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university of new hampshire

Six Historic Gardens

Historic gardens have a special appeal to New Englanders if only because of our harsh winters and long dreary springs.

Though they offer the visitor serenity and relaxation, preserving historic gardens usually involves a great deal of hard work and commitment. Stewardship of historic gardens also requires knowledge of horticulture, garden design, landscape design, history and often architecture and architectural history.

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

Elizabeth Park

The historic gardens at Hartford’s Elizabeth Park

Elizabeth Park in Hartford is the oldest municipal rose garden in the United States with 800 rose varieties.

Charles M. Pond, who financed the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, bequeathed his estate to Hartford — but only if the city named it after his late wife. In 1897, Hartford took possession of the 102-acre site.

Park superintendent Theodore Wirth created the 2.5-acre Rose Garden in 1904. The city decided it couldn’t afford the historic garden in the 1970s, so a group of volunteers rescued it.

Today, the park includes the historic gardens, pathways, century-old Lord and Burnham greenhouses, lawns, tennis courts, bowling greens, a picnic grove and a pond. Ironically, the border between Hartford and West Hartford moved, so Hartford’s largest park now sits mostly in the neighboring town.

1561 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford, Conn.

Asticou Azalea Garden

Asticou Azalea Garden, one of two historic gardens that came from Reef Point

Think of a Japanese stroll garden in coastal Maine and you’ve pretty much imagined the Asticou Azalea Garden. Though it started in 1957, the garden has a much longer history. It began as Reef Point, a Bar Harbor estate owned by Mary Cadwalder Rawle and Frederic Rhinelander Jones, Edith Wharton’s brother. Mr. and Mrs. Jones were also parents of landscape architect Beatrix Farrand.

Farrand inherited the property in 1935, and she and her husband Max decided to turn Reef Point into a horticultural study center. The venture was less successful than the Farrands hoped, and Bar Harbor refused to grant them a tax exemption after the Maine fires of 1947.

Farrand then broke up her gardens, selling many of her plants to Charles Savage. He moved most of them to Thuya Garden, an English flower garden, but he thought the azaleas would do better next to a pond in Northeast Harbor. And so he created the Asticou Azalea Garden, which features cherry trees that bloom in spring, azaleas and rhododendrons in June, Iris in July, water lilies in August and fall colors in September and October.

Savage designed the historic gardens to inspire feelings of serenity, something you’ll need if you visit nearby Acadia National Park in the summer.

3 Sound Drive, Northeast Harbor, Maine

Arnold Arboretum

Arnold Arboretum includes some of the oldest historic gardens

The Arnold Arboretum certainly counts as historic, as it started in 1872 because of a bequest from a whaling captain named James Arnold. But is an arboretum a garden? Well, yes. The Arnold Arboretum includes an herbarium, the wildflower-filled Cosmopolitan Meadow and the Explorers Garden, with plants from the North America-China Plant Exploration Consortium of the early 1900s.

The arboretum began when Arnold bequeathed part of his estate to Harvard, which added it to another country estate given to the college by Benjamin Bussey. In 1872, Harvard named botany professor Charles Sprague Sargent as arboretum director. Sargent worked with Frederick Law Olmsted to design the roads, pathways and gardens.

Harvard gave the Boston the arboretum in 1882, when it joined the city’s Emerald Necklace park system. The college got a 1,000-year lease and the responsibility for running the historic garden, now 281 acres.

The arboretum includes about 15,000 plants, including tiny trees in the Larz Anderson Collection of Japanese Dwarfed Trees, originally imported by Larz Anderson in 1913.

125 Arborway, Boston, Mass.

Prescott Park

Portsmouth’s Prescott Park

Prescott Park provides a waterfront oasis for pedestrians strolling through the historic city of Portsmouth, N.H. Two sisters, Mary and Josie Prescott, inherited a fortune from their brother Charles in 1932. They decided to use the money to replace a seedy, industrial section of town with a public park.

The sisters began to systematically buy up land along the Piscataqua River, deeding the land to Portsmouth in 1940. They also set up a trust to maintain the 10-acre park in 1949.

Today, the University of New Hampshire donates plant material for the park’s flower beds, but the city maintains them. The park, popular among artists and wedding planners, features lawns, gardens, brick walkways, boardwalk piers, public docks, and an island for picknicking. The park stays open year-round, and in summer hosts outdoor Broadway musicals.

1 Water Street, Portsmouth, N.H.

Green Animals

The Green Animals topiary garden in Portsmouth, R.I., dates to 1859, when the Victorian mansion was built on a 7-acre estate overlooking Narragansett Bay.

Thomas E. Brayton, treasurer of the Union Cotton Manufacturing Company in Fall River, Mass., bought the property in 1872. He hired Joseph Carreiro as superintendent of the property in 1905, and Carreiro began to train topiaries. Carreiro also planted and maintained fruit trees, perennial beds, herb and vegetable gardens.

Later joined by his son-in-law, Carreiro created more than 80 topiaries, including a horse and rider, a unicorn, a giraffe, an ostrich, an elephant and two bears.

In the 1940s, the estate hosted a coming-out party for Jacqueline Bouvier and later a reception for First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. In 1972, Brayton’s daughter Alice left the estate to The Preservation Society of Newport County upon her death.

Today, Green Animals is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States. It opens seasonally and includes formal flowerbeds, geometric pathways, rose and grape arbors and fruit trees in addition to the topiaries.

380 Cory’s Lane, Portsmouth, R.I.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller

The formal Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Garden

The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park was the boyhood home of George Perkins Marsh, a founder of both the environmental movement and the Smithsonian Institute. Frederick Billings, the president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, bought the property. He managed it according to the principles of land conservation put forth by George Perkins Marsh.

Mary and Laurance Rockefeller later bought the property in 1954. A series of prominent landscape architects, including Ellen Shipman and Robert Morris Copeland, created and altered the extensive gardens. Today they include an azalea and rhododendron garden, rock garden, cutting garden, a hemlock hedgerow and a stand of Norway spruce,

The property became a national historic park in 1992, its purpose to interpret the history and evolution of conservation stewardship in America. It is open from Memorial Day through October.

54 Elm St, Woodstock, Vt.

Images: Arnold Arboretum By Daderot at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18516058; Asticou Azalea Gardens By Dudesleeper – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17126170; Prescott Park By Bostonian13 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27655804; Green Animals By Brian Feathers, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58062721. This story was updated in 2023.

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Six Epic College Pranks

College pranks have been part of the college experience since at least the 13^th century, when Oxford students sent a prostitute to the cardinal in residence. The tradition of college pranks came to North America with the Puritans.

In the early 1800s, Harvard students thought it amusing to ring the bell in Memorial Hall during the wee hours of the morning. But at Brown, students preferred to muffle the college bell.

Over the years, college pranks have involved putting farm animals in inappropriate places. Pranksters often victimized prominent statues as well. Dartmouth students painted the statue of Harvard’s John Harvard green, Yale students painted him blue and others put him in women’s underwear.

Here we bring you six historic college pranks performed at New England institutions of higher learning. If you know of any other college pranks, please include them in the comments section.

College Pranks, Animal House Style

The Gardner Dow Field at Connecticut State, where students first paraded the ramnapped Ulysses.

There’s nothing like a sports rivalry to inspire college pranks, and the University of Connecticut and the University of Rhode Island, not 60 miles apart, are no exception.

In 1933, Connecticut State Agricultural College changed its name to Connecticut State College, and renamed its football team the Statesman rather than the Aggies.

It didn’t help the team. In 1934, the Connecticut Statesmen lost six out of their first seven games, while their opponents shut them out five times. Their final home game against the Rhode Island State Rams was likely to end badly for Connecticut.

Then Connecticut students learned that Rhode Island students planned to taunt them by bringing Ulysses, their ram mascot, to the game.

The Connecticut students stole Ulysses. During the 1934 game, Connecticut fans paraded Ulysses on the field accompanied by the marching band. As expected, Connecticut lost 18-0, Rhody fans tore down the goal posts and a fight broke out.

The next month, Connecticut chose as its mascot the Husky, a less kidnappable animal than the ram. For years afterward, Connecticut students ramnapped Ulysses and his successors. And for years afterward, the winner of the UConn-Rhode Island football game took home Ramnapping Trophy. When Rhode Island quit using live rams as mascots in 1974, the trophy was moved to the J. Robert Donnelly Husky Heritage Sports Museum on the UConn campus.

Streaking in Winter

University of Maine at Orono

College pranks took the form of streaking on college campuses starting in the early 1970s. Defined as running naked through a public place, streaking started out with solitary males running across campus or at sporting events. Women soon joined in the fun and streakers began running around en masse.

Some historians peg the beginning of the craze after newspapers began reported streakers at Florida State in January 1974. Despite the New England winter, University of Maine students quickly took up the sport at Orono.

The student government in March called a meeting at Memorial Hall to discuss how to handle the streaking epidemic. One streaker couldn’t resist temptation, and he streaked the meeting.

The state of Maine ended up enacting a law against streaking, but it proved ineffective. On Nov. 2, 2002, a police officer arrested two University of Maine undergraduate women for jogging naked through downtown Orono. A prosecutor charged them with indecent conduct. One of the women asked the police officer if he saw her genitals. He said no. The judge ruled a woman naked in the street is not an indecent act under Maine law because a woman’s genitals are primarily internal.

MIT Masters College Pranks

Smoot mark 364.4 on the Cambridge end of the Harvard Bridge. It says “+ 1 ear”, not “± 1 ear”, as it should.

The geeks at MIT have so perfected college pranks over the centuries that the MIT Museum once featured a Hall of Hacks.

The college pranks at MIT often display technical aptitude, something you’d expect at a university that teaches technology. MIT students once put a campus police car on top of the Great Dome, its lights flashing and its dummy inhabitant enjoying coffee and donuts.

Later, they put a subway car on the Great Dome and got it moving.

In the 1930s, Ken Wadleigh and four other MIT students welded a streetcar to its rails. They distracted the motorman and then set off thermite bombs to weld the wheels. Wadleigh became a dean at MIT.

In 1958, MIT students used undergraduate Oliver R. Smoot to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge. They marked the bridge at every Smoot, and measured it as 364.4 Smoots, plus or minus an ear. When the bridge was renovated in 1964, the markings were restored, and they remain today.

Not all pranks involve technology. MIT students dressed the John Harvard statue as the Unabomber after the arrest of that Harvard alumni.

Cow-centric College Pranks

Thompson Hall at UNH

University of New Hampshire students have long taken to heart the admonition, “If at all possible, involve a cow.”

Students at UNH, a land-grant college, have access to farm animals for their college pranks. Over the years, students put pigs and sheep in places where pigs and sheep don’t belong.

In the 1930s, Alpha Gamma Rho brothers managed to haul a cow into the Thompson Hall tower. Somehow they got the cow down as well.

In 1951, students replicated the college prank by stashing a cow in the second floor of Ballard Hall. A poem written by the night watchman, Pop Marshall, recounts the episode:

“Now I’m willing to guard your property / And watch your buildings fine, / But teaching music to a cow / Is a little out of my line.”

Years later, UNH would be victimized by a more serious college prank of sorts when popular physics professor Kevin Yates turned out to be a college dropout named Marvin Hewitt. Read Hewitt’s extraordinary story here.

Messing With Messer

In the annals of Brown University, perhaps no administrator was so victimized by college pranks as Asa Messer. He became president in 1804, just when Nicholas Brown gave $5,000 to the College of Rhode Island and renamed it Brown. Under Messer’s tenure, the student body grew, but Brown’s bequest wasn’t quite enough to run the college to the student’s liking.

Asa Messer

Beloved tutors left Brown for other colleges, but Messer couldn’t afford to hire enough replacements to keep class size down.

Early in his presidency, students played harmless college pranks such as painting Messer’s horse or stabling it in his third-floor office.

Then the students’ pranks turned dangerous. They built a hut of kindling and set it on fire next to University Hall, endangering the building’s roof and Messer’s barn. Students damaged dormitories in University Hall and broke windows and doors of Hope College’s new chapel.

University Hall in 1792

Messer didn’t believe in sparing the rod and spoiling the undergraduate. He punished pranksters by rusticating them – sending them off to work on a farm. They called him a tyrant.

Messer believed the students aimed their vandalism at him personally, and he resigned.

Samuel Gridley Howe had attended Brown during those troubled times, and had once led Dr. Messer’s horse into the belfry. He also put hot ashes in his tutor’s bed.

After he founded the Perkins School for the Blind, Howe went to visit Dr. Messer. He apologized for his wayward youthful behavior. Messer replied, “Howe, I am afraid of you now. I am afraid there will be a torpedo under my chair before I know it.”

Panty Raid To End All Panty Raids

Vermont College of Fine Arts today

On the evening of May 24, 1963, carloads of cadets from Norwich University led a panty raid against the women of Vermont College (now the Vermont College of Fine Arts).

Vermont’s faculty and staff had an inkling something would happen that evening. A local store clerk said he’d sold out of women’s underwear that day. Vermont Dean Pauline Collins told her students she’d received a call from Gen. Ernest Harmon, who headed of Norwich Academy, warning about the panty raid. She told them to cancel their dates, return to the dormitory by 7:00 p.m., turn out the lights when the panty raid began and let no one into the building.

At dusk, cars carrying 300 Norwich cadets began to arrive, followed by the police and fire department. A hose truck stopped in front of the dorm, and the firefighters jumped out to hook up the hoses. A Norwich cadet commandeered the fire truck and drove it into a fountain. Girls shouted from the windows, “Come on Norwich! We want Norwich!” Firefighters then turned their hoses on the students in the windows.

Fighting broke out between police and cadets. Police Chief George Connor said, “We were knocked down, kicked, and trampled upon. It’s a miracle that no one was killed.”

In the end, Vermont’s president issued a denial that his students had participated at all in the hijinks.

Images: Smoot, By Denimadept – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6792703; Streaker, By Alex Kehr – originally posted to Flickr as #367, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3953923Thompson Hall at UNH By AcrossTheAtlantic – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63031225. Vermont College By Hannahmorris – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24295961.

This story about college pranks was updated in 2022.

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Bennington’s Trinity University, the Medical School That Didn’t Exist

In 1889, medical schools popped up all over the country to satisfy the high demand for doctors. Prospective medical students had a host of choices. Did they prefer The University of New Hampshire or University of Cincinnati? Trenton (N.J.) Medical College or the New York State Medical College? Or better yet, how about the prestigious Trinity University of Medicine and Surgery in Bennington, Vt.?

The only problem with all these medical schools was that they were fake. They were a figment of the fertile imagination of Henry Freeland Bradbury (or at least that seems to have been his name). Bradbury practiced medicine in many areas, popping up in Nashua, N.H., Lowell, Mass. and Boston, as well as Bethel and St. Albans in Vermont. And he didn’t always use the name Bradbury. In one city he would morph into Dr. Freeland. In another, Dr. Ripley.

Trinity University

Illustration of a Trinity University diploma

When away from his patients, Bradbury sold diplomas by the score. They certified that the bearer was trained in medicine and surgery. He offered the diplomas for a variety of fees, ranging from $60 to $300.

In the spring of 1889, the medical community first learned of Trinity University. A doctor applied for admission to a medical society at Buffalo, N.Y. He presented himself as a graduate of Trinity University in Bennington, Vt.

A quick inquiry to the town clerk at Bennington would reveal that, in fact, Trinity University had incorporated in the small town. Trinity offered a course of studies in law, dentistry and liberal arts, as well as medicine and surgery. At least that’s what the articles of incorporation stipulated.

The ‘university’ never amounted to anything more than a piece of paper. But it was enough for Bradbury to start churning out diplomas. He printed circulars advertising the college and developed a brisk business selling diplomas.

Unfortunately for Bradbury, one of his advertisements reached Alan Hardwicke, a hardware maker. Hardwicke’s brother was a physician, and the two men suspected something was off about Trinity University.

Busted

The advertisement didn’t explicitly state that the college sold phony degrees. It talked about accepting only students of good moral character and requiring a lengthy course of study. But when Hardwicke began corresponding with Bradbury, the outlines of the operation became clear.

Bradbury wanted Hardwicke to send him a paper addressing a medical condition, such as “Treatment of Bright’s Disease.” And he suggested he meet with Hardwicke to administer an exam. The reason, he said, was so Hardwicke and he could swear under oath, if needed, that Hardwicke had sat for an exam to receive his diploma.

When Hardwicke balked, Bradbury agreed to send the aspiring doctor a diploma for $60 (C.O.D.) to the train station at Buffalo under a false name. Afterwards, Bradbury agreed, he would place Hardwicke’s name in the college records and certify he had graduated in response to any requests to verify his status.

Bennington, Vt., in 1887. No Trinity University here.

Hardwicke promptly forwarded the diploma to the medical society, which began investigating. They soon uncovered how Bradbury operated. Mail for the college went to a Cornhill Street address in Boston. It arrived in a building that housed a waiting room for streetcar passengers. A lawyer collected the mail for Bradbury and forwarded it to him in Nashua, N.H., where he maintained a medical practice.

From that office in New Hampshire, Bradbury supplied the diplomas and managed the business of Trinity University. He imported sheepskin for the diplomas from New York and had them printed in Lowell, Mass.

Though the medical societies forwarded their findings to the police, for a time Bradbury remained at large . Eventually, however, a prosecutor indicted him in federal court for the fraud, and he pleaded guilty. The matter did not, however, end Bradbury’s medical career.

Serial Husband

Bradbury, then but a young man in his early 20s, changed his name to Henry Esmond and returned to Vermont. He set up practice in several towns and enjoyed a strong country practice. While in Vermont, Bradbury/Esmond proved adept at winning the affections of women. But bad at keeping them.

His first marriage to wife Anna ended in divorce in 1907 when he developed an unusually powerful influence over one of his patients, a young girl named Fleda White. Fleda’s father did his best to keep the doctor, now in his late 30s, away from his daughter.

In the end, however, the two married, though Bradbury/Esmond had to bring Fleda and her family to Claremont, N.H., for the wedding. The reason? Bradbury/Edmonds had been divorced form his first wife for less than three years. Vermont law required a three-year cooling off period for divorcees before they could marry again in the state.

The second marriage proved no more successful than the first, and Fleda divorced the doctor in 1914 owing to his abusive behavior.

No Charm

A third trip down the aisle ended acrimoniously, as well. Shortly after his second divorce came through, the doctor married a young woman named Martha. The marriage got off to a bad start when police arrested Henry while the couple honeymooned in Toronto. Things went downhill from there, with Henry returning to his abusive ways.

He admitted to his third wife that he had been convicted of assaulting one of his former wives. But, she revealed to the court during sensational divorce hearings, she never did find out why he was arrested in Toronto. That’s because he used the false name Marcus Eastman.

The judge agreed to grant the divorce and set the former dean of Trinity University at liberty to pursue his happiness.

This story about Trinity University was updated in 2023.

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The Cat Who Ran the NH Summer Camp

On this date in 1935, Nellie T. Hendrick was preparing to step down from the post she held for 20 years as dean of the Northern New England School of Religious Education. Mrs. Hendrick, originally from Keene, N.H., and a long-time resident of Nashua, N.H., is credited with founding and running the summer school/camp. But what of the cat that really pulled the strings of the operation?

For 20 years the school was fueled by donations, personally rounded up by Hendrick, and modest tuition fees paid by campers. In 1924, the fee was $13, for which attendees received opportunities for recreation and the chance to listen to informative lectures. Mrs. Hendrick is credited with creating a tantalizing mix of scholarship and recreation.

The 1924 program, for instance, pulled in attendees by promising: “hikes, tennis, ball games, swimming contests and other water sports made possible by the nearness of the famous Oyster River. Mr. Gilmore will also direct the stunts on Saturday afternoon when the classes vie with each other in producing mirth provoking feats. Picnics and a breakfast in the beautiful College woods add to the week’s enjoyment.”

Nellie T. Hendrick, Dean of Northern New England School of Religious Education

Lest anyone be concerned that the event was purely hedonistic, a new pageant “The Birth of the Bible” was also to be presented, and evening lectures in psychology were also promised. Dr. William Byron Forbash of New York, noted author of The Boy Problem, attended and offered lectures for parents and teachers on ‘Understanding Our Boys’ and another on ‘The New Girl Problem.’

It’s easy to see why this program became so popular, and why in 1935 Mrs. Hendrick received plaudits for her work. Governor Henry Styles Bridges even attended her final program to offer his personal congratulations and best wishes.

But it was an open secret among campers that there was a feline power behind the throne, which explained why Mrs. Hendrick found herself unable to continue directing the school as its dean. The intrepid reporters of the Nashua Telegraph reported the death of Assistant Dean Astor on August 26, 1935.

“The untimely death of her cat Vanderbilt Astor while she was at the school bothered Mrs. Astor a good deal more than talking of the honors bestowed upon her during the closing days of school,” the paper reported.

And she broke down and offered this startling revelation to the reporter: “Mrs. Hendrick recalled that she could not sit down at her typewriter in the study but what the cat would run to the room and start pawing over the typewritten letters as if subjecting all to its approval before they were mailed out. ‘Practically every letter I mailed out was first mussed up by Vanderbilt Astor,’ she said.”

Further details of Vanderbilt Astor’s contribution to the school are lost in the fog of history. Astor left no account of his own involvement in the school. Perhaps he wanted to remain anonymous for reasons of his own choosing. Or, perhaps he was unable to type. Now you know the full story of the cat who ran the summer camp.

–This has been an update from the History Cat Network.

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