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The Kettle Holes of New England (12 Other States Have Them Too)

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You’ll find thousands of kettle holes in New England, but you won’t find them everywhere in the United States. They can be ponds, lakes or bogs, but they always result from an iceberg that calved from a glacier and then melted.

Geologist Robert Thorson calls them “fossil icebergs” in his book, Beyond Walden: The Hidden History of America’s Kettle Lakes and Ponds.

Kettle holes came about with the retreat of the Laurentide ice sheet, which covered much of Canada and the northern United States. The icebergs it left behind got covered with sediment until they melted.

Kettle holes dimple the landscape south of the Great Lakes, Adirondacks and New England mountains. They then end around the 37th parallel along the southern borders of Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia. Thorson calls them a “blue galaxy” within 19 “kettle states.”

Collectively, writes, Thorson, “they form a galaxy of approximately 100,000 blue dots on the American landscape. Ranging from the parched prairies of the western high plains and the foggy, boggy moorlands of eastern Nantucket, this galaxy is widest near the center between Michigan’s upper peninsula and central Indiana.”

America has two famous kettle holes, one mythical, the other with mythical status. They are Lake Wobegon in Minnesota and Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Though fictional, Lake Wobegon is clearly one of Minnesota’s many kettle lakes, wrote Thorson. He has also observed central Minnesota’s kettle holes most resemble the ones in New England.

Thoreau had a spiritual relationship with Walden Pond, calling it “heaven beneath us.” “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature,” he wrote.

Sunset at Walden Pond

Following the Kettle Holes

In the early 19th century, New Englanders began migrating west, showing a preference for northern kettle country, wrote Thorson. They left their imprint on the kettle states in architecture, urban design and industry. Cleveland’s Public Square and Detroit’s Penobscot Building provide just two examples.

Minnesota, wrote Thorson, was the only state outside of New England to which Thoreau traveled. When he visited, he noticed that half the people he met came from Massachusetts and the lumbermen all came from Maine.

New Englanders’ attraction for kettle holes made sense since they’d long used them for drinking water, trapping beavers, growing marsh hay for livestock,  fishing and hunting, making bog iron, growing cranberries and wild rice and cutting refrigeration ice.

Wondering where there’s a kettle hole in your state? Here’s a short list of them.

The Gift of the Glacier

Anderson Pond, aka Blue Lake,

“The entire Connecticut landscape is a gift of the glacier,” writes Thorson.

The Connecticut River Valley, New England’s breadbasket, was once a tropical salt lake. The glacier then dredged the lake and dammed it to form another shallow one that threw sand onto the shore. The valley drained 12,000 years ago leaving rich soil suited to farming. It also left the kettle holes that dot the landscape around Hartford.

A small kettle hole in Branford helped give birth to American limnology, the science of lakes. G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Yale zoology professor, used Linsley Pond in Branford to teach students about ecology, according to Thorson..

The glacier also deepened an old river channel along shat is now the Connecticut shoreline. Then the sea level rose to create deep water harbors from Greenwich to Stonington. Marshes and kettle holes behind the beaches then developed as the sea level slowly rose. One such kettle hole, Anderson Pond in North Stonington, encompasses 57 acres ideal for boating, canoeing or kayaking.

Development threatens the health of Connecticut’s kettle holes, which are highly sensitive to climate change and water pollution. When Thorson wrote his book in 2009, home buyers increasingly looked to freshwater shorelines. They had concerns about rising sea level, increasing hurricane strength and the high cost of flood insurance.

Kettle Holes, a Kame and Blue Clay

Otter Ponds

Kettle hole junkies in Maine can find a series of kettle holes just outside of Portland. The Portland Water District opened the Sebago Lake Land Reserve in 2005 for recreation and admiring kettle holes. They include Half Moon Pond, Otter Ponds and Snake Pond.

Visitors can also see a kame slope left by the Laurentide glacier when it retreated.  It also created a ridge of sediment known as the Presumpscot Formation.  When the ice sheet melted into streams, the water carried sediment like silt and clay to the ocean. The silt left behind — the Presumpscot Formation — runs from the Maine and New Hampshire coasts inland. Mainers call the sediment “blue clay” and used it for brickmaking in colonial times.

Kettle Holes For Drowning Certain People

Scargo Lake, one of Cape Cod’s biggest kettle holes

Cape Cod has more than a thousand ponds and lakes and almost 500 of them are kettles – “enough to drown every gossip in,” people used to say.

The Laurentide ice sheet began to head south about 25,000 years ago, reaching Cape Cod and the Islands. When it retreated, it carved out a sand and rock formation called a moraine.

Enough to drown every gossip in

Scargo Lake in Dennis is one of the biggest kettles on Cape Cod. It covers 60 acres with an average depth of 25 feet and 1.3 miles of shoreline. It’s been been stocked with game fish since before 1911, when the commonwealth’s Division of Fish and Wildlife first surveyed it. People can swim from Princess Beach, the primary swimming beach.

Many myths and legends have sprung up about Scargo Lake and yes, they involve a Native American princess.

According to one version, Princess Scargo of the Nobscusset tribe fell in love with a handsome young native on his way into battle. He gave her four fish as a token of his love in a wooden bowl. Or maybe he gave her three fish in a hollowed-out pumpkin.

She put the fish in a tiny pond and awaited his return. Only one of the fish lived during a long, dry summer. Her father called together all the women and children to dig a pond “as wide as an arrow’s flight.” The dirt and rocks they dug up formed Scargo Hill, on top of which Princess Scargo could watch her fish and await her true love’s return.

And that’s why Scargo Lake is shaped like a fish.

A Much Photographed Kettle Hole

Lake Chocorua ready for a picture

The surface of Lake Chocorua on most days exhibits a stunning reflection of Mount Chocorua in the White Mountains. That makes it one of the most famous kettle holes in the Northeast and a popular subject for photographers.

Located in Tamworth, N.H., Lake Chocorua owes its pristine water to the lack of development around it. For five decades, the Chocorua Lake Conservancy has worked to protect the watershed with conservation covenants and easements. Forests now buffer the lake, and motorboats are forbidden by law.

New Hampshire boasts two other well-known kettle holes in the world of limnology: Pea Porridge Pond in Conway and Madison and the much-studied Mirror Lake in the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest.

Rhode Island’s Kettle Holes

Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge, full of kettle holes

In Rhode Island,  moraines on Block Island and near Charlestown are about as old as Cape Cod — and as full of kettle holes.

The Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge has plenty of them. Once used for farming, it got turned into a military base during World War II, the Naval Auxiliary Air Station Charlestown. Then the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designated it a refuge in 1970.

Today shrubs and grassy reclaim the old runways, used as part of the trail network that goes past salt marshes, kettle holes and forests. Birdwatchers love it, as they’ve recorded 310 species of birds within the refuge.

Ninigret belongs to a complex of five wildlife preserves along Rhode Island’s south coast that also include Trustom Pond, John H. Chafee at Petaquamscutt Cove, Block Island and Sachuest Point. The Kettle Pond Visitor Center at Ninigret offers information about all five.

A Spectacular Sight

Kettle Pond, one of many kettle holes in Groton State Forest.

When the Laurentide glacier retreated north, it scraped out yet another moraine in northeastern Vermont. Melting icebergs then  filled Vermont’s kettle holes and kettle bogs.

Kettle Pond State Park near Marshfield belongs to seven state parks in Groton Forest. The Civilian Conservation Corps created many of the trails and shelters among the trees.

A hiking trail circumnavigates the pristine waters of Kettle Pond, which, as its name suggests, is a kettle hole. The hiking trail offers a swimming beach, primitive shelters and the call of the loon. Climb nearby Owl’s Head for a spectacular view of the pond.

With thanks to Beyond Walden: The Hidden History of America’s Kettle Lakes and Ponds by Robert Thorson. 

Images: Ninigret By Greg Thompson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, via Flickr, Public Domain. Cape Cod aerial view NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr, CC by SA 2.0. Lake Chocorua By Jdahlem21 – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5323618. Otter Ponds By NewtonCourt – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106790726. Kettle Pond By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60968369. Walden Pond at Sunset by Tim Hettler via Flickr, CC by 2.0.

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Connecticut Justice: When Murder Became Manslaughter in 1712

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The evolution of New England laws from a religious basis toward secular Common Law happened gradually. It took a big step forward in Connecticut in 1712 when the father-and-son team of John and Daniel Gard allegedly killed a stranger who came to their town. But was it murder or manslaughter?

The Gards lived in Stonington, and they were visiting a neighbor, Daniel Eldridge, a sea captain. William Whitear, a visitor from Long Island, came to the Eldridge house. It’s not recorded what started the trouble between Whitear and the Gards, but an argument broke out.

manslaughter

Postcard of the New London Courthouse, built in 1784.

Daniel Gard challenged Whitear to a fight. When witnesses separated the two men, Whitear had clearly gotten the worst of it.

Manslaughter or Murther?

Court records described the incident:

On the 16th day of August, 1712, a quarrel arose at the house of Daniel Eldridge in Stonington, between the prisoner, Daniel Gard, and William Whitear, a stranger, and that the prisoner challenged said Whitear to fight; whereupon they went out of the house, and closed in with one another, and that the prisoner threw said Whitear on the ground and fell with him, and there lay until they were parted; and that said. Whitear said he told the prisoner immediately he had killed him.

Seven days after the fight, Whitear died. An autopsy suggested his bladder had burst in the fight, and he died of the resulting infection. Prosecutors initially charged both Daniel and his father with murder, but then cleared John of joining the fight. Daniel stood trial, however, and a jury found him guilty. But the jury also made a curious finding:

… whether upon the whole matter the aforesaid Daniel Gard is guilty of murther or manslaughter we leave to the discretion of the court.

Connecticut hadn’t actually legislated manslaughter at the time. Legislators, jealous of the powers of colonial courts, specified that judges could only enforce specifically “Connecticut laws.”

In cases where the law was unclear and there were no colonial acts to consult, the courts had traditionally turned to the Bible for guidance. In 1672, Thomas Rood had been convicted of incest. The law said nothing about the crime.  The General Court then settled the matter by declaring that under the “law of God,” Rood must be put to death.

English Common Law

In the Gard case, the judges at the New London courthouse again appealed to the General Court for guidance. And in this instance, the Legislature took a different course. They instructed that the judges could follow English Common Law in setting Gard’s sentence.

When the court finally issued a sentence in November, it actually followed neither common law nor Connecticut law. Instead, Gard received a hybrid sentence, a common colonial punishment. He had to stand upon the gallows for an hour with a noose around his neck. Following that he received 39 lashes.

Scholars have noted that the case against the Gards opened the door to greater use of English Common Law in the American colonies. Less than 10 years later the General Court actually specified that, in cases where Connecticut law was silent on an issue, English Common Law would be the default.

The New England States: Their Constitutional, Judicial, Educational, Commercial, Professional and Industrial History by William Davis and The Solemn Sentence of Death: Capital Punishment in Connecticut by Lawrence Goodheart.

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Leonard Black, A Suffering Slave Who Overcame Many Trials

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Leonard Black couldn’t read or write when he escaped slavery in Maryland, but he found a way to pay for his education. He then told the story of his cruel masters in a booklet printed by a New Bedford printer.

Leonard Black developed into an inspirational minister who preached that all men are equal before God. He also taught that slavery required ignorance.

The slaves are taught ignorance as we teach our children knowledge. They are kept in darkness, and are borne down under a cruel, cruel oppression! All human rights are denied them as citizens! They are not recognized as men! My old master frequently said, “he did not believe a d–d nigger had any soul!” They are made to undergo everything as a beast. Having a full, perfect, undeniable right to stand out before God as MEN, the cruel, God-defying white man, without semblance of right, with no pretence [sic] but might, has prostituted them to the base purpose of his cupidity, and his baser beastly passions, reducing them to mere things, mere chattels, to be bought and sold like hogs and sheep!

 

Leonard Black, Slave Boy

Leonard Black was born into slavery in 1820 in Maryland, 60 miles south of Baltimore. As a young child, the slaveowner sold his mother and sister in New Orleans. At six years old, he had to work for a Mr. Bradford, which separated him from the rest of his family.

“No one, who has always enjoyed the right of liberty, can realize the horrors of slavery,” he wrote.

To be at the will of another, to be owned like a cow or horse, and liable at any moment to the highest bidder, to be transported to a distant part of the country, leaving the dearest relatives behind; to be, in fine, ground down mentally and physically by the untold curses of slavery, may be a very pretty thing to the masters of the “peculiar institution,” but it is death to the slaves.

Mrs. Bradford beat him and made her 10-year-old son beat him and spit in his face. One day she ordered him to take a bushel of corn upstairs, but he couldn’t do it. She hit him with the johnny-cake board, cutting his head so badly it bled more than a quart.

After two years Mr. Bradford placed Leonard Black with his father, fearing Mrs. Bradford would kill him. Mr. Bradford’s father was worse than Mrs. Bradford. The old man had been a professor of religion. Black called him a ‘backslider’ and a ‘wanderer from God.’

Backslider

Leonard Black lived with the senior Bradford for 7-1/2 years, during which he had no hat and no pants, but only a pair of shoes and a lindsey slip. He had to eat his meals, mere scraps from the table, while standing. He slept on a piece of carpet on the hearth. His job was to fetch wood, and one winter day he came inside to get warm.

He wrote

Old Mr. Bradford followed me in, and said: “If you want to be warmed, I’ll warm you.” He took the tongs, heated them in the fire, and branded my legs; and the scars are there to this day. I could not sit down in consequence of the wound.

When the old man died, he was sent to work for a Mr. Gardner, who was just as cruel.

After 13 years he returned to Mr. Bradford and his four older brothers. Three of them escaped and went North. A preacher who came to visit Mr. Bradford’s daughter alleviated Leonard’s sufferings from time to time. He gave him money with which he bought books. In 1836, Leonard Black converted to Christianity, inspired by the 8th verse of the 23d chapter of Matthew,

*I experienced a hope under a slave man,” and “Give us of your oil, for our lamps have gone out.”

Freedom

The African Church in Boston

The African Church in Boston

Finally, in 1837, Leonard Black escaped.  He walked to Boston, working odd jobs along the way and evading his captors. In Boston he asked for his brothers, and he learned of a George Black, a minister living in Portland, Maine. While boarding with an African-American woman he tracked down Black, who offered to pay his fare to Portland.

He learned Black wasn’t his brother, a disappointment. However, Black and his family kindly took him in. They made clothes for him and taught him to read. He got jobs as a farm laborer and as an engineer in a steam factory.

In 1838, he moved to Boston with George Black, who became the minister of the African Meeting House on Belknap Street.

Try, Try Again

Leonard Black married one of George Black’s daughters, and they lived with David Walker, the African-American whose anti-slavery pamphlet resulted in a price on his head in the South. He worked on the wharves and as a servant, but decided he wanted to be a preacher.

Francis Wayland

Leaving his family in Boston, he moved to Providence, where he lived with Francis Wayland, president of Brown University. He studied the Bible at the Meetinghouse Street Church. He moved his family from Boston, got a job working for a stone mason and told the pastor he wanted to be a minister. The church brethren gave him a hearing and decided he wasn’t ready.

Discouraged, Leonard Black sold his books and went to work on a canal boat until an accident nearly cost him his life. After working on the canal for three weeks a horse fell on him and kicked him in the head.

He despaired while he recovered slowly. His wife was pregnant, he had no money and he couldn’t work. Wayland and others helped him and his family through those hard times, and he decided to try the ministry again.

Life and Sufferings

In 1847 he went to New Bedford to dictate his story, published s The Life and Sufferings of Leonard Black, a Fugitive from Slavery. Written by Himself. In the run-up to the Civil War, at least 80 such slave narratives went into print to inspire enthusiasm for the abolitionist movement.

It worked for Leonard Black. He preached in Nantucket, then in 1850 he became a Baptist minister at the Third Stonington Church in Stonington, Conn., where he doubled the membership to 60 adults.

He found a sanctuary and a ministry at the Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn, N.Y., but only for a short time. Congress enacted The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required Free states to return runaway slaves to their owners. Leonard Black feared for his life and his freedom, so he resigned the ministry and lived quietly in New York for the next 12 years.

In 1873 he and his wife moved to Petersburg, Va., where he served as pastor of the First Baptist Church and again doubled the size of the congregation.

He died on April 28, 1883, and more than 5,000 people attended his memorial service. Every store that employed an African-American closed that day.

This story was updated in 2021.

 

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Nathaniel Palmer, Connecticut Mariner, Sort of Discovers Antarctica in 1820

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On Feb. 6, 1821, young Capt. Nathaniel Palmer and the four-man crew aboard the Hero were becalmed in uncharted waters off Antarctica, hoping not to run into anything.

Half Moon Island

Half Moon Island

Palmer rang the ship’s bell, and was shocked to hear a bell reply from a distance.

A half hour passed, and again Palmer rang the bell. Again a bell tolled in reply. He later said,

I could not credit my ears. I thought I was dreaming, save for the screeching of the penguins, the albatrosses, the pigeons and the Mother Cary chickens [Wilson’s petrels], I was sure no living object was within leagues of the sloop.

Nathaniel Palmer

When the fog cleared, Palmer and his men found themselves between two Russian warships, the Vostok and Minyy, sent by the czar on a worldwide voyage of exploration.

Nathaniel Palmer

Nathaniel Palmer

The captain of the Vostak, Fabian von Bellingshausen, discovered Antarctica a year earlier. He summoned Palmer and, according to lore, was astonished to find someone so young – Palmer was 21 — and in such a small vessel sailing the treacherous waters.

Palmer offered to pilot the Vostok to Deception Island, an extremely safe harbor he had discovered on a journey three months previously. He also told Bellingshausen of an immense peninsula of land to the south. Bellingshausen graciously offered to name Palmer’s discovery Palmer Land on Russian charts.

Today, the southern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula is officially known as the Palmer Land.

Stonington Sealers

Deception Island seal

Deception Island seal

How Nathaniel Palmer came to discover a part of Antarctica has to do with the old China trade.

When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783 it opened the Orient to trade with the United States. But the young country had little to trade. The Chinese valued its ginseng and bullion, but it was the fur of sea otters and seals that really opened the China trade to Americans.

For more than six decades, ships from Stonington, Conn., dominated the seal trade. The first Stonington sealer sailed out in 1818; the last, in 1892.

Seal fur commanded such high prices in China that sealers slaughtered seals to near-extinction in many places.

When the known seal rookeries ran out of seals, ships from Stonington led the search for new sealing grounds in the South Atlantic.

Tame As Kittens

Nathaniel Palmer was a Stonington native, born on Aug. 8, 1799, the son of a shipbuilder.

He went to sea at age 12 on ships running the British blockade between Boston and Portland during the War of 1812.

In 1819, he got a job as second mate on the Hersilia, which voyaged to the South Atlantic in search of rookeries rumored to be teeming with seals ‘as tame as kittens.’

Hersilia sailed to the South Shetland Islands, where the rumors turned out to be true. The vessel returned with 8,868 sealskins in May of 1820. They sold for $22,000, worth about a half million dollars today.

Antarctica

Antarctica

The news of the Hersilia‘s find sent the sealers of Stonington and other East Coast ports into a frenzy outfitting ships for sealing expeditions. Thirty sealers set off for the islands that brimmed with seals. They sailed from Nantucket, New Bedford, Salem, New Haven, Fairhaven, New York, Britain and Russia.

Palmer invested his share of the profit from the Hersilia voyage into two small sloops, the Express and the Hero, which he captained. They joined a fleet of five sealing ships making the exodus to the South Shetlands, and met up with them on Livingston Island. The fleet anchored in a position vulnerable to gales, so Palmer and his crew sailed farther south in November to find a better harbor.

The Hero

The Hero was a tiny vessel, only 47 feet long, ideal for scouting good harbors and beaches. On that scouting expedition, Palmer discovered Deception Island, the Orleans Strait and two good harbors at Half Moon Island and Yankee Harbor. He returned to the fleet and brought them to Yankee Harbor.

Three months later, he made the encounter with the Vostok that affixed the name of Palmer to the frozen continent. He is sometimes credited with discovering Antarctica, but Bellingshausen and Irish explorer Edward Bransfield clearly preceded him.

The next year on another sealing voyage, Nathaniel Palmer made his last discovery: the South Orkney Islands.

Nathaniel Palmer House

He turned his attention from sealing to captaining fast sailing ships to Asia. He designed hulls and rigging to make the ships even faster, becoming a co-developer of the clipper ship.

Nathaniel Palmer died a wealthy man on June 21, 1877.

His home in Stonington was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1996.

This story was updated in 2022. Images: Half Moon Island CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1257329. Nathaniel Palmer House By Parker Higgins – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3833701.

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The SS Lexington Disaster, Worst in Long Island Sound History

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Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1834 commissioned a paddlewheel steamboat called the SS Lexington to be the fastest and most luxurious in operation. She turned out to be the most lethal.

Steamboat Lexington before the tragedy

Steamboat Lexington before the tragedy

Vanderbilt wanted a vessel to serve the route from New York City to Providence, R.I. When finished, the SS Lexington featured ornate teak woodwork throughout, an elegant lounge, a dining saloon and a furnished deck.

Her engine was one of the most efficient on the water, and in June 1835 she made the 180 miles between New York and Providence in 12 hours, 14 minutes.

The SS Lexington often had exciting races with another Sound steamer, the John W. Richmond. “Great liberties were taken with boiler presures, so that when races occurred, which were not infrequent events, steamboat traveling in the United States was as risky as it was exciting,” reported International Marine Engineering in 1912.

Cornelius Vanderbilt

SS Lexington

The SS Lexington wasn’t racing during the cold, windy night of Jan. 13, 1840, on the run between New York and Stonington, Conn. She was catching a train. Vanderbilt had switched the route in 1837 to meet the terminus of a new railroad. He had also sold the vessel to the New Jersey Steamship and Navigation Company, which converted the boilers to burn coal instead of wood.

Steamboats had a tendency to catch fire, and in 1838 the U.S. Congress created the Steamboat Inspection Service. It couldn’t handle  the task. The SIS didn’t discover the improper conversion of the SS Lexington’s boiler, or that it burned too hot for the smokestack’s casing.

A steamboat historian wrote that ‘“when she was pressed hard, the roar of the fires could be heard all over the boat and at each revolution of the wheels she trembled from stem to stern.”

The crew of the SS Lexington shoveled extra coal into the boiler that night because of the rough seas. She was carrying 150 bales of cotton along with the passengers and crew. She left the dock at 4 p.m. Halfway to Stonington, the casings on the overheated smokestack ignited, and the fire spread to the cotton. Instead of putting out the fire immediately, crewmen went to check the engine first.

Awful Conflagration

The rope that controlled the rudder burned through and the engine stopped. The steamer drifted away from land. Tragically, the sloop Improvement  was less than 5 miles away and never came to the SS Lexington’s aid. The captain later explained that he was on a schedule and didn’t want to be late.

Only about 20 passengers could find lifeboats. The first lifeboat was sucked into the paddlewheel, killing all aboard. The remaining two lifeboats were lowered into the water stern first, and they were swamped immediately.

By 8 p.m. the center of the main deck collapsed. Passengers threw baggage containers and cotton bales into the water to use as rafts. Those who couldn’t find anything to cling to quickly died of hypothermia or drowned. The steamship still burned when it sank at 3 a.m.

Three who survived had climbed onto floating bales of cotton. David Crowley, the second mate, drifted for 43 hours on a cotton bale before coming ashore and staggering a mile to a private home. Charles Smith, a fireman, climbed onto a section of the paddlewheel before rescuers got to him.

Steamboat Lexington tragedy by Nathaniel Currier

Steamboat Lexington tragedy by Nathaniel Currier

Aftermath

An investigation revealed the boiler had been improperly converted, the crew violated fire safety procedures and the captain of the Improvement should have come to the rescue. Nothing was done until 1852, after an  unusual number of steamboats exploded, caught fire or collided. Congress passed another law, the Steamboat Act of May 30, 1852. It required testing of boilers, safety valves and licensing of pilots.

Nathaniel Currier printed  Awful Conflagration of the Steamboat Lexington and sold thousands of copies.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was said to have a ticket for the fatal voyage, but missed it because he was discussing his poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus, with a publisher.

The SS Lexington was brought to the surface in 1842 and 30 lbs. of melted silver were recovered. But then the chains supporting her snapped and she fell back to the bottom of the Sound, breaking into three pieces. Though there is supposedly gold and silver in her hull, she has never been recovered.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Joshua Hempstead, Diarist of Colonial New London, Conn.

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Joshua Hempstead throughout his long life in colonial New England pursued many business activities, some of which carried perils almost unimaginable today.  Misfortune could strike at any time, and the early colonists knew well the vicissitudes of life.

He was a model New Englander of the era, a devout, hard-working tradesman, dedicated to his family and to his community.

A page from Joshua Hempstead’s diary

Hempstead worked as a surveyor, shipwright, gravestone carver, lawyer, local official and — always — a farmer.  Like 90 percent of colonial New England men, he could read and write, and he kept a diary for most of his life. He used it to keep track of his many business and civic activities. He noted the weather, baptisms, engagements, deaths, military trainings, court sessions, ship traffic, town meetings, thanksgivings, fasts, feasts and his travels. The New London County Historical Society published it in 1901. Historians for many years used it for its references to events like the Boston fire of 1711 and the Great Awakening of the 1740s.

As historians got more interested in the lives of ordinary people, the diary drew more attention. Today, the Connecticut Historical Society views his diary as an important source about colonial life in Connecticut.

Joshua Hempstead

Joshua Hempstead was born Sept. 1, 1678 in New London, the only son of Joshua Hempstead and Elizabeth Larrabee. His grandfather, Robert Hempstead, had entailed the house to his oldest son. That meant oldest sons in perpetuity would inherit the entire estate.

 

The Joshua Hempstead House

Joshua’s father, a wheelwright, died when he was only 10, and Joshua inherited the house. His descendants lived in the house until 1937.

As a boy he entered into apprenticeship with a shipwright, then the aristocrats of the wood-turning trades. Around 1698 he married Abigail Bailey of Long Island. They had nine children. Abigail died in 1716 a few days after giving birth to their last child. Joshua Hempstead never remarried, but reared the children with the help of relatives and women hired to help with the housework.

Joshua Hempstead, 1711

New London had been founded in 1646 by John Winthrop the Younger, son of the Puritan leader of the Massachusetts colony, and several dozen planters of the middling sort. One of them was Joshua Hempstead’s grandfather.

The young Winthrop died in 1676, and his sons inherited his vast landholdings. Joshua Hempstead acted as their agent, managing their affairs when the head of the family was away.

john-winthrop-jr.

John Winthrop the Younger

New London grew into a busy village of farmers, merchants, shipbuilders and mariners. The town did a brisk trade with the West Indies, and Hempstead often notes the arrival and departure of ships from Barbadoes. Within 50 years the population would grow to more than 3,000 people.

In 1711, Hempstead had a growing family, a farm and civic responsibilities. During the fall of that year he had to harvest his crops and work on building a ship while serving on a jury.

Oct. 2, 1711 I picked out Corn & made a Platform to Lay ye husks on & I gathered some corn. A great fire in Boston this night.
He continued to gather and husk corn.

It took five days to find out more. On Sunday, Oct. 7, 1711 he wrote,

mr white Preached in ye forenoon & mr. Hunting in ye afternoon. the sad news came of a great fire in Boston burnt from ye School house Lane to Almost ye heart of ye Town Dock both sides ye Street about 100 houses burnt & 8 or 9 sons Lost.

Death in 1716

John Winthrop the Younger practiced medicine on the side when he wasn’t governing a colony. He diagnosed and medicated about 500 Connecticut residents. His son Wait followed in his footsteps, serving both as governor and doctoring on the side. On August 4, he tried to heal Joshua’s wife, Abigail, who had given birth to their ninth child, Mary, on July 29.

On Aug. 4, 1716 he wrote,

I was in ye yard about Town al day. my wife very Ill. Mr. Winthrop come to visit her in ye Evening used means for her Relief & Mr Miller Let her blood in.

On Sunday, Aug. 5, he wrote,

my Dear Wife Died about half an hour before Sunrise. I was at home al day except in the Evening I went to ye burying place.

Her body was buried about 2 p.m. the next day. He carried the newborn baby to Mary Trumans at night to Nurse. The next day he went to look for a nurse.

Two days later he noted that his 17-year-old son Joshua had taken ill with a sore throat and fever.

On Friday, Oct. 10:

my Dutyfull Son Joshua Died about Noon like a Lamb being 17 years & 20 days old a pattern of patience.

He buried Joshua next to his mother. All three now rest in New London’s Cedar Grove Cemetery.

Cedar Grove Cemetery, 2021. Image courtesy Google Maps.

Joshua Hempstead, 1724

At the age of 46 he decided to travel to Stonington, Conn., to deliver gravestones and pick up some cider. Today the trip is a 20-minute drive. In 1724, it took quite a bit longer, even by boat, the preferred method of transportation along the coast in those days.

On Nov. 12, 1724, Joshua Hempstead set out for Stonington with his son Stephen. He reported in his diary, as usual, on the weather. It started out fair, but didn’t stay that way.

I Set out for Stonington in Jos Coits Longboat with Stephen in order to fetch Cyder. I carried 10 pr gravestones. 7 for Wm Wheeler, 1 for Ebe Wms & 2 pr Not Sold. ye Wind was high about W S W & a great Sea that I dare not venture Round Long point. I put in for Mumford’s. But got on the flatts was forced to put most of the Stones overboard & yt got a Shore. Lay out al night under a Hay Stack.

The weather improved the next day, and Hempstead and his son visited the famously hospitable George Mumford. Wrote Hempstead:

In ye Morn wee went up to Mumfords on Mr Winthrops farm Stayed for the Tide to Rise got ye Stones in about 2 Clock & got up with them about 6. I Lodged at Mr Wms & Stephen at Bennats with John.

Adam Jackson, 1727

On Sept. 21, 1727, Joshua Hempstead bought a slave, Adam Jackson, for 85 pounds.

“I bot Adam for £ 85,” he wrote.

It wasn’t unusual for people in coastal New England towns to own an enslaved person or two. Nearby Rhode Island, the slave-trading capital of New England, provided a steady supply of kidnapped Africans to work in bondage.

Jackson, born in Africa, lived in the Hempstead house with him for 30 years. His children did too, as well as other members of Hempstead’s family.

They worked side by side.

On a cold spring day in 1728, “I was on the Island with Nathll & adam cutting wood.”

In July of 1730, “wee Carted the Ld of hay to Stewarts & Carted 2 Ld in the lot & Stackt it & mowed the oats only my Self & Adam.”

In the fall of 1747, “In the foren[oon] I went to mamacock with adam & Jonat & finisht Raking the Salt hay.”

And as late as 1754, when Hempstead was 75, “helpt adam Load up 4 pr of gravestones at Picketts wharf…”

James Davenport, 1743

Many New England towns were caught up in religious fervor called the First Great Awakening during the 1730s and 1740s. A cross-eyed English minister named George Whitefield helped start it all, touring the colonies to give fiery speeches.

James Davenport and others followed in Whitefield’s footsteps.  They preached that people could find salvation through spiritual rebirth – a rebirth that started with public weeping, groaning and howling. A Yale graduate from Stamford, Davenport’s career nosedived when he threw his pants into a bonfire of the vanities in New London.

Joshua Hempstead took notice of Davenport and his followers, who called themselves New Lights. The preacher did not impress Hempstead when he went to hear him on Feb. 27, 1743.

I went to Town to Meeting to hear Mr Davenport, but it was Scarcely worth the hearing. the praying was without form or Comelyness. it was dificult to distinguish between his praying & preaching for it was all Meer Confused medly. he had no Text nor Boble visable, no Doctrine, uses, nor Improvement nor anything Else that was Regular…he Calld the people to Sing a New Song &c forevermore 30 or 40 times Imediately following as fast as one word could follow after another 30 or 40 times or more & yn Something Else & then over with it again. I cant Relate the Inconsistance of it.

George Washington, 1756

Hempstead died on Dec. 22, 1758, 17 years before the American Revolution started. He did, however, catch a glimpse of a 24-year-old George Washington, who rode through town during the French and Indian War.

George Washington by Charles Wilson Peale.

The sight of Washington in New London on March 8, 1756, caused him to wax unusually descriptive.

Col. Washington is returned from Boston and gone to Long Island, in Power’s sloop; he had also two boats to carry six horses and his retinue; all bound to Virginia. He hath been to advise with Governor Shirley, or to be directed by him, as he is chief general of the American forces.

By then Hempstead had trouble with his hearing. On Aug. 20, 1756, he recorded a trip to the doctor in his diary:

fryd 20 fair. In the foren(oon) I rid out & Joshua to John Stubbins’s & Wm Manwarings & there had Doctor Wm Hough to Try to help me in hearing. he Seringed my Ears & drew out a Large gob of Ear wax out of my Right Ear & then I could heard my Watch click which I could not before. Chappel & adam finish Stacking the last hay att the Lowerend of the Lot.

This story was updated in 2022. Images: Joshua Hempstead House By Jerrye & Roy Klotz, MD – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35972709.

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