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Windsor Conn.

Arsenic and Old Lace: Not Funny to the Man Who Brought a Serial Killer to Justice

On Jan. 10, 1941, Hartford State’s Attorney Hugh Alcorn attended the opening night of the Broadway play, Arsenic and Old Lace. The audience laughed uproariously at the dark comedy about two elderly spinsters who poison lonely old men with arsenic-laced elderberry wine. The New York Times drama critic wrote that it was ‘so funny none of us will ever forget it.’

Hugh Alcorn didn’t find it funny. Not in the least.

First edition cover of Arsenic and Old Lace

As the prosecutor for Hartford County, Alcorn spent years trying to bring to justice Amy Archer-Gilligan, the subject of Arsenic and Old Lace. She had posed as a caring Christian woman while uncaringly murdering as many as 50 people.

And now Amy Archer-Gilligan, notorious serial killer, whiled away her days at the Connecticut Hospital for the Insane in Middletown. There she kept up the pious Christian routine, praying in her chair with a Bible in her lap, wearing a black dress trimmed with lace. Her victims, who had all died horrible deaths, moldered in their graves.

What was funny about that?

Arsenic and Old Lace Prosecutor

Hugh Alcorn was born in 1872 in Suffield, Conn., to Irish parents who had immigrated as children to the United States in 1838. His father served in the Civil War, suffering as a POW in the notorious Andersonville Prison. That left him with an addiction to drink, which led to his death by drowning.

Hugh Alcorn

Hugh Alcorn compensated for his father’s inadequacies, studying at the Connecticut Literary Institution (now Suffield Academy) and then reading for the law at the Hartford firm of Case, Bryant and Case. He married, had three sons, ran for the state Legislature and won twice. He built a lovely Colonial Revival house in Suffield. In 1908, the Connecticut Superior Court appointed him state’s attorney for Hartford County. Over his next 34 years in the job, he won a reputation as a tough but fair prosecutor.

In 1914, a woman named Nellie Pierce came to see him and described her suspicions about her brother’s death. Franklin Andrews had been living at the Archer Home for Elderly People and Chronic Invalids in Windsor, Conn. He had seemed in fine health just before he died suddenly of a gastric ailment.

Franklin Andrews

Franklin Andrews, a robust 60-year-old, had paid the proprietress—Amy Archer-Gilligan–$1,000 to take care of him for the rest of his life. Pierce had just seen her brother a few days before Archer-Gilligan called her to say he’d taken ill. Pierce wanted to see him, but Archer-Gilligan suggested she wait.

Amy Archer-Gilligan, the serial killer depicted as two crazy spinsters in Arsenic and Old Lace

A few hours after the call, Franklin Andrews died an agonizing death. An undertaker immediately whisked his body away for embalming. When Nellie saw her brother’s body, she was surprised at how well he looked. And then she, her sister and her brother went through his things. They discovered a letter from Archer-Gilligan pressing him for a loan of $500. Andrews had given her the money, and Nellie Pierce demanded it back, according to the Hartford Courant.

She got the money, and she went to see Hugh Alcorn. Alcorn was also visited by his friend, Courant editor Clifton Sherman. Sherman gave him evidence that something was seriously amiss at the Archer Home.

Archer Home for Elderly

The Archer Home was a large brick house at 37 Prospect St. outside downtown Windsor. Alcorn’s investigation revealed that Amy Archer and her husband James had bought it in 1907 after running a similar convalescent home in Newington, Conn.

The site of the Arsenic and Old Lace murders on Prospect Street in Windsor has been broken up into apartments. Image courtesy Google Maps.

James Archer died suddenly of a previously undiagnosed kidney ailment on Feb. 2, 1910. He left Amy, then 36, with their 13-year-old daughter, Mary. Conveniently, Amy had taken out an insurance policy on James just weeks before he died. She would thus be able to keep the Prospect Street house.

As many as 20 residents – she called them ‘inmates’ – lived in the house at any one time. They could pay from $7 to $25 a week, or a flat fee of $1,000 for the rest of their lives. The house doctor, Howard King, later said Amy sometimes herded the inmates together into crowded rooms and let them fend for themselves.

Neighbors on Prospect Street had noticed an unusually large number of deaths in the home. The undertaker always arrived in the dead of night to take away the latest body.

St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church today. Image courtesy Google Maps.

What was going on? Amy was a tiny, pious widow who always carried a Bible and gave generously to St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church. She said she had the bodies removed from the house quickly because she didn’t want to upset the other inmates. But why so many bodies?

Michael Gilligan

In 1913, Amy had married Michael Gilligan, a healthy and hearty widower with a handful of adult children and a hefty savings account. He died on Feb. 10, 1914, just months after their marriage, and he willed his entire estate to her.

Amy Archer-Gilligan covered her tracks cleverly, but not cleverly enough. Michael Gilligan had a friend, Carl Goslee, who wrote obituaries as a freelancer for the Courant. He had written a lot of obituaries about the inmates of the Archer home. Between 1907 and 1916, 60 residents died at the home, 48 within the last five years.

Goslee took his suspicions to Clifton Sherman, his editor, who sent him and another reporter to bring back the death certificates of all who died at the Archer Home.

The obituary writer also went to the W.H. Mason Drugstore (in 2020, the Broad Street Barber and Siam Corner Thai Kitchen). There he learned Amy and her inmates had bought huge amounts of arsenic. Amy claimed she needed the poison for a serious rat problem at the home.

The H.H. Mason Drugstore today. Image courtesy Google Maps.

Alcorn’s Investigation

In 1914, the Connecticut State Police was only 11 years old and murder investigation hadn’t developed into the science it is today. That, at least, is one explanation for why it took nearly two years for state police to arrest Amy Archer-Gilligan for the murder of Franklin Andrews.

Toward the end of 1914, an undercover state police officer named Zola Bennett moved into the home pretending to be a wealthy widow. Bennett learned how Amy bilked her residents, either borrowing money from them or asking them to turn over their estates to her in return for lifetime care.

The state police carefully gathered more evidence over the next year.

By May 9, 1916, “We became certain that something was wrong,” Alcorn told newspaper reporters.

“Then we exhumed the bodies and were convinced that it was a case of cool, calculated premeditated murder of inmates of the home,” he said.

Buried Bodies

Alcorn had ordered Michael Gilligan exhumed, and the coroner found arsenic in his body. Though undertakers used arsenic in the embalming process, that couldn’t explain the enormous amount of arsenic in his stomach.

Alcorn also ordered investigators to dig up Franklin Andrews. He wanted it done secretly because he feared Archer-Gilligan would destroy evidence if she knew how close the investigation was coming.

The Courant reported the “eerie tale” began “in a cemetery toolhouse in Cheshire on a spring night in 1916, where Dr. Arthur J. Wolff and a small group of assistants performed an autopsy by the light of a lantern and ‘two pocket electric flashlights’ on the exhumed remains of Franklin Andrews.

Hillside Cemetery in Cheshire, Conn., where Franklin Andrews was buried (twice). Image courtesy Google Maps.

The former Franklin Andrews, dead two years, rested on a plank placed on two barrels.

Nellie Pierce had joined them, and watched as the doctor determined her brother had died of arsenic poisoning. His death certificate claimed he had died of a gastric ulcer. Howard King, Amy’s house doctor and Windsor’s medical examiner, had certified Andrews’ death.

Alcorn ordered three other autopsies. In the end, he decided to charge Amy Archer-Gilligan with five counts of first-degree murder. Police, though, believed she killed at least 20 inmates by giving them elderberry wine laced with arsenic.

One victim, Charles Smith, had withdrawn his life savings, more than $3,000, and given it to her before he died at 87. Another, Alice Gowdy, had paid $500 to move into Franklin Andrews’ room just a few days after his death. She died the same way he did six months later.

Investigators also determined Amy Archer-Gilligan had forged Michael Gilligan’s will leaving everything to her.

Arsenic and Old Lace Arrest

On May 18, 1916, Hugh Alcorn and state police officers – including Zola Bennett, who had since moved out – visited Amy Archer-Gilligan at the home.

Under questioning, she insisted on her innocence.

“I am a poor, hard-working woman and I can’t understand why I am persecuted as I have been during the last few years,” the Courant reported she told police. “This is a Christian work and one that is very trying as we have to put up with lots of things on account of the peculiarities of the old people.”

The police carried away papers and bottles with labels on them, the Courant reported. More than a year later, on June 19, 1917, her month-long trial began. Alcorn, who led the prosecution, brought in medical experts to testify that her victims died of poison, and they had ingested it while alive.

It took a jury 15 minutes to find Amy Archer-Gilligan guilty.

Mary Archer at the time of the Arsenic and Old Lace trial

The judge sentenced her to death by hanging. But she appealed, and received a new trial in 1919. Her daughter Mary testified to her mother’s innocence, revealing that she had an addiction to morphine.

During the trial, Amy kept repeating the same phrase, “I want to go home.” Then, finally, she made a plea. She’d admit to guilt on one count of second-degree murder. Hugh Alcorn accepted the bargain, and she went to the Wethersfield State Prison, supposedly for life.

In 1924, officials declared her temporarily insane and sent her to the state insane asylum in Middletown, Conn. Her medical records are sealed, and so the only clue to her mental state are reports that she played funeral music on the piano when no one had died.

The insane asylum in Middletown, Conn.

Her temporary insanity lasted 38 years, and she died there on April 23, 1962.

The Rest of the Story

Hugh Alcorn continued prosecuting criminals, 15,000 during his career, to be exact. Meanwhile, a playwright named Joseph Kesserling asked Alcorn to help him write a play about the Amy Archer-Gilligan murders. Alcorn gave him access to court documents.

Kesselring had the good fortune to win the sponsorship of talented producers Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, according to Gregory William Mank in The Very Witching Time of Night: Dark Alleys of Classic Horror Cinema. Mank called the original version, titled Bodies in the Basement, a tasteless mess, ‘almost Springtime for Hitler-style awful’ and devoid of humor.

Lindsay and Crouse quietly rewrote the play, turning Amy into two maiden aunts, giving Kesselring credit and renaming it Arsenic and Old Lace. They did, though, share royalties with Kesserling.

The audience loved the black humor, with lines such as, “Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.” Or, “One of our gentlemen found time to say ‘How delicious!’ before he died.”

It ran for 1,400 shows. Hugh Alcorn, of course, didn’t find it funny. He retired the next year, and died in 1955 at the age of 82.

One son, Hugh Meade Alcorn, served as Republican leader of the Connecticut General Assembly in the 1940s and chairman of the Republican National Committee in the late 1950s. Another son, Howard Wells Alcorn, served as Chief Justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court. A third son, Robert Hayden Alcorn, wrote a number of books, including No Bugles for Spies and a history of Suffield, Conn.

In 1944 Frank Capra turned the play into the film classic starring Cary Grant.

Images: Arsenic and Old Lace cover, By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia

With thanks to Devil’s Rooming House: The True Story of America’s Deadliest Female Serial Killer By M. William Phelps and Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Connecticut History by Ray Bendici. This story was updated in 2022.

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Connecticut’s Rev. John Stoddard Sells His Wife, Loses His Church

John Stoddard – Revolutionary War veteran, Congregational minister and descendent of a long-established Connecticut family – pushed his life onto the rocks at the age of 30 when he decided to sell his wife.

Born in Woodbury. Conn., in 1767, John Stoddard was the great-grandson of Anthony Stoddard, pastor for 61 years at the town’s First Church. Several sources list John as a private in the “Connecticut Line,” the troops that Connecticut had to provide to fight the American Revolution.

John Stoddard Gets a Wife

In September 1786, John married Phebe Northrup from Washington, Conn. The couple had two children while John studied the ministry. After traveling some, Stoddard arrived in Jamaica, Vt. Then in 1794, John Stoddard became pastor of the Congregational Church there.

The Congregational Church was the second church in Jamaica. The Baptists had previously established a church. In a town vote, Stoddard was not officially called to serve as minister, but the town did give him land. It had previously given 100 acres to the Baptist Church for use of its minister. It split that grant in half and gave half to the Congregational Church for use of Stoddard.

Stoddard was part of a small increase in immigration that to Vermont. Families from southern New England had found their prospects stifled at the end of the Revolution. So they travelled to rural Vermont to establish their fortunes.

Stoddard didn’t last long as pastor, however. Because he sold his wife.

Wife Selling

Wife-selling was not unheard of in the early days of America. An old custom, it came from Great Britain where the upper class had difficulty breaking the marriage bond. Divorce was both rare and expensive. And generally the courts required a cause, such as desertion or adultery.

Selling a Wife (1812–14), painting by Thomas Rowlandson

The lower classes also required a cause for divorce. But they had another, quicker way out of a bad marriage. A husband could sell his wife to another man for a few shillings or other compensation. It was sort of a precursor to no-fault divorces.

Often the wife directed the sale because she already caught the eye of her future husband/buyer. But at the very least, the wife needed to support the sale. Because if matters came to court, selling a wife could get sticky.

In 1645, Bagett (Bygod) Egleston of Windsor, Conn., had to pay a fine of 20 shillings for selling his wife Sarah. Details of the case are scarce, though apparently the sale was not to her liking. That resulted in the court’s involvement. A later interpretation of the story held that Sarah, much younger than Bagett ,hounded him so that he wished to get rid of her.

Stories in the Press

And Alice Morse Earle in her Colonial Dames and Good Wives reported on another wife sale gone awry. This one failed, perhaps, due to buyer’s remorse. The details appeared in the Boston Evening Post of March 15, 1736.

Boston. The beginning of last Week a pretty odd and uncommon Adventure happened in this Town, between 2 Men about a certain woman, each one claiming her as his Wife, but so it was, that one of them had actually disposed of his Right in her to the other for Fifteen Shillings this Currency, who had only paid ten of it in part, and refus’d to pay the other Five, inclining rather to quit the Woman and lose his Earnest; but two Gentlemen happening to be present, who were Friends to Peace, charitably gave him half a Crown a piece, to enable him to fulfil his Agreement, which the Creditor readily took, and gave the Woman a modest Salute, wishing her well, and his Brother Sterling much Joy of his Bargain.

Earle, who wrote about many New England customs, explained.

The meagre sale-money, fifteen shillings, was the usual sum which changed hands in England at similar transactions, though one dame of high degree was sold for a hundred guineas.

John Stoddard Sells a Wife

By all accounts, Stoddard’s wife was happy with the sale. His congregation, not so much.

In 1797, Rev. Stoddard sought an honorable dismission from his post with the church. A dismission without the word honorable attached simply would mean he had left the church — probably in bad graces. An honorable dismission would signal to any other churches that Stoddard had been a good minister and, should he be looking for work, he should be considered. The church denied his request, and instead appointed a council to hear complaints against Rev. Stoddard, of which there were many. The church records report.

Ezra Livermore charged him with deceit in relation of the manner of his coming to Jamaica, but the council thought that while there was a show of it, there was no intention of deceiving.

We recommend to pastor and people, solemnly and faithfully to examine themselves at this day when the frowns of Providence are so evidently upon them. Be entreated, beloved, to inquire impartially what you have done amiss, and humble yourselves before God under his rebukes.

Imitate the meek and benevolent temper of Christ, one toward another, forgive one another, and pray one for another, if any man have a quarrel against any as you hope to obtain forgiveness of your Father in Heaven. Let all wrath and malice and bitterness be put away from you with all strife. Be guarded, brethren, against a spirit of division, seek the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace. Be careful and tender of each other’s character, with charity, disposed to cover rather than to magnify each other’s faults.

With that, Stoddard was dismissed.

Aftermath

And what of Phebe Stoddard? Her trail is lost, though some inspired genealogist could probably close the loop on this story.

Both Federal Writers’ Project Guide to the Green Mountain State and Gazetteer and Business Directory of Windham County, Vt. reported that she was happy with the transfer. She went on to raise a family with her new husband.

Wife-selling, as a custom, was more common in England – where it was sometimes conducted in a public forum or market. It died out in the late 1800s.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The First Town Meeting Still Going in Six States

Town Meeting dates to the European settlement of New England, and it persists today in town halls, schools and auditoriums.

Not to be confused with Town Hall meetings, it’s a form of direct democracy in which a community gathers and votes on budgets and policies.

Town Meeting Misery

A fan of Town Meeting once called them ‘a little primitive nursery of republican truth.‘ Others have called them ‘misery.’

Exeter, N.H., Judge Henry Shute did not enjoy Town Meeting. In 1898, he complained about Town Meeting, writing,

The hall is full of smoke, there are not seats enough, and the people walk restlessly to and fro, talk gossip, laugh and pay but little attention to the speakers, unless the discussion waxes warm, when there is a rush forward, and the speakers are loudly applauded or roundly hooted, as their opinions find favor or otherwise with the audience. Small boys and some not so small chase each other and wrestle, and the occasional attempt of some inebriated gentlemen to harangue the crowd in the back part of the hall meets with great favor.

The New England Historical Society tried to find the oldest continuously run Town Meeting in each state. We searched records to find the oldest town (or city, in the case of Vermont), when it held its first Town Meeting and whether it’s still held. We did our best. If, however, you know of an older town with a continuous Town Meeting, please include it in the comment section below the story.

Windsor, Conn.

First Church of Windsor

Puritans settled Windsor, the oldest English town in Connecticut, in 1633. In the early days, every man deemed a ‘freeman’ had a duty to attend Town Meeting. The town fined men for failing to attend without excuse.

The town convened meetings as often as needed. Sometimes they published orders and laws from the General Court, sometimes after Lecture Day or on Training Day when all the men would attend.

Windsor originally held Town Meeting in a thatched hut surrounded by a stockade. Eventually it moved to the First Church of Windsor

To be an inhabitant, you had to have a good character, a blameless life and honest conversation. Women weren’t allowed to be inhabitants, nor were vicious and abandoned persons, idlers, vagabonds and paupers.

In 1637, Connecticut’s General Court decreed that unmarried young men couldn’t live by themselves or with a family unless the town allowed it. Disobeying the law brought a fine of 20 shillings a week. In Windsor, Town Meeting decided who should stay and who should go.

Berwick, Maine

Berwick Town Hall

On June 9, 1713, Berwick became Maine’s ninth town. Since Maine’s older towns no longer have town meeting – or, like Castine, didn’t hold Town Meeting until later — we’re going with Berwick as having the oldest Town Meeting in Maine.

Berwick got its start in 1630, the first settlement in Maine to survive. Two others, Saint Croix Island and the Popham Colony didn’t last long. For nearly a century Berwick was a parish of Kittery, considered ‘too poor and low’ to ever form a town. Among its early settlers were indentured royalist soldiers from Scotland. The Roundheads captured them at the Battle of Dunbar during the English Civil War and sold them as slave labor.

Berwick held its first Town Meeting in the meeting house built in 1706.

Today, Berwick offers a handy guide for newcomers to Town Meeting with questions and answers such as, “Won’t I seem like an idiot if I ask questions?”

Plymouth, Mass.

Reconstructed meeting house at Plimoth Plantation

Dorchester, Mass., claims its early selectmen established the New England Town Meeting. On Oct. 8, 1633, Dorchester passed an order establishing that form of town government. Dorchester, however, has since become part of Boston — and the Pilgrims held a town meeting (then called court day) in 1622. So the distinction of having the first goes to Plymouth, Mass.

Gov. William Bradford ran the first town meeting of Plimoth Plantation in 1622 in order to divide land among the families.

The other fledgling towns followed the Pilgrim example and held annual meetings as well.

In Massachusetts, the General Court in 1635 enacted the New Towne Ordinance. It authorized each town to dispose of common property, order its civil affairs and to choose its ‘own particular officers.’

The meetings tended to get raucous, though, and in 1715 the Massachusetts General Court passed another law requiring Town Meeting to elect a moderator.

The disorderly carriage of some persons in the meetings….the affairs and business thereof is very much retarded and obstructed…at every such meeting a moderator shall be first chosen by a majority of votes, who shall thereby be empowered to manage and regulate the business of that meeting.

Only freemen had the right to vote in colonial government elections. They were shareholders in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and male property owners. But all adult taxpayers could vote in town government.

A special mention goes to Pelham, Mass., which has the oldest town hall in continuous use for town meetings. It was built in 1743.

Exeter, N.H.

Settlers founded Exeter in 1638, one of the first four townships in New Hampshire. It’s the only one of the four to still hold Town Meeting.

During the earliest days, the men of Exeter came to the town center and voted on how to divide up land. Then they had refreshments, perhaps an Election Cake, rum or hard cider. They brought their African-American servants or slaves. The black servants elected their own shadow government, called the ‘Negro Court,’ as they did throughout New England.

In addition to dividing land, electing officers and setting budgets, Exeter Town Meeting resolved controversies. According to the Exeter Historical Society, in 1641 a goodman with an illegible name let his pig run wild through the fields. The pig spoiled some corn planted by the Squamscott Indians. The town had guaranteed them the right to plant and harvest their own crops. Exeter Town Meeting consequently voted the goodman had to give the Indians a bushel of corn.

Exeter usually held its meeting in March. Starting in 1855, the town held it at the Exeter Town Hall. Sawdust was spread on the floor to sop up the mud on meeting-goers’ feet.

New Hampshire allowed towns to adopt a ballot vote in 1996, and two years later Exeter did just that.

In 2019, Exeter already held its first Town Meeting, called a Deliberative Session, in February, but it scheduled an election for March 12 at the Talbot Gym.

New Shoreham, R.I.

Block Island from the ferry

Town Meeting has disappeared from nearly half of Rhode Island’s towns. Since Rhode Island adopted the Home Rule Amendment to its Constitution in 1951, 15 of the state’s 31 towns abandoned the Financial Town Meeting as the final step in adopting a budget.

New Shoreham — Block Island – is one of the 16 towns that still hold Financial Town Meeting. It’s also one of the oldest towns in Rhode Island. And according to our research, its Town Meeting is the earliest recorded in Rhode Island, dating to 1672.

New Shoreham’s annual Financial Town Meeting is held at the Block Island School on the first Monday in May. The town has held the longest Town Meeting in recent memory: 4-1/2 days in 1991. It also holds the distinction of being the smallest town in the smallest state in the country.

Vergennes, Vt.

Vergennes Opera House and Town Hall

Most towns are bigger than Vergennes, Vt., which incorporated as a city in 1788 without first incorporating as a town or a village. Though its annual meeting is called a City Meeting, we’ll grant it the honor of ‘oldest town meeting.’

Vergennes was settled in 1766 along the Otter Creek Falls. The settlement had big ambitions to develop as an industrial center.

For a while it succeeded. The Monkton Ironworks Co. became the biggest iron foundry in the United States by the War of 1812, when it made the fittings for the fleet that defeated the British on Lake Champlain. Commerce boomed until the latter half of the 19^th century, when the railroads made Vergennes’ location on waterways irrelevant. Today it’s the smallest of Vermont’s nine cities, with a population of 2,588 in 2010.

Vergennes still has an annual meeting, called a City Meeting, that dates to 1789, the year after it incorporated.

The annual City Meeting is held at the Vergennes Opera House, a restored 1897 building that houses City Hall on the first floor.

Photos: Plimoth Plantation Meetinghouse By Swampyank at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18002716; Block Island By Billy Hathorn at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17667939. This story was updated in 2021.

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Roger Ludlow and the 1650 Scourge of Shuffleboard

In 1646, Roger Ludlow had the task of establishing laws for Connecticut. It wasn’t an easy job, but after four hard years he produced the Code of 1650. Sometimes called Ludlow’s Code, it addressed all manner of evils up to and including shuffleboard.

Ludlow belonged to the stauncher group of Puritans who left England during the Great Migration. Arriving in America in 1630, he first lived in Dorchester in Massachusetts before moving to Windsor, Conn. Later he moved to Fairfield, which he founded.

The Hazard Room, a 1792 painting by Thomas Rowlandson.

Roger Ludlow

Ludlow, an Oxford-educated lawyer, had some success in politics – serving as deputy governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and lieutenant governor of Connecticut. But his main contribution to the settlement of New England was his codification of laws for Connecticut. He also co-authored the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the first constitution in America.

Ludlow’s Code proceeded alphabetically from “Ability” to “Wrecks at Sea,” and it covers the typical crimes. Capital offenses included murder, perjury, witchcraft and smiting one’s parents. Burglars were to be branded with the letter “B” and so forth.

Ludlow didn’t stop with major crimes. His code outlawed swearing, heresy, idleness and stubbornness. And he also singled out shuffleboard for elimination.

Monument to Roger Ludlow in East Norwalk

Shuffleboard

Outlawing shuffleboard was not that unusual considering the Puritan’s general orientation and the nature of the game in Britain. Europeans had enjoyed playing it for at least 500 years. In England, it went by names like shove halfpenny and earlier shove groat.

The basics of the game were similar to today’s shuffleboard. People slid a disk down a board and got points based on where it stopped. It was played in public houses in England and was a time-waster that was generally harmless – except when disputes arose between players or large wagers resulted in hard feelings. The Puritans, who opposed most sports played with a ball, had little use for it.

King Henry VIII played at shuffleboard and outlawed it for commoners in England during his reign. There’s little doubt that the Puritans had no use for the people who pursued it. Some tavernkeepers kept the shuffleboard hidden and secret from any strangers, only brought out for trusted regulars.

Aftermath

Arthur Miller in his play about the 1692 Salem witch trials, The Crucible, notes that Bridget Bishop’s tavern had shuffleboard. That hints at the prejudice the residents of Salem would have held against her.

In the long run, of course, shuffleboard prevailed – morphing into various forms and enjoying popular revivals during the Roaring 20s and the 1950s. Even today shuffleboard can be found in its table and floor varieties.

Purchase of Norwalk, a WPA mural by Harry Townsend, in Norwalk City Hall.

As for Roger Ludlow, the publication of his code represented the high-water mark for his career in New England. He did purchase the land that became Norwalk, but he had also gotten involved in various property disputes.

His troubles included a conviction by a court for slandering a woman he had declared a witch. Ludlow left Connecticut to settle briefly with his brother in Virginia in 1654 and then travelled to Ireland. There he won an appointment to a post of magistrate. He did not return to America and died in the 1660s – well before Connecticut became the gaming and gambling capital of New England.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Mystery of the Hartford Circus Fire Still Lingers, 78 Years Later

Of all the mysteries that still surround the Hartford Circus Fire, the most compelling is the identity of a small blonde girl in a white dress. Though her body was curiously unmarked by the fire, the child dubbed ‘Little Miss 1565’ had never been identified with certainty.

Hartford Circus Fire

The Hartford Circus Fire was one of the worst fire tragedies in U.S. history, killing about 170 circus-goers and injuring more than 700. It happened 18 months after the Cocoanut Grove Fire killed 492 people in Boston.

The Hartford Circus Fire broke out during the Thursday afternoon performance of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus on July 6, 1944. About 7,000 people came to see the circus under the big top — a huge canvas weatherproofed with 1,800 pounds of paraffin wax dissolved in 6,000 gallons of either kerosene or gasoline.

Not only was the enormous canvas highly flammable, but some of the exits were blocked, contributing to the death toll. We will probably never know the exact number of victims will nor the cause of the Hartford Circus Fire. The identities of some of the victims, like Little Miss 1565, have never been established.

The Hartford Circus Fire

The Hartford Circus Fire began after the first act, the lion performance, and shortly into the second as The Great Wallendas performed their daredevil highwire stunts.

Bandleader Merle Evans probably spotted the flame first. He quickly instructed the band to play The Stars and Stripes Forever, the tune signaling distress to circus people. They played during the fire until a pole fell and forced them to quit.

The ringmaster, Fred Bradna, tried to tell the audience not to panic, but the power failed. People stampeded toward the exits, but animal cages blocked them.

World War II was still raging, and many adults were at work in war-production plants when the fire broke out. Sixty-eight of the approximately 170 who died in the Hartford Circus Fire were 15 or younger.

Spectators and circus workers sliced open the tent and pulled children out, or lifted them over the barriers that blocked their escape.

‘A big ball of fire’

Maureen Krekian was 11 years old and had gone to the circus by herself. Sixty-three years later she recalled the Hartford Circus Fire:

I remember somebody yelling and seeing a big ball of fire near the top of the tent. And this ball of fire just got bigger and bigger and bigger. By that time, everybody was panicking. The exit was blocked with the cages that the animals were brought in and out with. And there was a man taking kids and flinging them up and over that cage to get them out. I was sitting up in the bleachers and jumped down — I was three-quarters of the way up. You jump down and it was all straw underneath. There was a young man, a kid, and he had a pocketknife. And he slit the tent, took my arm and pulled me out.

Few who survived ever forgot it. The late actor Charles Nelson Reilly, then 13, made it out of the big top. Many years later he said he rarely attended the theater since the audience sounds reminded him of the crowd at the Hartford Circus Fire.

Little Miss 1565

About eight minutes after it first caught fire, the flaming big top collapsed. Victims were burned by melting paraffin, trampled to death in the panic or asphyxiated or burned when the canvas fell. Seven hundred people suffered injuries. The only animals in the tent at the time, the lions, survived with minor burns.

After the Hartford Circus Fire, officials sorted and laid out bodies on army cots in a nearby armory for the families to identify.

Little Miss 1565

No one came to identify a little blonde girl wearing a white dress died of asphyxiation. Her body was well preserved, with only a few burn marks on her face. Investigators named her Little Miss 1565 after the number given to her.

Hartford Police Sgt. Thomas Barber and Sgt. Edward Lowe grew obsessed with finding out who she was. Barber, a widower, had two children who planned to attend the circus but hadn’t arrived when the fire broke out.

Barber and Lowe took dental impressions, fingerprints, footprints and photographs. A Life magazine story in 1965 described their efforts:

They sent the dental charts to hundreds of dentists, questioned mailman, doctors, tradesmen, Sunday school teachers. They tried, futilely, to match her to adult victims of the fire.

Gravesite Visits

The police officers showed her photo to everyone who claimed a body on the night of the fire. They visited orphanages and welfare agencies, and they wrote to every primary school in Connecticut enclosing their little friend’s picture. During the futile search Barber often stopped by the grave to brood about the child at his feet.

Every year on Memorial Day, Christmas Day and July 6 the two police officers brought flowers to her grave in Northwood Cemetery in Windsor, Conn.

Barber spent the rest of his life trying to find her. Not once did he fail to place flowers on her grave on those three days. After Barber died in November 1977, local florists continued the tradition of laying flowers on Little Miss 1565’s grave.

Mystery Solved?

In 1981, Lowe’s widow told the press he had learned the little girl’s identity and told her family, who didn’t want any publicity. Six years later, someone left a note on her gravestone that read, “Sarah Graham is her Name! 7-6-38 DOB, 6 years, Twin.” Notes nearby said her twin and other relatives were buried nearby.

In 1991, Hartford arson investigator Rick Davey published a book claiming Little Miss 1565 was Eleanor Emily Cook. Eleanor’s brother Donald worked with Davey to establish Eleanor Cook’s identity. Authorities exhumed Little Miss 1565 and buried her in Southampton, Mass. She lay next to Eleanor Cook’s brother Edward, who also perished in the Hartford Circus Fire.

An American Tragedy

Ten years later, Stewart O’Nan published The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy. O’Nan argued Little Miss 1565 could not have been Eleanor Cook. Their dental records didn’t match and her mother insisted all of her life that the child was not Eleanor.

O’Nan believed another family misidentified Eleanor Emily Cook as their own, and other members of the Cook family began to question the identity of the girl buried next to Edward Cook.

At the conclusion of his book, O’Nan explains why the story of Thomas Barber and Little Miss 1565 is so compelling:

To be lost and forgotten–to be abandoned–is a shared and terrible fear, just as our fondest hope, as we grow older, is that we might leave some part of us behind in the hearts of those we love and in that way live on. Perhaps, in the end, we will not be lost. In that respect, she was received the only gift we can give her, a gift we wish desperately for our loved ones, a gift we all want, finally: to be remembered.

Watch newsreel footage of the Hartford Circus Fire investigation here.

With thanks to The Circus Fire: A True Story of an American Tragedy. This story about the Hartford Circus Fire was updated in 2022.

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Oliver Ellsworth: Founding Father and Yale Dropout

Oliver Ellsworth, the forgotten founding father, was a lawyer, a member of the Constitutional Convention, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a U.S. senator, a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court – and a Yale dropout.

He was born April 29, 1745 in Windsor, Conn., to Cept. Capt. David and Jemima Ellsworth. During his boyhood there was only one carriage in Windsor, his family ate from wooden trenchers and work on the farm was hard. In 1762, at the age of 17, he entered Yale College to prepare for the ministry. He only lasted two years.

William Garrott Brown explains in The life of Oliver Ellsworth that he ‘entered at a time of undergraduate discontent’:

Oliver and Abigail Ellsworth

The long administration of President Thomas Clap was drawing to a close, and his headship of the still struggling seminary, though admirable for vigor and devotion, had been growing too arbitrary to please the student body. There was much complaint also of the tutors.

And then there was the food. Breakfast for four was a loaf of bread. Dinner for four was an apple pie and a quart of beer.

Young Oliver Ellsworth was disciplined several times, according to the school records. His first offense was puzzling: He joined 10 others ‘to scrape and clean the college yard.’ He also, after evening prayers on Thursday, joined others who ‘put on their Hats and run and Hallooed in the College Yard in contempt of the Law of College.’

Why exactly he left Yale isn’t clear. According to family legend, at midwinter at midnight he inverted the college bell and filled it with water, which froze. For whatever reason, he ended up at Princeton. The New Jersey college had about 100 students at the time, but it excelled at teaching the art of teaching and writing. No other college trained as many debaters for the Continental Congress or the Constitutional Convention.

About 200 years later, another politician who excelled at speaking and writing would write the biography of Oliver Ellsworth for the Encyclopedia Britannica. It was the only encyclopedia entry John F. Kennedy ever wrote.

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