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The Missing Kennebunkport Mural of the WPA

Towns and cities across America are dotted with WPA-era murals. Many of them pay tribute to the working classes of America. But not Kennebunkport. It had its WPA mural torn out of the local post office because critics thought a beach scene inappropriate for the town.

The Kennebunkport mural before its removal

Franklin Delano Roosevelt designed his Works Progress Administration program to lift the country from the Great Depression. It created millions of jobs for unemployed men and women. His jobs program included 5,000 artists commissioned to create works of art – many of them on the walls of post offices and other government buildings.

Kennebunkport Mural Fight

Exactly why people despised the Kennebunkport mural depends on when and who spoke about it. Two authors led the public crusade to have it removed. Booth Tarkington, an Indiana novelist and playwright, summered in Kennebunkport. Kenneth Roberts, a Maine writer of historical novels, speculated in Florida land.

Tarkington, an outspoken critic of FDR and his New Deal, acted as point man on the crusade against the mural. (Tarkington also hated automobiles). Roberts then got involved to give a local face to the fight.

Maine U.S. Sen. Wallace White, Senate minority leader, brought the matter to the floor of the Senate. He moved to allow the mural’s replacement four years after its installation.

“The mural is a picture, which, to speak frankly, depicts a number of fat women, scantily clad, disporting themselves on a beach,” White said.

“It has been an offense to the citizens of that community ever since it was placed in the post office. In fact, it has been so much of an offense that the people of the community raised something in excess of $1,000 to have painted a mural which depicts historically the seafaring and shipbuilding activities of the community.”

The Kennebunkport Post Office, built in 1940.

No Bulges Here

Maine’s other U.S. senator also weighed in. “Our only objection was that the murals depicted feminine forms absolutely foreign to the great state of Maine. Our Maine women do not bulge fore and aft in this unsightly manner,” said Ralph Owen Brewster.

Then he added, “Our womenfolks bulge in only the most delightful ways.”

The $1,000 fund, raised by New York architect Charles Ewing, would pay for the new mural if the government would OK the removal of the first.

Tarkington added more fuel to the fire. He insisted the figures in the picture had no clothes on. “It includes several figures both male and female. The central figure is a bumpy looking male with an old automobile tire around his waist as a life preserver. The ladies are all bumpy, too, and very ugly. The beach in the picture looks like Coney Island. Why should Kennebunkport have to have a Coney Island mural in its post office? It isn’t a summer resort. There isn’t even a beach. The beach is across the river at Kennebunk.”

There were actually no nudes in the mural, which underscores one of the odder aspects of Tarkington taking on the role of art critic. He was, by this point in his life, blind.

Still others said the people in the mural looked to be inspired by images of Russian peasants. They hinted at potential Communist sympathies on the part of the artist.

Squealing Dowagers

The artist was Elizabeth Tracy Montminy, known as Tracy Montminy. The Boston woman had recently graduated from Radcliffe when she painted the mural in 1941. It was the fifth and final mural she would paint for the WPA. She had painted four others in Saugus, Milton and Medford, Mass, and Downers Grove, Ill.

Tracy Montminy

But only “Bathers” in Maine attracted any controversy. Montminy defended her work. She described the mural as showing “a Renaissance influence in which the arabesque predominates.”

She chalked up the controversy to “the squealing of some cachectic dowagers.”

Nevertheless, President Harry Truman in May of 1945 signed the budget bill allowing for the removal of the mural. “Eviction Order for those Fatties of Kennebunkport Post Office Wall Signed,” announced one headline. Within a month, the post office had the mural removed.

The second Kennebunkport mural.

The mural that now graces the Kennebunkport post office shows Kennebunkport Harbor in the 1830s. An artist named George Grant painted it.

The mural’s whereabouts today is unknown. It ended up somewhere in Washington, D.C. The painting of the ships that replaced still resides in Kennebunkport’s post office.

This story about the Kennebunkport mural was updated in 2021. Image of Tracy Montminy By Columbia Tribune – Original publication: ca. 1940s unknownImmediate source: http://www.columbiatribune.com/arts_life/ovation/who-were-the-montminys/article_b7200ad7-ef5a-5018-be18-9eabc243c6f0.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51160512. Second Kennebunkport mural and Kennebunkport Post Office by Jimmy Emerson DVM via Flickr, CC by 2.0.

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Lady Deborah Moody, A Dangerous Woman, Comes to New England

In 1654, when New York governor Peter Stuyvesant needed help collecting taxes, he turned to Deborah Moody. The career of the Salem, Mass., woman then came full circle from outcast to political power broker.

Sketch of a woman in 1640 by Wenceslaus Hollar.

A friend of John Winthrop, Moody came to Massachusetts to escape religious intolerance in England sometime before 1640. Moody’s husband, a baronet, had died 10 years earlier. Her son had sold most of the familial lands in Wiltshire.

In trying to reestablish her life as a widow, Lady Moody had visited London where she attended some of the more exotic religious services of the day among the Baptists and Quakers.

Deborah Moody, Anabaptist

Deborah Moody became an Anabaptist, a school of thought that held people should not be baptized as children but rather as adults.

Anabaptism amounted to heresy in the 1630s. Lady Moody, now a heretic, had to appear before England’s Star Chamber, the high court that heard cases involving the nobility. The court had the power to decide how long nobles could live away from their ancestral estates, and it ordered Lady Moody to go home to Wiltshire.

A 1504 document showing Henry VII in England’s Star Chamber with clerics and the mayor of London.

Moody had considered joining Winthrop and his settlement in America. Though she had long criticized the Church of England, the prospect of joining in the new colony had initially seemed too daunting. But with this new frustration, Deborah Moody decided to move.

At age 54, she pulled up stakes and sailed for America. She first settled in Saugus on a grant of 400 acres for a plantation. Shortly, however, she bought a small house in Salem, and then a farm of more than 1,000 acres from John Humphrey in nearby Swampscott. Humphrey, a one-time deputy governor of Massachusetts, had grown tired of the new colony and was returning to England.

Neighbor Trouble

She had the misfortune of moving into the neighborhood of the Rev. Hugh Peter, also a fellow member of the church at Salem. Given her unconventional beliefs she could hardly have chosen a worse neighbor. Peter was one of the ministers who had successfully prosecuted Anne Hutchinson just two years earlier for her Anabaptist beliefs.

Hugh Peter. Image courtesy of The Public Catalogue Foundation

Peter succeeded in having her banished from Massachusetts for her illegal religious beliefs.

Faced with the increasing hostility, Deborah Moody decided to leave Massachusetts just as Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams had. Rather than head for Rhode Island, however, Moody chose New Amsterdam (now New York).

John Winthrop noted in his journal: “The Ladye Moodye, a wise and anciently religious woman, being taken with the error of denying baptism to infants, was dealt withal by many of the elders and others, and admonished by the church of Salem (whereof she was a member); but persisting still, and to avoid further trouble, etc., she removed to the Dutch, at the advice of all her friends. Many others infected with Anabaptism removed thither also. She was after excommunicated.”

John Winthrop

Gravesend

Moody and a group of her followers who relocated in 1643 to New Amsterdam found the Dutch government much more tolerant. She still had considerable wealth, and New Amsterdam welcomed her. The governor granted her 7,000 acres on the southwestern tip of Long Island.

Lady Deborah Moody Memorial in Gravesend.

She called her new settlement Gravesend. But the new town had a rocky beginning. Though she had cautioned all her fellow settlers to pay the local Native Americans for any land they wanted to use, there were misunderstandings. The indigenous people did not embrace the concept of property ownership. Payments were for fishing rights, they believed, while the colonists expected full ownership of the land they paid for.

Soon, the Natives attacked and the settlers gathered in Lady Moody’s sizable home for protection. Deborah Moody toyed with the idea of returning to her home and land in Massachusetts. Peter had by now returned to England. He would eventually be executed as a regicide for his role in the trial and execution of Charles I.

Old Gravesend Cemetery.

But Peter was not the only enemy Moody had. Moody wrote to Winthrop asking whether she might return, and on-again, off-again governor John Endecott urged him to advise her against it unless she was prepared to renounce her views.

“I shall desire that she may not have advice to return to this jurisdiction, unless she will acknowledge her evil in opposing the churches and leave her opinions behind her, for she is a dangerous woman,” Endecott wrote.

Deborah Moody, Brooklynite

Moody and her fellow Gravesend villagers fortified their small town and dug in. Over the coming years, the town grew and Deborah Moody earned widespread respect. Gravesend did not adopt a single, sanctioned church. Rather, people worshiped as they wished with many, like Lady Moody, simply conducting services in their homes.

As stability set in, Lady Moody emerged as a major power in the town. She had so much influence that in 1654 Gov. Stuyvesant had to call on her to mediate a dispute over taxes.

Dahill Road and Kings Highway in Gravesend, Brooklyn.

Lady Deborah Moody died in 1659 at 73, and Gravesend — now part of Brooklyn — bears her stamp to this day. You can still walk some of the streets she laid out in 1643.

With thanks to Liz Loveland for her editorial suggestion. This story about Deborah Moody was updated in 2023.

Images: Lady Deborah Moody Memorial by By Jim.henderson – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23005948. Old Gravesend Cemetery By Jim.henderson – Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23005944. Brooklyn roads by CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1335607.

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How the Italian Immigrants Came to New England

Italian immigrants put their stamp on New England as indelibly as any Puritan. New England, in fact, is the most Italian region in the United States.

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

Today, the descendants of Italian immigrants make up more than 10 percent of the population of every New England state except Vermont and Maine. Any New Englander can recognize the voice of Joe Castiglione or the Magliozzi brothers. And tens of thousands attend the region’s 45 summer festas. They happen from Our Lady of Assumption in Portland to St. Bartholomew in Providence.

Italian Americans have undeniably influenced New England’s food history. Boston’s North End brought us Prince spaghetti, Pastene sauces and Dragone cheese. It also gave us the first Italian café, Café Vittoria, in 1929. Amato’s Italian delicatessen in Portland, Maine, claims to have originated the Italian sandwich. And, of course, Frank Pepe in New Haven invented the white clam apizza.

More recently John Bello of New Britain created SoBe beverages.

Italian-Americans

And yet Italian immigrants have contributed to American history and culture in ways that are typically – well, American. Italian immigrants sculpted the Lincoln Memorial. They frescoed the dome of the Capitol. And they founded the Bank of America, formerly the Bank of Italy.

S. Z Poli of New Haven built a chain of vaudeville theaters and Charles Ponzi of Boston’s North End discovered a new form of financial fraud. Bart Giamatti presided over Yale University and Major League Baseball. Providence’s Edward Valenti created the Ginsu knife and the infomercial.

Mike Eruzione of Winthrop, Mass., captained the U.S. Olympic team that defeated the Russians in 1980. And Filippo Mazzei, a physician friend of Thomas Jefferson, published a pamphlet that contained a familiar line. It read,

All men are by nature equally free and independent.

Jefferson then used it in the Declaration of Independence.

Beginnings

The first Italians were explorers, and not just Christopher Columbus. America got its name from an Italian, Amerigo Vespucci. He explored the east coast of South America from 1499 to 1502.

Giovanni Caboto

Venetian John Cabot – Giovanni Caboto — and his son Sebastian are the reason Americans speak English. That’s because Cabot first explored the mainland in North America in 1497 under the commission of English king Henry VII.

And Giovanni di Verrazano explored the Atlantic coast between Florida and New Brunswick.

Italians also fought in the American Revolution. Afterward, Italian immigrants came to the United States as political refugees, as missionaries and as explorers.

They came as well because of a need for their professional skills. In 1801, Philip Trajetta founded a music conservatory in Boston, the first in the United States. And beginning in 1871, Gaetano Lanza taught mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 40 years.

Scattered Italian families settled in Boston between the American Revolution and the Civil War, but the city didn’t attract large groups of immigrants then. There was too little land and too little commercial opportunity. Boston’s homogeneous and self-contained social life also made it forbidding to outsiders.

But 7,000 Italians fought in the Civil War, and six won the Congressional Medal of Honor. New York even recruited infantrymen from Italy for its 39^th regiment, also known as the Garibaldi Guard.

Then after the Civil War, New England’s mills and factories didn’t have enough workers, so they recruited immigrants from overseas.

A Wave of Italian Immigrants

An Italian immigrant family, 1911. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

From 1880 to 1920, an estimated 4 million Italian immigrants arrived in the United States. Most came between 1900 and 1914, and most came from southern Italy and Sicily. Italian unification in 1861 had worsened conditions in the mother country. Plus the soil was exhausted, taxes and tariffs were high and young men were conscripted for seven years

In 1880 about a thousand Italian immigrant families came to Boston. They represented the first wave to the city bypassed by most Europeans, save for the Irish.

These immigrants didn’t speak English. They therefore had to take low-wage jobs and fell prey to labor brokers known as padrones. So they settled in ghettoes known as Little Italys. Those included Front Street in Hartford, Central End in Bridgeport, Shrewsbury Street in Worcester and the South End of Springfield, Mass.

Burlington, Vt., Portsmouth, N.H., and Portland also had Little Italys, but they since disappeared. The once-crowded tenements of the North End of Boston, New Haven’s Wooster Square and Providence’s Federal Hill have all gentrified.

Birds of Passage

About a third of the newcomers were birds of passage, workers who intended to stay until they saved enough money to reestablish themselves in Italy. It wasn’t easy. Italian men ended up working low-paying construction jobs, while women usually worked as seamstresses in garment factories. Many Italian immigrants led the fight for better pay and working conditions. Arturo Giovanitti, Joe Ettor and Carlo Tresca organized the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike.

Many blamed prejudice against Italian immigrants for the 1927 execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. And many Italians Anglicized their names to avoid the stigma of their ethnicity. For example, actor Ernest Borgnine of Hamden, Conn., was originally Ernest Borgnino. Steve Carell, a Concord, Mass., native, would have been Steve Caroselli had his father not changed his name.

World Wars

World War I abruptly ended the massive wave of Italian immigration to America. Then came the restrictive Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924. The Little Italys stabilized and prospered, and English became the predominant language. Italian Americans then started to get better jobs as civil servants and skilled tradesmen, though the Great Depression reversed many of their gains.

Henry Mucci in the Philippines by the U.S. Army Signal Corps.

By the time the United States entered World War II, 600,000 Italians had not become American citizens. The government therefore declared them enemy aliens and required them to report regularly. At the same time, as many as 500,000 Italian-Americans served in the armed forces.

During the war, Italian-American servicemen earned the Medal of Honor. For example, Col. Henry Mucci of Bridgeport led Army Rangers on a daring raid of a POW camp that held survivors of the Bataan Death March.

Postwar Prosperity

The war, however, opened up good-paying jobs to Italian immigrants in defense factories. Then after the war many Italian-Americans took advantage of the G.I. Bill to attend college. In the post-war era, Karen Ignani of Providence became CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans. Samuel Palmisano, of Southport, Conn., was named president and CEO of IBM.

Because they prospered, Italian-Americans gained political power. Ella Grasso won election as governor of Connecticut, the first woman governor elected in her own right. Tom Menino served as Boston’s longest serving mayor, while Massachusetts elected Foster Furcolo, John Volpe and Paul Cellucci as governors. Even Maine had an Italian-American governor, John Baldacci, and Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy’s mother has Italian ancestry.

Rhode Island

Nearly one in five Rhode Islanders – 18.9 percent – claim Italian ancestry. That makes the Ocean State the most Italian in the country. In 1950, John Pastore became the first Italian American elected to the U.S. Senate. Donald Carcieri, Edward DiPrete and Gina Raimondo since won election as governor. Raimondo now serves as secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce

And who can forget Buddy Cianci, who for years served as the colorful mayor of Providence?

Gateway Arch to Atwells Avenue in Providence.

Johnston, R.I., the most Italian municipality in the United States, has 46.7 percent of its population claiming Italian ancestry.

Companies like the Silver Spring Bleaching and Dyeing attracted Italian immigrants to Providence’s North End in the 19^th century. Today, 36.7 percent of North Providence residents say they had Italian ancestors.

Famous Italian Americans from Rhode Island include comedienne Ruth Buzzi and novelist Peter Pezzelli. Rhode Island also produced Italian-American athletes — hockey players Jack and Dave Capuano and Olympic skater Marissa Castelli.

Connecticut

Frank Pepe’s pizzeria.

Today, Connecticut ranks as the second most Italian state in America after Rhode Island. A full 18.7 percent of the population claims Italian ancestry.

Roughly half the populations of East Haven, West Haven and North Haven are descended from Italian immigrants. Wooster Square, home of Frank Pepe’s white clam apizza, is a bastion of Italian culture and cuisine. And more than a quarter of the populations of seven Connecticut towns — Northford, North Branford, Oakville, Orange, Wolcott, Derby and Wethersfield — have Italian ancestors.

Stamford sent Andy Robustelli to the Football Hall of Fame and Bobby Valentine to the helm of the Boston Red Sox. Joe Castiglione of Hamden announces Red Sox games on the radio. And Rosa Ponselle of Meriden performed with the Metropolitan Opera during the 1920s and 1930s.

Massachusetts

In Revere, 35.7 percent of residents claim Italian ancestry, making it the most Italian city in Massachusetts. Massachusetts itself ranks as the fourth most Italian state in the country behind New Jersey. That’s because close to 14 percent of Massachusetts residents have Italian ancestry, with a half-million living in metropolitan Boston.

Famous descendants of Italian immigrants to Massachusetts include poet John Ciardi and artist Frank Stella. Massachusetts has also produced such Italian-American athletes as Rocky Marciano, Tony Conigliaro and Joseph Bellino. Aerosmith’s Joe Perry’s mother was Italian, and so was Jay Leno’s dad.

New Hampshire

Yes, New Hampshire ranks as the seventh most Italian state in the country. Nearly 11 percent of its residents say they have Italian ancestors. Salem, along the southern tier, has the densest population of Italian-Americans in New Hampshire at 15.7 percent.

This story was updated in 2022.

Image: Atwells Avenue By Zigamorph – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 us, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3996788.

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Jehovah’s Witness Carleton Nicholls, 8, Wouldn’t Pledge Allegiance in 1935

In October of 1935, Lynn, Mass., schools expelled eight-year-old Carleton Nicholls for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. That set off nearly a decade of strife between Jehovah’s Witnesses and patriotic civic groups.

Two events led to the controversy. In 1935, the Massachusetts legislature, at the urging of fraternal organizations, passed a law requiring “each teacher shall cause the pupils under his charge to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.”

With the Great Depression continuing to make life miserable for many Americans, communism gained appeal. Traditionalists sought ways to make sure teachers didn’t influence schoolchildren to question capitalism in schools. Even though the most schools featured the pledge, the Legislature wanted all schools to recite it. James Michael Curley, then governor, gladly signed the proposal into law.

Massachusetts Gov. James Michael Curley

Meanwhile in Germany, Hitler persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses with increasing intensity for refusing to swear allegiance to the Nazi Party. Eventually the Third Reich would imprison Jehovah’s Witnesses in concentration camps, killing thousands of them.

The purple triangle identified Jehovah’s Witnesses in Hitler’s concentration camps.

Jehovah’s Witness

In June of 1935, J.F. Rutherford, a leader of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, was asked if the refusal to swear allegiance was limited to Germany. He declared that he believed saluting any earthly emblem was unfaithful to God, and he would not do it. Some in the church took this to mean the saluting the flag opposed church teaching.

So, while in 1934 Jehovah’s Witnesses such as Carleton Nicholls had willingly saluted the flag, everything changed in 1935.

The controversy soon spread. In Saugus, Mass., Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to say the pledge. Elsewhere around the country similar protests began to take place.

The town of Belchertown, Mass., escalated the issue further. It expelled three children from the Opielowski family for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance – Anna, 10; Sophie, 12 and Dominic, 13. Then a judge sentenced them to be locked up in reform school. He also fined their father, Ignace.

A Sensation

The Opielowski case became a sensation in newspapers across the country. The Daughters of the American Revolution called for the family to be deported. Some editorial writers accused the family of disloyalty. Others ridiculed the Massachusetts law as an infringement of liberty. Still others tried to hand a black eye to the Catholic Church, since Curley was Catholic and the church supported the Pledge of Allegiance laws.

The progressive media, meanwhile, snickered. While universities and colleges were yielding their principles and complying with requirements for loyalty oaths for faculty and administrators, children were willing to stand fast and go to jail for their beliefs.

Nationally, the hysteria over the Pledge of Allegiance reached a new level in 1940. The Supreme Court ruled in a Pennsylvania case that requiring students to recite the Pledge did not infringe on their liberty. Only New Hampshire’s Harlan Fiske Stone opposed the decision. He argued that forcing citizens to express beliefs that they did not hold violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

Maine

Regardless, the high court set the law, and it unleashed a wave of clashes across the country between angry citizen mobs and Jehovah’s Witnesses. They already were unpopular for their stand on the pledge and for opposing war. Two such clashes occurred in Maine.

In Kennebunk, local residents harassed a Jehovah’s Witness church and pelted it with rocks. On June 9, a group had congregated in the hall when a car stopped out front. The two men in the car would later say they stopped only to change drivers.

Inside the church, the congregants said the men threw rocks at the building. One of the Jehovah’s Witnesses inside fired a shotgun that hit the two men, slightly injuring one and more seriously injuring the other. The second man had his leg amputated.. Later that night, a crowd reportedly more than 2,000 strong torched the church.

J.F. Rutherford

The shooter would be convicted of assault with intent to kill. Arson charges against two men would be dropped for lack of evidence.

In August, the violence worsened in the town of North Windham, Maine. Arthur Cox, a Jehovah’s Witness from Philadelphia, was in town proselytizing. In addition to handing out the church’s trademark newsletter, The Watchtower, Cox also had a portable phonograph that he used to play a message from J.F. Rutherford.

Cox and another man visited the garage of deputy sheriff Dean Pray to play the phonograph. The offer infuriated Pray who demanded Cox leave. The deputy chased the two men into the street where Cox fired three shots from a revolver, killing Fray.

Cox was already on bail from a previous arrest for his part in a fight that broke out in Portland when someone tried to destroy church literature that Cox distributed.

Protesters converged on the Portland courthouse, tightly guarded for Cox’s trial. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.

In 1943, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of reversing itself, holding that the Pledge of Allegiance can’t be mandated.

This story updated in 2022.

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