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Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, Lawyer, Poet and a Black Man’s Drinking Buddy

When Nancy Hammond bought a house on Gates Street in Portsmouth, N.H., she had no idea it would inspire her to trace the life story of a good and interesting man. Tradition had it that Jonathan Mitchel Sewall had lived in the house during the time of George Washington. Washington, in fact, may have walked right past it on his visit to Portsmouth in 1789.

Hammond wanted to find out more.

Sewall’s house on Gates Street

She learned that Sewall recorded his observations about much of the world around him, from Salem to Spain, from slave to Superior Court chief justice. He felt things deeply, and, often depressed, he wrote popular poems about the world he knew. Hammond’s curiosity about him led her to dig up those old poems as well as fragments of his life.

Then, during the COVID pandemic, she wove them together into The Life and Times of Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, 1748-1808.

“Now I am cherishing him and hoping to make him better-known as best I can,” she wrote in her introduction.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Sewall’s life was his friendship with Primus Fowle, an enslaved printer with whom he probably shared “many a cheerful dram.”

Jonathan Sewall

Sewall was the great-nephew of Judge Samuel Sewall, a Puritan leader, Salem witch trial judge and opponent of slavery.

Samuel Sewall

Born in Salem, Mass., Jonathan was educated at Boston Public Latin School while living with his uncle Stephen Sewall, chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature. He then studied law with his cousin Jonathan Sewall, Massachusetts attorney general, before he moved to Portsmouth, N.H There he became a well-known and well-loved local character who wrote poetry and the New Hampshire Bill of Rights. He spoke at every local celebration during the rest of his life, and most likely helped the enslaved people of Portsmouth with their Black Petition of 1779.

Self Medication

Sewall came from a mercantile family, and he was apprenticed in the merchant business in Salem. Some time before his apprenticeship ended, he came down with a fever. It brought him so low that he decided to take a voyage to a milder climate for his health.

And so he sailed for Spain, probably Bilbao. New Hampshire historian Albert T. Batchellor wrote that the warm climate helped him. “[Y]et the violence of his fever and the strong medicines which the physicians administered to him when sick, afterwards subjected him to exquisite nervous affections and the keenest mental suffering approaching delirium,” Batchellor wrote.

Jonathan’s brother-in-law, William Pynchon, described in his diary on December 21, 1785, his visit to his house in Salem: “Bro. Mitchell comes in Portsmouth stage; a dark cloud over his visage, his eyes wild.“

Jonathan grew prone to hypochondria and nervous problems, which he medicated with “stimulating beverages.”

“But his friends loved him none the less and appear never to have lost respect for him,” wrote historian Charles Bell. “The lady who became his second wife, when remonstrated with on her engagement to a man of his habits, replied, ‘I would rather marry Mr. Sewall drunk than any other man sober’.”

Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, Lawyer

His mercantile career over, Jonathan Mitchel Sewall turned to the law. He studied — and probably lived with — Judge John Pickering. His later work as a Portsmouth lawyer brought him into contact with people in trouble. He often helped them out without charging them.

According to an obituary Hammond found, “The widow, the fatherless, and the stranger, also found in his talents a never-failing resources, for without even the hope of reward, he devoted his great abilities to their service.”

Though no portraits of him exist, a contemporary noticed his striking resemblance to the British statesman, Edmund Burke.

Edmund Burke, from the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, oil on canvas, (1767-1769)

Hammond notes Sewall may also have helped draw up an eloquent petition demanding freedom for Portsmouth’s enslaved servants in 1780. The document, known as “the petition of Nero Brewster and others,” failed then to free them. In 2013, New Hampshire’s General Court posthumously granted them their freedom.

Nero Brewster worked for William Brewster, who ran a tavern on Pleasant and Court streets. Sewall may well have medicated himself with stimulating beverages at Brewster’s Tavern .

This map shows the proximity of Judge John Pickering’s house to Fowle’s printing shop.

“With Jonathan’s own propensity for drink, he must have shared quite a few “cheerful” drams with Primus,” wrote Hammond. “Primus may well have been the first enslaved person that Jonathan met in Portsmouth as they probably lived across the street from each other.”

Primus would have printed Jonathan’s poetry. He had come to New Hampshire with his owner, the printer Daniel Fowle. Fowle sometimes printed Jonathan’s public poetry in his weekly newspaper, The New Hampshire Gazette.

Primus

“It has been said that Primus could not read,” wrote Hammond. “If he were the only person working with Fowle it seems unlikely that he would be unable to help with the typesetting.”

His main task, she wrote, “would have been setting the cases of print on to the press, setting the paper, and then inking the letters before the case went into the press. Then the lever was turned to pull the paper and the case of type into it and to press it down to make the print. When this was done, the lever was pulled back to take the case out and then, because the ink was oil based, the printed sheets had to be hung up to dry overnight. The type needed to be cleaned and returned to the letter cases.”

Hammond offers the kind of insight Jonathan Mitchel Sewall revealed in his poetry. She wondered,

“What must it have been like for Primus to print ads for the sale of “Indian, Negro, or Mulatto” people as slaves and information about returning escapees to their enslavers every week?” she wondered. Hammond includes examples, such as “A very likely NEGRO BOY, about 14 years of age, to be Sold, Enquire of the Printer.”

Primus died in 1791, and Jonathan wrote his obituary, which appeared in the newspaper.

Epitaph on the Death of Primus

Under these clods, old Primus lies

At rest and free from noise,

No longer seen by mortal eyes j

Or grieved by roguish boys;

The cheerful dram he lov’d ‘tis true

Which hastened on his end.

But some in paved-street well knew

He was a hearty friend,

And did possess a grateful mind

Though oft borne down with pain,

Yet where he found a neighbour kind

He surely went again;

Too often did the mirth of some

His innocence betray,

By giving larger draughts of rum

Than he could swill away,

But now he’s dead, we sure may say

Of him, as of all men,

That while in silent graves they lay

They’ll not be plagu’d again.

Not Fair

Writes Hammond, “The epitaph reads as though it was given at the graveside as it begins ‘Under these clods.’ It surely gives the impression that Jonathan knew Primus well even to the painfulness of his aging shoulders and knees.”

If Jonathan Mitchel Sewall was sensitive enough to understand that Primus suffered physical pain as well as humiliation, he may also have grasped the unfairness of his enslavement. Hammond noted that Sewall’s son Stephen, probably around 14, apprenticed to a printer, then an elite trade.

“The printing trade was a very good one to be in and a young boy could progress from his seven-year apprenticeship to become a journeyman and then a master printer himself,” Hammond wrote. “As a journeyman he would be able to get a job in almost any city. But at that time these steps would only be possible for a young white boy. Primus’ “apprenticeship” lasted for all of his long life. A printer would not only print the newspaper, but broadsides, pamphlets, books, and many types of forms especially for the state.”

In Silent Graves

Primus Fowle was buried in Portsmouth’s Negro Burying Ground, a segregated cemetery on the outskirts of the town. People eventually forgot about it until 2003, when a road crew unearthed coffins and skeletal remains. Today, a memorial park on the site memorializes those buried there.

Portsmouth African Burial Ground Memorial

Seventeen years later, Jonathan Mitchel Sewall went to his final resting place in Portsmouth’s North Cemetery. His gravestone reads,

Sacred to the Memory of Jonathan Mitchel Sewall, Esq.

Counsellor at Law who died March 29, 1808 Age 60

In vain shall worth or wisdom save

The dying victim from the destin’d grave,

Nor Charity, our helpless nature’s pride,

The friend to him who knows no friend beside,

Nor genius, science, eloquence have pow’r,

One moment to protract the appointed hour.

Could these united have his life repriev’d,

We should not weep for Sewall still had lived.

Portsmouth African Burying Ground Memorial Park By LibSEEE – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91322234.

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Tavern Tales: Stories from Boston’s Colonial Taverns

Murder, affairs, brawls and politics! They all had a home in Boston’s colonial taverns.

Taverns provided vital services in colonial times. Strangers with no one to vouch for them could stay and dine there. Businessmen conducted meetings and transactions at colonial taverns. News flowed through them. And the taverns served as the political petri dish where the ideas and principles of the American experiment in democracy took root.

Of course, the other element to tavern life was the alcohol they dispensed. The colonial government tightly regulated alcohol – the General Court dictated everything from how much alcohol cost to how much someone could drink. Despite the government’s best efforts, however, Boston’s colonial taverns took center stage in a number of scandals and spats over the years. Here are seven great scandalous tales from colonial taverns in Boston:

Castle Tavern Cuckold

The Castle Tavern – William Hudson kept the Castle Tavern in Dock Square (near Faneuil Hall). It would later go by many names, but that’s how people knew it in 1642. Hudson had returned to England to fight in the English Civil War. For two years, he left his wife and family in the care of a friend. When he returned, however, he found his wife and his friend had gotten too friendly. Servants in the home saw the pair slipping into the bedroom together and accused them of adultery.

Adultery called for the death penalty, and that’s what the town’s magistrates recommended. A jury, however, adopted a more lenient posture and convicted them of “adulterous behavior,” accepting the woman’s story that the two had, in fact, been in bed together (as reported by servants). However, they did not consummate their affair because she persuaded her suitor it would be wrong.

As punishment, the couple stood in the town gallows for an hour wearing halters, and then submitted to a whipping. Hudson accepted his wife’s story and the two lived happily ever after.

Drunken Lawmaking at the Royal Exchange

In 1747, Boston’s Old Statehouse burned. The building still stands today, after repairs. The first floor housed the mercantile exchange, while the second floor held offices for the governor, assembly and courts. Many records survived the fire, though it did prompt the Commonwealth to establish laws requiring records be duplicated and backed up.

Repairs would be completed in 1748, but for a time the fire rendered the General Court homeless. Where better to makes laws than a tavern? And that’s where the legislators relocated: to the Royal Exchange. The Exchange was popular with Masons. It also featured in another shady event, this one in 1728. Henry Phillips and Benjamin Woodbridge had been drinking at the tavern when they got into an argument. The fight escalated until Woodbridge and Phillips found themselves on Boston Common, dueling with swords. Two sons of well-known families dueling caused a stir.

Woodbridge died of wounds incurred in the fight. Woodbridge, meanwhile, with aid from wealthy friends, fled Boston for France, where Phillips would die before 1730, leaving behind a massive lawsuit over his estate and a slew of new laws increasing the penalties for dueling.

Outrage at the British Coffee-House

The British Coffee-House, also on State Street, served as a sort of headquarters for the royalist faction in Boston. Here, a heated fight broke out between the Patriot agitator James Otis and British officers in 1769. One officer struck Otis on the head. The effects of the blow lingered for the rest of his life.

But the tavern gained notoriety first nearly 20 years earlier. In 1750 the tavern presented a play, Thomas Otway’s “The Orphan.” The play tells a tragic story of a love triangle that ends in suicides all around. Theater was frowned upon in New England and this play particularly infuriated the public . . . so much that the government outlawed the performance of plays altogether.

Poison At The Golden Ball Colonial Tavern

In 1735, Humphrey Scarlett owned the Golden Ball Tavern, also located near Faneuil Hall. The tavern dated back about 100 years at that point, with Scarlett as its latest keeper.

Scarlett and his second wife, Mary, had a year earlier had a son, and apparently their servants did not think highly of their living arrangements. Two black servants (some sources identify them as slaves), tried to poison the entire family, according to a criminal indictment. The two servants put arsenic in the chocolate and served it at breakfast.

The pair tried to implicate a maid in the scheme, but she proved her innocence by showing that she, too, had drunk some of the chocolate – something she would hardly do if she knew it contained poison.

Caesar and Yaw – the servants – had to stand on the gallows for an hour with a noose around their necks and endure 39 lashes with a whip as punishment for the attempted murder.

Eloping at the Exchange

Royal Exchange – Located on State Street at the corner of Exchange, the two-story building passed through several owners. In 1772 it became the Boston end of the first Boston-to-New York stage, and was a stagecoach stop for decades. It also no doubt witnessed its fair share of agitation in the days leading up to the American Revolution, as it looked out on the spot where the Boston Massacre occurred.

The Exchange’s clientele skewed toward the loyalists. Mrs. Mary Clapham, in charge of the tavern, boarded a number of British officers at the establishment – a decision she may have regretted. Clapham had several daughters, one of whom took a liking to their British guests and eloped with an officer who caught her eye.

Gambling for Grapes

The Bunch of Grapes tavern stood on State Street. John Marston, originally from Salem, managed the tavern before and during the American Revolution. Marston had an illustrious military career and served on Boston’s Committee of Correspondence during the war, helping to arm and supply the revolutionary soldiers.

John Marston also reportedly took part in the Boston Tea Party – which seems plausible since the Bunch of Grapes served as an unofficial headquarters for the Sons of Liberty, who plotted the revolt against England.

But Marston also had a blot on his record, as well. In 1778 he was cautioned by the courts. His crime? Allowing or encouraging gambling at his establishment with games such as backgammon.

Off With Cromwell’s Head

Politics permeated Boston’s taverns, and none more so than the oddly named Cromwell’s Head on School Street. In England, Cromwell’s literal head served as a warning to any who would challenge the authority of the king.

Oliver Cromwell, bearing the title Lord Protector, took charge of England after his colleagues beheaded King Charles I during the English Civil War. Cromwell died in 1658 of natural causes and his countrymen buried him in a ceremony every bit as grand as a funeral for a king. However, when the monarchy returned to England, under King Charles II, the government disentombed Cromwell and his fellow revolutionaries, removed Cromwell’s head and posted it on a stick in London as a warning to potential traitors. There it stood for 20 years (give or take).

In Boston 100 years later, however, Cromwell’s head did not represent a repudiation of the man. Rather, Cromwell’s Head tavern celebrated his pluckiness and willingness to take on the king, or at least that’s how the British loyalists saw it.

When passing by, loyalists would cross to the other side of the street rather than pass under Cromwell’s likeness on the sign above the tavern door. And, when the British took control of Boston in the early days of the American Revolution, the tavern owners had to remove the sign and store it for safekeeping. It made its return after the hostilities ended.

Thanks to:

The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, John Winthrop.

Old Boston Taverns and Tavern Clubs, Samuel Adams Drake, Walter K. Watkins.

Diary of the Rev. Samuel Checkley, edited by Henry Winchester.

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New England’s Six Wealthiest Towns (And How They Got That Way)

The wealthiest towns in each New England state all have good schools, beautiful homes and well-preserved historic districts. They are also, unsurprisingly, overwhelmingly white.

New England’s wealthiest towns also tend to produce and attract celebrities and highly accomplished people in the arts, sports and business. Some of their residents are hell-bent on keeping the wealthiest towns wealthy. Conservative provocateurs Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter live in New Canaan, Connecticut, and Grover Norquist lives in Weston, Mass.

The Wealthiest Towns Get Started

In many cases, the wealthiest towns started off as sparsely populated farm villages. Then after the railroad came and the Civil War ended, rich people started building country estates on them. Then the estates fell to the income tax and the Great Depression. So when World War II ended, real estate developers pounced on some of these rural enclaves and turned them into suburbs.

In two other cases — New Hampshire and Vermont — the wealthiest towns evolved from historic, well-preserved colonial villages.

Several different statistics can measure a town’s wealth, but we chose per capita income.

Here, then, are the wealthiest towns in each of the six New England states.

New Canaan, Conn.

The famous Glass House was built in one of Connecticut’s wealthiest towns.

Bet you thought it was Old Greenwich, right? But New Canaan has the highest per capita income, $99,016, in the wealthiest county in the wealthiest state in the union. Greenwich at $91,478 and Darien, at $94,376, came in as Connecticut’s second and third wealthiest towns, according to the Connecticut 2014-15 Adjusted Equalized Net Grand List per Capita.

New Canaan started out as a Congregationalist parish in 1731, and didn’t get incorporated until 1801. After the American Revolution, shoemaking took off in the town. Then in 1868, the railroad came to New Canaan, bringing wealthy New Yorkers looking for a country retreat. Lewis Lapham, founder of Texaco, built Waveny House and summered on the estate for many years.

The New Yorkers began to stay year-round, commuting to work in the city. In the 1890s, New Canaan earned the nickname ‘Next Station to Heaven,’ though detractors call it the ‘Next Station to Hell.’ In 1980, The Official Preppy Handbook listed New Canaan as one of the preppiest towns in America.

Like most of New England’s wealthiest towns, New Canaan has preserved some of its colonial buildings. But the town has an unusual concentration of mid-century modern homes, such as Philip Johnson’s Glass House. A group of modern architects known as the Harvard Five lived and worked in New Canaan, all followers of Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius.

Not everyone loved the modern homes. Of the 80 or so built between 1940 and 1960, about 20 have been torn down. The town now tries to preserve them. You can see many of them in the 1997 film The Ice Storm.

Rick Moody, who wrote The Ice Storm, lived in New Canaan. Today, the town’s 20,000-odd residents include quite a few show people, including Martin Mull, Paul Simon, Harry Connick, Jr., Mike Wallace and Brian Williams.

Cape Elizabeth, Maine

A John Calvin Stevens house in Cape Elizabeth, one of Maine’s wealthiest towns. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Cape Elizabeth actually has a lower per capita income than North Oxford, Maine. But North Oxford is technically an unorganized territory and had only 17 residents in 2000, so we’re sticking with the seaside town of Cape Elizabeth.

King Charles I renamed Cape Elizabeth after his sister, Elizabeth of Bohemia, when explorer John Smith brought him a list of North American places with native names. Anglican traders and fisherman came to the frontier village, which for decades was embroiled in the French and Indian wars.

In 1765, Cape Elizabeth separated from Falmouth (now Portland).Then in 1895 South Portland separated from Cape Elizabeth. The two towns had diverged in character: Cape Elizabeth remained rural, while South Portland grew with commerce and industry. Then, following the typical pattern, wealthy industrialists found the pretty countryside near the city a perfect place to build their estates. And after World War II, Cape Elizabeth turned into an affluent suburb.

Per capita income in Cape Elizabeth, population about 9,000, was $57,725 in 2016.

You’ve seen pictures of Cape Elizabeth’s most famous landmark, Portland Head Light. The town also has a number of Shingle Style houses designed by John Calvin Stevens. Two film icons lived in town: director John Ford was born there and Bette Davis had a summer home in Cape Elizabeth.

Weston, Mass.

The Henderson House, a private home in one of the wealthiest towns in Massachusetts.

Ever wonder where all those athletes with the astronomical contracts go to live? Try Weston, Mass., the wealthiest town in Massachusetts.

Weston was little more than a field for grazing cattle until its incorporation as a town in 1712. Since the town lies along the Boston Post Road, taverns thrived serving travelers. Two still stand today as historic properties — along with one local historic district, 10 National Register districts, 26 historic areas, and seven houses listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The railroad brought small factories to Weston, and then it brought business moguls who liked the quick train ride from Boston. They began building large estates on land unsuitable for farming.

In 1927, a wool tycoon built Henderson House, the last great summer estate in Weston. About a dozen more huge estates survive, and rich people are building new ones. Hedge fund manager Jim Pallotta in 2007 built a 27,000-square-foot mansion nicknamed ‘the house that ate Weston.’

Weston boomed after World War II. More than half of the town’s increasingly expensive houses were built between 1950 and 1979. By 2017 the population reached 11,389. Today the median home price is about $1.5 million and the per capita income $105,217.

Five of the 50 richest people in Massachusetts live in Weston, and so do some of New England’s most beloved sports heroes: Celtics M.L. Carr, John Havlicek and Robert Parish. Bruins legend Bobby Orr lives in Weston, as do two former Red Sox players, David Ortiz and Jerry Remy.

New Castle, N.H.

https://newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/wealthiest-towns-new-castle-wentworth.jpg

Wentworth-By-The-Sea today presides over one of New Hampshire’s wealthiest towns.

Tiny New Castle, a collection of island on New Hampshire’s seacoast, started out in 1623 as a fishing village. Within the next decade the British built a fort to protect the harbor. The state incorporated New Castle in 1683 and named it after the fort, now a historic landmark known as Fort Constitution.

For many years, the world overlooked the fishing village squeezed onto several small islands covering just .8 miles. That neglect preserved many of New Castle’s colonial-era homes. The town’s residents, 968 in 2010, have restored and preserved many of those houses.

In 1821, bridges connected New Castle to Portsmouth on the mainland. Then in 1874, the town got a huge boost with the construction of the grand hotel, Wentworth-By-The-Sea. The largest structure on New Hampshire’s 18-mile coast, it attracted famous socialites, politicians and business leaders from around the world. At the height of its glory, Wentworth-By-The-Sea accommodated negotiators for the Treaty of Portsmouth, which ended war between Japan and Russia in 1905.

Wentworth-By-The-Sea began to decline with the rise of the automobile, but New Castle’s fortunes continued to rise. Per capita income tops the state at $97,601, according to the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-year estimates.

Local preservationists saved Wentworth-By-The-Sea from the wrecking ball in 1997 by finding a new owner, Ocean Properties. By 2003, the restored hotel opened as a Marriott hotel property.

Barrington, R.I.

A town hall that’s appropriate for one of Rhode Island’s wealthiest towns.

You’d probably guess Newport as the wealthiest town in Rhode Island because of its famous Gilded Age mansions. But you’d be wrong. Barrington, just southeast of Providence, actually has the highest per capita income in the state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. Per capita income for Barrington was $59,464. Newport wasn’t even second. That honor belongs to Jamestown, just west of Newport.

Congregationalist Separatists founded Barrington in 1717, and for many years it remained a farm community. Then brickmaking companies moved into town, employing many French-Canadians and Italians. After World War II, the flight from the city began to transform Barrington into a bedroom suburb.

The population more than doubled between 1950 and 1960. In 2015, 16,240 people lived in Barrington. Spalding Gray, Sean Spicer and Roger Angell came from Barrington.

Like most of the wealthiest towns in New England, Barrington has preserved its history in nine historic districts and claims to have excellent schools.

Old Bennington, Vt.

The Old First Church of Old Bennington, one of Vermont’s wealthiest towns.

Old Bennington, an incorporated village inside Bennington, is not only the wealthiest town in Vermont, it’s possibly the most historic.

In 2010, Old Bennington’s per capita income topped Vermont’s list at $40,884, putting it ahead of Manchester Village by $33. Only 139 people lived in Old Bennington that year, which means one wealthy resident could have skewed the per-capita income figures upward — or downward.

However, Old Bennington’s many large, expensively restored Revolutionary-era homes, suggest most Old Benningtonians are comfortably fixed.

New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth chartered Bennington (and named it after himself) in 1749, making it one of the oldest as well as wealthiest towns in the state. Vermont law later created the incorporated village, a defined area within a town. Vermont’s incorporated villages can provide some municipal services like drinking water, sewer systems, police, fire, trash collection and building code enforcement.

Its historic district includes 93 buildings and objects, including the Battle of Bennington Monument and the Old First Church, named Vermont’s ‘colonial shrine’ by the Legislature. Robert Frost and his wife Elinor are buried behind the church, along with 75 Revolutionary War soldiers who died in the Battle of Bennington. A stone near the cemetery marks the spot where Ethan Allen’s house once stood.

Images: Glass House, By Staib – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7797606; Peirce-Henderson House in Weston, By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15922502; Old First Church By Nheyob – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16986574. Canaan Main Street By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/gcdougherty/all-towns-and-cities/north_canaan_ct/canaanvillagemainst-3.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74545267.

This story was updated in 2023.

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A Haunted Murder Scene in Each New England State

If you’re looking for a haunted murder scene, New England has plenty of them. The region is awash in old taverns where the ghosts of murder victims move furniture at night or cemeteries where they float above gravestones.

New England has always embraced tales of the supernatural. New England ghosts, witches, devils and monsters in human shape populate the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Shirley Jackson and Stephen King. There’s even a name for the region’s special brand of horror: Gothic New England.

Here then is a haunted murder scene in each New England state.

The Murder Scene at Union Cemetery

The White Lady’s murder scene? Union Cemetery at night.

One autumn night a man knelt by his wife’s grave in 400-year-old Union Cemetery in Easton, Conn. He missed her, and it comforted him to talk to her.

After a short while he looked up from the grave and saw a ghostly figure watching him. She had long dark hair and wore a diaphanous white veil and an old-fashioned white dress or nightgown.

“I wish my husband would have loved me as much as you love your wife,” she said, and then she vanished.

Some people believe the White Lady was murdered. Her body, they think, was dumped behind the Easton Baptist Church next to the cemetery. Others believe she murdered her husband. Whatever the case, the White Lady is one of Connecticut’s most famous ghosts. People have seen her walking among the gravestones and floating above them. She also appears to motorists on Route 59.

Whether it’s because it abuts a murder scene or because it’s so old, Union Cemetery has been called the most haunted cemetery in Connecticut. The cemetery attracts so many ghost hunters the Easton police have closed it off to traffic at night.

Johnny Winter and Harry Reasoner are also buried in Union Cemetery, but so far as we know they do not haunt the place.

Easton, Conn.

Wood Island Lighthouse

A lighthouse and a haunted murder scene: Wood Island Light.

In 1896, local sheriff Fred Milliken rented his chicken coop on Wood Island to Howard Hobbs, a drifter, to sleep in. The two men argued, and Hobbs shot the sheriff. He then went to the lighthouse keeper’s house and shot himself there.

Hobbs’ spirit haunts the murder scene at the Wood Island lighthouse, located off Biddeford Pool in Maine. People have heard moans and strange voices, seen dark shadows and found locked doors mysteriously opened.

The story doesn’t end there. One lighthouse keeper was so spooked by the haunting that he left the lamp unlit and rowed to the mainland. He found a room in a boardinghouse and jumped to his death the next morning.

20 Yates St., Biddeford, ME

The Lizzie Borden House

The Fall River hatchet murder scene is now a popular bed and breakfast.

Lizzie Borden, a 31-year-old single woman, famously took an axe and killed her father and stepmother at their home in Fall River, Mass. Or did she? The debate continues since the couple was found murdered on Aug. 4, 1891.

A jury acquitted Lizzie of murder nearly a year later. Many thought she got away with the crime. Others think the maid did it, or perhaps Lizzie’s uncle, who provided an absurdly overdetailed alibi.

Whatever the case, Lizzie continued to live in Fall River, ostracized by the community, until her death at age 66. The murder scene was turned into a popular bed and breakfast in 1996. Guests most often request the room where Lizzie’s stepmother met her end.

Ghost hunters sometimes stay in the house to investigate paranormal activity. A floor will creak in an empty room, or doors will open and close mysteriously. Sometimes the proprietor smells a faint flowery scent, and once the hallway chandelier suddenly turned off and a shadow climbed the stairs.

Today, a popular rhyme persists about the murders:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

92 Second St., Fall River, Mass.

The Country Tavern

The Country Tavern in Nashua, a murder scene long ago.

In 1741, a sea captain named Ford built a house in what is now Nashua, N.H. He brought his much younger wife Elizabeth to live there while he went to sea.

Once, after a 10-month absence at sea, he returned to find Elizabeth and her new baby. In a fit of rage he locked Elizabeth in a closet and killed the infant. When Elizabeth emerged to find out what he’d done, she attacked her husband. Capt. Ford then stabbed her with a knife and threw her body down a well.

In the 1980s, Elizabeth Ford’s farmhouse became a popular eatery, the Country Tavern. Her ghost supposedly haunts the murder scene, but in a playful way. She moves salt and pepper shakers, tosses dishes off shelves and runs her fingers through patrons’ hair. Sometimes she makes an appearance in a window on the second floor, gazing out over the property.

452 Amherst St., Nashua, N.H.

The Biltmore Hotel Murder Scene

The lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, scene of murders and suicides during Prohibition.

In 1918, a rumored Satanist named Johan Leisse Weisskopf financed construction of the Biltmore Hotel (now known as Graduate Providence). He supposedly installed chicken coops on the roof to supply birds for ritual sacrifices and dug hot springs in the basement for purification rites.

During Prohibition, the Biltmore became a speakeasy frequented by Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. The hotel hosted raucous parties that supposedly resulted in the murders of several guests. Today, Biltmore guests say they hear laughing and dancing from an empty room, once, perhaps, a murder scene.

The most famous ghost, though, belongs to a wealthy guest who threw himself off the 14^th floor of the Biltmore when the stock market crashed in 1929. Hotel guests say they’ve seen a man plummet past their windows, only to look down and see no body on the sidewalk.

11 Dorrance St., Providence, R.I.

College Hall, Vermont College of Fine Arts

The ghost of Anna Wheeler haunts College Hall.

College Hall at the Vermont College of Fine Arts was built near an 1897 murder scene involving a jealous lover.

On a Saturday morning, 17-year-old Anna planned to meet her fiance, Jack Wheeler, a handsome 22-year-old stonecutter. They would take the train to Barre that day to watch the Decoration Day celebration. She lived on East Liberty Street where her cousins, the Bugbees, had hired her to do domestic work.

Mildred Brewster, 20, went to the Bugbee house and waited on the porch for 20 minutes before knocking on the door. The two women talked inside for 45 minutes, and a witness later testified to overhearing the conversation. Mildred said, “Jack Wheeler can’t be engaged to us both; we will have to let him decide.”

Mildred and Anna then walked past the Montpelier Seminary, now College Hall, toward Jack Wheeler’s house. Then Mildred took out a .32 caliber revolver and shot Anna, then herself. Anna died that afternoon, but Mildred lived to be charged with murder. A jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity, and she spent the rest of her life in and out of sanitariums.

Anna’s ghost now haunts College Hall near the murder scene, closing doors, moving objects, breaking glass and throwing pictures off walls. Once she supposedly moved furniture to block the door of a locked office.

36 College St., Montpelier, Vt.

If you enjoyed this story about haunted murder scenes, you may want to read our story about haunted houses in New England here.

Haunted murder scene images: Union Cemetery By Karl Thomas Moore – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46789828; Biltmore Lobby By Kenneth C. Zirkel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21843548. This story last updated in 2021.

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The Puritans Blame Provoking Evils for King Philip’s War

Increase Mather could see King Philip’s War coming from his pulpit. All around him he saw sinful activity: periwigs, high prices, tippling in the ordinary, even people leaving the Sunday meeting before it ended. And so when the Native Americans rose up and began to destroy entire villages, Mather pressed the Massachusetts General Court to legislate morality. The lawmakers then passed the 1675 Provoking Evils legislation, New England’s most notorious blue laws.

Increase Mather

Increase Mather, an ambitious 36-year-old minister, had a fanatical desire to reform Puritan society. He believed the Puritans had strayed from the founding generation’s moral purpose. He was literally a product of those founders: His father, the influential Rev. Richard Mather, had come to Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Puritan Migration.

“Mather seems to have been on the side of the declining old-style,” wrote historian Anne Kusener Nelsen. “All that was new in any way — the merest toleration, luxurious apparel, or the changing character of the churches — presented a threat to Mather’s ideal of the Puritan state.”

Increase Mather

Mather thought the Puritans had gone horribly soft even before the Nipmucks, Wampanoags and Narragansetts began attacking New England’s frontier. Parents weren’t bringing up children properly within the church. Fashions had gotten out of hand, with men wearing long hair and women wearing bangs and topless dresses.

And that wasn’t all. The lower orders of society showed contempt for authority and people didn’t behave in church. Merchants and laborers charged exorbitant prices. Some people even rode to other towns on the pretext of going to lecture but really frequented taverns.

Clearly, the Puritans were going to hell in a handbasket.

King Philip, or Metacomet

And so when King Philip unleashed his fury on the New England colonists, Mather was quite certain the Lord had sent them as his agents to purify his people.

The way to win the war, Mather believed, was to eliminate the provoking evils.

“Let them no more say, God must do all, we can do nothing, and so encourage themselves to live in a careless neglect of God, and of their own souls, and salvation,” he wrote in his history of the conflict.

King Philip’s War

King Philip’s War began on June 20, 1675 when a war party of Pokanokets struck the tiny Plymouth Colony settlement of Swansea. Thereafter, Indian allies shocked and terrified New England. Hundreds of warriors would strike swiftly and suddenly, burning villages, taking captives and slaughtering families.

During the 14 months of fighting, Plymouth Colony lost 8 percent of its adult male population. In the end, 35 towns were burned or abandoned, leaving only 65 in New England.

The war also disrupted the homogenous, self-governing Puritan communities. Military commissioners had authority over the Puritan ministers. Large numbers of armed soldiers, usually strangers, moved into small, close-knit towns.

The Indians suffered even more as a result of the war. The colonists sold as many as a thousand into slavery, and 5,000 died in battle, of sickness or of starvation. Another 2,000 fled west or north. At the outset of the war, Indians comprised 30 percent of New England’s population; by the end, they dwindled to 15 percent.

King Philip’s War

Provoking Evils

In October 1675, four months into the war, Increase Mather took his turn delivering a lecture before the General Court.

He told them only one thing could turn God from his displeasure and spare Massachusetts from the heathen: a thorough reformation of provoking evils.

The lower house, the democratic deputies (now known as the House of Representatives) quickly passed the laws banning provoking evils. The aristocratic magistrates in the upper house (now the Senate) didn’t go along with them. One week later, an Indian war party attacked a town. The magistrates quickly passed the Provoking Evils law.

On the day the magistrates acted, the Puritans scored a victory against the Indians. Mather, of course, interpreted that to mean God approved of the Provoking Evils law.

The horror! Slashed sleeves.

The General Court passed a strict dress code prohibiting such fashion excesses as slashed sleeves, periwigs and bared bosoms. The law authorized local officials to prosecute men for wearing long hair and women for wearing bangs or curling their hair.

Town officers had to close the meeting house doors so no one could leave before service ended. If children didn’t come to Sabbath service, town officials would fine their parents or whip the children.

Massachusetts already had laws on the books against swearing, but lawmakers strengthened them by ordering punishment to anyone who overheard a swear word and didn’t report it.

The General Court ordered every person found at a Quakers meeting to be apprehended, jailed for three days or fined five pounds. If the constable didn’t enforce the law, he would pay a four pound fine.

No longer could townspeople drink in taverns (known as ordinaries), which existed only for travelers.

Finally, they fixed wages and prices.

Backlash

Enforcing the Provoking Evils law would surely end the war, wouldn’t it?

Not everyone thought so.

Gov. John Leverett

Gov. John Leverett told Mather over dinner he’d gone too far when he complained about rampant drunkenness in the colony.

Three months after the Provoking Evils law passed, Increase Mather gave another sermon about excess in apparel and the frequenting of taverns. After meeting, two wealthy parishioners, Capt. Thomas Lake and John Richards, stayed behind. They told him he might have persuaded the ignorant, but no rational man would buy his argument. .

And Mather’s rival, the less-fanatical Rev. William Hubbard, believed the Puritans’ land grabbing caused King Philip’s War. Hubbard also thought military ineptitude and overconfidence prolonged the bloodshed.

Land

Eventually, of course, the Puritans won the war and the provoking evils laws were repealed. And in the end, Mather came around to Hubbard’s view that land hunger caused the conflict.

Land! Land! hath been the Idol of many in New-England: whereas the first Planters here that they might keep themselves together were satisfied with one Acre for each person, as his propriety, an after that with twenty Acres for a Family, how have men since coveted after the earth, that many hundreds, nay thousands of Acres, have been engrossed by one man, and they that profess themselves Christians, have forsaken Churches, and Ordinances, and all for land and elbow-room enough in the world.

Thanks to King Philip’s War and the Hubbard-Mather Rivalry by Anne Kusener Nelsen, published in the William and Mary Quarterly, and The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639–1723 by Michael G. Hall. This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Historic Boats, From Schooners to Submarines

Historic boats are as much a part of New England as Revolutionary battlefields and old taverns. The region has a fascinating maritime history — even in Vermont, which has the 110-mile long Lake Champlain.

Historic boats include everything from submarines to frigates, steamboats to schooners. The luxurious to the prosaic, Gilded Age yachts carried millionaires while workhorse schooners hauled coal and fertilizer.

We decided against including replicas such as tall ships, though we did include historic boats that have undergone extensive restoration.

Here, then, are six historic boats, one in each New England state.

Charles W. Morgan

The Charles W. Morgan in retirement

The Charles W. Morgan, a whaling ship built in 1841, is the oldest surviving merchant vessel and America’s only surviving wooden whaling ship from the 19th century.

She was designed to catch whales and harvest the whale blubber on deck for whale oil. The Charles W. Morgan made 37 voyages from her home port of New Bedford, Mass. They ranged from nine months to five years.

On her very first voyage, her crew caught and processed 59 whales for 2,400 barrels of whale oil. Over the course of her active lifetime, 1,000 men served as her crew and harvested 54,483 barrels of sperm whale oil. Some of her crew survived a cannibal attack in the South Pacific. She also sailed the South Atlantic and Indian oceans.

Difficulties bookended her career as an active whaling ship.

As she was under construction in 1841, the boatbuilders went on strike, demanding a 10-hour work day. Three weeks later the workers accepted a 10-1/2 hour compromise.

After harvesting whales for 80 years, it took 87 years to fully restore the old vessel. Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Conn., finished restoring the Charles W. Morgan in 2013. In 2014, she sailed her 38th voyage — touring New England.

75 Greenmanville Ave., Mystic, Conn.

Victory Chimes

Windjamming in Maine

The Victory Chimes, known as a shoal draft centerboard schooner, one of only three surviving examples of a three-masted schooner in the United States. Her owners used her in the Great Lakes, along the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. Today people call her a windjammer, and she carries passengers on pleasure cruises along the Maine coast.

Schooners carry cargo, wood, coal, fertilizer and grain; empty cans for canning factories; and goods for stores along lumbering rivers. The Victory Chimes, a Chesapeake Ram schooner, was designed for the shallow Chesapeake Bay and Chesapeake and Delaware Canal. Ram schooners earned their names because they butted their way through the other schooners on the canal.

Built in 1900 in Delaware, she hauled cargo along the Chesapeake until 1946 under the name Edwin and Maude. In retirement, she worked as a ‘dude schooner’ on the Chesapeake.

Windjamming had started in Maine in the 1930s when a man named Frank Swift of Bucksport came up with the idea. Maine investors bought the Edwin and Maude in 1954, renamed her Victory Chimes and repurposed her as a windjammer.

In 1984, Thomas Monaghan of Domino’s Pizza bought her and called her Domino Effect. In 1988, he refitted – and saved – her, using original techniques. She returned to Maine in 1989, bought by Capts. Kip Files and Paul deGaeta, who renamed her Victory Chimes.

Today, Victory Chimes appears as the windjammer on the back of the Maine state quarter.

Captain Spear Drive, Rockland, Maine

Old Ironsides

Old Ironsides

We simply couldn’t leave the legendary naval frigate Old Ironsides off our list of historic boats.

George Washington named her in 1797, and today she is the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat.

She defeated four English warships of the supposedly invincible British Navy during the War of 1812. On Aug. 19, 1812, she earned her nickname while quickly winning a one-sided battle with the Guerriere off the Nova Scotia coast.

The Guerriere began firing at the Constitution while she was largely out of range. As one shot bounced off her hull, a seamen reportedly shouted, “Huzza, her sides are made of iron!”

During the Quasi-War with France she had come to the rescue of Haiti’s revolutionary government. She besieged Tripoli in the Mediterranean during the Barbary Wars.

The U.S. Navy considered Old Ironsides a piece of junk in 1833, until a young Harvard student found out about their plans to use her for target practice and sink her.

An indignant Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a poem about her and sent it to the Boston Daily Advertiser. Old Ironsides begins:

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky…

You probably know how the storm of protest saved the old warship. Today you can visit Old Ironsides year round at the USS Constitution Museum in Boston.

Charlestown Navy Yard, Charlestown, Mass.

Albacore

The Albacore in action.

The Albacore, once described as ‘the submarine that gave its body to science,’ today ranks as one of the most popular tourist attractions in Portsmouth, N.H.

The experimental sub’s most perilous voyage was her last – from Portsmouth Harbor to her permanent display site on dry land.

In Portsmouth, workers built a marine railway along which she could float to her final resting place. First, they had to remove a railway trestle and make a temporary cut across a four-lane highway. She struck bottom three times and then got stuck in the middle of the road. It took months to build a dam so she could be refloated. Portsmouth commuters were not amused.

During her active life, the Navy used the Albacore to test experimental features used in nuclear submarines. Built in 1952-53 at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the Navy launched her on Aug. 1, 1953. For the next two decades she went through many changes as the Navy experimented with hull configurations, propellers, rudders, blow systems and sonar.

Like most of the other historic boats on our list, she is a National Historic Landmark.

Albacore Park, 600 Main St., Portsmouth, N.H.

Coronet

The Coronet back in the day.

Amazingly, Rhode Island has no historic boats listed as National Historic Landmarks. But America’s wateriest state does have the Coronet, one of the world’s oldest and largest schooner yachts. The word ‘yacht’ indicates a vessel built for sport or pleasure rather than hauling freight. And she is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Industrialist Rufus T. Bush had the Coronet built as a luxurious waterborne home and as a Gilded Age status symbol in 1885. She earned worldwide fame when Bush won a transatlantic race against the Dauntless in 1887. The New York Times devoted its entire full page to the race results. Bush then circumnavigated the globe in the Coronet. After he died, she passed through six owners, including the religious organization known as the Kingdom.

Since 2010, the International Yacht Restoration School in Newport has worked on restoring the Coronet. Coronet Restoration Partners manages the project.

449 Thames St, Newport, R.I.

S.S. Ticonderoga

The Ticonderoga, one of Vermont’s most historic boats.

The Ticonderoga, a side-paddle-wheel lakeboat, carried passengers and freight on Lake Champlain. She was built in 1906 on Lake Champlain in the Shelburne Shipyard. In 1950, the historic boat returned to Shelburne – to the Shelburne Museum, where she sits on dry land. The SS Ticonderoga was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

At two-thirds the length of a football field, she required a crew of 28. In the early days, she met the evening train from New York in Westport and steamed to St. Albans carrying passengers, farm produce, livestock and dry goods. During both world wars she carried soldiers between Plattsburgh, N.Y., and Burlington. Later she ran from Burlington west to Port Kent, N.Y., and for a while she operated as a floating casino.

The museum restored her interior, with original furniture and appointments in the dining room, captain’s quarters, promenade deck and barber shop.

6000 Shelburne Rd, Shelburne, Vt.

Images: Charles W. Morgan By Rhvanwinkle at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15032247; Victory Chimes By Raphodon – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5516997. Old Ironsides By Yuhan Zhang – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73538648. This story was updated in 2021.

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