Tag:

Windsor Vt.

Maxfield Parrish, A Mechanic Who Painted Fantastically

The landscape of Vermont and New Hampshire inspired Maxfield Parrish in 1922 to create the lush, romantic painting Daybreak.

Daybreak became the most popular art print of the 20^th century. One in four U.S. households owned a print of the neoclassical landscape with two beautiful nymphs in the foreground.

Daybreak, by Maxfield Parrish

Parrish’s spectacularly imaginative art made him famous and allowed him to live comfortably with his family in the Cornish Art Colony. There he entertained President Woodrow Wilson, actress Ethel Barrymore and journalist Walter Lippman. Norman Rockwell idolized him from across the Connecticut River in Vermont. Calendars he illustrated as advertisements sold by the millions. And a shade of cobalt blue was even named after him.

Maxfield Parrish

Maxfield Parrish didn’t understand his own popularity — or at least claimed not to.

“I am hopelessly commonplace, I don’t know what people see in me!” he once said.

His methodical, almost mechanical, way of painting produced brilliant effects of color and light. He adapted the new process printing technique to methods used by the old masters. He started with a monochrome underpainting and then layered on transparent glazes. And between each layer, he applied varnish.

“This method is very simple, very ancient, very laborious, and by no means original with me,” he said. He called himself ‘a mechanic who paints.’

Maxfield Parrish

Ecstasy

Maxfield Parrish was born July 25, 1870, in Philadelphia, to artist Stephen Parrish and Elizabeth Bancroft Parrish. His parents named him Frederick, but he later adopted his maternal grandmother’s maiden name.

From childhood he wanted to be an artist, and his parents encouraged him. When he turned 10, his father took him on a tour of European art museums. They sketched together in Europe and in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Philadelphia.

After graduating from the Pennsylvania College of Arts, he and his father shared a studio in the Annisquam village of Gloucester, Mass.

He studied art for another year at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry, then embarked on a wildly successful career.

Golden Age

During the Golden Age of American illustration, artists produced a prodigious amount of fresh, exciting pictures for books and magazines. There was little difference between commercial and fine art during the period, roughly lasting from 1880-1920. It was triggered by innovations in mass color printing and led by such Brandywine artists as Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth.

Successful illustrators achieved celebrity in their day, their names household words.

Maxfield Parrish belonged to that group. He illustrated greeting cards, advertisements and children’s books, including Arabian Nights and Poems of Childhood. His work arrived in the mailboxes of millions of homes, appearing on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, Colliers and Scribners Magazine. His paintings for full-color calendars for Edison-Mazda Lamps sold in the hundreds of thousands, sometimes the millions. People often framed them at the end of the year.

By 1910, he was so successful he was earning more than $100,000 a year in a time when a home could be bought for $2,000.

Cornish

Maxfield Parrish as a young man.

Maxfield Parrish was only 28 in 1898 when he and his new wife, Lydia Austin, could afford to build a house in Plainfield, N.H.

Plainfield belonged to the Cornish Art Colony, and his father .had already moved there. He urged the young couple to join him. Maxfield Parrish built a house across the river from his father and called it The Oaks. He lived there until his death on March 30, 1966.

The Cornish Art Colony flourished from 1895 to about 1925. Led by August Saint-Gaudens, it included artists, sculptors, writers, politicians and entertainers. They lived in the towns of Plainfield and Cornish in New Hampshire, and across the Connecticut River in Windsor, Vt. Residents included President Woodrow Wilson, artist Frederic Remington, dancer Isadora Duncan, actress Marie Dressler, sculptor Daniel Chester French and literary editor Maxwell Perkins.

The Lantern Bearers, 1908

In 1922 Maxfield Parrish finished what he called ‘the great painting’: Daybreak. He used three models: Kitty Owen, William Jennings Bryan’s granddaughter; his daughter Jean; and Susan Lewin, his young nanny.

The painting achieved staggering success. Still in print, Daybreak outsold Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans and Da Vinci’s Last Supper.

Parrish eventually moved out of The Oaks and into the studio with Susan Lewin. His wife began to take long trips with their four children. The arrangement scandalized Plainfield, but Parrish and Lewin claimed to have only a Platonic friendship.

Meanwhile the public demanded more images of lissome nymphs and androgynous youths in sumptuous landscapes and fantastical scenes. And so Maxfield Parrish obligingly churned them out.

No More Girls on Rocks

In 1931, Maxfield Parrish told The Associated Press, “I’m done with girls on rocks.” He abandoned illustration for landscape painting, which was more satisfying, but less lucrative.

He hadn’t finished with Susan Lewin, though. Their arrangement continued for 55 years until Lydia Parrish died in 1960. Maxfield Parrish was 90, Susan Lewin was 71, and they could finally marry. He declined, and she left him to marry someone else.

The Mill Pond

Parrish continued to paint landscapes and murals until his death. His clients included the Vanderbilts, Whitneys, Astors, Du Ponts and Hearsts. In 2006, actor Mel Gibson’s wife Robyn bought Daybreak at Christie’s for $7.6 million.

The ‘mechanic who paints’ had an abiding love for machinery. He built a shop beneath his studio and filled it with machines. With them, he created model scenes, props and lighting effects for his paintings. One of his sons, Stephen, became an airline mechanic. Another son, Maxfield Parrish, Jr., helped create the self-developing camera at Edwin Land’s Polaroid Corporation. Daughter Jean became an artist.

Daybreak continues to influence popular culture. Variations were used on a Moody Blues’ album cover, in a Michael Jackson music video, a Bloom County cartoon collection and the movie poster for The Princess Bride.

Parrish around 1920.

A Maxfield Parrish enthusiast bought The Oaks. He then rebuilt it after it burned. It was put up for sale in its entirety for $1.15 million in 2017.

You can visit the center of the Cornish Art Colony, St. Gaudens National Historic Site, a National Park Service site.

This story about Maxfield Parrish was updated in 2023.

11 comments 1.7k views

The 6 Oldest Public High Schools in New England

The oldest public high schools in the United States all stand in New England, probably because the Puritans believed in educating children so they could read the Bible.

Class of 1919 at Pinkerton Academy, one of the oldest public high schools.

Four of America’s 17^th-century public high schools started in New England. They include Hartford Public High School (1638), the Boston Latin School (1635), Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (1648) in Cambridge, Mass., and Hopkins Academy (1664) in Hadley, Mass.

Still, they’re relative babes compared to schools in England and Germany. For example, the King’s School in Canterbury, England, was founded in 597.

Those old European schools provided the model for New England’s first public high schools. They mimicked the Latin school of 14^th– to 19th-century Europe, teaching — well, Latin.

That approach made some sense, as Latin was the universal language for academic, legal, government and liturgical matters. For the children of working families, the Latin schools allowed them to improve their station in life.

During the Renaissance, the Latin schools evolved to teach classical literature, history, rhetoric, dialectic, natural philosophy and arithmetic.

But which are the oldest public high schools in each New England state? We list them below.

Hartford Public High School

Hartford High, one of the oldest public high schools in the U.S.

Founded as Thomas Hooker’s Latin School in 1638, Hartford Public High School is the second oldest public high school in the United States. It started only three years after the Boston Latin School, and sits right next to the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the Mark Twain House.

Mark Twain’s daughters, Olivia and Clara, attended Hartford Public High School from 1887 to 1889.

Not until 1847 did the school teach anything other than Greek and Latin. Back then, that was what young men needed to enter college or the ministry. The school changed its name to Hartford Public High School in 1847.

A fire destroyed the school building in 1882, only 13 years after its construction. George Keller designed a new one (he also designed the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Hartford). The school had better science facilities than those in most colleges, as it had a chemistry laboratory, a science lecture hall, a Clark telescope and an observatory.

Hartford built a new school in 1963 and later renovated it. Today, 1,300 students attend the school known as The Pub.

Famous alumni include Edward Gallaudet, actor Tony Todd, former Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez and NBA star Marcus Camby.

Hampden Academy

Maine’s oldest public high school

Stephen King taught English at Maine’s oldest public high school, Hampden Academy. It should be no surprise then that he set his novel Carrie there.

One of his students remembered him as a great teacher, though he looked a bit like a werewolf. “I will never forget the day he came into class with a dandelion in his sport coat pocket, and announced he had sold “Carrie” including movie rights,” wrote Jim Spohrer. “He was very happy, and we were all happy for him.

“Later that week, everyone in the school was working on their novel :-)”

Hampden was founded in 1803 as a private school, then as a theological seminary and finally a public high school. Today it has about 700 students from Hampden, Newburgh, Frankfort and Winterport in a new $52 million school built in 2012. The National Register of Historic Places lists the original Hampden Academy building, which also happened to be the site of the Battle of Hampden during the War of 1812.

Boston Latin School

Founded in 1635, Boston Latin School is easily the most famous of all the old public schools.

The early Puritans established the Boston Latin School. It then evolved into a bastion for the offspring of Boston Brahmins who wanted their children to attend Harvard. Its alumni include Saltonstalls, Adamses, Lowells, Phillipses, Winthrops, Eliots and Danas.

Dropouts include Benjamin Franklin and Louis Farrakhan. Graduates include four Harvard presidents, four Massachusetts governors and five signers of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Helen Magill White was the first female student, graduating in 1877. She went on to become the first American woman to earn a Ph.D. The year she graduated from Boston Latin, the city founded Girls’ Latin School (later the co-ed Boston Latin Academy). Not until 1972 did Boston Latin admit its first co-educational class.

Famous alumni include Samuel Adams, Leonard Bernstein, Cotton Mather, George Santayana, Ed Ames, Phillips Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Arthur Fiedler, Thomas Finneran, John Hancock, Nat Hentoff, Henry Knox, Theodore White and Sumner Redstone.

Pinkerton Academy

New Hampshire’s oldest high school is also the biggest.

The Town of Londonderry established a classical high school in 1793. Then in 1814 the wealthy Pinkerton brothers, Major John Pinkerton and Elder James Pinkerton, donated $16,000 to make the private Londonderry high school permanent.

The State of New Hampshire incorporated the school on Dec. 4, 1815. Tuition cost $2 a quarter.

Three years later, the high school admitted the first female student. Coeducation didn’t last long, however. In 1821, the Adams Female Academy opened and Pinkerton stopped accepting girls.

Pinkerton remained an independent day and boarding school until it agreed to accept public school students from Derry in 1948.

Robert Frost taught at Pinkerton Academy. Murderess Pam Smart and astronaut Alan Shepard attended the school, now New Hampshire’s largest. It has 3,100 students, 800 more than the next biggest school in the state.

Pinkerton Academy remains a private school, but it serves as the public high school for the New Hampshire towns of Derry, Hampstead, Chester and Auburn.

Providence Classical High School

In 1800, Rhode Island’s General Assembly ordered each town to open public schools. Most towns couldn’t do it, but Providence managed to open elementary schools. For decades Rhode Island had no public high school.

By 1838 a heated debate raged over education. Opponents said a public high school would be ‘too aristocratic’ and would ‘educate children above working for their support.’ William Goddard, a prominent Brown professor, led the high school advocates who eventually won their case.

Providence dedicated Classical High School on March 20, 1843. At first it admitted women and African-Americans, then decided to segregate African-Americans. Four teachers taught arithmetic, algebra, Latin, English grammar, ancient history, medieval history, modern history and bookkeeping.

The school quickly grew too crowded and the city built a new one in 1878. By 1963 that building was outdated, and Providence held a competition to design a new one. The local firm Harkness & Geddes won the contest in collaboration with Boston architect Walter Gropius.

The new high school was built in 1970 in the same Brutalist style as the much-hated Boston City Hall. Today, Providence Classical High School is a demanding college preparatory magnet school. In 2012 it made Newsweek’s America’s Best High Schools list.

Windsor High School

Not inferior to any public high schools in Vermont.

Windsor High School in Windsor, Vt., is the youngest of the oldest public high schools in New England.

Sometime around 1786 a school was built in the village. It was used until about 1810, when the villagers decided to build a new brick schoolhouse. In 1838 the village decided to divide the younger students from the older, which eventually led to the establishment of the high school in 1845.

The village decided to construct a ‘more pretentious school building,’ one that would be an ‘ornament and an honor to the place.’ After much discussion, the town build the high school in 1886. Windsor boasted it had a high school ‘not inferior’ to any public high schools in the state.

Today it is a junior and senior high school with 300 students in grades 7-12.

Windsor draws students from the Vermont towns of Windsor, West Windsor, Weathersfield and Hartland as well as Cornish, N.H.

Photos: Hampden Academy, By Justinrussell – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36624973. Pinkerton Academy, By Unknown – Genealogical and Family History of the State of New Hampshire. ASIN: B000K7FWIS, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8729927; Pinkerton class of 1919, PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8789719. Classical High School, By Antony-22 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43545809.

This story about the oldest public high schools was updated in 2022.

9 comments 1.1k views

Vermont’s Burlington and Hinesburg – The Railroad that Wasn’t

In the late 1800s, industrialization boomed and fast shipping was a key to success. A town without a railroad faced big competitive disadvantages. Thus the idea of the Burlington and Hinesburg Railroad was born in 1890.

In November of that year the Vermont Legislature granted a charter to the Chittenden County Railroad. The planners began imagining the prosperity that would soon come to the area, then dominated by farming.

Train entering a tunnel.

The founders of the new railroad came from some of the more prominent names in town: Leonard Andrews, postmaster; C.G. Peck, son of a former senator and Isaiah Dow, owner of the Hinesburg Woolen Mill.

The Burlington and Hinesburg

The plan for the railroad was to run it up from Hinesburg through Shelburne, Williston, St. George and into South Burlington where it could connect with the Burlington and Lamoille Railroad. Railroads were expanding rapidly and competing for the market share to carry products and people from even tiny corners of the country to and from the larger cities.

A railroad, the local merchants thought, would be the perfect solution to make Hinesburg competitive in shipping its textiles, lumber or other products.

For nearly 15 years the work proceeded. The name of the road was changed from Chittenden County to the Burlington and Hinesburg and surrounding towns even made inquiries into how they might get the railroad into their villages.

A Look Around Chittenden County published by the Chittenden County Historical Society includes a letter from Col. Ellsworth Lawrence to his family in Hinesburg. He happily notes that he has a plan for a new product to be created at the family farm:

“I believe there is blue clay in paying quantities suitable for making pottery, tile, etc. – any amount of it over in the southwest corner in the south meadow.

“You and I will have to go over there pretty soon and we will investigate and if we find the clay – why then all we will need to do is to go to working on pots and tile, and ship them out on our new railroad to market.”

Working on the Railroad

Work proceeded with the railroad negotiating rights of way, grading road beds, installing culverts and buying land for a railroad station. In 1903, the Burlington and Southeastern Railroad bought the line. It had even bigger plans to add a spur north and another all the way to Windsor.

In 1905, the dream died, with more than $100,000 spent, almost all its track bed graded, and four miles of actual track laid, the dream died. The railroad ran out of money. Its treasurer signaled the company could not possibly succeed. The railroad fever finally broke.

All that was left was a series of track beds, many of which have been bulldozed. Some, however, remain today, as historian Gerry Fox explained in a 2015 lecture.

This story was updated in 2022.

1 comment 250 views

6 Revolutionary Taverns

The American Revolution probably wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the Revolutionary taverns where patriots and Loyalists gathered to talk politics. Sam Adams famously haunted the taverns of Boston, honing his political skills and making his political connections. His cousin John Adams called taverns places where ‘bastards, and legislators, are frequently begotten.’

Here the New England Historical Society brings you six Revolutionary taverns that played a role in the birth of the United States of America.

Old Constitution House

The Vermont Republic came into existence at the Old Constitution House in Windsor, Vt. Built around 1750, Elijah West ran it as a tavern in January 1777. That month, Vermont representatives met in Westminster and declared independence from the colonies that claimed to its land — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and New York.

Then on July 2, 1777, a constitutional convention met at Elijah West’s tavern and drafted a constitution. The meeting went on for several days while the British recaptured Fort Ticonderoga. On July 8, the convention at West’s tavern got word of the British advance and considered adjourning. A violent thunderstorm kept the delegates at the tavern. They finished the Vermont Constitution.

The Vermont Constitution, in effect for 14 years, was the first to prohibit slavery, establish universal voting rights for all men and to authorize a public school system.

The building functioned as a tavern until 1848. It later served as a store, a home and a warehouse. In 1901 local preservationists began trying to save the building. Thirteen years later the house and land were donated to the Old Constitution House Association and money raised to restore it. In 1961, the state took ownership of the tavern.

The Old Constitution House has been restored as a tavern museum and includes historic items donated by descendants of the delegates and the Daughters of the American Revolution.

For more information about the Old Constitution House, click here.

Keeler Tavern Museum

Timothy Keeler bought the Keeler tavern in Ridgefield, Conn., from his uncle in 1769. His grandfather had built the structure as his family home 50 years earlier. In 1772, just before the American Revolution broke out, Keeler and his wife Ester converted it into a tavern. At first the tavern sign featured a portrait of King George III, but then Keeler, a patriot, painted it over with an image of a horseman.

Cannonball lodged in the Keeler Tavern

During the Battle of Ridgefield in 1777, British troops fired on the tavern. They had heard people were melting down musket balls in its basement. A British cannonball that struck a corner post of the building can still be seen.

The Keeler family ran the tavern and inn on the site until 1907. Napoleon’s younger brother Jerome stayed at the inn with his wife during their honeymoon.

In 1907, architect Cass Gilbert bought the inn from Timothy Keeler’s granddaughter. He then turned it into a summer home with a sunken garden. Gilbert’s daughter Emily sold the house in 1957, but local preservationists purchased it in 1965. They then began running it as a museum the next year.

For more information about the museum, click here.

Burnham Tavern

Burnham Tavern postcard

In June of 1775 the Margaretta, an armed British schooner, sat in Machias Bay, its guns trained on the frontier town of Machias, Maine. The British delivered an ultimatum: The townspeople of Machias needed to ship their lumber to Boston to build barracks for British soldiers if they wanted critical supplies. If they refused, they could go hungry. The Margaretta’s captain, Lt. James Moore, also threatened an attack.

What to do? The militia men of Machias debated their course of action in Burnham Tavern, built in 1770 by Job Burnham. His brother-in-law, Jeremiah O’Brien, urged an attack on the Margaretta. He led a band of 40 men, mostly armed with farm implements, in the capture of the British ship. After the battle, the tavern was used as a hospital to tend the wounded of both sides. Moore died of his wounds in the tavern. There is today a chest in the tavern said to be stained with his blood.

The Hannah Weston Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution now runs the tavern as a museum. It opens for the summer of 2016 on July 5 from 10 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday. For more information about Burnham Tavern, click here.

Colonial Inn

The Colonial Inn in Concord, Mass., was originally three buildings, the first dating to 1716. In the tense months before the American Revolution broke out nearby, the inn’s middle building (now the front desk and gift shop) was used to store arms and provisions.

Dr. Timothy Minot, Jr., lived and worked on the western side of the inn (now home to the Liberty Restaurant). After the Battle of Concord on April 19th 1775, he cared for the wounded Minutemen in his home. What is now the Liberty Room was a hospital, one of his bedrooms, now “Room 24”, as an operating room and “Room 27” as the morgue.

Part of the inn passed into the hands of Henry David Thoreau’s grandfather. Thoreau’s father moved his family into that part of the inn while Henry attended Harvard. Eventually it became a boarding house, named the Thoreau House after Henry’s aunts. They entertained guests in the sitting room. J. P. Morgan, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Don Henley all stayed at the Colonial Inn (not at the same time). Today it’s one of the Historic Hotels of America. For more information about the Colonial Inn, click here.

Wyman Tavern

Captain Isaac Wyman built the Wyman Tavern in Keene, N.H., in 1762. Wyman was a veteran of the French and Indian Wars. His family ran the tavern for 40 years, right through the American Revolution, It became a central meeting spot for Keene revolutionaries leading up to the war for independence.

When news arrived that British troops had fired on Americans in Lexington, Keene’s 29 minutemen assembled at the tavern three days later. Then they began their march south to join the Revolution. In later years it served as schoolhouse for Salmon Chase, Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the Treasury. Perhaps it wasn’t the best place to learn lessons of character and ethics.

Today the tavern is a museum operated by the Cheshire County Historical Society. It opens for tours in the summer. For more information, visit the society’s website here.

White Horse Tavern

In 1652, Frances Brinley built the White Horse Tavern in Newport, R.I., but it didn’t become a tavern until 1683. Then, William Mayes bought the property and enlarged it into a tavern. And it wasn’t named White Horse until 1730.

Tories hung out at the tavern in the early days of the Revolution. It also housed British soldiers leading up to the Battle of Rhode Island. Among its more colorful owners was William Mayes, Jr., a Rhode Island pirate.

Today you can not only visit the White Horse, you can still get a meal and a drink there. For more information, visit the Tavern’s website here.

Photos: Keeler Tavern Museum By Rolf Müller (User:Rolfmueller) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1361338; Keeler Tavern cannonball By Rolf Müller (User:Rolfmueller) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1361326. White Horse Tavern By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7018372. Wyman Tavern By Ymblanter – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19418202. This story was updated in 2022.

9 comments 1.1k views

The 21 New England Colonial and State Capitals

New England cities and towns used to vie for colonial and state capitals the way they now court sports stadiums, with the result that 21 New England capitals graced the land since Europeans settled the region.

Typical 18th century New England government building

Typical 18th century building you’d find in New England state capitals

Rhode Island, the tiniest state, has had the most state capitals, while Massachusetts, the largest, has had the fewest.

Connecticut once had its state capital in New York and Maine had its in Canada. Two of Vermont’s capitals have served as the seat of a national government, and Boston was at one time the capital of all New England.

The reasons for moving colonial and then state capitals had to do with conquest, migration and the ideals of the American Revolution. Americans thought they were taxed without representations, and they blamed the distance from the British Parliament. After independence, they believed they needed equal physical access to the state legislature to get represented equally.

21 New England State Capitals

From 1776 to 1812, the people of the 13 original colonies agitated to move their state capitals to the center of the state, writes Rosemarie Zagarri, in The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776-1850.

“The confidence of people in their government rested on people’s ability to know and be known by their representatives,” Zagarri wrote. After decades of westward migration, it made no sense to them to have a capital on the Atlantic coast.

Old State House 1793

Boston, the longest continuing state capital in the United States, was the one New England capital that stayed put. John Winthrop’s city on a hill had too much power to let any upstart town take the government away from it.

As is still the case, western Massachusetts resented Boston for it. The people of Springfield, Mass., commented in 1780 that “It is probably, by Reason of their different situations, that many of the more distant Towns will generally omit the full Exercise of their Rights, and that those at or near the Center of Government will exercise them in their full Extent.”

Seating the commonwealth’s government in Boston was on the list of grievances during Shay’s Rebellion.

East vs. West

Residents of Lenox objected to the Massachusetts constitution of 1778 because, as they put it, “[Article 6] has a tendency to induce the Remote parts of the State … to neglect keeping a Representative at the General Court. In a word it is making Representation unequal.”

Plymouth

Boston reigned as the capital of all New England when King James II created the Dominion of New England in 1686. James correctly worried the colonies were too independent and thought consolidating the colonies would solve the problem. It didn’t. The Dominion lasted all of three years. In 1689, the Boston Revolt ended the Dominion and sent Royal Gov. Edmund Andros packing.

Boston, however, wasn’t always the capital of all Massachusetts. For 70 years, Plymouth was the capital of Plymouth Colony, which included Cape Cod, Scituate, Marshfield and Duxbury, Bridgewater, Taunton, what is now New Bedford and Fall River, Dartmouth and Freetown. Plymouth could even argue a history as capital of Rhode Island, as Plymouth Plantation claimed parts of Rhode Island including Bristol, Rehoboth and Little Compton.

The Flying State Capitals of RI and Conn.

View of Newport, 1730. Courtesy Library of Congress.

View of Newport, 1730, one of RI’s many state capitals. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Rhode Island and Connecticut resolved the conflicts over the location of their state capitals. They decided on rotating state capitals, a solution dubbed ‘The Flying Statehouse.’

From 1639 to 1644, Portsmouth, R.I., served as the capital of the English colony of Aquidneck Island and Providence the capital of – well, Providence. For more than a century, Providence prevailed as the seat of government when the two colonies merged in 1644, with the brief interruption of Boston as the capital of the Dominion.

In 1776, Rhode Island embarked on a lively experiment, rotating its capital to each of the five county seats: Providence, Newport, East Greenwich, South Kingstown and Bristol. The experiment proved too lively. After 1853 the state legislature stopped meeting in the Kent, Washington and Bristol counties and alternated between Providence and Newport. Providence grew and Newport declined, and in 1900 the government finally settled down in Providence.

The old Connecticut Statehouse,.

The Dutch once claimed Connecticut. Its capital was New Amsterdam, a fort at the tip of the island now known as Manhattan. In 1639 Connecticut broke off as a separate English colony. A year later, so did New Haven.

Hartford and New Haven held sway as respective state capitals, except during the three years of the Dominion of New England.

From 1701 to 1875, Hartford and New Haven were the co-capitals of Connecticut, with the General Assembly holding spring sessions in Hartford and fall sessions in New Haven. Lawmakers got fed up with the complicated arrangement and decided to settle on one city. Hartford and New Haven vied for the privilege of hosting the government, and Hartford won.

Vermont and NH

Artists’ conception of the first New Hampshire Statehouse

Portsmouth became the capital of New Hampshire in 1689 until 1775, with the usual caveat about Boston.

During the American Revolution, New Hampshire’s General Assembly shuttled among Concord, Hopkinton, Dover, Amherst, Charlestown and Hanover, but officially settled in Exeter. After the war, New Hampshire citizens clamored for a centrally located capital and travel-weary lawmakers agreed.

Portsmouth cautioned against the move in 1790, arguing that citizens were less likely to be represented when their state capitals were far away.

Concord became New Hampshire’s de facto capital in 1808, though not by law until 1816.

Montpelier

Vermont has had four capitals. The state started out as disputed territory between New York and New Hampshire. On Jan. 15, 1777, representatives meeting in the oldest town, Westminster, declared independence from both and gave themselves the name, The Republic of New Connecticut. Almost six months later, representatives of the new republic met in the biggest town, Windsor, and changed their name to the Republic of Vermont.

Vermont succumbed to the prevailing desire for a central capital in 1805, 14 years after it became a state. Windsor lost out to the small town of Montpelier, then with a population of less than 2,000.

Maine

Part of Maine was once the French colony l’Acadie, and in 1604 its capital was Ile St. Croix, now the uninhabited St. Croix Island. In 1605 Port Royal, now in Nova Scotia, became the capital of Acadia. Then by 1658 Maine had joined Massachusetts, and until 1820 its capital was Boston.

The people of Augusta chipped in $11,000 for this

For the next 12 years, Portland served as Maine’s capital, but many lawmakers wanted to move the seat of government to a central city or town. In 1822 a committee was appointed to visit Portland, Brunswick, Hallowell, Augusta, Waterville, Belfast and Wiscasset. The Lewiston Saturday Journal reported, “In each of which towns a choice of very valuable lots was freely offered for the acceptance of the state.”

They said if it were to be on the seaboard, it should be in Wiscasset, but if inland, on Weston Hill in Augusta because of its scenic beauty. Augusta bought the hill and gave it to the state. That sealed the deal; Augusta it was.

Still Not Resolved

Architects drew up plans for a statehouse budgeted to cost $80,000. In the end it cost $138,991.34. Augusta citizens picked up $11,000 to keep the capitol, but the tug-of-war hadn’t ended. Portland, now known as ‘the deserted village’ after the capital moved, kept trying to get the government back.

On Jan 26, 1907, the Lewiston Saturday Journal reported ‘ever since 1821, the issue has been right there in the same old place. Sometimes it has been quiescent. Sometimes it has been acute. It comes in cycles–usually of ten years separation. Several times it has shaken the state from border to border. It may do so again — this session or next. In either case, Augusta must wake up. … a serious and important movement [is] forming.”

Augusta kept the capitol.

This story about the 21 New England state capitals was updated in 2022. Image of the Old Connecticut Statehouse By olekinderhook, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54816354.

8 comments 1.7k views

Abner Kneeland, The Free-Speech Martyr Convicted of Blasphemy in 1838

Abner Kneeland was a powerful and energetic Universalist minister whose religious doubts and political beliefs sent him to a Massachusetts prison in 1838.

Abner Kneeland

Depending on who you asked, Abner Kneeland was either ‘a venerable, learned and strictly moral man,’ or ‘hoary-headed apostle of Satan.’

He was also a free thinker and a pantheist, which is what got him into trouble, at least technically. But he was prosecuted as much for telling working people and immigrants to question authority.

His conviction was widely denounced and no one was ever prosecuted for blasphemy in Massachusetts again.

Young Abner Kneeland

Abner Kneeland was born on April 7, 1774 in Gardner, Mass., the sixth of 10 children born to Timothy and Moriah Stone Kneeland. He studied for a year at an academy in Chesterfield, N.H., but then his formal education stopped. Abner and his older brother then moved to Dummerston, Vt., to follow his father’s trade of carpentry. He also taught school and wrote a spelling book. By the age of 27 he joined the Baptist church in nearby Putney, Vt., and began to preach. Within three years he was converted to Universalism.

In 1804 he was ordained as an itinerant minister in New Hampshire, and settled down with his wife in Langdon. In 1811 he moved to a promising church in Charlestown, Mass. However, he abruptly resigned the ministry three years later, overcome by religious doubts.

Doubts

Kneeland and his wife then went into the dry goods business in Salem, Mass. His good friend Hosea Ballou, a prominent Universalist theologian, brought him back to the ministry in 1816 and he took up a pulpit in Whitestone, N.Y. But again his doubts asserted themselves.

He then moved to a parish in Philadelphia in 1818. Kneeland energetically led the church, publishing sermons and tracts, editing newspapers, compiling a hymnal, translating the New Testament and developing a new system of spelling. He fell under the influence of utopian socialist Robert Owen and began to adopt then-radical ideas about social reform. Before his free thinking got him into trouble in Philadelphia, he moved to a church in New York City.

Federal Street Theater

He began to attract attention, not of the good kind, while preaching in New York. He and his followers broke off from his church, forming the Second Universalist Society, but soon he offended them, too. Kneeland allowed a radical feminist and abolitionist, Frances Wright, to speak from his pulpit when no one else in New York would give her a platform. Universalists from as far away as Maine passed resolutions denouncing him. He questioned the existence of one God and the divinity of Jesus Christ. By 1830, the Universalists kicked him out of the church.

Infidel Orgies

The next year he moved to Boston, where he found a ready audience. As a lecturer for the First Society of Free Enquirers he spoke to 2,000 people on Sunday mornings at the Federal Street Theater and to as many on Wednesdays. Critics called them ‘infidel orgies.’

Two thousand people, mostly poor immigrants, subscribed to his publication, The Investigator. In it, Abner Kneeland criticized the conservative influence of religion on society and supported equal rights for women and all races. He thought women should keep their own names and bank accounts and spoke out for birth control, divorce and interracial marriage.

As a member of the Society he believed it wrong to teach children creeds, miracles and religious doctrine. He preached critical investigation of religious truths was the basis of good citizenship.

Kneeland’s popularity unsettled Boston’s elite. They worried he would influence the laboring classes to disrespect authority and question their humble place in society.

Blasphemy

Abner Kneeland landed in court after declaring his beliefs in 1833. “I am not an Atheist, but a Pantheist; that is, instead of believing there is no God, I believe that in the abstract, all is God,” he said. “[T]he whole duty of man consists in living as long as he can, and in promoting as much happiness as he can while he lives.”

In December 1833 he printed a letter explaining his differences with Universalism. “Universalists believe in a god which I do not; but believe that their god, with all his moral attributes, (aside from nature itself,) is nothing more than a chimera of their own imagination.”

For that, he faced prosecution five times for blasphemy. His first three trials ended in hung juries.

Abner Kneeland used three arguments to defend himself: first, that he never denied the existence of God, he just denied the existence of a god. Second, the law violated the Massachusetts’ Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion. And third, the law violated the guarantee of freedom of the press.

The arguments didn’t impress the Supreme Judicial Court, though it took two years for Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw to issue his decision. Shaw’s decision was criticized as one of the worst of the 2,200 he handed down during his career. In it, he argued Kneeland had blasphemed God with malicious intent. He defended Massachusetts’ blasphemy laws, and he concluded freedom of the press did not gibve a ‘general license for scandal, calumny and falsehood.’ Unlimited freedom of the press would prevent authorities from punishing ‘all incitation to treason, assassination, and all other crimes however atrocious.’

Backlash

Lemuel Shaw decided against Abner Kneeland.

Ralph Waldo Emerson signed a letter defending Kneeland. So did William Lloyd Garrison, Bronson Alcott and Theodore Parker. More people, however, signed letters supporting the court.

Kneeland served all of 60 days in prison – and became a martyr for the cause of free speech.

The London Investigator criticized the prosecution in 1857. It called Kneeland “a venerable, learned and strictly moral man sentenced and carried to jail for publishing his honest belief on matters of religion.”

“Massachusetts, which is so much extolled as being superior to all other States, is probably the only State in the Union where the Christian bigotry that used to burn heretics at the stake is still suffered to disgrace the statute-book,” remarked the Investigator. The Windsor, Vt., Statesman opined, “that if Kneeland could not speak his mind the very cause for which the Pilgrims came was overthrown. ”

After his release, Abner Kneeland moved to Iowa, where he started a utopian community called Salubria. He died August 27, 1844, and the community failed soon afterward.

With thanks to the Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography. This story about Abner Kneeland was updated in 2022.

0 comment 649 views