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Westerly RI

How To Be a Swamp Yankee

A swamp Yankee is born, not made. Those who aspire to swamperdom may tell you differently, but they’re wrong.

Though definitions of “swamp Yankee” vary from “trailer trash” to “salt of the earth,” they agree on one thing: the swamp Yankee goes back generations to the same part of New England. Mark Patinkin , in his Providence Journal column, defined them as “earthy, proud New Englanders who date to the Revolution, but haven’t made or spent much money since.”

Thomas Barnes, a New Bedford raccoon hunter, illustrated a 1925 article explaining swamp Yankees.

The pushback he got from that column prompted him to write another. In it, he concluded, “I think I’m more confused than when I started.”

We understand.

“The outside world has never understood the Swamp Yankees,” wrote one denizen of Hope Valley, R.I., a hotbed of swamperdom. “We act dumb to keep our privacy.”

Swampers

In 1963, Ruth Schell wrote a scholarly essay on swamp Yankees. She concluded the typical swamper is “…a rural dweller—one of stubborn, old-fashioned, frugal, English-speaking Yankee stock, of good standing in the rural community, but usually possessing minimal formal education and little desire to augment it. “

A more disdainful definition comes from the urban dictionary. “Someone whose family has been in America for generations (several of which may actually reside together) but has never gotten off the ground, couch, or smack long enough to build a functional family or become a redeeming member of society.”

An even more scornful description came from the late Walter Stone, longtime Rhode Island state police chief who retired in 1990: “illiterate woodchopper.” (T-shirts were subsequently made with the slogan, “I’m an illitrit woodchoppah.”)

Otis Dyer wrote a book, Swamp Yankee, in which he explains where “woodchoppah” comes from.

Edward Buzzell, [swamp] Yankee dairy farmer from Slocum R.I.

Swamp Yankees were usually small dairy farmers who supplemented their income by spending their winters in the swamps, cutting firewood to sell in Providence and Pawtucket and saw-logs to local sawmills.

They also worked as fishermen and shop owners, wrote William Sisson in Soundings:

They were tough, smart, laconic fishermen, farmers and merchants who grew up in Rhode Island and Connecticut and could wrest a living from land, sea and small shops. Best as I can tell, they were an independent, hard-working lot who spoke what was on their minds and didn’t suffer fools.

Pete MacPhee, who designs rock ‘n roll posters, motorcycle ads and beer cans, calls himself Swamp Yankee. “A Swamp Yankee to me is a blue-collar guy who marches to the beat of his own drum,” he told The Newport Daily News. (MacPhee once handled the props for a heavy metal band called the Amish Alcoholics – “Spinal Tap but worse,” MacPhee said.)

Where the Swamp Yankee Dwells

Grayson Hugh, an R&B singer-songwriter, wrote a song called Swamp Yankee.

(I ain’t no punk (ain’t no punk)
just a little bit stanky (a little bit stanky)
I got the funk (I got the funk)
I’m a swamp yankee (swamp yankee))

Hugh describes himself as “from the western hills of Connecticut,” but he’s a first-generation American born in Hartford, so no, he ain’t no swamp Yankee.

In a 2003 article in New England Quarterly about President Calvin Coolidge, Kerry W. Buckley called Calvin Coolidge a swamp Yankee because he came from an old family “no longer prominent or monied.”

Calvin Coolidge Swamper wannabe?

Another former Massachusetts governor, William Weld, was also described in a newspaper as a swamp Yankee. Perhaps he earned the designation because he liked to brag about his $8 drugstore glasses. But Weld came from Long Island and Coolidge from Vermont, so no, they ain’t no swamp Yankees, either.

The real swamp Yankee comes from the watery lowlands of southeastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island or eastern Connecticut.

Some argue Massachusetts has only one swamp Yankee county: Bristol. Others make a case for southern Worcester County, too. As for Cape Cod: absolutely not.

Connecticut has four swamp Yankee counties: Middlesex, New London, Tolland and Windham. Four of Rhode Island’s five counties are swamper country: Bristol, Kent, Providence and Washington.

Proud swamper Barry Browning in 2000 argued swamp Yankeeland is smaller than that. According to him, swamp Yankees come from South County – which exists only in the minds of Rhode Islanders. It’s a mythical county along the southern coast of the state.

According to Browning, swampers come from rural parts of South County, such as Perryville, Hope Valley, Richmond, Hopkinton, Exeter, Alton, Woodville, “Tuckertown” and Matunuck. Driving south from Providence, swamp Yankee country it starts past the old Bostich-Textron Plant on Route 2 in East Greenwich.

How the Swamp Yankee Got Started

The origins of the term are also disputed. Some say the name started in Thompson, Conn., during the American Revolution. Townsfolk who feared a British attack hid overnight in the swamp.

According to others, swamp Yankee refers to the descendants of those who fought in the Great Swamp Fight during King Philip’s War. (Not really something to be proud of.)

Engraving depicting the colonial assault on the Narragansetts’ fort in the Great Swamp Massacre in December 1675

Still others say they arrived in the Great Puritan Migration, but usually as indentured servants or underpaid crew on the ships. Further, the story goes, the servants got paid at the end of their indenture with swampland.

To add to the confusion, the New York Times reported in 1935 that swampers were Yankees driven out of mill towns by immigrants ( “Out of the Whirlwind,” The New York Times, May 26, 1935 .)

Hunh?

Browning explained in 2006 why the Times might have gotten confused. “The ”great” cotton mill families of South County’s nineteenth century….are inextricably entwined with many old-line South County families who would now consider themselves “Swampers,” he wrote.

Back in the day, he wrote, one would have correctly described swampers as uneducated and poor. “However today I know several who would call themselves “Swampers” who have attended Brown, Wellesley Smith, and other Ivy League colleges,” he wrote. Others, he wrote, serve on bank boards and own over 1,000 acres of land. The ownership and coveting of land is an inherited trait, he noted.

“Swampers” seem to take pride in accumulating ancestral objects, and they practice frugality. They paint the bathroom floor, though they can easily afford ceramic tile.

How To Spot a Swamp Yankee

One way to tell a swamp Yankee is to look in the yard. There’s a big woodpile and a clothesline in it because swampers heat their houses with woodstoves and dry their clothes in the fresh (often winter) air. You might spot an accumulation of shells, evidence of all the quahogs they’ve eaten. You might also spot an accumulation of old vehicles.

Montville, Conn., in New London County — swamper territory.

The house might be unpainted, but flowers will bloom in the yard. A swamp Yankee might also leave an old washing machine in the dooryard for decades, or recycle a bathtub in the pasture to water the cows. A swamp Yankee might still patch his roof with corrugated tin.

Swamp Yankees wouldn’t buy new clothes because that would be showy and embarrass the family. They drive old pickup trucks or perhaps a Buick Skylark with a rotting muffler.

Eating and Talking

You used to be able to find swamp Yankees at the Swamp Yankee Days festival in Ashaway, R.I. It featured a tractor parade, baked bean-eating competition, a Mr. and Mrs. Swamp Yankee contest and cow chip bingo. To play, you put some well-fed cows out on some grass and lay bets on who will produce a cow chip first.

The Country Store by Otto Land

Ashaway’s annual fest has ended, but you might find a swamp Yankee in an old country store telling lies to another swamp Yankee. Those are disappearing, too.

But if you do happen to find such an emporium, you’ll know if the patrons are swamp Yankees by the way they talk. There’s no “r” at the end of a syllable, and “i” is pronounced “oi.” They can also improvise with added syllables.

Catherine Presley , who grew up in Hope Valley, tried to explain it:

Theyugh in Hope Valley. Ole Ben James would saye to mah brother’s “Whaccha saye bouy!”

And

We wood goeh dowun to the main street theyugh, to the squayugh and get summuh that theyugh sodey wahtah.

Swampers eat as their ancestors did. Supper might consist of johnnycakes, cube steak and codfish cakes. Or fried eels, baked beans(home made) and johnnycakes. An upcountry swamp Yankee could dine off slab bacon, boiled potatoes and johnnycakes, while a coastal swamper might feast on smoked buckies (river herring), bluefish and johnnycakes.

So, whaccha saye to theyat?

Images: Mattity Swamp By Swampyank – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=105080393. Edward Buzzell Delano, Jack, photographer. Mr. Edward Buzzell, Yankee dairy farmer of Slocum, Rhode Island. United States Rhode Island Washington County Slocum, 1940. Dec. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017793117/. Country Store: Lang, Otto, -1940, Artist. The Country Store. , ca. 1890. [Between and 1910] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2009616966/. Montville: Montville: Delano, Jack, photographer. Untitled photo, possibly related to: Houses and small farms in the Montville, Connecticut area. United States Connecticut Montville, 1940. [Nov] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017748612/.

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The Green Book Guides African-Americans to Safety in New England (and Elsewhere)

African-Americans driving through New England from the 1930s to the 1960s carried the Green Book to guide them to friendly hotels, restaurants and service stations.

It was a time when they might find themselves in sundown towns, which banned minorities from within municipal limits after dark. The practice wasn’t limited to the Jim Crow South — it happened in New England, too.

James Loewen, a historian who researches sundown towns, found evidence of a sign in Connecticut that said, “Whites Only Within City Limits After Dark.”

Always alert to potential embarrassment or danger, African-Americans carried blankets, packed lunch and even toted cans of gasoline when they took to the road.

And they carried the Green Book.

The Green Book

Victor H. Green was an African-American letter carrier in New York City. Among his deliveries were Jewish guides that told Jewish readers what restaurants and hotels didn’t admit them. He asked his colleagues in the postal service to help him by asking around on their routes about good places to stay. He then published the first Green Book in 1936, focusing on metropolitan New York City.

The 10-page book, which sold for 25 cents, included listings for restaurants, service stations, hotels, tourist homes, taverns, liquor stores, beauty parlors, nightclubs, drugstores and tailors.

It included a quotation from Mark Twain on its cover:

Travel is fatal to prejudice.

Expansion

The Green Book expanded over the years to include every U.S. state. It also included advertisements for lodgings, for Ford automobiles and for service stations. During World War II, Victor Green suspended publication, but by 1949 it ran to more than 80 pages.

Esso (now ExxonMobil) promoted the Green Book because of the work of James ‘Billboard’ Jackson, the company’s first black marketing specialist. Esso sponsored the guide, telling its black customers it allowed them to ‘go further with less anxiety.’ African-American drivers could buy the Green Book and get maps at Esso stations. Shell, on the other hand, had a reputation for turning away black customers.

Green’s timing was good. African-Americans were buying cars as soon as they could afford them to avoid the indignities of traveling on trains or buses. The interstate highway system was still in the future, so motorists had to drive through unfamiliar towns where they might not be welcome.

Journalist George Schuyler, a Rhode Island native, explained in 1930,

…all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult.

Obsolescence

Green looked forward to the day people wouldn’t need the Green Book. In the 1949 edition he wrote,

There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal opportunities and privileges in the United States. It will be a great day for us to suspend this publication for then we can go wherever we please, and without embarrassment. But until that time comes we shall continue to publish this information for your convenience each year.

The year the Civil Rights Act passed, 1964, was the Green Book’s last. By then Civil Rights activists demanded equal access and discouraged voluntary segregation.

Jim Crow Bible

Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe

During the Jim Crow era, the Green Book was the Bible of black travel. Today it is a guide to a past that hasn’t completely vanished.

In the 1949 Green Book, for example, listings for the African-American neighborhood in Boston’s South End include eight hotels and guest houses, nine restaurants, a couple of barbers, the Savoy Nightclub (where Malcolm X once shined shoes) and a half-dozen tailors.

Charlie’s, one of the restaurants listed on Columbus Avenue, was where Sammy Davis. Jr., used to tap dance for change as a young boy. Charlie’s, now known as Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe, closed in 2014 but reopened under new ownership.

As New Haven revives the jazz that once made it a mecca for musicians, the 1949 Green Book limns the Dixwell neighborhood where Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday performed. There was the Phillis Wheatley Hotel, the Dr. M.F. Allen tourist home, the Belmont Restaurant, the Elks Nightclub and Lillian’s Paradise.

The Monterey Café, where owner Rufus Greenlee danced with Josephine Baker, lasted long enough to foster New Haven’s Hip Hop scene in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

Providence

Most of the accommodations listed in the Green Book in New England were small hotels and tourist homes owned by African Americans. In cities, they were usually found in marginal or minority neighborhoods.

One notable exception was the Providence Biltmore, an elegant 19-story hotel in the middle of downtown. It was built in 1922 after the Providence Chamber of Commerce campaigned for a signature hotel where people could gather for important civic and cultural events.

The hotel had an open occupancy policy, accepting both black and white guests. But it took a step further by actually paying for a listing in the Green Book. Beginning in 1941, it simply reads, “Biltmore” under the heading “Providence.”

The Providence Biltmore closed in 1975, but reopened four years later after renovation and a landmark designation. It changed hands, underwent another renovation, changed hands again, and was renamed Graduate Providence.

Oak Bluffs

Today, the Town of Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard is a resort community visited by such prominent African-Americans as Spike Lee, Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. In 1956, it provided even more of a reprieve for upper-middle-class African-Americans like Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote speeches on the porch of an Oak Bluffs cottage.

In 1948, Dorothy West wrote a novel about the town’s social life, The Living Is Easy. That year the Green Book listed eight places where cottages could be rented in Oak Bluffs. (You can watch an online documentary about Oak Bluffs for free here.)

The Shearer Cottage on Martha’s Vineyard catered to black vacationers starting in 1912. Charles and Henrietta Shearer built their wooden tourist home in the Highlands area of Oak Bluffs. Charles had been born into slavery but graduated from Hampton Institute in Virginia, then worked as a teacher.

Shearer Cottage is still in business and still run by the Shearer family.

Ironically, the Green Book didn’t list the Shearer Cottage until 1963, along with such establishments as Brownie’s Cottage, Cinderella Cottage and Dunmere-By-The-Sea.

Rock Rest

Rock Rest in Kittery, Maine

One New England destination popular among African-Americans did not list in the Green Book: Rock Rest in Kittery, Maine. Clayton and Hazel Sinclair once owned the 2-1/2 story wooden Cape, running it as a guest house from 1946 to 1977. They advertised by sending postcards to their mailing list.

Clayton worked as a chauffeur in New York, Hazel as a ladies’ maid to a family that summered in Maine. When Clayton and Hazel decided to relocate, Clayton found a dilapidated house on Route 103 and Kittery and promised to fix it up. He did, and Hazel’s reputation as a cook drew enough guests to run Rock Rest as a business in the summer. Clayton Sinclair also worked in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Hazel catered in the off season. Today the house is on the National Register of Historic Places. On June 4, 2022, two historic markers were scheduled to be unveiled commemorating Rock Rest.

For an interactive map showing places listed in a 1956 Negro Travelers’ Green Book, click here. View the text of the 1949 Green Book, courtesy The Henry Ford, here.

Photos: Oak Bluffs by Elkman at Wikipedia, Charlie’s Sandwich Shoppe by John Phelan at Wikipedia. Rock Rest By Robm154 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35858018.

This story was updated in 2025. If you enjoyed it, you may also want to read about New England’s sundown towns (which only allowed white people to stay after dark) here.

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Hurricane Carol, So Deadly Her Name Was Retired

Hurricane Carol, one of the worst to hit New England, was so ferocious the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration retired the name for a decade after it struck in 1954.

The Edgewood Yacht Club survived the storm surge

Strong, sustained winds swept through Rhode Island and the eastern parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut, killing dozens and destroying buildings, automobiles, boats and crops. The storm took out power for days, Gov. Dennis Roberts declared martial law in Rhode Island and called up the National Guard.

Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine suffered as well, though to a lesser extent.

On tiny Onset Island, the storm trapped more than a dozen families who had no warning of the approaching storm. Fifty people crowded into a two-story cottage, and their sheer weight held the house on its foundation. Women and children went upstairs, and the men downstairs took the windows out of their frames to let the waist-high water surge through the house.

“We could see and hear the funnel go right up Buzzards Bay,” remembered a cottager, 10 at the time. “After the water went down the men went out to try to find the baby that the mother lost hold of. The baby was found days later floating dead.”

In New England, Hurricane Carol killed 65 people and injured a thousand.

The Birth of Hurricane Carol

Hurricane Carol started on Aug. 25, 1954, as a tropical wave near the Bahamas, and strengthened as it moved northwest. On August 27, meteorologists clocked Carol’s winds at 105 mph. The hurricane then moved northeast, flooding the mid-Atlantic coast.

On August 31, Carol sped up and slammed into Old Saybrook, Conn. Rosemary Carpichio, then 10, remembered it well. Her family cottage on Cornfield Point stood only three houses from the beach.

“My father took me out during the eye of the storm when all was quiet and the sun was shining,” she recalled. “All of the roads were washed out and we were completely surrounded by water on the point. It was too late to evacuate.”

The next day, Carol morphed into an extratropical cyclone over northern New England.

Power Lines Sparking

Hurricane Carol crashes into Connecticut. NOAA photo.

At the storm’s height, winds gusted up to 125 mph, blowing roofs off houses in Rhode Island. The hurricane flooded downtown Providence with up to 12 feet of water. Winds on Block Island reached 135 mph, the highest ever recorded there.

The aftermath of Hurricane Carol in Westerly, R.I.

The storm washed away 200 homes in Westerly, R.I. In Newport, R.I., it damaged the Casino.

Ronald Guilmette was living in the Rogers Williams Projects in Providence. He and three friends had climbed a tree to see the storm better. “The tree was blown done and I broke my right arm,” he remembered. “To this day I don’t know how I got to Rhode Island Hospital where they repaired it.”

Narragansett Bay, Buzzards Bay and New Bedford Harbor suffered storm surges of more than 14 feet. Rod Sherman was at a family reunion in Little Compton, R.I. He remembered many trees down and power and phone wires dangling in the wind. He also recalled power lines sparking as they hit the wet ground and leaves stripped from trees.

Old North Church after Hurricane Carol got done with its steeple. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Old North

In Boston, Hurricane Carol tore off the spire of the Old North Church. Donations from children across America rebuilt it the next year.

Digital Equipment Corp. then occupied the Assabet Mills in Maynard, Mass. The company’s employees filled several thousand sandbags to protect the buildings that housed production equipment.

Hurricane Carol destroyed this boat in Marblehead Harbor. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

National Guardsmen flew a planeload of dry ice to Boston for people who lost power and had no refrigeration. Gov. Christian Herter called up guardsmen in six Massachusetts towns to prevent looting. State officials then ordered the evacuation of Cape Cod, and 20,000 people left the peninsula.

Paul Phillips was an infant, staying with his mother and his grandmother in Dennisport at a cottage across the street from the ocean. His mother got him and his grandmother to higher ground and then helped to rescue more people. “A day or two later, there was a photo on the front page of the Cape Cod Times of my mom in the back of the truck, reaching out her hand to help someone get on board,” he remembered.

Damage from Hurricane Carol approximated $642 million, making it the costliest storm up to that point. The hurricane destroyed nearly 40 percent of fruit and vegetable crops — apples, peaches, corn and tomatoes. A third of New Englanders lost power, many for days.

Thousands of automobiles like this one were destroyed by Hurricane Carol. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Hurricane Carol destroyed thousands of automobiles like this one. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The Damage

The storm damaged more than 10,000 homes, completely destroying 1,545. Mary Willis Paquette lived with her family in a triple decker in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.

“There were triple deckers facing ours, ” she recalled, “and one of two pine trees fell and sheared off our neighbors’ three back porches. My Dad ran out and yelled, ‘Is everyone OK?’, and thank goodness everyone was fine.” She said she’d always remember the smell of the pines and the fresh smell of the air after the hurricane.

Hurricane Carol wrecked another 3,000 boats and 3,500 automobiles. Carol caused such destruction that the weather service retired her name, the first ever for an Atlantic hurricane. It made a comeback 10 years later, only to be retired again.

Then 12 days later came Hurricane Edna. Edna killed 21 people, caused widespread power outages on Cape Cod, flooded roads and railroads in Main and forced evacuations throughout southern New England.

All in all, the 1954 hurricane season ranked as one of the worst in the 20th century.

***

Read more about Hurricane Carol in “New England Weather.” Just published by the New England Historical Society. Click here to order your copy today.

This story was updated in 2024. You may also want to read about the Great New England storm of 1938 here.

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One Family’s Miraculous Ride During the 1938 Storm

On Sept. 21, 1938, New Englanders started out enjoying what looked like a decent fall day. No one was paid attention to the 1938 hurricane headed up the coast. The Moore family had no reason to think they would take a miraculous ride to safety that day.

Weather forecasters told those who paid attention the storm had turned out to sea. The worst they should expect? A breezy day.

Houses destroyed by the hurricane of 1938. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

One man at the National Weather Bureau predicted the storm would, in fact, follow the devastating track of the hurricanes of 1635 and 1815. But his superiors overruled him, and the forecast for the day called for good weather.

1938 Hurricane

Estimates vary, but at least 400 people perished that day and maybe as many as 800. The hurricane of 1938 crossed over the tip of Long Island, then slammed into New London, Conn., and raced up the Connecticut River Valley at 50 miles per hour.

It caused unprecedented destruction. In New London, high waters pushed a five-masted ship, Marsala, into a warehouse and then started a fire that demolished a quarter-mile section of the city’s business district.

As the storm passed the Milton Observatory in Massachusetts, 186 m.p.h. wind gusts were recorded. Up into New Hampshire, Peterborough went up in flames and part of the Cog Railway on Mt. Washington blew down. And in Vermont, the storm caused a train derailment and uprooted maple trees and apple orchards.

Rhode Island got the worst of it. Parts of downtown Providence were under 14 feet of water, with people sheltering on the second and third floors of buildings. In Westerly, R.I., 100 people died ecause of the storm.

Perhaps the most astounding story of the storm comes from the Moore family of Westerly. As the storm grew stronger, the family tried to evacuate their beachfront home, but could not. As the ocean waves began surging into the house, Catherine Moore recalls her father bracing against the front door literally trying to hold back the ocean.

The Miraculous Ride

As the family moved first to the second floor and finally to the third floor to stay above the storm surge, they watched as house after house succumbed. They saw neighbors washed away. Finally, the waves overwhelmed their own house, lifting it off its foundation.

“Next thing I knew, we were floating,” Moore recalled. “We were on the water with the waves crashing over us, and part of the house still attached, one of the walls still attached to this piece of floor, and it almost acted as a sail.”

In all, 10 people clung to that bit of floor as it hurdled across the sound to land in Connecticut, where the family then stepped back on to land and back into their lives.

Newsreel footage of the 1938 hurricane can be seen here.

This story was updated in 2021.

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