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Springfield Mass.

The Legend of Deep River’s XYZ Bank Robber

The letters XYZ are chiseled into a small grave marker in a corner of a cemetery in Deep River, Conn. Underneath lies a bank robber, killed by a shotgun blast from the night watchman at the Deep River Savings Bank.

Legends have grown up around the tiny gravestone, slightly smaller than a shoebox. Many believe the mystery of XYZ’s identity was never solved.

After all, it’s much more fun to believe that a beautiful woman in black visited the unknown XYZ for every year for 40 years.

Deep River Town Hall

Deep River

At the end of the 19th century, Deep River, Conn., had acquired great wealth from the ivory trade. Deacon Phineas Pratt, the descendant of one of the town’s original settlers, invented a device to cut ivory, which gave U.S. manufacturers a chance to compete against Europeans.

Back then ivory was in great demand for combs and for piano keys. Factories in Deep River and in nearby Ivoryton dominated the market, and most ivory that came into the United States from the Civil War to World War II came through those two towns.

The Deep River Savings Bank was believed to have more than $1 million in deposits, and it received a tip about a planned robbery. So the bank hired a night watchman, a local man named Harry Tyler.

Sure enough, around 1 AM on Dec. 13, 1899, four men tried to enter the bank. One, described as having a long black moustache, tried to jimmy open the window. Tyler took his sawed-off shotgun and fired at the robber, blowing away part of his face. The other three fled, leaving their accomplice to die in Deep River.

No one in Deep River knew the man’s identity, and no one claimed his body.

The Legend of XYZ

So the town buried him in the Fountain Hill Cemetery near the railroad tracks. A legend grew up around the mysterious gravestone. According to one, Tyler received a letter in a woman’s handwriting shortly after the robber’s death. It asked him to put a stone inscribed with the letters XYZ on the unnamed robber’s grave. A small sandstone block carved with those letters now marks his final resting place.

Fountain Hill Cemetery entrance. Image courtesy Google Maps.

The townspeople claimed a woman in black walked from the railroad station to the XYZ marker every December for forty years. She always left a small flower and she never said a word.

The story has a couple of problems. Two months after the robbery, the New Era published a story revealing his name: Frank Howard, a deep-dyed criminal.

The newspaper reported that detectives hired by the American Bankers Association had worked on the case, presumably how the bank got tipped off.

Detectives traced Howard, also known as P.E. King, to Mancelona, Mich., to Albany and to Springfield, Mass.

Howard had blown up a safe in a hardware store and shot a police officer with a revolver – in the back. Detectives also knew his accomplices, but couldn’t prosecute because of a lack of evidence.

A Good Legend

But a good legend will outlive the truth.

Decades later, an article published in the Deep River New Era reported “for several years following the daring bank attempt, a woman dressed in black would get off the train at the Deep River depot, walk down the tracks and up into the cemetery by the back way and visit the grave of XYZ, leaving a bouquet of flowers on it.

“The woman was never stopped, followed or otherwise investigated, and her relationship with the dead robber has never been learned.”

Today, young children leave coins on the gravestone so XYZ won’t put a curse on them. More people visit his grave than any other in the cemetery.

A different bank building now stands on the Deep River Savings Bank site. But you can still visit a display case with the gun, shell casing, and some photos.

Or put a coin on his grave.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Private Snafu, Horny WWII Cartoon Character, Teaches Soldiers How To Behave — And Dr. Seuss How To Write

Well before the Grinch Stole Christmas or the Cat in the Hat Came Back, Dr. Seuss gave voice to Private Snafu, a cartoon character decidedly not for children.

Snafu was a horny, stupid, sloppy big mouth who did everything wrong. That was the point. Private Snafu starred in propaganda cartoons for the U.S. Army during World War II. By constantly messing up, he taught lessons about why it’s important to do things right – or at least, to do them the Army way.

Dr. Seuss – Springfield, Mass’s own Theodor Geisel – wrote many of the 23 cartoons ultimately shown to soldiers between June 1943 and 1946. Because some of his audience was only semi-literate, Dr. Seuss used simple, easy-to-remember rhyme for his characters. He later used the same technique in his books for children.

Private Snafu

Snafu, the narrator explains, stands for “Situation Normal…All Fouled Up.” But he pauses before the word “fouled,” to hint at the F-word usually used.

The cartoons were risqué, with bathroom humor, bosomy women, mild cursing and racial stereotypes of the enemy that would horrify people today.

Private Snafu was described as “a patriotic, conscientious guy who thinks the army’s swell.” But he gets himself into hot water by disobeying orders. In the process, Private Snafu shows how to handle a rifle, manage personal hygiene, avoid malaria, put on a gas mask – and why it’s important.

He has a good angel on his shoulder, though, or rather a cigar-smoking, unshaven Technical Fairy First Class, who persuades Private Snafu to do the right thing

In one episode, Snafu complains about peeling potatoes on KP. The Technical Fairy, in a dream, shows him what would happen if Snafu ran the Army. The soldiers would all get booze and women, but their enjoyment would end when the Luftwaffe catches them unprepared.

“The moral, Snafu, is the harder you work, /The sooner we’re gonna beat Hitler, that jerk,” the Technical Fairy tells him in pure Seussian.

Warner Brothers

The cartoons came about after Warner Brothers Cartoons won the bid for the contract from the U.S. Army. Frank Capra, who directed It’s a Wonderful Life, dreamed up Private Snafu. Dr. Seuss was joined by such giants of animation as Chuck Jones, Mel Blanc and Bugs Bunny creator Fritz Freleng.

Bugs Bunny, in fact, makes cameo appearances in two of the shorts. Daffy Duck appears as well.

Dr. Seuss

In one cartoon, Private Snafu starts a rumor and ends up in a padded cell, driven insane when it multiplies into word that the Allies lost the war.

“The hot air is blowing, a rumor is growing,” says the narrator in more Seussian.

Several of the Private Snafu shorts deal with leaking classified information. In Spies, he lets slip that he’s taking a transport ship to Africa. Axis spies find out, the information lands on Hitler’s desk and U-boats end up killing Private Snafu. He finds himself in hell and asks the devil who let the secret out. The devil puts a mirror in front of him and he sees a horse’s behind.

In one of the last cartoons, however, Dr. Seuss may have let his imagination get a little too close to the truth. In Going Home, Private Snafu lets slip that the United States plans to drop an imaginary secret weapon onto Japan. At the same time, scientists were working on the real atom bomb. Going Home was never released, with no explanation. Was it because the writer who warned against leaking classified information had inadvertently released classified information?

Dr. Seuss would later collaborate with Chuck Jones on the ever-popular television special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Timothy Leary Gets the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act Overturned

Timothy Leary found out just how screwy America’s cannabis laws were when he got busted for violating the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.

Leary faced a 30-year prison sentence, so he hired a team of lawyers to defend him in court. They argued the law violated his Fifth Amendment right protecting him against self-incrimination. They reasoned he had to tell federal authorities he possessed pot so they could tax it. But state laws made cannabis possession a crime.

Timothy Leary.

In 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with Leary and ruled the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act unconstitutional. Leary then went on to run for governor of California. (He didn’t win.) He had a campaign song called Come Together, which his friend John Lennon wrote.

Then in 1970, Congress further complicated the laws governing cannabis by making possession of it a crime.

It was a funny way to treat a plant that the early colonists were required to cultivate and which doesn’t always get you high.

Cannabis

Some strains of cannabis have compounds that alter the mind, while others don’t.

Humans have bred cannabis plants in Asia since as early as 8000 B.C. They cultivated hemp for fiber to make clothes and rope. Later they bred strains for medicine and for getting stoned.

Cannabis

The English colonies passed the first cannabis law in 1639. The Massachusetts General Court ordered every household to plant the weed. Connecticut then followed the next year. They did it because of a rope shortage — they needed the hemp.

The early New England farmers grew plenty of cannabis. For example, 220,000 pounds of fiber from the cannabis plant went into the rigging of Old Ironsides.

Patent Medicines

Cotton eventually surpassed cannabis as the agricultural fiber of choice. But patent medicine makers continued to use cannabis as an active ingredient in over-the-counter remedies. People used it as a tincture or an oil to cure gonorrhea and asthma, and to ease the pain of childbirth.

Drug stores also sold dried marijuana in one-ounce packages. Two cigarettes cost a dollar.

By the turn of the 20^th century, things began to change. States passed poison laws, which required medicine makers to label certain kinds of ingredients. In 1905, poison laws in both Vermont and Maine mentioned cannabis. But Rhode Island’s didn’t.

Then in 1906, the federal Pure Food and Drug Act required products with cannabis to carry labels.

Massachusetts went even further in 1911, making cannabis possession a crime. Lawbreakers paid a fine and served a three- to six-month prison sentence. The law had an exception, though, for doctors, nurses and veterinarians with a license to prescribe the stuff.

The Massachusetts law, like others, didn’t distinguish between cannabis that produced a high and cannabis that didn’t. Other states soon followed and made all cannabis possession a crime.

Immigration

Drug laws also began to take on an anti-immigrant taint. Since the American Revolution, medical doctors freely gave opium to their patients. Then the Civil War caused widespread drug addiction. Doctors gave large quantities of opium and morphine to wounded soldiers and, later, to sickly women.

That was okay. But it wasn’t okay when Chinese immigrants on the West Coast started opening opium dens. So Congress decided to step in. The Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1915 banned opium for non-medical reasons. It also required doctors who prescribed opium to register with the federal government.

A San Francisco opium den

In the American Southwest, the 1910 Mexican Revolution drove immigrants into the United States. Some of them liked to smoke cannabis recreationally. People viewed them as the “marijuana menace.”

The 1937 Marijuana Tax Act

That set the stage for the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. A hard-nosed FBI agent named Harry Anslinger wrote the bill, and he testified cannabis could cause violent delirium. He called it “marijuana’ rather than cannabis. After all, “marijuana” sounded foreign and therefore more sinister.

Anslinger claimed a 20-year-old “axe-murdering marijuana addict” named Victor Licata had killed his entire family. In truth, Licata suffered from mental illness and didn’t smoke pot.

Anslinger also ignored a doctor who looked at 2,216 criminal cases and found cannabis had influenced exactly zero. And he paid no attention to the American Medical Association, which strongly opposed the bill.

Evidence suggests that powerful corporations had an interest in suppressing cannabis. Dupont, which made nylon and rayon, feared competition from hemp fiber. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who owned paper mills, thought hemp might be used to make paper.

Harry Anslinger

And so Congress passed the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. Then in 1951, Congress passed the Boggs Act, which imposed a mandatory minimum prison sentence of two to 10 years for possession of cannabis. Two months after President Harry S Truman signed the bill, 500 people were arrested for marijuana possession in one day.

Timothy Leary

Timothy Leary, a leader of the ‘60s drug counterculture, was born into a well-to-do Springfield, Mass., family in 1920. A great uncle, another Dr. Timothy Leary, served as Boston’s medical examiner, and his grandfather was believed to be the richest man in western Massachusetts.

The grandfather, however, squandered his money, and when his son found out he abandoned his family when Timothy was 13. That perhaps explains Timothy Leary’s behavior problems. He got kicked out of high school, expelled from Holy Cross, silenced at West Point, expelled from the University of Alabama and fled to Europe — twice. But he did manage to earn a PhD from the University of California by the time he reached 40.

Timothy Leary, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and others singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’

He won an appointment as a lecturer in clinical psychology at Harvard University. While at Harvard, he studied the effects of psychedelic drugs on personality. But Leary also used drugs recreationally, and in 1962 Harvard fired him.

Monstrosity

In 1965, he got busted for cannabis possession in Laredo, Texas, and charged under the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. In developing his defense, he learned about the federal weed law. Leary called it “a bizarre monstrosity from the bureaucratic standpoint and unconstitutional from the legal standpoint.”

A revenue stamp for cannabis

Under the law, people couldn’t buy tax stamps without providing details about the amount and location of their marijuana. And marijuana, of course, was illegal.

The high court sided with Leary in 1969, and Congress repealed the law the next year. But Congress also passed the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. The law put cannabis in the most restrictive category of controlled substances.

Lawmakers reasoned cannabis was dangerous because of its “high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use” and a “lack of accepted safety.”

Since then, researchers have concluded cannabis does have therapeutic effects. Opinion vary, though, on how addictive and dangerous it is. By 2021, 36 states and the District of Columbia have made cannabis possession legal, at least for medicinal purposes.

And in 2018, the federal Farm Bill legalized cannabis for industrial use. That “unleashed a potential economic dynamo for American farmers,’” according to Forbes magazine.

Images: Harry Anslinger By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34928390. Timothy Leary with John and Yoko By Roy Kerwood – Originally uploaded to English Wikipedia by Roy Kerwood, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44122819. This story was updated in 2022.

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Justin Morgan, More Famous for Owning a Horse Than Writing Gorgeous Music

Justin Morgan became far more famous for the horse he owned than for the brilliant music he wrote.

Justin Morgan Jr., said to closely resemble his father. Courtesy Vermont Historical Society.

A little six-year-old horse he walked from Springfield, Mass., to Randolph, Vt., would father the first, famous American horse breed. That little horse has 175,000 descendants, known by the name of Morgan.

Justin Morgan only owned his horse for three years, but he had a lifelong passion for music. He wrote psalmody, the first distinctive American style of music.

Popular for a while, Morgan’s music was forgotten for more than a century, then rediscovered. Nine of his compositions survive.

Justin Morgan

Justin Morgan was a descendant of Miles Morgan, an early pioneer of Springfield, Mass., and ancestor of financier J.P. Morgan. The family was described as “substantial yeoman farmers,” involved in civic and church affairs.

Justin was born in 1747, the eighth of 11 children. He probably had a quality education. After he inherited a part of his father’s barn and a small piece of land, he married his cousin, Martha Day. Martha’s brother Luke played sidekick to Daniel Shay, who led the famous rebellion.

Springfield, a cavalry depot during the American Revolution, was a hive of horse activity. While starting his family, Justin Morgan rented horses for stud, ran a farm and served as a part-time tax collector.

Then, after the war, people couldn’t pay their taxes because of hard times and lack of currency. The state could seize tax collectors’ property if they didn’t come up with enough tax receipts. Morgan couldn’t, and he got hauled into court.

Around 1788, he moved his family to the independent Republic of Vermont, perhaps to escape Massachusetts taxes.

Vermont

In Randolph, Justin Morgan farmed, sold liquor, bred horses, served as town clerk and wrote music on the side. He also taught penmanship and singing. He traveled widely, as far as the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania, Bainbridge, N.Y., and perhaps as far as Baltimore.

A Morgan horse

Just after the Morgan family left Massachusetts, a stallion named Figure was born in Southern New England. His owner may have owed Justin Morgan money. But for whatever reason, he gave the little horse to him. Morgan walked him home to Randolph.

Figure stood just under five feet at the shoulder, athletic, graceful, pleasant and handsome. Strong enough to pull stumps from rocky soil, he had enough speed to win races. Morgan recognized the little horse’s unique qualities, the result of a genetic mutation.

Morgan owned Figure for about three years, advertising him for stud in Randolph and Lebanon, N.H., and Royalton, Williston and Hinesburg, Vt. He leased Figure in 1795 to clear land for $15 a year. He eventually traded the horse for land in Moretown, Vt.

Figure had 11 more owners during his life. They used him for logging, racing and breeding. In 1796, Figure easily won a race against two New York horses in Brookfield, Vt. The stretch of road he raced is known as the “Morgan Mile.”

Three of Figure’s children then became foundation bloodstock: Woodbury, Bulrush and Sherman. Vermont farmers loved them. By the 1830s, Vermont farmers were sold Morgan horses outside the state. Many paid off their mortgages with the proceeds.

The Morgan Horse

Morgans were ridden by Pony Express carriers and President James Monroe. They fought on both sides of the Civil War, favored by officers and the First Vermont Cavalry Regiment. When the regiment captured a Confederate soldier, he said, “It was yer hosses done likked us!” A Morgan horse was the only survivor of Little Big Horn.

In 1821, another horse kicked Figure and he died of his injuries. His owner buried him in Tunbridge, Vt.

In 1907, the US Department of Agriculture decided to perpetuate and improve the Morgan breed, so it established the US Morgan Horse Farm near Middlebury, Vt. The University of Vermont eventually took over the farm in 1951.

The Morgan Horse Farm

Psalmody

Justin Morgan died of tuberculosis in 1798, three years after he sold Figure. He left five children. Two had died before reaching adulthood. He wrote one of his hymns, Amanda, on the death of his infant daughter.

Morgan’s musical compositions, known as psalmody, are complex with elaborate repetitions of a theme. They take great skill to execute.

Morgan’s music was popular with Congregational and Baptist churches throughout New England. Today his compositions are viewed as outstanding original folk music.

Some of his songs were printed in tune books published by others and sold widely. They then fell out of style in the cities around 1810, when European music came into fashion. Social snobs made fun of the rustic New England psalmody.

Justin Morgan, Rediscovered

Then in the mid-20^th century, it was rediscovered during a revival of early American music.

Conductor Leopold Stokowski led the Houston Symphony Orchestra in Fantasy on a Hymn Tune (listen to it here. The Ebenezer Church choir in Dunwoody, Ga., performed his hymn Montgomery (watch it here.) Amanda has been performed by Czech choral group Ensemble Versus.

Marguerite Henry wrote an award-winning children’s book about Justin Morgan published in 1945. Called Justin Morgan Had a Horse, Disney made it into a film in 1972.

Images: Morgan Horse Farm By Greenmountainboy – Own work. This photo uploaded with Wiki Loves Monuments mobile 1.2.5 (Android)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22178500. Morgan Horse By Laura Behning. – Emma Brunberg, Leif Andersson, Gus Cothran, Kaj Sandberg, Sofia Mikko und Gabriella Lindgren. A missense mutation in PMEL17 is associated with the Silver coat color in the horse. BMC Genet. 2006; 7: 46. Published online 2006 October 9. doi:10.1186/1471-2156-7-46, also available from http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1617113 – license: CC BY 2.0., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1907056.

This story updated in 2022.

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Stephen Burroughs, Counterfeiter – A Revolutionary Success Story

Shortly after the end of the Revolutionary war the new American country needed currency, and Stephen Burroughs was happy to oblige. He printed more different banknotes than anyone in his day. Unfortunately, they were all counterfeits.

Stephen Burroughs

The story of Stephen Burroughs starts out conventionally enough. Burroughs grew up in the small town of Coventry, N.H. He was born in 1765, the son of a prominent Presbyterian minister.

Like many minister’s kids he liked mischief. For example, stealing watermelons was a common tradition in Burroughs’ day. But he embellished on the tradition. When one of his neighbors grew tired of having his produce pilfered, the angry farmer decided to stake out his field one night. Burroughs made use of this bit of intelligence and approached the farmer’s son. He had just seen, he told him, someone slipping into the family watermelon patch. The young man hurried off to catch the “thief” and hilarity ensued.

Stephen Burroughs faces off against his angry congregation. (Illustration, Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs).

Most of Burroughs’ story is derived from his memoirs, which he published first at age 33 and polished and republished repeatedly for decades. Historians believe Burroughs’ memoirs contain a lot of truth, and some embellishment. But with a life as dramatic as his, he didn’t really need embellishment.

At age 14 he ran off to join the Continental Army, but couldn’t manage to convince the enlisting officers that he was old enough to serve. So instead he joined up on the crew of a privateer in Newburyport, Mass. While on board he assisted the medic/doctor on the ship and learned some rudimentary medicine.

Revolutionary-era privateer.

Dropout and Fraud

His father sent him to Dartmouth College, but he lasted only a short while – his penchant for pranks landed him afoul of the college leaders. Burroughs next tried his hand at medicine, passing himself off unsuccessfully as a doctor. Following that he turned to the ministry. Though untrained, Burroughs had access to his father’s sermons. Armed with a few of these, he headed to Massachusetts to sell himself as a minister.

Landing in Pelham, Mass. – home to rabble-rouser Daniel Shays — Burroughs was soon outed as a fraud and chased out of town by a hostile congregation. Though he failed in his pursuit of the ministry, his time in Massachusetts shaped his thinking. While there he encountered a con man who sold shares was selling shared in his alchemy process, which he claimed could turn copper into gold. When the con man collected all the investors he could, he fled town.

The appeal of alchemy was partially rooted in the extreme shortage of hard currency following the Revolutionary War. Congress had notoriously printed worthless paper money, and people did not view bank notes as reliable. They craved hard currency. Lacking that, however, Burroughs observed that private banks were building successful followings for their own bank notes and coins.

Counterfeit coin mold

More Trouble

The only reason paper money had value, Burroughs concluded, was because people agreed that it did. So did it matter if it was counterfeit or not? Counterfeiting was illegal, though fairly common in America both before and after the Revolution. Though many paper notes bore the legend: “Tis Death to Counterfeit,” actual punishments were much more lenient – and of course the counterfeiter had to get caught, which clever counterfeiters could avoid. Burroughs was not clever – at least not yet.

Burroughs acquired some counterfeit coins from a colleague and attempted to pass them at an apothecary in Springfield, Mass. He was arrested on the spot. At his trial, Burroughs past efforts at impersonating a minister helped seal his fate. He was sentenced to jail at Boston’s Castle Island prison. In 1788, Burroughs emerged from jail a wiser, though not reformed, man. His fascination with currency had taken root.

Bursting Bubble

Burroughs next tried his hand at school teaching, but was accused of seducing his students He made off to Long Island and then to Georgia, where land speculation was reaching a mania pitch. Burroughs passed himself off as a surveyor and gained the confidence of none other than Robert Morris, the millionaire who financed much of the American Revolution. When the land bubble burst, Morris and his many investors, including Burroughs, were left broke.

Robert Morris

Burroughs headed back north, but this time he decided that his notoriety, and the presence of ample law enforcement, worked against him in New England. He didn’t stop at Massachusetts. He traveled first through Vermont and then over the border into Canada. Here, with his wife and children, he established a mill and set himself up as a proper counterfeiter.

Of course, Burroughs had only himself to thank for his notoriety. He first published his memoirs at the age of 33, and they remained in print into the late 1900s. In Canada Burroughs found a perfect opportunity. The border with Canada was loosely policed despite the smuggling that had gone on for decades. Most of the activity involved goods from the United States flowing to the loyalists who had relocated to Canada after the Revolution.

Canada

Burroughs set up shop in two Canadian locations: Shipton and Stanstead. He became a prolific counterfeiter. Paper money was, at the time, generated by individual banks. During Burroughs’ time in prison, paper money had grown much more acceptable. Burroughs became a master at reproducing bills from a variety of sources. His fame brought criminal partners flocking to him. He generated a steady flow of counterfeit money heading down from Canada to all the states.

Counterfeit warning printed on the reverse of a 4 shilling Colonial currency in 1776

From time to time his partners would come to grief, arrested and tried for passing counterfeit bills. In the course of their trials it would come out that the men were merely pawns, employed by Burroughs, to pass the counterfeit.

Cat and Mouse

Meanwhile, relations between the United States and Canada were strained. Canada had little interest in chasing down the American counterfeiter.

Detectives and bounty hunters dispatched by American banks were often thwarted by Burroughs’ neighbors. He had befriended and provided his neighbors with both cash and amateur medical assistance. As the bank men grew more aggressive, they managed to push Burroughs farther north into Canada. But his bills, drawn on banks from all the New England states and beyond, continued pouring south.

Hired men from the banks would harass Burroughs’ operations and confiscate his money from time to time, but he simply printed more. All the while, his legend grew. From his northern outpost, Burroughs enjoyed his game of cat and mouse. When the banking firm Gilbert & Dean announced they had created a counterfeit-proof bill, Burroughs mailed down a taunting letter and a counterfeited version of their currency.

Boston’s Old Statehouse, where Gilbert & Dean kept their offices.

End of an Era

Finally, in 1808, authorities on both sides of the border agreed to crack down on the counterfeiting with tough new laws. Burroughs, aware that he had lost the last of his friends in high places, announced he would counterfeit no longer. Though eventually arrested in Canada, he won a pardon.

Evidence suggests that Burroughs did finally go straight. He converted to Catholicism and became prominent in the church around 1810. His critics suggested he was probably in the business of selling Papal pardons.

Burroughs died in 1840 in Canada, a free and wealthy man.

Thanks to The Alchemy of the Self: Stephen Burroughs and the Counterfeit Economy of the Early Republic by Stephen Mihm and Memoirs of Stephen Burroughs, by Stephen Burroughs.

Images: Coin molds By Original author unknown – The outlaws of Cave-in-Rock : historical accounts of the famous highwaymen and river pirates who operated in pioneer days upon the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and over the old Natchez trace, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56779619.

This story was updated in 2022.

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A Christmas First for New England? Each State Can Claim One.

New England is as unlikely a place as there is to celebrate a Christmas first. After all, Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut officially banned the holiday. It wasn’t until the mid-19^th century that most New Englanders took the day off, let alone trimmed trees, sang carols or sent cards.

And yet, with a little imagination, we can find a Christmas first in each of the New England states.

First Christmas Tree in Connecticut

A German father and son collecting a tree, painting by Franz Krüger

Painting of a German father and son collecting a tree, by Franz Krüger

A Hessian soldier named Hendrick Roddemore put up a Christmas tree in Windsor Locks, Conn., in 1777, giving Connecticut the claim to the first Christmas tree.

The Americans captured Roddemore, a mercenary, at the Battle of Bennington.

Many prisoners from that battle were sent to Boston and then elsewhere. Roddemore ended up at the farm of Samuel Denslow in Windsor Locks. Denslow let him live in a small cabin on what is now the Noden-Reed Farm and home of the Windsor Locks Historical Society.

In 1777, Roddemore raised a Christmas tree inside that small cabin. He continued to live there until well after the war, putting up a tree every year. Today, a stone marks the spot where Roddemore put up that first tree.

First North American Christmas in Maine

christmas-firsts-buildings_on_saint_croix_island_-_circa_1613_-_project_gutenberg_etext_20110

First buildings on St. Croix

Maine can claim perhaps the best Christmas first: the first Christmas, in 1604. It happened on St. Croix Island, the lost French colony of Maine.

St. Croix Island, now on the border between New Brunswick and Maine, was settled by a small band of Frenchmen headed by Sieur DeMons. Samuel Champlain served as historian and navigator. The expedition included thieves from Paris prisons and noblemen from the court of Henry IV, Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers, artisans, merchants and sailors.

The Frenchmen arrived in June, almost three years before Jamestown started. They built a fort, houses and a handmill, and they planted gardens and a field of rye.

On Christmas day, the French colonists, all men, attended services in a new chapel. They probably held two, one for the Protestants, one for the Catholics.

Then they gathered inside next to a roaring fire, told stories, joked and reminisced about France. They had a feast — perhaps roast venison or rabbit stew.

The St. Croix settlement did not last. Most of the men were felled by a mysterious disease – probably scurvy. By spring they decided to move, packed up their houses and moved to Port Royal, which is now Annapolis.

First American Christmas Card in Massachusetts

A Christmas first for Massachusetts: The Louis Prang Christmas card.

One man can take credit for the first American Christmas card: Louis Prang. He fled the German wars of 1848 and came to Boston. Prang went to work for an engraver, eventually setting up his own lithography shop.

The first Christmas card had already been sent in 1843 by an Englishman named Sir Henry Cole. He had a thousand cards designed and printed, but he couldn’t send them all. So he sold the leftovers for a shilling. Word spread about the cards, and soon English printers were churning them out.

The fad didn’t spread to America until Louis Prang found out about it. He decided the potential market was huge. In 1875 he printed his first Christmas cards for the London market, and the next year he sold them throughout the Northeast. It took but two more years for him to corner the greeting card market in the United States.

By 1881, Louis Prang was printing more than 5 million Christmas cards a year. His Prang Lithographic Factory in Roxbury became a tourist attraction, and he often conducted tours himself. His house and factory are still standing, the house at 45 Centre St. and the factory at 270-286 Roxbury St.

Eventually Louis Prang moved his business to Springfield, where he continued to make Christmas cards as well as child-safe art materials – which you can still buy under the Prang name.

A White House Christmas Tree from NH

The 1997 Christmas ornament depicting the Pierce White House

New Hampshire native Sarah Josepha Hale deserves credit for promoting the Christmas tree in her popular magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book.

In 1856, another New Hampshire native introduced the first Christmas tree to the White House.

President Franklin Pierce and First Lady Jane Pierce invited the Sunday school class of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church to join them in trimming the tree for Christmas. The Pierces were mourning for their son, Benny, who died in a train wreck shortly before they moved into the White House.

It was no accident that the Pierces chose a Sunday school class to trim the tree. Christmas trees had gained such acceptance in Sunday schools they were even called ‘Sunday school trees.’ Children who memorized Bible verses got rewarded with trinkets and candy hanging from the tree. When cold weather caused churchgoers to stay home, a decorated indoor tree enticed children to brave the winter temperatures.

The Pierces had never taken a Puritanical attitude toward Christmas. In 1824, Pierce’s father, Benjamin, hosted 21 veteran soldiers from the American Revolution to his home in Hillsoborough, N.H., for a Christmas feast.

Sighting of Santa Claus in RI

A Newport, R.I., resident wrote this

Clement Moore wrote A Visit From St. Nicholas for his children, never intending it to become the most popular Christmas poem ever. Nor did he expect it would forever define Santa Claus as a jolly old elf who flew around on Christmas Eve in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

Moore grew up the son of the Episcopalian bishop of New York who twice served as president of Columbia University. His mother inherited a vast estate, now the Chelsea neighborhood of New York. Moore was an intellectual, a professor of Biblical Learning and author of the first Hebrew-American dictionary.

In 1822, Moore borrowed some Dutch and German Christmas lore for his poem, a gift to his six children. A friend copied it and submitted it to the Troy, N.Y., Sentinel. The newspaper published it on Dec. 23, 1823, and for many years thereafter. It wasn’t until 1837 that Moore was identified as the author. Moore himself didn’t acknowledge authorship until 1844 – and only because his children insisted.

So how does Rhode Island fit in?

Sometime in the 1850s, Moore bought a home in Newport, R.I., and became a summer resident.

The house is known as ‘Cedars,’ ‘Clement C. Moore House,’ and ‘The Night Before Christmas House.’ It still stands at 25 Catherine St., though it has been broken up into apartments. Some have claimed that he wrote ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ in Newport. The Redwood Library tells us that’s unlikely as the house hadn’t been built when Moore wrote the poem.

The First National Christmas Tree from Vermont

The National Christmas Tree.

In 1923, a General Electric engineer named Frederick Morris Feiker wrote to President Calvin Coolidge suggesting he light the national Christmas tree on the Ellipse. Coolidge asked the president of Middlebury College to donate a tree from Vermont.

Wealthy Middlebury alumni paid to ship the 48-foot-tall balsam fir to Washington, D.C. A crane put the tree in place a few weeks before Christmas, and $5,000 worth of GE electrical cables illuminated the 2,500 red, white and green Christmas lights.

At 3 p.m. on Dec. 24, a choir began a two-hour concert of Christmas carols. At dusk, President Coolidge pushed the button to light the tree. As many as 9,000 people came to the Ellipse to sing carols over the next four hours.

This story was updated in 2020.

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