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The Christmas Blizzard of 1909: ‘The Sea Never Gives Up The Living’

More than 50 people died in the Christmas blizzard of 1909, a two-day storm with disastrous effects from Pennsylvania to Canada. The worst carnage happened at sea, where the storm caught mariners unaware.

Mild weather had dominated December of 1909 in New England. The weather service reported 20 “ideal days” that month. The string of mild weather came to a halt, however.

In New England, ships crashed onto the rocks, people drowned in their beds and bodies turned up buried in snow for weeks.

The Christmas Blizzard Starts

The snow started falling and gale winds arrived at 2 o’clock in the afternoon and would take some 24 hours to peter out, with two monster high tides. Snow totaled roughly 18-inches, but it varied from place to place along with the winds. In Boston, for instance, the highest wind recorded was 54 miles per hour, but on Cape Cod winds soared to 84 miles per hour.

Though not the largest blizzard ever, the Christmas blizzard of 1909 left a dramatic impact. All in all, the Christmas blizzard of 1909 did more than $10 million in damage and resulted in more than 50 deaths in the United States.

Chelsea and Everett Flooded

Chelsea and Everett, Mass., felt the most dramatic impact of the wind and tides. After initially holding strong, the floodgates at the mouth of the Island End River gave way at night as the storm surge pushed water higher.

Ocean water rushed into the streets, flooding low-lying homes and businesses in a matter of minutes. Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Harkins drowned while asleep in their bed, the newspapers reported, and Michael Callahan, an elderly man, drowned when flood waters invaded his home – on the second floor.

Forced from their homes, hundreds of residents waited in the raging blizzard as wagons slowly transported them to safety on higher ground. It would take weeks to rebuild the floodgates and restore people to their homes.

In all, 25,000 people fled their homes as the ocean waters pushed through the streets. Eighty acres of land flooded. At least four people drowned.

Connecticut and Rhode Island survived with less damage, though it took work crews days to restore telegraph and railroad lines.

The Christmas Blizzard at Sea

The ships at sea felt the greatest effects of the 1909 Christmas blizzard. The Seamen’s Journal reported 15 ships lost or severely damaged, with many more incidents not recorded. The Davis Palmer accounted for the most tragic loss of the storm.

Sister Ship to Davis Palmer werched in the Christmas Blizzard of 1909

Schooner Paul Palmer, Sister Ship to Davis Palmer wrecked in the Christmas Blizzard of 1909

As Christmas approached, the Davis Palmer, a five-masted schooner, made her way north around Cape Cod toward Boston Harbor. The ship was one of 14 that naval architect W.F. Palmer built and named for his children. The Bath, Maine, shipyards produced the Davis Palmer; she stretched more than 300 feet in length.

The crew aboard the Davis Palmer celebrated Christmas in style, oblivious to their fate. The barge Hop Along reported passing by the ship. The Palmer’s crew stood on deck singing and making merry as they headed toward their destination, loaded down with West Virginia coal from Newport News, Virginia.

The Wreck of the Davis Palmer

The ship worked her way through the gale force winds until she had nearly cleared the Graves, outer ledges in Boston Harbor. But the storm soon drove the Davis Palmer onto Finn’s Ledge. From there she drifted into Broad Sound and sank. Fourteen of her crew died in the wreck. Bodies would wash ashore in the weeks to come; some never turned up.

Other ships fared better. The schooner Maud Seward, from Deer Isle, Maine, lost her way off Cape Cod and washed up, wrecked, on Martha’s Vineyard where she rotted for years. But no lives were lost. The Ada Damon, from York, Maine, washed up at Ipswich, Mass. – probably a total loss, but the wreck injured no one. In the harbor at Plymouth, Mass., the storm damaged more than four vessels.

Chaos at Sea

Further out at the Five Fathom Bank, off New Jersey, sailors reported seeing the schooner George P. Hudson bound from Norfolk, Va., to Boston with a load of coal. The storm had badly crippled the Hudson, but her captain refused assistance. With people waiting in concern, the Hudson prompted great relief when she limped into Vineyard Haven, damaged but still afloat.

The schooner Wyoming

The six-masted Wyoming, the largest wooden ship ever built, left Bath, Maine, just days before Christmas – newly launched. Likewise, the F.W. Camp departed Boston for Norfolk. Both were missing for days before they finally turned up safe.

The Christmas gale of 1909, according to the Seamen’s Journal, “illustrates the force of the adage that ‘the sea will claim its own.’ It is said that ‘the sea never gives up its dead.’ It would perhaps be truer to say ‘the sea never gives up the living.’

“Christmas 1909 will long be remembered by the seamen of the Atlantic Coast as one of the most fateful days in the fateful history of those waters.”

Havoc Elsewhere

As the storm proceeded up the coast to Newfoundland, another 11 schooners from Newfoundland disappeared into the raging blizzard, carrying 60 more people to their deaths. “Worst storm in 50 years,” newspapers reported, with damage placed at more than $750,000.

After the storm, streets up and down the eastern seaboard remained blocked by snow for days as a cold front passed through, so cold that rivers froze over. Thousands of people filled the streets to remove snow and ice, restore electricity and help those trapped in their homes. Cleanup would continue into 1910. On January 25, rain in Pennsylvania revealed the corpse of a man who had frozen to death in a field, overcome by the blizzard four weeks earlier.

This story was updated in 2022.

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The Providence Tea Party: On Dry Land, in Daylight and Thrown By Women

Rhode Island patriots had no more love for tea than did their allies in Boston, and on March 2, 1775, they threw the Providence Tea Party in Market Square.

Rhode Island had already hosted one militant protest against Parliament’s customs policies. On June 9, 1772, Rhode Island’s Sons of Liberty captured the crew of a British customs schooner and burned the vessel to the waterline. Rhode Island has since celebrated the Gaspee Affair as its own version of the Boston Tea Party.

Though not the only Tea Party, the Boston affair happened first, and gained the most notoriety. It also inspired similar action from Charleston, S.C., to York, Maine. In some places, patriots threw tea overboard as they had in Boston. In others, they burned the tea as they did in Providence.

Provience’s Market Square, 1840s

Boston Tea Party Starts It All

Contrary to popular belief, the Tea Act didn’t increase the tax on tea. Rather, it lowered the price of tea – for one giant British company that had too much of the stuff. By enacting the Tea Act, Parliament gave a bailout in the form of a duty-free monopoly to the troubled British East India Company.

The cheap British East India tea threatened small merchants in North America – as well as the Dutch smugglers who sold it to them.

In 1765, eight years before the Boston Tea Party, the Rhode Island General Assemble opposed the Stamp Act with a resolution denying ‘the right of any power but itself to levy taxes in the colony.’

The Boston Tea Party

Word of the Boston Tea Party spread fast through the colonies. In January 1774, Rhode Island patriots held meetings in Newport and Providence to address ‘so interesting and alarming an occasion.’ And they agreed that if they didn’t express the ‘firmest resolution to vindicate our rights,’ it might be ‘construed as a cession of them into the hands of those who have wantonly evaded them in this instance.’

Walking the Walk

In addition to talking about their rights, Rhode Islanders had walked the walk. In the summer of 1774, the General Assembly sent Stephen Hopkins and Daniel Ward to the Continental Congress. The Assembly also created the Providence Light Infantry.

By winter, the General Assembly had chartered more companies in Providence, Newport and East Greenwich, the Train of Artillery, the Scituate Hunters, the Providence Artillery, the Providence Fusiliers and the North Providence Rangers.

Stephen Hopkins

The Providence Tea Party

Then in early 1775 Rhode Islanders held the Providence Tea Party.

In 1923, Providence Magazine gave one of the few accounts of the burning of the tea in Market Square. The magazine reported that on March 2, 1775, the Town Crier announced:

“At four of the Clock this Afternoon a Quantity of India Tea will be burnt in the Market Place. All true friends of the Country, Lovers of Freedom and Haters of Shackles and Hand-cuffs, are hereby invited to testify their good Disposition, by bringing in and casting into the Fire a needless Herb, which for a long time hath been highly detrimental to our Liberty, Interest and Health.”

As planned, patriots started a fire in the middle of Market Square and women fed 300 pounds of tea into it.

The Gazette on March 4, 1775, reported:

“At the appointed hour a fire was started in Market square, a barrel of tar was placed upon it, and copies of Lord North’s speech, and other obnoxious English papers were burned, while to the flames were added 300 pounds of tea, fed to the fire by the women of the town.”

“While the tea was burning a spirited Son of Liberty went along the streets with his brush and lampblack, and obliterated or unpainted the word TEA on the shop signs,” reported the Gazette.

More Tea Parties

Today, a plaque on the side of the Market House provides a rare reminder of the Providence Tea Party. It reads, “Near this spot the men and women of Providence showed their resistance to unjust taxation by burning British-taxed tea on the night of March 2, 1775. Erected by the Rhode Island Societies of the Sons of the American Revolution and Daughters of the American Revolution 1894.”

The Market House today

Providence patriots had plenty of company in the tea-destruction department. On the Christmas Day after the Boston Tea Party, the British ship Polly sailed up the Delaware River and put in at Chester, Pa., with 698 chests of tea. Philadelphian patriots met with the captain, escorted him upriver and suggested he return to London. Perhaps they showed him broadsides threatening to tar and feather him. He did.

Then in January 1774, Princeton College students broke into a storeroom, took all the tea and burned a dozen pounds of tea on the campus.

On April 22, 1774, a ship captain named Chambers tried to smuggle 18 chests of tea into New York. The Sons of Liberty got word of it, searched the ships, found the tea, dumped it overboard and burned the chests in the streets. Earlier that month, New York’s Sons of Liberty turned back the Nancy, which carried 698 chests of tea into Sandy Hook.

On May 24, 1774, patriots in Chestertown, Md., dumped tea from a brig into the Chester River. Chestertown still celebrates the event.

From Maine to South Carolina

In York, Maine, on Sept. 15, 1774, 150 pounds of tea came from Newfoundland on the sloop Cynthia. The Sons of Liberty seized the tea and stashed it in a storeroom. Then some ‘Pickwacket Indians’ made off with the tea. Somehow the tea returned mysteriously two days later.

In October 1774, patriots burned the Peggy Stewart, which had carried tea and indentured servants to Annapolis, Md. (The servants got off the ship beforehand.)

On Nov. 3, 1774, seven chests of tea were landed in Charleston, S.C., but local officials ordered the merchants who received it to dump it into the Cooper River. Fearing what the mobs might do if they didn’t, they dumped it.

On December 22, 1774, patriots in Greenwich, N.J., burned tea, six days after the Boston Tea party.

This story was updated in 2021. Image of the Providence Market House By Filetime – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=98763110.

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The Boon Island Cannibals of Maine

On a frosty New Year’s Day in 1711, the York County coroner was summoned to examine a frozen body discovered in a tangle of seaweed on the beach at Wells, Maine. The emaciated body, covered with sores, had obviously died while trying to make landfall in the makeshift raft found nearby. But from where? Boon Island, a rocky ledge six miles off the coast, was a likely suspect.

The coroner, Lewis Bane, went to Cape Neddick where he convinced John Stover to take him to Boon Island. With a crew of three they boarded Stover’s fishing shallop and headed out to sea. As they approached, they saw something white at the highest point on the island. Then they got closer and saw a flapping white tent, with three figures outside of it waving their skinny arms.

With some difficulty, Stover maneuvered the shallop through the rocky ledge surrounding Boon Island and dropped anchor. They could see the three gaunt castaways wearing long beards and no overcoats. One identified himself as Capt. John Deane, and he shouted at them to come ashore and evacuate the castaways, or at least to build a fire.

Stover then boarded the small canoe they’d brought along and paddled to the island. The sight of the skeletal captain, covered with sores and blood, rendered him speechless. What he saw inside the tent shocked him even more.

The story of the Boon Island cannibals created an international sensation then, and still inspires books and essays. It destroyed John Deane’s reputation, though he spent a lifetime trying to repair it.

Boon Island. Today it has a lighthouse on it.

The Nottingham Galley

The Nottingham Galley set sail from London on Sept. 10, 1710 under the command of Capt. John Deane. Bound for Ireland with a cargo of rope, Deane brought along the ship’s principal owners: his brother Jasper and an English gentleman named Miles Whitworth.

They left in a convoy of merchant vessels protected by two Royal Navy warships. England was warring with France in the War of the Spanish Succession (called Queen Anne’s War or one of the French and Indian wars in New England). Merchant ships needed protection from the French privateers patrolling the Irish Sea.

Nottingham Galley

The Nottingham Galley broke off from the convoy and sailed north to Killybegs, where Deane intended to add butter and cheese to his cargo. But Killybegs was an unlikely place to buy dairy products, and the waters swarmed with French privateers. Sure enough, the Nottingham Galley crew spied two sails likely belonging to privateers.

Mutiny

Two versions of events followed. Deane claimed he intended to evade the privateers. Three crewmembers published a dispute of Deane’s account, an unusual thing for ordinary sailors to do in the early 18^th century.

The crew claimed the captain sailed toward the privateers hoping to be captured or to be forced to run aground. That way he could collect from the ship’s large insurance policy. Or perhaps, they hinted, Deane was smuggling goods to the enemy. Whatever his intent, the sailors wrote that he ‘endeavored to betray her [the Nottingham Galley] to the French.’

They crew also hinted at mutiny, a hanging offense. They wrote that Deane would have ‘bore down’ on the suspicious ships, ‘but the Men would not consent to it, because they perceiv’d them to be French men-of-war.’

Whether they mutinied or not, one thing does come through loud and clear: the crew despised Deane, who they viewed as a sadist as well as a traitor. Deane viciously beat the sailors, crippling two so they couldn’t work for a month. And he put them on short rations, which no doubt hurt their chances of survival on Boon Island.

Boon Island

The Nottingham Galley reached Canada – then held by the French – and John Deane dallied for a week off the Newfoundland coast. When a ship’s sails were spotted speeding toward them, Deane did a strange thing. Instead of fleeing a ship likely to belong to the enemy, he opened the bar for the crew. He, his brother and Whitworth donned their best clothes and awaited the arrival of the mystery ship.

Naturally, the crew suspected Deane was hoping for a French privateer. Perhaps he’d arranged an assignation when in Ireland. But whether he did or not, the ship turned out to be an English galley.

Charles Galley, 1676, by Willem Van de Velde

The Nottingham Galley sailed on, finally running into a sleet storm in the Gulf of Maine on December 10. Deane and the first mate, Christopher Langman, argued over what course they should take. Deane beat Langman bloody around the head, and Langman had to take to his berth.

Meanwhile the crew grew worried about the strengthening storm and the proximity to land. The ship was then about 12 miles north of Boon Island.

On December 11, the Nottingham Galley crashed against the ledge of Boon Island and splintered to pieces. The crew chopped down the mast, which landed fortuitously on the rocks. Using the mast as a guide, the men of the Nottingham Galley managed to crawl along the slippery rocks and reach safety on the island.

But how safe? They made it onto Boon Island at low tide, when it measures 700 feet by 300 feet. High tide leaves 150 feet exposed. In a storm, the sea can completely wash over the island, only 17 feet at its highest point.

The sailors made it through the night. But they had no overcoats, no food, nothing to make a fire with.

The men fashioned a tent from the remains of a sail, and they found some cheese and beef bones that floated ashore from the wreck. First mate Langman killed a seagull, which they ate raw because they couldn’t start a fire.

The cook died the second night. They weren’t hungry enough to eat him. They found some mussels, which they ate, and some cow hide, which they cut into small pieces and swallowed. The mate killed another seagull with a saucepan, and again they ate it raw.

Land was a tantalizing six miles away. When the weather cleared, they could see ships sailing in and out of Portsmouth Harbor. Three even passed Boon Island, but the castaways couldn’t get their attention. So they built a crude boat, which overturned immediately and smashed to bits.

Then a Swedish crewman fashioned a raft and a sail, and he set off with another sailor for the mainland. They floated toward shore, but the Swede was never seen again. The other sailor’s frozen body washed up on shore. His death allowed some of the others to live.

Cannibals

The weather continued to worsen. It snowed, and the men’s clothing froze to their bodies. That killed the ship’s carpenter, a fat man of 47. He stopped speaking and he died that night.

Somehow they came to the decision to cut up the carpenter and eat him. According to the crew, it was John Deane’s idea. According to Deane, the men overruled his objections to the deed.

Deane had trained as a butcher in England. He cut off the carpenter’s head, hands and feet so the corpse wouldn’t seem so human. He disemboweled him and cut up his breast in strips. Then he wrapped seaweed around ‘a few thin slices, washed in salt water,’ and distributed the pieces. The mate and two others refused to eat their former shipmate, but the next morning were the first in line for a serving.

Rescue

When John Stover arrived, he first spoke with Deane, who led him to the tent. Inside, he saw seven sticklike men huddled together for warmth, sick, cold and covered with sores and vermin. In the words of one castaway, Stover was shocked by “the Ghastly Figure of so many Objects, with long Beards, nothing but skin and bone, wild staring Eyes, and Countenances fierce, barbarous, unwashed, and infected with Human gore.”

They crawled to him, cried, and grabbed his ankles with their frostbitten hands. The captain begged him to take him back to the shallop in the canoe. But the weather was turning stormy, and the canoe capsized with the two men in it.

Stover promised he’d return immediately to rescue the castaways. The men begged him for a fire. So Stover built one for them, which allowed them to roast the carpenter. Eating his cooked flesh would cause them less disgust.

Stover returned to the shallop and made for shore as the storm grew worse. The rescuers barely made it.

Not for three days would the sea calm down enough to allow anyone to come close to Boon Island. Finally on Jan. 4, 1711, two sloops arrived and sent a canoe to the island. Some of the men had to be carried off; they were too weak to walk.

They were taken to a Portsmouth tavern, where they were fed slowly so as not to injure their bodies. Lt. Gov. John Wentworth paid for their care. A doctor administered to the castaways, cutting off frostbitten fingers and toes. The cabin boy lost half of his foot, the most severe amputation of the crew.

John Deane, staying at a friend’s house in Portsmouth, immediately wrote an account of the shipwreck in which he appeared heroic. Three crew members, still sick and weak, signed it. But then Christopher Langman and two others recanted.

He Said, They Said

When the crewmen returned to London, they published their own version of events and distributed it among London’s coffeehouses. In it, they portrayed Deane as traitorous, dishonest, brutal and cowardly. They blamed the shipwreck on him, because they’d be safely in Boston if he hadn’t dallied off the Newfoundland coast. He had cried and panicked when the ship ran aground. He had proposed cannibalism. And he had tried to turn the ship over to French privateers.

The common mariners’ pamphlet ruined his reputation as a gentleman and drove him out of London.

Deane would spend the rest of his life getting back his good name. He joined the Russian navy and commanded a frigate, capturing more than 20 enemy ships. But then something happened that favored the Nottingham Galley crew’s take on Deane’s character.

As commander of a Russian ship, Deane had captured two Swedish vessels when an English and a Dutch man of war appeared. Deane dawdled, just as he had off the privateer-infested coasts of Ireland and Canada. The English man of war seized his two Swedish prizes. Later, junior officers accused him of taking a bribe to deliver the Swedish ships to the English. A court-martial found him guilty, and he was demoted.

But the resilient Deane ended up spying for Britain and persuaded his superiors that he’d uncovered a conspiracy against the Crown. He married a wealthy woman and wrote another history of Boon Island. In 1728 he received a diplomatic appointment. He retired in comfort and died at the age of 81. The crew disappeared from history.

With thanks to “To Obviate a Scandalous Reflection”: Revisiting the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley by Stephen Erickson and Boon Island: A True Story of Mutiny, Shipwreck, and Cannibalism, by Stephen Erickson and Andrew VIetze. This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Sears Houses

In the early part of the 20^th century, you could buy Sears houses for the price of a good pair of shoes today.

Times certainly changed. In 2005, a high-end Sears home sold for $900,000.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. sold about 100,000 kit houses from catalogs between 1908 and 1942. They were shipped by rail, with pre-cut lumber stamped for assembly. The company promised a man of average abilities that he could finish the house within 90 days — if he followed the 75-page instruction book.

Sears Houses

Sears got into the business of catalog homes because its building products division was losing money. Frank W. Kushel, who managed the company’s china department, was given the task of turning around building products. He suggested the company sell entire houses in 22 styles and ship them from the factory.

Sears copied the popular housing styles of the day, which included colonial revival features taken from historic New England homes. There’s even one model called The Puritan.

Sears marketed the houses as ‘machine made’ with already cut lumber. “No waste, no mistakes, no big labor bills,” read the catalog copy.

The kits came with nails, shingles, shellac, windows, doors, trim hardware, paint and downspouts. They did not include cement, bricks or plaster. Materials for indoor plumbing, electricity and central heating had to be bought separately.

By 1920, Sears was shipping an average of 125 houses a month. Nine years later, Sears sent 250 houses each month from just one of its four plants. The company boasted it was the world’s largest home builder.

Sears also financed home purchases, and half its homes were tied up in mortgage loans by the time of the Great Depression. The company lost $11 million on defaulted mortgages in 1934, and by 1940 it was out of the house business.

Hamden, Conn.

The C225

Realtors say a Sears house can sell for more because of the enduring quality of the materials and construction.

Sears homes were built throughout Connecticut. In Hartford alone there are dozens, but they are also in Putnam, Hamden, Canton, Shelton, Bethel, Plainville and Torrington.

The 1916 Sears catalog featured testimonials from two men who bought Sears houses in Connecticut.

D.G. Arnold wrote he was ‘well pleased’ with his home, Modern Home No. 119, in Putnam, Conn.

“All the rough lumber, doors, windows, clapboards, flooring, moldings and stairs, in fact everything required to finish a first class house, came from Sears, Roebuck and Co. at a savings of about $500, as compared with local prices,” he wrote. “My builder says he never used better finish and he has had fifty years’ experience.”

L.S. Chapman from Shelton wrote to say he saved several hundred dollars and found the materials better than expected. “Our house, No. C225, is beautiful.

The cottage at Lockwood Farm in Hamden is a Sears house. So are the Cello House, the Viola House and the Second Fiddle House at the Music Mountain in Falls Village, Canaan.

Sears didn’t make all pre-cut houses. There were actually six large companies that made kit houses, but none had the marketing clout of Sears and its famous catalog. Another company, Aladdin, sold enough homes to the Bristol Brass. Co. in 1916 to fill four blocks near the factory in Bristol, Conn.

Bucksport, Maine

The entrance to the Sears Belfast was modeled on the doorway of the Perkins House in Castine, Maine.

Identifying Sears houses has become a cottage industry for fanatics who produce books, blogs, documentaries and even bus tours by the Smithsonian Associates.

Sears enthusiasts argue whether Bucksport, Maine, has a neighborhood full of identical Sears houses – Belfasts, to be precise. Writer Scott Sowers says yes. Rose Thornton, who has made a career of identifying Sears houses, says no.

“The Sears Belfast and the Bucksport Houses are wildly different from one another,” wrote Thornton after examining a photo of a Bucksport house.

(Tangentially, the front doorway of the real Belfast was modeled on the doorway of the historic Perkins House, built in 1769 in Castine, Maine.)

People authenticate Sears houses by comparing them to the models in the Sears archives. That’s usually not enough, since houses are often altered over the years. They must also look for stamped lumber in the basement or attic, shipping labels on moldings or the characteristic ‘SR’ stamped on bathroom fixtures. (For other clues, click here.)

We did track down a Sears house on Lindsay Road in York, Maine.

A Sears house in York, Maine

Longmeadow, Mass.

A Sears Verona, catalog illustration

Sears houses arrived in two railroad box cars in a variety of styles and prices. At the high end was the Magnolia, a four-bedroom, high-ceilinged colonial modeled after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s house in Cambridge, Mass. It sold for $5,972. (See featured image.)

At the low end was the Natoma, a three-room house that sold for $191. It had no bathroom, but you could buy the outhouse separately.

The Natoma

The Verona was another ‘high-class home,’ according to the catalog, ‘of the Dutch type of colonial architecture.’ An authenticated Sears Verona has been identified at 115 Belleclaire Ave., in Longmeadow, Mass.

A house on Medway St. in Norfolk, Mass., is in contention for being a Sears house. Authentic Sears houses were also assembled in Newton, Easthampton, Boston, Woburn, Springfield, Wrentham, Cohasset and Pittsfield.

Claremont, N.H.

The Castleton, catalog illustration

Two small New England companies also sold kit houses.

The Thayer Portable House Co. operated in Keene, N.H., from about 1920 to 1940. It had grown from the Springfield Portable House Co. in Massachusetts. There was also the Robinson’s-Money-Saving-Mill-Made Cut-to-Fit Houses of Providence, R.I.

Still, Sears was king in New England, shipping homes from its factory in Philadelphia.

Two Sears houses have been identified on Mulberry Street in Claremont, N.H. One was a Castleton; the other, a Lorain. (Click here to read more about these houses.)

The Castleton was promoted as ‘dignified and substantial,’ ‘a well-designed house that will make a pleasant home.’ The Lorain was marketed as a charming six-room colonial with dark shutters, snowy walls and window boxes. You can watch a documentary about restoring a Lorain here.

Middletown, R.I.

The Parkside, an economical Sears house

The Parkside was a cute, economical four-room house sold from 1934 to 1940. There’s an authenticated Parkside at 43 Beacon St. in Middletown, R.I. The current owner did considerable research into the house’s history and put up a website about it. (Check it out here.)

In 1938, the Middletown Parkside sold for $1,372. In 2006, it sold for $222,000. Bob Wolfenden, a military veteran, built the house in 1940 and lived in it for the rest of his life. He was a professional carpenter who became superintendent of the Newport, R.I., Water Department. He and his wife Mildred had no children.

John Little bought the house and enlarged it after his friend Bob died. The Parkside then changed hands several times, became a rental and went into foreclosure. It needed repair by the time the current owner bought it in 2006. You can see pictures of the house over the years here.

Burlington, Vt.

An Alhambra, from the catalog

Burlington, Vt., has so many catalog houses there’s a field guide to them called A Guide to the Catalog Houses of Burlington, Vermont.

Burlington was an ideal market for kits of Sears houses as well as for those of its competitors, Aladdin and Gordon Van Tine. The city’s population grew by 10 percent every decade while growing richer. The expansion of the streetcar network opened up cheap empty land. Burlington could also be reached by two major railroads, making it easy to ship kit houses.

Kit houses cluster in Burlington’s South End, the Five Sisters neighborhood, south of the University of Vermont campus, the New North End and Lakeview Terrace. Of the 30 kit houses identified in the Burlington field guide, 14 came from Sears.

A cluster of Sears houses in Burlington shows the range of styles: A four-square Fullerton and a Westly bungalow were identified on N. Prospect Street. Also:

- A Dutch colonial Lucerne on Catherine Street,
- A colonial revival bungalow called a Crescent on St. Paul Street
- A Spanish Colonial Alhambra on South Winooski Avenue
- A Tudor Revival Barrington at Marian Street.

Images: Perkins House By S437885 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35346344; Sears Catalog House, by InAweofGod’s Creation, Creative Commons license. This story about Sears houses was updated in 2022.

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The Candlemas Massacre and the Salem Witch Trials

One week after two girls in Salem, Mass., begun having strange fits, the Candlemas Massacre wiped out the village of York in the District of Maine.

On a snowy night, a French and Indian war party traveled on snowshoes to the village outskirts and waited until just before dawn. Then they killed or captured about 150 people and burned almost all of their houses.

The Candlemas Massacre took place in the midst of King William’s War, one of the French and Indian wars fought intermittently in North America from 1689 to 1763.

The massacre would have an impact on subsequent events, including the Salem witch trials. It would also influence the next French and Indian War, known as Dummer’s War or Father Rales’ War.

Sorrowfull Tideings

The Rev. George Burroughs in nearby Wells described the Candlemas Massacre: ‘Pillours of Smoke, the rageing of the mercyless flames, the insultations of the heathen enemy, shooting, hacking… & dragging away others.’

He concluded with an accusation that foreshadowed the Salem witch trials:

The ‘Sorrowfull tideings’ from York, wrote Burroughs, showed ‘God is still manifesting his displeasure against this Land.’

Salem witch trial

York, Maine

English colonists had settled Maine under a charter granted to Fernando Gorges. York was successively known as Bristol, Agamenticus and, in 1642, as Gorgeana. Gorges died 10 years later. Massachusetts Bay Colony then absorbed Maine and renamed the settlement York.

Massachusetts officials wanted to push Maine’s boundaries beyond Casco Bay. However, New France – now Canada – claimed Maine too.

Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de Saint-Castin

Gov. Edmund Andros in 1686 ordered a raid on the home of Baron Saint-Castin, a Frenchman who founded Castine, Maine. Saint-Castin retaliated by destroying the English fort at Pemaquid in 1689.

In 1692, Madocawando, sachem in the Penobscot band of Wabanakis, led the Candlemas Massacre. He had a reputation for his courage, his hatred of the English and his son-in-law – Baron Saint-Castin.

Early Warnings

The Candlemas Massacre didn’t take York by complete surprise.

Shubael Dummer, founder of York’s First Parish Congregational Church, resisted warnings to leave the village because of the dangerous unrest.

Wrote Cotton Mather,

Though solicited with many temptations to leave his place, when the clouds grew thick and dark in the Indian hostilities, and was like to break upon it, he chose, rather, with a paternal affection to stay amongst those who had been so many of them converted and edified by his ministry.

The residents of York may also have seen paper money, the first in North America, issued by Massachusetts to pay for the war with the French and Indians.

The Candlemas Massacre

Plaque marking the spot where the attackers left their snowshoes

On Jan. 24, 1692, Madocawando and French missionary Louis Pierre Thury led as many as 300 French and Wabanaki on snowshoes from Canada to York. Before dawn, they piled their snowshoes next to a large rock and crept into town. (A plaque marks the spot today.)

“The Inhabitants were in their unguarded Houses, here and there scattered, Quiet and Secure,” according to a contemporary account. Taking the houses one by one, the warriors killed the inhabitants and livestock, captured others and burned most of the buildings.

Indians shot Shubael Dummer at his own front door while he tried to escape on his horse. They stripped him of his clothes and mutilated his body. Then they captured his wife, Lydia, and their small son and forced them to march through the snow to Quebec.

“On the next Lord’s Day a full welted savage, purposely to deride the ministerial character of Mr. Dummer, put on his garments, and then stalked about in the presence of the distressed captives some of whom belonged to his church, to aggravate their feelings,” according to historian William Williamson.

Aftermath

When Indians burst into the Moulton house, four-year-old Jeremiah had hidden under the bed. Amid screaming and scuffling the Indians buried a hatchet in his mother’s head, then tomahawked his father. Jeremiah watched as the Indians scalped his parents. After they left he stayed under the bed until the house caught fire. He then ran from the house toward a group of men who turned out to be Indians. They tied him up along with the others.

Capt. John Floyd with a small group of militiamen rushed to the scene of the Candlemas Massacre from Portsmouth, N.H. They discovered about 18 houses burned, the remainder rifled and the dead lying about. The attackers left standing the gaol, the meeting house and the garrison.

Floyd and his men buried 48 people in a mass grave along with an unrecorded number of small children.

The Old Gaol in York

The captives were taken to Canada, where some were ransomed by Capt. John Alden Jr., son of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins of the Plymouth Colony. The Indians set Lydia Dummer free, but separated her from her son. She traveled to Quebec three times to find him, but never saw or heard from him again.

Jeremiah Moulton

Jeremiah Moulton reappeared during Dummer’s War, named after Shubael Dummer’s nephew William, acting governor of Massachusetts. Some called it Father Rale’s War, after Father Sébastien Rale who led an alliance of Wabanaki Indians on the side of New France.

In 1724, Moulton led 200 men to the Wabanaki settlement of Norridgewock to kill Father Sebastian Rale and slaughter the Indians. The Englishmen succeeded in killing Rale and 80 Abenakis, including two dozen women and children.

Moulton returned to York and became sheriff. In 1719 he rebuilt the gaol with timbers left from the one that was left standing. Today it still stands, the last known public building of the colonial era.

Later in 1692, John Alden and John Floyd were accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials because of their involvement with the Candlemas Massacre. Both managed to escape execution.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Six Historic Places Connected to Illicit Love Affairs

Illicit love affairs are as much a part of history as are war and elections, and the New England Historical Society doesn’t hesitate to publish stories about them. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we bring you six places connected to illicit love affairs. They include a movie star’s home, a racy monument, several historic houses and a watch tower. There is one for each New England state.

Hepburn House

Katharine Hepburn’s house

Katharine Hepburn had a 25-year love affair with her married co-star Spencer Tracy. It only ended with his death.

At their introduction on the set of Woman of the Year, Katharine famously said, “I fear I may be too tall for you, Mr. Tracy.” Film director George Stevens retorted, “Don’t worry, he’ll soon cut you down to size.”

Instead, he fell in love with her and she with him. “I loved Spencer Tracy. I would have done anything for him,” she said.

They starred in nine movies together, but lived apart and kept their affair private. Tracy and his wife were estranged, but neither sought a divorce.

Tracy and Hepburn did stay together at Hepburn’s summer home in the Fenwick beach colony in Old Saybrook, Conn. Her caddy remembers them having breakfast together.

When Tracy died in 1967, Hepburn didn’t attend his funeral service out of respect for his two children. She did follow his hearse on the six-mile trip through Los Angeles and, when it reached the church, whispered, “Goodbye, friend – this is where I leave you.”

The house, on Mohegan Ave., is privately owned, but you can visit the Katharine Hepburn Museum in Old Saybrook. It’s at 300 Main St. Click here for more information.

Cliff Walk Path and Many (Supposed) Illicit Love Affairs

Cliff Walk Path, York Harbor, Maine

What’s worse than not getting any Valentine’s Day cards or letters? How about getting a letter announcing that your wife has a heartthrob — just not you.

Allen Ryan received just such a jolt in 1922 about his wife Sarah and her “friend,” entertainment lawyer George Maxwell. Ryan, a one-time king of Wall Street, had so much money and clout he could move the stock market at will.

The shock of the poison pen letter received by Allen Ryan jolted society all the way from Philadelphia to Maine, where the Ryans summered at York Harbor. York Harbor in the Roaring 20s was a popular destination for wealthy summer travelers escaping the cities.

The ensuing scandal resulted in Maxwell being charged with sending the poison pen letter himself, along with letters to husbands of 40 other society women with whom he was supposedly having illicit love affairs. George proclaimed his innocence and blamed his enemies. Predictably, the affair ended in the Ryans’ divorce.

York Harbor has changed a lot since the Ryan-Maxwell scandal of the 1920s, but you can still get a flavor of the old days on the Cliff Path along York Harbor, where gracious cottages of long-ago York remain perched on the edge of the sea.

Emily Dickinson Museum

Emily Dickinson’s married brother Austin carried on an illicit love affair for 13 years with Mabel Loomis Todd, also married. The whole town of Amherst, Mass., including Todd’s husband, knew about the affair. He was okay with it. Austin’s wife was not.

On Sept. 10, 1882, Austin took Mabel to sing and play the piano for his two reclusive sisters and mother, who lived next door to him. Emily listened to her from the shadows of the hall, but never appeared. Only Emily’s sister Lavinia ,,met Mabel face-to-face.

The next night, Austin and Mabel paused on their way to a whist party and confessed their love for each other. “Rubicon,” Austin wrote in his diary afterward.

Their liaison was one of the better-chronicled of the illicit love affairs. Austin and Mabel kept diaries, in which they called their love ‘overwhelming,’ ‘God-inspired,’ ‘beyond any love that ever was.’

Mabel described their sex life in her diary: “Sweet communions. Oh joy! Oh! Bliss unutterable” and “A little Heaven just after dinner.”

Emily Dickinson died in 1886, and Lavinia asked Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson to publish her poems. They did, and Mabel embarked on a lecture tour that made famous the reclusive Emily.

Mabel’s affair with Austin ended with his death in 1895.

The Emily Dickinson Museum includes both Emily’s and Austin’s house at 280 Main St. in Amherst, Mass. Click here for more information.

John Parker Hale House Museum

The Woodman Institute Museum, Dover, N.H. , which includes the Hale House

In the 1860s, Valentine’s Day was the perfect opportunity for a young man to flirt with a girl from a different class. People then viewed a Valentine’s note as an acceptable way to express their affection without fear of giving offense.

In 1862, one of the South’s most notorious villains took the opportunity to express his affection for one of New Hampshire’s leading ladies. To his surprise, perhaps, John Wilkes Booth captured the eye of Lucy Lambert Hale.

Hale charmed a great many men in both Washington and New England. John Hay, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Robert Todd Lincoln were all said to have expressed some interest. Her father was John Parker Hale, a U.S. senator, abolitionist leader and Lincoln supporter. But an anonymous Valentine in 1862 from Booth caught Lucy Hale’s fancy, and soon the two got better acquainted.

Hale was mad enough that his daughter was involved with an actor. Imagine his shock when his daughter’s beau turned out to be an assassin.

When Booth was captured after killing President Lincoln, he had Lucy Hale’s picture in his pocket. Senator Hale spread word far and wide that Lucy was not engaged to the actor-turned-murderer. Father and daughter then departed for an extended visit to Europe.

One of Lucy Hale’s gifts to New Hampshire is the house where she grew up. The Woodman Museum at 182 Central Ave. in Dover, N.H., acquired the Hale house in 1915, and it’s open to visitors.

Hannah Robinson Tower

The view from the Hannah Robinson Tower

Hannah Robinson fell for a poor French dancing teacher and set off one of the greatest scandals of colonial America. Her love affair was less illicit than unapproved and tragic.

Born in 1746, she was the daughter of a wealthy Narragansett planter. The family lived in a large stone house in Newport near Narragansett Bay. During the American Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette and Comte de Rochambeau visited the Robinson house.

Hannah wanted for nothing, and one of her favorite pastimes was to sit on a large rock and look out at Narragansett Bay. She was sent to finishing school in Newport, where she fell in love with her French dancing teacher, Peter Simons. Peter returned Hannah’s feelings, but the lovers knew her father wouldn’t consent to a marriage. He believed Peter wanted Hannah’s money.

They eloped one night and set up house in Providence.

Unfortunately for Hannah Robinson, her father was right – and he cut her off financially.

Peter abandoned Hannah after he realized he wouldn’t get any of her money. When her father learned his daughter was poor, ill and suffering in Providence, he finally relented and went to fetch her.

On their slow journey home, she asked them to stop when they reached the large rock where she had watched the bay. Unfortunate Hannah Robinson died soon afterward at home on Oct. 30, 1773.

In 1938, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built a new watch tower at the site where Hannah Robinson watched the Bay. The Hannah Robinson Tower, is now owned by Preserve Rhode Island and managed by the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management.

You can find it at the interchange between U.S. Route 1 (Tower Hill Road) and Route 138 (Bridgetown Road) in South Kingstown, R.I.

An Illicit Love Affair Revealed in Hope Cemetery

Louis Brusa gravestone

Most of the people buried in Hope Cemetery in Barre, Vt., carved their own memorials and tombstones. Barre calls itself the granite capital of the world, and skilled stonecutters flocked to it from Europe, especially Italy, in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

The 65-acre cemetery attracts tourists with its beautifully carved and sometimes unusual granite memorials. They include images of a soldier smoking a cigarette, a race car, a bored angel, a soccer ball and an 18-wheel truck.

Louis Brusa was an Italian-born master stonecutter. He practiced his craft in Barre with the new compressed air tools, which made his work go faster but sent granite dust into his lungs.

Louis, born Luigi Giovanni in 1886, became a partner with the Brusa Brothers. He developed silicosis from the granite dust and died at the age of 51.

As he was dying, Brusa decided to warn others about the disease. He then commissioned Don Colletti to carve a memorial of a man dying in the arms of a woman. When the monument was placed over his grave, it caused a local scandal. The woman looked not like Brusa’s wife Mary, but just like his mistress.

This story about illicit love affairs was updated in 2022.

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