Tag:

war of 1812

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 2023.

4 comments 3.1K views

Hannah Jumper, 75, Rampages Against Rum in Rockport

Over five hours one summer day in 1856, 75-year-old Hannah Jumper and 200 women rampaged through the streets of Rockport, Mass., smashing casks of rum.

The ladies had had enough of the Rockport fishermen who squandered their money on booze during the winter. It was bad enough that they couldn’t work during those months, worse that they impoverished their families by drinking up their scant cash.

Though Hannah Jumper had never married, she shared the wives’ frustration with their boozing, lay-about husbands. She began holding secret meetings in her rooms with the Rockport women to plan their raid.

Hannah Jumper

Hannah Jumper was born in 1781 in Joppa section, a farming community on Cape Ann, Mass., the sixth of eight children. Growing up she learned how to use herbal medicines to care for the sick, including her mother and sister. Despite her best efforts, both died of consumption.

When the War of 1812 broke out, Hannah moved to Rockport, then known as Sandy Bay. She was a tall, 31-year-old redhead who supported herself by sewing and nursing. Over the years, she made many friends within the fishing community.

Rockport is still a fishing village.

By 1847 an abstinence group formed in Rockport with a hundred or so members. But the ‘dark beverage of hell’ tightened its grip on the men of the town. They were earning little enough from fishing, and their families suffered when they spent their money on booze. By the 1850s, their drinking only got worse. The sale of illegal spirits in Rockport increased 250 percent from 1852 and 1855, according to author Marshall W.C. Swan.

Hannah Jumper grew outspoken and strident in attacking liquor. She and several hundred women began plotting their raid on alcohol.

When Rockport’s 1856 Independence Day celebration turned into a drunken brawl, the women had armed themselves with a plan, a banner and hatchets. On the night of July 7, they quietly went out and marked with white chalk the places that illegally sold liquor.

The Rockport Rampage

At about 9 am on July 8, Rockport was startled by the sight of 200 women gathered in Dock Square. The women unfurled a cotton banner emblazoned with a black hatchet. . All wore shawls, beneath which they carried hatchets. No doubt the tall, 75-year old Hannah Jumper captured the onlookers’ attention.

Dock Square today, thanks to Google Maps.

They began to march through Rockport’s main streets, led by a seaman carrying the American flag. The many spectators who gathered soon realized what the ladies had in mind: a raid on shops and other places that illegally sold liquor.

As the procession arrived at each marked place, they stopped. If the door wasn’t opened, they forced their way in. According to a witness, Ebenezer Poole, they “seized casks, demijohns, jugs and bottles that contained the bane of their happiness, and emptied their contents into the street, occasionally making use of hatchets (with which they were liberally supplied) to hasten the flow of the hated liquid.”

According to another witness, every woman in Rockport who ‘could walk or move on crutches’ participated in the raid. Among the men who watched were their husbands, selectmen, deacons, ministers and policemen, and many approved of the raid. The rum sellers, though, did not.

Hannah Jumper and the Hatchet Gang raided 13 establishments over the space of five hours. They destroyed an estimated $700 worth of liquor. Men described Rockport as a mammoth punch bowl, and for two miles people could smell rum.

Aftermath

The women had raided a small grocery store owned by James Brown, who had an unsavory reputation for selling illegal spirits. He took the women to court – every one of them. The judge ruled in their favor. Brown appealed again and again, until a judge ordered him to pay the women’s court costs of $346.25.

Hannah Jumper died in 1865 and is buried in the Old First Parish Burying Ground in Rockport.

Rockport remained dry until 2005, when the town voted to allow alcohol to be served at restaurants. Liquor stores, however, are still illegal.

Image of Rockport: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=973731. This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 1.7K views

When the British Bombarded Falmouth

When the War of 1812 came to Cape Cod, only a few towns such as Falmouth resisted the British. In response, the British bombarded Falmouth. The town still remembers the attack, and evidence of British cannonballs can be seen to this day.

The War of 1812

America entered the War of 1812 after the British began boarding U.S. ships and impressing sailors onto Royal Navy vessels.

Most New Englanders, heavily dependent on maritime trade, didn’t want to go to war. They knew the British could easily blockade the coast and stifle trade — as well as bombard their towns.

When the U.S. entered the war on June 18, 1812, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed a resolution calling the declaration “an event awful, unexpected, hostile to your interests, menacing to your liberties, and revolting to your feelings.”

Massachusetts Gov. Caleb Strong refused to commit the state’s militia to the war effort. In response, President James Madison refused to send troops to defend Massachusetts.

By the end of the war, several New England states came close to seceding from the United States.

Naval battle during the War of 1812: The USS Constitution vs. HMS Guerriere.

War Hawks

Westerners and southerners, however, wanted war. They wanted to expand westward into the Northwest Territory, some of which was still under British control.

Falmouth, Mass., on Cape Cod’s southern shore, strongly supported the war. “Falmouth best upheld the honor of the Cape,” wrote Samuel Eliot Morison.

During the War of 1812, Cape Cod bore the brunt of British aggression. The British Navy blockaded all the Cape ports, raided the harbors and seized vessels with abandon. They came ashore to steal crops and livestock.

They extorted money from every Cape Cod town but Barnstable, Falmouth, Sandwich and Orleans. They cut off shipping to Nantucket, and the starving islanders voted neutrality during the war.

But Falmouth stood firm against the British. Not only did Falmouth refuse to bribe the Royal Navy, the Falmouth Artillery Company routinely fired guns at British ships that passed by. That made the town an especially appealing target.

On Jan. 20, 1814, David Nye wrote to Secretary of War John Armstrong about the vulnerability of Falmouth. Since the local government couldn’t help, they turned to the federal government. “We have nothing to expect, should we fall into their hands, but to be treated with all the insolence and barbarity which is so peculiar to the British and their savage allies,” he wrote.

The British Bombarded Falmouth

When the British bombarded Falmouth, illustration.

At about the time of David Nye’s letter, the H.M.S. Nimrod, an 18-gun cruiser that would capture or destroy 50 U.S. vessels during the war, anchored off Naushon Island nearby. The captain, Nathaniel Mitchell, heard about a U.S. sloop that ran aground off Woods Hole in Falmouth. He sent sailors in small boats to attack the vessel.

But the Falmouth Artillery Company got wind of the planned attack and hastened to Woods Hole. They arrived in time and fired on the British, killing one sailor and wounding another.

When he learned of the failed attack, Capt. Mitchell wanted revenge. So he sailed the Nimrod to Falmouth, raised a white flag and sent a boat ashore. When the landing party came onto the wharf, it demanded that Falmouth turn over two cannon and sloop.

The Artillery Company commander, Weston Jenkins, supposedly replied with words that echo today. “If ye want the cannon, come and get them, and we will give ye what’s in them first,” he said.

The British replied that the Nimrod would bomb Falmouth in an hour. Falmouth evacuated the women and children from the town. One woman stayed behind: Weston Jenkins’ wife Elizabeth, who cooked for the 200 men who stayed in town.

Then the cannonballs began to fly. The British bombarded Falmouth all afternoon and into the evening. Though the cannonballs damaged buildings they didn’t kill anyone. One of those buildings, for many years the Nimrod restaurant, has a hole made by a cannonball in its men’s room from the time the British bombarded Falmouth.

Wareham

The Nimrod finally gave up and sailed toward Rhode Island. In June, the Nimrod sailed into Buzzard’s Bay and anchored offshore Wareham, which borders Cape Cod.

Wareham had no use for the War of 1812. So when Capt. Mitchell sent 200 men ashore under a flag of truce, Wareham welcomed them. The British demanded to know which ships belonged to Falmouth. Wareham officials told them. The British then set afire 17 ships, mostly belonging to Falmouth.

The Nimrod then ignominiously ran aground in Buzzard’s Bay. Capt. Mitchell ordered the cannon thrown overboard to lighten its load.

Orleans

Admiral Lord Richard Howe

In the final Cape Cod engagement of the war, Admiral Lord Richard Howe demanded bribes from Brewster and Eastham to protect their saltworks. Orleans, however, refused. Howe ordered an attack on Orleans, but his vessel, the HMS Newcastle, couldn’t navigate the marshy coastal waters. The Newcastle’s cannonballs fell short of the town.

The local militia skirmished with the HMS Newcastle when it tried to land in Rock Harbor.

In 1987, a diving crew recovered five of the Nimrod’s artillery pieces. The Falmouth Historical Society now has one on display.

This story was updated in 2023.

2 comments 2.4K views

Rufus Porter, the Yankee Da Vinci

Rufus Porter left his mark on early New England homes with stencils on their walls and Scientific American on the coffee table. He had an astonishingly productive career, though his most cherished dream never materialized. He desperately wanted to fly gold miner to California in three days — well before the Wright brothers were a gleam in their father’s eye.

Rufus Porter

He was a classic Yankee of the early 19^th century, part peddler, part itinerant artist. part inventor. A descendant of early Puritan settlers, he took to the road selling what people would buy at the time.

He also founded Scientific American, invented the revolving rifle, and wrote a popular How-To book for artists.

Rufus Porter liked coming up with new ways to do things. As for getting patents and making money from his ideas, well, not so much.

Wall mural by Rufus Porter

Rufus Porter

He was born in West Boxford, Mass., on May 1, 1792. Two of his ancestors, John Porter and his wife Mary, immigrated from England during the Great Migration of Puritans. When John Porter died, he owned a vast property. It included the Massachusetts cities and towns of Salem, Danvers, Wenham, Beverly, Topsfield and Boxford.

Rufus Porter’s parents, Abigail and Tyler Porter, just had a farm, which they sold when Rufus was nine and moved to Maine. At 15, he became apprenticed to a shoemaker.

The shoemaking apparently didn’t take. He played the fife and fiddle for several years in Portland, enlisted in the militia during the War of 1812 and then painted drums and sleighs.

Rufus Porter married Eunice Twombly in 1815 and started a dancing school the next year in New Haven.

But by then he must have sensed a new American craze: portraits. To have someone paint your own, that is. Rufus Porter took to the road and began painting people’s portraits, in some ways a typical itinerant artist.

In other ways he wasn’t. He figured out how to quickly paint likenesses with a portable camera obscura: a dark box with a lens and a mirror that threw the sitters’ image onto a piece of paper.

No Likeness, No Pay

He’d come to town with his nephew Jonathan D. Poor and a camera obscura mounted on a cart decorated with flags.

Timothy Fuller

He passed out handbills, with announcements like this one from 1832:

The Subscriber respectfully informs the Ladies and Gentlemen of Haverhill and its vicinity, that he continues to paint correct Likenesses in full Colours for two Dollars at his room at Mr. Brown’s tavern, where he will remain two or three Days longer. (No Likeness, No Pay.)

He could paint a silhouette in 15 minutes and charged 20 cents. Sometimes he’d paint 20 portraits a day. He painted one famous likeness of Timothy Fuller, a Massachusetts congressman and Margaret Fuller’s father.

Somehow Rufus Porter managed to have 10 children despite all the time he spent on the road. He had six more with his second wife, though only one survived infancy.

Murals and Inventions

Later, he came up with a formula for quickly painting murals and stencils on the walls of farmhouses and village taverns. He shared his wealth of knowledge with a How-To book, called A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts, and Interesting Experiments. It went through four printings.

It was quite the thing to stencil your walls in 1829. That year a commentator wrote, “You can hardly open the door of a best room anywhere, without surprizing or being surprized by the picture of somebody plastered to the wall and staring at you with both eyes and a bunch of flowers.”

For a while Rufus Porter traveled with Moses Eaton, Jr., and together they decorated the interior of the Hancock Inn. He also painted murals on the walls of the Kent House in Lyme, N.H., the Birchwood Inn in Temple, N.H., the Damon Tavern in North Reading, Mass., and the Mural House in Green, Maine– to name a few.

Rufus Porter painted at least 160 murals on the walls of houses and taverns. He traveled to the mid-Atlantic, all the way to Virginia.

A Rufus Porter mural now at the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Abnormally Busy

During his abnormally busy career, Rufus Porter started Scientific American in 1845. He sold it 10 months later, but stayed on as editor for another 18 months. He also contributed articles to the magazine for the rest of his life.

Rufus Porter invented many new things during his remarkable career, including clocks, railway signals, churns, a life preserver, a cheese press, and a revolving rifle. He patented only a fraction of his inventions, and sold the rights to his rifle to Samuel Colt for $100.

More Martha Stewart Than Wright Brothers

His real obsession, though, was building an airship. In 1849 he conceived of a dirigible that would take prospectors to California during the Gold Rush. Powered by steam, it would be 800 feet long and carry as many as 100 passengers.

Rufus Porter had already demonstrated scale models of his airship. He had such confidence in his invention that he asked for down payments of $50 for a $200 New York-to California fare on his aerial locomotive. A tornado destroyed his first airship, rowdy onlookers destroyed his second, and technical troubles tanked the third.

Rufus Porter died on Aug. 13, 1884, while visiting his son in West Haven, Conn.

People still paint in the style of Rufus Porter. You can visit the Rufus Porter Museum of Art and Ingenuity during summer in Bridgton, Maine.

Images: Rufus Porter, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2988189. This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 2.9K views

Six Gravesites of Military Heroes

Military heroes who sacrificed for their country certainly deserve to be remembered on Memorial Day weekend. Some people remember them with parades and speeches, others with flowers on their graves.

The New England Historical Society honors them with this story about the place where each state’s greatest military heroes rest, we hope, in peace.

Wooster Cemetery

David Wooster

Connecticut produced many military heroes, including Benedict Arnold, a hero at least for a while.

Nathan Hale is the first among all Connecticut’s military heroes, having given his life for his country. But no one ever found his body.

And you might get into an argument if you called Revolutionary War Gen. Israel Putnam a hero.

But Gen. David Wooster definitely qualifies as a military hero from Connecticut, albeit a largely forgotten one. He gave his life for his country in the Battle of Ridgefield, chasing British troops back to New York after they burned Danbury.

As Wooster lay dying, he said, “I am dying, but with a strong hope and persuasion that my country will gain her independence.”

He was buried in Wooster Cemetery on Mount Moriah in Danbury. And yes, Wooster Square in New Haven was named for him.

Monument to David Wooster in Wooster Cemetery.

Wooster Cemetery, Ellsworth Ave., Danbury, Conn.

Pine Grove Cemetery

Of all of Maine’s military heroes, Joshua Chamberlain stands as the greatest.

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, by Matthew Brady

When the Civil War broke out, Chamberlain left his job as a Bowdoin College professor to command the storied 20^th Maine Regiment.

On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 20th Maine held off three savage charges by Confederate regiments. By evening, the 20th Maine ran low on ammunition. He could either hold the hill and face certain destruction, or retreat and allow the Confederates to overrun the Army of the Potomac.

Instead, the men fixed their bayonets and charged down the hill. The shocked rebels broke and ran.

Chamberlain suffered grievous wounds during the Second Battle of Petersburg. He then received a promotion to brigadier general on what was thought to be his deathbed. He lived to the age of 85 and received the Medal of Honor for his gallantry at Gettysburg.

A simple headstone marks Joshua Chamberlain’s grave in historic Pine Grove Cemetery near Bowdoin College, where he returned after the war.

military-heroes-gravesite-chamberlain-grave

Pine Grove Cemetery, image courtesy Google Maps

Pine Grove Cemetery, Brunswick, Maine

Old Burial Hill

The Americans might have lost the Revolution if it weren’t for one of Massachusetts’ great military heroes, John Glover.

military-heroes-glover's-regiment-glover

John Glover

Glover raised a regiment of Marblehead fishermen and sailors known for their discipline and teamwork. The regiment, which, included African-Americans and Indians, ferried George Washington and 2,400 men across the Delaware on Christmas night in 1776.

The Battle of Trenton, which followed, gave the American cause a boost in morale when it badly needed one.

Glover had already saved Washington’s Army. When the British defeated the Continental Army on Long Island, Washington ordered Glover’s Regiment to evacuate the troops to Manhattan. They safely landed 9,500 men, along with all their baggage, nearly all their artillery, stores, horses and provisions. Had the evacuation failed, Washington’s army—and probably the war—would have been lost.

John Glover is buried in Marblehead in the picturesque Old Burial Hill cemetery.

Old Burial Hill

Marblehead, Mass.

Stark Cemetery

John Stark

John Stark, , the most famous of New Hampshire’s military heroes, was also a quote machine. During the Battle of Bennington, Stark rallied his men with the words:

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!

Stark’s performance earned him the nickname Hero of the Battle of Bennington:

He may have been the one who said, “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” at the Battle of Bunker Hill. And he most certainly coined New Hampshire’s motto, Live Free or Die.

Stark fought with distinction during the entire war, then went back to his farm in New Hampshire. He is buried with his wife in Stark Cemetery in Manchester, N.H. It’s in the back of Stark Park.

Stark Cemetery

Stark Cemetery, River Road, Manchester, N.H.

Common Burying Ground

You would expect Rhode Island’s greatest military heroes to be mariners and you would be correct.

But Rhode Island’s Oliver Hazard Perry wasn’t just a military hero. He defeated a British squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. His victory turned the tide of the war in the West, and he became a national hero as well as a military hero.

Perry didn’t have long to enjoy his fame. He died of yellow fever in 1819 at the age of 34.

Perry joins many of Newport’s most prominent citizens at the Common Burying Ground in Newport. His neighbors include Ida Lewis, Ann Smith Franklin and William Ellery.

The Common Burying Ground has a large number of colonial era headstones, including the largest number of colonial African American headstones in the United States.

military-heroes-perry-common-burying-ground

The Common Burying Ground

Farewell St & Warner Street, Newport, R.I.

St. Joseph’s Cemetery

Capt. John Lonergan

John Lonergan realized his men were under heavy fire from a house in front of them. Lonergan ordered his men to charge it. They surrounded the house and Lonergan knocked in the front door, bellowing, ‘’Surrender! Fall out here, every damned one of you!’ The Confederates tumbled out of the house, and Lonergan’s company took 83 of them captive.

Lonergan later headed the Vermont branch of the Fenian Brotherhood and organized two failed raids into Canada from St. Albans. His aim was to pressure Britain to leave Ireland. He died in 1902. In 2013 his great-granddaughter unveiled a memorial marker to honor him in Burlington’s City Hall Park. He is buried, however, in St. Joseph Cemetery in Burlington.

military-heroes-gravesite-lonergan-st-joseph

St. Joseph’s Cemetery

206 Auburn St. Burlington, Vt.

End Notes

Images: David Wooster’s monument, By Kensphotos – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4064498. Common Burying Ground By Swampyank at en.wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17984252. Oliver Hazard Perry, By Gilbert Stuart(Life time: 1755-1828) – Original publication: Portrait by Gilbert Stuart Immediate source: http://www.toledomuseum.org/2013/08/08/artwork-of-the-week-august-9/, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40572296. Stark Cemetery By AlexiusHoratius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26455478. Google images by Google Maps. Image of Oliver Hazard Perry courtesy Toledo Museum of Art.Old Burial Hill By Newenglandhistory1 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114115853.

This story was updated in 2022.

0 comment 1.1K views

When Calling Someone a New Englander Was an Insult

In November 1852, newspapers in Pennsylvania gave over 650 words to assailing the flaws of the New Englander. In a wide-ranging screed they attacked the region as full of dis-unionists, atheists and abolitionists.

New England, they wrote, “Began its career by burning and hanging Baptists and Quakers, anyone who differed from its Puritanical notions of Religion.”

1860 political cartoon deriding the New Englander, Dividing the National Map (From the Library of Congress).

And it goes downhill from there. The tirade then recounted Massachusetts’ expulsion of Roger Williams and John Adams’ Alien and Sedition acts. It also attacked the region’s opposition to westward expansion and to the War of 1812.

Latest Outrage

In 1852, the region foisted its latest outrage on the new territory of Kansas. New England abolitionists began settling there to create an anti-slavery voting bloc.

Across the country, the expression “New Englandism” gained popularity. Supporters used the term to describe New England’s can-do attitude, its bustling economy and strict religious beliefs. But detractors used it far more often. They said New Englandism meant the anti-slavery sentiments taking root in the Republican Party.

The New Englander, said critics, sought to deprive the nation of slavery. But New England states had, in fact,”‘grown rich by importing slaves from Africa.” Further, they said, the region lives “now in luxury upon the blood and bones of the human beings it thus trafficked in.”

In July of 1858, the Cincinnati Enquirer supported President James Buchanan. The newspaper attacked New England congressmen and senators for voting against Buchanan. This, the newspaper suggested, represented the latest in a long string of New England bad judgment calls.

The region’s flaws included its failure to give even a single electoral vote to Thomas Jefferson or Andrew Jackson when they first ran for president.

In 1859 abolitionist John Brown raided Harper’s Ferry. Newspapers then denounced New England for providing funds for his attack. One southern newspaper noted: “. . . he went back to New England, traveling through its several villages, and collecting money, which was freely contributed.”

By 1863, newspapers in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Indiana lashed out full strength against New England. Through the West and Midwest, newspapers reported, the feeling against New Englandism, “is every day growing more bitter.”

The Entitled New Englander

An Illinois newspaper noted the New Englander from the beginning demanded tribute from the rest of the country. They made others pay homage, “first by commerce, then by protective tariffs, and now, in the abolition of slavery.”

The newspaper then warned New Englanders will try to impose their ‘Unitarianism, Congregationalism, or Independentism,’ as the national religion.

And a newspaper in Indiana applauded the other states considering breaking away from New England. The editors also predicted New England would be left out in the col’ to survive on her “bleak and barren hills.” The region, they said, would be “cast off from the protection and commercial advantages” that it enjoyed from the other U.S. states.

This story about calling someone a New Englander was updated in 2023.

2 comments 1.3K views

Newer Posts

Older Posts