Tag:

reenactors

The Shot Heard Round the World: Concord vs. Lexington vs. … Menotomy?

There was a shot, and it was heard around the world, but who fired it and where? Debate over the shot heard round the world caused more than one skirmish over the years – between Concord and Lexington.

And then Menotomy jumped into the fight.

shot-heard-round-the-world-battle-lexington

The Battle of Lexington, where the shot heard round the world was fired.

First Armed Opposition

The question, “Where was the shot heard round the world fired?” surfaced in 1824. Then the Marquis de Lafayette visited all 24 states to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of independence. When he arrived in Lexington, Mass., people told him he’d reached the ‘birthplace of American liberty.’ But then he went to Concord, where people told him the patriots made the “first forcible resistance” there.

That infuriated Lexington, having been deprived of “the honour of having raised the first standard of an armed opposition to the unjust and tyrannical measures of the mother country.”

So in 1825, the Lexington Town Meeting appointed a committee to publish a statement of facts about the April 19 affair, “as may be supported by undoubted testimony.”

From that testimony, Elias Phinney tried to put the matter to rest. He compiled a book called, History of the Battle of Lexington: On the Morning of the 19th April, 1775 (now a free ebook).

In it, he explained the confusion. Shortly after the battles, British general Thomas Gage claimed the patriots fired the first shot. To refute that claim, witnesses in Lexington said the patriots hadn’t even fired.

But in the opening days of the war, Phinney wrote, no one wanted to admit that Lexington patriots had shot at British regulars. The outcome of the war was then far from certain, and militiamen identified as shooters could wind up on the gallows.

The Shot Heard Round the World

Phinney wrote that at sunrise, 700 British regulars showed up in Lexington and about 80 militiamen came out of Buckman’s tavern. They knew the British regulars were on the march to Concord to seize arms and ammunition.

Standing on Lexington Green, militia Capt. John Parker told his men not to fire first.

What really happened was that someone — no one, to this day, knows for sure — discharged a weapon. Some people consider that the shot heard round the world.

The Battle of Lexington, by William Barnes Wollen.

Phinney, however, neglected to mention that anonymous shot. Instead, he set out to prove that the redcoats, under orders, began firing.

“Their commander, Lieut. Col. Smith, advanced a few rods, and exclaimed, “Lay down your arms and disperse, you damned rebels!–Rush on my boys! Fire!” and fired his own pistol.

Well… not quite. Smith hadn’t even arrived. It was probably Maj. John Pitcairn who told the rebels to lay down their arms. But Finney wanted to prove that the patriots did shoot back, only, however, after the British fired a second unprovoked volley. So he listed the testimony of militiamen who said they’d fired their weapons.

Testimony

Phinney wrote that William Munroe was confident some of the militiamen fired back. He testified that Ebenezer Munroe, wounded in the arm, said to him, “I’ll give them the guts of my gun.”

“We then both took aim at the main body of the British troops,–the smoke preventing our seeing anything but the heads of some of their horses,–and discharged our pieces,” Munroe testified.

“I discharged my gun into the main body of the enemy,” said Ebenezer Munroe.

William Tidd retreated up the north road as an officer on horseback pursued him. He called out, “Damn you, stop, or you are a dead man!” …”Therefore I sprang over a pair of bars, made a stand, and discharged my gun at him.”

Nathan Munroe said he jumped over a wall when the British started firing, ‘and then turned and fired at them.’

Reenactors on the march to Lexington to commemorate the shot heard round the world.

Concord Hymn

That testimony didn’t persuade Ralph Waldo Emerson. He lived in Concord in a house called the Old Manse, where his father and grandfather had watched the skirmish. In 1836, he added fuel to the debate between Concord and Lexington when he published the Concord Hymn.

It begins:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

Emerson, in essence, argued that in Concord at the Old North Bridge the patriots fired the first shots under orders. In Concord the British suffered their first fatalities and made their first retreat. So the first real resistance in the American Revolution happened in Concord, he concluded, along with the rest of the town.

Reconstructed Old North Bridge.

The animosity between Concord and Lexington simmered for the next few decades. During the bicentennial of the shot heard round the world, President Ulysses S. Grant considered skipping Massachusetts to evade the issue.

Then in 1894, Lexington petitioned the Massachusetts Legislature to proclaim April 19 as “Lexington Day.” Concord countered with a petition to call it “Concord Day.” Arlington, then called Menotomy, entered the fray, declaring patriots had fought a larger battle there during the British retreat to Boston.

Gov. Frederic T. Greenhalge came up with a compromise to honor the shot heard round the world: Patriots’ Day.

Since 1969, Patriots’ Day falls on the third Monday of the month of April. Maine and Connecticut also celebrate the holiday to commemorate the shot heard round the world.

Images: Reenactors By Jrcovert – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19639046. Old North Bridge By Daderot at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5942756. This story last updated in 2022.

2 comments 483 views

Six Places That Raised a Liberty Pole

Beginning in 1766, the liberty pole symbolized dissent from Great Britain, but over the years it took on different meanings for the people who raised them.

The first liberty pole in America was actually a tree. On Aug. 14, 1765, the Sons of Liberty hanged stamp collector Andrew Oliver in effigy from the boughs of a large elm in Boston. Forever after it’s been known as the Liberty Tree.

When someone raised a red flag – a gift of John Hancock — at the top of the tree, it meant the Sons of Liberty should meet. British soldiers later hacked it down when they occupied Boston.

As tall as 170 feet high, the liberty pole sprang up in towns throughout New England as the British Parliament imposed unpopular taxes and restrictions on the American colonies. Sometimes it stood next to a liberty tree. Sometimes it replaced the tree.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger, commenting on symbolic reisistance to Great Britain, wrote, “In this department of silent propaganda no single venture paid richer dividends than the Tree of Liberty.”

“Raising the liberty pole,” 1776 / painted by F.A. Chapman ; engraved by John C. McRae, N.Y.

The Liberty Pole

The Romans erected the first liberty pole after assassinating Julius Caesar. The murder plot’s leaders met at the Roman Forum, where someone placed a Phrygian cap from a freed slave on top of a pole to show the Romans won their freedom from Caesar’s tyranny.

In the British North American colonies, the liberty pole began to spring up in response to specific events. Shutesbury, Mass., for example, erected a liberty pole on Sept. 5, 1774, the day the Continental Congress first met.

When the pole (or tree) was capped with a red Phrygian cap or a flag, it meant the townspeople should assemble and vent their anger with the British government.

The liberty pole reappeared even after the Revolution ended. It showed resistance to the Whiskey Tax and support for the French Revolution. When the Sedition Act passed, the liberty pole reappeared — and disappeared. Federalists who supported the Sedition Act cut them down in Wallingford, Vt., and in Vassalboro, Maine.

By the mid-19^th century, people erected liberty poles as focal points for Fourth of July celebrations or as symbols of loyalty to the United States. Sometimes they stood for symbols of dissent and had nothing to do with patriotism.

The Phyrgian cap survives too — on the official seals of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Army and the state flags of West Virginia, New Jersey and New York.

Here, then, are six places where a liberty pole once stood. If you know of any others, please mention them in the comments section.

Newtown, Conn.

On May 19, 1774, 1,000 residents of Farmington, Conn., erected a liberty pole, burned an effigy of Gov. Thomas Hutchinson and a copy of the Boston Port Act.

By October 1774, Connecticut newspapers reported, “Liberty-poles from 100 to 170 feet high, are erected and erecting in most of the towns of Connecticut.”

Newtown, Conn., put up a liberty pole to commemorate the nation’s centennial in 1876. It wasn’t the town’s first liberty pole, though; a resident remembered one in his childhood, sometime in the 1830s. The wooden pole fell to the weather and the town replaced it several times. Today, Newtown’s flagpole stands as the town’s most prominent landmark.

Old Town, Maine

A disagreement among two factions of the Penobscot Indian tribe resulted in two liberty poles on their reservation.

Sometime between 1848 and 1859, the Indians on the Penobscot Reservation in Old Town, Maine, split into two groups. It started when the old sachem, Atien Swassin, was accused of drunkenness, adultery and corruption. A public council convicted him and removed him from office, but his followers remained loyal to him. They formed the Old Party and erected a liberty pole and flag.

Those loyal to the new sachem formed the New Party and also erected a liberty pole and flag.

The two groups argued and fought until the Old Party sent a messenger to several Indian tribes in Canada, inviting them to participate in a fight on the reservation, also known as Indian Island. The tribes refused, but held a Great Fire Council to try to reconcile the two parties.

The council sent two envoys to the Penobscot Reservation, and they agreed to abolish the parties, cut down the liberty poles and live in peace. But a wily leader of the Old Party persuaded the New Party to cut down its liberty pole first. After they cut it down, three members of the Old Party hugged their liberty pole so now one could cut it down without cutting their arms.

Eventually the three Old Party members repented and apologized, and the two parties managed to get along after that, according to Sprague’s Journal of Maine History in 1917.

Bedford, Mass. (Still Raising a Liberty Pole)

The liberty pole appeared in many Massachusetts towns, including Taunton, Concord, Middleborough, Barnstable, Granville and Vineyard Haven. But as far as we know, only Bedford still commemorates the raising of the liberty pole two Saturdays before Patriots Day.

The tradition began in 1965, a year after the Bedford Minuteman Company of reenactors formed. Now, minutemen reenactors from all over New England gather on the Town Common and march with fife and drum to Wilson Park. There they watch a minuteman shinny up a 25-foot pole and place a red cap on it. Then a British soldier disrupts the celebration.

The Bedford Liberty Pole Capping Parade and Ceremony is one of the opening event for all of the minuteman companies of the region;

Portsmouth, N.H.

A tall flagpole with an eagle, a shield and a carved Phrygian cap marks the spot of Portsmouth’s first liberty pole. It lies between what is now Prescott Park and Strawbery Banke.

During the run-up to the American Revolution, a tidal inlet separated the two places, and a swing bridge connected them.

On Jan 9, 1766, New Hampshire’s Sons of Liberty erected a liberty pole by the bridge to show their opposition to the Stamp Act. They hoisted a banner that read, ‘Liberty, Property and No Stamp.’ They also forced the stamp tax collector, George Meserve, to resign.

From then on, Portsmouth called the bridge Liberty Bridge.

Portsmouth put up a flagpole to honor the original liberty pole on the Fourth of July in 1824, and then replaced it with another in 1899.

At that point, Portsmouth also filled in the inlet, dismantled the Liberty Bridge, tore down dilapidated old buildings and created Prescott Park and the Strawbery Banke house museum.

The flagpole, though, still stands in the original spot.

Newport, R.I.

Newport’s patriots assembled under the liberty tree on a triangular piece of land at the corner of Thames and Farewell streets. William Read had donated the land to William Ellery and other Sons of Liberty shortly after the repeal of the Stamp Act. There, the patriots held mock funerals for liberty and hanged unpopular Loyalists in effigy. They also put up a liberty pole at a distance from the tree and put their colors on both whenever appropriate.

When the British occupied Newport, they cut down the liberty tree. Newport patriots planted an oak tree in its place to commemorate their victory in the American Revolution. It lasted until the Civil War, and another oak was planted in 1876. That one lasted only 21 years. The fourth liberty tree, a leaf beech tree, was planted in 1897 and still stands. In 1919, Henrietta C. Ellery deeded the property and the tree to the city. It is now William Ellery Park, a small pocket park.

Waterford, Vt.

Capt. John Wyman was a belligerent Revolutionary War veteran extremely proud that he had fought at Bunker Hill. After the war he moved to Dummerston, Vt., and said he wanted to be buried on a hill on his farm. He got his wish, at least until the town moved his body to a cemetery. While he rested on his farm, however, townspeople erected a liberty pole next to his grave.

However, we couldn’t figure out where the old revolutionary had been buried, and Dummerston bears no sign of a liberty pole. Nor could we find evidence of liberty poles in Bennington or Wallingford, where Vermonters had erected them. We hit pay dirt, though, in the Lower Waterford section of St. Johnsbury.

The Caledonian Record reported on May 17, 1861, “People of all parties assembled at Lower Waterford to participate in the ceremony of giving to the breeze the American flag … and to declare their devotion to the constitution and the Union.” They formed into a hollow square around the liberty pole, and ‘the flag was brought forth and flung to the breeze…’

Howard Coffin, in his book, Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont, refers to a photo that shows the flagpole in front of the Congregational Church across from the old hotel. Both still stand.

This story last updated in 2022.

4 comments 549 views

New England Places To Take Mom on Mother’s Day

Everyone knows about historic New England places like the Freedom Trail or Robert Frost’s Farm. But the New England Historical Society can take you to historic sites that you may not even realize are historic.

Loammi Baldwin House next to a portion of the Middlesex Canal

Even a modern-day restaurant may have a story to tell of long ago. Take, for example, a Chinese restaurant in suburban Boston. Sichuan Garden in Woburn, Mass., is in a former Federal-style mansion that was once the home of Loammi Baldwin, a Revolutionary War veteran. The Baldwin apple was named after him, but even that wasn’t his claim to fame. He built the Middlesex Canal, once a major commercial waterway. Remnants of the canal, which opened in 1803, can be seen right near the restaurant. Or visit the Middlesex Canal Museum 20 minutes away at 71 Faulkner St. in North Billerica.

If Mom likes Chinese, think about taking her to the Sichuan Gourmet in nearby Billerica. Or to any one of the town’s 50 restaurants. Billerica experienced an extraordinary baby boom when the War of 1812 broke out. The 90 families in the town produced 1,043 children, or 11.6 children per family. Can there be a more appropriate New England place to celebrate Mother’s Day?

Well, perhaps so … Portsmouth, R.I., Cambridge and Watertown, Mass., come to mind. Julia Ward Howe, author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, came up with the idea for Mother’s Day, though she thought June 2 would be the ideal date. She and her husband, Samuel Gridley Howe, had a summer home in Portsmouth called Oak Glen. It’s now on the National Register of Historic Places. Though the house is a private residence, there are plenty of other historic sites in Portsmouth (as well as 38 restaurants, a vineyard, topiary garden and polo). Portsmouth, which celebrated its 375^th anniversary two years ago, boasts a Revolutionary War fort, a home where the Marquis de Lafayette stayed before the Battle of Rhode Island and the training facility where John F. Kennedy learned about his PT Boat.

But we digress.

Mount Auburn Cemetery

We thought of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge and Watertown because that’s where Julia Ward Howe is buried – along with Nathaniel Bowditch, Charlotte Cushman, Fanny Farmer, Dorothea Dix, Francis Parkman, Isabella Stewart Gardner, Winslow Homer and Edwin Land – to name a few. Mount Auburn isn’t just a cemetery, it’s also a National Historic Landmark, a botanical garden, an outdoor museum of art and architecture, and an important habitat for urban wildlife. The cemetery is credited with starting the American green space movement. If the weather’s good, it’s a gorgeous place for a tranquil stroll, as there are miles of roads and paved paths.

As long as we’re thinking about Julia Ward Howe, we can’t forget Boston, which is where Howe and Gridley lived for a while on Beacon Hill. It’s also a great place to stroll if Mom doesn’t like hills, and there are lots of places to eat. The Howe-Gridley home at 13 Chestnut St., still a private residence, is on the Women’s Heritage Trail.

Sweet Pea Restaurant in Riverton, Conn.

If Mom’s into antiques, she might be into a trip to the Village of Riverton in Barkhamsted, Conn. There the Hitchcock Chair Co. is still making chairs, after a hiatus or two since Lambert Hitchcock started his factory on the Farmington River in 1818. Riverton has a historic district that includes a post office, the Riverton General store, Sweetpea’s Restaurant, Still River Antiques, Greenwood Glass Blowing Studio and Gallery, the Riverton Inn and the Hitchcock Chair Store.

Or how about Old Sturbridge Village? On Mother’s Day, all moms are admitted free. The museum’s village gardens feature medicinal plants used by mothers during the early 19th century, while village households and shops offer insight on parenting back in the day. There’s a prize drawing for two handcrafted gold leaf candle sconces worth $500. Old Sturbridge is also hosting a Mother’s Day brunch, with a children’s station as well. Click here for more.

Judith Sargent Murray

Judith Sargent Murray, born in Gloucester, Mass., is another Mom who could be honored with a visit. She was inspired by ideals of equality and empowerment that spawned the American Revolution. She was a prolific writer who compiled her writing into a three-volume set purchased by George Washington, John Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. Though she only had one daughter who lived to adulthood, she was responsible for educating 12 children. Late in life, she moved to Natchez, Miss., to be with her daughter and was pretty much forgotten after her death in 1820. It wasn’t until 1984 that 20,000 letters she’d written and copied were discovered in a Mississippi plantation house. Historians are still trying to digest them all.

Sargent House Museum

Gloucester is in itself worth a trip, with its picturesque waterfront, seafood restaurants, Cape Ann Museum, Eastern Point neighborhood and settings that appeared in the film The Perfect Storm. You might want to wait until Memorial Day weekend, when Murray’s home — now the Sargent House Museum – opens Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The high Georgian style house has paintings by another famous member of the Sargent family, John Singer.

If you’re a fan of John Singer Sargent (we certainly are) his paintings can be viewed at the Isabella Stewart Garden Museum, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Worcester Art Museum, the Portland Museum of Art, the RISD Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Currier Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.

Mark Your Calendar

Revolutionary War re-enactment at the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum

On Saturday, May 14, take a journey through the life of a colonial soldier at the Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum in Wethersfield, one of the prettiest and most historic towns in Connecticut. Revolutionary War re-enactor Anthony Riccio will demonstrate how a Continental soldier fired a musket as the finale to the museum’s “Revolutionary Soldier” Digging Deeper Tour. Riccio and Sal Carmosino will show how to use the contents of a typical soldier’s haversack, including a canteen, sealing wax, dice, flint, gunpowder horn and mouth harp. You’ll learn how the army developed under the leadership of George Washington, who stayed at one of the museum’s four colonial homes during the American Revolution. The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum even has a restored colonial privy where George Washington may well have sat. For more information, click here.

Photo of Mount Auburn Cemetery by Swampyank at Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0; Photo of Sargent House Museum by Doug Kerr on Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0 By Wikipedia.

0 comment 199 views

Crispus Attucks, ‘The First To Defy, The First To Die’ in the Boston Massacre

On the wintry night of March 5, 1770, a tall, angry sailor named Crispus Attucks led a resentful mob of civilians in a fight with British soldiers at Dock Square in Boston.

19th-century lithograph of the Boston Massacre, emphasizing Crispus Attucks

Tensions had risen between the British soldiers and the colonists since Parliament passed the hated Townshend Acts. They imposed import duties on paper, paint, lead, glass and tea.

For two years, British troops had been posted in Boston to protect Crown officials who tried to collect the tariffs.

In response, Boston boycotted British goods, which imperiled the livelihoods of struggling laborers. And off-duty British soldiers edged out American dockworkers. In addition, colonial sailors resented the British for impressing them into service in the Royal Navy.

As a result, working-class civilians and soldiers had clashed in the weeks and months before the Boston Massacre on March 5.

On that night, an argument between a wigmaker’s apprentice and a British sentry attracted a crowd, dockworkers, Irish immigrants and sailors like their leader, Crispus Attucks.

As W. Jeffrey Bolster writes in Black Jacks,

…a crowd of mostly white sailors followed a seafaring man of color into danger; and this time, into history.

Crispus Attucks

Attucks was born around 1723 somewhere near Framingham, Mass., perhaps Natick, the praying Indian town. His mother belonged to the Wampanoag tribe, and his father was an African-American slave. His mother may have been descended from John Attucks, hanged for treason because he sided with his people during King Philip’s War.

Crispus Attucks was enslaved for 27 years, probably by a man named William Brown of Framingham. In 1750 he won his freedom by running away to sea. Or he may have bought his freedom. In any case, he often worked on whalers, and in between voyages he worked as a ropemaker.

Crispus Attucks

Seafaring was one of the few occupations free men of color could enter. Twenty-five years after the American Revolution, one-fifth of the 100,000 men employed as sailors were African-American.

The sea allowed room for black leaders. White sailors would follow a skilled black seamen who could help navigate a ship out of danger.

African-American sailors also provided a vital communications link between North and South and among Africans everywhere. For example, they helped Boston abolitionist David Walker spread his inflammatory pamphlet, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, by taking copies to Southern ports.

And though the sea represented enslavement to Africans, it also gave a lifeline to freedom for people like Attucks. Northern sea captains not only employed black sailors, they helped southern slaves sail to freedom on their ships; Frederick Douglass, for example, disguised himself as a sailor to escape slavery.

The Boston Massacre

On the night of the Boston Massacre, Crispus Attucks had just returned from a voyage to the Bahamas. He planned to sail to North Carolina. But he first joined the growing crowd harassing the sentry in Dock Square.

Witnesses said his eerie war-whoop egged on the angry civilians. They threw snowballs, sea coal and oyster shells at the sentry. Attucks then poked him with a stick, called him a ‘lobster’ and said he would have one of his claws.

British runners alerted the officer of the watch, Capt. Thomas Preston. Preston then gathered seven men and joined the sentry on the steps of the Custom House. They loaded their muskets.

According to most accounts, Crispus Attucks led the crowd forward. He shouted, “Come on you rascals, you bloody backs, you lobster scoundrels, fire if you dare, God damn you, fire and be damned, we know you dare not.”

In the confusion, one soldier discharged his musket – hitting Attucks, according to witnesses. Soon after the soldiers fired into the crowd.

Paul Revere’s famous engraving of the Boston massacre.

First To Die

Crispus Attucks died on the spot, the first killed in what Samuel Adams named as the Boston Massacre. Samuel Gray , a ropemaker, and James Carpenter, a sailor, died alongside Attucks. Samuel Maverick, a 17-year-old, died the next day of his wounds. Patrick Carr, an Irish immigrant, died two weeks later.

After the killings, patriots carried the body of Crispus Attucks to Faneuil Hall, where it lay in state. Then they buried the four dead victims as heroes in the Granary Burying Ground.

Attucks became an icon of the black abolition movement.

In antebellum New York at the Coloured Seaman’s Home, boarders dined under a framed portrait of Attucks. In 1858, black abolitionists celebrated the first ‘Crispus Attucks Day’ at Fanueil Hall. Thirty years later, a monument was erected on Boston Common in honor of Attucks and the other victims, “the first to defy, the first to die.”

Reenactors typically reprise the Boston Massacre around the anniversary.

With thanks to MassMoments and Black Jacks. This story about Crispus Attucks was updated in 2023.

Image of Crispus Attucks By Original uploader was Mav at en.wikipedia. Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3559623

10 comments 2.4k views

Cracking the History of the Uncommon Common Cracker

Every so often when you’re looking through a book of old New England recipes, you’ll find one that calls for the common cracker. Well, there are plenty of common crackers around. Saltines come to mind.

But the common crackers these recipes call for are actually a specific type of common cracker. And these days, they’re anything but common.

vermont-common-cracker

If you dropped back in time, say 30 years, you’d know exactly what the recipe needs. Well into the 1970s, the common cracker was ubiquitous throughout New England.

But to get the full picture, you’d need to step back in time a bit further, to the days when fresh bread was not easy to buy and before science took over the business of baking. With preservatives and cellophane and cardboard packaging, today you can commonly eat crackers made anywhere in the world.

But in the early 1800s, that wasn’t the case. Baking science hadn’t evolved so, and the common cracker solved a problem for hungry families needing a staple that would keep for months.

Inventor of the Common Cracker

If you want to figure out who invented the first common cracker, you probably won’t have any luck. They went by many names and many bakers produced them, with small variations in size. The Boston Cracker in Massachusetts, the Portland Cracker in Maine, the Montpelier Cracker in Vermont, and so forth.

American crackers, themselves, first came into existence in Newburyport, Mass. — or so the story goes– in the bakery of Theodore Pearson. There he created pilot biscuits.

Sailors, soldiers, explorers and travelers have carried some variation of cracker with them for centuries, as far back as you can imagine. The Newburyport version of this was called hard tack (among other things).

Hard Tack

Hard tack consists of an unleavened water and flour baked to within an inch of its life. It will last virtually forever. Hard tack produced for the War of 1812 was stored and then brought out for use in the Civil War, for example, none the worse for wear. Soldiers and sailors preferred it only slightly to starvation.

But hard tack soon gave rise (forgive the pun) to more elegant crackers for domestic use. The addition of yeast, a rising period of 24 hours (and more) and a long period of kneading, followed by baking and drying, resulted in a puffy white cracker with a hard thick outer shell. Voila! The common cracker.

Preserved hardtack from U.S. Civil War, Wentworth Museum, Pensacola.

The ingenious yankees had dozens of uses for them. Many involved mashing. They commonly used them as thickeners for soup and chowder or mashed and eaten with milk. Later, they split them, buttered them, toasted them and gave them all sorts of toppings. And when potatoes began to take over the chowder, the crackers shifted to the side for crumbling in just before eating.

The folks at The Food Timeline suggest Artemus Kennedy, a baker in what is now Arlington, Mass., originated the common cracker. Kennedy, their research suggests, began baking the crackers at his bakery founded in 1805. He rode around the nearby country on horseback selling them. But no one knows where he got the idea for them.

Early Bakers

Another early baker who dabbled with the cracker was Josiah Bent, founder of the G.H. Bent company in Milton, Mass., in 1801. The company earned a reputation for making water crackers, which Bent prized for their ability to travel well on sea voyages. Bent’s water crackers are smaller than the common cracker, but he made other products as well. Bent definitely made a lot of hard tack for the government, as did Pearce, and the company revived that recipe for Civil War reenactors a century after the war itself ended.

The G.H Bent factory in Milton, Mass.

Perhaps the best known of the common cracker makers was Charles Cross of Montpelier, Vt., and his tireless horse. Charles and his brother Thomas, originally from New Hampshire, founded Cross Bakers in 1828. The business continuously operated for 151 years, evolving into C.H. Cross & Sons before going bankrupt in 1979. Then the firm and its Cross Crackers moved to Claremont, N.H.

In the early days, Cross used a horse-powered treadmill to run the machinery for his bakery. His horse alternated jobs, one day powering the treadmill, the next hauling crackers for delivery. Over time, Cross grew to have a crew of salesmen traveling throughout New England selling his crackers to stores.

But in his earliest days, Cross packed up the crackers and displayed them in barrels. And this is probably how we most associate with common crackers: stored in a barrel that served as a centerpiece of the country store where they were sold. Visitors to the store would be invited to pull up a seat, crack open a cracker and put a piece of cheese on it. In this setting, men resolved the issues of the day, shared news and settled arguments.

Then the barrels disappeared. And as the humorist John Gould wrote, “everything has been on the skids since the common cracker declined.”

Julia Child

The common cracker had a new lease on life given to it by Julia Child, who gave them her stamp of approval for use with chowder. She became rather famously obsessed with cracking the recipe, which she eventually did.

Should you need a common cracker today, there are two companies still selling them: the aforementioned G.H. Bent, known as the Bent Cookie Factory, which has continuously operated since 1801; and Vermont Common Foods, which wholesales them and has a nice collection of recipes for how to cook with them. The company acquired the Cross cracker equipment, which it uses to make them today.

You can order the Vermont Common Cracker from the Vermont Country Store. Click here. This story was updated in 2021.

Images: GH. Bent Co. By Jameslwoodward – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7907262. Hard tack By Infrogmation of New Orleans – Photo by Infrogmation, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4615956

12 comments 1.3k views