon owned a copy. He joked that explained the 18-1/2 minute gap in the Watergate tapes.

Afterward

The Guthrie Center

Alice sold the church, and it changed hands several times. Many Alice’s Restaurant fans continued to make pilgrimages to the church, including Arlo Guthrie in 1990.

He felt the building nurtured lasting relationships, so he raised money and bought it. He named it the Guthrie Center, and it houses the Guthrie Foundation, an interdenominational interfaith meeting place.

Officer Obie died in 1994 at the age of 69. Years after the Alice’s Restaurant incident, he said, “You know, if it had only been a couple of bags of garbage, I would have picked it up myself.”

Alice Brock and Ray Brock subsequently divorced. She lives in Provincetown, Mass. Ray Brock died in 1979 of a heart attack.

Guthrie during his 2005 Alice’s Restaurant Massacree 40th Anniversary tour.

Watch Arlo

You can watch Arlo Guthrie sing Alice’s Restaurant Massacree at Farm Aid in 2005 here. He suffered a stroke on Thanksgiving in 2019, and gave up touring. “[I]t’s time to hang up the “Gone Fishing” sign,” he wrote on his website. “Going from town to town and doing stage shows, remaining on the road is no longer an option.’

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).

This story about Arlo Guthrie and Alice’s Restaurant was updated in 2022. The image of the Stockbridge Cafe By Dtobias – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3931984. Image of the Stockbridge School by By Wlmg – Canon 35mm Camera, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28430426. Image of Arlo Guthrie in 2005 By Adam Hammer from Saint Cloud, Minn., USA – Arlo Guthrie, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2595064. Arlo Guthrie in 1979 By Warner Bros. – Original publicity photo, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41907624.

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The Great 1938 Hurricane, A Once-In-A-Lifetime Storm

The Great 1938 Hurricane took almost everyone by surprise. Sept. 21, 1938, was supposed to be a breezy fall day in New England. Few paid attention to the storm barreling up the coast.

At 12:30 PM, a 30-foot bank of what looked like fog rolled in toward Long Island. It turned out to be the storm surge, topped by waves 30 and 50 feet high.

By 4 pm, one of the most powerful and destructive hurricanes ever to hit Southern New England made landfall between Bridgeport and New Haven, Conn.

Great 1938 hurricane storm surge. Photo courtesy NOAA/NWS.

The damage was horrific. Estimates vary, but at least 400 people died that day and maybe as many as 800. The Great 1938 Hurricane crossed over the tip of Long Island, slammed into New London and raced up the Connecticut River Valley at 50 miles per hour. It destroyed cemeteries, slammed boats into shore, uprooted entire orchards and smashed structures into splinters.

Erosion from the Great 1938 hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Trashed Infrastructure

The hurricane chewed away at roadbeds, like Shore Drive in Winthrop, Mass., above. It washed away railroad tracks, sent bridges downstream and downed electrical wires, leaving some New Englanders without electricity for weeks.

The hurricane wiped away entire communities, altered the shoreline of Long Island, washed away bridges, severed train service between New York and Boston and between cities in Connecticut and Rhode Island. It brought down 20,000 miles of power and telephone lines.

The Great 1938 Hurricane pushed the Tulip onto land. Photo courtesy Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

In New London, Conn., high waters pushed a five-masted ship, Marsala, into a warehouse and started a fire that demolished a quarter-mile section of the city’s business district. The hurricane also tossed the lighthouse tender Tulip, pictured above, ashore.

The Great 1938 Hurricane washed homes off their foundations. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Houses washed off their foundations, like the one above that landed in the Cape Cod Canal.

A Wild Ride

Perhaps the most astounding story of the storm comes from the Moore family of Westerly, R.I. As the storm grew stronger, the family tried to evacuate their beachfront home, but could not. As the ocean waves began surging into the house, Catherine Moore recalls her father bracing against the front door literally trying to hold back the ocean.

The family moved first to the second floor and finally to the third floor to stay above the storm surge, watching as house after house succumbed and neighbors were washed away. Finally, the waves overwhelmed their own house, lifting it off its foundation.

“Next thing I knew, we were floating,” Moore recalled. “We were on the water with the waves crashing over us, and part of the house still attached, one of the walls still attached to this piece of floor, and it almost acted as a sail.”

In all, 10 people clung to that bit of floor as it hurtled across the Sound to land in Connecticut. There the family stepped back on to land and back into their lives.

Damage From the 1938 Hurricane

Westerly, a bastion of quiet old wealth, never quite regained its prestige after the Great 1938 Hurricane. Charlestown, R.I., lost a bit more: 160 out of 200 homes were annihilated.

Aftermath of the Great 1938 Hurricane in Hartford, Conn. Photo licensed under public domain by Wikipedia Commons.

The storm forced the Connecticut River over its banks, inundating cities and towns with floodwater. In Hartford, the river reached 35.4 feet, 19.4 feet above flood stage. Above, Bushnell Park in Hartford after the storm.

The Great 1938 Hurricane submerged coastal towns under eight feet of water. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Parts of Falmouth and New Bedford, Mass., were submerged under eight feet of water.

Rhode Island got battered by the Great 1938 Hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island got the worst of it. Parts of downtown Providence were under 14 feet of water, with people sheltering on the second and third floors of buildings. According to the National Weather Service, a storm surge of 12 to 15 feet destroyed most coastal homes, yacht clubs and marinas on Narragansett Bay.

The Great 1938 Hurricane inflicted tremendous damage on shipping. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Above, the steamship Monhegan sits at a pier in Providence after sinking during the hurricane. Two-thirds of the boats in New Bedford Harbor sank. Before the storm, 100 boats fished the waters between Point Judith, R.I., and New London. Afterward, the hurricane left only three.

One of the 19,000 buildings destroyed by the hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Cost of the 1938 Hurricane

In New Hampshire, fire destroyed four buildings in Peterborough and wind blew down part of the Cog Railway on Mount Washington. And in Vermont, the storm caused a train derailment and uprooted maple trees and apple orchards. The hurricane blew the house pictured above onto railroad tracks.

As one of the most costly hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland, it caused damage later estimated at $308 million. A total of 4,500 homes were destroyed and 25,000 damaged. The storm totaled about 26,000 automobiles and blew over 20,000 electrical poles. And high winds knocked down an estimated 2 billion trees in New York and New England, devastating forests.

The storm soaked an unknown number of pants. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The dead filled funeral homes. Homeless refugees crammed into town halls, armories and fire stations. Clinics then ran out of typhoid vaccine. It took a week to restore power in Provincetown, and 200 men spent a week trying to open the roads to Newport, R.I.

The Clean-Up

Cleaning up timber damaged by the Great 1938 Hurricane took years.

The storm blew down so many trees that paper mills processed them for nine years.

The blowdowns posed a dilemma: What to do with enough woody debris to nearly fill Rhode Island? And how to do it quickly enough so it didn’t set off tremendous forest fires?

President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration to clean up the mess. It then took two years for the 50 CCC camps and 15,000 WPA workers in the region to finish the job.

The Northern Kraft Paper Mill in Howland, Maine. In 1947, the mill still used wood cut from trees downed by the Great 1938 hurricane.

To see newsreel footage of the Great 1938 Hurricane, click here.

This story was updated in 2022. With thanks to The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns. If you’d like to read about a wild ride one family took during the storm, click here. If you’d like to read about another family’s ordeal stranded on a high floor in their house, click here.

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Flashback Photos: Tourists Visit Provincetown, 1940

Edwin Rosskam took these photos of Provincetown, Mass., in August 1940. Rosskam, with his wife Louise, chronicled American life during the Great Depression for the Farm Security Administration.

Provincetown tourists, 1940. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The caption on the photo above reads, “Tourists fresh off the boat from Boston. With only two hours in town, they buy seashells, dinners, trinkets, and rides on the sightseeing bus.”

Provincetown musicians. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

“Local talent makes music on a Sunday afternoon under soldiers’ monument,” wrote Rosskam. Provincetown had been a whaling and fishing center in the 19th century, and by the 1890s it attracted writers, artists and tourists.

Provincetown tourists. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

The Portland Gale in 1898 wrecked much of Provincetown’s fishing industry, and the town then grew more dependent on tourism. Here, Rosskam photographed tourists on the street.

Provincetown art class. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

“Provincetown’s reputation as an art center provides ample income for several art schools,” wrote Rosskam. “Outdoor classes are likely to pop up anywhere.” The Cape Cod School of Art, the first outdoor school of art in the United States, was founded in Provincetown in 1898 by Charles Webster Hawthorne.

Shacks. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Shacks used by fishermen and members of the lifesaving service were converted in the early 20th century to homes for tourists, artists and writers. Henry David Thoreau described antebellum shacks, used for the lifesaving service and as refuges for shipwrecked sailors in Provincetown and Truro.

Provincetown Shacks

The lifesaving shacks were then replaced in the 1920s by the Dune Shacks of Peaked Hill. The shacks had no electricity or running water. But they did have such guests as Jack Kerouac, e. e. cummings, Norman Mailer, Jackson Pollack and, most famously, Eugene O’Neill. They are now on the National Register of Historic Places.

Truro touris house. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Truro tourist house. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Rosskam captured these tourists at home in a Truro tourist house.

This story last updated in 2022.

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Jolley Allen Missed Evacuation Day in 1776 and It Cost Him Everything

Jolley Allen was a nervous man by March 16, 1776. A Boston merchant who arrived from England in 1755, Allen was a Loyalist through and through.

The British evacuate Boston, March 17, 1776.

He had sold, among other things, some of the tea that so infuriated his new countrymen and prompted the Boston Tea Party. And he had been threatened with tarring and feathering for it.

So while he hadn’t accumulated a lot of friends, his connections had allowed him to prosper in the colonies, and he amassed a tidy estate. If you think the idea of losing it all would infuriate him, you’d be right. That’s why he planned to leave Boston behind for a return to England.

Siege of Boston

By March 16, 1776, the standoff between the British and Rebel forces in Boston was as tense as it would get. The rebels under the direction of George Washington had the city under siege. The colonists had fortified Dorchester Heights with cannon, but they were outnumbered by the 10,000 British soldiers who held the city of Boston.

The British, led by Gen. William Howe, faced their own dilemma. They had won the Battle of Bunker Hill, but with enormous casualties. One more such pyrrhic victory and the British might well lose the whole war.

Knox’s noble train of artillery

With fresh cannon brought by Henry Knox now looking down on the British from Dorchester, Howe had no sane alternative but to retreat by sea. The British, however, needed to provide cover to the Loyalist families that had supported them through their 11-month siege in Boston. They needed an orderly escape.

The colonists, meanwhile, wanted the British to leave without burning Boston. With an informal agreement in place that the British would not burn the town in exchange for the colonials not attacking the British ships as they departed, the standoff dragged on for nearly two weeks. During that time, Loyalists tried to load their ships for departure and the colonists waited.

Evacuation

By March 16, several minor skirmishes had occurred and Howe was convinced Washington was losing patience. And so he ordered the evacuation of Boston the following day, March 17. Jolley Allen was ready to go. His plan was to be on board a ship and simply fall in line and follow the British wherever they went.

British defenses in Boston, 1776, Courtesy Library of Congress

On March 11, Jolley Allen had procured the services of a private sloop, Sally, to transport him to England. The ship would be piloted by a 20-year veteran sea captain, Robert Campbell. He spent the next several days procuring introductions and letters of recommendation to assist him in his transition. He also loaded the contents of his two warehouses on to the ship, along with his personal belongings. His furniture alone he valued at more than 1,000 pounds.

Unpleasant Surprise

By March 14, Jolley, his wife and their seven children had boarded the ship. As more than 100 British ships began leaving on March 17, however, Robert Campbell’s ineptitude became clear. Over the next 24 hours, Campbell managed to collide with two other fleeing British ships, nearly capsize Sally and finally run it aground while the British ships sailed away for Nova Scotia.

It was then that Allen learned Campbell had never been to sea, and knew nothing about sailing. Before long, 20 other passengers from the lower decks joined him in his cabin. Could they join the Allens in their stateroom, the others asked, so that they might all die together?

Provincetown, undated, Courtesy New York Public Library

Allen was flabbergasted to learn that a plank had given way and the ship was filling with water. The captain seemed unable to offer any suggestions. The passengers and crew managed to anchor the ship near Provincetown. When he got to shore in Provincetown it became obvious that Jolley was part of the evacuation, and he was arrested.

Initially some townsfolk offered to secure his belongings, for a sizeable fee. But a friendly stranger clued Allen in that they had already started ransacking his things. By the time he returned to retrieve them, they disappeared.

Back Home

Allen had to go before the General Court to plead his case. On his way from Provincetown, he passed through Boston and stopped at his old house. His barber had taken it over, but he let him rent a room for two nights.

What little remained of Allen’s belongings disappeared for good when he placed them in the safekeeping of two Boston town fathers.

Finally, in February of 1777, Allen made good his escape and fled to London, where he pleaded his case for compensation, published in Account of the Sufferings and Losses of Jolley Allen, a Native of London. Whether he exaggerates or not is unclear, as we only have his side of things recorded.

This story was updated in 2023.

Image: Provincetown By Scan by NYPL – https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-25c5-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48668409. British defenses By Thomas Hyde Page – Library of Congress G3764.B6S3 1777 .P3 Faden 32, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4392826.

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Black Sam Bellamy, The Pirate Who Fought Smart, Harmed Few, Scored Big

Black Sam Bellamy became the wealthiest pirate in history not because of greed but because of anger – anger at the English system that exploited poor country boys and sailors like him.

British press gang

After his early death in 1717 he left a legacy of folklore on Cape Cod and a ship loaded with treasure off its coast. In 1984, treasure hunters found his ship and in 2018 archaeologists believed they found his remains.

Black Sam Bellamy ran his pirate operation democratically. His men were slaves and Indians and sailors pressed into service. Bellamy treated them equally and let them vote on important decisions.

In a famous speech attributed to Bellamy, he scorned the wealthy merchants he plundered: “They rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage.”

Pirate historians have traced Bellamy’s career, summarized by Colin Woodard as ‘Fight smart, harm few, score big.’

Robin Hood of the Sea

Bellamy and his crew captured 53 ships before he died in a shipwreck at 28. They called him Black Sam Bellamy because he eschewed the fashion for powdered wigs and wore his black hair tied with a black satin bow. He had good manners, dressed neatly in fancy clothes, and he always wore four ornate dueling pistols in his sash.

Black Sam Bellamy called himself ‘Robin Hood of the Sea,’ and his men called themselves ‘Robin Hood’s men.’ There is no record of him ever killing a captive, and he often returned captured ships and cargo if they didn’t suit his purpose.

We know little of Black Sam Bellamy’s early life, though he is presumed to have been born in Devon in the west of England. The woman who was probably his mother died in childbirth and was buried Feb. 23, 1689. His parents were likely tenant farmers, hovering on the edge of starvation like half of England.

Bellamy left home at a young age for a port – London, Bristol or Plymouth. He became a ship’s boy at 13 at the outset of the War of Spanish Succession. By the end of the war in 1712 he was a skilled sailor.

Turn to Piracy

Gold recovered from the Whydah

No one knows how Black Sam Bellamy ended up on board a British ship. A press gang may have grabbed him. In the early 18^th century, Britain didn’t have anywhere near enough sailors. The press gangs tricked country boys into signing up or simply kidnapped and forced them on board ships.

Once in service, ship captains routinely cheated sailors of their wages. They gave the sailors vague IOUs instead of wages, or paid them for their last voyage just before they left port for the next. Sometimes they simply didn’t pay them at all.

Black Sam Bellamy sailed to Cape Cod in 1714 or early 1715 to seek his fortune, arriving in Eastham where he may have had relatives. There he had an affair with the beautiful Maria Hallett, all of 15. After impregnating Maria he sailed to Florida to recover Spanish treasure with his friend from Rhode Island, Paulsgrave Williams. Others got to the treasure first.

The two men turned to piracy under Benjamin Hornigold, but the crew mutinied and elected Bellamy as their captain.

Hen-hearted Numbskulls

In 1717 Bellamy and his crew captured the Whydah Gally, a slave ship he refitted as a flagship with 28 guns. The Whydah had an advanced weapons system capable of attacking any man-of-war in the Americas.

In a year, Black Sam Bellamy and his crew raided 54 ships along the U.S. East Coast and the Caribbean. All in all they captured treasure worth $120 million today, according to Forbes magazine. That made him the top-earning pirate.

The Whydah Gally also captured a sloop under the command of a Capt. Beers. Black Sam Bellamy wanted to let him keep his ship, but his crew had voted to burn it. Bellamy asked the captain to join the pirates, and Beers declined. That allegedly inspired the speech attributed to the pirate:

I am sorry they won’t let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a mischief, when it is not to my advantage; damn the sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of use to you.

Though you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security; for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by knavery; but damn ye altogether: damn them for a pack of crafty rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls.

They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make then one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?

Black Sam Bellamy Lost and Found

Map of the Whydah wreck

The Whydah and the Mary Anne, commanded by Williams, headed north to New England. Williams and the Mary Anne broke off to Rhode Island, where he wanted to visit his family. Bellamy continued on, perhaps to Eastham to see Maria, but a terrific Nor’easter on April 26, 1717 wrecked the Whydah off the coast of Wellfleet. Black Sam Bellamy and all but two of the 142 men on board perished.

Eventually, 102 of the bodies from the Whydah Gally were buried in a mass grave. The Mary Anne was shipwrecked a few days later, leaving seven survivors.

In 1984, underwater explorer Barry Clifford rediscovered the Whydah in 14 feet of water and five of sand. The Whydah’s artifacts can be seen at Expedition Whydah Sea-Lab & Learning Center in Yarmouth, Mass.

Since Clifford found the wreck of the Whydah, archaeologists continued to search the site. In 2018 they announced they may have found the remains of Black Sam Bellamy himself.

Legacies

The U.K. Telegraph reported scientists found a femur encased in a mass of iron, stone, silver, gold, tools and weapons. They also found pieces of a crushed helmet, indicating a violent death. And they discovered an ornate pistol wrapped in a ribbon that probably belonged to Black Sam Bellamy.

In 2016, an Englishman from Devon came to the Whydah Pirate Museum with documents that showed he was descended from Black Sam Bellamy. Scientists from the University of New Haven tested the bones for a DNA match with the presumed descendant. They found the man’s DNA didn’t match Sam Bellamy’s.

However, in 2021, investigators from the Pirate Museum announced they’d found six pirate skeletons in hard masses of minerals from the shipwreck site. Clifford said he hoped to identify the pirates and connect them with any descendants.

Black Sam Bellamy did leave another legacy. Maria Hallett gave birth to Bellamy’s baby, who died. She spent a short time in jail. According to local lore, she lost her mind or withdrew from society and moved to a shack in Wellfleet. People called her ‘Goody Hallett’ or ‘The Witch of Wellfleet.’ Today a meadow in Wellfleet is known as Goody Hallett Meadow.

With thanks to The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard. This story about Black Sam Bellamy was updated in 2023.

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The Valentine’s Day Storm of 1940

The Valentine’s Day Storm of 1940 barreled into New England just 15 months after The Great New England Hurricane of 1938. Heavy snows and high winds made it one of the most memorable storms in Boston’s history.

Pedestrians struggle to stay upright during the Valentine’s Day Storm.

The blizzard caught Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts by complete surprise, as the National Weather Service had predicted ‘rain and light snow.’

The storm killed 31 people, paralyzed travel and stranded thousands for days. It closed every department store in Boston, something the Great New England Hurricane hadn’t done.

Valentine’s Day Storm

It started benignly with flurries in the morning of Valentine’s Day and developed explosively. As the afternoon wore on, the snow began to fall at a rate of three inches per hour — for seven hours. Winds as high as 60 mph drove drifts as high as 10 feet, making the roads impassable.

The National Weather Service forecast rain mixed with snow in the afternoon. Office workers left home in the morning wearing heels and had to struggle through the snow on the way home.

Workers struggling through the snow on one of Boston’s wharves.

The storm created blizzard conditions throughout New England and into New York and Pennsylvania. It halted all train travel throughout New England. Two thousand people who had come to see Sonja Henie perform at the Boston Garden were stranded. They thronged North Station’s Hotel Manger lobby and restaurant all night long. The trains didn’t run until 10 a.m.

Notice of train delays during the storm.

Notice of train delays during the Valentine’s Day Storm.

Some managed to find hotel rooms at pricey rates. When the hotel rooms filled up, hotels put cots in their lobbies and ballrooms. Many Henie fans hung out in hotel bars for several days, still in their dinner jackets and evening gowns.

So many cars were stranded that Boston police enforced a ban on automobiles entering the city.

An auto stuck in the snow during the Valentine’s Day Storm.

Poetic License

In Provincetown, the Advocate reported the Valentine’s Day Storm began with ‘an angry, darkening sky that shone dull green’ in the surf. The northeast wind ripped shingles off the town hall with such force that a shingle cut through a parked car. About 25 men and women slept in chairs in town hall overnight. Winds up to 80 mph were recorded along Beach Point.

Charles Olson

The Valentine’s Day Storm launched the poetry career of Modernist Charles Olson. Olson, then 29, was about to leave Gloucester, Mass., to work in New York City. On the night of the awful storm he left his mother in the house near the Annisquam River, jumped off the porch and wandered down to the bay to be bombarded by sheets of ice blown in from the sea.

Years later he wrote an epic series of verse called The Maximus Poems, which alluded to the storm as marking the time he started writing poetry.

there was a Dance Hall there
like literally ye Olde
West on the spot what he
looked out and saw the sun gleaming
on the snow after
the St Valentine Day’s
Storm spring
1940

The Clean-Up

The next day crowds of men wanting work waited at the City Yards on Albany Street, reported the Boston Globe. It took 17,000 of them to dig Boston out of the snow, as 9,000 Works Progress Administration workers joined the 7,500 regular public workers and extras. Any man with a shovel could go to the local work yard and get a job. The city ran out of shovels and they had to supply their own.

A firefighter tries to shovel out his truck during the storm.

A firefighter tries to shovel out his truck during the Valentine’s Day Storm.

Emergency workers cleared train tracks with bonfires, oil lamps and flame throwers. Boston hired 17,000 men to shovel the city out. That included 9,000 WPA employees and 7,500 regular workers. Any man who showed up with a shovel could get work. The shovel was crucial, for the city ran out of them.

In Medfield, Mass., the snow was higher than the tops of cars.

For days afterward in New Bedford, the family and friends of the crew of the Palmer Island awaited news of the 49-foot dragger, feared lost at sea during the storm. The Coast Guard scoured the seas for it and after three days found the Palmer Island 120 miles south of Block Island. On Sunday, Feb. 18, the Coast Guard towed the vessel back to New Bedford with all 10 crewmen aboard.

With thanks to The Boston Globe. Photos, except for Charles Olson, courtesy the Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection. This story about the Valentine’s Day storm was updated in 2022.

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