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Rutherford B. Hayes

“Wormley, The Caterer, Dead”

That’s what The Boston Sunday Globe of Oct. 19, 1884, proclaimed. James Wormley the proprietor of the famous Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C., died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston after unsuccessful surgery to treat his chronic kidney stones.

James Wormley

Wormley came to Boston to seek relief from the renowned surgeon Henry J. Bigelow, an early proponent of anesthesia and a pioneer in surgery for vesicle calculus (bladder stones). The Boston-born Bigelow was a graduate of Boston Latin and Harvard and served as a surgeon at Mass General for over 40 years.

Painting of first operation under ether at Mass General. Bigelow is standing third from right.

That Wormley chose Dr. Bigelow and Mass General says a lot about the physician and the institution, which opened its doors in 1821 and has been a national leader in medical advancement ever since. But it was clear that Wormley was gravely ill when he came to Boston; Dr. Bigelow said his chances of survival were about one in a thousand, according to The Evening Star of Washington, D.C.

Renowned surgeon Henry J. Bigelow of Mass General.

Who Was Wormley?

James Wormley was a Black caterer and hotelier born in Washington, D.C. His hotel was one of the most elegant and modern in Washington, renowned for its cuisine. It was frequented by the political power brokers of the post-Civil-War period. It served as the venue of the infamous Compromise of 1877, also known as the Wormley Agreement. The deal settled the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Republican Rutherford Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden by throwing the election to Hayes. The Republican victory led to the removal of federal troops from the South and the effective end of Reconstruction.

The Wormley Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Wormley was one of the most prominent African Americans in the country during the 1870s and 1880s. An ardent proponent of Black civil rights, he counted among his friends Frederick Douglass and John Mercer Langston, the U.S. minister to Haiti. His sons served in the army and navy during the Civil War.

The Massachusetts Connection

Wormley had many connections to Massachusetts’ political leaders. U.S. Representative Samuel Hooper from Marblehead helped him purchase his hotel in 1871, acting as a silent partner. In 1884, The Boston Globe reported that Sen. George Frisbee Hoar of Worcester entertained U.S. Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray of Nahant at Wormley’s at the extravagant cost of $100 a plate.

Congressman Samuel Hooper from Marblehead

But his closest relationship was with Sen. Charles Sumner of Boston, the radical Republican. In 1871, Wormley and Sumner persuaded Congress to fund the first public school for African Americans in Washington, which became known as the Wormley School. The two became lifelong friends. In fact, Sumner gave him a gift of his personal copy of the signed 13^th Amendment, abolishing slavery. Wormley was among the attendants as Sumner lay dying after suffering a heart attack in Washington.

Senator Charles Sumner

In May 1884, just five months before his own death, he received “the thanks of the Commonwealth” for the gift of his good friend Charles Sumner’s portrait. That portrait still hangs today in the Statehouse.

Currier and Ives print, Death of Charles Sumner. Wormley is sitting in chair.

About the Author

James F. Lee is a freelance writer and blogger whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, and AAA Tidewater Traveler Magazine. He recently posted Phillis Wheatley’s Boston: Vestiges of the poet’s life remain today. He can be reached at www.jamesflee.com.

SOURCES: Boston Globe Archives, whitehousehistory.org, James Wormley Recognition Project. IMAGES: James Wormley, Unknown Author Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International — CC BY-SA 4.0; Wormley Hotel, Unknown Author {{PD-US}}; Henry J. Bigelow, Unknown Author https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0015953.html Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0; ether operation painting by Robert C. Hinckley, from the Collection of the Boston Medical Library {{PD-US}}; Samuel Hooper {{PD-US]]; death of Sumner, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, ID cph. 3b50 102 {{PD-US}}.

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John Humphrey Noyes Finds Out Sex and Silverware Don’t Mix

John Humphrey Noyes started out in the 19^th century as a conventional Yale-trained minister until he found out he was perfect and without sin.

He attracted hundreds of followers who liked thinking they were perfect, too. They followed John Humphrey Noyes to his utopian communities in Putney, Vt., Wallingford, Conn., and Oneida, N.Y.

There they prospered. But John Humphrey Noyes liked sex as much as he liked being perfect, and he wound up fleeing to Canada.

He left a legacy, though, on millions of dining room tables throughout the world.

John Humphrey Noyes

He was born in Brattleboro, Vt., on Sept. 3, 1811, with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father, John Noyes, went to Congress, and his mother, Polly Hayes Noyes had a nephew who became president of the Unite States, Rutherford B. Hayes.

John Humphrey Noyes’ well-to-do family sent him to Dartmouth and then to Yale Theological Seminary.

In his second year in seminary, he decided Christ had already come a second time in 70 A.D. He then had a religious conversion, his second, after which he proclaimed he did not sin. His friends, unsurprisingly, began to think him unbalanced.

He converted a woman named Harriet Holton to his doctrine of Perfectionism, and they married in 1838. During the first six years of marriage she gave birth five times, but only one of their children lived. The couple then began living apart. He said the separation brought them both satisfaction that they had never before experienced.

Utopian Living

John Humphrey Noyes attracted about 40 followers of his Perfectionism, mostly New England farmers. After Yale kicked him out of school, Noyes and his followers moved to Putney, Vt.

In the mid-1840s, the Putney community began to experiment with communal living.

The Oneida community between 1865-75.

They shared some traits with the Shakers. For example, they believed in working for the good of the community, not just for oneself. And the whole community raised their children.

Unlike the Shakers, who didn’t have sex, the Perfectionists believed in having sex with multiple partners.

They didn’t hide their beliefs, which horrified Vermonters. A mob drove them out of Putney even as the state attorney general issued arrest warrants for John Humphrey Noyes on the grounds of adultery.

The Perfectionists moved to Oneida, N.Y., where they took out a mortgage for $2,000 on 40 acres of land, an old house, an abandoned Indian hut and an old Indian saw mill.

Silverware and Hats

They started out poor, sleeping on the floor of the old house. But they worked hard, sawing lumber for neighbors, raising crops and small fruit and making rustic furniture, silk thread, traps and palm frond hats. John Humphrey Noyes took up blacksmithing. Eventually the Oneidans starting making their famous silverware.

The community benefited from its remoteness and its simple living. It was so far from population centers that its young men didn’t have to register for the draft during the Civil War. And they used so few consumer goods they reinvested their profit in their business ventures.

The Perfectionists set up a satellite community in Wallingford, Conn., where they made matchboxes, and in Brooklyn, N.Y., where they made traveling bags. Two other small offshoots started in Newark, N.J., and Cambridge, Vt. After about a decade of hard work, they had accumulated a net worth of $67,000.

By 1875, they were worth $180,580 with about 300 members.

Criticism Prevents Novel Reading

They created a unique form of government called ‘criticism.’ It cured all sorts of faults, including selfishness, idleness, rudeness and a love of novel-reading.

Cartoon of Charles Guiteau

In 1875 a New York journalist named Charles Nordhoff visited the Oneida community and watched a session of criticism. John Humphrey Noyes sat in a large rocking chair as a group of 15 criticized a young man named Charles, who sat in the middle of the room.

Charles, they told him, sometimes used slang, acted supercilious and haughty and sometimes used pet names for people he liked. One critic said Charles had condemned the beefsteak as tough and made other unnecessary remarks about the food on the table.

Charles himself conceded he had started to think religion wasn’t important, but he was correcting that error.

Criticism, apparently, didn’t work too well on one member of the community. Charles Guiteau lived in Oneida for five years before going off to assassinate President James Garfield.

Stirpiculture

But it was John Humphrey Noyes’ views on sex that got him into trouble. He believed in ‘complex marriage,’ or what others call polygamy.

He also believed people should create children intentionally rather than through haphazard sex. But John Humphrey Noyes believed the Christian view of sex — limited to marriage — had the effect of sexually starving young people from about age 14 until they wed.

He solved the problem by having young men practice having sex with older Perfectionist women who’d gone through menopause. That way, the young men could practice delaying gratification, which was Noyes’ preferred method of birth control. He also believed women had the right to choose whether to have a child.

John Humphrey Noyes reserved most of the community’s young virgins for himself.

Another odd practice: Men asked women to have sex through a third party. At least that cushioned the letdown.

By 1869, John Humphrey Noyes began encouraging the best and brightest young people to have children. He called it ‘stirpiculture’; others called it eugenics. That’s when the community began to have trouble, because parents wanted to raise their own children.

Families also began to raise their children for a competitive, capitalist society rather than for the communal good.

Trouble

Noyes also ran afoul of Anthony Comstock, a young New York reformer who founded the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice.
In 1879, John Humphrey Noyes heard a rumor that he was to be arrested for breaking the state’s marriage laws, so he fled to Canada. He died there on April 13, 1886.

The Oneida community went on to form a corporation. The business leaders determined the new company’s most profitable products were plated spoons. Eventually, the Oneida company grew into the world’s largest producer of flatware.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six New England Presidential Visits and the Stories Behind Them

New England is full of sites that hosted past presidential visits as the country’s leaders came north in search of votes, campaign cash or just a vacation. Here are six of them:

Providence, 1843

Market Square, Providence, 1844.

In 1843, President John Tyler’s presidency was reeling. Tyler was the first vice president to ascend to the presidency because the incumbent died. His detractors let him know it. They dubbed him the ‘Accidental President’ or ‘His Accidency.’

By 1843, Tyler was facing dramatic turnover in his cabinet. His efforts to negotiate the annexation of Texas into the United States was causing an uproar, since Taylor wanted it to join the United States as a slave-holding state.

Buffeted by Washington, Tyler decided to take his program to the people. He headed north, and the wildly popular response encouraged him to mount a third-party bid for office in 1844.

Tyler arrived before dawn on June 15 at Stonington, Conn., where a crowd of 2,000 greeted him.

Travelling north toward Rhode Island, the crowds began swelling around North Kingstown. The New York Herald noted that Providence was unprepared for the huge outpouring of people eager to see the president:

The curiosity to see him was immense. The Common Council of Providence mismanaged everything most horribly; a mob surrounded the cars, and set all order at defiance. An old man cried out, “Here, I’ve had my pocket picked of my pocket book.”

Tyler traveled the streets to Brown University and back to Market Square, where he ate at the Franklin House, an inn that used to stand across from the Market House.

Across the river he did some handshaking at the first indoor mall in America, the Westminster Arcade: “The president then went into a queer looking place called Westminster, and shook hands with 5,000 people,” reported the Herald.

A delegation from Lowell, Mass. buttonholed Tyler and persuaded him to visit that city, as well. He traveled there after the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument. There he learned of a new disaster brewing for his administration – his attorney general had died. The president decided to return to Washington rather than continue his tour, but his spirits were greatly improved.

Tyler finally dropped out of the 1844 race when the Whigs approved his plan to annex Texas.

The Westminster Arcade remains open to this day in Providence. Today it’s a shopping destination with two stories of apartments.

Sargent’s Purchase, N.H., 1869

Stereo-graph photo of Ulysses Grant atop Mount Washington in 1869.

In the summer of 1869, Washington’s heat drove the new president, Ulysses S. Grant, to visit New England with his wife and children.

On Aug. 27, 1869, the Grant family climbed Mount Washington. They took the three-year-old cog railway, the first cog railway in the world. Sylvester Marsh designed the railway for the mountain’s steep grade. The train has cog wheels that mesh with a toothed rail in the center of the track.

It wasn’t the first train the Grants took on that vacation. They rode from Newport, R.I., to Boston, where a large crowd greeted them. They took another train to Nashua, N.H., where they were again greeted by thousands of well-wishers. On they went to Manchester, where Grant toured the printing department of the Amoskeag Mills and greeted some 3,000 millworkers lined up to see him.

In Concord, Grant told the welcoming crowd that it was his first visit to New Hampshire and he was sorry an injury prevented him from shaking hands.

At 9 a.m. the next day, the presidential party left the Crawford House in Crawford Notch, N.H., for what was then called the Sky Railroad. According to news reports, the president was particularly struck with the simplicity and safety of the air brake.

The Grants seated themselves in the car and moved skyward. A cannon was fired when they reached the summit and the president was told the Harvards had lost the boat race. “Well I am very sorry to hear it,” Grant said.

After lunch, the presidential party headed to Littleton and then Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

The Cog Railway to the top of Mount Washington has never stopped operating.

Brattleboro, Vt., 1877

Brooks House, Brattleboro, Vt.

Until 2000, history counted the election of 1876 the closest contest for the White House ever. Rutherford B. Hayes, an Ohio Republican, won the Electoral College. Samuel Tilden, a Democrat, won the popular vote.

The two parties hammered out the compromise of 1877, in which Hayes got the White House and the Democrats got everything else. They won an end to the Reconstruction period of federal control of the South.

Without federal troops to intervene when African-Americans were harassed, Democrats soon took control of the southern statehouses. Their anti-black policies that survived for decades.

As a longtime supporter of Reconstruction, Hayes wanted to “wipe out the color line.” His efforts at promoting racial harmony failed. Perhaps no one could have succeeded.

In his first months in office, Hayes had to authorize the military to repulse Mexican criminal bandits terrorizing the border and put down the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.

He needed an escape, and Vermont was the tonic. Hayes’ grandfather, Rutherford, built a home at West Brattleboro in 1780. His son, also Rutherford, built at Dummerston before moving to Delaware, Ohio, where the president Rutherford Hayes was born in 1822.

On his 1877 return visit, Hayes stayed with his cousin William Bigelow in West Brattleboro. Bigelow was said to be the wealthiest man in Vermont at one time. A large reception was held at the Brooks House in Brattleboro, and the time spent in Vermont restored Hayes’ outlook.

Vermont would retain a special place in Hayes’ life. After leaving office, he was a regular visitor. Some reports held that he had become engaged to Mary Ann Hayes Bigelow, who had been host to Hayes in 1877 with her husband William. The wedding had been delayed because of the death of Mary Ann’s son Russell, and Rutherford died before it could take place.

Hayes ordered Dummerston Granite shipped to Ohio from the family’s Vermont homestead and used it as the base for the stone that marks his and his wife’s grave.

Today Brattleboro’s Hotel Brooks is still open and operating as a shopping and dining destination.

Adams, Mass., 1897

Postcard showing statue of William McKinley at Adams, Mass.

Adams and North Adams, Mass., never had a better friend than William McKinley. His trade policies strengthened the textile industry and helped the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company grow to be a world leader in textile manufacturing.

The Plunkett family, who owned the mills, invited McKinley to stay with them twice. In 1897 he was given the honor of laying the cornerstone for the Adams Free Library. To this day the library contains a chair that was especially constructed for McKinley for the occasion.

The Plunketts also arranged for him to give a speech to the thousands of attendees at the Hoosac Valley Agricultural Fair on Sept. 22, 1897.

McKinley would return to Adams for a week stay beginning June 21, 1899, during which he was treated more like royalty. He traveled through Holyoke, Westfield, Pittsfield and Springfield, encountering huge crowds at each.

It was North Adams that pulled out all the stops. The city erected a viewing stand for McKinley to watch a special parade that featured bands, school children, military units and mounted police. Pressed to give an impromptu speech, McKinley marveled at the prosperity manufacturing had brought to the area:

I know something about North Adams from my visit two years ago, but as I rode through the beautiful streets of your city today I must confess I was wholly unprepared to witness its splendid progress and prosperity.

When McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist in 1901, no town mourned the loss more than Adams. The town erected a statue in his honor that stands to this day in front of the library he dedicated. It was rededicated in 1903.

Poland Springs, Maine, 1921

The summer of 1921 was especially gay at the Poland Springs resort, which the Ricker family had been running in one form or another since 1793. Motor traffic had never been heavier, and the first week in August was filled with dancing, tennis and golf.

Poland Spring House

That week came to a climax with a visit from President and Mrs. Warren G. Harding, who had driven from Lancaster, N.H. There they had been staying with Harding’s secretary of war, John Wingate Weeks.

On Aug. 4, 1921, the Hardings arrived in Poland Springs for lunch after driving 200 miles from Lancaster and stopping at a sanitarium in Oxford, Maine. There the president promised World War I veterans, mostly suffering from gas attacks, that the government would do everything it could to help them.

He had asked that Poland Springs do nothing special for his visit, but the caddies were noticeably excited. The president and his wife ate lunch and then he played a round of golf. That night, Harding left from Portland for Washington on the presidential yacht Mayflower.

The Poland Springs resort is still open and still offering a challenging course for golfers.

Groton, Conn., 1952

President Harry Truman laying the keel for the USS Nautilus.

On Saturday June 14, 1952, President Harry Truman visited the shipyard at Groton, Conn., to celebrate laying the keel for the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine ever built.

Truman, who ordered the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, said he hoped it would begin an age where the discoveries that fueled development of the atom bomb would be applied to industry in ways that would benefit society.

Truman envisioned planes and ships powered by atomic energy, as well as power plants driven by this inexpensive new generating process:

Such a possibility would revolutionize the technological basis of our civilization. It could provide the answer to the crying need for sources of power in the underdeveloped areas of the world. It could mean industrial development for areas now held back because they have no supply of coal, or oil, or waterpower.

Truman said he prayed the submarine would never have an enemy and be tied up someday as an historic relic of a threat of war long passed.”

While all Truman’s projections didn’t come to pass, the Nautilus is in fact tied up and open for tourists as a museum and library.

Of course Truman didn’t forget politics in his speech, praising Sen. William Bento for standing up to Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his red-baiting tactics.

Truman’s private journal hints at a more curmudgeonly president behind the hoopla. He wrote:

“Well here I am, Sunday evening all alone. Margaret came to the Great White Prison for the week end on Friday 13th. I went by train to Groton (rhymes with rotten) to speak on atomic energy for peace time use. Should have flown both ways but my staff decided that it would be bad weather going up. It wasn’t.”

And of the frustrations of the White House life that was coming to a close, he said, “Lesson: Don’t raise your boy to be President of the United States.”

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6 Places That Became a Summer White House

The summer White House has featured in presidential life since John Adams returned to Quincy, Mass., to get away from the muggy heat of Washington, D.C.

Spending time away from the nation’s capital also allowed presidents to sense the country’s mood and to thank their wealthy donors. New England’s wealth and cool weather attracted presidential families in the days before air conditioning.

Here are places in each of the six New England states that became a summer White House.

The Thimble Islands, Branford, Conn.

A Thimble island

According to Connecticut legend, President William Taft spent part of a presidential summer on the Thimble Islands. The Thimbles are an archipelago of 365 small islands off the coast of Branford in the Long Island Sound.

The Branford Historical Society cautions that Taft probably only visited the Thimbles as a Yale student, though ConneticutHistory claims Taft had a summer home there for two years in the 1900s.

Rutherford B. Hayes did visit Branford as president. His grandfather was born in Branford, and his great-grandfather had built the Totoket Hotel on Main Street. In 1889, President Hayes came to Branford to see the hotel his great-grandfather built. The townspeople presented him with an axe made by his great-grandfather at a reception outside the hotel.

Totoket Hotel, photo courtesy the Branford Historical Society.

The Totoket Hotel has long disappeared, but you can still visit the Thimble Islands.

Bar Harbor, Maine

President Taft’s first summer White House in Beverly.

President William Howard Taft’s summer White House started out in Beverly, Mass. For four summers, his staff ran the government from borrowed offices in downtown Beverly.

Taft’s first hostess in the city got sick and tired of Secret Service interference, nosy tourists and the hubbub surrounding the president. She told Taft not to come back at all. She even threatened to tear down the house, located at Lynch Park. Instead, she cut it in pieces, floated it across the harbor to Marblehead and left Taft to move to a new house in the neighborhood.

Taft then announced with great fanfare in July of 1910 that he would make an extended trip to Maine. With stops planned for Eastport, Bangor, Ellsworth, Rockland and Islesboro, Taft would base his operations in Bar Harbor. There, he would stay on the 273-foot presidential yacht Mayflower, with its crew of 200.

Hancock House

A Summer White House in Maine

Taft first touched land in Eastport, then sailed on to Bar Harbor for a three-day stop.

He spent much of his time with wealthy summer residents. This caused a bit of a stir among the year-rounders, which Taft tamped down by giving a speech on the town bandstand.

“The three days that have passed in Bar Harbor will be red letter days in my life,” he told the crowd. “The air is like champagne in a Prohibition state, and without the uncomfortable consequences that follow imbibing that liquor.”

However, Taft’s visit to Mount Desert Island was not without trouble. He shot a 23 on a single hole during one round of golf when he got stuck in a sand trap. On the same course, the 300-pound-plus president tripped and sprained an ankle.

Taft at his summer White House

And, when he spoke to a crowd at the Hancock House in Ellsworth, pickpockets made off with hundreds of dollars from unsuspecting Mainers who came to hear him speak.

Most of the spots Taft visited are either gone or in private hands, but a few survive. The Bangor House Hotel is still at the corner of Main and Union streets, though it’s now housing. Taft participated in services at the stately Ellsworth Congregational Church. He took tea at the Jordan Pond House and the Kebo Country Club — the scene of Taft’s rough game — remains open to this day.

Hyannis Port, Mass.

The Kennedy Big House

The summer cottage that Joseph P. Kennedy rented in Hyannis Port in 1926 would eventually become the summer White House. Hyannis then (and now) belonged to the Irish Riviera.

The waterfront house had commanding views of Nantucket Harbor. Kennedy bought it in 1928 and set about enlarging and improving it for his growing family. It had six bedrooms and four servants’ rooms on the second floor, a wine cellar in the shape of a ship’s hull and a motion picture theater in the basement.

In 1956, Joseph Kennedy’s son John bought a smaller home of his own near the big house. In 1959, the youngest child, Edward, bought a house next to the other two in 1959. He sold it to his brother Robert and his wife, Ethel, in 1961, and later bought another home nearby.

John F. Kennedy used the compound as his headquarters for his 1960 campaign for president. He then used it as the summer White House during his presidency.

The Kennedy family at Hyannis Port, 1931

The main house was recently donated to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The compound can’t be visited, but it can be seen from the tour boats that leave from Hyannis.

To see rare photos of the Kennedy family at the Hyannis Port compound, click here.

Cornish, N.H.

Harlakenden House

Woodrow Wilson spent several weeks in the summers of 1913 through 1915 at Harlakenden, a country estate in Cornish, N.H. Wilson leased his summer White House from Winston Churchill – the American Winston Churchill, a writer who lost a race for governor of New Hampshire in 1906.

Harlakenden sat on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River. Cornish was the center of an art colony of about 100 artists, writers and politicians from about 1895 to the end of World War I. It stretched from Windsor, Vt., to Plainfield, N.H. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the central figure in the colony, which included Ethel Barrymore, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Isadora Duncan, Maxwell Perkins and Maxfield Parrish.

On Sept. 12, 1913, a play called Sanctuary: A Bird Masque was performed in Cornish with Wilson, his wife and the British ambassador in the audience. Miss Eleanor Wilson played the lead role and Miss Margaret Wilson sang the opening song, The Hermit Thrush. The play’s theme was the senseless slaughter of birds for frivolous purposes.

The occasion was the dedication of the Meriden, N.H., bird sanctuary – one of the first in the nation.

At the time, the Underwood Tariff Bill was in Congress . Bird-lovers everywhere wanted to ensure the bill included a ban on importation of bird feathers for decorative purposes. The play helped keep the heat on. Wilson returned from his summer White House early because the tariff bill had passed, with the language about birds intact.

Harlakenden burned to the ground, but the Cornish art colony survives as the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Newport, R.I.

Eisenhower House

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, decamped to the Naval Base in Newport, R.I. There he dealt with the crisis over school integration in Little Rock, Ark.

He also summered in Newport during his presidency in 1958 and 1960. At first in 1958 Eisenhower stayed at the Naval War College on Coasters Harbor Island, but he wanted to be closer to the golf course at the Newport Country Club. So he moved to a mansion at Fort Adams for two summers in Newport.

Now called Eisenhower House, it was built in 1873 for Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt, a Civil War artillery officer. The house has stunning views of Narragansett Bay and Newport Harbor.

It now belongs to Fort Adams State Park, and you can rent it for weddings and social events. For more information click here.

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Plymouth Notch

Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president of the United States while vacationing at his boyhood home in Plymouth Notch, Vt.

His father, a notary, swore him in at 2:47 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1923, hours after President Warren G. Harding died.

Though Coolidge spent most of his adult life in Northampton, Mass., he often visited his family home. It is a modest white frame farmhouse in the classic New England style of big house, little house, back house, barn.

The Secret Service detail assigned to him slept in tents on the property. In the summer of 1924, a dance hall nearby served as his office in the summer of 1924.

Today Coolidge’s birthplace and surrounding buildings are the Calvin Coolidge Homestead District, which includes the Cilley General Store, the Post Office, the Wilder Restaurant (serving lunch), the church, several barns, the dance hall and the Plymouth Cheese factory. For more information click here.

Brigadoon as a Summer White House

The Coolidge homestead is such a throwback to the way Vermont used to be that some people call it “Vermont’s Brigadoon.”

Coolidge and his sons in Plymouth Notch, 1916

Coolidge expressed his feelings about his home state in an eloquent speech that followed the disastrous flood of 1927.

“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.^”

Photo of the Thimble Islands by JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49575458.

This story about the summer White House in each state was updated in 2023.

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The Biggest (But Not the Most Fun) July 4th Celebration in the U.S.

A U.S. president had to sneak a drink and a Supreme Court justice tried to get out of going to the annual July 4th celebration in Woodstock, Conn.

Henry Ward Beecher speaking at Woodstock, Conn, President Grant seated. From a Harper’s Weekly engraving courtesy Library of Congress.

During the second half of the 19th century, the small Connecticut town boasted the largest July 4th party in the United States.

It was not the kind of raucous celebration typical of the decades after the Civil War. Its host, Henry C. Bowen, was a teetotaler and a staunch Congregationalist. Pink lemonade was served, fireworks were set off for (not by) spectators and many, many speeches were given.

A Temperate July 4th

Some of the most prominent people of the era delivered speeches, including three presidents: Ulysses S. Grant, Benjamin Harrison and Rutherford B. Hayes. Other notable speakers included Julia Ward Howe, John Fremont and Henry Ward Beecher.

Roseland Cottage

Henry Chandler Bowen, ‘Mr. Fourth of July,’ was a wealthy businessman who made his money in the dry goods business. He also published a religious newspaper, The Independent. Bowen helped found the Republican Party and for several years served as Abraham Lincoln’s collector of Internal Revenue for the 2^nd district of New York. He had played a role in bringing Lincoln to Cooper Union for his historic speech in 1860.

Bowen had a thing for the color pink. In 1846, he built a 20-room summer home in his hometown of Woodstock and painted it pink. He called it Roseland Cottage after his wife’s favorite flower and decorated it with pink upholstery, pink linens and pink china.

Its extensive grounds included a manmade lake, 21 flower beds with at least 4,500 aunuals. He also built an indoor bowling alley (now the oldest in the U.S.) in the carriage house.

Henry Chandler Bowen by James Swayer (probably)

Starting in 1870, he hosted the huge July 4th celebration. The festivities included a reception for as many as 500 on the cottage grounds and a separate party for the hoi polloi in Roseland Park. (Bowen had paid to drain a swamp and build the park.)

President Grant spoke at the first celebration on the Roseland grounds. Afterward he bowled his first strike in the indoor bowling alley. He also spent the night in Bowen’s house, though Bowen didn’t allow drinking or smoking inside. Grant then smoked cigars on the porch and enjoyed a surreptitious cocktail.

Sermons and Sunday School Talk

The party in Roseland Park sounds like a lot more fun than the reception on the cottage grounds. It featured band concerts, games and huge amounts of strawberry shortcake and lemonade (pink, of course). At night a torchlight parade marched to the park, followed by a huge fireworks display.

The reception at the cottage had its moments. Caterers from New York City made the food, and hundreds of lanterns illuminated the gardens at night. But then there was the oratory.

The New York Times in 1884 listed the lineup: Gov. John D. Long of Massachusetts made the opening speech. The Hon. George H. Boker of Philadelphia then read a poem. Then the speeches including Benson J. Lossing on “Columbus: His Place in History,” the Rev. Henry Stinson on Worcester on “Aggressive Reformation and Agricultural Commissioner George B. Loring on “Parks and Highways.” Those didn’t end it, though. Dr. J.H. Vincent spoke on “The Every-Day College,” former Kansas Gov. J.R. St. John on “Prohibition” and, finally, Joseph Cook of Boston on “Ultimate America.”

One year, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., delivered a poem at Woodstock about his ancestors, many buried nearby. He came reluctantly, and only if the weather was good. “If I come and am wanted to say a few words at the proper time I could hardly refuse,’ he wrote beforehand. “But as to sitting through sermons and Sunday school talk and temperance speeches, if all that is necessary, I shall put off my visit to Woodstock.”

Henry Chandler Bowen died in 1896. He gave the house and grounds to the community. Also known as the Pink House, Roseland Cottage is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Historic New England bought it in 1970; the public may now visit the house.

This story about July 4th in Woodstock, Conn., was updated in 2022.

Images: Roseland Cottage by By Carol M. Highsmith – Library of CongressCatalog: http://lccn.loc.gov/2011631587Image download: https://cdn.loc.gov/master/pnp/highsm/13300/13393a.tifOriginal url: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.13393, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52228471.

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Henry Tisdale at the Battle of South Mountain: ‘As the ball struck me it gave me a shock’

Henry Tisdale was a 25-year-old sergeant in the 35th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry when a Confederate sniper shot him in the thigh. It happened at the Battle of South Mountain, the bloody prelude to the deadliest one-day battle of the war — Antietam.

Confederate troops marching through Frederick, Md., probably on Sept. 12, 1862, toward the Battle of South Mountain.

Gen. Robert E. Lee’s forces had invaded Maryland near Boonsboro, and Lee intended to capture Harper’s Ferry. In desperate fighting at three mountain passes, the Army of the Potomac drove them off the mountain. Fighting lasted 12 hours, with 6,100 men killed wounded or missing. Tisdale was shot at Fox’s Gap.

Also wounded at Fox’s Gap was a future president of the United States: Rutherford B. Hayes as commander of the 23rd Ohio Infantry. Another future president, William McKinley, also served in the 23rd at Fox’s Gap as a commissary sergeant.

Henry Tisdale

Tisdale was born in Walpole, Mass., on March 9, 1837, the oldest of seven children. He worked as a grocery clerk in West Dedham (now Westwood), Mass., when he enlisted in the Union Army on July 10, 1862. Tisdale felt it his Christian and political duty to do so, and believed every citizen ought to feel the same. He recorded those thoughts in his diary, which he kept from 1862-65.

Henry Tisdale, after the war.

Henry Tisdale survived the war after Confederate forces captured him. He married, opened his own grocery and had a number of children. During his lifetime he showed the diary to no one and never spoke of the war. But the day before he died he gave them to his son Roscoe and told him not to open it until after his death. He died on May 31, 1922.

Taint of Slavery

Henry Tisdale was a religious man, and on the day of the fighting he described the march through Frederick, Md.

Passed through two or three small villages; these and the farm dwellings and buildings we have passed are far from equaling in style or taste those of the North, showing many of them in a dilapidated appearance, and far more whitewash than paint. One feels already the taint of slavery upon the land in the somehow thriftless and want of enterprising look of the country.

He knew a battle loomed.

Prospects of our getting into action before night multiply causing a sort of feverish excitement to come over me. Help me my heavenly Father to do my duty in thy fear and for glory for Christ’s sake, Amen.

He then described what happened next in his diary six weeks later, on Oct. 29th, 1862. Around 4 p.m. his brigade received orders to march four miles to the battlefront. “A rough march,” wrote Tisdale, “climbing steep hills, some almost mountains crossing rough fields through corn fields and some of the way at double quick.” They met many wounded and, as they approached the battleground, saw a dead body here and there.

The Battle of South Mountain

A little after 5 p.m. his brigade found itself “mid the stern realities of actual battle” — the Battle of South Mountain. The soldiers knew because of “the screaming of shot and shell and rattling of musketry.”

The sight of the wounded sent a kind of chill over me but in the main feelings of curiosity and wonder at the scene about me took hold of my mind.

Battle of South Mountain

They drew up in the line of battle in a cornfield and then advanced through a field. They then reached a wood where they met a few scattering rebels, as the main body retreated.

In entering the wood came upon a large number of rebel dead lying in a ravine, presenting a sad and sickening sight. They were making an advance upon our lines, but when crossing the ravine, were met by a volley from the 17th Michigan which so thinned their ranks that on that part of their line they made a precipitate retreat.

Just after entering the wood, a rifle ball passed through Tisdale’s left leg just opposite the thighbone. As it struck, it gave him a shock, and he thought it must have shattered the bone. For a moment he didn’t dare move. Then he did move and discovered he only had a flesh wound. He felt thankfulness to God that he didn’t suffer a dangerous hurt. He thought some straggling rebel or sharpshooter in a tree must have fired the shot, because they hadn’t reached rebel lines.

Found myself in a few moments growing weak and tying my towel above the wound to stop its bleeding.

He tried to make for the rear to find a surgeon.

Wounded Confederate

Tisdale then encountered a wounded confederate. As he limped off, a wounded rebel sitting against a tree and asked if he had something to eat.

Exhibiting a loaf and going to him I opened my knife to cut off a slice when he placed his hands before his face exclaiming “Don’t kill me” and begging me to put up the knife and not to hurt him. Assuring him I had no intention of hurting him I spoke with him a little. Found he had a family in Georgia, that he was badly wounded and was anxious to have me remain with him and help him off. But found I was growing weaker from loss of blood and that the surging to and fro the troops about us made it a dangerous place so limping and crawling was obliged to leave him and move for the rear.

He was taken to a straw bed in a garden outside a cottage and had his wound dressed. He learned his regiment lost a few wounded, including a colonel who lost his left arm and a soldier who lost one of his feet.

Lutheran Church in Frederick. Henry Tisdale may be in this photo taken by Matthew Brady.

“He bore his amputation manfully,” wrote Tisdale. Wounded men of both rebel and union forces filled the house and outbuilding, “many moaning piteously throughout the night or until death put an end to their sufferings.”

Recovery

Tisdale then moved to the Lutheran Evangelical Church in Frederick, Md., converted into a hospital.

A rough board floor was laid over the tops of the pews. Folding iron bedsteads with mattresses, clean white sheets, pillows, blankets, and clean underclothing, hospital dressing gowns, slippers, etc. were furnished us freely. The citizens came in twice a day with a host of luxuries, cordials, etc. for our comfort. The church finely finished off within, well ventilated and our situation as pleasant and comfortable as could be made. A few rebel wounded were in the building. Some of the citizens showed them special attention bringing them articles of food, etc. and giving none to the others. The surgeons put a stop to this however by telling them that they must distribute to all alike or they would not be allowed to visit the hospital at all, this was much to our satisfaction. Remained in Frederick until Sept. 30th, getting on slowly, having my wound dressed twice a day. A liberal supply of reading material and other comforts furnished by the citizens.

When Tisdale could go about on crutches, he received orders to go to Philadelphia.