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How the Balsams Resort Was Built on a Railroad Seat

The story of the Balsams Resort, one of New Hampshire’s great old hotels north of the notches, begins with a conversation between Henry Hale and George Pullman.

Pullman was the engineer who designed the Pullman railway cars. They dominated the railroad industry from the 1860s onward.

Postcard of the Balsams Resort

Henry Hale served as an officer of Philadelphia’s Hale & Kilburn Manufacturing. Hale showed Pullman an odd design his company had patented. It was a reversible railroad car seat made of steel. The seat’s back flipped forward and back so that passengers could always face forward.

Pullman instantly hired Hale & Kilburn to begin turning out the reversible seats as fast as possible to fill up Pullman rail cars. The result was a vast fortune for Henry Hale and his brother J. Warren Hale.

Pair of reversible seats inside Gomaco-built replica 1903 Brill streetcar

By 1895, Henry Hale had been visiting a small hotel in Colebrook, N.H., called the Dix House, for 17 summers. Hale suffered from hay fever. In Colebrook, tucked among the evergreen trees, he found relief for his condition. George and Clara Parsons owned the Dix House and, when George died, Clara sold the inn to the Hale brothers. Henry had big plans for his new hotel and the land – more than 1,000 acres – that went with it.

The Balsams Resort

Hale attacked the project with gusto, renaming the hotel to the Balsams Resort. He established farms and stocked them with cattle, horses, goats and pigs. He constructed a slaughter house, a reservoir and an electric power plant. Dormitories were built for the staff. Ski trails were built for winter recreation and a golf course and swimming pools for summer.

By 1912 Hale had expanded the small 70-room Dix House, which dated to 1874, to the 400-rooms Balsams Resort, complete with opulent ballroom. By then J.P. Morgan had bought Hale & Kilburn for $9 million, and its founders would largely leave the business as it continued pumping out seats for all manner of vehicles.

In World War I, Hale & Kilburn’s futures took a huge leap forward as the government tapped the company to make munitions, including metal helmets for soldiers heading off to war.

The Hale brothers’ fortunes, however, were moving in the opposite direction. Ralph Nading Hill, in his book Yankee Kingdoms, says Henry Hale’s son-in-law, Carl Gerhard Rasmus, of the New York firm Rasmus & Co., enticed Hale into investing heavily in German war bonds. The bonds lost all their value after World War I.

The Balsams Resort

The War Ends

When the war ended, the Hales had lost most of their fortune. They began selling pieces of their estate and auctioning their prizewinning cattle.

The Hale brothers both died in the fall of 1921. The pioneering real estate auction house of Joseph P. Day then sold off the Balsams Resort to settle the estates. One-time Boston Red Sox owner Joseph Lanin picked up the Balsams Resort for a virtual song.

The Hales had poured $3 million into building the Balsams Resort. It has passed through several hands since. In 2019, New Hampshire’s General Court passed a law allowing the Coos County commissioners to create a tax-increment financing district around the resort. Les Otten, former head of the American Skiing Company, joined the redevelopment effort in 2014. He had plans to turn the resort into one of the largest ski areas in the Northeast. For the latest on Balsams redevelopment, click here.

This story last updated in 2023.

Images: Reversible seats By Steve Morgan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44309077. The Balsams By P199 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18091165.

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Champ, the Lake Champlain Lake Monster

Champ, North America’s answer to the Loch Ness monster, has long been a legend around Lake Champlain. He (or she) has spawned Indian legends, a baseball team mascot, offers of reward money, paranormal investigations, keychains, mugs and T-shirts . Champ has even inspired seafood patties on sesame-seed buns called “Champburgers.”

Artistic representation of Sandra Mansi's 1977 photograph of "Champ" monster. Illustration by Benjamin Radford.

Artistic representation of Sandra Mansi’s 1977 photograph of “Champ.” Illustration by Benjamin Radford.

More than 300 sightings have been reported over the years, and they’ve attracted the attention of serious people. In 1827, the eminent Yale scientist Benjamin Silliman said he was open to the possibility that a lake monster existed.

P.T. Barnum recognized the commercial potential of Champ. In 1873 and 1887, he offered the enormous sum of $20,000 to anyone who could capture the monster dead or alive.

But Barnum never had to pay up, and Silliman never had to put his reputation on the line. Though many believe in Champ’s existence, it’s unlikely the lake monster exists outside of the collective imagination.

Notes on Champ

Before the Europeans arrived, the Iroquois and Abenaki Indians described a lake monster that lurked in lakes and eats humans. The Abenaki called it Tatoskok or Gitaskog.

Samuel de Champlain was said to have seen Champ in 1609, but that story came from a made-up quote in Vermont Life magazine in 1970.

Lake Champlain

There was an early sighting in 1819, when a captain aboard a scow near Port Henry, N.Y., saw a ‘black monster’ in the water. He thought it was more than 180 feet long and had eyes like peeled onions.

Then in 1870, steamboat passengers said they saw Champ. That led to more sightings by steamboat passengers. In 1871, they said they saw a head and long neck in Horseshoe Bay. Two years later, steamboat passengers spotted Champ in Dresden, N.Y.

Sightings then continued into the 20^th century. In 1945, passengers aboard the SS Ticonderoga saw Champ swimming in the middle of the lake.

What Could It Be?

Some think Champ, like the Loch Ness monster, is a relative of the plesiosaur, an extinct marine reptile. It had a small head, long neck, turtle-like body, short tail and two pairs of paddles.

Others think it could be a zeuglodon (or Basilosaurus), an extinct prehistoric whale. Champ’s ancestors may have lurked in the Iapetus Ocean 500 million years before the Atlantic Ocean was formed.

In 1977, a woman named Sandra Mansi took a photo verified as authentic of something. It looked very much like Champ. A professional debunker named Joe Nickell pointed out the photo was taken of something in 14 feet of water, unlikely to contain a giant lake monster.

Champ mascot

In 2005, two upstate New York fishermen named Dick Affolter and his stepson Pete Bodette took a video of something strange in Lake Champlain. Bodette said, “What we saw always stayed right on the surface, and parts of it would come above the water, the back or the nose or the head.” The video only showed something under the surface, but it appeared on ABC News.

Joe Nickel had already investigated the monster’s existence in 2003. He concluded that Champ believers were arguing from ignorance. “We don’t know what these people saw; therefore, it must have been Champ,” he asid.

“One cannot draw a conclusion from a lack of knowledge,” wrote Nickell. “And so, until an actual specimen presents itself, the possibility that any large, unknown animal inhabits Lake Champlain remains somewhere between extraordinarily slim and none.”

Images: Mansi image representation: By BRad06 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43763274. Lake Champlain By Hbbrown18 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48446678. This story was updated in 2023.

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The Sinking of the Andrea Doria Ends an Era

The Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria wasn’t supposed to sink. After all, her designers had learned the lessons from the Titanic disaster.

But on a calm summer day in peacetime, she sank 60 nautical miles southeast of the Nantucket coast in the most shocking maritime disaster since the great ship went down 44 years earlier.

The Andrea Doria in 1955. Photo courtesy Bill Smith via Flickr

The Andrea Doria had radar, the latest technology. So did the ship that hit her.

The Andrea Doria also had a double hull with 11 watertight compartments and enough lifeboats for all passengers and crew.

So what happened to cause the destruction of the fabulous vessel and the deaths of 46 people?

A year of nasty litigation after the accident produced no good answers about how it happened. And the publicity about the tragedy hastened the end of an era of oceangoing travel across the Atlantic.

Andrea Doria

The transatlantic ocean liner still enjoyed its heyday when the Andrea Doria set sail from Genoa on July 17, 1956, bound for New York. She was one of the most beautiful ocean liners to sail the sea.

Some of Italy’s renowned artists designed her as a floating palace, with elegant staterooms, stunning lounges, outdoor swimming pools, an air-conditioned 50-car garage and a chapel for daily Mass. Silver and gold graced the dining room table, where passengers enjoyed fabulous meals.

Stockholm following the collision

The glamorous ship attracted such celebrities as actress Ruth Roman, Betsy Drake (Cary Grant’s wife), Philadelphia Mayor Richardson Dilworth and songwriter Mike Stoller, who wrote Hound Dog. Linda Morgan, 14, the daughter of ABC broadcaster Edward P. Morgan, was also aboard. So was Chad Gifford, 13, who later became president and CEO of BankBoston.

On July 25, the final night of her voyage, passengers were enjoying a last dance or saying farewell to each other over drinks. Some had retired to their staterooms. Then at 11:10 p.m. they felt a frightening crunch and heard terrified shouts.

Shrouded in heavy fog, the liner Stockholm, bound from New York to Sweden, had smashed 30 feet into the starboard side of the Andrea Doria. Most of the 51 passenger casualties happened at the point of impact. Five sailors were killed on the Stockholm, and dozens perished in cabins directly in the line of the collision. One man watched his dead or dying wife dragged away by the Stockholm’s bow as it separated from the Doria.

Capt. Piero Calamai issued an SOS from the Doria, as did the Stockholm’s captain Harry Gunnar Nordenson.

Help on the Way

The Andrea Doria immediately began to list heavily to starboard, which made half the lifeboats useless. The seawater breached some of the watertight compartments, flooding the generator room and cutting out the electricity.

Calamai realized the Doria was doomed. Thirty minutes after the collision, he ordered all to abandon ship.

The first lifeboats left only partially filled, mostly with panicked Doria crewmen. Stockholm crewmen were so angered when the boats arrived they almost turned them back. Other crew stayed with the ship and vowed to go down with it if their captain did.

Andrea Doria at dawn after the collision

Many lifeboats could not be lowered from the severely listing ship, so they had to be dropped into the water empty. Passengers climbed down Jacob’s Ladders to reach them, a tricky maneuver in the dark and confusion.

Calamai’s distress call was radioed to other ships. A freighter, several naval vessels and the luxury liner Ile De France reached the Doria. The Stockholm, not in any danger of sinking, helped with the rescue.

Greatest Rescue

Passengers on the lower decks struggled through dark passageways filling with seawater and oil. None of the frightened passenger knew help was on the way.

At about 2 a.m., the fog lifted just as the Ile De France arrived. The luxury liner’s captain ordered all the external lights turned on. The sight of the Ile De France, lit up like a Christmas tree, brought immense relief to the frightened Doria passengers.

Ruth Roman had been dancing in the ballroom when the Stockholm struck. She kicked off her shoes and ran to find her 3-year-old boy and his nanny. Somehow a crewman took the child from the nanny’s arms. In the confusion, Roman lost her son. She sat sobbing in the lifeboat, not knowing he’d been taken to safety aboard the Stockholm. Mother and son had a happy reunion when they landed in New York.

Ruth Roman reunited with her son. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

One man jumped from the Doria into the ocean to rescue a woman who had fallen into the water while trying to board a lifeboat. They later married.

Miracle Girl

Linda Morgan was in her cabin with her family at the point of collision. Her half-sister was instantly killed, her mother seriously injured. Linda was thrown from her bed onto the deck of the Stockholm. She was believed to have died along with her sister.

All night long, lifeboats from the rescue ships shuttled Doria passengers to safety as the stricken vessel slowly turned on its side before sinking.

In New York City, Edward P. Morgan reported the collision on his daily ABC radio broadcast. He didn’t tell his listeners his daughter had been a passenger on the Doria and he believed her dead.

Linda was discovered the next day with a broken arm. She was dubbed the ‘Miracle Girl.’ Morgan made an emotional broadcast describing the difference between reporting the news about strangers and reporting the news about loved ones.

The rescue operation then continued through the night, saving 1,660 passengers and crew. It’s considered the greatest peacetime rescue operation in maritime history.

At 10:09 a.m., almost exactly 11 hours after the collision, the Andrea Doria sank into the Atlantic.

Capt. Calamai, distraught, wanted to go down with the ship. The remaining crewmen, though, said they wouldn’t leave without him. To save them, he agreed to abandon ship. He then returned to his village in Italy a sad and broken man, and never went back to sea.

Litigation Over the Andrea Doria

The pre-trial hearing over liability for the collision happened in New York before U.S. District Judge Lawrence Walsh, later the Iran-Contra independent counsel. The contentious hearing lasted a year and raised public doubts about the safety of ocean liners.

The two companies decided to settle their dispute before trial. But they let the hostilities go on too long. The tragedy damaged the entire passenger shipping industry, even as people turned to long-distance air travel.

Evidence suggests that both crews misread their radars, and the ship captains misread each other’s intentions. When Nordensen realized they were on a collision course, he tried to maneuver past the Doria port side to port side. Calamai then thought Nordensen wanted to pass starboard to starboard, and mistakenly turned the Doria into the path of danger.

Aftermath

The wreck now lies in cold, dark water amid swirling currents too deep for recreational divers. But more experienced technical divers view it as the Mount Everest of diving. Since 2005, eight divers died trying to reach the Andrea Doria.

The Andrea Doria moments before sinking. Harry Trask of the Boston Evening Traveller won a Pulitzer Prize for the photograph.

The Stockholm subsequently got a new bow and still works as a cruise ship–sailing the Mediterranean under its new name, the Athena.

Visit a website about the tragedy by a survivor, Anthony Grillo, here. For a 25-minute National Geographic documentary about the Andrea Doria, click here.

If you enjoyed this story about the sinking of the Andrea Doria, you might like to read about the 1961 tragedy of Texas Tower No. 4 here.

Photo of the Andrea Doria on the day after the collision: Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1376587. Photo of the Stockholm: Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18295551. Andrea Doria via Flickr CC by 2.0.

This story was updated in 2023.

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6 Places That Became a Summer White House

The summer White House has featured in presidential life since John Adams returned to Quincy, Mass., to get away from the muggy heat of Washington, D.C.

Spending time away from the nation’s capital also allowed presidents to sense the country’s mood and to thank their wealthy donors. New England’s wealth and cool weather attracted presidential families in the days before air conditioning.

Here are places in each of the six New England states that became a summer White House.

The Thimble Islands, Branford, Conn.

A Thimble island

According to Connecticut legend, President William Taft spent part of a presidential summer on the Thimble Islands. The Thimbles are an archipelago of 365 small islands off the coast of Branford in the Long Island Sound.

The Branford Historical Society cautions that Taft probably only visited the Thimbles as a Yale student, though ConneticutHistory claims Taft had a summer home there for two years in the 1900s.

Rutherford B. Hayes did visit Branford as president. His grandfather was born in Branford, and his great-grandfather had built the Totoket Hotel on Main Street. In 1889, President Hayes came to Branford to see the hotel his great-grandfather built. The townspeople presented him with an axe made by his great-grandfather at a reception outside the hotel.

Totoket Hotel, photo courtesy the Branford Historical Society.

The Totoket Hotel has long disappeared, but you can still visit the Thimble Islands.

Bar Harbor, Maine

President Taft’s first summer White House in Beverly.

President William Howard Taft’s summer White House started out in Beverly, Mass. For four summers, his staff ran the government from borrowed offices in downtown Beverly.

Taft’s first hostess in the city got sick and tired of Secret Service interference, nosy tourists and the hubbub surrounding the president. She told Taft not to come back at all. She even threatened to tear down the house, located at Lynch Park. Instead, she cut it in pieces, floated it across the harbor to Marblehead and left Taft to move to a new house in the neighborhood.

Taft then announced with great fanfare in July of 1910 that he would make an extended trip to Maine. With stops planned for Eastport, Bangor, Ellsworth, Rockland and Islesboro, Taft would base his operations in Bar Harbor. There, he would stay on the 273-foot presidential yacht Mayflower, with its crew of 200.

Hancock House

A Summer White House in Maine

Taft first touched land in Eastport, then sailed on to Bar Harbor for a three-day stop.

He spent much of his time with wealthy summer residents. This caused a bit of a stir among the year-rounders, which Taft tamped down by giving a speech on the town bandstand.

“The three days that have passed in Bar Harbor will be red letter days in my life,” he told the crowd. “The air is like champagne in a Prohibition state, and without the uncomfortable consequences that follow imbibing that liquor.”

However, Taft’s visit to Mount Desert Island was not without trouble. He shot a 23 on a single hole during one round of golf when he got stuck in a sand trap. On the same course, the 300-pound-plus president tripped and sprained an ankle.

Taft at his summer White House

And, when he spoke to a crowd at the Hancock House in Ellsworth, pickpockets made off with hundreds of dollars from unsuspecting Mainers who came to hear him speak.

Most of the spots Taft visited are either gone or in private hands, but a few survive. The Bangor House Hotel is still at the corner of Main and Union streets, though it’s now housing. Taft participated in services at the stately Ellsworth Congregational Church. He took tea at the Jordan Pond House and the Kebo Country Club — the scene of Taft’s rough game — remains open to this day.

Hyannis Port, Mass.

The Kennedy Big House

The summer cottage that Joseph P. Kennedy rented in Hyannis Port in 1926 would eventually become the summer White House. Hyannis then (and now) belonged to the Irish Riviera.

The waterfront house had commanding views of Nantucket Harbor. Kennedy bought it in 1928 and set about enlarging and improving it for his growing family. It had six bedrooms and four servants’ rooms on the second floor, a wine cellar in the shape of a ship’s hull and a motion picture theater in the basement.

In 1956, Joseph Kennedy’s son John bought a smaller home of his own near the big house. In 1959, the youngest child, Edward, bought a house next to the other two in 1959. He sold it to his brother Robert and his wife, Ethel, in 1961, and later bought another home nearby.

John F. Kennedy used the compound as his headquarters for his 1960 campaign for president. He then used it as the summer White House during his presidency.

The Kennedy family at Hyannis Port, 1931

The main house was recently donated to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate. The compound can’t be visited, but it can be seen from the tour boats that leave from Hyannis.

To see rare photos of the Kennedy family at the Hyannis Port compound, click here.

Cornish, N.H.

Harlakenden House

Woodrow Wilson spent several weeks in the summers of 1913 through 1915 at Harlakenden, a country estate in Cornish, N.H. Wilson leased his summer White House from Winston Churchill – the American Winston Churchill, a writer who lost a race for governor of New Hampshire in 1906.

Harlakenden sat on a bluff overlooking the Connecticut River. Cornish was the center of an art colony of 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. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the central figure in the colony, which included Ethel Barrymore, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Isadora Duncan, Maxwell Perkins and Maxfield Parrish.

On Sept. 12, 1913, a play called Sanctuary: A Bird Masque was performed in Cornish with Wilson, his wife and the British ambassador in the audience. Miss Eleanor Wilson played the lead role and Miss Margaret Wilson sang the opening song, The Hermit Thrush. The play’s theme was the senseless slaughter of birds for frivolous purposes.

The occasion was the dedication of the Meriden, N.H., bird sanctuary – one of the first in the nation.

At the time, the Underwood Tariff Bill was in Congress . Bird-lovers everywhere wanted to ensure the bill included a ban on importation of bird feathers for decorative purposes. The play helped keep the heat on. Wilson returned from his summer White House early because the tariff bill had passed, with the language about birds intact.

Harlakenden burned to the ground, but the Cornish art colony survives as the Augustus Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

Newport, R.I.

Eisenhower House

In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, decamped to the Naval Base in Newport, R.I. There he dealt with the crisis over school integration in Little Rock, Ark.

He also summered in Newport during his presidency in 1958 and 1960. At first in 1958 Eisenhower stayed at the Naval War College on Coasters Harbor Island, but he wanted to be closer to the golf course at the Newport Country Club. So he moved to a mansion at Fort Adams for two summers in Newport.

Now called Eisenhower House, it was built in 1873 for Gen. Henry Jackson Hunt, a Civil War artillery officer. The house has stunning views of Narragansett Bay and Newport Harbor.

It now belongs to Fort Adams State Park, and you can rent it for weddings and social events. For more information click here.

Plymouth Notch, Vt.

Plymouth Notch

Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as president of the United States while vacationing at his boyhood home in Plymouth Notch, Vt.

His father, a notary, swore him in at 2:47 a.m. on Aug. 3, 1923, hours after President Warren G. Harding died.

Though Coolidge spent most of his adult life in Northampton, Mass., he often visited his family home. It is a modest white frame farmhouse in the classic New England style of big house, little house, back house, barn.

The Secret Service detail assigned to him slept in tents on the property. In the summer of 1924, a dance hall nearby served as his office in the summer of 1924.

Today Coolidge’s birthplace and surrounding buildings are the Calvin Coolidge Homestead District, which includes the Cilley General Store, the Post Office, the Wilder Restaurant (serving lunch), the church, several barns, the dance hall and the Plymouth Cheese factory. For more information click here.

Brigadoon as a Summer White House

The Coolidge homestead is such a throwback to the way Vermont used to be that some people call it “Vermont’s Brigadoon.”

Coolidge and his sons in Plymouth Notch, 1916

Coolidge expressed his feelings about his home state in an eloquent speech that followed the disastrous flood of 1927.

“I love Vermont because of her hills and valleys, her scenery and invigorating climate, but most of all because of her indomitable people. They are a race of pioneers who have almost beggared themselves to serve others. If the spirit of liberty should vanish in other parts of the Union, and support of our institutions should languish, it could all be replenished from the generous store held by the people of this brave little state of Vermont.^”

Photo of the Thimble Islands by JERRYE & ROY KLOTZ, M.D. – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49575458.

This story about the summer White House in each state was updated in 2023.

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The 1911 Heat Wave Was So Deadly It Drove People Insane

A July 1911 heat wave killed thousands of New Englanders and sent many over the brink of madness.

Two men in a park during the 1911 heat wave in New York City. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

During 11 hellish days, horses dropped in the street and babies didn’t wake up from their naps. Boats in Providence Harbor oozed pitch and began to take on water. Tar in the streets bubbled like hot syrup. Trees shed their leaves, grass turned to dust and cows’ milk started to dry up.

In every major northeastern city, the sweltering heat drove people to suicide.

On July 4, temperatures hit 103 in Portland, 104 in Boston (a record that still stands), 105 in Vernon, Vt., and 106 in Nashua, N.H., and Bangor, Maine. At least 200 died from drowning, trying to cool off in rivers, lakes, ponds and the ocean – anything wet. Still more died from heat stroke. The 1911 heat wave was possibly the worst weather disaster in New England’s history, with estimates of the death toll as high as 2,000.

Trying to cool off in Hartford. Photo courtesy Hartford Courant.

Trying to cool off in Hartford during the 1911 heat wave. Photo courtesy Hartford Courant.

The 1911 Heat Wave

June weather had been normal that year, but in July hot, dry air from the southern plains flowed into Canada and then swept south and toward the coast. The hot wind suppressed cool ocean breezes, and the temperature rose 11 degrees in a half hour in Providence.

In Hartford, crowds gathered around the Thermograph near City Hall to watch as the temperature fluctuated between 110 and 112 degrees in the shade. At Colwell’s store in Cumberland, R.I., the thermometer hit 130. A farmer in Woodbury left his field when the temperature reached 140 degrees in the sun.

Ice and electric fans were luxuries, air conditioning unknown. Pedestrians fainted from the stifling heat. At night, the streets filled with exhausted mothers walking up and down, trying to comfort their crying babies. They feared leaving them in their beds, lest they fail to wake up. One police officer described the night during the 1911 heat wave as a ‘giant wail.’

The City of Hartford flushed fire hydrants and ferries and trolleys allowed people to ride free. Some rode all day. Others went round and round on carousel horses for the slight breeze. The Heublein family donated water barrels to the parks, and the Trout Brook Ice Co. refilled them.

Throughout the region, factories closed and mail delivery was suspended.

Parks and beaches were opened for sleeping. In tenement slums, the sidewalks were lined with blankets and mattresses. Sleeping outside had its dangers, as thieves commonly stole hats, coats and wallets.

Sleeping in the park in New York during the 1911 heat wave. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

5,000 Sleep on Boston Common

Boston Common was described as the ‘biggest boardinghouse in New England.’ Five thousand men, women and children slept there on the ground at night during the 1911 heat wave.

Some people slept on roofs. John Merlo, a 28-year-old Italian immigrant, rolled over in his sleep on the tin roof of his boardinghouse in Hartford’s slum. He crashed through a 10-inch guard and fell to his death on the concrete below.

It became a daily ritual to read the morning newspaper to see how many died. Workers died digging holes. Women fell over picking blueberries. A teamster fainted and fell off his wagon, only to be trampled to death by the horses pulling it. A woman sitting up in bed talking suddenly keeled over, dead.

A week after it started, a line of thunderstorms broke the 1911 heat wave. But the next day the temperature shot up to 95 degrees. People started to go mad. In Hartford, a crazed man tried to climb a utility pole. Two police officers and three bystanders subdued him and wrestled him into a straitjacket. In Springfield, a man suddenly threw off his coat and ran through a pharmacy. In New York, a crazed drunk ran after a police officer with a meat cleaver.

The New London Day reported Jacob Seegar, an aged resident of Roxbury, Mass., was so crazed by the extreme heat he killed himself with a revolver.

Boys licking ice in New York City. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Train Wreck

The 1911 heat wave bent rail lines, causing derailments. But it was probably excessive speed that caused the wreck of the Federal Express train carrying passengers from Washington to Boston.

At 3:30 a.m. on July 11, the train derailed as it approached the station in Bridgeport, Conn.

The engine and six cars fell 20 feet to the street below, killing 14 and injuring 47.

The St. Louis Cardinals were sleeping in a Pullman car at the back of the train that remained on the tracks. They were on their way to Boston to play the Braves. Hall of Fame catcher-manager Roger Bresnahan directed the team’s rescue efforts, credited with saving many lives before ambulances reached the wreck.

Bangor

Bangor, Maine, had already suffered from one inferno two months earlier: the worst fire in its history. But in July, the city suffered from temperatures above 100 degrees.

A 69-year-old African-American woman, Mrs. Myra Hudlin, had been burned out in the fire and lived in a room with a bed, six chairs and a stove. She collapsed in the heat after washing clothes all one morning and died the next day.

The New York Tribune's estimates of the death toll from the heat, undoubtedly understated.

The New York Tribune’s estimates of the heat wave’s death toll, undoubtedly understated.

Bangorians seeking relief slept on porches and roofs. Most men walked around town without wearing a coat. Moviegoers showed up at the un-air-conditioned theaters at night in various states of undress.

On July 6, a terrific thunderstorm interrupted the heat and killed carpenter Harry Mower by toppling a barn on top of him. The storm damaged property throughout the city, felling the charred walls of buildings that still stood after the fire.

From morning to night, people hoping to catch a breeze jammed into the open cars of the Bangor Railway and Electric Company’s open trolley cars. Six thousand people besieged Riverside Park at the end of the trolley line in Hamden so they could cool off in the Penobscot River.

Even swimmers couldn’t escape the heat. David Kerr, a waiter on the steamer Belfast, was overcome by heat while swimming near the ferry terminal. He appeared too dazed to grab on to a line thrown to him.

After 11 days of searing heat, another severe thunderstorm brought the temperature down to bearable levels — and killed five more people. But the 1911 heat wave finally ended.

A deadly heat wave 15 years earlier launched a U.S. president. Read about it here. This story about the 1911 heat wave was updated in 2023.

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John Quincy Adams, Slavery’s Enemy Til the End

John Quincy Adams collapsed on the floor of the House of Representatives on Feb. 23, 1848 and died two days later. After he spent more than 50 years in the public eye, we often remember him for his quirks. His pet alligator or swimming naked in the Potomac or even his near drowning, for example.

His diaries serve as a wonderful record of just how full a life he had and how much he did to promote American economic and foreign policy interests. But in political and social terms, we probably best remember him for his opposition to slavery.

Adams found slavery revolting. He never missed the opportunity to speak out against it or draw his opponents into defending the practice. Even when he had virtually lost the power of speech, he never let up the fight. He quite literally stayed in the arena until the end.

John Quincy Adams

John Wentworth, the Sandwich, N.H., native who went on to win election as mayor of Chicago, recalled Adams in Congress. They served together in 1843 just five years before Adams died. Wentworth wrote of the various nicknames bestowed on him, from “old man eloquent” to “old man malignant.”

John Qunicy Adams (George Peter Alexander Healy)

John Quincy Adams (George Peter Alexander Healy)

“John Quincy Adams was 76 years of age when I first took my seat with him, in 1843, and I served with him until he fell in his seat, in February, 1848, having served his Country for over a half-century, and in a greater variety of responsible positions than any other man,” wrote Wentworth.

Old Man Eloquent

“He was called the ‘old man eloquent;’ but his eloquence was not of words or sentences or fancy. Nor was it the eloquence of Patrick Henry, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, or Charles Sumner. It was the eloquence of varied and as near universal (as could be said of any man) information, exhibited in the fewest possible words and with a sincere vehemence that demonstrated that he did not care where he hit nor whom he hurt.

Wentworth called his expressiveness a sort of “sledge-hammer” or “stand-from-under” eloquence. “Old man satirical” would have worked as well. Southerners called him the “old man malignant.”

“Slavery never received such ponderous blows as it received from John Quincy Adams,” wrote Wentworth. He seldom spoke about ordinary legislation. “But when he did, his fellow-members would assemble around him and listen with the profoundest attention to his generally-acknowledged words of wisdom.”

He never missed a chance to introduce the slavery question. And he took every opportunity to provoke the ire of his friends, “daring them to disputation, justification, and proof,” wrote Wentworth.

Manly John Quincy Adams

Wentworth described how Adams once delivered a bitter philippic against slavery. “A Southern member interrupted him by saying that nothing but his old age prevented a personal castigation. Mr. Adams responded.

I claim no favor on account of my age. I shall never call for United States troops to protect my manhood, as the South does to protect its want of manhood in enslaving an inferior race.

“Upon a few occasions he so far passed the bounds of delicacy as to charge that slavery had defeated the reelection of every Northern president,” wrote Wentworth.

John Wentworth

Then Wentworth noted that Adams had no idea his colleague, Abraham Lincoln, could hear his feeble voice. Calling Lincoln an “obscure member from the Free-States,” Wentworth noted he’d win reelection upon this very slavery question. “Still less did he think that that colleague, the first Northern president to be reelected, was to be assassinated,” wrote Wentworth. And then he speculated that if Adams still lived during Lincoln’s assassination, he would have a comment.

The slave-power assassinates whom it can not defeat.

The Color of His Head

In 1846, at the age of 78, John Quincy Adams suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. After a few months rest, he recovered and returned to Congress. Wentworth described how he communicated his feelings when he could no longer deliver a speech.

“Conspicuous as Mr. Adams always was, he became more so after he was struck down by a paralytic attack, which deprived him of most of his physical strength, and reduced his voice to but little above a whisper. His sight and hearing, like his intellect, however, were preserved to the last. Occasionally, when things were said which did not suit him, he would so far forget his infirmities as to attempt to rise, and then, when he would abandon the attempt, he would give a look to the man who had been speaking, indicating that it was well for him that a reply could not be made. It was understood in the galleries, as well as in the house, that the color of his head was the index of his feelings, it often becoming as red, under the violent declamations of Southern men, as living coals of fire.

“A Southern fire-eater was vehemently denouncing Northern anti-slavery men, when Father Adams’ head fired up with his usual indignation. Some waggish member exclaimed to the orator: “He says you are lying.” The speaker at once dropped the line of his speech, assumed a belligerent attitude, and exclaimed: “Who says I am lying?” “Adams,” “Adams,” replied several members. The laughter which followed was. greatly increased when Mr. Adams, ‘putting his hand upon his head, gave a significant nod, as much as to say: “I do say he was lying.”

This story updated in 2022.

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