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Shrewsbury Mass.

John Hancock Snubs George Washington

In the fall of 1789, President George Washington spent 10 days in Massachusetts, greeted by large crowds of people — with the notable exception of Gov. John Hancock.

Washington had been president six months, and he knew well the fragility of the union. He decided to knit the 13 colonies together with his personal popularity, and announced he would visit each of the states during his first year in office.

John Singleton Copley painted this portrait of John Hancock around 1771. Courtesy Massachusetts Historical Society.

His first stop in Massachusetts was in Springfield, where he inspected the federal armory. Then he rode on to Palmer, West Brookfield, Brookfield, Spencer, Leicester and Worcester, where he received a 13-gun salute. He rode through Marlborough, Shrewsbury, Sudbury and Weston.

Everywhere he went, cheering crowds crowds greeted him. People treasured everything he touched: dishes, chairs, beds. Many towns renamed streets “Washington Street” after he rode on them.

Where’s John Hancock?

Washington arrived in Cambridge on October 24, where he had maintained headquartered during the Siege of Boston. He was then escorted to Boston by high-ranking officials led by Lt. Gov. Samuel Adams. John Hancock was not among them.

Hancock believed he outranked Washington, who was only president of a confederation. Hancock was governor of a commonwealth.

George Washington

While Hancock holed up, the rest of Boston went wild celebrating Washington’s arrival. Despite Washington’s request that there be no ceremony, he was met with a grand procession from one end of the Common to the Statehouse. Lining the route were citizens grouped by trade, each flying a white silk flag with its insignia. Washington passed through a temporary arch designed by Charles Bulfinch as a chorus of young men serenaded him with a song, Washington, the hero is come.

Washington stayed in a private home, where official plans called for Hancock to pay him a visit and then host a dinner for him. A few minutes before the scheduled meeting, Hancock sent word that he couldn’t make it because of his health. Washington responded by excusing himself from the dinner.

Jealousy, Maybe?

Hancock’s treatment of Washington may have had deeper causes than his commitment to the sovereignty of Massachusetts. Years earlier, Hancock had wanted the Continental Congress to appoint him rather than Washington commander in chief of the Continental Army.

Three years after that, however, Hancock named his son John George Washington Hancock.

Mercy Otis Warren offers an explanation for John Hancock’s behavior toward Washington: He was vain and fickle.

Mr. Hancock was a young gentleman of fortune, of more external accomplishments than real ability. He was polite in manners, easy in address, affable, civil and liberal. With these accomplishments, he was capricious sanguine and implacable; naturally generous, he was profuse in expense; he scattered largesse without discretion, and purchased favors by the waste of wealth, until he reached the ultimatum of his wishes, which centered in the focus of popular applause.

Mercy Otis Warren by John Singleton Copley. Courtesy Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Blame the Gout

The people of Boston noticed that John Hancock snubbed George Washington, and they didn’t like it one bit. Hancock finally realized his behavior hurt his popularity. So the next day he sent emissaries to Washington with his humble apologies and a question: What time would it be good for Washington to see him?

Washington replied between 1 pm and 2 pm, and John Hancock showed up almost immediately – his legs swathed in bandages. His gout, he explained, prevented him from welcoming the president.

Washington gracefully accepted Hancock’s explanation.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Ralph Earl, The Loyalist Bigamist Who Painted the Revolution

The two-faced, twice-married Ralph Earl created pro-patriot propaganda though he sympathized with King George III. He was married to two women at the same time, one American, one English. And after fleeing to England during the Revolution he returned to Connecticut to become the leading painter of American revolutionaries.

Percy’s Rescue at Lexington by Ralph Earl

Laurence B. Goodrich, in Ralph Earl, Recorder for an Era, ranks him among the most “brilliant and historically important artists of the land” who produced a “glowing pictorial record of the era.” Wrote Goodrich:

…the works of Earl–more intimately than those of any other painter — bring us today a realistic view of post-Revolutionary America. … His pictures show people in their own houses, surrounded by their furniture, caressing their pets, pursuing their customary occupations.

Earl painted this portrait of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton

Ralph Earl

Ralph Earl was born in either Shrewsbury or Leicester, Mass., on May 11, 1754. He may have taught himself to paint. He married his second cousin, Sarah Gates, in the fall of 1774, when she was already pregnant. They had two children, but the marriage was not a success. They lived apart for all of six months of their marriage.

Earl set up a studio in New Haven, Conn., and painted primitive portraits, including an awkwardly drawn but powerful Roger Sherman.

Roger Sherman by Ralph Earl

Engravings based on his historical paintings of the Battles of Lexington and Concord were published Dec. 13, 1775, the first in Connecticut.

British Army in Concord, by Ralph Earl

Earl remained loyal to King George III, though his father was a captain in the Continental Army, his brother a Minuteman and several of his cousins died in the Revolutionary cause.

Ralph and Sarah Earl were accused of treason. A petition signed by 50 people demanded action against them. Gen. John Burgoyne’s quartermaster general, John Money, saved Earl. Money “had the goodness to disguise him as a Servant and bring him from Providence to Newport in a Flag of Truce and from thence to England where they arrived in April last [1778].” Earl left Sarah behind; they had parted ways by then.

England and Back

He spent the next seven or eight years in England, where he studied with Benjamin West. His draftsmanship improved under West, and he won commissions to paint the king and the English gentry. In England, he also married Ann Whiteside, apparently not having divorced Sarah.

Oliver and Abigail Ellsworth by Ralph Earl

He returned to the United States after the war ended and tried to set up a studio in New York City. Instead, he landed in debtors’ prison for a year and a half, where he painted portraits of the people charged with enforcing the debtors’ laws.

Earl was released from prison and moved to Connecticut, where he painted well-to-do rural families and prominent citizens who had supported the Revolution. He traveled to Vermont and Massachusetts with his family as well.

Ralph Earl died in Bolton, Conn., on Aug. 16, 1801, probably of alcoholism. In 1935, a red sandstone monument was erected to his memory. The inscription reads:

In Memory of Ralph Earl

One of the foremost portrait painters in
America of his time. Born at Shrewsbury,
Massachusetts, May 11th, 1751, he studied in
London under his countryman Benjamin
West; was an exhibitor in the Royal Academy;
and, upon returning to his native country
in 1786, painted chiefly in Connecticut.
His portraits of American patriots include
three signers of the Declaration of Indepen-
dence — Roger Sherman, Governor Olivler
Wolcott, Sr., and William Floyd — and those
of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, General
Baron von Steuben, Colonel Samuel Talcott,
Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, Major Moses
Seymour, and the Honorable George Wyllys.
His death here in Bolton, August 16th, 1801,
was recorded by the Rev. George Colton
(1736-1812). and he was presumably
buried here in an unmarked grave.

With thanks to Worcester Art.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Worst Tornado in New England History Strikes Worcester, Mass.

The Worcester tornado of 1953 struck without warning and cut a swath of destruction, at times a mile wide, through a half-dozen towns. It was the worst tornado in New England history, and one of the 25 worst tornadoes in U.S. history.

The worst tornado in New England history spent 90 minutes on the ground in Massachusetts from Petersham to Framingham.

For 90 minutes it stayed on the ground, traveling 48 miles from Petersham through Worcester to Shrewsbury, Southborough and Westborough. Finally it petered out over Framingham, having gobbled up everything in its way.

New England’s worst tornado blew down houses, threw cars out of parking lots, ripped trees from their roots. It grabbed bodies and entire houses and tossed them into Lake Quinsigamond. It snatched paper in Holden and dropped it in Eastham on Cape Cod. The tornado brought with it hailstones the size of baseballs and rained debris on Boston suburbs.

It officially killed 90 people, unofficially killed 94, injured 1,300 and destroyed 4,000 buildings. More than 10,000 people lost their homes.

In the end, New England’s worst tornado would change the way the National Weather Service ran the Storm Prediction Center to give more timely and accurate warnings of dangerous weather events.

Worst Tornado

The deadly twister belonged to an outbreak of tornadoes over the northern United States for three days, from June 6-9. A high-pressure system collided with a low-pressure mass over Nebraska, which generated tornadoes in Ohio, Michigan and Nebraska.

The Flint-Beecher tornado on June 8 — the worst tornado to strike Michigan — killed 116 people and injured 844. Seven other tornadoes in the Upper Midwest that day killed nine more people and injured 52 more.

New England’s worst tornado struck without warning.

The mass of cold air moved east overnight, dropping temperatures rapidly in New England. The cold front collided with warm air from the South, creating highly unusual conditions for a tornado in the northeastern United States.

National Weather Service forecasters in Boston knew a tornado was likely. But it was the first year the NWS forecast tornadoes, and the forecasters feared telling the public lest they cause panic.

Forecasters issued a severe thunderstorm watch instead. So when at 4:25 p.m. the twister touched down near the Quabbin Reservoir in a Petersham forest, no one was prepared.

Fear at First Sight

Boaters on the Quabbin Reservoir first noticed the boiling clouds in the sky, which formed into three funnels. One dissipated, but twin funnels headed southeast.

At first they terrorized farm country. Near Barre a twister collapsed a two-story farmhouse and threw 18-year-old Barbara Knight and 11-year-old Eddie White hundreds of feet to their deaths. Eddie’s mother suffered a fractured spine. His older sister June survived, having been thrown through the air on a door and fallen back to earth safely.

The worst tornado moved through Rutland, killing two. Then it killed nine more people in Holden, where it wiped out the Brentwood subdivision and all but 12 of the 75 homes in White Oaks. A 12-year-old boy, Larry Faucher, struggled against the wind to bring his bicycle home, but the killer tornado picked him up before he made it and hurled him to his death in a field.

New England’s worst tornado left 10,000 people homeless.

The black storm cloud grew to a mile wide by the time it slammed into Worcester. Mrs. Virginia Harrison was the first of 60 people killed in in the city by the tornado. She was swept away with her stately home, which had just appeared in a Better Homes and Gardens photo.

Random Violence

No social class was spared. People were crushed to death in collapsing triple deckers or lost their homes in the fire afterward. A priest and two nuns were killed at Assumption College (now Quinsigamond Community College).

The Uncatena-Great Brook Valley neighborhoods suffered the worst destruction. Houses simply vanished and entire blocks of homes leveled. The tornado picked up a 12-ton bus and slammed it against the Curtis Apartments, killing two and dropping the buildings’ blueprints in Duxbury, Mass. At the Brookside Home Farm, a dairy, six men were killed and the herd of 80 Holstein cows wiped out.

Winds reached speeds of 335 mph, among the highest ever recorded. The tornado caught up people on the street and hurled them to their deaths. Or it tossed around cars and mangled the people inside. It plucked people out of their shattered homes or impaled them on flying debris.

Someone found a wedding dress in Worcester hanging from a telephone wire in Natick. A chunk of mattress found floating in the Massachusetts Bay, 100 miles away.

Winds as high as 335 mph made the June 9, 1953 twister the worst tornado to strike New England.

Still More

Still that wasn’t the end of it. The worst tornado turned east and barreled through Shrewsbury, killing 12, through Westborough, killing six, and through Soutborough, where it claimed three more victims. It crushed them in the collapse of the Fayville Post Office.

The worst tornado had company in New England that day. A smaller tornado struck Sutton, Northbridge, Mendon, Bellingham, Franklin, Wrentham and Mansfield, injuring 17. A still smaller twister injured several people in Fremont and Exeter in New Hampshire, and others caused minor damage in Colrain, Mass.

New England’s worst tornado destroyed 4,000 buildings.

Quelling Panic

People at first thought the Soviet Union had launched an attack on Massachusetts — or maybe it was a side effect of the nuclear testing in the Southwest.

The National Guard came out to quell panic and to help search for bodies and find the still-living under rubble. Several small children were found under the bodies of dead parents. Husbands and wives were found dead together, locked in a final embrace.

worst-tornado-robert-stoddard-john-kennedy

Worcester industrialist Robert Stoddard and John F. Kennedy before take-off in a helicopter to inspect the damage from New England’s worst tornado.

The tornado damaged the Norton Co., Worcester’s largest employer, shattering every window and tearing off the roof. But the company continued operations, employing 5,700 local people making grinding gears and abrasives.

On June 10, a young U.S. senator named John F. Kennedy came to inspect the damage from the storm.

Eight days after the worst tornado struck New England, the U.S. government reorganized the Storm Prediction Center and implemented a national radar system to spot storms. Until the Joplin, Mo., tornado of 2011, no storm since killed more than 100 people.

Photos of the worst tornado damage courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection, except for the photo of “Robert Stoddard and John Kennedy” by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia. For a slide show of the Worcester tornado, click here. This story was updated in 2022.

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