Tag Archives: Seacoast history

When a silent enemy traveled undetected: the Seacoast “throat distemper” epidemic of the 1730s

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“It was this readiness to adopt a theological explanation for the epidemic which was chiefly responsible for the hasty abandonment of a scientific one.” –Ernest Caulfield

Image of Fitch's printed sermonBy July 26, 1736, when Portsmouth’s Reverend Jabez Fitch speculated that the “throat distemper” epidemic ravaging the Seacoast was “the Fruit of strange Sins,” 129 children had died in nearby Kingston, NH–nearly a third of the town’s children.

This new and mysterious disease, with its horrific mortality rate, took hold suddenly, with the  appearance of gray or black spots at the back of the throat. Within a day or two, or sometimes hours, a child victim would be gasping and struggling for breath. If the disease was merciful, it claimed its victim quickly, but sometimes helpless parents had to keep vigil over slowly suffocating children for several days before the end came.

Kingston’s residents were baffled by this disease and stunned by how rapidly it claimed its victims. Unlike smallpox, the throat distemper seemed to erupt with no warning or contact from an obvious source of infection. With smallpox, colonial Americans understood that the disease spread rapidly from one infected person to another. Quarantine was one tool they used to battle smallpox, with towns often establishing quarantine stations during an outbreak.

The throat distemper, however, seemed to come on out of nowhere, as if God had suddenly decided he needed to provide a sign or warning to a certain cluster of people.

The first cases in Kingston occurred in homes located four miles apart, and then continued to appear in widely separated sections of town. Since its circulation seemed arbitrary, people abandoned (to their peril) the usual precautions they might attempt to prevent the spread of smallpox.  Although people had a general understanding of contagion (minus the specific knowledge of germs, viruses and bacteria), they did not know about “silent” or “healthy” disease carriers who were asymptomatic. Thus, Kingston residents who seemed unaffected by the disease probably were transmitting the bacteria in their town and in other nearby New Hampshire villages as they went about their business.

The epidemic next erupted in Hampton Falls, where one family reportedly lost all of their 13 children, then it travelled to Exeter, Durham, Dover, Chester, and finally to Portsmouth. At the Isles of Shoals, eight miles out to sea, the isolated fishing community lost 36 children. Ministers presided over fasts and prayers, but the fasting did not stop the spread of the disease, which jumped the Piscataqua River to Kittery, where 125 deaths were attributed to throat distemper, and then spread to other coastal towns in Maine. All told, over a span of about five years, the epidemic killed about 5,000 people in New England, most of them children.

Medical historians believe that the “throat distemper” was diphtheria, a bacterial infection in which a gray to black membrane develops in the throat, causing the victim to die from a choked airway, or from a blood infection caused by toxins produced by the bacteria. In 1890-91, German physician Emil von Behring developed the anti-serum that could, if administered in a timely fashion, cure diphtheria, (a discovery for which he was awarded the first Noble Prize), but the disease remained common in the United States until the 1920s, when a vaccination was developed. Although rare in the U.S. today, with only a handful of cases each year, diphtheria is still a public health threat in some parts of the world.

In suggesting divine causes for the epidemic, Reverend Fitch’s 1736 sermon may have inadvertently contributed to the spread of throat distemper. However, it also provided a wealth of specific information about the epidemic along with town vital records. Bare statistics reveal heartbreaking stories.

Ward Clark had been on the job as minister in Kingston for ten years. Hired in 1725 at age 22 to be the first minister of the new church, Clark had become a beloved and respected figure in Kingston. In the midst of the epidemic, along with two town doctors, Reverend Clark travelled from one home to another, offering spiritual comfort and medical advice, and probably spreading bacteria as he moved about.

Then, Clark’s own family took ill. On July 27, his wife Mary and their infant daughter died. A month later, on August 29, he lost his daughter Elizabeth, and then the disease also claimed his two little boys. Finally, the minister couldn’t take the suffering any longer. Bereft of his young family, Reverend Clark returned to his hometown of Exeter to regain his health, but died in May 1737 of a “wasting consumption” that may have been related to the disease, or to the trauma of loss.

The epidemic eventually eased, but returned time and again to Kingston and other Seacoast towns in the 18th century. In Kensington, NH, with about 600 residents, 120 children perished in the epidemic between 1735 and1737, “so many there were few children left to die,” writes town historian Reverend Roland Sawyer, who documents additional epidemics in 1745, 1747, 1760, and 1764.

I’ve looked for traces of the epidemic at the Plains Cemetery in Kingston,  but very few graves exist from before 1750. I’ve found two small gravestones from 1743, those of Seccomb French, who died on September 21, and his brother William, who went on to his fate two days later. Were these two little boys the victims of another diphtheria wave?

Somehow, their parents carried on. Father Nathaniel lived to age 69, long enough to see the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775.  Their mother, Abigail, lived to age 90. I would need to do further research to find out if they had more childre, but I suspect that their descendants walk among us today.

PS Reverend Fitch was a man of his times, when it was not uncommon to attribute many calamities to divine intervention. However, colonial ministers, who were the most educated, also were “early adopters” of scientific inquiry. In 1721, Onesimus, an African slave owned byCotton Mather, introduced the minister to the practice of smallpox inoculation — the pre-cursor of vaccination.  Inoculation usually resulted in a milder case of smallpox, and produced immunity (although some people also died from the practice). Mather used his pen and pulpit to advocate for widespread inoculation, gathered data and information on this “experiment,” and cited Onesimus as his original source.

Sources and resources:

This post is  modified version of material in my book, Pioneer on a Mountain Bike: Eight Days through Early American History, available from Amazon, at the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum, and from Rice Public Library.

Barry, John M. The Great Influenza; The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. New York: Penguin Books, c2004, 2005, p. 70. (info on diptheria).

Caulfield, Ernest. “A History of the Terrible Epidemic, Vulgarly Called the Throat Distemper, as it occurred in His Majesty’s New England Colonies Between1735 and 1740.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 1939 January 11(3), p. 223, and pp. 243-245. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Fitch, Jabez, An account of the numbers that have died of the distemper in the throat, within the province of New-Hampshire : with some reflections thereon ; July 26. 1736. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Sawyer, Roland D. The history of Kensington, New Hampshire, 1663 to 1945 (232 years) with a family and homestead register of the pioneer families, early settlers and permanent citizens of the town. Farmington, ME: Knowlton & McLeary Co., 1946, pp. 264–265.

The Maniacal Traveler plays with maps: my local history posts, via Google Maps

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This summer I am playing with mapping tools, which I eventually plan to teach my students at York County Community College to use in telling stories digitally.  Displayed here are my local history posts via Google Maps, many of which blend history with hiking, along with locations of nearby trails that I haven’t yet written about, and links to area historical societies.

Please click this link to display on a mobile device, which may or may not show a big white space below instead of my map.

If you click on the full screen square in the upper right hand corner, you’ll be able to  zoom in and out. The full-screen view also displays the legend.

This map is a work-in-progress; feedback appreciated.

Happy searching, reading, walking, and traveling!

Monuments, politics, and the cycle of forgetting: Remembering Bashka Paeff’s “Horrors of War”

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In Kittery, Maine, beneath the shade of an oak tree on a peaceful green common stands a monument that once stood in the cross-hairs of a politician who didn’t like its focus on the horrors of war. Today, many pass this monument daily, in their car and on foot, but Bashka Paeff’s beautiful bronze bas-relief sculpture, “The Sacrifices of War,” is now an almost forgotten part of the landscape.  This Centennial Year of War War I offers an opportunity to remember Paeff’s original title: “The Horrors of War.”

Bashka Paeff’s sculpture, “The Sacrifices of War,” was dedicated in 1925 as Maine’s Sailors and Soldiers Memorial for those who died in World War I. The newly-opened Memorial Bridge made Route 1 the main gateway into Maine, and the monument, located in Kittery’s John Paul Jones Park, greeted visitors as they crossed the bridge.

Born in Russia in 1894, Paeff immigrated to Boston with her family as an infant. There, she attended the Massachusetts Normal Art School, and then the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and worked as a subway token collector to support herself during the early stages of her art career.

The State of Maine commissioned the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial in 1919 to memorialize the soldiers and sailors who died in what was then called the Great War. The state had selected this site as part of the Memorial Bridge project designed to ease travel from Portsmouth to Kittery. At the time, an older wooden toll bridge, dating to the 1840s, connected the towns further upriver, but most people travelled back and forth by ferry to Badger’s Island.

Paeff’s mother holds her baby close to protect the child from the horror of war.

Paeff’s sculpture centers on mother protectively holding her child above two dead soldiers who lay by her feet. At the time, according to scholar Jennifer Wingate, the “patriotic mother” was the focus of wartime art and propaganda, and post-war memorials. Images of the patriotic mother might be combined with images glorifying war, for example, a rifle or helmet garlanded with laurel leaves. The “pacifist mother,” by contrast, was associated with Bolshevism and radicalism, and definitely out of the mainstream. Paeff’s portrayal of a pacifist mother, Wingate tells us, “expressed her firmly held view that war memorials should not glorify war” (31).

A dog tries to comfort a soldier who has died.

Another dead soldier has fallen on the left side of the protective mother.

So why did rural and conservative Maine choose to commission a pacifist monument to greet visitors at the state’s main entry point?

In 1924, Maine Governor Percival Baxter, a Republican, worked with a commission that included veterans and other military representatives to select Paeff’s design from 20 proposals. Baxter specifically had solicited proposals that portrayed the devastation and not the glory of war; he wanted a pacifist monument for Maine. The state contracted with Paeff to develop the sculpture and monument for $15,000 (a fee which included all costs associated with building the monument, not just for the sculpture itself).

And then there was an election.

Republican Ralph Owen Brewster, riding on a wave of populist anti-immigration sentiment, and aided by an endorsement from the KKK, was elected governor in 1924 and took office in 1925.

Governor Brewster did not like Paeff’s design, calling it a “more of a glorification of pacifism than of [Maine’s] part in the global conflict” (quoted in Wingate, 35). Paeff had already completed a large clay model of the sculpture, but Brewster declared that he would not pay for it unless Paeff modified the design. A political battle ensued with former Governor Baxter defending the monument in the Portland Press Herald:

The Memorial is striking and teaches a lesson….it portrays the sacrifices made by women and children as well as by men….It would have been easy to have selected the usual form of a memorial with soldiers in uniform carrying guns, making the usual appeal to the martial spirit. The present memorial, however, depicts what war really is” (quoted in Wingate, 36).

Paeff carved this low-relief image of fighting soldiers as part of a compromise with Governor Brewster.

Ultimately Brewster had to honor Paeff’s contract. However, she agreed to some small alterations. In the background, she added two fighting soldiers and a line of marching soldiers, carrying rifles and ready to fight. The background figures, however, are only visible to viewers standing close to the monument. To passersby, they are invisible. And the name of the monument was changed, from “The Horrors of War” to “The Sacrifices of War.”

This low-relief line of marching soldiers was also added to the monument to placate Gov. Brewster.

In an interesting twist, at the dedication ceremony, Major General Clarence R. Edwards, re-branded the monument to align with Governor Brewster’s view. The frightened mother, he said, was appealing “to the soldiery to save her babe from harm” (quoted from various news accounts in Wingate, 36).

Bashka Paeff was still a young woman when she created “The Sacrifices of War” and she went on to a have a prolific and distinguished career, actively working until her death in 1979.

But after a time, the controversy as well as the memorial were forgotten. The bronze tarnished green. The concrete urns that anchor the monument ended up in the Piscataqua River. In 2000-2001, a $40,000 grant paid for the monument’s cleaning and restoration, and “The Sacrifices of War” was rededicated at a ceremony with then-Governor Angus King in May, 2001.

Paeff’s original intent is evident in the memorial, which reminds us of war’s horrors  — something generals, soldiers and sailors, military families, and civilians in war zones know all too well, and which the rest of us can all too easily forget. Taking a moment to stop in John Paul Jones Park to look at Paeff’s monument provides us with an opportunity to remember.

Sources and resources

Bashka Paeff was well-known for realistic animal sculptures as well as war memorials, fountains, and portraits. Notable works include the Boy and Bird statue in the Boston Public Gardens, the Lexington Minute Men Memorial, and a statue of President Harding’s pet terrier, Laddie Boy.

“Motherhood, Memorials, and Anti-Militarism: Bashka’s Paeff’s Sacrifices of War, by Jennifer Wingate. Woman’s Art Journal. Fall/Winter 2008, 31-40. Available online via GoogleScholar (the link is not persistent, but the article is easily found).

“Pollution and salty air damage statue,” by Jeremy Corcoran. Portsmouth Herald. September 21, 2000. Updated December 16, 2010.

“Sailors and soldiers reborn,” by Amy Wallace. Portsmouth Herald. December 30, 2000. Updated January 31, 2011.

“Wisdom on war’s waste, ” by Nate Evans. Portsmouth Herald, June 1, 2001. http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20010601/NEWS/306019984

For more history on the Memorial Bridge, and links to old Kittery photos, see my post, On Bridges and the Jet Set.

 

 

 

The tragedy of the waitresses: A 1902 boating accident claims 14 lives at the Isles of Shoals

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Fourteen people died in Kittery, Maine on July 17, 1902.  I came across a list of the dead by accident, while browsing through some old Town Reports. All who died were young, including three pairs of sisters. How had these young people died at the Isles of Shoals? And why had I never heard about this event in Kittery’s history?

I soon learned that all perished by drowning, victims of a capsized whaleboat 200 feet off the shore of Appledore Island. Most of the dead, 12 women and two men, served as waitstaff at the Oceanic Hotel on Star Island, thus the event is recalled as the “Tragedy of the Waitresses.”

At the turn of the 20th century, the Isles of Shoals remained a mecca for summer visitors.   The Oceanic Hotel and the Appledore House attracted college students, teachers, and others for the same reasons that young people today take on similar jobs: they offer a great opportunity to spend the summer earning money in a fun social place.

Sources differ in explaining the details of exactly what happened on that overcast July day.  Some, including the skipper, Fred Miles, said the boat was overcome by a squall that struck as the boat was pulling into the harbor, while others say the accident resulted more from bad luck than angry seas.

This sketch of the Ipswich whaleboat accompanied a news story in the July 20, 1902 edition of the Boston Daily Globe.

In his book,  The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend, Lyman Rutledge provides an account based on interviews with shore witnesses. In this version, the whaleboat, loaded with its 16 passengers, set off for an afternoon excursion from the dock at Star Island under gray skies that suggested a brewing squall. After a short sail, the boat was returning to the harbor as the squall struck.

A witness interviewed by Rutledge says that the whaleboat was returning just as the afternoon steamer was completing its crossing from Portsmouth.  On the whaleboat, skipper Miles tacked to starboard to pull into Appledore Harbor. With the turn, the boat listed to its port side, and the young women on the boat crowded over to the starboard side, from where they could get a better view of the incoming boat.

But as the whaleboat passed into the lee of the steamer, the heavy wind was cut off.  As the sails went slack, the leaning boat shifted hard to starboard. With all the weight concentrated on the starboard side, water began to pour over the gunwales, overcoming the boat. Loaded with rock and iron ballast for stability, the whaleboat sank, stern first, within seconds. Most of the passengers drowned because the suction generated by the sinking boat pulled them under the water.

The capsize must have been a scene of utter chaos, as waves rocked and pulled at the other small boats trying to rescue the waitresses. Skipper Miles and two young women survived, but all the others were lost. As the harbor calmed, rescuers retrieved nine bodies, which were laid out on cots in the music room of the Appledore Hotel. A diver recovered the five remaining victims in the days that followed.

Kittery’s coroner, Edward E. Shapleigh, set out from Portsmouth at around 9:15 that evening to carry out the grim task of documenting the dead.

Most of the dead were young women, including sisters Mary and Ena Adams of Portsmouth, and Laura Gilmore, of Exeter. At the last minute, Ella Adams and  Hattie Gilmore, both sisters of victims, decided not to go. The Adams’s brother Oliver, rowing a dory, was the first to reach the victims (July 19, 1902 edition of the Boston Daily Globe).

The dead included two Harvard students who reportedly perished as they tried to hold up some of the young women. Nobody was wearing life jackets, which might have saved them, but even today, it’s unlikely that adult passengers on such an excursion would don life vests.

Fred Miles, the whaleboat skipper, was  devastated by the accident. He died of tuberculosis in 1911 at age 57.

News organizations from New York to San Francisco reported on the tragedy of the waitresses, with a mixture of facts, hearsay, and imagination. Coroner Shapleigh ruled the sinking an accident, and concluded that no further investigation was warranted, but that didn’t stop the media, families, and  community from casting blame.

Some blamed the captain for heading out when a storm was brewing. Others blamed the dockmen for regularly loading too many people in the whaleboat, although Skipper Miles claimed that the boat could hold many more passengers. Miles reportedly blamed the girls for not shifting in the boat, although the event happened so quickly, it’s unlikely that 16 people could have scrambled to the other side in time to prevent the capsize.

A fisherman and lifelong mariner, and the father of 13 children (two who died in infancy), Miles originally hailed from Nova Scotia, but had lived in Portsmouth for many years.

The headline from the July 19, 1902 edition of The New York Times. All victims eventually were recovered by divers.

The New York Times reported that when Miles was interviewed at his Hunking Street home the following day, he was “in a state bordering on prostration.” Newspapers around the country circulated the quote below was widely circulated newspapers around.

Skipper Miles, quoted in the New York Times. His explanation places more emphasis on the squall, compared to Rutledge’s account, in which bad luck (combined with the storm)  plays a larger role.

The Adams sisters are buried in Portsmouth’s South Cemetery. Mary, age 31, had worked for eight years as the order clerk at the Oceanic House, and was considered a valuable employee, along with younger sister Ena, age 22. They lived with their adult siblings in the family home on Marcy Street, their parents having died earlier. Their four brothers served as pallbearers at their funeral.

Her obituary describes Exeter’s Laura Gilmore, age 20 and a recent graduate of Robinson Seminary, as a “charming young woman”, and one of 12 siblings who were “peculiarly attached to one another,” with the older brothers and sisters working to save money to send the youngest one to college.

From the porch of the Appledore House, on Appledore Island, horrified visitors watched as the boat overturned and sank. The hotel, built to house 500 guests, closed a year later, and burned to the ground in 1914 (Library of Congress image).

I wonder how Fred Miles persevered after the tragedy. His wife gave birth to their 13th child that November, a baby girl died two years later. Miles developed tuberculosis and died in 1911, at age 57, leaving behind his wife Mary and 11 children.

This summer, I’ve been taking sailing lessons. As a novice, I am easily confused by the trifecta of sails, wind, and boat dynamics. I crash into the dock on almost every landing, have capsized the boat in a light breeze and no waves, and even managed to bust the tiller.  Although Skipper Miles was an experienced mariner, I now better understand how rapidly changing conditions could result in such an event. Sudden squalls happen out at the Shoals every summer, sometimes doing extensive damage to boats, docks and anything else on the water.

The day after the sinking, at the Oceanic House, “guests came from their rooms…in silence and seemed confused as they entered the dining-room where only a little handful of  waitresses with haggard faces were there to serve them,” writes Rutledge. “Out of the twenty-two, sixteen were absent, fourteen never to return.”

A Dr. Parks, interviewed by Rutledge, noted, “Had you been an ardent Shoaler at that time could you have forgotten it? Could you have attended a single session for the next fifty years without at least once during the week recalling that fearful tragedy?”

The Oceanic Hotel, where most of the accident victims worked, circa 1900 (Library of Congress photo). The Oceanic Hotel remains open today, serving as a conference center, but individual guests can also stay there on a space-available basis. Star Island is also a great destination for a day trip.

Sources and resources

Comments and additional information appreciated, especially in regards to the technical details of how or why the whaleboat capsized.

“Last chapter: All bodies of drowned on way home.” July 22, 1902, Boston Daily Globe.

“Terrible Drowning Accident: Fourteen Persons Go Down to Death Off the Isles of Shoals.”  July 18, 1902, Portsmouth Daily Chronicle (in vertical file at Portsmouth Aetheneum).

“Their last sad journeys: Bodies of the Isles of Shoals victims sent to sorrowing families” July 19, 1902, Boston Daily Globe.

“Tragedy of the Waitresses.” In The Isles of Shoals in Lore and Legend, by Lyman V. Rutledge. Star Island Corporation, 1971.

For more information on staying at the Oceanic Hotel, visit the Star Island Corporation website. Today, Appledore Island is home to the Shoals Marine Laboratory, which offers a variety of visitor programs.

 

Fragments of history: When the KKK marched in Kittery, Maine

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This photo by early 20th century photographer and businessman Frank Walker documents one of the KKK "Konclaves" held in Kittery in the 1920s.

This photo by early 20th century photographer and businessman Frank Walker documents a large KKK parade held in Kittery in the 1920s (courtesy of the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum).

Why and how did Kittery-ites join the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s? The Foreside parade in this undated J. Frank Walker photo likely took place on either June 30, 1924, or August 17, 1925, when Portsmouth Herald articles document these two “Konclaves” .

The 1924 parade concluded with a “naturalization” ceremony — an initiation ritual that echoed the ceremony for becoming a U.S. citizen.  The festivities wrapped up at Locke’s Cove with a cross burning.

But even though these two parades are fairly recent events, we have only fragments of history about the Kittery Klan.  Were the marchers — an estimated 400, according to some — all from Kittery, or was this a region-wide gathering?  Kittery was a small town of 4,700, so it seems unlikely that a single organization would draw 400 locals, especially at a time when many belonged to one or more fraternal organizations. Then again, 1924 lacked the myriad entertainments of the current era, so maybe the Klan parade provided an opportunity for a summer social event. On Labor Day, 1924, a Klan parade in Saco drew 300 marchers–reportedly a mixed crowd of locals and Klan members from throughout New England–so perhaps Kittery’s parades drew a similar crowd.

Some say–and again, this is hearsay based on fragments of talk and memory — that the parades were organized to protest the construction of St. Raphael’s Catholic Church in Kittery.  But in the 1920s, no construction was happening at St. Raphael’s, established in 1916 to serve the town’s small community of 77 Catholics.  Parishioners celebrated Mass in a small chapel, constructed in 1916 within the existing foundation of a one-time stable; the church was built in 1933-1934 at the same Wentworth Street location.  St. Raphael’s history book mentions that Catholics faced some bigotry, including the burning of a cross on the grounds of the basement church, but includes no dates.

Another view of the parade, which shows the marching band that also participated. The photo is undated, but The lighting suggest that this is a different shot of the same parade as above (courtesy of the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum).

Another view of the parade, which shows the marching band that also participated (courtesy of the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum).

Between 1923-1925, Klan membership surged in Maine to over 20,000 people (as reported by the Klan, with other sources reporting higher numbers), mostly due to a charismatic leader, F. Eugene Farnsworth, and a fear that French-Canadian immigrants might gain political power. Thousands of Quebecois were working in the mills of Biddeford, Saco, Sanford and other Maine towns, with more crossing the border each year.

What was happening in Kittery at this time? The town didn’t have the large mills with hundreds of employees.  However, U.S. Census records show a population surge in Kittery from 1900, when 2,872 people lived in town, to 1920, when 4,763 residents were counted–an increase of 66%.  U.S. immigration as a whole peaked in these years.  Was Kittery’s population increase fueled by immigrants? Or was the surge due to expanding job opportunities at the Shipyard as it built up during World War I?

In the early days of St. Raphael’s, the parishioners were not French-Canadians; the original membership list includes names such as Curran, Witham, Bridges, and Drake. This small group had been around for years, initially rowing to Portsmouth to attend Mass and then later traveling to South Berwick’s St. Michael’s Church.

Further north, in Portland and beyond, King Kleagle F. Eugene  Farnsworth, a one-time hypnotist best described as a huckster, had capitalized on fears of French-speaking Canadian immigrants to generate interest in the Klan. In 1923, Governor Percival Baxter, a Republican, spoke out against the Klan, predicted that the organization would fail to influence the “level-headed citizens of Maine.”

But he was wrong. Two years later, Republican Ralph O. Brewster became Maine’s governor, thanks in large part to the support of the “White Knights” who backed him.

This circa 1910 postcard shows an Atlantic Shore Line trolley crossing Locke's Cove. The KKK ceremony and cross burning occurred somewhere in this vicinity (Postcard from collections of Seashore Trolley Museum).

This circa 1910 postcard shows an Atlantic Shore Line trolley crossing Locke’s Cove. The KKK ceremony and cross burning occurred somewhere in this vicinity (Postcard from collections of Seashore Trolley Museum).

Farnsworth promoted “100% Americanism,” by which he meant White Anglo-Saxon Protestantism. By this time, Irish Catholics were mainstream in East Coast cities, and politically powerful, and Maine had a small Irish-Catholic population (the oldest Catholic church in New England, Saint Patrick’s, was established in Newcastle in 1808).

But a new horde of non-English speaking Catholics in a rural state like Maine posed a threat. They might take all the jobs or spread diseases in their tenement houses. They might gain political power and demand funding for parochial schools, or worse.

These sentiments echoed national anxieties about immigrants, especially the “yellow swarms” from Italy and other southern and eastern European countries.  By the early 1920s, the Klan claimed 6 million members, many recruited with its “100% Americanism” rhetoric.

This 1924 Portsmouth Herald article...

This Portsmouth Herald article describes the parade on June 30, 1924, including the cross-burning at Locke’s Cove. A similar short article describes a parade on August 30, 1925.

Today, when I see these photos of ordinary citizens marching in white robes, I wonder who they were and why they marched. Were they “old Kittery” residents, fearful of being displaced by industrialization and a changing economy?  Were they suspicious of French-speaking immigrants, even if they didn’t know any of these “outsiders” who didn’t speak English, practiced a “foreign” religion, and allegedly owed their allegiance to a religious leader in a faraway country? Were they seeking connection and community with others who made them feel safe?

During the Gilded Age of the 1890s, the outside world rediscovered Kittery, which became a popular summer destination for tourists who stayed in the town’s five large hotels.

But before the tourists came, Kittery, along with the rest of the Piscataqua region, was a sleepy backwater, in decline since Jefferson’s Embargo in the 1800s killed off the merchant economy (Kittery lost 35% of its population between 1800 and 1810).  Although many stayed and got by with farming, fishing, building ships, more than 100 years passed before the Kittery reached its pre-Embargo population of about 3,100 people.  Vital records in the Town Reports — births and deaths — show the same names over and again,  many from families who had settled here during colonial times.

kkk at the Grange 1933 (2)

This January 19, 1933 update on Kittery Grange news mentions Kittery Klan No. 5 as contributing to an upcoming Unemployment Bazaar.

The last documented Klan event in Kittery is a 1933 notice about a social event at the Kittery Grange.  By then, the Klan’s national membership had dropped to 45,000, with 225 members reported in Maine in 1930. The Klan had imploded, due in part to the murder trial and unveiling of King Kleagle D.C. Stephenson, a one-time salesman who had murdered his girlfriend, along with a variety of other allegations of corruption and abuse of power. In some parts of the country, the Klan continued to terrorize its victims, especially African-Americans, but it had lost its force as a national organization.

But before its implosion, the Klan had achieved several goals: it had helped to secure the passage of the 1924 National Origins Act, which limited the number of immigrants, especially non-Protestants from southern and eastern Europe. Then in 1928, the Klan helped to defeat presidential candidate Al Smith, a Catholic.

Still a small group in Kittery hung on.  I wonder who these ordinary people were, and why we have forgotten about Kittery Klan No. 5 so easily.

Sources and resources

I welcome all additions, corrections, comments, or suggestions for further information about the Klan in Kittery, via the Comments section.

Many thanks to Kim Sanborn, Executive Director of the Kittery Naval & Historical Museum, for sharing her insights on the Klan’s presence in Kittery.

U.S. Census data is compiled in an easy-to-read format on the Kittery, Maine Wikipedia page, but I have not been able to verify the accuracy of this data.

“The King Kleagle of Maine’s Ku Klux Klan was an opportunist,” by Sharon Cummings.  SoMeOldNews: Surprising Southern Maine History.  Cummings’s research suggests that anti-immigrant King Kleagle Farnsworth was himself a Canadian immigrant from New Brunswick, although he claimed Columbia Falls, Maine as his birthplace.

“The Ku Klux Klan in New Hampshire, 1923-1927”, Stephen H. Goetz. Historical New Hampshire, Vol 43, No. 4, Winter 1988. Goetz also looks at the brief time of the KKK in New Hampshire, where long-established French-Canadian communities had largely assimilated into the mainstream.  He speculates that the national “social hysteria” over immigration and other issues fueled Klan membership (which required the significant expenses of a $10 initiation fee and $5 for the white robe), as well as the general popularity of all fraternal organizations.

“The Nativist Klan.” Maine Memory Network of the Maine Historical Society.

Not a Catholic Nation: The Ku Klux Klan confronts New England in the 1920s, by Mark Paul Richards. Amherst/Boston, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015.

Richards’s book offers insightful and evidence-filled chapters on the rise of the Klan in Maine in the 1920s.  By the mid-1920s, Roman Catholics were the largest single religious group in the state, with 173, 893 adherents, compared to the Northern Baptist Convention, at 32,031, and the Methodist Episcopal Church, at 22,938.  Richards also cites a 1930 Washington Post article claiming a peak membership of 150,141 Klan member in Maine, the largest in New England, and almost 20% of Maine’s population, or 30% of the white native-born population.

U.S. Immigration Legislation: 1924 Immigration Act.  U.S. Immigration legislation online. The National Origins Act set limits on immigration and set up a quota system based upon the current population of the United States which basically guaranteed that the majority of immigration slots would go to immigrants from northern Europe (Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia).

“Uncomfortable History,” by Candace Kanes. Maine History Online. Maine Historical Society.

Related posts:

For more on Kittery history during the Gilded Age of the 1890s (especially on the PK&Y Trolley), see my posts “On Bridges and the Jet Set” and “Remnants of the Gilded Age at Brave Boat Harbor.”

On early 20th century immigration in Kittery: The little girl in the photo and The summer when Kittery aliens landed at the Town Office.

Lives lived, and lost, at the Kittery Town Forest

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Kittery purchased the land for the Town Forest, once known as the Poor Farm, in 1820. An 1852 Auditors report (the oldest I've uncovered) mentions the Almshouse. Since the original purchase included a house and a barn, the town was probably using it as an almshouse for many years prior to 1852.

Back in 1820, in Kittery, Maine, the town purchased the original 13-acre plot that became the Town Farm or Poor Farm.

Sometimes when I walk in Kittery’s 72-acre Town Forest, I wonder what became of Ella Hill and her girl Annie. From 1891 to about 1897, Ella and Annie lived here at the Town Farm, or Poor Farm. In 1891, the town spent $2 to move Ella and two children to the almshouse. She arrived with an infant son, Fred, in her arms. He died on May 22 that year and probably dwells in an unmarked grave nearby.

Ella had another son, John, born around 1878 when she was 20.  The 1880 census tells us that she and two-year-old John lived with Rachael Fernald and worked as a domestic servant. Ella’s father, John Hill, a farmer, died in 1880, so she perhaps went to live with and work at the Fernalds  to keep body and soul together for herself and her baby.  No husband is mentioned in the scant records I’ve found that document Ella’s life.  After the census, young John disappears, so perhaps Ella lost two children.

At the almshouse, Ella and little Annie probably ate supper each night with Adelaide and Charles Leach. By that time, Adelaide, about 60 years old, and Charles, her 49-year-old younger brother, had been residents, or “inmates,” of the almshouse for more than 2o years. Perhaps they provided comfort to Ella when her baby died. Perhaps she comforted them when William Leach, possibly their brother or another relative, died there on January 23, 1892, at age 64.

More inmate deaths followed during Ella’s stay. In 1892, Mary Taylor, age 45 died, followed by John Ricker, age 80, and Abigail Clements, age 79. Not long after, 88-year-old Joseph Parsons arrived. Perhaps Ella helped care for these elders to earn her keep.

Ella and Annie stayed on until around 1897, when they disappear from the Kittery town reports. Did Ella marry? Did she find employment in one of Kittery’s big hotels, or somewhere else?

Town records are silent on her eventual fate. They tell us a bit more about Adelaide and Charles, both of whom lived most of their lives at the Town Farm, and died there. On January 22, 1901, Adelaide died. Although the town report listed her name as a farm inmate for more than 30 years, nobody caught the mistake that named her “Annabelle Leach” in the vital statistics.  Charles died 15 years later, on September 20, 1916.

What the records don’t reveal is why the Leaches, an old Kittery family with roots dating to the 1600s, landed at the almshouse. They arrived, it seems, with other members of the Leach family, including their parents, Ebenezer and Iza, some time between 1861 and 1871; a town report from 1861-62 records expenses for “partial support” of 30-year-old Adelaide Leach at a private home. The 1860 census tells us that Ebenezer Leach was a fisherman, as was his son Charles. Various town reports  list the “Leach property” as under town ownership, valued at $500 in 1906 (but not part of the Town Farm, valued at $2,000). What fate befell the Leach family, so that they lost their land and perhaps their livelihoods, and ended up living out their days at the Town Farm? Why did two young adults — Adelaide and Charles – stay at the farm?

The blue-marked Quimby Trail offers a loop walk of about 3 miles through the forest.

The blue-marked Quimby Trail offers a loop walk of about 3 miles through the forest.

Today, the Town Forest is one of the Kittery’s under-the-radar resources, one in which I’ve enjoyed walking, running, and biking since the 1990s. Over the past 20 years, the forest surrounding the town land has shrunk, as housing developments have sprung up on all sides, but the Town Forest remains a great place to wander, and to wonder, about the people who once called this place home, including a good number who still remain, buried somewhere in unmarked graves.

In 19th century New England, the “poor farm” was a well-established institution where some residents worked at farm chores to pay their keep. However, evidence in Kittery’s town reports suggests that taxpayers generally supported the five to eight residents who lived there, with the town paying a salary to a “superintendent,” and bills for flour, wood, food, and other necessities, and even for hiring nearby farmers like William Haley and Samuel Norton to do the mowing and other heavy chores. Although it’s possible that “inmates” took care of a small garden, most were too old to do the hard physical labor of farm work.

The 19th century almshouse has a reputation as a misery-filled place where all manner of humanity was thrown together, elderly widows and young children mixed in with vagrants and drunkards. But some poor farms, especially in rural New England, were more convivial and communal – places of shelter and community where residents might play cards together or just enjoy the benefits of human companionship. They were more like small old-age homes, where elderly residents who had no family or whose family wouldn’t or couldn’t care for them lived out their last days.

The forest offers no dramatic vistas, but lots of old stone walls, a family cemetery, and other remains of the past that speak to lives lived and lost here.

The Town Forest offers no dramatic vistas, but lots of old stone walls, two family cemeteries, and other remains of the past that speak to lives lived and lost here. Here in the Haley Family Cemetery, walkers will find Captain Haley’s 1864 gravestone embedded in the ground, surrounded by other unmarked or illegible stones.

I suspect that the Kittery Town Farm almshouse had a community-like feel to it.  Adelaide and Charles Leach surely enjoyed the company of little Annie Hill, who lived at the farm until she was about seven. 

In 1820, Kittery purchased the original 13 acres for the farm, along with a house and a barn, for $325. Later, Captain John R. Haley left 59 surrounding acres to the town. It’s unclear when the town began using the house and land as its “poor farm,” but a town report from 1852 mentions the almshouse, so I suspect the land was purchased specifically to serve as a home for the poor. Some sources that discuss the Pepperrell family note that one of the Sparhawk brothers of Loyalist William Pepperrell ended up living at the almshouse (and the timing, around the 1820s, sounds about right, as a Sparhawk born in the 1750s or 60s would have been an elder by the 1820s).

Town records suggest that the town began to move away from using the almshouse as the shelter of last resort in the 1920s, when the number of residents declined to two and then to one, Mary Gunnison, an elderly woman who lived there with caretakers Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hall until around 1922.  

Later, the town rented the farm for a $175 a year.  In many years, maintenance expenses outweighed the rental income, which probably led to the decision to demolish the almshouse in 1961.  Many Kittery residents today still remember riding the school bus past the almshouse on Haley Road.

Evidence of porcupine activity in the forest; the porkies love the bark of the many hemlock trees.

Evidence of porcupine activity in the forest; the porkies love the bark of the many hemlock trees.

Somewhere in this forest is a lost and unmarked pauper’s burial plot that probably holds the Leaches and the other souls who died while living at the Town Farm. When the snow melts, I’ll continue to look for it, as I wander, and wonder, about these people, their stories, and why they landed at the poor farm.

Sources and resources

The Town Forest, at 77 Haley Road, runs between Haley and Lewis Roads, with parking areas on both ends. At the southern end, the former town pound, where stray livestock was once corralled, is an interesting feature.

I welcome any comments or additional information that might fill out this story about the Town Farm.

The Town Farm now features one main loop trail, about 3 miles long, known as the Quimby Trail, named for the late Conrad Quimby, a retired newspaper publisher who called Kittery home for many years, and as Chair of the Conservation Commission spearheaded the creation of walking trails in the Town Forest. Numerous herd trails also thread through the forest.  Hunters regularly tramp in these woods in the fall, and more adventurous walkers can plunge deep into the forest without fear of getting hopelessly lost (especially now that residential development surrounds the forest).

Walkers will find the Haley Family Cemetery, on the Quimby Trail, soon after it bears left (from the Haley Road entrance). The Lewis Family Cemetery is located at the Haley Road entrance, next to the Town Pound.

The Rice Library holds town reports dating to 1874. More reports (but not all) can be found in Maine’s Digital Commons. The earliest report I found was dated 1852.

Some general information about the 19th century poor farm comes from David Wagner’s excellent study of six New England town farms and almshouses: The Poorhouse: America’s Forgotten Institution,  New York; Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.

Information on the 1820 purchase is from the March 3, 2002 Portsmouth Herald article by Amy Wallace, “Kittery Hunts for Town Forest Solution,” by Amy Wallace.

Hunting is permitted in the Town Forest, so I recommend wearing hunter orange Monday to Saturday from November 1 to mid-December and avoiding the forest altogether at dusk and dawn, when hunters are most active. No hunting on Sundays.

 

Skulls of history in a forgotten tomb

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Where was he, the most noteworthy man who ever called my town home?

Back and forth I wandered, searching. Where was the life-sized portrait of Sir William Pepperrell?

At the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, nobody seemed to know, at least not the two young gallery guards I asked. At last, an older gentleman led me through American Decorative Arts to my baron.

We turned a corner and came upon an entire wall taken up by the portrait, which easily was one of the largest on display at the PEM. But even here, Sir William was largely forgotten, just another guy on the wall.

Sir William Pepperrell, painted in 1745 by John Smibert, to commemorate the successful Siege of Louisbourg.

Sir William Pepperrell, painted in 1745 by John Smibert, to commemorate the successful Siege of Louisbourg, at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Such is the fleeting nature of fame  — even when you were once one of the wealthiest and most famous men in the American colonies, and the only American-born Englishman ever awarded a baronetcy.

Reproductions of this portrait of Colonial William Pepperrell (the rags-to-riches orphan who built the Pepperrell Mansion in the late 1600s) are found in several 19th century histories. I have been unable to locate the name of the artist or the current owner/location of the portrait, which may or may not be that of the first William Pepperrell.

Reproductions of this portrait of the first William Pepperrell are found in several 19th century histories.

The Pepperrells were upstarts start-from-nothing Americans. Sir William’s father, William Pepperrell, came to New England as a teenaged orphan working on a cod fishing boat at the Isles of Shoals, just off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire.

After completing his apprenticeship, young Pepperrell used his earnings to buy his first boat. Eventually, he bought more boats, leased them out, and combined his knowledge of the fishery with his business acumen to build an empire. His 1682 Pepperrell Mansion still dominates Kittery Point’s Pepperrell Cove neighborhood today.

William, his son, expanded the empire and became a colonial real estate magnate, buying up property on Maine’s coast from Kittery to Scarborough. Both father and son, however, did more than count their dollars.  William senior helped to establish establish Kittery’s First Congregational Church, and was active in civic affairs, a legacy continued by his son, who served as a court judge and commanded the local militia.

By the 1740s, Kittery Point had little need for an active militia, as the threat of Indian raids on the coast had faded.  But Britain and France remained engaged in warfare. In 1745, Massachusetts Governor William Shirley, abetted by others, decided that the colonists should try to dislodge the French from their fort at Louisbourg, on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. He asked William Pepperrell (the son) to raise an army of 4,000 men and take command of an expedition upon Louisbourg.

Pepperrell had no military field experience.  When he accepted the command of this inexperienced citizen-soldier army, he knew the outcome was far from certain.

Long story short: After a lengthy siege, Pepperrell’s force, aided by the British Navy, captured the fort, and King George II made him a baronet. The American who had commanded the force that defeated a European army returned home to much acclaim.

Three years later, New Englanders had to swallow a bitter pill when the fort was returned to France as part of a swap for a British fort captured by the French in India. But the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle couldn’t take away that fact that the colonials had learned, under Pepperrell, that they could hold their own against professional soldiers – a lesson the next generation remembered 30 years later on the eve of the American Revolution.

Sir William Pepperrell, some say, became an inspiration for New England’s patriots. Conveniently, he passed away in 1759, so he could be remembered for Louisbourg without having to declare himself a Patriot or a Loyalist, as his Loyalist grandson William Pepperrell had to do. In 1774, his fellow citizens recalled Pepperrell as a “great American.”

In the 1730s (or possibly earlier), William built a large tomb for his father – a crypt dug into the side of a hill on a field across from the Pepperrell Mansion. A slab of imported marble capped the tomb, and the first William, who lived into his 80s, was interred there in 1734.  Later, other family members joined the patriarch, including the Hero of Louisbourg.

A postcard depicting the Pepperrell Tomb circa 1910-1920, when the tomb was a tourist attraction for the thousands of visitors who stayed in Kittery’s five Gilded Age hotels.  The trees are no longer standing, but the basic appearance of the tomb today is the same (1908 postcard, creator unknown).

But by the mid-19th century, Sir William’s tomb had fallen into disrepair. Writing in 1875, popular historian Samuel Drake noted that when the tomb was repaired, at the behest of Pepperrell descendent Harriet Hirst Sparhawk, “the remains were found lying in a promiscuous heap at the bottom, the wooden shelves at the sides having given way, precipitating the coffins upon the floor of the vault. The planks first used to close the entrance had yielded to the pressure of the feet of cattle grazing in the common field, filling the tomb with rubbish. About thirty skulls were found in various stages of decomposition.”

These skulls inside the Pepperrell Tomb are likely the remains of different members of the Pepperrell family, including Sir William. The photo, courtesy of the Portsmouth Atheneum, was probably taken by descendent and local historian Joe Frost, as it was found tucked into a book he had given the Atheneum.

These skulls inside the Pepperrell Tomb are likely the remains of various members of the Pepperrell family, including (possibly) Sir William. The photo was probably taken in the 1970s by descendant and local historian Joseph Frost, as it was discovered tucked into a book he had given the Atheneum (Joseph W.P. Frost Collection, Portsmouth Atheneum).

Although the tomb was repaired then, it has repeatedly fallen into a cycle of neglect and renovation. Another source notes that at the turn of the 20th century, young boys played games in and around the tomb.  For many years, the Pepperrell Family Association maintained the tomb, but that organization disbanded in 1937, probably because its members had died, or moved away, or lost interest in a now-distant ancestor. At that time, according to notes and documents in the Frost Collection at the Portsmouth Atheneum, the tomb plot was signed over to a relative in a distant state.

For years, it seems, care of the tomb has depended on happenstance and somebody taking an interest. At the time of Drake’s writing, the proprietor of the Pepperrell Hotel, which overlooked the tomb, took an interest. But because the tomb is sort of an island onto itself, not in a cemetery, not in somebody’s backyard, it is easily forgotten.

At the Kittery Naval and Historical Museum, visitors can look at mourning rings crafted to commemorate the death of Sir William Pepperrell. These rings were worn by relatives and others to show they were in mourning. We should do more of that kind of memorial today, although the cost of purchasing 14K gold rings for a large number of mourners is probably reserved to the 1%, as was likely also the case in 1759.

At the Kittery Naval and Historical Museum, visitors can look at mourning rings crafted to commemorate the death of Sir William Pepperrell. The family distributed these rings to mourners.  I like the idea of this tradition — a small but public display of mourning — although I’m sure the cost of the rings limited the practice to wealthier Americans.

In more recent times, local historian and Pepperrell descendent Joseph Frost (now deceased) corresponded with state officials and others, trying to get a person, a state agency, or some entity to take responsibility for the tomb, to assure that it didn’t again fall into a state of disrepair or neglect (Joseph W. P. Frost Collection, Portmouth Atheneum).

Back in the early 1960s, two people who claimed to represent the disbanded Pepperrell Family Association filed a quit-claim deed signing the lot over to the owner of Frisbee’s Store. He built a parking lot on the lower part of the tomb plot and carried out his obligations, per the deed, to maintain the tomb.  But eventually, the tomb was forgotten again, with brush, grass and trees growing up around it.

I’m still not exactly sure who or what “owns” the tomb, but in 2008, volunteers from the Friends of Fort McClary cleaned up the tomb.  Once again, Kittery’s forgotten hero was remembered. Today, a small American flag and the Union Jack flutter on grassy knoll across the street from Frisbee’s.

I wonder how many years will pass before we forget him again. I know that with volunteers, keeping something going often depends on one or two key people. They get sick, or move away, or die, or just get weary of responsibility.

Is forgetting the tomb an inevitable result of our on-to-go individualistic American lives? I haven’t visited the grave of my paternal grandparents since my grandmother died in the 1970s. I’ve visited the grave of my maternal grandparents once or twice in 15 years. I don’t even know the locations of the graves belonging to my great-grandparents, even though one great-grandmother lived long into my adulthood.

But my great-grandmother didn’t lead an expedition that inspired  a generation of Americans that they had it in them to win a war against a world power.  That’s a man worth remembering.

Front view of the Pepperrell Mansion, looking out towards Pepperrell Cove.

Front view of the Pepperrell Mansion, looking out towards Pepperrell Cove.  The first William Pepperrell built this house, on a plot of land given to him by his father-in-law, John Bray, who lived next door.  Sir William the son  lived here with his family until his death in 1759, when Lady Mary Pepperrell built her own more modern mansion town the street.

PS: Readers, if you know anything more about the tomb, please add your comments or email me, and I will update the information in this post.

Sources and resources

For more on the Pepperrells, I especially recommended the last chapter of my book, Pioneer on a Mountain Bike, along with my posts, “Ghost of a Pepperrell Lady“, “Globalization,circa 1807, curses the Lady Pepperrell House“and “Nathaniel Sparhawk and the Art of Swagger.”

The Kittery Naval and Historical Museum has several Pepperrell artifacts on display, including — possibly — a telescope that William might have used at Louisbourg.

For more on 18th and 19th century mourning rings, see Historic New England’s online exhibit, Not Lost But Gone Before: Mourning Jewelry.

Drake, Samuel Adams.  Nooks and Crannies of the New England Coast. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1875.

 

Globalization, circa 1807, curses the Lady Pepperrell House

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The Lady Pepperrell House, apparently released from its curse, on a recent spring afternoon.

The Lady Pepperrell House, apparently released from its curse, on a recent spring afternoon.

Lady Mary Hirst Pepperrell had impeccable taste.  So say many sources, but the best indicator is the home  she built in 1760 on Route 103 in Kittery Point.

The Lady Pepperrell House is one of Maine’s outstanding examples of 18th century Georgian-era architecture.  Its simple clean lines, graceful ionic pilasters, and large windows that flood the home with light invite house envy today.  But by the mid-19th century, many said the luxurious house was cursed.

It certainly looked cursed. Writing in the 1870s, historian Samuel Adams Drake described the house as “a somber old mansion, having, in despite of some relics of a former splendor, an unmistakable air of neglect and decay.  The massive entrance door hung by a single fastening, the fluted pilasters on either side were rotting away, window panes were shattered, chimney tops in ruins, the fences prostrate. It was nothing but a wreck ashore.  This was the house built by Lady Pepperell, after the death of Sir William.  Report said it was haunted; indeed I found it so, and by a living phantom.”

Lady Pepperrell’s house, built for her after the death of her husband Sir William, had almost become a metaphor for downfall of the Pepperrell family, except that the home’s decline began many years after the Pepperrell family’s Revolutionary War misfortune.

Besides, Loyalist William (Sparhawk) Pepperrell (who I’ve written about in another post) might have lost his property and most of what he held dear, but he lived a purposeful life in England after the war and ushered his four children successfully into adulthood.  The Lady, his grandmother, lived peacefully in her house, with no curse ever in evidence, until her death in 1789.

Such was not the case for the branch of the Cutts family that purchased Lady Pepperrell’s home in 1800 from Catherine and Daniel Humphreys, who had acquired it from Elizabeth Sparhawk (who was Catherine’s grandmother and Lady Pepperrell’s daughter).

In the 18th century, the Cutts clan, whose ancestors were among the first settlers of Kittery, established itself as one of the leading families of Kittery and Portsmouth. By 1800, Joseph Cutts was a captain and merchant wealthy enough to buy the elegant home, keeping it in the family, more or less. (Cutts was a descendent, via his mother, of the original William Pepperrell family).

But on the other side of the ocean, troubles stirred by the rise of Napoleon set in a motion a chain of events that led to the chaining of Charles Cutts, the Captain’s son, in an upstairs chamber.  He suffered from mental illness and reportedly was often chained to the floor to prevent injury to himself or others.

Drawing of Joseph Cutts (the Captain, I think, and not his son), attributed to Albert W. Fiske (Portsmouth Athenaeum collection).

Drawing of Joseph Cutts (the Captain, I think, and not his son), attributed to Albert W. Fiske (Portsmouth Athenaeum collection).

The Captain himself lost his sanity, although he lived a long life, dying at age 97 in 1861.  In 1839, another son, naval officer Joseph Cutts, killed himself in what once had been Lady Pepperrell’s bedchamber.  His death might have been the culminating blow for his sister, Sarah “Sally” Chauncey Cutts, caretaker to her father and brothers.  She too developed mental illness.

The key event in the demise of the Cutts family was Thomas Jefferson’s Embargo Act, passed in 1807 in a misguided attempt to stop British and French ships from seizing American vessels and to stop the British from impressing American merchant sailors into military service.  The Act banned all trade with Britain and France, both of which were the new nation’s biggest trading partners.

With the bill’s passage, Captain Cutts lost his livelihood. He could neither buy nor sell. His ships rotted in an anchorage behind Gerrish Island. By 1813, he was bankrupt and indebted to the government for unpaid duties.  (Some sources say the house was seized by the government for non-payment of taxes, and later redeemed by either Sally or another relative in the extended Cutts family). Although it’s likely that a genetics  played a large role in the family’s mental illness, the strain of losing his fortune probably contributed to Captain Cutts’s breakdown.

Drawing of Sally Cutts attributed to artist Albert W. Fiske (Portsmouth Atheneum Collection)

Drawing of Sally Cutts attributed to artist Albert W. Fiske (Portsmouth Athenaeum Collection)

On his undated mid-19th century visit, historian Drake described Sally as “a harmless maniac,” who was “the sole inhabitant of the old house; she and it were fallen into hopeless ruin together.” Her appearance, he wrote, “was weird and witch-like, and betokened squalid poverty. An old calash almost concealed her features from observation, except when she raised her head and glanced at us in a scared, furtive sort of way.”

She invited Drake and his companion into the house.  “Fragment of the original paper, representing ancient ruins, had peeled off the walls,” he wrote,  “and vandal hands had wrenched away the the pictured tiles from the fire-places. The upper rooms were but a repetition of the disorder and misery below stairs.”

Sally led Drake and his companion to an upstairs “apartment,” where she “relapsed into imbecility, and seemed little conscious of our presence.”  In her room, “some antiquated furniture, doubtless family heirlooms, a small stove, and a bed, constituted all her worldly goods,” wrote Drake. “As she crooned over a scanty fire of two or three wet sticks, muttering to herself, and striving to warm her weathered hands, I thought I beheld in her the impersonation of Want and Despair.”

I am a little skeptical as to whether or not Drake visited Sally Cutts in the Pepperrell House.  She died in 1874, (a year before Drake’s book was published) and spent time prior to her death living with friends who had taken her in.  Another writer, James H. Head, wrote of a similar visit to Sally Cutts in November of 1864, with his account published in the Boston Journal.  Sarah Orne Jewett presented a barely fictionalized account of a visit with “Miss Sally Chauncey” in Deephaven: Selected Stories and Sketches (1877), so presumably she visited her as well.

Captain Cutts and his family are buried in the Old Burying Ground across the street from his one-time home and the Congregational Church. A table-like memorial stone tells his story. (As you enter the cemetery, look to your left to see the Cutts memorial).

Captain Cutts and his family are buried in the Old Burying Ground across the street from his one-time home and the Congregational Church. A table-like memorial stone tells his story. (Entering via the cemetery’s maine gate, the Cutts memorial is readily visible, to the left).

Did poor Sally regularly open her door to touring writers who wanted to invade her privacy?  Or did Drake build upon and embellish the accounts of Head and Jewett? And am I the latest in a series of writers fascinated by the Cutts family history, even if it is a history that they would have preferred to keep private?

The story of the Cutts family, however, is worth remembering, because their family history is a microcosm for the economic devastation that Jefferson’s Embargo wreaked in the Seacoast region. Their pain helps us to better understand how the region suffered during this period of economic collapse.  Ships rotted in harbors. Many merchants declared bankruptcy. A ripple effect reverberated throughout the local economy. Portsmouth, once a thriving port, became a backwater instead of a rival to Boston or New York.

The Embargo Act inadvertently paved the way for the Seacoast region to become what it is today: historically rich, but economically underdeveloped compared to what it might have become.  The Seacoast region is not Boston, with its packed roadways and paved landscapes.

The losses suffered by the Cutts family and many others during the Embargo era have become our gain, in that we live in  what is now an economically vibrant but beautiful and sustainable community.  The story of the Cuttses connects with our story today.

A fire ravaged the Lady Pepperrell House on December 27, 1945 and caused extensive damage. The home was restored by X and Y. Portsmouth Herald photo from Historic New England digital collections.

Another sign of the curse? A fire ravaged the Lady Pepperrell House on December 27, 1945 and caused interior damage. John Fellows of Kittery oversaw the restoration. Historic New England (formerly the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities) owned the home from the 1940s until the 1980s, when the organization sold the home to a private owner. Portsmouth Herald photo from Historic New England digital collections.

The Lady Pepperrell House is protected by a preservation easement administered by Historic New England.  Other Kittery landmarks, however, such as the Pepperrell Mansion and the Bray House, are not protected. Although both homes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and currently are owned by good stewards, they could be torn down tomorrow if a property owner wanted to take that path.

These architectural artifacts of history remind us that we are not historical islands, despite our high tech gadgets and way of life. We live in both a global economy and an historical ecosystem where the past reverberates into the present.

Embargoes and lost fortunes lead to economic decline, paving the way for resurrection and reclamation.  Trolleys connect the city to the country, and bridges and automobiles (as I’ve written about here) swiftly change a way of life.  A grange hall becomes The Dance Hall, and a building where the Masons gathered transforms to a collection of gathering places for locals and visitors discovering the pleasures of walking across bridges.

Beware of curses– but only when we forget them.  In remembering Sally Cuts and her family, perhaps we’ll take more care as we construct our own story.

Lady Pepperrell House, undated photo (Historic New England Collection).

Lady Pepperrell House, undated photo (Historic New England Collection).

Resources and sources

For a great example of connecting the past to the present, read about Stories from The Grange and Kittery’s Foreside, a project organized by Drika Overton of The Dance Hall.

For more information the architectural details of the Lady Pepperrell House, see “Palladian Perfection, New England Style, Part 2: The Lady Pepperell House at Kittery Point Maine” at The Down East Dilettante.

To read more about Drake’s visit, see Chapter 10, “At Kittery Point, Maine,” in Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast, by Samuel Adams Drake (1875).

James Head’s Boston Journal account of his 1864 visit to Sally Cutts can be found in the Pepperrell House vertical file at the Portsmouth Athenaeum.

For some detailed photos of the exterior and interior of Lady Pepperrell’s house, see Donna Seger’s “Lady Pepperrell and Her House” at Streets of Salem.

For more on the oldest homes in Kittery Point, see Colonial Village, by John Eldridge Frost  (1947, publisher unknown)

 

 

The Ghost of a Pepperrell Lady

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John Singleton Copley rarely painted children, but likely couldn't refuse the commission from Isaac Royall for the portrait of his two daughter. The Royall family amassed a fortune trading slaves and merchandise. By the 1750s, Isaac Royall was one of the wealthiest men in New England.

John Singleton Copley rarely painted children, but likely couldn’t refuse the commission from Isaac Royall Junior for the portrait of his two daughters. The portrait is owned by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Click portrait for larger view.

Elizabeth Royall was a royal – a member of New England’s informal royalty.  When she was a tween girl, she and her older sister Mary sat for a young John Singleton Copley when he came to their Medford, Massachusetts house to paint their portrait in 1758.

New England royalty differed from British royalty in that most of the region’s wealthiest families had earned their royal status via a combination of education, commerce and the luck of having arrived first.  Once having attained their status, New England’s royal families maintained it with strategic marriages, lots of social networking, and visits to England to establish and nurture helpful contacts.

Elizabeth’s grandfather Isaac Royall, born to a family of modest means in colonial Maine, kickstarted the family fortune as a merchant mariner who eventually amassed a fortune trading in rum, sugar and slaves. By the 1750s, Elizabeth’s father had inherited the family’s elegant home and farm in Medford and freely enjoyed the fruits of his wealth while continuing to add to his immense fortune.  The Royall family was the largest slaveholder in New England, and the 20-27 slaves they owned (at various periods) supported the Royall lifestyle with their labors in the house and on the farm.

This portrait of Elizabeth and her older sister Mary, according to the Museum of Fine Arts, is designed to show off the family’s wealth and status through both the silk dresses and laces worn by the girls, and the inclusion of their pet dog, a King Charles spaniel then fashionable with English royalty.

Elizabeth and Mary grew up in this Georgian-style mansion that their grandfather had built around a brick farmhouse on the site that originally was owned by colonial Governor John Winthrop. Their father, Isaac Jr., had to flee from Boston during the Revolution and the property was confiscated by the state. During the first months of the war, it was used by Generals Lee, Stark and Sullivan and visited by George Washington.

Elizabeth and Mary grew up in this Georgian-style mansion that their grandfather had built around a brick farmhouse on the site that originally was owned by colonial Governor John Winthrop. Their father, Isaac Jr., had to flee  Boston during the Revolution and the property was confiscated by the state. During the first months of the war, it was used by Generals Lee, Stark and Sullivan and visited by George Washington.

A few years after sitting for the portrait, Elizabeth caught the eye of fellow New England aristocrat, William Pepperrell.  Young William, from Kittery Point, Maine, was the great-grandson of a Welsh orphan who had parlayed a fishing sloop at the Isles of Shoals into a small fortune that was further expanded by the commercial dealings and real estate investments of his son, William Pepperrell, who later achieved fame as the commander of a colonial militia that succeeded in taking the fort at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, from the French in 1745, service for which King George II awarded him a baronetcy. (The fort, however, was returned to France as part of a post-war territory swap).  Pepperrell’s only son died at age 24. Eventually, Sir William named his grandson William Sparhawk as his heir, on the condition that he change his surname to Pepperrell.

After graduating from Harvard in 1766, young William began to prepare for his role as keeper (and expander) of the family fortune. Exactly how Elizabeth and William met is not known, but as “royal” young people of similar ages, they would have readily crossed paths in the Boston social scene in which both were active. Even though William hailed from Maine, his grandmother Mary Hirst Pepperrell was a Bostonian. In addition to his time at Harvard, it’s likely that as William grew up, he and his siblings spent extended periods of time visiting relatives and friends in the city.

The pair met and fell in love.  Then and now, people tend to end up marrying others of similar social backgrounds, but that didn’t mean that these two young people didn’t feel a spark.  William was 21 when they married in Boston’s Anglican Christ Church on October 24, 1767 (some sources list the date as November 12).  Elizabeth was probably around the same age.   A year later, in the fall of 1768, William left a newly-pregnant Elizabeth and headed off to England to polish and secure connections that could enable the family’s fortunes to thrive.  He stayed aboard for almost two years, missing the July 1769 birth of his daughter Elizabeth, although he was quite thrilled when he finally got to meet her. “I found my little girl finely grown she stands very well & just beings to speak & tho’ I am a very young Papa,” he wrote to Lord Edgecumbe. “I find myself a very fond one.”

Elizabeth wrote him many letters while he was in England.  She didn’t hold back on sharing her feelings.  She missed him.  She felt that the Sparhawk family in Kittery Point, especially her mother-in-law, didn’t like her.  She filled him in on all the royal gossip, such as New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth’s marriage to his cousin Frances ten days after the death of her husband Theodore.  “A good hint to him,” she wrote on November 15, 1768, “of what he may expect, if she outlives him but I think he’ll deserve it.” (As it turns out, Elizabeth’s observation was on target: Frances Wentworth later had a scandalous affair with Prince William Henry, the third son of King George III,  and 20 years her junior, while John was serving as Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia).

But when William Pepperrell returned to Boston in the summer of 1770, after almost two years abroad, he found a world turned upside-down.  A series of Parliamentary acts had resulted in protests and boycotts. One-time college buddies had become political activities. People were taking sides, Patriot or Loyalist.  Like many who eventually came to be called “Loyalists,” William was conflicted – he didn’t like many of the laws passed by the British parliament — but he also didn’t countenance rebellion.

In 1774, William wrote letters to British figures such as Parliament member Edgecumbe and Prime Minister Lord North, urging conciliation and peaceful resolutions.  By 1774, however, the royal government had gutted the charter of Massachusetts. The elected Council on which William served was dissolved and replaced with a Council of appointed men.  William elected to not to resign, as so many others had done, and was branded as a Loyalist with a capital L, even though the title didn’t truly fit.

These years of stressful politics, however, were probably happy ones at home.  Elizabeth had three additional children, Mary, Harriot, and William, in the five years after William’s return from England. Baby William, their fourth son, was born in the summer of 1775.  By now, the Revolution had begun. Thanks to their costly victory at the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British still held Boston, but the town was blockaded by land.  Food and other supplies were scarce. For the Pepperrells, the world of luxury and privilege they had always taken for granted no longer existed.  But they had each other.

Then in September Elizabeth came down with a fever, sore throat, and a bad case of dysentery. Three weeks later, she was dead, and William became the single parent of four young children (including his two-month-old infant son).  William also took ill and almost died, but recovered, although he wrote to his mother that he wished not to.  Did Elizabeth contract cholera or typhoid fever? A virulent strain of influenza?  A bad case of food poisoning?  The cause is uncertain.

William blamed the war and the food shortages that resulted in a diet heavy with salted meat.  “But I still breath,” William wrote to his mother Elizabeth Sparhawk, in November 1775. “Love I never can again, till my soul is rewedded to that of my dear Betsy’s in the Joy of praising God forever.” She was, he wrote, “my deceased Friend & the worthiest of women.”

In the spring of 1776, grief-stricken and subject to arrest if he stayed in Boston, William, with his four children, set sail for England, where he became a leader of American Loyalists and an advocate for America prisoners-of-war.  By legislative act, all of his property was confiscated by the state of Massachusetts. He never returned to the U.S., nor did any of his children. (His Sparhawk brothers, however, eventually returned to Kittery).

In 1779, Copley painted this portrait of the Pepperrell family in London. The portrait (which is owned by the North Carolina Museum of Art) recalls happier times, as Elizabeth had been dead for three years.

In 1779, Copley painted this portrait of the Pepperrell family in London. The portrait (which is owned by the North Carolina Museum of Art) recalls happier times, as Elizabeth had been dead for three years.  Click on portrait for larger view.

Also living in London was Boston painter John Singleton Copley, who had moved there for artistic reasons.  In 1778, Copley painted his second portrait of Elizabeth Royall  — a portrait of her ghost.  In a family portrait commissioned by William, Copley depicts a happy family, the six Pepperrells, including Elizabeth, at the peak of her beauty and fashion, but dead now for three years.

As with most colonial women, the historical record provides only glimpses of Elizabeth.  Although her marriage to William is recorded, I have not found a record of her birth or death, or the location of her grave.  But she did leave us her voice, in letters that she wrote to William while he was in Europe; the Portsmouth Atheneum holds a transcribed collection of them.  The letters are chatty, sometimes petulant, loving, impatient, and brainy. Sometimes Elizabeth seems like a flighty young woman – after all, she was young, pregnant, and probably bored at her parents’ Medford home. But the letters also demonstrate that beneath the beauty lay a rigorous brain, as she asks William to bring home the latest books by scientists and philosophers.

What is most amazing about the letters is that they exist at all. William’s letters to her do not survive, although Elizabeth’s letters suggest that he wrote many.  As Henry Knox’s cannons set their sites on Boston, and Loyalists hurriedly packed up to evacuate with the British Army, William carefully packed up the letters, by then already almost ten years old.  The letters travelled to England, and then from one set of lodgings to another.  Did William take them out from time to time to read them again, and hear her voice? Did he share them with his sons and daughters, to help them know the mother they had lost so young?

The letters survive today, in a private collection in England, as do Pepperrell’s descendants.  William never re-married.  All of his children fared well, with good careers and marriages. In his older years, William was comfortable, though no longer well. Never again would he watch sloops cruise past Kittery Point up the Piscataqua River to Portsmouth.  Nor would he marry.

William was just shy of thirty when his wife died, and he lived to be 70. When he lost the love of his life, he still had his entire life ahead of him.  Why didn’t he marry again, at a time when many young men lost their wives (usually in childbirth) and remarriage was routine? Was William preoccupied with his work and with raising his children?  Was he not an attractive prospect because of his vastly reduced circumstances? Did he have flirtations and dalliances, or maybe a housekeeper/companion that shared his bed, if not his title?  Or did William decide that no woman could ever replace Elizabeth in the family portrait?

In politics, Sir William was conflicted, a loyalist with a small “l”.  In love, it seems, he earned his true title as Loyalist.

Sources and resources

Transcribed copies of Elizabeth Royall’s letters can be viewed at the Portsmouth Atheneum (although you have to go there in person to look at the letters).

For additional information on the portrait of Mary and Elizabeth Royall, visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

For additional information on the Copley portrait, Sir William Pepperrell and his family, visit the North Carolina Museum of Art.

The Royall House and Slave Quarters, in Medford, Massachusetts, is open on the weekend for tours from May through October.   A beautiful location, and a secret hidden gem.  The slave quarters are the only extent slave housing in New England.

For more detailed information on William’s status as a “loyalist” (small “l”), see “A ‘Great National Calamity’: Sir William Pepperrell and Isaac Royall, Reluctant Loyalists,” by Colin Nicolson and Stuart Scott, in the Historical Journal of Massachusetts Volume 28, No. 2
(Summer 2000).

Governor John Wentworth and the Tea Party that wasn’t

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What would happen when the tea landed in Portsmouth?  Would a mob gather at the wharf? Would violence erupt?  New Hampshire Governor John Wentworth pondered these questions when he learned, on June 25, 1774, that the mast-ship Grosvenor was sailing up the Piscataqua River and carrying cargo that included 27 chests of tea.

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John Singleton Copley came to Portsmouth to paint this portrait of young governor Wentworth in 1769.

Just a few months earlier, on the day of the Boston Tea Party in December 1773, Patriot-leaning residents of Portsmouth had held a public meeting and adopted a resolution declaring that if East India Company tea were brought to Portsmouth, the inhabitants would use “every necessary method to prevent it being landed or sold.”

As a Royal Governor appointed by the Crown, Wentworth owed his first allegiance to the King. He was troubled by the resistance to Parliamentary acts in places like Boston, even if he didn’t support  Parliament’s decisions.  And he didn’t like the fact that British troops were stationed in Boston.  Now, a cargo of tea was coming into his town, and he didn’t want trouble.

This June day was a critical moment for Wentworth, the 37-year-old nephew of the first royal governor, Benning Wentworth. The King had appointed the younger Wentworth as Governor 10 years earlier, and, up until the time of the Revolution, John Wentworth had earned the respect of most New Hampshire inhabitants for his thoughtful and creative solutions to governing the colony.  Not everyone always agreed with him, but most would concede that when Wentworth made a decision or proposed an idea, his primary goal was to serve the public welfare rather than his own.

Time and again, Wentworth had proven to be the ultimate diplomat, adept at compromise, negotiations, and at coming up with solutions.   For example, in 1771, the King’s tax people were demanding the quitrents due for lands granted in the backcountry. Wentworth knew he had to enforce the quitrent collections. He also knew that landowners would resist paying these taxes.  So he proposed that instead of going into the royal treasury, the quitrent funds should be used to develop roads from the interior to the coast.  The road-building project would help farmers get their goods to market, and generally benefit the backcountry regions of the New Hampshire.  This economic development, in turn, would ultimately generate more revenue for the Crown.   All parties bought into this win-win solution.

This sort of maneuver characterized much of Wentworth’s dealings: how to come up with a compromise in political or other disputes in which all parties felt as if they had gained something in the solution. Now, with the Grosvenor approaching Portsmouth, the Governor had to think fast to avoid a confrontation that, in his mind, would serve no good purpose in Portsmouth.

Wentworth quickly made arrangements for a message to be delivered to the captain.  Two days later, on June 27, he rode to Dover to spend the day, so as to present the appearance that nothing was afoot.  While he was gone, the tea was landed and brought to the custom house before anybody knew of its arrival.  Within a few hours, residents found out about the tea and assembled in a public meeting to discuss how to handle the situation, at which point Wentworth returned to town and joined the  meeting.  The crowd decided that as the cargo had already been off-loaded, a committee would take up the matter with the merchant to which the tea had been conveyed.  Ultimately, the committee and the merchant came up with a solution: the controversial duty on the tea was paid, but the merchant agreed to export the tea to Halifax, Nova Scotia and the residents of Portsmouth agreed not to interfere with its transport.  Though imperfect, the agreement satisfied all parties:  the duties were paid, but the tea wouldn’t be sold or consumed in Portsmouth.  Most importantly, violence was averted.

In December of 1774, when locals led by John Langdon and John Sullivan raided the cache of powder at Fort William and Mary, Wentworth acted with characteristic restraint. Instead of having the raiders rounded up and arrested – a scenario likely to result in a mob uprising – he met with leaders and asked them to return the power, on the promise of a full pardon extended to all involved.   The meeting ended cordially, but the instead of returning the power, a group of men led by Sullivan returned to the fort that night to carry off 16 cannon and other arms.

What Wentworth wanted most, it seems, was to preserve public order, to keep the peace.  But by the end of 1774, his authority had eroded and he was running out of options.   The Patriots had convened their own assembly and government in nearby Exeter.  By the spring of 1775, rebel militia had begun to fortify Portsmouth.  But even then, Wentworth continued his efforts to diffuse the situation.

In the harbor, the HMS Scarborough had begun to impress local fishermen and to seize supplies for British troops in Boston. Wentworth intervened, and Captain Andrew Barclay agreed to release the fisherman.

But by this time, the Governor was such in name only.  Only a few months earlier in January 1775, Portsmouth had greeted the birth of his first and only child, Charles-Mary, with booming cannons and celebrations.  The festivities likely concealed the extent to which Patriot fever had taken hold in New Hampshire.  Just a few months later, on June 13, 1775, Wentworth looked out his window to see a cannon pointed at the front door of his Pleasant Street home.

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The Governor’s home on 346 Pleasant Street, now part of the Mark Wentworth Home senior care facility.

The cannon wasn’t specifically aimed at the Governor.  A mob had gathered in front of his Pleasant Street home to demand the surrender of his friend Colonel  Fenton, who had stopped by for a social call on route to his temporary home on board the Scarborough.  Fenton,  a once-popular Assembly member, had been voted out of office after Lexington and Concord, after angering his constituents by publishing a letter urging them to stay on their farms rather than join the rebellion.  Once Fenton surrendered, to be escorted to Exeter, Wentworth decided to leave as well.  Along with  wife Frances and baby Charles, he fled to a damp and decrepit house at Fort William and Mary in Newcastle. In August, the family left town on the Scarborough, staying first in Boston, and then sailing to England (John stayed behind in Boston and then in British-occupied New York, but eventually he joined his family in England). After the War, the Wentworths  landed in Nova Scotia, where John served for many years as lieutenant governor.

John's first cousin and wife, Lady Frances Wentworth. They married 10 days after the 1769 death of her first husband, Theodore Atkinson. This portrait by John Singleton Copley painted this portrait in xxx, when Frances was about 20 and married to Atkinson.

John’s first cousin and wife, Lady Frances Wentworth. They married 10 days after the death of her first husband, Theodore Atkinson. John Singleton Copley painted this portrait in 1765, when Frances was about 20 and married to Atkinson.

Today some might applaud Wentworth for his integrity and loyalty to the office to which he had been appointed. Others might say that he was a member of the established elite trying to resist changes that  might challenge his social and economic standing.  Still others might call him a waffler unwilling to take a firm stance one way or the other.

In the end, Wentworth’s compromises and negotiations didn’t stop the Revolution.  He lost all of his property (except for his family portraits and furniture, which Portsmouth’s residents reserved for him) and had to flee the city of his birth, a place that his family had called home for more than a hundred years.

But in characteristic Wentworth fashion, the Governor’s losses, in a round-about way, served to benefit the public welfare. Although New Hampshire sent many men to fight in the Revolution, the war never came to New Hampshire.  Aside from that non-violent skirmish at the fort in December, 1774, no battles were fought in its towns.  No cities were burned, bombed or blockaded.  British soldiers were not quartered in local homes. Life was harder for all during the war, especially for those families who had sent their men off to distant battlefields, but at night, the residents of Portsmouth and other New Hampshire towns slept in peace.  John Wentworth may have lost all of his authority and his property, but he still managed to leave a valuable legacy for New Hampshire.

NOTE: John’s son Charles-Mary Wentworth eventually returned to live in Portsmouth, where he had many Wentworth relatives, whose numerous descendants take up a couple of columns in today’s phone book. I’d especially love to hear from any Wentworths who might have other interesting information to share about John Wentworth.

Sources

Mayo, Lawrence Shaw John Wentworth, Governor of New Hampshire: 1767-1775. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921. Mayo’s biography, which is full of interesting details about Wentworth’s life and times, presents a largely flattering and at times worshipful view of Wentworth.  Although I’m sure Wentworth had his flaws that a more objective biographer might highlight, Mayo’s book tends to confirm other bits and pieces I’ve read about Wentworth and how he governed.