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The Death of Chow in Boston Harbor, 1798

Among the graves of British and American Revolutionary War soldiers on Boston Common lies the body of a 19-year old Chinese teenager named Chow. The record of the death of Chow in 1798 is the first known documentation of a Chinese person in the United States.

His remains, just steps from Boston’s Chinatown, are also the first known of a Chinese national in this country.

Tombstone of Zhou Libei

Chow came to American in the early days of the old China trade. Another young man, John Boit, Jr., may have felt responsible for the untimely death of Chow. Boit probably ordered and paid for the gravestone, a durable, quality stone that reads:

“Here lies interred the body of Chow Manderien, a native of China, aged 19 years, whose death was occasioned on the 11th of Sept 1798 by a fall from the masthead of the ship Mike of Boston. This stone erected to his memory by his affectionate master John Boit Jr.”

A Young Man in the China Trade

The record of the death of Chow can be found in the archives of the deceased of the Boston municipal government in 1798.

Other records tell us the story of Chow: the nautical records kept by John Boit, Jr., and Boit’s family history.

John Boit, Jr.

Boit helped pioneer the China trade, which began when in 1783 the Treaty of Paris ended the American Revolution. The British had controlled the tea trade until then. In 1784, The Empress of China sailed to Guangdong, opening the China trade. U.S. merchant ships brought otter skins, ginseng, wine, turpentine, Hawaiian wood and Turkish opium to China. Then on their return they brought tea, porcelain and silk from China.

Drinking tea in Chinese porcelain cups had become fashionable among the western upper class. The status-conscious George Washington bought a large amount of Chinese porcelain. His wife Martha ordered “beautiful thin cotton cloth” from China. The so-called old China trade lasted from 1783 to 1844 and created many millionaires in the United States.

Map of the United States at the time of the death of Chow.

John Boit, Sr., imported goods into Boston, one of the most important ports in the old China trade. The younger Boit’s brother-in-law owned a ship called the Columbia. At 16, Boit sailed the world in the Columbia, capturing and trading otter skins in the Pacific Northwest. The crew then traded the skins for tea and silk n Guangzhou. Along the way they discovered a large river, named the Columbia after the ship.

The Fabulous Voyage

At the age of 19, John Boit, Jr., sailed the world in his own vessel, a 60-foot sloop named Union.

Diagram of the Union

Historian Samuel Eliot Morrison described the voyage as, ‘the most remarkable youthful exploit in this bright dawn of Pacific adventure.’

He left Newport on Aug. 1, 1794 with a 22-man crew, 18 guns and a fullc argo. They sailed around Cape Horn in February, traded for otter skins in the Pacific Northwest, fought Indians in Puget Sound, sighted Hawaii in October and arrived at the Whampoa anchorage near Guangzhou in December. There he traded his otter for silk and nankeen, and picked up passengers. One of them was 17-year-old Chow.

Chow

They sailed through the China Sea, the Straits of Sunda and the Indian Ocean to Mauritius, where Boit picked up coffee and pepper. The crew had to repair the ship’s mast after passing Madagascar, and then ran into a four-day gale that stove in the vessel’s bulwarks. They rounded the Cape of Good Hope in May, caught the southeast trades and on July 8 sailed into Boston Harbor.

Chinese tea merchants

The Union was possibly the only single-masted vessel to circumnavigate the globe, wrote Morrison in 1922.

First Chinese Boy

Qian Huang produced a documentary about the death of Chow, Meihua History, The first Chinese boy who came to the United States.

In it, she imagines what the 17-year-old must have seen and heard once he left Guangzhou on Jan. 12, 1796.

Raging through the waves of the Indian Ocean, going around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. In how many ports did [the ship] berth, how many skin colors did he encounter? How many languages did he hear?

How did he react to the western scenery in Boston: majestic European buildings, open roads, gorgeous foreigners, everything from vegetables and fruits to kitchens, baths and furniture, Everything is so novel and fantastic. When his Chinese intestines and stomachs met Western food, he was accustomed to burning in the hot sun, and met the relentlessness of the snow and ice in Boston. Has he ever been homesick?

Foul, Leaky and Slow

While unloading the Union, young Boit’s brother-in-law bought a French privateer, a snow named George, to sail to Mauritius, a small island off Madagascar. There he would sell it back to the French. He hired Boit as captain.

The George, wrote Morrison, was ‘foul, leaky and slow.’ The sailors had to constantly pump water from the boat, which left them exhausted. They needed help from the French authorities to limp into port. Boit said he hoped he’d never sail in a ship like that again.

The Chinese teenager Chow appears in the family history written by the descendants of young Boit. When they arrived on Mauritius, Boit found a house on the shore, and Chow took care of him. Boit called Chow, “My faithful servant.” The family history gave him another name: Libei. Today his name would be written Zhou Libei.

Boit chartered a vessel from Mauritius and sailed back to South Carolina. From there they presumably took a coasting vessel to Boston.

The Death of Chow

Shortly after they returned to Boston, Chow died in a fall from a mast on the vessel Mike.

Record of the death of Chow

Centuries later, Qian Huang visited the Central Burying Ground. She compared the tombstones in the storied cemetery from those of the same period. Chow’s tombstone is obviously good, she wrote. Boit chose a quality stone and lettering. Chow’s tombstone is as large as the tombstones of other captains of the same period. The lettering describing the death of Chow is even clearer than the lettering on other tombstones.

She notes that only an eighth of the deceased had tombstones in the 18^th century. The captain, she concluded, ‘was very satisfied’ with Chow.

The Boit family maintained its wealth and prominence in Massachusetts. A famous painting, two miles from Chow’s headstone, hangs on the wall of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. The four girls in the painting are descended from Capt. John Boit, Jr. John Singer Sargent, the preeminent American portraitist, painted The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit.

Not the First, But…

Huang writes:

Every year, especially in the summer, the Boston Museum of Art welcomes many Chinese tourists, as well as Chinese students and parents. When our compatriots stopped in front of this famous painting, they did not know that the ancestor of the four little girls in this painting buried a Chinese in the distance with grief in the early autumn days 220 years ago.

Location of Chow’s grave

The teenager surnamed Chow was not the first Chinese immigrant to arrive in an American oceangoing vessel from China, wrote Huang. But because of the death of Chow in Boston Harbor, and the maintenance of the cemetery, heis the only one who left physical evidence and a written record. His cemetery is also the earliest Chinese cemetery discovered to date in the United States.

With thanks to Qian Huang, Meihua History, The first Chinese boy who came to the United States, and to Samuel Eliot Morrison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860. This story was updated in 2022.

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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.

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Six French Place Names in Six New England States

French place names reveal much about the history of a city or town. They reflect the great historical events that took place at the time residents settled on a name. They may have named their town when a popular king took the throne, or during the French struggle for liberty, or right after the American Revolution, or during westward expansion.

You’re far more likely to find French place names the closer you get to the border of Canada. Still, the number of French place names in New England doesn’t truly reflect the region’s French heritage.

Vermont, of course, comes from the French for ‘green mountain’ (vert mont), and 23.9 percent of its population claims French ancestry. But only about a dozen of the state’s 255 municipalities have a French place name.

Vermont is only the third most Franco-American state in the Union. New Hampshire comes in second. Maine, with 25 percent of its population claiming French ancestry, ranks No. 1. The state has two dozen towns with French place names, and the state Legislature once claimed (probably wrongly) that ‘Maine’ came from the French province of the same name.

Here, then, are six New England municipalities with French place names, one in each state. If you know of another with a story worth repeating, please share in the comments section.

Orange, Conn.

Orange Congregational Church

Orange, Conn., initially belonged to the Algonquian Indians until 1637, when they sold it to the Rev. Peter Prudden. The price? Some coats and blankets, hatchets and hoes, a kettle, knives and a dozen small mirrors.

Prudden, educated at Cambridge University in England, came to Massachusetts as part of the Great Puritan Migration. He preached in Wethersfield, Conn., for a while. Then he joined a group of New Haven Colony settlers in Milford and was ordained pastor of the church in 1639.

When Prudden died in 1656, his survivors buried him in his garden, which became the Milford town cemetery. His widow, Joanna Boyse Prudden, married the first English mayor of New York City.

William of Orange

Thirty years after Prudden died, the last Roman Catholic king of England, James II, consolidated the New England colonies. He appointed the hated Edmund Andros as governor general of the Dominion of New England. Andros tried to seize Connecticut’s charter, but failed because a militia captain hid it in a large white oak tree, known forever after as the Charter Oak.

In 1689, much to the joy and relief of New England’s Puritans, William of Orange deposed James II. The staunchly Protestant William, who had inherited the French principality of Orange from his father, was James’ son-in-law and nephew. The colonists sent Andros back to England.

The popular new king gave the village of Orange its name. It belonged to Milford until 1822, when residents formed the Town of Orange. In 1921, rural Orange separated from urban West Haven.

Orange Center Historic District includes 42 historically significant structures, including the Orange Congregational Church. They form a ‘cohesive village of well-preserved buildings and their surroundings that convey a strong sense of the area’s historic appearance,’ according to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form.

Meetinghouse Lane, Orange Center Road, Schoolhouse Land, Tyler City Road.

Calais, Maine

Acadians first settled the region on both sides of the St. John River, so it’s natural that Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick, should have a close friendship. Calais has three international crossings over the St. Croix River to St. Stephen.

Calais from St. Stephen

So friendly were the two towns that the British military gave St. Stephen gunpowder to defend itself against Americans during the War of 1812. St. Stephen instead gave the gunpowder to Calais for its July 4^th celebration.

The townspeople named Calais for the French city in 1809 to honor France’s help to the American colonies during the Revolutionary War.

Calais Avenue about 1905

Calais didn’t really get going as a town until the 1820s, when shipbuilding and lumber brought growth and prosperity. Between 1810 and 1850, the town’s population grew tenfold, to 4,749. By 1840, Calais was the second busiest port in Maine next to Bangor. Many successful Calais businesspeople built fine homes in the city during its heyday.

The Calais Residential Historic District comprises 15 acres of handsome 19^th century homes in a variety of architectural styles.

Calais Residential Historic District: Calais Avenue and Main Street From Calais Avenue To Swan Street

Orleans, Mass.

the Duke of Orleans

Orleans, on Cape Cod’s elbow, has had its share of military assaults. The British captured the town twice during the American Revolution, and the Orleans militia skirmished with a British warship trying to dock at Rock Harbor during the War of 1812. And German U-boats shelled Orleans during World War I.

The town split off from Eastham in 1797, when memories of the British occupation still stung.

Isaac Snow, a descendant of Mayflower Pilgrim Stephen Hopkins, supposedly suggested the French place name for the new town. The British had captured Snow during the American Revolution and confined him aboard a prison ship in England. Snow then escaped to France, where he more than likely learned about the popular Louis Philippe Joseph, Duke of Orleans. The duke, though one of the richest men in France, supported the French revolutionary cause.

CG 36500

Isaac Snow’s family opened its first store in Orleans in 1887. The Snow family still runs Snow’s, where you can probably find whatever you need.

The town also harbors a motorboat listed on the National Register of Historic Places, CG36500, used in the courageous rescue of 31 Pendleton crewmembers in 1952.

CG 36500 is berthed at Rock Harbor n Rock Harbor Rd., Orleans, Mass.; Snow’s, 22 Main St., Orleans, Mass.

Fremont, N.H.

Fremont, N.H., took its French place name from the illegitimate son of a French-Canadian schoolteacher. John C. Fremont also happened to be a military hero and the Republican Party’s first candidate for president of the United States.

Fremont, N.H., meeting house

Fremont’s mother was the daughter of a wealthy Virginia planter. At 17 she married a well-to-do army major in his 60s. The major hired a Canadian immigrant, Charles Fremon, to tutor his young wife. They fell in love and ran away to Savannah, Ga., where John Fremon was born out of wedlock. The major refused to divorce John’s mother, so she could not marry his father.

When Charles Fremon died, John Fremont and his mother lived in poverty and disgrace. He compensated with pride and ambition.

During his lifetime he fought in the Mexican War, rose to the rank of major general, explored the West, gained and lost a fortune, served in the U.S. Senate from California and ran for president in 1856. He also met and married Jessie Benton, daughter of the powerful U.S. senator from Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton.

John Fremont

Benton earned immense popularity for his support of western expansion. In 1840, the town of Coventry, N.H., decided to change its name to Benton in honor of the senator. Fourteen years later, a town called Poplin, N.H., decided to change its name to Fremont after the future presidential candidate and senator’s son-in-law

Today the town takes justifiable pride in its 1800 Meetinghouse – and for being home to the stunningly awful all-girl group, The Shaggs.

Fremont Meeting House 464 Main Street , Fremont, N.H.

Lafayette Village, R.I.

When the Marquis de Lafayette made his triumphal tour of the United States in 1824, enthusiastic Rhode Islanders renamed a village in North Kingstown after him. Previously, people had given it a less glamorous name: the North Kingstown Cotton Factory.

Lafayette in 1825

Lafayette, though, remained little more than a French place name for a cotton mill, a smattering of houses and an unusually wide road. The road had been ordered by the Rhode Island colony in 1703 so farmers could bring their goods to the port of Wickford. The road had to be as straight as possible and 160 feet wide to allow grazing for livestock.

Today, the National Register of Historic Places lists Lafayette Village as a monument to Robert Rodman, a paternalistic textile manufacturer in the tradition of southern Rhode Island.

Rodman, a relative of the Hazard manufacturing family in nearby Peace Dale, began making wool textiles in Lafayette in the 1840s. He incorporated as the Rodman Manufacturing Co. in 1883 and employed 500 workers by 1900. The Rodman family still owned the company into the late 1940s, when it ceased operation.

One of the Rodman mansions in Lafayette. Google maps photo.

The company sold St. Nicolas Doeskin to growing markets in the south and west. In 1876, “one supposes a celebratory mood as Rodman packed his entire family, children and grandchildren off to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, where the doeskin, a luxury fabric with nap, won a medal,” according to Lafayette Village’s nomination for the National Register of Historic Places.

Shortly after the Centennial, Rodman bought the engineering marvel of the day, a Corliss steam engine, to power his textile machinery. In 1877 he built the vast brick mill that still stands.

Rodman also built a mansion for himself (now a patio furniture store) and three more for his children, a church, boarding houses and workers cottages.

The paternalistic Rodmans stayed within the community, made up of local Yankees who in the 1970s remembered it as ‘one big family’ and ‘all English.’ The Rodmans sponsored the Lafayette Cornet Band, magic shows, games and pottery classes to entertain the mill workers – and, no doubt, to distract them from any union organizers who might be prowling around.

For more photos of Lafayette in the 1970s, click here.

Lafayette Historic District, Properties bordering Ten Rod Road from Wickford Junction to the culvert east of 935 Ten Rod Road and side streets, North Kingstown, R.I.

Barre, Vt.

Barre, Vt., took its name from an Irishman of French Huguenot ancestry who gave the Sons of Liberty their name.

Isaac Barre

Isaac Barre, the son of Dublin’s high sheriff, served the British Army with distinction before representing Chipping Wycombe in Parliament. He had a long, colorful parliamentary career, during which he vigorously opposed the taxation of the American colonies. While addressing Parliament, he coined the phrase ‘Sons of Liberty.’

During his military career, Barre fought at the Battle of Quebec and gathered around the dying general James Wolfe. John Gouldsbury, the earliest settler of Barre, also fought at the Battle of Quebec under Wolfe.

Until 1788, roving bands of Indians were the only inhabitants of the area described as ‘primeval forests, granite hills and green valleys.’ The first settlers named it Wildersborough, but the residents didn’t like it and the name didn’t stick.

According to one story, the settlement’s selectmen decided the person who contributed the most to a meeting house could rename the town. For 64 pounds, Ezekiel Wheeler got to name the town Barre.

Socialist Labor Hall

According to another story, two men from Massachusetts put forward their preferred names at a Town Meeting. Both Captain Joseph Thompson of Holden and Jonathon Sherman of Barre wanted to name it after their former towns. They decided to fight it out in a barn, and Sherman won.

Barre grew into a center of granite cutting shortly after the War of 1812. The work attracted a diverse group of European immigrants, including Italian anarchists and members of the International Workers of the World. In 1916 and in 1929 Barre residents elected a Socialist Party candidate as mayor.

The old Socialist Labor Party Hall still stands, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

Socialist Labor Party Hall, 46 Granite St., Barre City, Vt.

Images for French place names: Fremont Meeting House, By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24513389; Socialist Labor Hall By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35779862; Calais By P199 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18061218; Orange church By The original uploader was Staib at English Wikipedia – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34580770

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Six New England Places With a Unique Name

The early English and Scots-Irish settlers tended not to give a new settlement a unique name.

Many New England place names came from towns and shires in England and Ireland. The Puritans even named groups of towns in New England after groups of towns in England: Boston and Lynn, for example, were next to each other in East Anglia as they were in Massachusetts. So were Worcester and Leominster, and Amesbury, Salisbury, Newbury and Andover.

In Rhode Island, the geography of England was mimicked in Warwick and Coventry and in Bristol and Newport. In New Hampshire, Sandown and South Hampton are next to each other as they were in England. And, as in England, there was once a Gosport on the Isles of Shoals next to Portsmouth in New Hampshire.

Unique Names

The Scots-Irish did the same. As the earliest pioneers after the Puritans, they named their frontier towns after home. New Hampshire has a Derry, Dublin and Antrim; Massachusetts a Colrain and a Charlemont; Maine a Belfast, a Limerick and a Newry. Both Vermont and New Hampshire have a Londonderry, and Connecticut has a Waterford.

But sometimes the first settlers simply named a place after its geographic features, like Marshfield, Mass., and Rockport, Maine.

Others named their towns after heroes, like Washington, Warren, Hancock and Adams. Generally, individuals only had towns named after them after the American Revolution, though one New Hampshire governor was the exception that proved the rule.

There are at least six New England places that have a unique name found nowhere else.

Mianus, Conn.

The Mianus River

Mianus is a village along the Mianus River that lies in three other districts in Greenwich, Conn: Riverside, Greenwich and Cos Cob.

It began as a project of the Veterans Administration and the Town of Greenwich to build 40 starter homes for servicemen returning from World War II and their families. During the Baby Boom there were 90 children in Mianus, and they played in the nearby woods and along the river and harbor. A writer named Jack T. Scully grew up there and wrote a book of poems celebrating his elegiac childhood, called Mianus Village.

The unique name is pronounced ‘maɪˈænəs,’ which made it the butt of jokes on the reality show Jackass.

Mianus is also known to antique inboard marine engine enthusiasts because it was home to the Mianus Motor Works, founded in 1889.

The area was given its unique name by English settlers in the 17^th century, who called it Mianus after the chief of the Siwanoy Indian tribe.

Kennebunk, Maine

The King’s Highway in Kennebunk, Maine.

A large sign once proclaimed, “Kennebunk, the only village in the world so named.” The locally famous billboard boasting the town’s unique name was attached to the Kesslen Shoe Mill on Route One.

‘Kennebunk’ was an Abenaki Indian word meaning ‘the long cut bank,’ which refers to the long bank behind Kennebunk Beach. The town’s presence on the Kennebunk and Mousam rivers made it an early center of shipping and shipbuilding. Later, manufacturers built mills on the rivers to make textiles, leatheroid, shoes and luggage.

Today Kennebunk is a bedroom community and a destination for upscale tourists attracted by its beaches and shopping. The town was overshadowed by its neighbor – also with a unique name. Kennebunkport was often in the world’s news when President George H.W. Bush summered there at his family compound.

Kennebunk today is home to the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, historic buildings, the 1799 Inn, Tom’s of Maine and the Brick Store Museum.

Dracut, Mass.

The historic Old Yellow Meeting House in Dracut.

Passaconaway, the Pennacook sachem who brokered peace in the Merrimack River Valley, spent most of his life on what is now Dracut, Mass.

It was known as Augumtoocooke until Passaconaway’s daughter Bess sold the land in 1665 to Captain John Evered, whose family was associated with Draycot Cerne in northern England. (Evered had earlier been in charge of the execution of Mary Dyer.) The land was sold for ‘four yards of Duffill and one pound of tobacco’ and given the unique name of Dracut.

Dracut belonged to Chelmsford until 1701, when it formally separated. Part of Dracut was set aside as a Praying Town for Christianized Indians. Dracut’s paper and textile mills attracted French-Canadian and Irish immigrants. Modern real estate development swallowed much of the town. What isn’t a suburb of Lowell is now part of Lowell, which annexed large parts of the town. Dracut has a population of about 30,000 and still retains some rural landscapes and historic buildings.

Henniker, N.H.

The Mill Pond in West Henniker

Henniker, a bucolic New England town near Concord, prides itself on being ‘the only Henniker on earth.’ It was chartered before the American Revolution and named for British merchant Sir John Henniker, an unusual practice at the time.

Christopher Lenney argued that towns named ‘directly and unequivocally for persons are largely of post-Revolutionary vintage’ in Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England. “The custom was un-English and only became widespread in the 19th century, when antipathy to the practice had broken down.”.

New Hampshire Gov. Benning Wentworth broke with that tradition when he dispensed land grants and charters in Vermont and New Hampshire, naming them after friends in high places to win their support for his westward expansion. Henniker, which received its charter in 1768, had been known as Todd’s Town and New Marlborough until Wentworth decided to name it after his friend.

Today Henniker is home to New England College, Pat’s Peak and the Old Depot No. 6 book barn.

Burrillville, R.I.

The Moses Taft House in Burrillville, R.I.

Burrillville, R.I., broke off from Glocester in 1806 and named itself after a favorite son, James Burrill, Jr. Burrill had established himself as a leader of Rhode Island by the tender age of 34. He had become Rhode Island’s attorney general at 25 and was elected a U.S. senator in 1817. Shortly before he died on Christmas Day in 1820, he delivered an eloquent speech opposing the Missouri Compromise, which banned free blacks and people of mixed race from settling in Missouri. That clause ‘was entirely repugnant to the Constitution of the United States’ he said, because it created separate classes of citizens.

Burrillville originally comprised 60 square miles but lost land to Massachusetts over a border dispute. Now part of the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, Burrillville once had many mills, now gone or shuttered.

St. Johnsbury, Vt.

St. Johnsbury, Vt.

St. Johnsbury was organized in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom in 1790, a time when the un-English custom of naming towns after individuals began to take hold.

St. Johnsbury was named for Michel Guillaume St. Jean de Crevecoeur, also known as J. Hector St. John, a French writer living in New York. St. John wrote Letters from an American Farmer in 1782, a book praising American agriculture.

St. John befriended George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, and he corresponded with Ethan Allen, who wanted to name the town St. John. The writer suggested St. Johnsbury, realizing that several places already had the name St. John.

St. Johnsbury became a minor manufacturing center where the Fairbanks family made its famous platform scales. By the 1940s, St. Johnsbury was the world’s largest manufacturer of scales, maple sugar and candlepins for bowling.

Today it is a quintessential Victorian industrial town with a large historic district that encompasses the Railroad Street District, Main Street, the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum and the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium.

Photos: Dracut Old Yellow Meeting House, By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26184431 ;Henniker Congregational Church and Historical Society, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3380925. This story last updated in 2022.

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Connecticut’s Mysterious Dave Mather: The Law of the Old West

Mysterious Dave Mather came to be a lawman in the old West pretty much by chance. The taciturn son of a Connecticut sea captain, he plied his violent trade on both sides of the law.

He was born on Aug. 10, 1851, in Saybrook, Conn., the eldest son of Ulysses and Lydia Mather. He called Cotton Mather and Increase Mather ancestors, an incorrect assertion that would have had the old Puritans rolling in their graves.

Mysterious Dave Mather

Mather’s father and mother had died by the time he reached 16. Ulysses, a sea captain in the China trade, died in Shanghai after the Chinese cook stabbed him.

Dave and his brother Josiah tried following in their father’s footsteps once. They signed on as crew on a ship that took them to New Orleans, but that ended their seafaring days. From there the two looked to the rapidly growing West for their future.

Mysterious Dave Heads West

The two Mathers turned to buffalo hunting for a time, and by 1879, then in his late 20s, Mather joined up with famed western lawman and writer Bat Masterson. Masterson assembled a posse to enforce a lawsuit over ownership of the Royal Gorge Route Railroad.

In the 1880s, there was sometimes little difference between lawmen and outlaws. But people considered Masterson somewhat progressive because would give an outlaw a chance to surrender before opening fire.

Bat Masterson

Not so with Mather, who earned the nickname Mysterious Dave because he didn’t speak much. Louis L’Amour wrote, “Dave Mather didn’t wait for you. If you came to town talkin’ loud about what you intended to do, Dave would find you and shoot you before you even got started.”

Mather led a violent career, even by the standards of the day. He had been charged in several schemes, including counterfeiting and attempting to sell phony gold bricks in Texas. He was also an on-again, off-again cattle rustler and horse thief. But in 1880 his career as a lawman started in East Las Vegas, N.M., where he took the job of assistant marshal.

The Legend of Mysterious Dave

The Mather legend began in January of that year when he and the marshal got caught in a gunfight with a gang of drunks. The marshal died and Mather became acting marshal. He killed one of the gang and shot another. The two remaining men escaped.

Mather then did a short stint as marshal in El Paso, Texas. He took up with the madam of a brothel for a time, but that ended badly when she accused Mather of stealing from her.

Mather then returned to Dodge City, where he had lived earlier. In 1882 he got a job as assistant marshal and developed a rivalry with a man named Tom Nixon.

Stagecoach outside of a Dodge City home

Dodge City was trying to control its saloons and brothels at the time. According to legend, Mysterious Dave would sit on the porch at the marshal’s office daring anyone to make trouble. One night, after a gang killed the marshal, Dave supposedly proceeded to the saloon where the seven-man gang had retreated and single-handedly killed them all in a wild gunfight.

When Nixon managed to replace Mather as assistant marshal, their feud escalated. In 1884, Nixon took a shot at Mather, slightly injuring him. Three days later, Mather ended matters by shooting and killing Nixon. He was tried and exonerated of any wrongdoing under the theory he was simply defending himself.

Leaving Dodge

Mather and his brother didn’t stay out of trouble for long. In 1885 they were accused of killing a gambler in a Dodge City saloon. When they were released on bail, the two men left town. Mysterious Dave disappeared from history.

In his absence, Mysterious Dave’s legend grew. One colorful anecdote involved his drinking at a Dodge City saloon. Mather was said to occasionally ask the bartender to hand him a pistol so that Mysterious Dave could take a shot at a bell outside. If he missed the bell, he concluded he was drunk and needed to go home.

One night, fed up with Dave, the bartender loaded the gun with blanks. Dave took his shot, missed the bell and headed off into the night. When he encountered a coyote, the drunk marshal reached for his gun and fired. Mystified, Dave concluded the animal possessed supernatural powers because he was unable to hit it – with the blanks in his gun.

The final days of Mysterious Dave are, naturally, a mystery. Some said he joined up with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Others said he went to Texas. His brother said that he simply never knew what happened to Dave after they left Dodge.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Rose Wilder Lane, the Secret Behind the Little House Books

In 1931, 44-year-old Rose Wilder Lane saw a manuscript of a book called Pioneer Girl. It told the story of a homesteader during the great westward expansion, from Wisconsin across Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, the Dakota Territory and back again to Missouri.

Rose Wilder Lane

Rose had been flying high as one of the best paid journalists of her time and a world traveler who lived for a time in Albania. It had all come crashing down in 1929 with the stock market collapse.

Not only did the crash wipe her out financially, it wiped out her elderly parents’ savings. Worse, the market for her writing dried up in the Great Depression.

So Rose Wilder Land moved back to her parents’ farm in Mansfield, Mo., and tried to start over. Her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, gave her the chance. Pioneer Girl was the genesis of the children’s classic, Little House in the Big Woods, and the seven Little House books that followed.

The name Rose Wilder Lane did not appear as co-author on the books. She always downplayed her role in writing them. By doing so, she sparked a debate about her contribution to some of the most popular children’s books of the 20^th century.

Rose Wilder Lane

Rose Wilder Lane was the only surviving child of Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was born Dec. 5, 1886 in De Smet, the Dakota Territory — the prairie where Little House on the Prairie took place. A bright student, she completed three years of Latin in one. Her parents’ financial struggles, however, prevented her from going to college.

She married a traveling salesman, and they traveled around the United States. She eventually divorced him. By 1910 Rose Wilder Lane began freelance writing, and in 1915 she got a job as editorial assistant on the San Francisco Bulletin. Her talents were quickly recognized, and she began churning out biographies of famous people and romantic fiction serials.

Laura and Almanzo Wilder

Rose Wilder Lane quit her job after three years and went back to freelancing. This time, she found tremendous success. She wrote short stories for leading magazines that were nominated for O’Henry prizes. Her novels made best seller lists.

Money gave her freedom, and she traveled widely in Europe. For long periods she lived in Albania with her friend Helen Dore Boylston, who wrote the Sue Barton children’s books.

Highway sign at site of Rose Wilder Lane’s birthplace.

After her money disappeared in 1929 and her career tanked, she moved back to Missouri with her elderly parents. Until 1935, Rose Wilder Lane lived in the farmhouse Almanzo had built just a few hundred yards from her parents’ newer cottage.

Little House

Rose had no luck finding a publisher for Pioneer Girl. One editor suggested she turn the first part into a children’s book. Mother and daughter liked the idea and wrote Little House in the Big Woods. Harper and Row agreed to publish it in 1931.

Suddenly, out of the blue, Laura Ingalls Wilder achieved literary success. Critics considered her a naïve genius along the lines of Grandma Moses.

Rose never publicly acknowledged her role in writing her mother’s books, giving critics plenty of grist for debate.

Did she take a rough manuscript and substantially rewrite it? Or did she simply encourage her mother and help her get the book published through her literary connections? The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

Rose was likely a true collaborator at most or an aggressive editor at the least. Her mother had written for local newspapers for two decades, and Rose had a track record as a novelist and editor.

Goddam Juvenile

Rose may have revealed her attitude toward writing the Little House books. “Have to finish my mother’s goddam juvenile,’ she wrote in her diary on May 10, 1936.

Rose Wilder Lane in 1933

While working on the first few of her mother’s books, she hated living in Missouri and felt stifled on her parents’ farm. But she rebuilt her writing career, enough to buy a farmhouse in Danbury, Conn., in 1938. There she could be near the New York literary scene, and she lived there for 25 years.

Rose Wilder Lane had ambitions other than writing (or editing) children’s literature. She went on to found the American Libertarian Party. She continued to express her views on individualism in books and columns for The Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper.

In 1965, Rose Wilder Lane reported on the Vietnam War for Women’s Day magazine at the age of 78.

Rose Wilder Lane died in her sleep at age 81, on October 30, 1968, just as she was about to embark on a trip around the world.

This story was updated in 2022. Image of Rose Wilder Lane highway marker By Winkelvi – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70242639.

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