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The Cold Storm and Great Freeze of 1857

The Cold Storm and Great Freeze of 1857 prostrated New England during the winter of 1856-57, one of the worst ever. Thirty-two snowstorms dumped more than six feet of snow on the ground. Fierce winds created drifts as high as 18 feet, and it got so cold the mercury froze in thermometers.

The frigid cold and heavy snow caused tremendous suffering and destruction, both during the winter and afterward. An untold number of people died. Some perished in shipwrecks, fires or floods, while others departed quietly, borne away by cold or starvation. The bitter cold no doubt contributed to an influenza outbreak, called “one of the greatest epidemics,” and death.

The property damage was immense, beginning with church spires blown away and ending with freshets that carried off buildings. High winds dashed dozens of ships against the shore and blew down houses. Commerce came to a halt, as snow paralyzed railroads and ice immobilized coastal navigation.

“That was a tremendous winter,” wrote steamboat historian Henry Whittemore in 1893.

December Start

The weather in New England remained mild until mid-December, though plenty of snow had fallen. Then on December 17 the temperature plummeted to 12 below zero in Massachusetts and 16 below in Maine.

The next day was the coldest day New England had suffered in 22 years, with temperatures rising scarcely above zero anywhere in the region.

It would get even colder. And for the rest of the winter, violent wind and snowstorms buffeted New England. A snowstorm on December 23 foretold what was to come.

January Storms

January opened with a storm on the third, which made the railroads impassable.

Sidney S. Rider, editor of Book Notes, recalled that storm half a century later. He worked as a clerk in the bookstore of George H. Whitney in Westminster Street. It started on Saturday, snowed all night and continued all the next day. Westminster Street was a bed of ice two feet thick for a month or more, he wrote.

A Book Notes reader, W.A. Potter, remembered the next storm. “On Jan. 8, 1857, railroad trains were snowbound all over New England. On that day not a train reached Providence until evening. Pawtucket omnibuses were unable to reach the city, Narragansett Bay was frozen solid to Newport, and a few persons skated to that city. No vessel arrived from outside for 10 days.”

Fire and Ice

On very cold days, New Englanders who lived in densely populated towns grew especially anxious about the threat of fire.

During the Cold Storm and Great Freeze, fire gobbled a box factory in Cambridge, the Claverick House in East Boston, Dr. J.E. Hunt’s house and outbuildings in Thomaston, Maine and John Coe’s dwelling house in Hitchcockville, Conn.

In Laconia, N.H., the railroad shops burned at the end of January. “The temperature was 30 degrees below zero, and the fireman suffered severely,” according to the fire department’s history.

The most spectacular fire that winter burned down Vermont’s granite Statehouse.

The Vermont Statehouse burned down On Jan. 6, 1857

For three days starting January 6, temperatures had plunged below zero. At the beginning of that cold snap, a workman was heating the Vermont Statehouse for a meeting the next day. After he closed the vents, the furnace got too hot. Flames then shot up through a floor register in Representatives Hall. The fire soon enveloped the dome. Townspeople helped firefighters by throwing chunks of ice and snow at the building.

The fire seemed under control until the wind whipped up, scattering burning coals throughout the town. Only the heavy snow on nearby roofs prevented it from spreading. In the end, the inferno left only the granite walls standing. Vermont had to build a new Statehouse.

10 Days in January

On Saturday, January 17, an enormous cold weather system settled over a swathe of the United States. By Sunday it was 30 below at Muscatine, Iowa, 40 below in Watertown, N.Y., and 30 below at Woodstock, Vt.

That weekend began the worst 10 days of the worst winter in memory.

People thought it too cold to snow, reported the Cambridge Chronicle. They had it wrong. On Sunday night, a devastating snow hurricane — the Cold Storm — hit New England.

A fierce northwest wind drove the snow. “Doubtless many persons, as they reluctantly crawled out of their warm nests to shiver in the sharp air of Monday morning, looked forth with surprise upon the drifted heaps that blocked their gates and doors,” the Chronicle said.

“Men were floundering through the snow up to their waists,” reported the Chronicle. Women only peeped out at the window and railcars stood still.

Perfect Tempest

In Connecticut, between two and three feet of snow fell, and all travel stopped, according to the Illustrated Commercial Mechanical, Professional and Statistical Gazetteer. On Monday the gale turned into a “perfect tempest” and blew down the Chapel Street Church spire in New Haven, prostrated “two lofty spires” in Waterbury and caused “much other damage.”

The barque Tedesco, headed for Boston, wrecked off Swampscott, Mass., all hands lost. In Provincetown, gale-force winds drove 17 vessels onto the beach. The wind also demolished a house in New Bedford.

Two schooners and a sloop went ashore at Owl’s Head, and the storm blocked the roads in Thomaston, Maine.

The London Illustrated News carried this print of “The recent deep snow in Massachusetts: street in New Bedford.” Courtesy Library of Congress.

Drifts

After the Cold Storm, drifts on the Cape Cod railroad tracks rose as high as 18 feet.

In Essex, Mass., drifts rose above the windows of William Perkins’ good-sized two-story house, the Pittsfield Sun reported. The Perkins family had to look at the clock to find out whether morning had arrived yet. One of the neighbors shoveled away the snow so Perkins could climb out of the window.

In Providence, Sidney Rider remembered the tremendous amounts of snow. “When I reached Mr. Whitney’s shop that snow drift was 17 feet high; and the boys had pierced it with a hole, though which the boys had led a horse, unhitched from a nearby carting wagon,” he wrote.

That was one of the few businesses that did open after the Cold Storm. Many didn’t. The trains didn’t run and ships froze in harbors all along the coast. People did without the bread, meat and milk ordinarily delivered to their door because draught horses couldn’t make it through the snow.

In the Connecticut River Valley, the cost of food skyrocketed. “The factory had been developed at the expense of the farm. Provisions were coming in from the West and the Connecticut valley was not feeding itself,” wrote Springfield historian Mason Arnold Green.

The poor suffered terribly for the want of food, and many churches took up collections for them, wrote Salem historian Sidney Perley.

Great Freeze

The Great Freeze of 1857 continued after the storm. On January 19, the day of the Cold Storm, the mercury froze in the thermometer in Franconia, N.H., and registered 50 below zero in the Vermont towns of Montpelier and St. Johnsbury.

“The air was very thin and peculiarly transparent and light, and the sky therefore remarkably clear,” wrote Perley.

Scene on the ice, Boston Harbor–Citizens Hauling the Ferry-Boat. Courtesy Boston Public Library

Steamboats had to break the ice on Long Island Sound, which froze for a month. “The harbor at New Haven is frozen as tight as Baffin’s Bay,” reported the Hartford Times on January 27. “Capt. Merrow, of the schooner Daniel Trowbridge, who has been for a week frozen in near Southwest Ledge, at the mouth of New Haven harbor, reports that nothing but ice can be seen from his topmast, with a spyglass.

Narragansett Bay was frozen tight, with ice 14-inch thick on Pawtucket Bar as late as mid-March. The ice blockage lasted so long that the Providence textile mills started to run out of cotton.

“There was plenty at Newport, and the Commercial Steamboat Company resolved to break through the ice and get that cotton,” wrote Whittemore (ck). A captain Williams took charge of the Curlew, a very strong boat. The Curlew broke through the ice and towed the cotton in bales.

Frozen

In New Hampshire, Portsmouth Harbor froze over for the first time in memory. So did Boston Harbor. On January 26, Henry David Thoreau saw vessels frozen in the ice.

“Saw thousands on the ice,” he wrote in his journal. “[A] stream of men reaching down to Fort Independence where they were cutting a channel toward the city– Ice said to reach 14 miles. Snow untracked on many decks.” The ice didn’t go out until February 15, he noted.

On January 31, it snowed in Mexico City, an extremely rare phenomenon.

Freshets

Then came a thaw in February and two great rainstorms, which brought another set of problems. Tremendous freshets washed away buildings and bridges from Connecticut to Maine.

In Connecticut, the Housatonic River flooded, carrying off bridges. The floodwaters rose to the top of the Manufacturers’ Bank vault. After the flood subsided, bank officers couldn’t find a dry note of paper in the building.

The Shetucket River in Norwich flooded the waterfront and caused tremendous property damage.

In Castleton, Vt., an avalanche destroyed the barn and wagon shed belonging to Merlin Clark on February 22. Ice and snow filled the Clark’s house and buried a baby in its cradle, but the child survived unhurt.

Flooding came later in Maine. On April 16, for example, a Kennebec River freshet caused damage up and down the river, carrying away the toll bridge at Waterville and a railroad bridge in Skowhegan.

Damage caused by a freshet

Another Cold Storm

During March and April, the weather seesawed between balmy and fiercely cold. Then on April 21, Connecticut got hit by another great snowstorm. It started as rain, then turned to snow, dumping as much as two feet on Southern Connecticut.

The storm system whitened the streets of Baltimore, but in Bartlett, N.H., heavy rains washed away every bridge.

Then just when everyone thought the winter had ended, ice formed in Litchfield County, Connecticut, on Sunday, May 17.

This story updated in 2022.

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The Hardscrabble Riot of 1824 Makes Providence a City

In 1824, several hundred white people tore down about 20 homes occupied by black people in a mixed neighborhood called Hardscrabble in the Town of Providence, R.I.

What triggered the riot will probably never be known.

The underlying cause, though, was the industrialization that pushed artisans like weavers and shoemakers into factory jobs. They resented it, and they took their resentment out on poor African Americans.

After the riot, a racist broadside circulated in which the fictional black narrator laments,

O, de next morning such condition our village

So late de scenes of confusion, riot and pillage.

The pamphlet also promised similar treatment to other African Americans settling in Providence.

And sure enough, more rioters attacked another black neighborhood – and Providence finally did something about it.

Providence in 1858

Hardscrabble

The American slave trade centered in Rhode Island during the 17^th and early 18^th centuries. As a result, Rhode Island had the densest population of African Americans in New England.

It isn’t clear where Hardscrabble was located. Some say the Statehouse looks out over the neighborhood, others think it stood at the base of Olney Street.

Respectable and hardworking free blacks lived cheek by jowl with brothels, dance halls and saloons. Sailors, many of them Irish, patronized Hardscrabble’s dens of vice.

White men forced into factory jobs lumped all black residents of Hardscrabble together as shiftless criminals. Their racist attitudes were ‘an engine of respectability,’ according to historian Joanne Pope Melish.

In 1883, an African-American resident of Providence named William J. Brown remembered the Hardscrabble riot in his memoirs.

“The feeling against the colored people was very bitter,” he wrote. “The colored people themselves were ignorant of the cause, unless it could be our attributed to our condition, not having the means to raise themselves in the scale of wealth and affluence.”

As a result, he wrote, the “evil disposed” would abuse the colored people with impunity. “Mobs were also the order of the day, and the poor colored people were the sufferers.”

Detail from the broadside that appeared in the aftermath of the Hardscrabble Riot.

The Riot

On the night of Oct. 17, 1824, a fight broke out between large parties of black and white men. Apparently a black man had refused to step aside for a white man on the sidewalk in Hardscrabble.

The next night around 7 pm a large mob of white people gathered on a bridge. There was no moon that night, but many carried lamps. Some carried axes and clubs.

The noisy crowd surged toward Hardscrabble. Oliver Cummins went into Henry Wheeler’s house, a dance hall and a residence. Someone fired a pistol. Oliver Cummins claimed Henry Wheeler shot him in the mouth, but witnesses said they saw no injury to Cummins when they examined him.

A witness named Jesse Sweet later testified that about 40 people began tearing down Wheeler’s house, chopping at it with axes and then pushing over the walls. When they half finished, they moved on to another house and began tearing it down. A thousand people, including police and members of the Town Council, looked on but did nothing.

Over the next few hours, the mob tore down 20 houses, even toppling brick chimneys. They carried off what little furniture the Hardscrabble residents had and sold it at auction in Pawtucket. And some houses they set on fire.

Another view of Providence, 1844. Engraving from “The Providence Plantations for 250 Years” (1886), p. 87.

The Aftermath

A grand jury later charged 11 men, described as gentlemen, laborers and traders, with rioting. Oliver Cummins and Nathaniel Metcalf were found guilty, but due to legal technicalities they went free. Many witnesses who had joined the mob that night testified they saw none of the accused do anything wrong. Prosecutors dropped charges against the rest of the men.

Brown remembered a pious widower named Christopher Hall who lived in Hardscrabble. The mob tore down his house. He put the roof over his cellar and lived in it all winter. Then he moved to Liberia.

A pamphlet arguing for a different form of government circulated in the aftermath of the Hardscrabble Riot.

“Our own citizens may be led to infer that there is a tardiness and inefficiency in the nature of our municipal government…which, as we increase in population, it may become necessary to exchange for a form that will not in fact be more despotic than the undefined powers of a Town Council, but which is fitted to carry those powers into speedy and efficient operation.

Snowtown

Seven years later another mob laid waste to another African-American neighborhood called Snowtown. The Snowtown Riot lasted several days, and the governor and the sheriff eventually ordered in the militia. The Town Council, which governed Providence, could do nothing to stop the violence.

In 1831, a majority of the town’s 17,000 residents voted a charter to make Providence a city.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six More Artist Homes In New England

The creative spirit that moves people to sculpt and paint also tends to inspire an interesting artist home. Lucrative commissions in the days before the income tax meant some artists could live in country estates befitting a Gilded Age gentleman.

New England has quite a few artist homes now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We bring you six artist homes, one in each New England state. They all open to the public, at least seasonally.

Weir Farm

J Alden Weir studio. You can also visit the artist home on the Wilton farm.

Weir Farm, the home of J. Alden Weir, was a magnet for American artists such as John Twachtman, John Singer Sargent and Albert Pinkham Ryder. It probably helped that the farm was only 20 miles from the Cos Cob art colony in Greenwich.

There are two stories about how J. Alden Weir ended up owning the Weir Farm in Wilton, Conn. One is that Weir had a Manet painting that a collector wanted so badly he offered Weir $10 and his farm for it. According to the other, his wife’s family owned the farm.

As an art student in Paris, J. Alden Weir hated the new school of painting known as French Impressionism, until he didn’t. Eventually he became one of the most beloved American impressionist.

He was born in 1852, the 14^th of 16 children, the son of Robert Walker Weir, who taught drawing at the Military Academy at West Point.

Weir befriended many other painters, eventually co-founding The Ten, a group of artists unhappy with the conservative U.S. art establishment.

Nocturne: Queensboro Bridge by J. Alden Weir. Courtesy Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Weir’s paintings are on display in major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. The 60-acre grounds of Weir Farm National Historic Site open every day of the year to visitors. The farm also has an ongoing artist-in-residence program. Look for Weir Farm on the back of quarters issued in 2020.

Weir Farm National Historic Site, 735 Nod Hill Rd, Wilton, Conn.

Winslow Homer Studio

Where Winslow Homer painted and lived.

Winslow Homer, one of the greatest U.S. artists of the 19^th century, left the bright lights of New York City for Prout’s Neck, Maine. Then in his mid-40s, he moved partly to be near his family, partly to work in solitude and partly to paint the sea.

His family owned an estate on Prout’s Neck, and Homer moved into the carriage house. He painted the sea in Maine, traveling to the Caribbean during the winter and sometimes to the Adirondacks.

Though he also painted in oil, Winslow Homer knew he’d done something transcendent with his watercolors.

‘You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors,” Homer once said. He hung some of his exquisite watercolors on the walls of the rental cottages. Now they’re in museums or private collections.

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Salt Kettle, Bermuda, by Winslow Homer. Courtesy National Gallery of Art.

Maine architect John Calvin Stevens transformed the carriage house into a studio and designed the Winslow Homer house. He took as payment a painting, Afternoon Fog. The Portland Museum of Art bought the studio in 2006, restored it and now offers tours in the summer months.

Winslow Homer Studio, 5 Winslow Homer Rd., Scarborough, Maine

Chesterwood

The house that Daniel Chester French built in Stockbridge, Mass.

Daniel Chester French, like his contemporary Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was no starving artist. He won lucrative commissions, including one for the Lincoln Memorial, and could afford a summer artist home — an estate, really, called Chesterwood.

He bought the Stockbridge, Mass., farm in 1896, and had a studio built on the property. Then in 1901, he rebuilt the farmhouse. For the rest of his life he divided his time between New York and Stockbridge, but used his Chesterwood estate as his primary workspace.

Born in Exeter, N.H., his family moved to Concord, Mass., when he was xxx. His father befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott. Young Daniel took art lessons from Louisa May Alcott’s little sister, May. She encouraged him to study art.

artist-home-lincoln-memorialartist-home-lincoln-memorial

The Lincoln Memorial, courtesy National Park Service.

He launched his career by winning the commission to design the Minute Man statue in Concord.

Other works include The John Harvard Monument, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Mass. Commodore George H. Perkins monument at the New Hampshire State House

The statue of General Joseph Hooker in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation now runs the home as a museum and sculpture garden.

Chesterwood opens weekends in May.

Chesterwood, 4 Williamsville Rd, Stockbridge, Mass.

Saint-Gaudens National Park

Augustus Saint-Gaudens home in Cornish, N.H.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the center of the Cornish colony, which included about 100 artists, writers and politicians from about 1895 to the end of World War I. It stretched from Windsor, Vt., to Plainfield, N.H. President Woodrow Wilson rented a summer White House there, among such artistic luminaries as Ethel Barrymore, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Isadora Duncan, Maxwell Perkins and Maxfield Parrish.

Saint-Gaudens, born in Ireland, emigrated with his family to New York City in 1848 as a baby. Apprenticed as a cameo cutter, he eventually won lucrative commissions for public statues. Some of his most famous work includes an equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman in Central Park, a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and the gold double eagle $20 coin.

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, on Boston Common.

His masterpiece, the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, took him 14 years to create. The bronze bas relief commemorates the African-American 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment and its leader, Robert Gould Shaw, who died in battle. Since 1897 years it has stood across from the Massachusetts Statehouse on Boston Common.

Today Saint-Gaudens artist home, studio and gardens belongs to the National Park Service as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park. The park service has some of his sculpture on display, as well as reproductions of some of his masterpiece.

Saint-Gaudens National Park, 139 Saint Gaudens Rd., Cornish, N.H.

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, an artist home and snuff mill.

The Gilbert Stuart birthplace is unusual for an artist home, mostly because it’s also a snuff mill.

Gilbert Stuart’s father, Gilbert Stewart, was a Scottish immigrant who worked in the first snuff mill in America. His mother, Elizabeth Anthony Stewart, belonged to a prominent Middletown, R.I., family that owned large tracts of land. The house-and mill had stood in Saunderstown, R.I., for five years when Stuart was born in 1755. Stuart only lived there for six years because his family moved to Newport.

Gilbert Stuart showed early promise and studied painting in England, where he made a name for himself at 26 with his painting The Skater. His work commanded high prices in England, but he spent money carelessly and almost ended up in debtor’s prison.

The Athenaeum, by Gilbert Stuart

His most famous work, the portrait of George Washington, has appeared on the U.S. dollar for more than a century. He painted many famous people of the day, including John and Abigail Adams.

He died in 1828, leaving his wife and daughters so poor they couldn’t afford a gravesite. They buried him in an unmarked grave in the Old South Burying Ground.

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, 815 Gilbert Stuart Rd, Saunderstown, R.I.

Rokeby

An artist home for several painters, Rachael Robinson Elmer and her parents.

Rokeby, the artist home we chose in Vermont, was also a prominent stop on the underground railroad.

Rachael Robinson Elmer was born at Rokeby in Ferrisburgh, Vt., the granddaughter of Quaker abolitionists, on July 28, 1878.

Her father, Rowland Robinson, was an author and illustrator, and her mother, Anna Stevens Robinson, was a painter. They encouraged her interest in art, and let teenaged Rachael study art in New York City for three summers. She fell in love with New York City as a young girl and moved there after graduating from Goddard College. Rachael continued to take art classes, and Childe Hassam taught her to paint scenes of city life.

artist-home-rachael-robinson-elmer-trinity

Trinity Church and Wall Street by Rachael Robinson Elmer.

Rachael succeeded as a commercial artist and married an older man named Robert Elmer. She painted 12 “Art Lover’s New York” postcards showing famous scenes around the city and published them in 1914. They sold like wildfire, and other artists began producing impressionistic postcards. She was said to have changed postcards forever.

She died in 1919 in the flu pandemic of 1918 at the age of 40.

Today Rokeby is a historic farm property and museum that includes a 1780s farmstead, eight agricultural outbuildings with permanent exhibits, and hiking trails that cover more than 50 acres

Rokeby, 4334 U.S. Route 7 in Ferrisburgh, Vt.

End Notes

If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about an artist home you can sleep in n each New England state here.

Artist Home images: Weir Farm studio By Noroton – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4960283; Winslow Homer studio By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28919316; Chesterwood by I, Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2414120; Augustus Saint-Gaudens artist home, By Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35171636; Robert Gould Shaw Memorial By Carptrash at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27154774; Gilbert Stuart birthplace By Gibbystuart – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40114851; Rokeby By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11310696.

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Six Places That Appear on the Back of a Quarter

From 1999 through 2008, the 50 State Quarter program released commemorative quarters with unique designs for each state. Half of all Americans collected them at least casually, making it the most successful commemorative coin program ever.

The U.S. mint released five each year, one quarter every 10 weeks. They came out in the same order that the states ratified the Constitution. In New England, that order meant Connecticut went first, then Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Maine.

Rules governed the choice of design. No live person, no state flag and no head-and-shoulder image of a dead person.

Each New England state responded with an image that you can visit today.

Here, then, are the six New England places that appear on the backs of quarters.

Charter Oak Tree

Connecticut State Quarter

King Charles II in 1662 granted Connecticut a charter that allowed it to elect some of its own officials and make some of its own rules.

Charles’ successor, James II tried to combine the New England colonies with New York under a single Crown-appointed official, Edmund Andros. It didn’t go well.

The Charter Oak by Charles DeWolf Brownell, 1857

In 1687, Andros and 60 soldiers met with the leaders of the Connecticut Colony in Hartford and heatedly insisted they turn over the charter. The colonists just as heatedly refused to give him the document, which lay on a table before them.

According to legend, something — a gust of wind, perhaps — blew out the candles that lit the meetinghouse. In the confusion, the charter disappeared. Someone hid it in the hollow of a large white oak tree, where the king’s men couldn’t find it.

The oak, of course, became the revered Charter Oak and a symbol of American independence. Already more than 300 years old in 1687, the Charter Oak fell to a violent storm on Aug. 21, 1856.

The Dominion of New England fell well before that. Andros dissolved the colonial governments, including Connecticut’s even without the charter. Two years later in 1689 Massachusetts colonists sent Andros packing. James II lost power, the charter came out of hiding and the colonies reverted to their previous form of government.

The Charter Oak still exists – as chairs in the Old Connecticut Statehouse and as artifacts currently on display at the Connecticut Historical Society.

On the corner of Charter Oak Avenue and Charter Oak Place stands a column with a globe and a descendant of the original tree. There may be as many as 100 such trees, as people had collected acorns before it fell. The Simsbury Historical Society, for example, planted a descendant of the Charter Oak in 1976 to commemorate the nation’s bicentennial.

A portrait of the Charter Oak, framed in wood from the tree itself, hangs in the Wadsworth Athenaeum in Hartford.

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

Maine State Quarter

Maine chose to honor its maritime heritage with an image of a windjammer sailing by Pemaquid Point Lighthouse on the back of its quarter.

President John Quincy Adams in 1827 commissioned Pemaquid Point Light in Bristol, Maine, about 60 miles north of Portland. The original lighthouse didn’t last long as builders mixed saltwater with the mortar mix. It had to be replaced in 1835, and the contract specified the use of fresh water in construction.

A storied lighthouse keeper, Marcus Hanna

Pemaquid Point Lighthouse

, once staffed the lighthouse. He was the only person to ever receive a Medal of Honor for bravery during the Civil War and a Gold Lifesaving Medal for saving a life off Cape Elizabeth.

Today, the Bristol Parks and Recreation Department owns and operates the outbuildings surrounding the lighthouse as Pemaquid Point Lighthouse Park.

The vessel on the quarter is the Victory Chimes, a rare three-masted schooner. Moored in Rockland, Maine, the Victory Chimes sails up and down the coast on windjammer excursions.

Minute Man National Park

Massachusetts State Quarter

Massachusetts honors its historic role in the American Revolution by putting a famous statue of the Minute Man. The monument depicts a farmer who dropped his plow to fight at North Bridge in Concord, Mass., on April 19, 1775.

Today the statue stands guard at The Minuteman National Historical Park in Concord, where 500 militiamen defeated three companies of British troops.

The Minute Man

In 1873 an unknown, 23-year-old college dropout was given the commission to create a monument to the Minute Man.

The 100^th anniversary of the shot heard ‘round the world was approaching, and the citizens of Concord wanted to honor the farmers and tradesmen who battled professional British soldiers.

They decided to award the commission to Daniel Chester French, who had never executed a full-size statue. They had their reasons: His father was well-connected in town, and he had taken art lessons from Louisa May Alcott’s little sister, who vouched for his talent. French, of course, went on to design many famous works, including the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Old Man of the Mountain

New Hampshire State Quarter

Alas, New Hampshire just can’t let go of the Old Man of the Mountain, though the mountain did. He tumbled to the ground on May 3, 2003, but his image still appears on license plates, state highway signs and the New Hampshire state quarter.

The Old Man of the Mountain, back in the day

Before the Old Man went to his forever home, he was a series of five granite ledges hanging 1,200 feet above the floor of Franconia Notch. He measured 40 feet high from forehead to chin, and over the years he was held together by chains and patched up with cement, plastic, steel rods and turnbuckles.

At least he was already on the quarter when the U.S. Mint released it on Aug. 7, 2000.

For nearly 200 years, the Old Man of the Mountain attracted tourists and served as a proud symbol of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire native Daniel Webster perhaps best expressed what the Old Man meant to the state:

[U]p in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.

Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge

Rhode Island State Quarter

Watery Rhode Island chose to put the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, New England’s longest suspension bridge, on the back of its quarter. Since 1969 it has connected Newport with Jamestown. Today it costs 16 quarters to cross.

The Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge

On a clear day, you can see the bridge from Gay Head Light in Martha’s Vineyard, the top floors of Providence’s tallest buildings and the parking lot of Stone Hill Marketplace in Johnston, R.I., 23 miles away.

Claiborne Pell served 36 years in the U.S. Senate from Rhode Island, and sponsored the bill to grant financial aid to college students in the form of Pell grants.

The quarter also depicts a vintage sailboat, as Rhode Island is nicknamed the sailing capital of the world. The nation’s smallest state, it has 400 miles of coastline and 100 beaches.

Camels Hump Mountain

Vermont State Quarter

Maple sugar is to Vermont as sailing is to Rhode Island. Well, maybe skiing is a more appropriate analogy, but Vermont went with maple sugaring on the back of its quarter.

The back of the quarter also features the Camels Hump Mountain in northern Vermont. It’s one of the tallest mountains in Vermont, and its distinctive profile makes it Vermont’s most recognized mountain.

Camels Hump, one of a dozen of Vermont’s National Natural Landmarks

The Camels Hump has had no less than a dozen names since Samuel de Champlain sailed down the lake that bears his name. De Champlain called it ‘Le Lion Couchant,’ meaning ‘the Resting Lion.’ Ira Allen called it the ‘Camel’s Rump.’ The Abenaki Indians called it ‘tahwahbodeay wadso.’

A forest preserve encloses the mountain, the summit of which philanthropist Joseph Battell donated to the state in 1905. By 1912, the Green Mountain Club built a trail between the mountain and Sterling Pond. Today the trail is a high point on the Long Trail system. The Green Mountain Club now pays a caretaker to make sure hikers respect the mountain’s fragile alpine tundra.

Images: Claiborne Pell Bridge By UpstateNYer – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7548436; Pemaquid Point Lighthouse (featured image) By Tiger635 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31174599′ Pemaquid Point Lighthouse By WestportWiki – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21041474

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The Revolutionary Holidays You May or May Not Celebrate

Revolutionary holidays didn’t start and end with Independence Day.

When the Revolutionary War ended, Trumbull, Conn., celebrated with A Great Jubilee Day on May 26, 1783. The grand event featured militia maneuvers, feasting, prayer, speeches and toasts. The town was then called Stratford, and the holiday is now called Memorial Day.

Historic reenactment at Mount Independence

Holidays used to be local affairs, and they often moved around the calendar. For many years, the entire United States celebrated only two annual holidays: Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. Much of New England, of course, didn’t celebrate Christmas.

Early Thanksgivings happened when state or local officials decided it happened. In 1816, for example, Massachusetts celebrated Thanksgiving on November 28, while New Hampshire observed it on November 14. It wasn’t until 1941 that Congress passed a federal law making Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday in November.

New Englanders continue to celebrate Revolutionary holidays that commemorate events in the war with Britain. They tend to happen in the summer, often to attract tourists to their craft fairs, parades and reenactments.

Revolutionary Holidays in RI and Vermont

The Burning of the Gaspee by Charles deWolf Brownell, c1892

Since 1965, Pawtuxet Village in Warwick and Cranston, R.I., has celebrated Gaspee Days around Memorial Day. The festival commemorates Rhode Island’s version of the Boston Tea Party, when patriots burned a British customs schooner in 1772.

Celebrations of the Gaspee Affair in 2018 include a road race, parade, party, fireworks and reenactment of the ship burning.

In Vermont, Bennington Battle Day is celebrated every August 16. Vermont is perhaps the only state to commemorate an event that happened in another state. The Battle of Bennington, an important victory in the American Revolution, took place in 1777 in New York.

Bennington Battle Day happens every year with a battle reenactment, but the local historical society holds events throughout the summer. The 2018 Bennington Battle Celebration includes a road race, a ceremony at the memorial and a fashion show of historic costumes.

Powder House Day

New Haven celebrates Powder House Day every year to commemorate the events of April 22, 1775. Then Capt. Benedict Arnold and his Governor’s Foot Guard were eager to help out during the Siege of Boston. So they demanded the keys to the powder house so they could actually use their weapons.

Benedict Arnold celebrated in one of Connecticut’s revolutionary holidays.

Town Meeting had voted against sending help, but the Foot Guard ignored the vote.

Arnold sent a message to the selectmen that if he didn’t get the keys in five minutes, his men would break into the power house. He got the keys.

In 2018, New Haven celebrated Powder House Day on April 21 with a memorial service at the Center Church on the Green. Then a re-enactor playing Arnold marched across the Green and demands a key from the mayor. (Click here for the script.)

The day also featured carriage rides, a parade and tours of the new trees planted on the Green.

Margaretta Days

The first naval battle of the American Revolution took place in Machias, Maine (then Massachusetts). Today Margaretta Days is still one of Machias’ Revolutionary holidays.

During the Siege of Boston, British authorities asked Ichabod Jones, a Loyalist merchant in Machias, to help obtain supplies for the army. In June 1775, two of Jones’ vessels and the Margaretta, an armed British sloop, arrived in the harbor. The townspeople tried to arrest Jones on June 11 and went after the Margaretta’s commander, who escaped. The townspeople then seized one of Jones’ ships, armed a second and chased after the Margaretta. A short battle resulted in the death of the commander and several others, as well as the capture of the Margaretta.

In 2018, Machias celebrates Margaretta Days on June 16 with a reenactment, children’s activities, period foods and artisan demonstrations.

Hack Holidays

The Massachusetts Statehouse

Eighty years ago a state law gave two holidays to state and municipal workers in Boston and the rest of Suffolk County, but not to anyone else. Government workers could take off March 17, Evacuation Day, which commemorates the day British troops and Loyalist sympathizers began to leave Boston. They can also take off June 17 to observe the anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill.

Critics say the Revolutionary holidays reflect Massachusetts’, shall we say, overdeveloped government bureaucracy. They ridicule the ‘hack holidays’ that occur once a month except for August, when government employees take long vacations anyway.

Massachusetts hack holidays include New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King Day in January, Presidents Day in February, Evacuation Day in March, Patriots Day in April, Memorial Day in May, Bunker Hill Day in June, Independence Day in July, Labor Day in September, Columbus Day in October, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving in November and Christmas in December.

Revolutionary Holidays That Disappeared

One of the Revolutionary holidays that disappeared was Boston’s Massacre Day.

Patriots celebrated the holiday every March 5 from 1771 to 1783 to commemorate the 1770 Boston Massacre. Each year a prominent patriot delivered a speech, which would then be printed. When 1783 brought the end of the American Revolution, Boston officials decided to replace Massacre Day with Independence Day.

Fast Day wasn’t one of the Revolutionary holidays until it became one.

Since at least 1670, New Englanders regularly set aside fast days to, well, fast, attend church and ask God for blessings.

Massachusetts celebrated Fast Day until 1894, when the Legislature changed it to Patriots’ Day to commemorate the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Maine jumped on the Revolutionary holidays bandwagon and did the same in 1897. New Hampshire clung to the Fast Day tradition until 1991, when it became Civil Rights Day in January.

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How Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground Was Saved by the Gold Street Lady

The Ancient Burying Ground, the oldest historic site in Hartford, contains the remains of 6,000 men, women and children who settled the town.

But it might have disappeared were it not for the efforts of Emily Seymour Goodwin Holcombe, also known as the Gold Street Lady.

Beginning in 1640, anyone who died in town, regardless of race, religion or economic status, was interred in the Ancient Burying Ground. Not everyone could afford a tombstone, and most people didn’t have one. Only 563 stones marked graves in 1835, and today only 415 stones still stand.

the Ancient Burying Ground

Who’s Buried in the Ancient Burying Ground?

Buried in the Ancient Burying Ground are five early Connecticut governors; Hartford founders Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone; Jeremiah Wadsworth, commissary general of the Continental Army; and Daniel Gardiner, the first white child born in Connecticut.

The stones themselves show the progression of the stonecarver’s art, from simple facts about the deceased to elaborate death’s heads with batwings.

The Ancient Burying Ground, though, is located right in downtown Hartford on Gold Street, across from the Travelers Insurance Company Tower and near an apartment building designed by I.M. Pei.

Real estate development had threatened to gobble up what remained of the Ancient Burying Ground when preservationists stepped in.

Daniel Wadsworth, son of Jeremiah, started the effort to save the Ancient Burying Ground in 1836. He led the campaign to erect a brownstone obelisk in the cemetery with the names of the founders on it.

Mrs. Holcombe

Then in 1892, Emily Seymour Goodwin Holcombe stepped in. She came from an old New England family and married another WASP, John Marshall Holcombe, who rose to president of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Co.

Emily Holcombe

Emily Holcombe started by organizing the Ruth Wyllys Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1892. Four years later she began restoring the Ancient Burying Ground, no small task. It required widening Gold Street, demolishing several buildings and preserving the crumbling gravestones. She raised $100,000 for the project and on June 17, 1899 – Bunker Hill Day – 5,000 people came to the dedication of the restored cemetery.

During the ceremony, one city official praised Emily Holcombe. “If any man of my knowledge in Hartford had undertaken the task, there would have been nothing left of him but the footprints of those who had stepped upon him,” he said. He added that ‘official boards and public men, court committees and obdurate property owners, all bowed to the persuasiveness of Mrs. Holcombe.’

Colonial Revival

The Colonial Revival was in full swing then, and Emily Holcombe was far from done. In 1903, the descendants of Founding Father Oliver Ellsworth gave his house to the Connecticut DAR. Emily Holcombe furnished it with period antiques and established it as a museum.

When the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis opened in 1904, the Connecticut State Building featured a colonial home furnished with restored heirloom furniture, Connecticut paintings and books on genealogy.

In 1909, Emily Holcombe helped save Connecticut’s Old State House, slated for demolition. Again she raised money for the project and argued for the building’s historic importance. She also persuaded the General Assembly to change Connecticut’s motto from the Nutmeg State to the Constitution State.

The Old Statehouse

When Emily Seymour Goodwin Holcombe died in 1923, she was afforded the rare honor of being laid to rest in the Ancient Burying Ground.

According to the Connecticut Encyclopedia of Biography, published in 1917, no one was better known in Connecticut than Mrs. Holcombe. “Her achievements have carried her name far beyond the confines of her native State,” it said. “She is a woman of great modesty, but possesses initiative to an unusually large degree with the will to accomplish an undertaking decided upon as necessary or desirable. She also possesses great tact, diplomacy and executive ability.”

There’s More

Over time, the cemetery again grew shabby. Homeless people sought refuge there, and vandals made mischief in it. In the 1980s, Hartford began locking the gates. A second restoration campaign restored some headstones, fixed the masonry and ironwork and added benches and litter containers. Shepherd Holcombe, Emily Holcombe’s grandson, led the effort.

Images: Ancient Burying Ground By Staib – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12647042. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Revolutionary Holidays You May or May Not Celebrate

Revolutionary Holidays in RI and Vermont

Powder House Day

Margaretta Days

Hack Holidays

Revolutionary Holidays That Disappeared

How Hartford’s Ancient Burying Ground Was Saved by the Gold Street Lady

Who’s Buried in the Ancient Burying Ground?

Mrs. Holcombe

Colonial Revival

There’s More

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