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Scots-Irish history

How the Irish Immigrants Came to New England

In 1718, five ships from Ulster arrived in Boston Harbor. Their passengers, Scots-Irish immigrants, came at the invitation of the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts. The Puritans sympathized with their plight, fellow Protestants who suffered from Anglican intolerance.

But the Puritans didn’t exactly welcome them with open arms. And they weren’t the first Irish immigrants to New England.

Their story usually begins with the Great Hunger of the mid-19^th century, but it started well before that—and lasted long after.

The First Irish Immigrants

Before England destroyed Ireland’s merchant marine, Irish merchants traded with the American colonies as early as the 1630s. Irish fishermen from Galway and Waterford settled the Isles of Shoals, an archipelago of tiny islands nine miles from the Maine and New Hampshire coast. At first seasonal residents, several hundred Irish and other European fishermen had a permanent settlement on the islands by 1653.

The Isles of Shoals by Childe Hassam (painted many years later)

The archipelago developed into a thriving entrepot where they caught fish, salted it and sold it on the world market. Fishermen named Kelley, Haley and McKenna lived on the islands with their families. They abandoned the Isles of Shoals during the American Revolution.

The Puritans in Boston looked down on the Shoalers, a hard-drinking, Maypole-erecting lot. They also viewed the Protestant Irish who arrived in 1718 with a measure of dismay.

Protestant Irish

The Scots who settled in Ulster beginning more than a century earlier were called the Ulster Scots-Irish, or the Ulster Presbyterians. Squeezed between hostile Irish Catholics and the Anglican Church, they had to pay tithes, but couldn’t hold official positions. Parliament passed the Test Act in 1704, which required them to take Holy Communion in the Anglican Church — otherwise they couldn’t hold civil or military office and their marriages weren’t recognized.

The impoverished Scots-Irish immigrants who arrived in Boston in 1718 created a problem: How to support them? The Rev. Cotton Mather wrote,

But what shall be done for the great number of people that are transporting themselves thither from ye North of Ireland?

Massachusetts Gov. Samuel Shute envisioned Irish pioneers settling on the frontiers of Maine and New Hampshire, buffering the colony from French and Indians. So in 1720, an ordinance passed in Boston ordering ‘certain families arriving from Ireland to move off.’

Boston Harbor ca. 1765

Some settled in Nutfield, N.H., now called Londonderry. Some went north to Casco Bay, where they had a land grant. Fifty families moved to Worcester. From those settlements they spread out, and they kept arriving from Ulster. According to one estimate, the Scots-Irish made up 10 percent of New Hampshire’s population in the 18^th century.

In 1730, Massachusetts Gov. Jonathan Belcher tried to annex New Hampshire. But enough Londonderry Scots-Irish lived along the border to make sure it didn’t happen.

Today, many place names in Maine and New Hampshire reflect their Scots-Irish roots: Derry, Antrim and Londonderry, N.H.; Belfast and Limerick, Maine; Colrain, Mass.; and Londonderry, Vt.

Early Irish Immigrants

By 1650, a steady stream of Boston-bound ships began to leave Ireland filled with redemptioners, many of them Irish Catholic. They were indentured servants who agreed to near-slavery for seven years in exchange for passage, food, shelter and clothing.

They sailed from Dublin, Cork and Waterford to Marblehead, Boston, Providence and Piscataquis County, Maine. Some came from Galway via Newfoundland, where they fished.

Some came by way of Barbados, where Oliver Cromwell had deported 50,000 Irish Catholic peasants as indentured servants in the mid-17^th century. Ann Glover was one. She was living in Boston by 1680 and hanged on Nov. 16, 1688 as a witch. The proof: she could only say the Lord’s Prayer in Gaelic.

The Puritans treated Irish-Catholic newcomers even worse than they treated the Protestant-Irish immigrants. They wouldn’t let people own property or carry on a business in Boston unless they took the Oath of Allegiance to some Protestant faith.

The Catholics kept out of the Puritans’ way and they stayed out of the historical record. Historian Michael O’Brien argues that many Irish Catholics abandoned their faith and became Baptists and Methodists. “There was no alternative for them,” he concluded.

One Irish immigrant who came to Rhode Island left his mark. The Irish-Anglo philosopher George Berkeley arrived in Newport in 1729, hoping to found a college. He stayed for a little less than three years, but helped found the Redwood Library and donated his library to Yale College.

American Revolution

The Irish may have avoided the Puritans, but they had no love for the English. So when the American Revolution broke out, Irish immigrants and their descendants played major roles in achieving American independence.

Hibernian names fill the muster rolls of the Continental Army. The name “Kelly” alone appears 695 times. So many fought, in fact, that one British general testified at the House of Commons that “half the rebel Continental Army were from Ireland.”

Henry Knox by Gilbert Stuart 1806

Some of the best fighters and leaders on both sides of the American Revolution were Irish immigrants or sons of Irish immigrants. Continental Army generals Henry Knox and John Stark were Scots-Irish, and Gen. John Sullivan’s parents had emigrated from County Cork. American general Richard Montgomery and his friend Guy Carleton, a British general, both grew up in Ireland.

Eight of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence had Irish birth or ancestry as did seven of the 54 framers of the Constitution.

Great Hunger

Between 1815 and 1845, as many as 1 million Irish immigrants came to “Amerikay,” looking for opportunity. They found a measure of it, building canals and railroads and factories.

But it wasn’t until the potato crop began to fail in 1845 that the enormous influx of Irish immigrants sailed into New England. Hunger and poverty had pushed them out of Ireland, but the promise of work pulled them to the region’s industrial powerhouses. They flooded into Boston, Pawtucket, Lowell, Portland and Burlington, and to the manufacturing cities in the Merrimack and Connecticut river valleys.

Irish famine victims, Bridget O’Donnell and her children, 1849.

From 1845 to 1855, the so-called famine ships brought 2 million Irish immigrants to ports in Boston, New York and Canada. Many came to Canada first because of the cheaper fare, then made their way to New England. Those immigrants had a nickname: Two Boaters.

Many Irish immigrants died aboard the famine ships, also known as coffin ships. A Boston priest wrote a survival guide for those who dared make the journey. Father John O’Hanlon began it with a caution: “Change of location does not always bring better fortune to the emigrant.”

Suffering and Discrimination

The Irish immigrants often lived in crowded, unsanitary housing. Some dwellings had 100 people living in them with one sink and one toilet. In 1849, a cholera epidemic struck Boston. Of the 611 people who died of it, 500 were Irish.

“No Irish Need Apply” signs appeared in many a shop window and classified advertisement. The Irish endured frequent mockery as drunken, slovenly, ape-like creatures. They also suffered outright persecution.

Thomas Nast cartoon titled, “The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things.”

In Rhode Island, a man named John Gordon was hanged in 1845 for the murder of a prominent industrialist. His real crime was being Irish.

Neal Dow, the mayor of Portland, Maine, waged a war against booze in 1855. The city’s Irish community thought he was waging war against them. They had a point. When a riot over rum broke out, Dow called out the militia. A fisherman was shot to death in the melee.

When the Civil War started, many Irish immigrants fought in the Union Army, not always willingly. Some viewed it as practice for their military campaign to free Ireland from England. In 1870, a fanatical Irish-American army decided to conquer Canada to win Irish freedom. They invaded Canada from a Vermont farm, but their effort failed.

Depiction of Irish immigrants arriving at Constitution Wharf, Boston, 1857

Another Wave

Even after the famine subsided, they still came. From 1855 to 1921, large numbers of Irish immigrants left their farms for jobs in the industrial cities of the Northeast. They came to Portland, Maine, Burlington, Vt., and the New Hampshire cities of Manchester and Dover. They came to Pawtucket, Providence and Cranston in Rhode Island, to Hartford and New Haven in Connecticut. And they especially came to Massachusetts, to Boston and its North and South Shores, to the Merrimack River Valley and to Holyoke and Worcester.

Then, in 1922, quotas restricted the number of immigrants into the United States, including the Irish.

Concentration of Irish in America, 1970, according to the U.S. Census.

Triumph

When John F. Kennedy won the presidency of the United States in 1960, people viewed it as a triumph over a century of discrimination. But his family had already succeeded. His father, Joseph P. Kennedy, had amassed a fortune and served as U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. Many other Irish immigrants and their descendants had thrived in politics, people like Boston Mayor James Michael Curley and Speaker of the U.S. House Tip O’Neill.

Today, more than one in five residents of Massachusetts and New Hampshire claims Irish ancestry. And about 18 percent of people living in Rhode Island, Maine and Vermont have Irish forbears. Connecticut may be the least Irish state in New England, with only 16.6 percent of its people claiming Irish blood. But still, it’s in the top 10, with only Delaware claiming slightly more.

The world’s largest Irish flag at Rowe’s Wharf in Boston.

Boston, the most Irish city in the country, has retained much of its Irish culture and still attracts Irish immigrants. Mayor Marty Walsh’s parents were born in Ireland. Boston has the Celtics, Boston College, many churches and pubs, as well as the legacy of Whitey Bulger. Boston’s South Shore, known as the Irish Riviera, gave us the Dropkick Murphys.

Many Bostonians take off from work on March 17, a holiday in Suffolk County. To appease Yankee sensibilities, though, it’s called Evacuation Day. Though it commemorates the British departure from Boston, there’s no Evacuation Day parade.

Largest Irish flags By John Hoey from Framingham, MA, United States – World’s Largest Irish Flag (1), CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411665 and https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47411658.

This story last updated in 2023.

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Lightfoot and Thunderbolt – The Last New England Highwaymen

In July of 1816, Michael Martin encountered an odd clergyman at a tavern in his native Ireland. The cleric dazzled him with his wealth: fine clothes, rich jewelry and an endless river of liquor.

The clergyman put him through a series of tests to measure his strength and his running speed. Martin impressed the man so well, especially with his foot speed, that he offered him a job, a partnership really. But not as a clergyman, as a highwayman robbing unwary travelers.

Captain Lightfoot robbing Maj. Bray (Captain Lightfoot, the last of the New England highwaymen)

The clergyman revealed himself as a notorious robber in disguise, Captain Thunderbolt — so named because he struck fast and without warning – and he offered 20-year old Martin a place in the fraternity of highwaymen.

Martin hesitated momentarily, he later said. He had not, to this stage of his young life, committed any serious crimes. But he was about to start.

Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt dubbed Martin “Captain Lightfoot,” for his foot speed, and he schooled his new partner in his own personal highwayman’s code:

Steal from the wealthy, not the poor.
Never kill anyone unless threatened with death.
Be courteous, even charming, to those you rob.
Never rob a lady, and
At all times use minimal violence.

Thunderbolt stressed that most people, especially wealthy people, were quick to hand over their money and jewelry if they didn’t feel they would be harmed.

Armed with brass pistols, the two men took to the highways, robbing at will and drinking and dining around Scotland, England and Ireland. By 1819, both Doherty and Martin felt harassed. Though charming rogues, they were still rogues and the law wanted them found.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot’s stock in trade was disguise, posing as Quakers, beggars and physicians. They also altered their ages and features. But the hunt for them was so intense they feared being caught.

The Americas

So, separated in Dublin one day, Martin made the jump to go to New York. From that day forward, he said, he never saw his old friend Thunderbolt again. He did receive a letter from him, he said, in which Doherty explained he had dropped his Captain Thunderbolt identity and planned to go straight. Doherty added said he was traveling to the West Indies.

Martin, meanwhile, traveled to Boston and from there north to Salem, Mass. He worked for a time for Elias Hasket Derby, Jr., heir to many of Salem’s China Trade millions. But he soon received news from home that his father died. On the heels of that news came $400 from his brother, representing Martin’s inheritance.

Now with nearly $500, Martin took a last stab at going straight. He set himself up as a brewer, but the beer making business proved too difficult for him to master. By 1821 he was broke and in debt.

Martin resumed his robbing as Captain Lightfoot, travelling up to Montreal and back down through Vermont. He had a close call robbing a large man in Boscawen, N.H.

“He was a stout fellow and if he had shown spirit enough, might have given me a good battle,” Martin said. After robbing another man in Portsmouth, he headed south toward Boston.

Crime Spree

His plan, he said, was to find some people to rob in Boston or, “…if I did not succeed, I could probably find an opportunity of embarking for the West Indies, to meet my old friend Thunderbolt.”

Martin stole a horse in Salisbury, Mass. and rode to Medford. On the road there on an August night, he happened on the coach carrying Major John Bray and his wife.

Dr. John Wilson of Vermont (a.k.a. Captain Thunderbolt)

He stopped he coach and robbed Major Bray at gunpoint. As Bray’s wife clutched at her jewelry, the ever-gallant Martin assured her that he never robbed a lady – not strictly true, but it was that night.

From beginning to end it was a typical Lightfoot-Thunderbolt robbery. Get in, get out, get going. Only this time, the victims weren’t on a desolate road with miles to go before they could sound an alarm. Word spread of the robbery instantly and Martin found himself running from a mob of angry townspeople. In a fall from his horse, he dislocated a shoulder.

His fleet feet did not fail him, however, and he outran the pursuers finding a barn in Cambridge where he tied together his cravat and suspenders, attached one end to a post and the other to his wrist and re-located his shoulder — a painful process, he recounted.

Martin kept running all the way to Springfield, where his pursuers finally captured him.

The Gallows

Martin was convicted, but he first made one last desperate escape attempt. He managed to obtain a file and cut through his ankle chains. When his jailer entered his cell, Martin clobbered him with the manacles, knocking him senseless and nearly escaping.

However, his escape was thwarted at the jail yard gate, which would not yield to his repeated charges. Michael Martin (a.k.a. Lightfoot) was hanged dead in Cambridge in December of 1821. He walked to the gallows and, with a noose around his neck, signaled to the hangman he was ready by dropping his handkerchief. He was the first man sentenced under the new law that called for the death penalty for highway robbers.

The legends of Thunderbolt and Lightfoot might have ended there were it not for Martin’s decision to tell his story to a writer who published it soon after his death.

In it he gave a precise description of Captain Thunderbolt. New Englanders, traumatized by Lightfoot’s raids, kept a wary eye out for the other highwayman.

Return of Thunderbolt

In Dummerston, Vt., Dr. John Wilson had established himself as a physician. He was a Scot who said he spent a short time in the West Indies. A smart dresser and heavy drinker, he was nevertheless a well-regarded country doctor and something of a curiosity with his thick brogue.

Lightfoot had said that Thunderbolt was adept at passing himself off as a physician and there were whispers that Wilson might be the missing Thunderbolt. But the talk never amounted to anything, though Wilson was obsessed with the Lightfoot tale.

Over time, Wilson moved to Newfane and Brattleboro, where he married and then divorced Selah Chamberlain. He was a tyrant, she said, and what’s more she knew he had been a robber. She took him for as much money as she could get.

By the 1840s, Dr. Wilson had become something of a recluse. Often drunk and disheveled, he wore an ascot year-round. When he died, he demanded that he be fully covered. The undertaker, preparing Wilson for burial, discovered some unusual things. The cravat was hiding a large scar on his neck. The scar matched one that Thunderbolt had received in jail back in England, according to Lightfoot.

In addition, Dr. Wilson was found to be missing part of his left heel and his misshapen left calf had a hole in it — an exact match for the wounds that Lightfoot described him receiving in a shootout.

During his whole life, Wilson disguised his leg injury by wrapping his calf with paper so it looked normal. He also stuffed cork into his shoe to hide the shorter leg. He never even limped.

Upon his burial, the townspeople of Brattleboro concluded that Wilson, whose home belongings included some brass pistols and unexplained jewelry, was in fact Thunderbolt.

His biographer would say: “Sometimes I think he was the Thunderbolt and sometimes I think he was not. But the opinion is gaining very rapidly in this place, that he was the veritable man.”

This story about Lightfoot and Thunderbolt was updated in 2018.

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How New England Towns Got Their Place Names

Sometimes when you hear a place name, you’re pretty sure it’s somewhere in New England. The region’s distinct history left it with some pretty distinct naming patterns.

Many of the earliest towns settled by English Puritans take their names from their homes England, especially East Anglia. Since the French tried to claim New England, too, especially near the Canadian border, they managed to give some settlements French names — along with a state and an enormous lake. The Scots-Irish who settled New England’s frontiers also named their new towns after their homes in Ireland.

The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall.

Indigenous people, of course, had plenty of names for New England places before it became New England. So if a town doesn’t sound English, French or Irish, it’s a good bet it’s Native American.

Unless it’s Warren. New England has six towns called Warren, one in each state, but the reason for those place names is more complicated than you might think.

English Place Names

Massachusetts has at least 104 English names for cities, towns and counties, starting with Amesbury and ending with Yarmouth. (Click here for a complete list of U.S. places named after places in England.)

Rhode Island has the fewest — 15 of them, from Bradford to Wickford. Maine has 32, Vermont 36. Connecticut 31, including Hartford, an archaic spelling of Hertford (the birthplace of one of Thomas Hooker’s assistants, the Rev. Samuel Stone).

New Hampshire was named after Hampshire, England, by John Mason, the colony’s first proprietor (though he never set foot in New England). New Hampshire has 47 cities, towns and counties named after English places.

Puritan Place Names

Many Puritans who arrived in Massachusetts Bay during the Great Migration of 1620 to 1640 left from East Anglia, a wealthy center of cloth manufacturing. It had thriving ports named Boston, Great Yarmouth, King’s Lynn, Colchester and Harwich.

Norwich in East Anglia

Other Puritans came from Norfolk, the county of the North Folk, or the Northern Angles, while others came from Suffolk of the South Folk. Essex, between Suffolk and London, was the home of the East Saxons; Middlesex of the Middle Saxons.

The Puritans even named groups of towns in New England after groups of towns in England: Boston and Lynn, for example, were next to each other in East Anglia as they were in Massachusetts. So were Worcester and Leominster, and Amesbury, Salisbury, Newbury and Andover.

In Rhode Island, the geography of England was mimicked in Warwick and Coventry and in Bristol and Newport. In New Hampshire, Sandown and South Hampton are next to each other as they were in England. And, as in England, there was once a Gosport on the Isles of Shoals next to Portsmouth in New Hampshire.

Scots-Irish Place Names

Some place names reflect the Scots-Irish origins of their first settlers. Derry, N.H., counts as the first.

The First Parish Church in East Derry.

The Massachusetts Puritans, led by Cotton Mather, encouraged the Scots-Irish to settle in places where they would serve as buffers against the Indians. Those frontier settlements to the west, north and east became Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. And so New Hampshire has a Derry, a Londonderry and a Derryfield. It also has an Antrim, Colebrook, Dublin, Hillsborough, Kilkenny and Stewartstown.

Vermont has a Londonderry, named after Londonderry, N.H.

In Maine you’ll find a Belfast, Bangor, Limerick and Newry.

French Place Names

Northern New England — not Louisiana — has the highest percentage of people who claim French ancestry. And New France, or Acadia, once stretched into Maine. That explains at least some of New England’s French place names.

Castine, Maine, which dates to 1613, takes its name from the French Baron de Saint-Castin. A military officer, he established a fort and trading post there in the late 17th century. Other French place names in Maine include Tremont, Presque Isle, Montville, Minot, Lamoine, Lagrange, Isle au Haut and Frenchboro.

Castine, from Fort George, by Fitz Henry Lane

Vermont also has several towns with French names: Vermont, a corruption of the French for “Green Mountain,” has a Belmont, an Orleans and a Vergennes.

Some towns took French names because of enthusiasm for France after it helped win the Revolutionary War. Thus, Rhode Island has a Lafayette and Maine has a Paris and a Calais. Vermont also named Calais and its capital, Montpelier, in a burst of Francophilia.

Four New England towns took the French name Orange. In 1689, much to the joy and relief of New England’s Puritans, William of Orange deposed the Catholic King James II. Towns in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont named themselves after him.

Vermont

Generally, towns only named themselves for individuals after the American Revolution, New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth proved an exception.

Wentworth, colonial governor from 1741 to 1766, sold 138 tracts of land for town charters and named some of them after people he wanted to flatter. He named Clarendon, for example, for the earl of the same name and Monkton for British Gen. Robert Monckton. Wentworth named tiny Ferdinand after Prince Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick-Luneburg, related to England’s royal family.

Wentworth named Bennington after himself.

Montpelier

Many Vermont towns were settled after the Revolution. Hence, Wolcott named itself after Revolutionary general Oliver Wolcott, who also signed the Declaration of Independence.

Barton, Vt., named itself after Maj. William Barton, who captured British general Richard Prescott in Newport, R.I., during the Revolutionary War. He founded the town and then went to jail for selling the same piece of land to two people. Barton was born in Warren, R.I.

Then There’s Maine

Much of Maine came late to the naming party, mostly because Europeans didn’t settle the interior until the French and Indian Wars ended.

The coastal south, established earlier than central Maine, has the Puritan-sounding towns of York, a Falmouth, a Berwick and a Yarmouth.But When settlers put down roots in Maine in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, many people in foreign countries fought for independence. And so they named their towns after the freedom fighters they admired.

The residents of a town previously known as Holmanston incorporated in 1818, they chose “Mexico” to honor the Mexicans who won independence in 1815.

In 1821, people in Maine’s western interior decided to name their town Peru after the South American country that had just declared its independence from Spain.

Denmark, incorporated in 1807, was named in solidarity with the people of Copenhagen. The British Royal Navy attacked the Danish city in 1801 and 1807, much as it had attacked Falmouth in 1775. (Read more about Maine names here.)

Indigenous Names

Two New England states, Connecticut and Massachusetts, take their names from Native Americans. The Massachusetts tribe from the Great Blue Hill region near the bay gave the colony, then the state, its name. Other towns and villages named after tribes include Niantic, Conn., Penacook, N.H., Natick, Mass., and Penobscot and Norridgewock, Maine.

Quite a few Maine place names come from Native Americans, including Machias (“bad little falls”) and Ogunquit (“beautiful place by the sea”). Indigenous people also named Caribou, Damariscotta, Kennebunk, Millinocket, Orono, Penobscot, Saco and Skowhegan.

Main Street, Nantucket

Connecticut in particular has an abundance of towns and villages with indigenous names. They start alphabetically with Aspetuck in Fairfield County and end with Yantic in Norwich. They also include Cos Cob, Mianus, Mystic, Niantic, Norwalk, Willimantic and, appropriately, Uncasville, home of the Mohegan Sun casino.

Elsewhere in New England, some of the better-known towns with Native American names include Pawtucket, R.I., where the Red Sox farm team used to play and Nantucket, where whaling families used to live.

The Bush family still has a summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine, while the Kennedys have theirs in Hyannis, Mass.

Many geographical features, from Narragansett Bay to Mount Katahdin, also have Native American names, but that story is for another day.

Two Warrens, Six Towns

Each New England state has a town named Warren, though two different heroes of distinctly different eras inspired the place names.

Warren in Rhode Island, with colonial roots back to 1621, and Warren, N.H., which welcomed its first English settlers in 1767, were named for Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Warren. Admiral Warren was an Irish officer in the British Royal Navy. He, along with American troops, captured the French fort at Louisbourg on Nova Scotia’s Cape Bretton Island in 1745.

Warren, R.I.

The action established trading agreements between the New England colonies and Canadians. The victory not only made Warren very wealthy, it made him a celebrated figure throughout New England.

The Warrens in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine trace their name to a more well-known figure in U.S. history: Dr. Joseph Warren. Warren led the American struggle for independence in the run up to the war. A major general in the Continental Army, he died fighting with the militia at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British army knew him well and celebrated his death.

To Americans, however, Joseph Warren died a martyr to the cause of freedom. They have affixed his celebrated name to schools, monuments and towns throughout America since shortly after his death.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Fannie_s_Last_Supper/UX-ZAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=1896+world+food+fair+boston&pg=PT243&printsec=frontcover

This story about New England place names was updated in 2021.

Images: Nantucket By The original uploader was Bobak at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2776843. First Parish Church of East Derry By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24513489; Norwich in East Anglia By Pedro Fernandez Photo from Alicante, Spain – #streetphotography #Norwich #norfolk #visitnorwich #enjoynorwich #walk #places #downtown #HDR, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34614607.

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Chester Arthur, Inaugurated in his Lexington Ave. Home

The American public had low expectations of Chester Arthur when he became the 21st president of the United States, but he ended up surprising everybody.

Chester Arthur

This satirical cartoon from Puck magazine shows Chester Arthur pondering what to do with Roscoe Conkling, his white elephant.

He was born in Fairfield, Vt., on Oct. 5, 1829, to a Scots-Irish father who taught school and a mother with English and Welsh ancestry. He was the fifth of nine children. The family had moved to Fairfield in 1828, and would eventually move to New York state.

Birthplace of Chester Arthur.

Fairfield had lost its Yankee farmers to Genesee or Ohio ‘fever’ after the War of 1812. They gave up their rocky, hilly farms for the flat, rich land of western New York and the upper Midwest. They left behind cheap land, which the Irish had craved since the English had made it nearly impossible for Catholics to own land in Ireland. Fairfield was also near Catholic churches in southern Quebec, only two towns away.

Demography was almost destiny for Chester Arthur later in life. His birthplace aroused the suspicion of his political enemies. His political opponents later accused him of being secretly Canadian.

New York Lawyer

Arthur became a New York City lawyer enmeshed in the corrupt Republican political machine. He was viewed as a puppet of political boss Roscoe Conkling, who headed the Stalwart wing of the GOP. Stalwarts openly supported machine politics and patronage. Arthur had plenty of patronage to dole out after his appointment as collector of the Port of New York.

In 1880, the Republican Party nominated Arthur as vice president under James A. Garfield, though he had never won election to public office. Six months after Garfield’s election, Charles Guiteau shot Garfield in the back, shouting “I am a Stalwart of the Stalwarts! Arthur is president now!”

Chester Arthur

Chester Arthur was mortified. He knew people thought he had something to do with the shooting. He hid out in his Lexington Avenue home in New York City for two months and 18 days while Garfield lingered near death.

When Garfield finally died, Arthur took the oath of office privately at home.

A New Broom

He then overcome his dirty reputation by advocating civil service reform – and enforcing it.

By the end of his term in 1885 he was in ill health and didn’t actively pursue renomination. He died shortly after leaving office.

Mark Twain praised him, saying, “”[I]t would be hard indeed to better President Arthur’s administration.”

This story about Chester Arthur was updated in 2023.

Image of the Arthur birthplace: By Gerald L. Hann – camera, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37860210.

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New Hampshire Legend: Ocean Born Mary

The New Hampshire legend of Ocean Born Mary has pirates, ghosts, a light green silk wedding dress – and some of it is even true.

Ocean Born Mary

Mary Wilson was born on a voyage from Ulster to Boston on July 28, 1720. Her Scottish parents, Elizabeth and James Wilson, were emigrating to New England to escape the violence in Northern Ireland.

That much is true.

Pirates boarded the ship intending to rob and kill the passengers. But then they heard a baby cry below decks. The captain went down to investigate, and he softened at the sight of the newborn. He said he would spare the passengers if Elizabeth would name the baby Mary after his beloved mother (or his wife). He gave her a bolt of light green silk cloth and asked that Mary wear it at her wedding.

That part might have some truth to it. Pieces of Mary Wilson’s green silk wedding dress are on display in Londonderry, Henniker and Concord. And the Scottish emigrants’ encounter with privateers actually did happen. That’s according to reliable accounts published a few decades after Ocean Born Mary’s death, according to Jeremy Entremont, in his book Ocean Born Mary: The Truth Behind a New Hampshire Legend.

That version has the pirates boarding the emigrants’ ship and taking them aboard their own. The ordeal caused Elizabeth to give premature birth to her daughter, and the pirate captain, a father, took pity on her. He made her comfortable and allowed the captives to return to their ship and proceed on their voyage. And he did give Elizabeth presents, including the bolt of light green silk.

America

Mary’s father then died soon after they arrived in America. Elizabeth soon remarried James Clark, another Scots-Irishman.

Many Scots-Irish were coming to America then with the uneasy blessing of the Massachusetts Puritans. The Puritans viewed them as another persecuted religious minority. And they also thought the newcomers could settle on the frontier as useful buffers against the French and Indians.

The family settled in Londonderry, N.H., then on the western fringes of New England. The settlement celebrated Ocean Born Mary’s birthday every year.

Mary grew up a tall, red-headed, well-loved woman. She married James Wallace wearing the light green silk dress at her wedding. The couple had four surviving sons and one daughter. Three of the sons married three sisters and emerged as local political leaders.

Ocean Born Mary outlived her husband (true) and moved to Henniker, N.H. (true). Here’s where the New Hampshire legend of Ocean Born Mary gets nutty: The pirate captain came to Henniker in search of the grown-up infant Mary and married her (hardly) or made her his housekeeper (not true). He was also said to have been killed by another pirate (definitely not true).

A Nutty Legend

Here’s why the New Hampshire legend of Ocean Mary got nutty. In 1917, Louis ‘Gus’ Roy of Wisconsin bought a house that Ocean Born Mary’s son had owned. He then invented tales of buried gold and a tall, red-haired ghost that was probably Mary. He also gave house tours and rented shovels to tourists to dig for gold in the back yard.

In 1939, children’s book author Lois Lenski published a book of fiction about 10-year-old Ocean Born Mary and her adventures in Portsmouth, N.H. The author had help in her historical research from local historian Dorothy Vaughan, who for many of her 99 years was a reliable source of Portsmouth history.

Ocean Born Mary lies buried in the cemetery behind this building.

When Mary died, she was buried in the cemetery behind the Henniker Town Hall.

There is a house in Londonderry called the old Wilson homestead. Some believe Ocean Born Mary lived there. David Ellis, a volunteer with the Londonderry Historical Society, has researched the town records and learned that a different Wilson family lived there.

Images: Henniker Town Hall By Jokermage at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17982643. This story was updated in 2022.

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