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The Smock Wedding, or Getting Married Naked in Early New England

Some brides in early New England actually got married while naked. Or maybe they just wore their underwear, or smock, which is how the custom earned the name of smock wedding.

They could get awfully cold during a January marriage ceremony.

But the smock wedding had its advantages. According to a custom that started in England, a groom possessed everything a bride owned — including her debts. Most likely, if she were a widow, she possessed her late husband’s financial obligations.

So a groom could avoid paying his betrothed’s debts by marrying her while she wore either her smock (a thin undergarment) or her birthday suit.

In 1917, Elmer W. Sawyer of the Maine Bar Association called the smock wedding, ‘a public declaration and warning to her creditors that she took no property to her husband which would render him responsible for her debts.’

“It is not known how effective smock weddings were in the face of a creditor,” historian Stephen Parker noted drily.

A Maine Smock Wedding

Historian Alice Morse Earle called the smock wedding ‘a vulgar error,’ and reported that it spread from Maine to Rhode Island.

In 1724, the Town of Westerly, R.I., recorded several smock weddings. And in 1767, John Gatchell and Sarah Cloutman married in a smock wedding in Lincoln County, Maine.

Some Mainers also believed if the bride was married “in her shift on the king’s highway,” a creditor could follow her no farther in pursuit of his debt, according to Earle in Customs and Fashions in Old New England.

Such “smock marriages” took place in York, Maine, on the public highway. They often happened at night to preserve the bride’s modesty.

In February 1774, widow Mary Bradley wore only a smock when she met her bridegroom and the minister in York halfway between her house and the groom’s. The minister took pity on the shivering bride and threw his coat over her.

The bride must have had money.

The Vermont Version

In 1789, Maj. Moses Joy fell in love with Mrs. Hannah Ward, widow of William Ward. She was executor of her late husband’s insolvent estate; he was the constable of Putney, Vt.

Catherine Cornelia Joy Dyer recounted the story of their smock wedding in her 1876 volume, Brief History of the Joy Family: They wanted to avoid the unpleasant penalties of the law, she wrote.

“On the morning of her marriage with Major Joy Mrs. Ward placed herself in a closet with a tire-woman [lady’s maid] who stripped her of all her clothing,” wrote Dyer. “And when in a perfectly nude state she thrust her fair, round arm through a diamond hole in the door of the closet, and the gallant major clasped the hand of the buxom widow and was married in due form by the jolliest parson in Vermont.”

At the close of the ceremony the maid dressed the bride in a complete wardrobe the major had provided. He had it stored in the closet at the beginning of the ceremony. The bride emerged elegantly dressed in silk, satin and lace, and there was kissing all around.

A Few More Smock Weddings

In another Vermont smock wedding, the widow Lovejoy married Asa Averill while naked. She hid in a chimney recess behind a curtain.

There is also the story of the naked bride who climbed out a second-story window at night and stood on top of a ladder. After the ceremony she put on her wedding clothes.

The custom survived in old England as well. In 1775, the widow Judith Redding married Richard Elcock in a Winchester church wearing her shift. She took off the rest of her clothes in a pew.

This story about the smock wedding was updated in 2023. Thanks to Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England.

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The Great 1938 Hurricane, A Once-In-A-Lifetime Storm

The Great 1938 Hurricane took almost everyone by surprise. Sept. 21, 1938, was supposed to be a breezy fall day in New England. Few paid attention to the storm barreling up the coast.

At 12:30 PM, a 30-foot bank of what looked like fog rolled in toward Long Island. It turned out to be the storm surge, topped by waves 30 and 50 feet high.

By 4 pm, one of the most powerful and destructive hurricanes ever to hit Southern New England made landfall between Bridgeport and New Haven, Conn.

Great 1938 hurricane storm surge. Photo courtesy NOAA/NWS.

The damage was horrific. Estimates vary, but at least 400 people died that day and maybe as many as 800. The Great 1938 Hurricane crossed over the tip of Long Island, slammed into New London and raced up the Connecticut River Valley at 50 miles per hour. It destroyed cemeteries, slammed boats into shore, uprooted entire orchards and smashed structures into splinters.

Erosion from the Great 1938 hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Trashed Infrastructure

The hurricane chewed away at roadbeds, like Shore Drive in Winthrop, Mass., above. It washed away railroad tracks, sent bridges downstream and downed electrical wires, leaving some New Englanders without electricity for weeks.

The hurricane wiped away entire communities, altered the shoreline of Long Island, washed away bridges, severed train service between New York and Boston and between cities in Connecticut and Rhode Island. It brought down 20,000 miles of power and telephone lines.

The Great 1938 Hurricane pushed the Tulip onto land. Photo courtesy Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries.

In New London, Conn., high waters pushed a five-masted ship, Marsala, into a warehouse and started a fire that demolished a quarter-mile section of the city’s business district. The hurricane also tossed the lighthouse tender Tulip, pictured above, ashore.

The Great 1938 Hurricane washed homes off their foundations. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Houses washed off their foundations, like the one above that landed in the Cape Cod Canal.

A Wild Ride

Perhaps the most astounding story of the storm comes from the Moore family of Westerly, R.I. 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 family moved first to the second floor and finally to the third floor to stay above the storm surge, watching as house after house succumbed and neighbors were 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 hurtled across the Sound to land in Connecticut. There the family stepped back on to land and back into their lives.

Damage From the 1938 Hurricane

Westerly, a bastion of quiet old wealth, never quite regained its prestige after the Great 1938 Hurricane. Charlestown, R.I., lost a bit more: 160 out of 200 homes were annihilated.

Aftermath of the Great 1938 Hurricane in Hartford, Conn. Photo licensed under public domain by Wikipedia Commons.

The storm forced the Connecticut River over its banks, inundating cities and towns with floodwater. In Hartford, the river reached 35.4 feet, 19.4 feet above flood stage. Above, Bushnell Park in Hartford after the storm.

The Great 1938 Hurricane submerged coastal towns under eight feet of water. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Parts of Falmouth and New Bedford, Mass., were submerged under eight feet of water.

Rhode Island got battered by the Great 1938 Hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Rhode Island

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. According to the National Weather Service, a storm surge of 12 to 15 feet destroyed most coastal homes, yacht clubs and marinas on Narragansett Bay.

The Great 1938 Hurricane inflicted tremendous damage on shipping. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Above, the steamship Monhegan sits at a pier in Providence after sinking during the hurricane. Two-thirds of the boats in New Bedford Harbor sank. Before the storm, 100 boats fished the waters between Point Judith, R.I., and New London. Afterward, the hurricane left only three.

One of the 19,000 buildings destroyed by the hurricane. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

Cost of the 1938 Hurricane

In New Hampshire, fire destroyed four buildings in Peterborough and wind blew down part of the Cog Railway on Mount Washington. And in Vermont, the storm caused a train derailment and uprooted maple trees and apple orchards. The hurricane blew the house pictured above onto railroad tracks.

As one of the most costly hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland, it caused damage later estimated at $308 million. A total of 4,500 homes were destroyed and 25,000 damaged. The storm totaled about 26,000 automobiles and blew over 20,000 electrical poles. And high winds knocked down an estimated 2 billion trees in New York and New England, devastating forests.

The storm soaked an unknown number of pants. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

The dead filled funeral homes. Homeless refugees crammed into town halls, armories and fire stations. Clinics then ran out of typhoid vaccine. It took a week to restore power in Provincetown, and 200 men spent a week trying to open the roads to Newport, R.I.

The Clean-Up

Cleaning up timber damaged by the Great 1938 Hurricane took years.

The storm blew down so many trees that paper mills processed them for nine years.

The blowdowns posed a dilemma: What to do with enough woody debris to nearly fill Rhode Island? And how to do it quickly enough so it didn’t set off tremendous forest fires?

President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration to clean up the mess. It then took two years for the 50 CCC camps and 15,000 WPA workers in the region to finish the job.

The Northern Kraft Paper Mill in Howland, Maine. In 1947, the mill still used wood cut from trees downed by the Great 1938 hurricane.

To see newsreel footage of the Great 1938 Hurricane, click here.

This story was updated in 2022. With thanks to The Great Hurricane: 1938 by Cherie Burns. If you’d like to read about a wild ride one family took during the storm, click here. If you’d like to read about another family’s ordeal stranded on a high floor in their house, click 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. Tosemary 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.

This story was updated in 2022. You may also want to read about the Great New England storm of 1938 here.

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The New England Dark Day, May 19, 1780

The New England Dark Day was the darkest day of the American Revolution – a day as dark as night, a day when a candle was needed to see anything outside at noon.

On May 19, 1780, the sun came up as usual, but then the skies over New England darkened as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as New Jersey. There George Washington, fighting the Revolutionary War, reported the Dark Day in his diary (though he seems to have gotten the date wrong). “Heavy & uncommon kind of Clouds–dark & at the same time a bright and reddish kind of light intermixed with them–brightning & darkning alternately,” Washington wrote. “This continued till afternoon when the sun began to appear. The Wind in the Morning was Easterly. After that it got to the Westward.”

Dark Day

The Dark Day inspired terror, panic and puzzlement. Men prayed and women wept. Thousands left off work and took to taverns and churches for solace. Children were sent home from school. Bewildered chickens went to their roosts, frightened cattle returned to their stalls, the night birds whistled and frogs peeped as they did at midnight.

Was it an eclipse? A blazing star? The transit of Venus? In Salem, the Rev. Nathaniel Whitaker thundered the Dark Day was a rebuke from the Almighty for the sins of the congregation. Some wrung their hands and listened for the sound of trumpets announcing Judgment Day.

An anonymous poet wrote,

Nineteenth of May, a gloomy day,
when darkness veil’d the sky /
The sun’s decline may be a sign,
some great event is nigh /

‘Enchanting Hue’

The sun had risen a deep, brassy red. A ‘strange enchanting hue’ robed the rocks, trees, buildings and water, wrote Sidney Perley, 19^th-century Salem historian. Rainwater gave off a strong sooty smell and a black scum floated on rivers, especially the Merrimack, reported Richard Miller Devens in Our First Century. Boston smelled like a malt-house or a coal-kin.

A few minutes after 9:00 a.m., wrote Perley, ‘a dark dense cloud gradually rose out of the West and spread itself until the heavens were entirely covered, except at the horizon, where a narrow rim of light remained.’

Abraham Davenport

In Connecticut, members of the Legislature, called the State Council, feared the Dark Day signified the Day of Judgment. Some member clamored to adjourn the session.

Abraham Davenport earned lasting fame for his response:

I am against adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.

Twilight of the Gods?

Many other news and diary accounts described the strange phenomenon.

Dark Day mural, painted by WPA artist Delos Palmer in Stamford, Conn., Old Town Hall.

Dark Day mural, painted by Works Progress Administration artist Delos Palmer in Stamford, Conn., Old Town Hall.

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote a poem about the Dark Day in 1873 that began:

‘T was on a May-day of the far old year
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring,
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness, like the night
In day of which the Norland sagas tell, —
The Twilight of the Gods.

It concluded with an homage to Davenport’s courage:

And there he stands in memory to this day,
Erect, self-poised, a rugged face, half seen
Against the background of unnatural dark,
A witness to the ages as they pass,
That simple duty hath no place for fear.

In 1960, U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy mentioned the Dark Day during a campaign speech in North Carolina. He got some of the facts wrong, but praised Davenport.

“I hope in a dark and uncertain period in our own country that we, too, may bring candles to help light our country’s way,” Kennedy said .

Then The Sun Came Out

Joseph Dow, historian of Hampton, N.H., nailed the cause of the Dark Day in the 19^th century, a conjecture confirmed in the 21^st. It was a combination of clouds, fog and smoke. “For some days previous the air had been filed with smoke, arising, it was supposed, from extensive fires, somewhere raging in the woods,” wrote Dow.

“Prevailing westerly winds had spread the smoke over a very great extent of country. On the morning of the 19th, the wind, though variable, was principally from the eastward, and brought with it a dense fog from the ocean. This meeting and mingling with the clouds and smoke formed a mass almost impervious to light. The darkness became noticeable a little before eleven o’clock, and rapidly increased.”

Around midnight, a light breeze sprang up, blowing away the clouds and vapors, wrote Dow. Moonlight illumined the earth.

The next day, the sun came out as usual.

Scientific research into old trees in the Algonquin Highlands, Ontario, concluded the Dark Day resulted from a massive wildfire in Canadian forests. Scientists found charcoal and resin – ‘fire scars’ — in the growth rings of the trees.

This story was updated in 2023.

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Tarzan Brown, The Narragansett Indian Who Twice Won the Boston Marathon

Minutes before the 1939 Boston Marathon, a Narragansett Indian named Tarzan Brown was seen eating hot dogs and drinking milkshakes.

Tarzan Brown winning the 1939 Boston Marathon. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

He wore a running outfit, and he had won the race in 1936. He won it again that day.

The eccentric, mercurial Tarzan Brown dominated the sport of long-distance running in America along with John A. Kelley and Les Pawson throughout the 1930s. He once said,

In my heart I always felt, if I was in shape, I could beat any man living up to 50 miles.

Tarzan Brown

He was born Sept. 22, 1919, into deep poverty on the Narragansett Ashaway Reservation in Rhode Island to Byron and Grace (Babcock) Brown. He grew up in a shack. A sportswriter called him ‘a penniless redskin.’ It was said he didn’t show bitterness about the prejudice toward him, though he wasn’t oblivious to it. He once said he had to go to the barber in New London, Conn., because the barber in Westerly, R.I., wouldn’t cut his hair.

Ellison Brown was his American given name, but his tribe knew him as Deerfoot. He lived up to his reputation. One day in 1926, he followed a well-regarded Narragansett runner named Horatio ‘Bunk’ Stanton along his 20-mile training route. When Stanton arrived he told his trainer, Thomas ‘Tippy’ Salimeno, that some kid had followed him the whole way.

Ten minutes later, 12-year-old Ellison Brown showed up and introduced himself to Salimeno. The trainer told him to come back when he turned 16 and he’d manage his career.

He dropped out of school to learn traditional Narragansett stone masonry from his father. (Narragansett stone fences survive for hundreds of years.)

Tarzan Brown running the 1939 Boston Marathon. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones collection.

Barefoot Runner

At 16, he won his first foot race, a 10-mile event in West Warwick. He won many others, sometimes barefoot because he couldn’t afford running shoes.

Along the way he earned the nickname ‘Tarzan’ because of his Johnny Weismuller imitation and his ability to leap from tree to tree.

Intensely proud of his Narragansett roots, Tarzan Brown married a Narragansett woman named Ethel Wilcox.

Tarzan Brown seemed to run whenever he felt like it. He loved the outdoors and would disappear into the woods, living off the land for a week at a time.

One reason he ran was that he hoped to win the attention of an employer. He worked as a stonemason and a shell fisherman, but sometimes had to sell his trophies and medals to feed his wife and four children.

Heartbreak Hill

He first won the Boston Marathon in 1936 in a contest that inspired a sportswriter to name a hill in Newton, Mass., ‘Heartbreak Hill.’ Tarzan Brown took off quickly, but at mile 20 Johnny Kelley caught up with him and patted him on the back. They dueled for the final six miles, with Tarzan Brown taking the lead on the downhills, Kelley on the uphills. Tarzan finally went ahead of Kelley on the last Newton hill, breaking John A. Kelley’s heart.

That victory earned him a place on the U.S. Olympic team, but at the games in Berlin he dropped out of the marathon because of an injury. He did get into a fight with Nazi brownshirts in a beer garden.

The year before he had shown up wearing raggedy sneakers and an outfit sewn together from a dress. At mile 21 he tossed off his shoes and ran barefoot the rest of the way, finishing 13^th.

In 1938 he ran the race again, but jumped into Lake Cochituate mid-race to cool off.

He won the Boston Marathon again in 1939, the first runner to break the 2:30 mark. That year he entered two different marathons within 24 hours of each other and won both of them.

He retired from running in 1946.

Tarzan Brown was killed on August 23, 1975 after a van struck him outside a tavern in Westerly, Rhode Island.

The annual Tarzan Brown Mystic River Run in Mystic, Conn., has been run every year since 1975 in his honor.

With thanks to Ellison “Tarzan” Brown: The Narragansett Indian Who Twice Won the Boston Marathon by Michael Ward. This story was updated in 2023.

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Horace Vose, the RI Turkey Farmer Who Fed 11 Presidents on Thanksgiving

Horace Vose, a ]Westerly, R.I., turkey farmer, sent his turkeys to 11 presidents for four decades of Thanksgiving dinners and drama.

Every year, the Associated Press sent off a brief dispatch from Westerly, R.I.: “Horace Vose, following his annual custom of long standing, has sent to the White House the choicest turkey brought in for Thanksgiving.“

Horace Vose

Vose was born in 1840, 23 years before President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday. He began raising turkeys with his uncle at the age of 15. Vose increased his flock and became one of the most prominent turkey men in the country.

Farm Journal called him an ‘encyclopedia on turkeys’ and printed his Turkey Secrets. “All turkey raisers should have a copy,” reported the publication.

The White House turkey tradition started in 1873, when Vose sent a spectacular 38-pound Meleagris gallopavo to President Ulysses S. Grant. A picture of the bird is still preserved. Vose treasured the handwritten thank-you note from Grant and kept it in his safe.

Pres. and Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt seated on lawn, surrounded by their family; 1903. From left to right: Quentin, Theodore Sr., Theodore Jr., Archie, Alice, Kermit, Edith, and Ethel. Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

From then on, Vose every year looked over the best flocks in Rhode Island and Connecticut. With great care he selected the presidential bird, according to The White House Historical Association. He shipped them express in a box addressed to the president.

In some years, drama surrounded the turkey delivery. In 1910, the New York Times reported the Tafts’ turkey had arrived – but the White House hadn’t confirmed the delivery to Horace Vose.

Scandal and Consternation

“Consternation grips Rhode Island,” blared the headline, but then reassured the reader. “This year’s turkey, one of the finest which the Rhode Islander ever sent this way, arrived today. Fears were entertained that the White House would have to go to market and buy its own turkey for this Thanksgiving.”

That drama paled in comparison to the 1904 scandal. The Boston Herald, an opponent of President Theodore Roosevelt, reported his children had cruelly treated the turkey that Horace Vose sent.

Roosevelt’s secretary William S. Loeb, Jr., issued a strongly worded denial: “The article states that the children released the turkey and chased it all over the White House grounds, plucking at it and teasing it, and yelling and laughing, until the bird was well nigh exhausted, while the President looked on and laughed,” wrote Loeb.

“As a matter of fact, the turkey was dressed when Mr. Vose sent it, and was used for Thanksgiving dinner. … No such incident as that recounted has ever taken place since the President has been in the White House, and nothing in the remotest degree resembling it has ever taken place.”

He went on to attack the Herald correspondent for inventing – and the editor for commenting on – incidents without the flimsiest foundation in fact.

Loeb, by the way, had a son named William S. Loeb III, publisher of the Manchester Union Leader.

Turkey Fame

Horace Vose of Westerly, R.I., shipping a turkey to President Theodore Roosevelt for Thanksgiving. Photo courtesy Theodore Roosevelt Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

The agricultural press made Horace Vose a star, referring to him as ‘Horace Vose of White House turkey fame.’ In an interview with Michael Boyer, Farm Journal poultry editor, Bose argued the turkey was the most patriotic bird.

“It is purely American, and for stateliness, courage and energy it is an emblem of our American people,” wrote Boyer. “For that reason he thought and hoped that some day a Big Bronze gobbler would replace the American eagle on our silver.”

In addition to his Thanksgiving offering, Vose also sent smaller turkeys to the White House at Christmas. During the Taft administration, the press reported ‘the poultry king of Rhode Island’ sent a 35-40 pound turkey to grace the presidential table, alongside ‘’Aunt Delia’s goodies.’ Taft’s Aunt Delia Torrey of Millbury, Mass., always sent ‘Nephew Will’ a package of apple pies, jellies and jams grown on her property.

Horace Vose occasionally had competition. One year, someone from Georgia sent a 26-pound opossum to President Taft, along with a 50-pound pie from a New Yorker.

In 1913, Kentuckian South Trimble, clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, sent a turkey to President Woodrow Wilson. Trimble’s turkey weighed 30 pounds, seven pounds lighter than Vose’s bird. Trimble said his bird tasted better because he fed it a diet of red peppers. Sadly, the choice of the Wilsons turkey for the 1913 Thanksgiving is lost to history.

Horace Vose died shortly thereafter, on Dec. 20, 1913. Farm Journal reported, “He lived a life of usefulness and was loved by all who knew him.”

This story about Horace Vose was updated in 2018.

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