HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History: Recent Episodes
HUB History
Where two history buffs go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the hub of the universe.
105 years ago this month, Irish President Eamon De Valera embarked on an 18-month tour of the United States, starting with a visit to Boston. His goals were to raise funds for the Irish Republic, gain international recognition, and garner support for Irish independence from British rule. De Valera’s visit to Boston included a massive rally at Fenway Park, a speech to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and visits to historical sites. Despite facing challenges, such as his questionable immigration status and opposition from Yankee-aligned politicians, the tour was a success, laying the groundwork for nearly a century of American support for Irish republicanism before the Good Friday accords finally brought the Troubles to an end.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/303/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Lincoln of Ireland at Fenway ParkDe Valera at South Station Boston Globe + June 26, 1919: Official Welcome for De Valera in Boston + June 27, 1919: De Valera Receives Mayor’s Invitation + June 28, 1919: De Valera to Be Here Today + June 28, 1919 (evening): President De Valera Will Arrive At South Station At 6 Tonight + June 29, 1919: Head of Irish Republic Gets a Mighty Welcome in Boston + June 30, 1919: 50,000 Flock to Hear De Valera Plead Irish Cause at Fenway Park + June 30, 1919 (evening): De Valera Given Enthusiastic Greeting in the Legislature + July 2, 1919: De Valera Thanks All New England * New York Sun + June 27, 1919: Valera Sees Trick in Dominion Rule + June 30, 1919: Asks US to Place Ireland in League + July 1, 1919: Valera Says Irish are to be United * Springfield Union + June 28, 1919 (evening): Blocks Speech by De Valera in the Senate + June 29, 1919: Boston Gives Warm Welcome to De Valera * June 28, 1919 Birmingham Age-Herald: De Valera has No Official Status * June 29, 1919 New York Tribune: The President of the Irish Republic Drops In * June 30, 1919 Fall River Evening Herald: Enlists America in World Freedom * July 1, 1919 London Guardian: De Valera on Peace Treaty: “A Mockery” * July 12, 1919 Irish Standard of Minneapolis: De Valera Wins the American Heart * July 12, 1919 St Joseph’s Catholic Tribune: Thousands Cheer President De Valera * Davis, Troy D. “Eamon de Valéra’s Political Education: The American Tour of 1919-20.” New Hibernia Review / Iris Éireannach Nua*, 2006 * Eamon de Valera’s visit to Boston in 1919 and 100 years of Irish-US relations, Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States * In June 1919, Irish Leader Eamonn de Valera Spoke at Fenway Park, Visited Boston’s Mission Hill, Bunker Hill, Cambridge & Lexington, via Irish Boston History & Heritage
In this episode, we delve into the historical visit of Irish President Eamon de Valera to the United States, particularly his impactful visit to Boston in 1919. Despite facing challenges with his immigration status, De Valera’s tour aimed to raise funds for the Irish Republic, gain international recognition, and garner support for Irish independence from British rule. His visit to Boston included a massive rally at Fenway Park, a speech to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, and visits to historical sites.
De Valera’s appearance in Boston sparked enthusiasm and support from Irish Americans, with thousands flocking to see him speak at Fenway Park. He conveyed gratitude for their support and expressed hope that Ireland would gain recognition as a sovereign state. De Valera emphasized the importance of securing Boston’s support due to its revolutionary history and symbolic significance to the cause of Irish independence.
During his visit, De Valera also visited Cambridge, Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, paying tribute to historical landmarks significant to both American and Irish revolutionary history. His speech at the Massachusetts House of Representatives highlighted the mandate of the New Republic and addressed misconceptions about the Irish struggle for independence.
Despite De Valera’s efforts to rally support in the United States, the Irish Republic ultimately collapsed, leading to the establishment of the Irish Free State under the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty. De Valera continued his political career and eventually became the third president of the Republic of Ireland. His visit to the United States laid the groundwork for raising millions of dollars to support the Irish Republic and remains a significant chapter in Irish-American relations.
On the first anniversary of D-Day, Boston was feeling festive. Yes, there was a somber editorial cartoon in the Globe picturing an allied cemetery in Normandy to remind people of the sacrifices that the nation had made, but Germany had just surrendered, making the sacrifice seem worthwhile. Now, on D+1 (or was it D+366?), the city would turn out to hail a conquering hero, as General George S Patton, Junior set foot on American soil for the first time in two and a half years. His speech in Boston honored the city’s wounded veterans but managed to deeply offend gold star families whose sons, fathers, and brothers had died under Patton’s command. Was this a simple slip of the tongue or a symptom of a deeper and more concerning malady, a closely guarded and dark secret?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/302/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
General Patton Invades Boston Boston Globe + June 7, 1945 (evening): Patton’s arrival, family reunited, parade route + June 8, 1945: Full front page, pictures, Patton’s procession, speech, and dinner + June 8, 1945 (evening): Patton departs for LA + June 14, 1945 (evening): “Patton Explains Boston Remark” + Nov 11, 1954: Patton statue on the Esplanade unveiled on the first national Veterans Day * June 6, 1945 Washington DC Evening Star: Patton’s daughters on the way to Boston * June 8, 1945 Detroit Evening Times: Pictures of Patton’s arrival in Boston * June 8, 1945 Waterbury Democrat: Arrival and summary of Boston visit * June 8, 1945 Washington DC Evening Star: Coverage of “damned fools” comment * June 11, 1945 Baltimore Sun: Letter from a gold star father * June 14, 1945 Austin American-Statesman: Walking back “damned fools” comment * June 15, 1945 Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph: Letters from angry gold star families * June 15, 1945 New York Daily News: Walking back “damned fools” comment * See an invitation to the June 8 reception at the Copley Plaza * “The Real Story of General George Patton, Jr’s Death & Final Days,” via Warfare History Network, By Major General Michael Reynolds * Patton: A Genius for War, Carlo D’Este * General George S. Patton, Jr: Man Under Mars,* James Howard Wellard
Joseph Warren Revere was a Boston boy, but a military career kept him from spending much of his adult life here. He was the grandson of the famous Paul Revere and named after the secular saint Joseph Warren. As a young Navy officer on the USS Constitution, he fought slavers and pirates, discovered buried treasure, met a czar, and almost killed a king. Falling in love with California while serving in the Mexican-American War, he made a small fortune during the Gold Rush, while getting mired in scandal. By the time he served as a union general in the US Civil War, Revere had fought under the flag of three nations. He had seen war on four continents, discovered a fifth, and traveled to all of them. He had dined sumptuously with monarchs and nobles, and broken bread with native peoples around the world. He was a skilled artist and map maker, and an aggressive combat leader. None of those accomplishments, however, could save his career from an ignominious end amongst charges of cowardice after the battle of Chancellorsville.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/301/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Joseph Warren Revere Keel and saddle: a retrospect of forty years of military and naval service, by Joseph W. Revere * A tour of duty in California; including a description of the gold region: and an account of the voyage around cape Horn; with notices of lower California, the Gulf and Pacific coasts, and the principal events attending the conquest of the Californias, by Joseph Warren Revere (includes maps and illustrations by Revere) * A Memorial of Paul Joseph Revere and Edward H.R. Revere, by Pauline Revere Thayer * General Joseph Warren Revere: The Gothic Saga of Paul Revere’s Grandson,* by William R. Chemerka * An 1863 pamphlet from Revere protesting his dismissal * An anonymous 1864 pamphlet defending Revere’s actions at Chancellorsville * A map of San Francisco Bay sketched by Joseph Warren Revere * Explanation and illustration of a Chambers gun * A Chambers gun in the USS Constitution’s fighting top
Did you feel an earthquake in Boston on April 5, 2024? Depending on where you were at the time, you might have felt nothing or you might have noticed a mild tremor. While we think of Boston earthquakes as a punchline and damaging quakes as a California problem, that hasn’t always been the case. Imagine an earthquake that comes on with the sound of rolling thunder, one where the ground heaved like waves on an angry sea, throwing people to the ground, opening up fissures in the earth, and triggering a tsunami that affects distant shores. This was the experience of Boston during the great Cape Ann earthquake of 1755, and the effects of a similar seismic shock in modern Boston could be simply catastrophic.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/300/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Seismic Boston Professor John Winthrop’s lecture on the 1755 earthquake; this copy includes handwritten marginal notes about earthquakes by John Adams
* Professor Winthrop’s letter to Thomas Birch on the 1755 quake
* Jonathan Mayhew’s sermon on the 1755 earthquake at the West Meeting House
* Charles Chauncye’s sermon on the 1755 earthquake at the Old Brick Meeting House
* John Adams’ diary entry on the 1755 earthquake
* Jeremiah Newland’s “Verses Occasioned by the Earthquakes in the Month of November, 1755”
* “The Great Earthquake” by Jourdan Houston, American Heritage, August/September 1980
* Thomas Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay, with a footnote on the 1755 earthquake
* Historic Storms of New England, By Sidney Perley
* “The Earthquake Risk in Boston,” by Irving B Crosby, Journal of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers, December 1923
* Andrews, William D. “The Literature of the 1727 New England Earthquake.” Early American Literature, vol. 7, no. 3, 1973
* The terror of the Lord. Some account of the earthquake that shook New-England, in the night, between the 29 and the 30 of October. 1727, Cotton Mather’s sermon and personal account of the 1727 earthquake
* Wonder-working Providence of Sions Saviour in New England, Volume 2,
By Edward Johnson
* “Boston’s Earthquake Problem,” Jeremy Miller, Boston Globe Magazine, May 28, 2006
* “How Safe Are Our Older Buildings in Boston Against Earthquakes?”
Eric Hines, Tufts Now,* February 6, 2012
* East coast vs west coast earthquakes, via USGS
* The Faneuil Hall weathervane is knocked down in 1755, episode 196 (Did you see the weathervane toppling in our header image?)
* Cotton Mather contends with the aurora borealis in 1719, episode 289
During the bicentennial celebrations in 1976, Boston bustled with fireworks, concerts, and historical reenactments, while a unique spectacle quietly unfolded at the Old North Church. The iconic lanterns, forever linked to Paul Revere’s midnight ride, were illuminated not by candlelight, but by the distant light of a star some 200 light-years away. This episode explores the technological challenges involved in capturing starlight and converting it into an electrical signal that traveled thousands of miles, as well as the promotional challenges for Hawaiian officials who wanted to feel like part of the bicentennial celebration. Buckle up, as we journey from the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea to the heart of revolutionary Boston, all under the ethereal glow of a distant star.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/299/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Starlit Old North 1776 Starlight Illuminated Old North’s Lanterns for the Bicentennial, Erika Tauer’s article for Old North that first tipped me off to this story * “BICENTENNIAL: Oh, What a Lovely Party!” Time Magazine, Monday, July 19, 1976 * “Christian Mayer’s Double Star Catalog of 1779,” J.S. Schlimmer, Journal of Double Star Observations, Fall 2007 * “Epsilon Lyrae is the famous Double Double star,” Bruce McClure, EarthSky, July 4, 2023 * “Removal of Maunakea observatory set to begin in April, completed by August,” University of Hawai’i News, April 8, 2024 * “Getting Lost in the Stars,” Pierre Bowman, Honolulu Star Bulletin, July 5, 1976 * “A Star for Paul Revere,” Honolulu Advertiser, July 1, 1976 (this one has the fun graphic) * “Lanterns Lit By Star’s 1776 Light,” Boston Globe, July 5, 1976 * “America on Way to Party,” Holyoke Transcript-Telegram, July 3, `1976 * “Starlight Triggers Lanterns,” Idaho Statesman, July 5, 1976 (A wire story carried all over the country) * “Hawaii-Boston Feat Successful,” Jake Williams, Honolulu Advertiser, July 5, 1976 * “Boston: American Kaleidoscope,” Mrs. Opal E. Eckert, The Maryville (MO) Daily Forum,* July 16, 1976
Eclipses happen when the moon passes between the sun and the earth during the daytime, briefly blocking the light of the sun from the face of the earth. Over the past few years, observers in the US have been treated to every flavor of solar eclipse: a partial in 2021 when part of the sun’s disc remains unobscured; a total eclipse in 2017, when viewers in the narrow path of totality experienced daytime darkness, and an annular eclipse just last fall, when a ring of fire hung in the cold, bright sky. In honor of the April 2024 total eclipse, I’m sharing a clip that cohost emerita Nikki and I recorded within the first year of this podcast about some of the earliest experiences of eclipses here in Boston, most notably in 1780 and 1806. I’ll also share a clip about an unrelated phenomenon that darkened the skies over Boston for a second time in 1780, then again in 1881, 1950, and several times in the past 5 years. This was no eclipse however, but rather a much more terrestrial effect.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/298/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Eclipse Fever2023 Annular Eclipse2021 Partial Eclipse2017 Total Eclipse2017 Total EclipseStupid cloud!!2017 Total Eclipse2015 Supermoon EclipseJune 2023 smoke eventJuly 2021 smoke eventSeptember 2020 smoke eventTotal Eclipse* Viewing details for the 2017 eclipse in Boston * In an article on Quaker martyr Mary Dyer, Christy K Robertson tipped me off to the 1659 eclipse. * Thomas Jefferson misses the 1778 Eclipse. * More on the 1779 Massachusetts expedition against the British on Penobscot Bay in Episode 25. * The 1780 expedition to view an eclipse at Penobscot Bay. * Putting that expedition in the context of the Revolution. * A letter ordering the state to outfit a ship for the 1760 expedition. * The New York Times reports on why the 1806 eclipse was particularly good for viewers in Boston. * Cows on Boston Common were disturbed by the 1806 total eclipse. * The path of the 1806 eclipse.
When Darkness Veiled the Sky* A 1912 Forest Service report explaining what causes Boston’s dark days. * Professor Samuel Williams’ contemporaneous scientific account of the 1780 dark day. * Abigail Adams describes the 1780 dark day. * Cotton Tufts describes the 1780 dark day. * George Washington’s account of the 1780 dark day in faraway New Jersey. * Abraham Davenport prefers to be found at his desk if the 1780 dark day is actually the end of the world. * Modern analysis reveals the source of the smoke in 1780. * Sidney Perley’s history of storms and weather in New England, including descriptions of dark days. * A letter from Emily Dickinson on the 1881 yellow day. * Ryan W Owen’s article about Boston’s yellow day. * The first photograph of a comet, made in 1881 just weeks before the yellow day. * An artist’s rendering of comet C/1888 K1. * Wild conspiracy theories about a dark day in 1950.
This week I’m pleased to be able to share a recent talk from the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury about recent archaeological discoveries at Shirley Place that help shed light on the lives of enslaved residents at the 18th century governor’s residence, as well as evidence of the home’s original location before it was moved into its current position in the 19th century. The presenter is past podcast guest Joe Bagley, the archaeologist for the city of Boston, who has led a series of digs at the Shirley house and at the house’s original location across Shirley street. This work is important because written records have only revealed the identity of one of the Africans who were enslaved at the house by Royal Governor William Shirley. In the talk, Bagley explains how discoveries of animal bones, forgotten paving stones, and a cowrie shell connect the dots to the enslaved lives that history otherwise overlooks. He also shares stone flakes and pottery shards that remind us that the history of Shirley Place long predates William Shirley, encompassing the Massachusett people who first called it home.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/297/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Recent Archaeological Discoveries at Shirley Place* See a composite 3D rendering of 42-44 Shirley Street showing the test trenches Bagley describes in the talk. * A 2021 Boston Landmarks Commission report includes pictures and diagrams illustrating how Shirley Place and 42-44 Shirley Street appear today and in the past, replacing some of the slides Bagley refers to in the talk. * A view of Shirley Place in relation to downtown Boston in the 1770s * An overview of 42-44 Shirley Street on the Boston Archaeology web page.
Shirley Place in its original locationShirley Place after it was relocated in the 1860s
I’m pleased to share a recent talk called “Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved” that was part of the Congregational Library and Archive’s Valentines Day celebration. Helen Gelinas spoke about Cotton Mather and the women he was closest to: his three wives, his daughters, and his sisters, as well as his lifelong mission to understand the biblical Eve, the prototype for all women in his universe. Helen examined who he was behind closed doors, as a husband and father, and she challenged us to reconsider our assumptions that Cotton Mather would have been a tyrant over his wife and a strong disciplinarian who ruled his children with a rod. She also shared the surprising insight that between wives, Cotton Mather was one of Boston’s most eligible widowers, who was pursued aggressively by suitors.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/296/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Cotton Mather and the Women He LovedPresenter Helen K. Gelinas is the Director of Transcription for New England’s Hidden Histories. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from The Hartt School in Connecticut, and a BA in English and an MA in American Studies from the University of Tübingen, Germany. In Tübingen, she was selected by The Mather Project to be a research and editorial assistant for Volume 5 of Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana. Following the presentation and publication of her essay, “Regaining Paradise: Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana and the Daughters of Eve,” she earned a Research Fellowship to the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale Divinity School. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Early American Studies at the University of Heidelberg, completing her dissertation entitled, “‘The Spirit and the Bride’: Female Parity, Prophecy, and the Power of the Pen in the Works of Cotton Mather.”
- Find out more about the Congregational Library and Archives
Exploring Family History at the Congregational Library & Archives – A Workshop Sponsored by New England’s Hidden HistoriesDate: Friday, April 4, 2024
Time: 10 am – 2 pm EDT
Format: In-person at 14 Beacon Street, Boston
Registration Cost: $40 for CLA members / $50 for non-members
RSVP Deadline: Friday, March 29, 2024
Does your family history include puritans or ancestors who lived in early New England (1620-1850)? Join us for an in-person workshop on Friday, March 29 from 10:00am – 2:00pm at the Congregational Library & Archives with New England’s Hidden Histories Project Director Dr. Tricia Peone and CLA Archivist Billy McCarthy.
Participants will learn how to use the New England’s Hidden Histories digital archive and other resources at the CLA to research family histories and fill in context for understanding the lives of people in the past.
The workshop will include time to conduct your own family history research at the CLA. Participants are encouraged to send requests for specific items they wish to look at in advance. You do not need to be a historian to attend. Anyone interested in learning how to work with and interpret historical records is welcome. However, space is limited.
The cost to attend includes lunch. Email tpeone@14beacon.org with questions about the workshop.
In this episode, I'm joined by Professor Adrian Chastain Weimer, author of the recent book A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire. The book focuses on the period just after King Charles II returned the Stuarts to the English throne, during which he when he sought revenge against Boston Puritans for their perceived role in the execution of his father. Decades before the absolute rule of Edmund Andros, the crown sent four royal commissioners to Boston with secret orders that would upend every facet of public life, from voting to worship to the code of laws. Our conversation explores how the colonists defended their liberty within the constitutional system of colonial Massachusetts under restoration rule.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/295/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
A Constitutional Culture
Despite the name, Plymouth Hospital was a South End institution. As the first training school for Black nurses in segregated Boston, Plymouth provided a needed service to an underserved community, led by a medical pioneer. Dr. Cornelius Nathanial Garland moved to Boston from the deep south to seek opportunity, but while he found opportunity in the Hub, he also found a deeply segregated medical establishment. To fight against this system and provide opportunities for Black Bostonians in medicine, he founded a hospital and nursing school. However, the most radical civil rights leader in Boston would accuse Garland of reinforcing that very same system of segregated medicine.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/294/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Black Boston’s First Hospital Lisa Garland’s fantastic 2023 profile of Dr. Cornelius Garland * Dr. Garland and Plymouth Hospital, Alison Barnet, Spring 2014 Aceso: Journal of the Boston University School of Medicine Historical Society * A profile of Garland in The Crisis*, January 1920 * Garland’s obituary in the Sept 1952 Journal of the National Medical Association * Garland’s obituary in the June 28, 1952 Boston Guardian * Past podcast guest Ken Liss on the Garlands’ move to Brookline * Black Bostonia’s oral history interview with Lucille Allen * Boston Globe articles + Nov 13, 1906, Garland runs for city council + Feb 26, 1908, the nursing school opens + May 14, 1908, fundraiser for Plymouth Hospital + Mar 31, 1909, linen shower for Plymouth + Aug 26, 1909, National Medical Associan meeting in Boston + Aug 27, 1909, Garland elected secretary + Sept 20, 1909, annual report of Plymouth Hospital + Nov 9, 1909, Plymouth Lend a Hand Society + July 1, 1910, first graduates + June 13, 1911, second graduating class * July 30, 1909 Nashville Globe, “Boston The Mecca for Negro Doctors”
In the last episode, we talked about Boston’s first water sources, from rainfall and natural springs to a simple wooden aqueduct connecting Jamaica Pond to downtown Boston. This time, we’re picking up where episode 292 left off. As Boston grew in the early 19th century, it quickly outgrew its existing water supply, which was dreadfully polluted anyway. The city was left looking outside its boundaries for a water source that was large and plentiful enough to supply the needs of a growing American city, and debating whether that source should be owned by a governmental entity or a private company. This week, we’ll look at the celebration that came with the solution to that problem, and the drawn out debates and hard work that enabled Boston to supply its citizens with a truly public source of water.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/293/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Cochituate Water for BostonCharts of Long and Spot Pond during the debateOctober 25, 1848 Water Festival on Boston CommonA schooner is hauled up Tremont Street as part of the festival + Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston, Michael Rawson
+ City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago,* Carl Smith
+ Nov 1, 1847 Boston Advertiser: Walking through a finished aqueduct section
+ Nov 27, 1847 Springfield Republican: Mayor Quincy’s comments at the halfway point
+ Oct 17, 1848 New York Herald: The first Cochituate water arrives in Boston
+ Oct 26, 1848 Boston Evening Transcript: Reporting on the grand water celebration
+ Report of the commissioners appointed under the order of the City Council, August 26, 1844 : to report the best mode and expense of bringing the water of Long Pond into the city of Boston
+ The financial history of Boston from May 1, 1822, to January 31, 1909
by Huse, Charles Phillips
+ Celebration of the introduction of the water of Cochituate Lake into the city of Boston, October 25, 1848
+ Walking on the aqueducts in Wellesley
+ A suggested route on the aqueducts in Newton
+ Boston’s Sudbury aqueduct is reactivated during a 2010 emergency
+ Water for Early Boston from Jamaica Pond
+ Loammi Baldwin also surveyed the Middlesex Canal
+ ED Leavitt and the Chestnut Hill Waterworks
+ Daniel Dain and his History of Boston
A 14 mile route on the aqueducts in Newton and Wellesley from my marathon days:
This is the first of a three-part history of Boston’s water supply. First up is the early history of water in Boston, from its reliance on natural springs to the construction of the first aqueduct. We’ll compare today’s pure, plentiful drinking water to the challenges that early Bostonians faced in obtaining clean water. First, we’ll look at natural springs, hand-dug wells, and cisterns in early Boston, but as the city grew, these sources became increasingly scarce and polluted. Then we’ll talk about new technologies at the turn of the 19th century, such as drilled artesian wells and the Boston Aqueduct, which brought water from Jamaica Pond into the city. However, these new technologies were controlled by private companies, only providing water to the wealthiest Bostonians, leaving most residents desperate for a new, public source of water in the mid-19th century. Later episodes will explore the near-miracle that introducing a public water supply from the Cochituate reservoir represented and the engineering marvel of our modern Quabbin reservoir.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/292/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Water for Early Boston Big thanks to Morris A. Pierce of the University of Rochester, for compiling the Documentary History of American Water-works. * 1794 act incorporating the Boston Aqueduct Corporation * Corporate records of the Aqueduct Corporation * Boston selectmen approve piping water to Long Wharf in 1797 * Description of the drilled well on Long Wharf in the Journal of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers. * Our past episode about the well on Long Wharf * Canavan paper presented at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in 1907 * Massachusetts Water Resources Authority wins “Best of the Best” Water Taste Test * MWRA Water Given “People’s Choice Award” at New England Water Works Association Conference * MWRA Receives Public Water System Award from Mass DEP * Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, 2008 Platinum Award for Utility Excellence * Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston, Michael Rawson * City Water, City Life: Water and the Infrastructure of Ideas in Urbanizing Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, Carl Smith * The Crooked & Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston, 1630-1822,* Annie Haven Thwing
Jane Lyden Rousseau led the team of archaeologists who studied the crypts at Old North Church during a 2023 restoration. While none of the burials were disturbed, her team was able to carefully study the contents of each crypt, learning more about death rituals and burial customs in colonial New England. In a talk she gave as part of the Old North digital speaker series in December, she shared more about the history of the Old North crypts, as well as what her team learned by looking within. Among the questions that will be answered are when Old North buried congregants beneath the floor of the church, how many people had their final resting places there, and how church sextons made room for a staggering number of burials in a very limited space.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/291/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
History in Bricks and Bones* For more past and upcoming talks, check out the Old North Digital Speaker Series * Coverage of the crypt restoration from the Herald * Coverage of the crypt restoration from NBC 10 * Northeastern’s Huntington News has some of the best coverage of the crypt project * New Hampshire Chronicle covers a local artisan who restored the crypt doors * Channel 5 covers the reopening of the Old North crypts
I had originally planned to release an interview with an expert this week where we debunked some of the most common myths about the destruction of the tea. Events conspired against me, however. Luckily, the rest of Boston has the 250th anniversary of the Tea Party covered. There are commemorative events taking place around the city and throughout December, so we’ll look at a different detail. In all the hoopla about the tea, it’s easy to forget that the tea ships also carried other cargoes. In this week’s episode, we’ll revisit two classic stories about other cartoes that the tea ships brought to Boston. First, we’ll hear about Phillis Wheatley’s book of poetry, which was on the Dartmouth, through the story of enslaved artist Scipio Moorhead. After that, we’ll learn about Boston’s first street lamps, which were on the forgotten fourth tea ship, the William.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/290/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
More Than Just TeaHe Takes Faces at the Lowest Rates February 4, 1773 edition of The Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News Letter includes an ad for an enslaved African American man who posesses “extraordinary genius” and who “takes faces at the lowest rates.” * Letter from Robert Calef with the Countess Huntingdon’s request for a portrait of Phillis Wheatley to be used as a frontispiece * To S.M., A Young African Painter, Upon Seeing His Works, by Phillis Wheatley * The frontispiece of Wheatley’s book, which may be adapted from a portrait by Scipio * Eric Slauter’s essay “Looking for Scipio Moorhead” appears in the book Slave Portraiture in the Atlantic World, edited by Agnes Lugo-Ortiz and Angela Rosenthal * Roberts, Wendy Raphael. “Phillis Wheatley’s Sarah Moorhead: An Initial Inquiry.” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 107, no. 3, 2013 * Lacey, Barbara E. “Visual Images of Blacks in Early American Imprints.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 1, 1996 * “An Elegy, To Miss Mary Moorhead, On the Death of her Father, The Rev. Mr. John Moorhead,” by Phillis Wheatley, broadside printed by William McAlpine * Diary entry of Reverend David McClure documenting his stay with the widow Moorhead after John’s death (h/t JL Bell) * January 2, 1775 edition of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal carrying an ad for the auction of Rev John Moorhead’s estate, including the enslaved painter Scipio. * Prince Demah’s signed portrait of William Duguid in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. * Article by Paula Bagger and Amelia Peck in Antiques Magazine, describing how the Met came to acquire a Prince Demah portrait * Article by Paula Bagger about rediscovering Prince Demah in the Hingham Historical Society archives (includes Prince’s portraits of Henry and Christian Barnes) * A 1774 receipt signed by “Prince Demah,” proving he dropped Barnes as quickly as possible (h/t Caitlin DeAngelis) * Christian Barnes’ March 1770 letter describing her intent to market Prince’s portrait skills and Henry Barnes’ Feb 1771 letter about his fears that Prince will self-emancipate if exposed to Black Londoners (also surfaced by Caitlin DeAngelis) * More context about how families like the Wheatleys and Moorheads thought about enslaving people via Mark Peterson’s The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power 1630-1865*
In Search of Boston’s First Street LampsGas lampGas lampGas lampNOT a gas lampRed gas fire box lampRed gas fire box lampAt Race Point, near where the William wreckedA December 1917 ad in the Boston GlobeBoston Globe, 28 September 1968 In a January 2023 post, JL Bell explains what happened to Boston’s first streetlamps later in 1774 * The wreck of the William, December 20, 1773 Boston Gazette and Country Journal * Merchant John Rowe’s diary, search for “lamps” to find his work on the committee * John Adams letter about the benefits of whale oil street lamps * CA Quincy Norton’s “Lanterns in Early America,” 1904 Connecticut Magazine * Letter from John Andrews about the street lamps on the William * Mayor Wu’s plan to replace gas lamps with LED * Previewing a replacement LED gas lamp * Mary Beth Norton. “The Seventh Tea Ship.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 4, 2016 * Comments about the first lamplighters in Manufactured Gas Plant Remediation: A Case Study,* by Allen W. Hatheway & Tomas B. Speight * Maintaining Boston’s remaining gas lamps
Our Dearly Departed DukeI had to say goodbye to Duke on the morning when I intended to interview an expert about Tea Party myths. Duke was 14 ½ years old, and he was a very good boy. He was my constant companion, going on daily walks with me and coming along on my morning runs for over a decade. He loved cheese and peanut butter and pizza crusts. He was a champion commuter on the orange line, the blue line, and the commuter rail. He was experienced with canoes, water taxis, and high speed ferries, and he hated them all. He loved to travel, visiting all the New England states, from the top of Mount Washington to the tip of Cape Cod, from the trails of the Blue Hills to the Kennedys’ private beach, and from Portland to Providence to New Haven to Burlington. He didn’t love history as much as we do, but he visited Ticonderoga, Valley Forge, and many other historic sites at our sides.
Was Cotton Mather a victim of 18th century cancel culture? In December 1719, Bostonians were astounded at the spectacle of the northern lights dancing in the sky, a sight that nobody alive could remember seeing before. One of the Bostonians who watched in astonishment was Cotton Mather. Confronted with this unprecedented natural phenomenon, Mather was torn. His instinct was to see signs and portents in the aurora borealis, but the world around him was changing, and his fellow natural philosophers were more likely to see the clockwork rules of Newtonian physics than the hand of God or the devil moving the universe around them. Mather’s report focuses on the secular experience of the phenomenon, but had he really changed his tune, or was he following the new political correctness of the modern era?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/289/
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The Mather Borealis Cotton Mather’s A Voice From Heaven: An Account of a Late Uncommon Appearance in the Heavens * Thomas Robie’s Account of the First Appearance of the Aurora Borealis * Thomas Prince’s Account of the Northern Lights when first seen from England, 1716 * William Whiston’s An Account of a Surprizing Meteor, Seen in the Air, March the 6th, 1715/16 * Greenwood, Isaac. “An Account of an Aurora Borealis Seen in New-England on the 22d of October, 1730, by Mr. Isaac Greenwood, Professor of Mathematicks at Cambridge in New-England. Communicated in a Letter to the Late Dr. Rutty, R. S. Secr.” Philosophical Transactions (1683-1775), vol. 37, 1731 * Winship, Michael P. “Prodigies, Puritanism, and the Perils of Natural Philosophy: The Example of Cotton Mather.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1, 1994 * Gardener, Andrew G. “Mumbo Jumbo Meets its Match.” The Colonial Williamsburg Journal, Autumn 2010 * Soth, Amelia. “When the English Witnessed Battles in the Sky.” JSTOR Daily, October 29, 2020 * Samuel Green’s paper on the 1719 aurora and the lack of newspaper accounts * Benjamin Trumbull’s A century sermon, or Sketches of the history of the eighteenth century. Interspersed and closed with serious practical remarks. Delivered at North-Haven, January l, 1801. * Perley, Sidney, Historic Storms of New England*, 1891 * April 2023 New England aurora * April 2023 New England aurora * November 2023 New England aurora
Isaac Greenwood 1730My dad 1980sMy dad 1980sMy dad 1980sMy dad 1980s
Daniel Dain is the author of an ambitious new history of Boston, called A History of Boston. A few years ago, a listener got in touch with the show to say that he was a lawyer by trade, but working on a manuscript on Boston history by night. When he shared the manuscript with me, I was shocked by it’s sweeping scope, and impressed when a bound copy found its way to my door earlier this year. A History of Boston blends his interest in urbanism and his deep love of Boston history to describe a series of boom and bust cycles in the longterm health and viability of Boston. I will ask him not only what has happened in Boston’s past but also what challenges and opportunities he sees on the horizon.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/288/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
A History of Boston, with Daniel DainWhen he’s not studying this city, Daniel Dain is the president and cofounder of the boutique lawfirm Dain Torpy, which specializes in real estate and development. You can also find Dan’s upcoming book events on the firm site. He sits on a number of boards, including the board of Vilna Shul, the historic immigrant synagogue on Beacon Hill that we recently featured on the show. He is a true Boston history nerd, and he’s an enthusiast of cities more broadly. Back in early 2021, he emailed me a draft of his manuscript about Boston history that he’d been working on for a couple of years.
We traded a series of favorite Boston history anecdotes over email. He said he liked the incident where the crew of the USS Constitution had to resort to kedging, or towing, the ship to outrun a British foe during a battle with no wind. I responded that I always chuckle over the time when Captain Stewart ordered the sails thrown aback, letting the wind catch the front edge of the sails and suddenly stopping the ship, but at the risk of shearing off the mainmast. I joked that it always reminded me of the scene in Top Gun when Maverick says, “I’m going to hit the brakes, he’ll fly right by” before dropping the flaps and letting Jester pass under his guns. Guess what?? He used it in the book, A History of Boston When my copy came in the mail Dan had helpfully flagged page 217 with a post-it to point out the footnote. magine my surprise when I got a package in the mail two years later with a bound copy of that manuscript. Dan had helpfully flagged page 217 with a post-it note. Calling me a Boston historian is a bit of a stretch, but those are his words, not mine.
190 years ago, Bostonians awoke to an unexpected light in the sky before dawn on November 13, 1833. Some began their morning routines, thinking the sun had risen, a few dashed outside to douse the fire they expected to see consuming a neighbor’s house, and some simply looked out the window in curiosity. When they looked up to the heavens, they saw an unparalleled celestial spectacle. A meteor shower of unprecedented intensity erupted in the night sky, filling it with tens of thousands of shooting stars per hour, which observers said fell as thickly as snowflakes in a winter storm. Star Wars fans might picture the Eye of Aldhani from episode 6 of Andor, a spectacular feat of special effects that allowed the protagonists to make their escape from the empire during a meteor shower that lit up the sky. The real 1833 meteor shower was no less spectacular. The event, which came to be known as the Leonid meteor storm, was one of the most remarkable astronomical events in recorded history, both because of its breathtaking beauty and its importance to the development of science.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/287/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
A Blizzard of Falling Stars Professor Denison Olmsted’s “Observations on the Meteors of November 13th, 1833” from The American Journal of Science and Arts * Professor Olmsted crowdsources meteor observations in the 1833 Mechanics’ Magazine, and Journal of the Mechanics’ Institute * A disinterested entry about the meteors in the diary of John Quincy Adams * Newspaper accounts + The Nov 21, 1833 Litchfield (CT) Enquirer reprints an account from the Boston Transcript + The Nov 23, 1833 Northern Star (RI) describes someone who thought the light of the meteors was a house on fire + The Nov 28, 1833 Newport (RI) Herald notes past meteor showers on November 13, going back decades + The Nov 26, 1833 New Hampshire Gazette reports on meteorite fragments believed to have been found on the surface + The Nov 26, 1834 Newport (RI) Herald contains a version Professor Olmsted’s observations on the meteor shower meant for general audiences, presented for the anniversary of the event * Sidney Perley’s 1891 Historic Storms of New England * Helen Sawyer Hogg, “Out of Old Books (The Leonid Shower of 1833),” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 56, 1962 * David W Hughes, “The World’s Most Famous Meteor Shower Picture,” Earth, Moon, and Planets, Vol. 68, 1995 * Bob Riddle, “Discovering the Leonids,” Science Scope, vol. 22, 1998 * Mark Littmann, Todd Suomela, “Crowdsourcing, the great meteor storm of 1833, and the founding of meteor science,” Endeavour*, Vol. 38, 2014 * Tips from NASA on how to see the 2023 Leonids, which will peak on the night of November 17. * Citizen Science: Get Involved! + Neponset River Community Water Monitoring Network, tracing pollution sources to improve water quality for wildlife and recreation + Project PHAEDRA, transcribing the papers of the women who worked as human computers at the Harvard Observatory
In King Hancock, the Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father, Brooke Barbier paints the portrait of a walking contradiction: one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, but a man of the people; a merchant who made his fortune in the warm embrace of empire, but signed his name first for independence; and an enslaver who called for freedom. Perhaps most of all, he’s portrayed as a moderate in a town of radicals. Hancock didn’t leave behind the same carefully preserved, indexed, and cross referenced lifetime of papers like our old friend John Adams. He wasn’t immortalized as the indispensable man, like George Washington. But Brooke weaves together the details that can be found in portraits, artifacts, official records, and surviving letters to create a nuanced portrait of a founder who should be remembered for more than a famous signature.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/286/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
King HancockBrooke Barbier is a public historian, tour guide, and the proprietor of Ye Olde Tavern tours, offering a boozy look at Boston’s revolutionary history. Speaking of the revolution, Brooke is our first repeat guest, as she joined the show back in March of 2017 to talk about her first book, Boston in the American Revolution: A Town versus an Empire. Brooke holds a PhD in American History from Boston College, with a specialty in social and cultural life in Boston during the revolutionary era. Her new book is out this month, King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father. In it, she examines revolutionary Boston through the life of John Hancock, including his deep longing for connection to friends and family, his love of entertaining, and his embrace of fashion in crafting his public image.
- Learn what happened to John Hancock’s grand Beacon Hill mansion.
- More on the 1768 Liberty riot.
- You may be surprised by John Hancock’s role in hanging the last woman executed in Massachusetts.
- Here’s our attempt to describe Hancock’s role with the Corps of Cadets VERY early on in the podcast’s run.
- If you’re brave enough to listen to some baby podcasters, check out our first interview with Brooke Barbier.
- Check out Hancock’s famous signature on this 1765 thank you note.
In this episode, professor Patrick O’Brien of the University of Tampa will be examining the loyalist experience of our Revolutionary War, mostly from the perspectives of women and enslaved African Americans. From our vantage point 250 years later, it’s easy to view the War for Independence as a simple story of good and bad. The good patriots battled the bad British from Lexington to Yorktown, until we had a country to call our own. Look a little closer, however, and the story isn’t so simple. Many of the tens of thousands of loyalists who were eventually forced to flee the new United States had roots that went back a century and a half in this country, every bit as long as the patriots who drove them out. And, as Dr. O’Brien points out, many of those who left everything behind to start new lives in London or Halifax didn’t really have much say in the matter, as enslaved people, indigenous groups, and women were more or less forced to adopt the political positions of the white men in their lives. Dr. O’Brien will bring those stories to light by focusing on a few prominent Boston loyalist families.
This talk was delivered as part of Old North Illuminated’s Digital Speaker Series. Many thanks to ONI and Dr. O’Brien for sharing it with us.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/285/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
This Perilous Hour of Trial, Horror & DistressDr. O’Brien is a historian of the American Revolution who studies British-sympathizing women and families, their experience as exiles in Nova Scotia and their return to the United States in the late 18th century. He is an associate teaching professor of history at the University of Tampa.
- Patrick O’brien; Duty and Love: Flora Lee’s Resistance to Slavery in Revolutionary Marblehead. The New England Quarterly
- O’Brien, G. P. . (2020). “Gilded Misery”: The Robie Women in Loyalist Exile and Repatriation, 1775–1790. Acadiensis
- The importance of the “Book of Negroes” in Nova Scotia history
- Loyalist songs
- Loyalist Migrations Project
- Primary sources and discussion topics on Loyalists via MHS
- Kacy Tillman, “What is a Female Loyalist,” Commonplace: the journal of early American life
Our header image this week is a detail from the background of Benjamin West’s 1812 portrait of John Eardly Wilmot
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist). This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune. They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabella’s life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy. Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/283/Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist). This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune. They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabella’s life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy. Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/283/Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist). This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune. They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabella’s life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy. Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/283/Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
This week, Aaron Stark joins the show to discuss his new book Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American Company, which chronicles an attempt by a foreign power to infiltrate, emulate, and eventually annihilate a great American company. In the late 19th century, watches were at the forefront of technological innovation, and the Waltham Watch Company made some of the finest watches in the world. Unlike their Swiss competitors, whose products were fancy, handcrafted works of art, the Watham company specialized in mass produced, affordable, and reliable watches for the masses. At an 1876 World’s Fair, they announced their arrival on the world’s stage, and the world took notice. The Swiss, in particular, took notice, and they took it by sending spies to steal the secrets of Waltham’s success.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/284/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American CompanyAaron Stark is a West Point graduate and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, where he served as an Apache helicopter pilot in the US Army. After attending Harvard Business School, he returned to the US Military Academy at West Point as a professor of finance, before moving on to a career in business. Disrupting Time is his first book. Visit aaronstarkbooks.com to read primary sources and view historical images related to the books, including portraits of Eliza Putnam and Jacques David.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist). This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune. They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabella’s life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy. Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/283/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Emily Franklin is the author of over 15 novels for young adults and adults, as well as contributing to anthologies on topics as varied as surviving high school and the films of John Hughes. The Lioness of Boston is her first work of historical fiction, recounting the life and imagining the inner world of adoptive Bostonian Isabella Stewart Gardner. She was inspired to write the book by a lifetime of visits to Isabella’s museum, and now having written the book gives her a new perspective on the museum she’s known so long. Emily lives in the Boston area with, as her bio points out, “two dogs large enough to be lions.”
The bold eye contact, the revealing dress… the Sargent portraitIsabella Stewart GardnerCleopatra’s Barge, via Historic New England* Learn more about John Singer Sargent and Isabella * Hear Emily Franklin speak about The Lioness of Boston at the Boston Athenaeum on October 18 (also available as a virtual event).
Enjoy two classic stories this week. First up is the story of the Cocoanut Grove fire. In November 1942, Boston was on a wartime footing, business was booming, and the streets were packed with soldiers and sailors on their way to fronts around the world. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a fire broke out at the popular Cocoanut Grove nightclub, and in the moments that followed, 492 people were killed, making it Boston’s most deadly disaster. After that, the podcast visits December 1917, when another world war raged in Europe. When confusing reports of a disaster to the north reached Boston, the city sprang into action, loading a special train with doctors, nurses, and medical supplies. After the most massive explosion before the advent of the atom bomb, Boston rushed relief to the town of Halifax. In return, they send us a Christmas tree each year.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/281/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
We have disasters on the mind because of the terrible, deadly fires on Maui. We just replayed a story about how deeply connected Boston is to Lahaina in episode 280, but if you want to hear it on its own, you can go back to episode 220 to learn how the ancient royal dynasty of Maui had its seat in Lahaina, how King Kamehameha moved his royal court to Lahaina after conquering Maui, and how whalers, merchants, and Congregational missionaries from Boston gathered there during the colonial era. The survivors need food, clean water, and housing in the immediate short term, and they will have to rebuild their lives from scratch in one of the most expensive places in the country. Please consider donating toward Maui relief. I would recommend the Maui Food Bank, to help families in need, or the Maui Humane Society, who are reuniting lost pets with their families, feeding homeless animals, and providing veterinary care.
PT-109* A 2015 history of PT-109 from the US Navy History and Heritage Command * “Survival,” by John Hersey * Letter from Kohei Hanami, via JFK Presidential Library * August 1943 memo by the survivors of PT-109, via JFK Presidential Library * A 1961 history of PT-109 by the US Navy Division of Naval History * Joseph Kennedy’s correspondence about PT-109, via JFK Presidential Library * “Kennedy Lauds Men, Disdains ‘Hero Stuff’,” Boston Globe, Jan 11, 1944 * “Kennedy’s Son Is Hero In Pacific As Destroyer Splits His PT Boat,” New York Times, Aug 20, 1943 * Ambassador Caroline Kennedy marks 80 years with a mile swim. * All photos public domain as works of the US government
JFK at the helm of PT-109PT-105, as sister ship of PT-109
80 years ago this month, on a tiny Pacific island, a legend was born. In the darkness before dawn on August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed and sank a small, plywood boat commanded by a 26 year old Lieutenant Junior Grade named John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In the hours and days that followed, young Jack Kennedy would prove to be a true American hero, swimming mile after mile through shark and crocodile infested waters, while towing an injured crew member by a strap clenched in his teeth. In the ensuing decades, PT-109 has become one of the most famous small craft in US Navy history, largely due to Kennedy’s actions. However, it also became a craven political ploy, when JFK and his father Joseph Kennedy used the story of PT-109 to launch a political career that would carry Jack Kennedy to the Oval Office.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/281/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
PT-109* A 2015 history of PT-109 from the US Navy History and Heritage Command * “Survival,” by John Hersey * Letter from Kohei Hanami, via JFK Presidential Library * August 1943 memo by the survivors of PT-109, via JFK Presidential Library * A 1961 history of PT-109 by the US Navy Division of Naval History * Joseph Kennedy’s correspondence about PT-109, via JFK Presidential Library * “Kennedy Lauds Men, Disdains ‘Hero Stuff’,” Boston Globe, Jan 11, 1944 * “Kennedy’s Son Is Hero In Pacific As Destroyer Splits His PT Boat,” New York Times, Aug 20, 1943 * Ambassador Caroline Kennedy marks 80 years with a mile swim. * All photos public domain as works of the US government
JFK at the helm of PT-109PT-105, as sister ship of PT-109
This week, enjoy three classic stories about Bostonians and their adventures on the Pacific Ocean. First, we’ll hear about the voyages of the Columbia to the Pacific Northwest starting in 1787, then we’ll move on to the Congregational missionaries who descended on Hawaii in 1823, and finally, we’ll talk about the Boston whaler who brought the industrial revolution to Spanish California. While you’re listening to these three classic stories, see if you can figure out what I’m working on that would involve a Brookline native on a small boat in the Solomon Islands in August 1943!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/280/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Around the World on the Columbia Robert Haswell’s log of the 1787 voyage * Don Martinez passes news of the Columbia to Boston * The Columbia returns to Boston in 1790 * John Quincy Adams writes to Abigail Adams about the Columbia’s 1790 return * John Boit’s log of the 1790 voyage * Haswell’s partial log of the 1790 voyage * Captain Robert Gray’s surviving 1790 log entries * The detailed map of the Northwest created on the 1790 voyage * History of the Columbia River by William Denison Lyman * Hubert Howe Bancroft’s History of the Northwest Coast * How Charles Bulfinch recovered Robert Gray’s log * Dean A Fales’ 1960 paper on Joseph Barrell * A 1989 thesis on the second voyage * The Life of Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect by Ellen Susan Bulfinch * Samuel Eliot Morrison’s The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1860* * Martha Gray’s petition for a Revolutionary widow’s pension * Morrison’s” Boston Traders in the Hawaiian Islands, 1789-1823″ * The images below are from a museum in San Francisco
Puritans in ParadiseKeawala’iPalapala Ho’omau HuialohaHuialohaHuialohaHuialohaNahikuNahikuLahuiokalani Ka’ānapaliKahakuloaLanakila Ihiihi O Iehowa Ona Kava in KeanaeLanakila Ihiihi O Iehowa Ona Kava in KeanaeKeolahouWaiola in LahainaRoyal burial plot at WaiolaRoyal burial plot at WaiolaWananalua in Hana Morrison, S. E. “Boston Traders in Hawaiian Islands, 1789-1823.” The Washington Historical Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3, 1921 * History of the Sandwich Islands Mission, Rufus Anderson, 1870 * A Narrative of Five Youth from the Sandwich Islands, 1816 * A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands, Hiram Bingham, 1848 * Tate, Merze. “The Sandwich Islands Missionaries Create a Literature.” Church History, vol. 31, no. 2, 1962 * Portraits of American Protestant missionaries to Hawaii * The Hawaiian Kingdom, Volume I, Ralph S Kuykendall, 1938 * Island Queens and Mission Wives, How Gender and Empire Remade Hawaii’s Pacific World, Jennifer Thigpen, 2014 * Background on Opukaha’ia from an independent researcher * Empire of the Young: Missionary Children in Hawai‘i and the Birth of U.S. Colonialism in the Pacific, 1820-1898*, dissertation by Joy Schulz, 2011 * The congregation at Keawala’i refuses to deed their church and land to the missionary society in Boston * The 1848 panorama of a whaling voyage around the world that our header image is taken from * A travelog of the bicentennial trip to Boston * Rediscovering the royal complex at Moku’ula
Joseph Chapman, from Boston to L.A.The only known photo of Joseph and Guadalupe Chapman ca 1847 Scott, Paul T. “Why Joseph Chapman Adopted California and ‘Why California Adopted Him.’” The Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 3, 1956, pp. 239–246. * Ward, Jean Bruce, and Gary Kurutz. “Some New Thoughts on an Old Mill.” California Historical Quarterly, vol. 53, no. 2, 1974, pp. 139–164 * Mason, Jesse D; Thompson & West, History of Santa Barbara county, California, with illustrations and biographical sketches of its prominent men and pioneers * Robinson, Alfred, Life in California: Being a Residence of Several Years in that Territory * Transcription of Jedediah Smith’s Journal – First Expedition to California, 7 Aug 1826 – 3 Jul 1827 * Harrison Rogers’ journal in Dale, Harrison Clifford; Smith, Jedediah Strong; Rogers, Harrison G; Ashley, William Henry; The Ashley-Smith explorations and the discovery of a central route to the Pacific, 1822-1829: with the original journals* * Notes on the mission mills from the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation * Photos and archaeological survey of the millrace prepared for the National Park Service in 2012 * The Pasadena Star News reports on the unveiling of the relocated millrace in 2013 * Additional details from the unveiling * The mission church at San Gabriel suffers a devastating fire in July 2020. Ongoing updates.
The campanario, or wall of bells, at San GabrielChapman’s millraceThe historic plaque that caught my attentionEnormous grape vineTiny grapesDiagram of Chapman’s MillMillrace as excavated in 2009A monument to the thousands of Tongvans buried at San Gabriel
This week’s story ties one of modern Boston’s iconic Freedom Trail sites to the earliest days of English settlement in the Shawmut Peninsula. It’s a story that ties the first Puritan to die in Boston to the hated Royal governor Edmund Andros, and it ties some of the earliest non-English immigrants in Boston to Ben Franklin and Abigail Adams through the invention of two local industries. King’s Chapel is beloved in Boston today, but it was seen as an unwelcome invasion when it was first proposed in 1686. In this week’s show, we’ll look at how Boston found room for an unwanted church, how the church was reinvented three times, and how it launched local glassmaking and founded the granite industry in Quincy. We’ll also see where you can still find the last traces of the original, wooden King’s Chapel hiding inside the walls of a more modern church, but not here in Boston.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/279/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Building King’s ChapelKing’s Chapel ca 1710Hammered granite and handblown glass at King’s ChapelThe foundation of King’s ChapelThe rafters at King’s ChapelThe Paul Revere bell was a later addition to King’s ChapelInside King’s ChapelInterpretive material at King’s ChapelInterpretive material at King’s Chapel Annals of King’s Chapel, vol 1 * Annals of King’s Chapel, vol 2 * The failed 1711 invasion of Quebec * Metcalf, Priscilla. “Boston before Bulfinch: Harrison’s King’s Chapel.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 13, no. 1, 1954 * To Benjamin Franklin from John Franklin, 26 November 1753 * Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, Charles Francis Adams * THE EXCAVATION OF THE GLASS FURNACE IN QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS, George R. Horner * History of the Granite Industry of New England,* Arthur Wellington Brayley * “Holy jigsaw puzzle: After a fire gutted a historic church, N.S. town began an incredible reconstruction” * “Historic N.S. church destroyed in blaze” * “Historic Lunenburg church reopens”
More Episodes* Taking Louisbourg, the Gibraltar of North America (episode 132) * The 1689 Uprising in Boston, revisited (episode 165) * The Original War on Christmas (episode 212) * Episode 57: Boston and Halifax, a lasting bond
Between the John Adams miniseries on HBO and the musical 1776, everyone knows that John Adams was one of the leading voices for independence in the Continental Congress. And along with negotiating the treaty of Paris and keeping the US out of the Quasi War, Adams always considered the Declaration one of his chief accomplishments. 50 years after Congress adopted it, John Adams remembered it on the morning of July 4, 1826, remarking “it is a great day. It is a good day.” That evening, he died, with many sources reporting that his last words were “Jefferson still lives.” He was wrong, though. Earlier that day, Jefferson had woken briefly, asked “is it the fourth” and then declined further medical treatment before slipping into a coma and himself dying. For someone who was so closely associated with America’s founding document, why did John Adams believe we should celebrate it on July 2nd? And how did his closest and most trusted advisor, his wife Abigail, urge him on toward independence in a letter that history remembers for other reasons? Let’s find out!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/278/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Adamses Declare Independence* March 31, 1776: Abigail’s “Remember the Ladies” letter * April 14, 1776: John responds, “you are so saucy) * April 27, 1776: Abigail to Mercy Otis Warren, “I have helped the sex abundently” * May 7, 1776: Abigail, “I cannot say that I think you very generous to the Ladies” * May 26, 1776: John to James Sullivan, “Whence arises the Right of the Men to govern Women, without their Consent?” * July 3, 1776: John, “I am surprized at the Suddenness, as well as Greatness of this Revolution.” * July 3, 1776: John, “The Second Day of July 1776… will be celebrated by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.” * July 21, 1776: Abigail, “I went with the Multitude into Kings Street to hear the proclamation for independence read and proclaimed.”
Thomas Jefferson visited Boston in 1784, arriving in town on June 18th. That also happened to be the same day when Abigail Adams left her home in Quincy to start making her way to France to join John at his diplomatic posting, though her ship didn’t actually leave Boston until the next day. In this episode, we’ll explore how the friendship that was kindled during their single day together in Boston carried on through their shared months in France, their decades of correspondence, and even through the years when Jefferson and John Adams were feuding. We’ll also examine Thomas Jefferson as an early New England tourist, who explored not only Boston, but also New Haven, Portsmouth, and other key regional population centers, as well as taking a fun look at his epic Boston shopping spree just days before he too boarded a boat to Europe.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/277/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Thomas Jefferson in Boston Jefferson’s 1784 account book * Jefferson to David Humphreys, 27 June 1784 * Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 2 July 1784 * Jefferson to James Madison, 1 July 1784 * Jefferson to David Humphreys, 21 June 1784 * Frederic Kirkland’s review of Dumbauld’s Thomas Jefferson, American Tourist * Abigail Adams, June 20, 1784 * Elbridge Gerry to Abigail Adams, May 18, 1784 * Abigail Adams to John Adams, May 25, 1784 * Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, June 19, 1784 * Abigail Adams to John Adams, July 23, 1784 * Abigail Adams to John Adams, 30 July 1784 * “Abigail & Tom,” by Edith Gelles * Jefferson to John Adams, 24 July 1784 * Jefferson to John Adams, 24 July 1784 * Abigail Adams to Anna Quincy, Sept 4, 1784 * Abigail Adams to Mary Smith Cranch, July 6, 1784 * Lin Manuel throwing shade * John Adams to Abigail Adams, 7 September 1783 * James Hemings on the Sporkful podcast * The Hemingses of Monticello*, by Annette Gordon-Reed
The new play “Revolution’s Edge” will debut at Old North Church in June 2023. It tells the story of three Bostonians and their families on the eve of the Revolution. Mather Byles is the Loyalist rector of Old North Church, Cato is an African American man who’s enslaved by Byles, and John Pulling is a whiggish ship’s captain and member of the Old North vestry. The three men have very different stations in life, but they all have young families with intertwined lives, and on April 18, 1775, they all had very different decisions to make about those lives. My guests this week are Patrick Gabridge, producing artistic director of the Plays in Place theater company, and Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North Illuminated. Together, they’ll tell us how this, um, revolutionary new drama came to be.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/276/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Revolution’s Edge Get tickets to see “Revolution’s Edge” from Old North Illuminated * Learn more about Plays in Place, including past performances in Boston * Listen to our past interview with Mark Peterson, author of The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865 * Listen to our past interview with JL Bell, author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War*
If you walk down Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, you might notice a small stone marker that states, “on this spot in the year 1000, Leif Erikson built his house in Vineland.” You might be surprised to learn that Leif Erikson had a house in Cambridge, and if so, you’ll be even more surprised to learn that the lower Charles River was the seat of a thriving Norse city around the turn of the first millennium. Learn about Harvard professor Eben Norton Horsford’s theory that the legendary Viking city of Norumbega was situated along the Charles River in this week’s podcast!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/275/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Lost Viking City on the CharlesThe 1965 Vineland mapBeinecke library explanationHorsford mapHorsford mapHorsford photoHorsford photoShepard mapShepard diagramShepard mapCornelia Horsford diagramCornelia Horsford diagramViking prow on the Longfellow BridgeViking prow on the Longfellow BridgeHorsford photo Horsford, E. N. “John Cabot’s Landfall, Site of Norumbega.” Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, vol. 17, 1885 * Horsford, Eben Norton, Discovery of America by Northmen: Address At the Unveiling of the Statue of Leif Eriksen, Delivered In Faneuil Hall, Oct. 29, 1887 * The Problem of the Northmen, by Horsford, Eben Norton (1889) * The discovery of the ancient city of Norumbega, by Horsford, Eben Norton (1889) * The landfall of Leif Erikson, A.D. 1000, and the site of his houses in Vineland, by Horsford, Eben Norton (1892) * “Dwellings of the Saga-Time, in Greenland, Iceland, and Vineland,” by Cornelia Horsford, National Geographic, March 1898 * Eben Horsford’s biographical sketch from the New England Historic Genealogical Society * Horsford’s obituary in the Harvard Crimson * Jackson, Charles L. “Eben Norton Horsford [obituary].” Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 28, 1892 * A guide-book to Norumbega and Vineland, by Shepard, Elizabeth G (1893) * A Lecture on the Discovery of America by the Northmen, Five Hundred Years Before Columbus, Asahel Davis (1840) * Dieserud, Juul. “Norse Discoveries in America.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, vol. 33, no. 1, 1901 * Fowke, Gerard. “Points of Difference between Norse Remains and Indian Works Most Closely Resembling Them.” American Anthropologist, vol. 2, no. 3, 1900 * Reviewed Work: The Defences of Norumbega by Eben Norton Horsford, Science, vol. 17, no. 435, 1891, pp. 319–319 * Roylance, Patricia Jane. “Northmen and Native Americans: The Politics of Landscape in the Age of Longfellow.” The New England Quarterly*, vol. 80, no. 3, 2007
Thanks to the Hamilton musical, it’s almost impossible to hear the names Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy without bursting into song. The play made the three eldest daughters of Philip Schuyler famous, and in this episode we’re talking about the first two sisters, but mostly just Angelica. Fans know that there was a flirtation between Angelica and Hamilton, but that relationship was exaggerated for the show. Angelica’s actual romance and marriage were downplayed for the show, but it was this union that brought Angelica Schuyler Church to Boston, where she lived for over two years under an assumed name. What was she doing here, and who was the mysterious John Carter who escorted her here?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/274/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Schuyler Sisters in Boston James McHenry to Alexander Hamilton, August 11, 1782 * Abigail Adams to Elizabeth Cranch, December 3. 1784 * Diary of John Quincy Adams, August 25, 1785 * John Trumbull’s autobiography * The Second Continental Congress elects John Carter as an auditor and accepts his resignation * The Whig Club, or a Sketch of Modern Patriotism* * “Schuyler Successors: The Big Small World of the Eighteenth-Century Hudson River Valley,” by Danielle Funiciello via Historic Hudson Valley * THORNTON, WINIFRED KNIGHT. “A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH MANSION, BELVIDERE.” New York History, vol. 31, no. 3, 1950 * John Barker Church’s profile from the History of Parliament Trust * Historian Joanne Freeman on Alexander Hamilton, March 20, 2020, via C-SPAN * From a series by JL Bell in January 2017 + “John Barker Church: ‘the mere man of business’?” + “Even the Carters Could Not Shut Their Hearts Against Us” + “Carter and My Eldest Daughter Ran Off” * Tilar Mazzeo’s biography of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton * Our header image shows Angelica and young Philip with a servant, by John Trumbull
Spring in Boston means baseball, and this week we’re talking about the time in 1874 when the Boston Red Stockings tried to bring America’s national pastime to Britain. 120 years before the World Baseball Classic, Boston’s biggest baseball promoter did his level best to get the cricket fans in “jolly old” hooked on his game… and the fact that he could sell them all the mitts, bats, and gloves they would need was just a happy accident, I’m sure. Red Stockings pitcher and future sporting goods magnate Al Spalding led the team on the World Baseball Tour, but would they be able to convert English strikers to batters and bowlers to pitchers? And for the team, would their nearly two month long diversion mean the end of their pennant race for 1874?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/273/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
1874 World Baseball Tour Big thanks to Eric Miklich for his essay about the World Baseball Tour, which was the inspiration for this episode * Zeiler, Thomas W. “Basepaths to Empire: Race and the Spalding World Baseball Tour.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, vol. 6, no. 2, 2007 * Szymanski, Stefan and Zimbalist, Andrew. National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer, Brookings Institution Press, 2005 * Schloss, Matthew David. “The Creation of the Doubleday Myth,” Masters Thesis, Department of History, University of Utah, 2013 * Ryczek, William J. Blackguards and Red Stockings: A History of Baseball’s National Association, 1871-1875, McFarland, 1992 * Spalding, AG and Meacham, Lewis. Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide for 1878: A Complete and Practical Handbook of the National Game of America, AG Spalding & Bro, 1878 * Voigt, David Quentin. “The Boston Red Stockings: The Birth of Major League Baseball,” The New England Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 4, 1970 * Bloyce, Daniel. “That’s Your Way of Playing Rounders, Isn’t It? The Response of the English Press to American Baseball Tours to England, 1874-1924,” sportingTRADITIONS, vol 23, no 1, 2005 * “1874 Boston Herald coverage of the Red Stockings tour,” compiled by Bill Nowlin, in 2016, to accompany publication of the SABR book Boston’s First Nine: The 1871-75 Boston Red Stockings* * Boston Globe + March 23, 1874: British tour announced + August 4, 1874: baseball and cricket at Lord’s + August 24, 1874: baseball is “rounders considerably elaborated” * Richmond Daily Dispatch, August 5, 1875: a game at Lord’s * “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Haydn Quartet, 1908
The Red Stockings at Lord’s1874 Red StockingsThe Red Stockings at BromptonHarry WrightAlbert Goodwill Spalding
John Adams later described the prosecution of William Corbet as a case “of an extraordinary Character, in which I was engaged and which cost me no small Portion of Anxiety.” In 1769, four common sailors were brought into Boston to stand trial for murder. The victim was an officer in the royal navy, and the crime had taken place just off Cape Ann, almost within sight of home. As Boston suffered under military occupation, could a military victim receive justice in a radicalized Boston? And what really happened on that ship near Marblehead? Had the dead officer really just been searching for cargo that the captain hadn’t declared and paid customs on? Or were they up to something darker, like illegally kidnapping Massachusetts sailors and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/272/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Pitt Packet Case This episode was inspired by a 2017 Walk Boston History blog post * The Journal of the Times covered the Pitt Packet case in May and June * Report of the shooting in the May 1, 1769 Boston Evening Post * Report on the trial in the June 19, 1769 Boston Gazette * Report on the shooting and trial in the July 3, 1769 Boston Evening Post * John Adams’ legal notes on the trial (start here and use “next document” to proceed through his notes on the admiralty court’s jurisdiction, his transcription of testimony, and a detailed record of his closing argument * In December 1769, John Adams ponders writing a pamphlet about the case * Lt Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s account of the case in his History of Massachusetts Bay* * John Rowe’s diary entry for June 14, 1769 calls the resistance by the sailors “very courageous, and I think very right.” * JL Bell recounts an incident in Boston in 1774 involving impressment, in an article published after this episode was recorded. * Related epsisodes: + Boston’s 1747 Impressment Riot + Boston’s 1768 Liberty Riot + An execution during the occupation of Boston + Tensions run high during the occupation of Boston
On April 9, 1863, a shooting was carried out in a basement just off of Court Street, behind Boston’s Old City Hall. The gunman was a Union cavalry officer, who belonged to one of Brahmin Boston’s most wealthy families. The victim was a new Irish American recruit in his brigade. The shooting would result in accusations of cowardice and an execution, but was either justified?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/271/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Court Street MutinyCharles Russell LowellSite of the shooting in 1861Site of the shooting today Life and Letters of Charles Russell Lowell, by Edward Waldo Emerson * Harvard Memorial Biographies, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson * Memoirs of the War of ’61, by Elizabeth Cabot Putnam * “MILITARY INSUBORDINATION.; A Mutiny in the Second Massachusetts Cavalry The Ringleader Promptly Shot, and the Difficulty Quelled.” New York Times, April 9, 1863 * “Execution at Fort Independence.” Rutland Weekly Herald, June 18, 1863 * 1861 map showing the corner of Williams Court and Court Square, where the shooting took place * “A Mutineer’s Bullet,” [PDF link] from the research site The Second Mass and its Fighting Californians * Ragon, Stephen F., “Expendable: Eight Soldiers From Massachusetts Regiments Executed For Desertion During the United States Civil War” (2017). Graduate Masters Theses.* 436. * Finding the grave of Charles Russell Lowell and Josephine Shaw Lowell
Just a quick bonus episode, so I can tell you about a change to my personal life and what it means for the show.
Duke in 2011Duke in 2023
Starting in 1884, audiences of veterans, schoolchildren, and everyday Bostonians streamed into a cavernous, castle-like building on Tremont Street in the South End to witness the closest thing to virtual reality that existed at the time. The building still exists, though a series of renovations have rendered it much more ordinary and less palatial than it was back then. The painting still exists too, and it still offers an immersive experience for visitors that blends reality and art, but not in Boston anymore. The building was known as the Cyclorama, and it was purpose built to hold the painting, which was also known as the cyclorama, one of the most audacious artistic endeavors of the 19th century. Together, they commemorated the turning point of the bloody Civil War that had ended two decades earlier.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/270/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Gettysburg Cyclorama“Mystery of the South End” adThe oddly shaped cyclorama lot forms from landfillThe cyclorama on its irregular lotLocation of the Cyclorama perspective on the battlefieldThe competing Bunker Hill cyclorama A guidebook sold at the Cyclorama building * Administrative history of the Gettysburg National Military Park * Boston Landmarks Commission report * Boston Center for the Arts site study * Markantes, Charles G. “THE CUSTER CYCLORAMA, REVISITED” Military Images, vol. 27, no. 2, 2005 * Georg, Kathleen R., and Wendell W. Lang. “The Tipton Panorama Photos of Gettysburg” Military Images, vol. 6, no. 2, 1984 * Illustrated Boston, the Metropolis of New England*, 1889 * Our header image * “The Uprising in the North,” by Paul Philippoteaux (and a description) * A National Park Service article about the Getysburg cyclorama * Yoni Appelbaum’s article about Civil War cycloramas * After finishing the episode, I stumbled across this article about a 1902 cyclorama at the University of Iowa Museum. Thinking about it also made me realize that the North Korean cyclorama I mentioned in the show is actually from the 20th century, not the 19th. * Boston Globe (paywalled) + 20 Dec 1884 Ad for the grand opening + 21 Dec 1884 Reporting on the sneak peek of he cyclorama + 17 Jan 1885 Gettysburg Veteran Association visits the cyclorama + 14 Feb 1885 Description of “The Uprising of the North” + 23 Apr 1885 Ad for the cyclorama + 29 May 1885 Crowds visit for Decoration Day + 27 Jun 1885 Cyclorama investors get their first dividend + 27 Jul 1885 Confederates visit the cyclorama + 19 Aug 1885 Exclamations overheard at the cyclorama + 17 Jan 1886 Field trips to the cyclorama + 07 Feb 1888 Preview of the new Bunker Hill cyclorama + 01 Oct 1888 Cyclorama company stops paying dividends + 23 Dec 1888 Last minute visits to the Gettysburg cyclorama + 22 Mar 1889 Description of the Little Bighorn cyclorama + 01 Jan 1904 Gettysburg cyclorama rediscovered
A Boston ad hanging in GettysburgA Boston ad hanging in GettysburgA model at the Atlanta History Center showing how cycloramas were paintedCyclorama of the Battle of Atlanta showing how the diorama blends with the paintingA dummy of Clark Gable at the Battle of Atlanta cyclorama
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...Last winter, the Old North Church historic site hosted a series of conversations about radical Black abolitionist David Walker, and his book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. As part of their Digital Speaker Series, education director Catherine Matthews moderated a discussion between artist, educator, and activist L’Merchie Frazier and playwright Peter Snoad on December 15. This edition focused on the text of the Appeal as a piece of rhetoric that pointed out the brutality and hypocrisy of slavery and urged the enslaved to rebel by any means necessary. Thanks to our friends at Old North for allowing us to share this panel with you.Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/240/
Annie L. Burton was an entrepreneur and restaurateur, who moved to Boston as a young woman after spending her childhood enslaved on an Alabama plantation. Annie spent decades as a domestic servant, first in the south, and then in the north, in Newton, the South End, Wellesley, Jamaica Plain, and other neighborhoods in and around Boston. For most Black women in the years and decades after emancipation, cooking, cleaning, raising children, and washing and ironing for white families were among the only opportunities available for paid work, making Annie’s experience utterly typical. Two things make her life unique: her decision to bet on herself and open a series of restaurants, first in Florida, then in Park Square in Boston, and then in a number of New England resort towns; and her decision, just after the turn of the 20th century, to put pen to page and write her story down and publish it, preserving the details of her life in a way that wasn’t available to most of her peers.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/269/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Annie Burton and her Restaurant Memories of Childhood’s Slavery Days, by Annie Burton * Pierce, Yolanda. “Her Refusal to Be Recast(e): Annie Burton’s Narrative of Resistance.” The Southern Literary Journal*, vol. 36, no. 2, 2004 * Boston Globe, April 3, 1898: Arthur Crumpler attends the Franklin Evening School * About Boston baked beans * 1871 Boston map showing the location of railroad terminals * Photo of Annie Burton and the book title page via NYPL * Read JL Bell’s investigation of why Boston stopped lighting its streetlamps in the summer of 1774, then click “newer post” to see part two. This is partly in response to our recent episode about Boston’s first streetlamps.
Related epsisodes* Fannie Farmer’s Boston Cooking School Cookbook * Joseph Lee, another formerly enslaved restauranteur * Molasses in Boston * Arthur Crumpler and Dr. Rebecca Lee Davis Crumpler
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US in 1864, and she spent most of her adult life in Charlestown, Beacon Hill, and the Readville section of Hyde Park. She devoted her career to pediatrics and obstetrics, published the first medical text by an African American author, and made a point of caring for the marginalized, even moving to Virginia to tend to formerly enslaved people at the end of the Civil War. The nation’s first Black female physician lay in an unmarked grave for 125 years, but there were important developments in the story of Dr. Crumpler during our first pandemic year.Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/200/
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...“The Birth of a Nation” was one of the most controversial movies ever made, and when it premiered on February 8, 1915 it almost instantly became the greatest blockbuster of the silent movie era. It featured innovative new filmmaking techniques, a revolutionary score, and it was anchored by thrilling action scenes shot on a never-before-seen scale, with thousands of actors and extras, hundreds of horses, and battlefield effects like real cannons.“Birth of a Nation” was unapologetically racist, promoting white supremacy and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as the noble, heroic saviors of white America from the villainous clutches of evil black men bent on rape and destruction. Upon the film’s 50th anniversary in 1965, NAACP president Roy Wilkins proclaimed that all the progress that African Americans had made over the past half century couldn’t outweigh the damage done by “Birth of a Nation.”When the film debuted in Boston in April of 1915, audience reaction was split along racial lines, with white Bostonians flocking to see the movie in record numbers, while black Bostonians organized protests and boycotts, with leaders like William Monroe Trotter attempting to have it banned in Boston.Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/121/
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...African American inventor and draftsman Lewis Latimer’s parents self-emancipated to give their children the opportunities afforded to those born into freedom. A Chelsea native, Latimer’s career took him from the Navy, to a patent law firm, to the prestigious circle of Thomas Edison’s pioneers.Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/120/
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...Historian Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, author of Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, joins us this week to talk about the evolution of partisanship and political loyalty among Boston’s African American community, from just after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century. It was a period that at first promised political and economic advancement for African Americans, but ended with the rise of lynching and codified Jim Crow laws. It was also a period that began with near universal support for Lincoln’s Republican party among African Americans, with Frederick Douglass commenting “the Republican party is the ship and all else is the sea.” However, after decades of setbacks and roadblocks on the path of progress, many began to question their support of the GOP, and some tried to forge a new, non-partisan path to Black advancement. Dr. Bergeson-Lockwood will tell us how the movement developed and whether it ultimately achieved its goals. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/154/
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...Frank Hart was a transplant to Boston who became a famous star in a sport that no longer really exists. Hart was a pedestrian, competing in grueling six-day races where the winner was the person who could run, walk, or even crawl the most miles by the time the clock ran out. He made his debut in the Bean Pot Tramp here in Boston, but he followed the money to races in New York, London, San Francisco, and beyond, becoming one of America’s first famous Black athletes. However, Frank Hart’s career declined along with the popularity of pedestrianism, while the rise of Jim Crow raised new hurdles for a Black competitor. Joining us this week to discuss the rise and fall of Frank Hart is Davy Crockett, the host of the Ultrarunning History podcast and author of the new biography Frank Hart: The First Black Ultrarunning Star.original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/265/
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month. When five year old Sarah Roberts was turned away from the schoolhouse door in Boston simply because of the color of her skin, her father sued the city in an attempt to force the public schools to desegregate, in compliance with a state law that had been intended to do just that years before. Unfortunately, the suit was unsuccessful. Not only did the Boston schools remain segregated, but the court’s decision provided the legal framework of “separate but equal,” which would be used to justify segregated schools across the country for a century to come.Original show notes: http:HUBhistory.com/162/
Joseph Lee was a hotelier, caterer, and one of the richest men in his adopted hometown of Newton. By the time of his death in 1908, Lee had worked as a servant, a baker, and for the National Coast Survey; he had worked on ships, in hotels, and at amusement parks. He had earned a vast fortune in hotels, lost most of it, and earned another one through his patented inventions that helped change the way Americans eat. He had entertained English nobles and American presidents. And he had raised three daughters and one son, who was a star Ivy League tackle before graduating from Harvard. If you make bread at home, or meatballs, or fried chicken, or casserole, you are the beneficiary of the technology Joseph Lee developed. That would be a remarkable life for anyone, but Joseph Lee was enslaved in South Carolina until he was about 15 years old, making his accomplishments even more remarkable.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/268/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Joseph Lee and his Bread Machines Joseph Lee’s patent for the bread crumbing machine (and our header image) * Joseph Lee’s patent for a bread kneading machine * The Women’s Era, January 1897 * Richmond Planet, Dec 20, 1902 * The Colored American Magazine, May 1902 * King’s Handbook of Newton, Moses Sweetster * Lee’s obituary in the Newton Graphic * Lee’s obituary in the Boston Globe * Lee’s obituary in the New York Age * “Joseph Lee: famed hotelier, restaurateur, inventor,” Anthony Neal, The Bay State Banner * “How This Unsung Black Entrepreneur Changed The Food Industry Forever—And Made A Lot Of Dough,” Brianne Garrett, Forbes* * “Joseph Lee: Restaurateur, Caterer, Hotelier, Inventor,” Wayne Miller, Quincy Historical Society * Joseph Lee’s entry in the National Inventors Hall of Fame * A photo of the Woodland Park Hotel in 1888 * A 1901 map of Quincy, showing the Squantum Hotel immediately before the Moon Island causeway * An 1886 map of Newton showing the Woodland Park Hotel in the lower right corner * Globe Articles + July 29, 1884, steers running wild in the streets + April 12, 1885, announcing a Maine franchise + Sept 16, 1891, the First Family arrives in Newton + Oct 1, 1891, the First Lady hosts a ball at Woodland Park + April 23, 1892, Joseph Lee goes bankrupt + May 1, 1896, Joseph Howard Lee’s promising tennis career + Nov 7, 1896, picture of Joseph Howard Lee + Nov 8, 1896, Joseph Howard Lee stops a Princeton drive + June 27, 1897, announcing Lee’s move to Norumbega Park + Sept 5, 1897, advertising Lee’s dinners at Trinity Court + Dec 1, 1897, Lee is leaving Trinity Court for his own catering business + May 14, 1898, an ad for the new Squantum Inn + May 14, 1898, article about the new Squantum Inn * Related Episodes + Brighton Stockyards + Norumbega park + Lewis Latimer + Thomas Wentworth Higginson + Squantum Point
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...Professor Richard T Greener grew up in Boston in the shadow of the abolition movement, graduated from Harvard, and became one of the foremost Black intellectuals of his era. However, soon after publishing his most influential work, when it seemed like he would take up the mantle of Frederick Douglass, he instead sank into obscurity. He was nearly forgotten for over a century, until his legacy was rediscovered in 2009 in a discarded steamer trunk in a dusty attic on the South Side of Chicago.Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/217/
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...From his Harvard graduation in 1895 to his death in 1934, William Monroe Trotter was one of the most influential and uncompromising advocates for the rights of Black Americans. He was a leader who had the vision to co-found groups like the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, but he also had an ego that prevented him from working effectively within the movements he started. He was a critic of Booker T Washington, and an early ally of Marcus Garvey. Monroe Trotter was the publisher of the influential Black newspaper the Boston Guardian, and he is the subject of a new biography by Tufts Professor Kerri Greenidge called Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/183/
For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days...In 1773, an ad appeared in the Boston Gazette for a Black artist who was described as possessing an “extraordinary genius” for painting portraits. From this brief mention, we will explore the life of a gifted visual artist who was enslaved in Boston, his friendship with Phillis Wheatley, the enslaved poet, and the mental gymnastics that were required on the part of white enslavers to justify owning people like property. Through the life of a second gifted painter, we’ll find out how the coming of the American Revolution changed life for some enslaved African Americans in Boston. And through the unanswered questions about the lives of both these men, we’ll examine the limits of what historical sources can tell us about any given enslaved individual. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/229/
Today, we’re revisiting a classic episode about the radical Black abolitionist David Walker. Walker was a transplant to Boston, moving here after possibly being involved in Denmark Vesey’s planned 1822 slave insurrection in South Carolina. At a time when very few whites spoke of ending slavery, Frederick Douglass said Walker’s book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement.” He demanded an immediate end to slavery, and he endorsed violence against white slave owners to bring about abolition. After the book helped inspire Nat Turner’s 1830 uprising in Virginia, southern slave states banned his book and offered a reward for anyone who would kill or kidnap him. With a price on his head, many people believed that David Walker’s mysterious death in a Beacon Hill doorway just a year after his landmark book was published was an assassination. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/190
In the 1760s, the town gaol (jail) where prisoners were held while awaiting trial was a cold, dark, and truly terrifying edifice on Queen Street, just up the hill from the Old State House. When a fire was discovered in the jailhouse just after 10pm on January 30, 1769, it briefly became the focal point of the long-simmering tensions between the town and the occupying British soldiers that would eventually culminate in the Boston Massacre. Who deliberately set the fire in the jail, and why were some of the prisoners grievously injured before they could be rescued? Who was responsible for patrolling the streets of a city under military occupation? What was the legal role of the occupiers during a fire emergency, and how did the fire at the old Boston jail become a surprising story of cooperation between the rival factions in Boston? Listen now for all those answers and more!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/267/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Fire in the Old Boston Gaol (Jail) Many thanks to Dr. Nicole Breault for allowing me to use excerpts from her 2022 paper “Witness to Crisis and Revolution: The Reports of Boston’s Town Watch, 1763-1775” * “Keeping Order in the North End: On Patrol with the Night Watch,” by Nicole Breault * Dickerson, O. M. (Oliver Morton), 1875-1966. Boston Under Military Rule <1768-1769>: As Revealed In a Journal of the Times. Boston: Chapman & Grimes, 1936. * Rowe, John, 1715-1787, Edward Lillie Pierce, and Anne Rowe Cunningham. Letters And Diary of John Rowe, Boston Merchant, 1759-1762, 1764-1779. Boston: W. B. Clarke company, 1903. * The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, 6 February 1769 (report on the fire and Sam Adams’ Urbanus letter) * The Boston-Gazette, and Country Journal, 13 February 1769 (response to Urbanus) * The duties of a Boston town watchman in 1769, via JL Bell’s Boston 1775 blog * A complete history of the Boston fire department : including the fire-alarm service and the protective department, from 1630 to 1888, by Arthur Wellington Brayley * A History of Boston: The Metropolis of Massachusetts, from Its Origin to the Present Period; with Some Account of the Environs, by Caleb Hopkins Snow * The History and Antiquities of Boston, the Capital of Massachusetts and Metropolis of New England: From Its Settlement in 1630, to the Year 1770, by Samuel G. Drake * Old landmarks and historic personages of Boston, by Samuel Adams Drake * Aline Kaplan’s Next Phase Blog post about the old jail building * A total eclipse of liberty: Being a true and faithful account of the arraignment, and examination of Daniel Fowle before the Honourable House of Representatives of the province of the Massachusetts-Bay, by Daniel Fowle * History of Boston, from 1630 to 1856*, by Isaac Smith Homans * Our header image is not of the 1769 jailhouse fire, but of the 1711 fire that destroyed the Town House and First Church just a block or so away. * A georeferenced copy of the 1722 Bonner map (shown with an inset below) to help you find the jail on the streets of today’s Boston * By the time the Bonner map was updated for a 1769 edition, two more fires had been added to the info box about Great Fires in the lower left corner.
An actor portrays a Boston town watchman during the March 2016 Boston Massacre reenactmentAn actor portrays a Boston town watchman during the March 2016 Boston Massacre reenactment
How can something as simple as streetlights transform a city? What can the Boston Massacre teach us about how dark the streets and alleyways of Boston were in the years before streetlights? How did the town decide to buy English oil lamps for the streets but fuel them with American whale oil? How did Boston’s very first street lamps survive a shipwreck and the Boston Tea Party, and who decided where they would be installed and how they would be maintained? In the era of climate change, what does the future hold for Boston’s quaint remaining gas street lamps? Let’s find out!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/266/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
In Search of Boston’s First Street LampsGas lampGas lampGas lampRed gas fire box lampRed gas fire box lampAt Race Point, near where the William wrecked The wreck of the William, December 20, 1773 Boston Gazette and Country Journal * Merchant John Rowe’s diary, search for “lamps” to find his work on the committee * John Adams letter about the benefits of whale oil street lamps * CA Quincy Norton’s “Lanterns in Early America,” 1904 Connecticut Magazine * Letter from John Andrews about the street lamps on the William * Mayor Wu’s plan to replace gas lamps with LED * Previewing a replacement LED gas lamp * Mary Beth Norton. “The Seventh Tea Ship.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 73, no. 4, 2016 * Comments about the first lamplighters in Manufactured Gas Plant Remediation: A Case Study,* by Allen W. Hatheway & Tomas B. Speight * Maintaining Boston’s remaining gas lamps
Frank Hart was a transplant to Boston who became a famous star in a sport that no longer really exists. Hart was a pedestrian, competing in grueling six-day races where the winner was the person who could run, walk, or even crawl the most miles by the time the clock ran out. He made his debut in the Bean Pot Tramp here in Boston, but he followed the money to races in New York, London, San Francisco, and beyond, becoming one of America’s first famous Black athletes. However, Frank Hart’s career declined along with the popularity of pedestrianism, while the rise of Jim Crow raised new hurdles for a Black competitor. Joining us this week to discuss the rise and fall of Frank Hart is Davy Crockett, the host of the Ultrarunning History podcast and author of the new biography Frank Hart: The First Black Ultrarunning Star.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/265/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Frank Hart: The First Black Ultrarunning StarBuy the book on Amazon
Davy Crockett is a serious ultrarunner, having completed over 100 100 mile races. He’s also a race director, a serious student of ultrarunning history, the director of the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame, and host of the Ultrarunning History podcast. Before starting his research into the history of ultrarunning, he also wrote four books about American westward expansion.
Frank Hart appears on a cigarette cardFrank Hart is runner 8 on the right of the lower imageFrank Hart chases the competitionFrank Hart racingMadison Square Garden set up for a pedestrian race
How did Boston come to host the first concert ever performed in what’s now the United States? Why was Boston resistant to the idea of a concert until almost 60 years after they became common in our ancestral city of London? When did Puritan Boston relax its rules and customs enough to allow public performances of secular music? Who brought the idea of charging for admission to a musical performance to colonial Boston, and what artistic legacy did he leave behind here? Listen now to find out!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/264/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Madam & Miss Will Shake Their Heels Abroad Andrew Oliver, Peter Pelham: Sometime Printmaker of Boston * MUSICAL LIFE IN BOSTON IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, Foote, Henry Wilder. , Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society; Worcester, Mass. Vol. 49, (Apr 19, 1939) * Woodward, Henry. “February 18, 1729: A Neglected Date in Boston Concert Life.” Notes, vol. 33, no. 2, 1976 * Butler, H. Joseph. “A NEWLY DISCOVERED WORK OF CHARLES THEODORE PACHELBEL.” Bach, vol. 28, no. 1/2, 1997 * “Before America: The Life and Art of Peter PelhamBefore His Immigration to America,” Philip Walker Jacobs * Whitmore, William Henry, Notes Concerning Peter Pelham: the Earliest Artist Resident In New England, And His Successors Prior to the Revolution*, 1867 * Early Concert-life in America (1731-1800), Oscar George Sonneck * The Diary of Samuel Sewall, volumes one, two, and three * The header image from Peter Pelham III’s manuscript book is from Colonial Williamsburg * The map below is a 1730s plan of Dock Square overlaid on a georeferenced Bonner map
Boston witnessed a grim Christmas in 1774, at the height of the British occupation. There had been redcoats in Boston for six years at that point, but after the Tea Party the previous December, the number of occupying troops skyrocketed, until there was nearly one British soldier for every adult male Bostonian. They were there to enforce the intolerable acts, and their presence only fanned the flames of rebellion in the colony. An increased Army presence in Boston always led to an increase in desertions, and December 1774 was no exception. On the 17th, while his unit was away on exercises, Private William Ferguson got really drunk, and then he either tried to desert and start a new life here in America, or he went to see about getting some laundry done. Either way, he was convicted, and Boston was shocked to bear witness to an execution by firing squad in the middle of Boston Common, bright and early on Christmas Eve.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/263/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
A Christmas Eve Execution “William Ferguson’s Walk on the Ice,” by Don N. Hagist inspired this episode, which relies heavily on his research. * British Lieutenant John Barker’s diary * Boston merchant John Rowe’s diary * The Boston Gazette reports on Ferguson’s execution * The Boston Gazette reports on Eames’ execution * The Journal of the Times reports on Eames’ execution * JL Bell tackles the case of Richard Eames’ 1768 execution * “‘We might now behold American Grievances red-dressed:’ Soldiers and the Inhabitants of Boston, 1768-1770,” by David Niescior * Gilbert, Arthur N. “The Regimental Courts Martial in the Eighteenth Century British Army.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies*, vol. 8, no. 1, 1976
For a couple of months now, I’ve been hinting around about a lawsuit that HUB History has been caught up in. We have finally reached a settlement, so I can tell you a little more about what happened and why I’ve been so thirsty recently when I make my Patreon appeals. Speaking of which: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/ or http://HUBhistory.com/support/
For Thanksgiving, we are revisiting three classic episodes of HUB History. First, learn how the carol “Over the River and Through the Wood” started out as a Thanksgiving song, and why the songwriter’s extreme beliefs almost cost her livelihood. Then, hear how 19th century Boston got the vast flocks of turkeys needed for a traditional Thanksgiving to market, and then to the dining room table. And finally, prepare to be surprised when you hear that college students, even Harvard students and even John Adams’ kids, have been known to drink and cause trouble, such as the 1787 Thanksgiving day riot.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/262/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Over the River and Through the Wood Read the original lyrics to “Over the River and Through the Wood” in Flowers for Children * Barrett’s royalty free (but highly abridged) version * An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans by Lydia Maria Child * Our show about David Walker’s An Appeal to the Colored People of the World, which influenced Maria’s Appeal * Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s profile of Lydia Maria Child * The treacly morality piece “The Little White Lamb and the Little Black Lamb” in Flowers for Children * Our show about Horace Mann, who influenced Maria’s children’s writing * Maria’s father and his famous Medford Crackers * More on early crackers in New England * Read Maria’s turkey and cracker stuffing recipe in The American Frugal Housewife*
Boston’s Wild West* The Brighton Market: Feeding 19th Century Boston, David C Smith & Anne E Bridges. * 1841 report on agriculture in Massachusetts. * Nathaniel Hawthorne describes the Brighton market. * A description of the Brighton Cattle Fair from a Louisville publication called The Dollar Farmer. * A description of the Brighton Cattle Fair in an 1846 New England Farmer magazine. * Our header image comes from this 1850 article in Gleason’s Pictorial. * Turkey drives described by Paul Gilbert for VPR. * Articles by William Marchione on the Brighton stockyards, the Cattle Fair Hotel, and the annexation debate. In that first article, he gathered several additional period sources that we quoted on the stockyard fires, stampedes, and lawsuits. * For a broader discussion of Boston’s annexations of surrounding towns, check out our Episode 61.
Cattle Fair HotelThe competing Watertown stockyard gives a sense of how Brighton may have looked.Stockyard fire in 1913.Harvard’s Thanksgiving Day Riot* Pitt Clarke’s Harvard diary * Minutes of the Harvard administration’s deliberations on punishing the rioters. (pages 285-287) * Abigail Adams’ sisters write one another about Charles Adams’ bad behavior * John Quincy Adams writes about the riot in his diary. * Cotton Tufts hears from cousin John Quincy Adams about the “riotous ungovernable spirit” at Harvard. * A JQA letter to another cousin. * Abigail writes to John Quincy asking him to watch after his little brothers. * Abigail’s sister gripes a bit about Charles.
106 years ago this week, a terrible accident took place within sight of South Station. November 7, 1916 was election day in Boston, but it was an otherwise completely ordinary autumn afternoon for the passengers who packed themselves into streetcar number 393 of the Boston Elevated Railway for their evening commute through South Boston to South Station and Downtown Crossing. The everyday monotony of the trip home was shattered in an instant, when the streetcar crashed through the closed gates of the Summer Street bridge and plunged through the open drawbridge and into the dark and frigid water below. How many could be saved, and how many would have to perish for this evening to be remembered as Boston’s greatest moment of tragedy for a generation?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/261/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Trolley of Death* 100 year Globe retrospective by Eric Moskowitz * Globe coverage (paywalled) + Nov 8, 1916 Initial report + Nov 9, 1916 Recovering and identifying the dead + Nov 10, 1916 Searching for the body of Miss Elsie Wood + Nov 11, 1916 Funerals + Nov 12, 1916 Grand jury will decide if charges are warranted + Nov 17, 1916 Mayor Curley’s committee to safeguard drawbridges + May 24, 1917 Elsie H Woods’ body recovered + July 1, 1911 Trolley nearly plunges into the Mother Brook * Other news coverage + Nov 7, 1916 AP report declaring 30 dead + Nov 8, 1916 UPI report on Walsh’s arrest + Nov 18, 1916 Mississippi paper makes a tasteless joke + Nov 7, 1916 Wire service story with Shea disputing Walsh’s account + Nov 8, 1916 Wire service story, includs Shea’s account disputing Walsh’s claims * Nov 11, 1916 Electric Railway Journal article * Public Service Commission report * 1918 annual report of the Public Service Commission * Current drawbridge laws (sections 120-129)
Hoisting car 393 out of the water1916 BERy system mapArrow showing where car 393 went inAn arrow pointing out a woman helping to recover bodiesGlobe DiagramGlobe Diagram* Cross section of Fort Point Channel depths * Sliding mechanism of Summer Street bridge and the updated gates in 1930 and in 1931
Sponsored by Boston’s Best Dog WalkersSenior Podcast Producer DukeBoston’s Best Dog Walkers & Pet Services is a full service pet care company that offers walking, boarding, grooming, training, and much more! Since I’ve been working at home since March 2020, senior podcast producer Duke, my 13 year old pupper, has gotten very used to having me around most of the time. That makes it hard to get away when I DO have to go into the office, so having a reliable dog walking service is the key. Whether you’re a local looking to go out on the town or a visitor staying in Boston with your pet, Boston’s Best Dog Walkers has you covered. They’ll take your dog on an adventure that’s suited to canine tastes while you get out and explore Boston’s many historic sites. Visit BostonsBestDogWalkers.com to learn more, and enter promo code HUBhistory for special services and discounts for Hub History listeners!
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19th Century Boston was a riotous town, and in past episodes, we’ve examined everything from anti-draft riots to anti-catholic riots to anti-immigrant riots that took place in this city in the 19th century. The incident on Washington Street on October 21, 1835 was different, however. Where most of Boston’s 19th century riots erupted from street violence among and directed by the working classes, the mob’s attack on the Female Anti Slavery Society and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was led by a group characterized as “gentlemen of property and influence.” Enraged by the audacity of radical calls for immediate abolition, this mob of respectable gentlemen broke down the doors, scattered members of the Female Anti Slavery Society, nearly lynched William Lloyd Garrison, and inspired abolitionist leader Maria Chapman to exclaim, “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere!”
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/260/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Gentlemen’s Mob Our header image is from the collection of the BPL. * Diary of Bradley Newcomb Cumings. * Frederick Douglass’s Plea for Freedom of Speech in Boston. * Patrick Browne’s post about the riot. * Letter from George Thompson to William Lloyd Garrison about the riot. * Francis Jackson Garrison’s biography of William Lloyd Garrison. * Hindus, Michael S. “A City of Mobocrats and Tyrants: Mob Violence in Boston, 1747-1863.” Issues in Criminology, vol. 6, no. 2, 1971 * William P Marchione, Boston Miscellany: An Essential History of the Hub*. * Letter about the riot from Angeline Grimke to William Lloyd Garrison. * 1835 Constitution of the Boston Female Anti Slavery Society. * October 24, 1835 Liberator (pages 1 and 3) * October 31, 1835 Liberator (pages 1, 2, 3) * November 7, 1835 Liberator (pages 2, 3, 4) * November 14, 1835 Liberator (page 4)
When it came steaming into Boston Harbor 81 years ago this week, the fishing trawler Buskø was escorted by a Coast Guard cutter, with armed guards watching over her crew. The next day’s headlines declared that the US had captured a Nazi spy ship manned by Gestapo agents who were setting up secret bases in Greenland, but the truth turned out to be more complicated. The Busko was sailing under the Norwegian flag and manned by a Norwegian crew, yet their peaceful voyage to deliver supplies to isolated Norwegian hunters in the arctic was used to cover up Nazi intelligence gathering, so what would the fate of the ship be? And while war was raging in Europe, the United States was technically at peace, so on what charges were the Norwegian crew held at the East Boston immigration station?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/259/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Nazi Spy ShipBusko on Boston HarborThe Bear under full sailThe Northland with mastsThe Northland without mastsBear officers relieving the whalers“Hell Roaring” Mike Healy on the BearRadio equipmentLorenz transmitterLorenz transmitterThe Bear sinking* NYT Nov 19, 1941: More detention camps * NYT Oct 26, 1941: History of the Bear * Oct 17, 1941 declassified FBI memo * Oct 23, 1941 declassified FBI memo * Skarstein, Frode. (2007). “A cursed affair”—how a Norwegian expedition to Greenland became the USA’s first maritime capture in World War II. Polar Research. 26. 181 – 194. 10.1111/j.1751-8369.2007.00019.x. * WAESCHE, R. R. “The Coast Guard in War.” The Military Engineer, vol. 37, no. 231, 1945, pp. 5–7. * Oct 27, 1941 Time Magazine: “War & Peace, Prisoners of Defense” * Maritime Executive summary about the rediscovery of the Bear * NOAA story about rediscovering the Bear * AP Oct 15, 1941: description of the Busko arriving in port * UPI Oct 14, 1941: processing the prisoners * Boston Globe + Oct 14, evening + Oct 15 + Oct 16 (check out the pic of the Newfie!) + Oct 16 + Nov 19 + Oct 27, 1942 + Dec 15, 1944
Professor Charles R Gallagher’s recent book The Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front is an in depth accounting of an organization that was wildly popular in Boston and beyond in the years before the US entered World War II. The Christian Front was deeply rooted in Catholic doctrines, but the value at its core was a form of anticommunism that members treated as interchangeable with antisemitism. Professor Gallagher will tell us how the group was founded and how the doctrine of Catholic Action and the Mystical Body of Christ theory enabled their hateful ideology. He’ll also introduce the intellectual leaders of the group, the streetfighters who led it down the primrose path to paramilitarism, and the Nazi spymaster who turned the group toward treason.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/258/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The Nazis of Copley Square, by Charles R GallagherProfessor Charles R Gallagher one of those multi-hyphenates who puts the rest of us to shame. He’s a professor of history, a Jesuit priest, and an award winning author. More specifically, he is a member of the Society of Jesus who teaches in the history department at Boston College, where he studies the history of right-wing movements, the intersection of intelligence and religion, American Catholicism, papal diplomacy, international relations, and the history of the Holocaust.
Make sure to check out his profile on the Harvard University Press site, which includes a more complete biography and has tons of links to his other media appearances about the book. You can buy the book using the widget below, or on Amazon, if you prefer.
The West End and the North Slope of Beacon Hill have gone through extreme transformations over time. At the turn of the 20th century, these neighboring communities welcomed Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, though very few signs of those vibrant communities remain today. As the last of the purpose-built immigrant synagogues still standing in downtown Boston, the Vilna Shul is a unique building with a rich history of immigration, community, and the evolving American identity. Vilna Shul Executive Director Dalit Horn joins us this week to talk about the history and future of this unique synagogue.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/257/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Vilna Shul Visit the Vilna Shul website to plan your visit or check out their upcoming events*!
Prior to joining the Vilna, Dalit Horn served as the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Impact at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Dalit designed and implemented cutting edge and creative approaches to expand the Institute’s partnerships, educational and programmatic agendas, visibility and effectiveness. Prior to this role, Dalit served as Assistant Director at AJC’s Belfer Center for American Pluralism.
Dalit received a BA in History from Columbia University, a BA in Jewish Thought from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she studied management, leadership and organizational design. She is both an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and a Davidson Scholar. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts with her husband and their two sons.
Reading list: The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions * Boston’s West End (Images of America) * The Jews of Boston * A Life On Beacon Hill: An Unauthorized History of Phillips Street*
During the summer of 1775, when the siege of Boston was at its peak, about 1500 Pennsylvania Riflemen answered a call for volunteers. By the time they reached the American lines in Cambridge, expectations for these troops were through the roof. Thanks in no small part to a publicity campaign engineered by John Adams, the New England officers commanding the troops around Boston believed that these fresh troops were capable of nearly everything. Their reputation was based in part upon the riflemen’s origins on the frontier, and in part on the advanced weaponry they carried. While they’re the status quo today, rifles were new to both armies that were facing off in Boston and nearly unheard of here in New England. However, fame went to these soldiers’ heads, and after only a couple of months on the front line, they were nearly ungovernable. They refused to take part in the regular duties of an American soldier, they staged jailbreaks when their comrades were locked up for infractions against military discipline, and on September 10th, they staged the first mutiny in the new Continental Army.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/256/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Mutiny at Prospect Hill* Riflemen Run Riot by Joshua Shepherd * Making and Unmaking a Military Myth by Thomas A Rider II * Lt Ziegler and “Our Thirty-two Mutineers” by JL Bell * June 14, 1775 Congress resolves to enlist ten companies of riflemen * June 17, 1775 John to Abigail Adams, George Washington to command Continental Army * June 18, 1775 John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, praising riflemen’s skill * June 22, 1775 Riflemen to march to Boston ASAP * July 6, 1775 John Adams to James Warren, Riflemen are gentlemen of independent fortunes * July 31, 1775 Riflemen in action at Charlestown * Aug 31, 1775 Riflemen in action at Plowed Hill * Sept 5, 1775 George Washington’s orders, two companies of riflemen to go on Quebec expedition * Sept 10, 1775 Nathanael Greene expects trouble from riflemen * Sept 11, 1775 James Warren to John Adams on the mutiny * Sept 11, 1775 George Washington’s orders, riflemen to participate in fatigue duty * Sept 13, 1775 George Washington’s orders, mutineers to be court martialed * Sept 30, 1775 George Washington complains that his horse is a better shot than immigrant riflemen * Oct 23, 1775 William Heath complains about immigrant riflemen to John Adams * Oct 24, 1775 John Thomas to John Adams, riflemen are poor soldiers * Oct 30, 1775 Artemas Ward thinks the riflemen’s reputation is ruined * Dec 11, 1775 Billy Tudor was unimpressed with riflemen’s courage * George Hanger’s comments on rifles and riflemen * James Thacher’s military journal, describes riflemen’s appearance * Rifleman Jesse Lukens’ letter about the mutiny
Independent researcher TJ Todd recently gave a presentation about Old North Church and the sea. TJ’s talk focuses on two notable sea captains, both of whom longtime listeners will remember from past episodes. Captain Samuel Nicholson was the first, somewhat hapless, captain of the USS Constitution, and Captain Thomas Gruchy was the privateer who captured the carved cherubs that keep watch over the Old North sanctuary from the French. Exploring the lives of these two famous captains will reveal what life was like for the ordinary sailors and dockworkers who made up a significant portion of Boston’s population in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as drawing connections to other incidents from Boston’s maritime past, including many that we’ve discussed in past episodes.
Thanks to our friends at the Old North Foundation for allowing us to share this presentation with you.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/255/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Old North and the Sea* Check out more events in Old North’s Digital Speaker Series, including Professor Tad Baker’s talk about the Salem Witch Trials as a failure of leadership.
Related podcast episodes Mutiny on the Rising Sun * The 1747 Impressment Riot * The Underground Railroad on Boston Harbor * The Well on Long Wharf * Secret North End Tunnels * Launching the USS Constitution * The History of Long Wharf * David Walker’s Appeal* * Privateers in the American Revolution
Cy Young Day, an exhibition game to celebrate the greatest pitcher of all time, was bracketed by days of sports celebration, from prizefighters in the squared circle to old time baseball in the Harbor Islands. Held at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds on August 13, 1908, the Cy Young celebration drew a record crowd of 20,000 fans to the now long gone ballpark. By this time, Young had been playing professional baseball for 20 years, and he was starting to slow down. Nobody knew if the old Ohio farmboy would be playing for Boston when the 1909 season rolled around, so it seemed as if the whole city turned out to show the pitcher their love, and to make sure he would have a comfortable nest egg for his expected retirement.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/254/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Celebrating Cy YoungCy Young and his loving cup (Nuf Ced collection)The crowd for Cy Young’s game (Globe photo)Boston Americans in their costumes (Globe photo)Old timers’ game on Peddocks (Globe photo)Sports writers on Peddocks for the old timers’ game (Nuf Ced collection)Cy Young pitches at the first World Series (Northeastern collection)* A photo analysis of the presentation of Cy’s floral arrangements * A postcard sent from someone who attended Cy’s game * Another of Cy’s loving cups * SABR analysis of Cy’s first perfect game * Cy’s duel with Rube Waddell * The Sox trade Cy Young away * Baseball on Peddocks Island * Boston Globe articles + August 13, 1908: old timers’ game on Peddocks + August 13, 1908: post game coverage + August 14, 1908: game analysis, photos of crowd + August 14, 1908: Cy Young day benefits the league * Papke fights a double card * Cy Young facts * We may not see another Cy for a hundred years * Cy’s game brings in 20,000 people and at least $7,500 * Detroit’s Cy Young naysayer * The Cy Young Day festival in Ohio
Back in 2015, I was at the Boston Public Library for a special exhibition called “We Are One,” which showcased items from their collection dating from the French and Indian War to the Constitutional Convention, showing how thirteen fractious colonies forged a single national identity. Libraries have a lot more than just books, of course. The BPL has everything from streaming movies and music to historic maps to medieval manuscripts to Leslie Jones’ photos to one remarkable gold medal. Some of the items on display were breathtaking, like a map hand drawn by George Washington, Paul Revere’s hand drawn diagram showing where the bodies fell during the Boston Massacre, and a gorgeous 360 degree panorama showing the view from the top of Beacon Hill during the siege of Boston. What stopped me in my tracks, though, was a solid gold medal. It was about three inches in diameter, but it was hard to tell through the thick and probably bulletproof glass protecting it.
On the side facing me, I could see a bust of George Washington and some words, but they were too small to read. A special bracket held the medal in front of a mirror, and on the back I could make out more lettering, as well as a cannon and a group of men on horses. Later, I learned that this was the Washington Before Boston Medal, commemorating the British evacuation of Boston. It was the first Congressional gold medal, and the first medal of any kind commissioned by the Continental Congress during our Revolutionary War. This illustrious medal’s journey to the stacks of the Boston Public Library will take us from Henry Knox’s cannons at Dorchester Heights to John Adams at the Second Continental congress in Philly to Ben Franklin in Paris to a Confederate’s dank basement in West Virginia during the Civil War.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/253/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Hostibus Primo Fugatis* John Adams proposes a medal and letter for Washington * John Adams writes a letter of congratulations to Washington * The letter from Congress to Washington congratulating him * Washington’s thank you letter to Congress * John Adams writes to Abigail about trying to find an artisan in Philly * Notes on the centennial of Evacuation Day * Jefferson’s description of the medal * Helpful notes about the medal from the editors of Founders Online * More notes on the medal from the Coin and Currency Collections at Notre Dame * The Medallic History of the United States * A nearly perfect silver medal from the original Paris die sold for $156k in 2019 * We Are One at the BPL in 2015 * Header image
Sponsored by Liberty & Co.This week’s podcast is sponsored by Liberty & Co, who sell unique products inspired by the American Revolution. If you find yourself inspired by today’s episode, you might consider the Journal of Major George Washington. By the time the Washington Before Boston medal was presented, he was already first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen. But before George Washington was a legend, he was a 21 year old min the Virginia militia. Dispatched by the governor in 1753 to deliver an ultimatum to the French who were encroaching on western lands, he returned instead with their flat refusal. Returning to the same area in what’s now Pennsylvania the next year, he stumbled blindly into a skirmish with a French patrol, accidentally setting off the global war we know as the seven years war or the French and Indian war.
Between those two expeditions, however, George Washington’s journal of the first journey was printed as a pamphlet in Virginia, and Liberty & Co offers a beautiful reproduction of the pamphlet, including a fold out map of the conflicting land claims on the frontier. If 18th century pamphlets aren’t your thing, you might like the Houdon bust of Washington that the obverse of the Washington Before Boston medal is based on.
Save 20% on any purchase with the discount code HUBHISTORY.
By the summer of 1863, the Civil War had dragged on longer than anyone thought at the outset, and leaders on both sides were desperate for more money, arms, manufactured goods, and most of all men. That growing desperation had inspired secretary of war Edwin Stanton to authorize Massachusetts governor John Andrew to start enlisting the nation’s first Black troops a few months before, including the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, whose well deserved fame was refreshed with the movie Glory. The influx of fresh and motivated troops contributed to Union gains throughout the rest of the war, but the so-called colored regiments were not enough. In July of that year, Congress passed a law compelling able bodied men into military service for the first time. Here in Boston, the burden of that draft law fell disproportionately on the working class Irish Americans of South Boston and the North End. And as we’ll see, the Irish had strong resentments based in class, race, religion, and economics that made them suspicious of compulsory service. These tensions boiled over on the evening of July 14th, 1863 as marshals attempted to serve the first draft notices in the crowded and narrow streets of the North End, with the US Army eventually firing artillery and small arms into a crowd of civilian protesters at point blank range.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/252/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The North End Draft RiotPrimary Sources* A Plain Statement of Facts by a Plain Man * William Lloyd Garrison letter * Major Cabot’s report * Emma Sellew Adams’ Remembrance of the Boston Draft Riot * David Weston’s diary * Campbell’s trial
Period Media* NYT July 16, 1863 * NYT July 17, 1863 * NYT July 18, 1863
Essays* Joseph Lueck * William Hanna * Joe Regan * Brett Palfreyman * Patrick Browne * Ian Jesse * Jack Tager * Judith Ann Giesberg
The US Supreme Court can't stop women from having abortions, but they can stop women from surviving abortions.
In this episode, Seth Bruggeman discusses his recent book Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston. In it, he traces the development of the Freedom Trail and our Boston National Historic Park, examining the inevitable tension between driving tourism revenue to Boston and doing good history. He delves into the politics surrounding our local historic sites during the trauma of urban renewal in Boston and the violence of the busing era that followed. He also argues that the Freedom Trail and related sites have been used to defend dominant ideas about whiteness at several different points in Boston’s contested history.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/251/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Lost on the Freedom TrailSeth Bruggeman is an Associate Professor of history at Temple University, where he studies the role of memory in public life, especially how Americans have used objects (in museums, monuments, historic sites, and beyond) to exert control over how we understand the past. Lost on the Freedom Trail is his fourth book.
Seth’s faculty profile | Twitter | Facebook
The New Boston, City of Opportunity, Book I: America’s Heritage Along the Freedom TrailA butcher at Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market, 1930s-1950s, photo by Leslie Jones“The Soiling of Old Glory, 1976,” OnView: Digital Collections & Exhibits, accessed June 15, 2022, https://collections.countway.harvard.edu/onview/items/show/18274.Award Winner!HUB History won a Massachusetts History Alliance Star Award for innovation in communications in public history!
For our 250th episode, we’re trying something different. This week, Aaron Minton from the Pilgrim’s Digress podcast is turning the tables on your usual host, Jake. And instead of asking the questions, this time Jake has to answer them.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/250/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Aaron and I discussed a lot of past episodes this week. Here are most of them… comment below with any that I missed!
- The Court Martial of Paul Revere
- The Great Molasses Flood
- Whale Watching on Washington Street
- Disaster at Bussey Bridge
- Millen Brothers Tommy Gun Murders and Cessna Strafer
- Pope’s Night
- Dr. Rebecca Crumpler
- First Ladies Forum (discussion of first person interpretation)
- Matthew Dickey of the Boston Preservation Alliance
- The Birth of Historic Preservation in Boston
- Demanding Satisfaction: Dueling in Boston
- Annexation: Making Boston Bigger for 150 Years
Eric Jay Dolin joins us this week to discuss his new book Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. We’ll discuss the role of privateers in the American Revolution, with a special focus on the many privateersmen who sailed out of Boston and New England. Privateers were civilian ships that were outfitted for war by optimistic investors, with volunteer crews who were willing to risk their lives fighting for a share of the profits. From the mouth of Boston Harbor to the very shores of Britain, these private warships sailed in search of rich English merchant vessels, while risking the lives and freedom of their crews. While their role is mostly forgotten today, Eric will explain how privateer crews helped turn the tide of Revolution in favor of the Americans, and we’ll discuss how our modern habit of associating privateering with piracy leads to a distaste for the privateersmen who helped win our independence. Rebels at Sea will be available in bookstores everywhere on May 31, 2022.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/249/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Rebels at SeaEric Jay Dolin is the author of 15 books, including a history of the US China trade, a history of whaling, and an environmental history of Boston Harbor. His 2019 book Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates was a finalist for the Julia Ward Howe award and a featured pick at the Mass Historical Society. His most recent book, Rebels at Sea, which shines a spotlight on piracy’s more respectable cousin the privateer, is available for preorder now, and it will be in bookstores everywhere on May 31.
Find out more about Eric and his upcoming book events on his website, and follow him on Facebook for the latest news.
Sponsored by Liberty & Co.This week’s podcast is sponsored by Liberty & Co, who sell unique products inspired by the American Revolution. If you find yourself inspired by today’s episode, you might consider a design featuring the so-called pine tree flag or the flag of the Massachusetts naval militia. A white banner with a large green pine tree under the words “An Appeal to Heaven,” this flag was used by the fleet of ships that George Washington personally funded after arriving in Boston in the summer of 1775, by the state navy that Massachusetts fielded (at least until it was decimated in the Penobscot expedition that we discussed in episode 25), and unofficially by countless privateers who sailed from Massachusetts during the Revolution.
At Liberty & Co, you can purchase this design as a t-shirt, a trucker’s hat, a sticker, or even a 3 x 5 foot flag. If that doesn’t float your boat, you can find merch with other flags of local significance, like the 1774 Taunton flag, emblazoned with the words “liberty and union,” or the New England flag, a red field with a green pine tree in a white union that is said to have flown at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Save 20% on any purchase with the discount code HUBHISTORY.
This episode continues our story of Joshua Slocum and his solo circumnavigation of the globe. We’ll follow Captain Slocum as he builds the little sloop Spray and hatches a plan to make money for his family by sailing alone around the world for the first time. We’ll follow his astounding path from Boston to the rock of Gibraltar, back to South America, and through the months long ordeal of the Straits of Magellan. We’ll learn how he sailed thousands of miles across the South pacific to Samoa without ever touching the wheel of the sloop, while his family worried that he had perished at sea. And we’ll follow him on his pilgrimage to the home of Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson, his adventure in South Africa, and finally across the Atlantic and home, covering about 46,000 miles in three years, two months, and two days.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/248/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Captain Joshua Slocum’s adventure began in Boston, and it took him to nearly every corner of the world, nearly costing him his life on multiple occasions, and probably costing him his marriage. But in the end it earned him a place in history as the first person to circumnavigate the world completely alone, covering about 46,000 miles in three years, two months, and two days, without so much as a dog or a ship’s rat for company. The saga begins long before that legendary 1895 voyage, when the growing and very seafaring Slocum family lived at sea for 13 years, until they were visited by unspeakable tragedy. It follows them as they attempt to pick up the pieces, only to encounter further misfortunes that drove a wedge into the family and drove the Captain out to sea in his handmade sloop on what seemed like an impossible mission: sailing alone around the world.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/247/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Two deadly murders were committed in and around Boston using military grade assault weapons, and both of them happened in the middle of a raging debate around gun control in this country. You might assume I am talking about an incident that happened after the school shootings in Parkland Florida in 2018 or Columbine in 1999, but I’m not. The first crime took place in the sleepy Boston suburb of Needham in 1934, when three gangsters used a stolen Tommy gun to rob the Needham savings bank and murder two policemen. Sadly, this deadly crime took place just months before the 1934 federal firearms act made it illegal for civilians to own machine guns. The second crime we’ll discuss took place a generation later, in 1989, in the middle of a heated national debate that resulted in George HW Bush’s 1989 limited assault weapons ban, and the stronger 1994 ban that was allowed to expire in 2004. In what has to be the only recorded example of someone going postal in the sky, a disgruntled postal worker killed his ex wife, stole a plane, and spent hours shooting up downtown Boston with an AK-47.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/246/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Professor Kelly Kilcrease of UNH Manchester joins us on the podcast this week to discuss his new book, Boston’s Long Wharf: A Path to the Sea. Today, Long Wharf is easily missed along Boston’s waterfront, but that’s because the rest of the city has grown up around what was once considered one of the great wonders of the modern world. From the beginning of the 18th century until the early 20th century, Long Wharf was the grand front entrance to our city, welcoming visitors, sea captains, immigrants, and even enslaved Africans. Dr Kilcrease will tell us why the grand pier was built, how the proprietors funded it, and how it has changed over the past 300 years.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/245/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
This week we’re featuring a magician. And not just any magician, one of the most famous of all time, Harry Houdini. When he wasn’t busy escaping from locked jail cells and underwater safes, the Great Houdini made it a personal mission to unmask fraudulent mediums. In the early 20th century, mediums, spiritualists, and psychic practitioners of all kinds were undergoing a massive boom. With all the death associated with the Great War and the global flu pandemic, the public was desperate for a message from the other side, and there were plenty of practitioners who were willing to sell it to them. The practice of spiritualism was so widespread and accepted that the journal Scientific American was on the brink of giving it the stamp of scientific legitimacy. The leading contender for their approval (and their large cash prize) was a Beacon Hill medium who went by the stage name Margery. And she might have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for that meddling magician, too!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/244/
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This week, the show gets a visit from four veteran historical interpreters who have joined forces on a new collaborative project called The First Ladies Forum. Together, they portray four of America’s First Ladies, including both interpreters and First Ladies with ties to Boston. We’ll discuss the lives of Dolley Madison (portrayed by Judith Kalaora), Louisa Catherine Adams (portrayed by Laura Rocklyn), Mary Lincoln (portrayed by Laura Keyes), and Jacqueline Kennedy (portrayed by Leslie Goddard) and how the actors choose to embody them. We’ll also talk more broadly about what it’s like to be a costumed historical interpreter and the role of historical interpretation in helping people understand the people and events of America’s past.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/243/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
During a legendary New England blizzard, trains and trolleys ground to a halt in Boston, stranding commuters at South and North Station. Thousands of drivers were forced to abandon their cars in the middle of traffic and just walk away in search of shelter. Dozens of people were killed in the storm. Much as it may sound like the great blizzard of 1978, or even a typical Monday in February 2015, this week’s show is actually about the Valentine’s Day blizzard of 1940 that hit Boston without warning and left chaos in its wake.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/242/
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For about 12 years, the eccentric Ann Winsor Sherwin and her son William made a cozy home on an abandoned four-masted schooner that ran aground off Spectacle Island. Against all odds, she managed to hold off agents of the ship’s owners, the health commission, the Coast Guard, and the Boston Harbor Police. Abandoned by her no-good husband who thought he could make it big in Hollywood, Ann and her three children were destitute and homeless until they set up a home on the schooner, riding out the Great Depression rent-free on Boston Harbor. They were a family out of time, until the world (in the form of the US Army) came calling for young William.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/241/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This week, we’re trying something a little bit different. This fall and winter, the Old North Church historic site has been hosting a series of conversations about radical Black abolitionist David Walker, and his book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. As part of their Digital Speaker Series, education director Catherine Matthews moderated a discussion between artist, educator, and activist L’Merchie Frazier and playwright Peter Snoad on December 15. This edition focused on the text of the Appeal as a piece of rhetoric that pointed out the brutality and hypocrisy of slavery and urged the enslaved to rebel by any means necessary. Thanks to our friends at Old North for allowing us to share this panel with you.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/240/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The new book Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands explores how the city of Boston has transformed the islands on its doorstep time and time again, as the city’s needs shifted over the centuries. From a valuable site for farming, to a dumping ground for all of Boston’s problems, to a wilderness of history and romance, to an urban park, these many transformations reflect a changing city. Author Dr. Pavla Šimková joins us this week to discuss how Boston initially embraced the islands, later turned its back on the Harbor, and more recently has embraced them both again. You’ll hear us argue about the 1960s plan to hold a bicentennial expo on the harbor and the role of storyteller Edward Rowe Snow in promoting the Harbor Islands to a new generation, and you’ll hear us agree about the beauty and importance of this urban asset.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/239/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The early years of James Gately, who was better known as the Hermit of Hyde Park, were shrouded in mystery. Gately was an Englishman who came to Boston after his life took a bad turn. He had trouble making money when he got here, got robbed of his last cent, and decided to give up on humanity and disappear into the wilderness forever. For almost thirty years, he scratched out a meager existence living off the land in the woods of Hyde Park, while his legend grew. By the time he died in 1875, he was so well known that treasure hunters beat a path to his door to search (unsuccessfully) for the fortune they believed he had buried in his woods.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/238/
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Dr. Per-Olof Hasselgren is a practicing surgeon and author of the recent book Revolutionary Surgeons: Patriots and Loyalists on the Cutting Edge, which is a profile of eleven Revolutionary War surgeons. Dr. Hasselgren joined Jake to discuss the Boston physicians, brothers, and brothers in arms Joseph and John Warren. Joseph is famous for arranging the lantern signal from Old North and dispatching Paul Revere on his famous ride, as well as for his heroic death at Bunker Hill. His little brother John followed him into politics and medicine, and went on to found Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Hasselgren brings a unique perspective to the conversation, examining the medical careers of these eminent physicians through a physician’s eyes. The episode explores how 18th century physicians learned their craft, how they earned a living, and how they intermingled medicine and politics, as well as how surgery was changing during the Revolution and the groundbreaking surgery pioneered by John Warren and his son John Collins Warren.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/237/
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In the book Combat Zone, Murder, Race, and Boston’s Struggle for Justice, journalist Jan Brogan turns her impressive research and reporting skills on the case of Andy Puopolo, a 21 year old Harvard football player who was killed in a fight in the Combat Zone in 1976. The case would pit the most privileged group at the most privileged school in the world against three poor Black men on the margins of society, while in the background Boston tore itself apart on racial lines.
The book plumbs the depths of white, working class Boston’s racial resentments during the busing era, a criminal justice system that stacked the deck against Black defendants, and a police department that was compromised at its core by organized crime. It highlights the street violence that helped cement Boston’s reputation as the most racist city in the country, as well as the two trials that came to diametrically opposite verdicts in the same city, just a couple of years apart. It also puts the reader in the mind of the younger brother of the victim, left behind to deal with his feelings of grief and guilt, while wrestling with the possibility of revenge.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/236/
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This week we’ll explore the strange case of a 1907 shooting in Jamaica Plain. There was a gun, a gunshot, and a gunshot victim… a child, in fact. But there was no shooter, or at least no human shooter. If this was today, we might be talking about a terrifying robot machine gun, but 1907 was a little early for that. Instead, we’re talking about a deadly trap laid by a homeowner to protect his grape arbor. For setting this deadly trap, the homeowner would face criminal trial for assault, but pay only a trivial fine. As bizarre as the case sounds, it was part of a trend that was sweeping the nation at the time, with many spring gun cases arising in the Boston area, until the matter was finally settled in a state supreme court case that every first year law student still studies today.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/235
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This week, Jake interviews Dr. Jared Ross Hardesty, author of the new book Mutiny on the Rising Sun: a tragic tale of smuggling, slavery, and chocolate, which uncovers the dark web of interconnections between Old North Church, chocolate, and chattel slavery. Dr. Hardesty will explain why a reputable sea captain would become a smuggler, trafficking in illegal chocolate and enslaved Africans; the risks an 18th century Bostonian would take to provide himself with a competence, or enough money to allow his family to live independently; and what it meant in that era to be of but not from Boston. At the heart of the story is a brutal murder and mutiny on the high seas, illustrating the fundamental brutality of life in the 18th century, but the role of the church (specifically Old North Church) in the social and economic lives of Bostonians is also central to understanding the life and death of Captain Newark Jackson.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/234/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Come with me on a voyage around the world with the officers and crew of the ship Columbia. Formally named the Columbia Rediviva and accompanied by the sloop Lady Washington, the ship was owned by a group of prominent Bostonians and charged with opening up trade between Boston and China. Almost by accident, the Columbia became the first American ship to visit the west coast of North America, the first American ship to land in the Hawaiian islands, and the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. Over the course of five years and two expeditions, the crew completed two circumnavigations, brought the first native Hawaiian to visit Boston, and “discovered” the Columbia river (which would have been news to the dozens of villages and thousands of inhabitants on the river). The mighty river of the west had previously been thought to be a myth, and navigating up this river established US land claims in what would eventually become seven states. The Oregon Country was contested between Russia, Spain, and Britain, but the Columbia’s expedition opened it to Boston merchants, and pretty soon all American traders on the west coast were known as the Boston men.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/233/
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Arthur Kingsley Porter was a celebrity professor, who worked in the shadow of the Harvard secret court that purged the campus of gay students and faculty. He grew up in wealth and privilege, expecting to follow his brother into the family law firm, before experiencing an epiphany that drove him to become one of the world’s foremost experts on medieval European art and architecture. After a midlife revelation led to an unconventional lifestyle, his family sought refuge at their Irish castle and their offshore cottage, until Porter disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the summer of 1933.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/232/
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Since the earliest days of the Bay Colony, prisoners of war have been held on the islands of Boston Harbor. This week, we’re sharing two classic stories of the Harbor Islands POWs from past episodes. One of them is about the Confederate prisoners who arrived at Fort Warren on Georges Island in the fall of 1861, fresh from the field of battle in North Carolina. They’d be joined by Maryland politicians who supported secession, the supposed diplomats Mason and Slidell, and eventually even Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens, who didn’t seem to much appreciate Boston hospitality. 81 years later and a mile away on Peddocks Island, a group of unruly Italian prisoners were confined at Fort Andrews after starting what may have been the only soccer riot in Boston history at a South Boston prison camp.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/231/
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Joe Bagley is the archaeologist for the city of Boston, and his new book Boston’s Oldest Buildings and Where to Find Them catalogs 50 of the oldest houses, stores, churches, and even lighthouses that still stand here in the Hub. In this episode, he tells us how it’s still possible to rediscover an unknown house from the 1700s in the North End in 2020, and how a house from the 1790s, the 41st oldest building in Boston, could be demolished in the few short months since the book was published. Along the way, we’ll talk about how he researched the book, the rules he had to write for himself about what “counts” as a historic building, and how similar his life is to Indiana Jones. We’ll also explore how historic buildings can reveal the otherwise untold stories of enslaved Bostonians, women, and even some of the earliest Japanese citizens to visit the United States. Plus, I’m joined by special guest host Nikki this time around!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/230
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In 1773, an ad appeared in the Boston Gazette for a Black artist who was described as possessing an “extraordinary genius” for painting portraits. From this brief mention, we will explore the life of a gifted visual artist who was enslaved in Boston, his friendship with Phillis Wheatley, the enslaved poet, and the mental gymnastics that were required on the part of white enslavers to justify owning people like property. Through the life of a second gifted painter, we’ll find out how the coming of the American Revolution changed life for some enslaved African Americans in Boston. And through the unanswered questions about the lives of both these men, we’ll examine the limits of what historical sources can tell us about any given enslaved individual.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/229/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
On August 10, 1780, British prisoners of war being held on a ship on Boston Harbor conspired to disarm their guards and escape. In the end, they were all caught, but an American guard was killed. This case gives us a fascinating insight into what life was like for POWs in the American Revolution, but there’s very little record of it in historical sources. If the prosecutor in the murder case hadn’t signed the Declaration of Independence four years earlier, his papers may not have been considered worth saving, and we might have no record of this interesting case at all. Amazingly, the defense basically argued that all’s fair in love and war, and that since the redcoats had been taken prisoner by force, they had a right to seek freedom by force. Even more amazingly, it worked!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/228/
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Boston Light, America’s first and oldest light station, still welcomes visitors and locals alike if they approach the city by sea, but that wasn’t always the case. During the first year of the Revolutionary War, there were three attempts to destroy Boston Light during the siege of Boston. First, the newly formed Continental Army burned the strategically important lighthouse twice in July 1775, 246 years ago this week, using the 18th century equivalent of a stealth fighter: the humble whaleboat. Then, as the British finally evacuated Boston in the spring of 1776, the last ships to leave the harbor blew up the lighthouse that June.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/227/
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For almost 20 years, Nike missile batteries formed a suburban ring around Boston that ushered the city into the 1950s and the atomic age. The Ajax missile and its successor, the Hercules, were intended to defend Boston and its many military assets from Soviet bombers flying over the North Pole to rain nuclear destruction on the Hub. The ring of bases stretched from the South Shore to the North Shore and far inland, always ready to fire in 15 minutes or less. The Nike program was an open secret, with base gates sometimes thrown open for the public and reporters alike. But there were more closely guarded secrets, as well. Like the fact that the Ajax missile wasn’t really equipped to engage modern jet bombers. Or the fact that a successful interception by the later Hercules would result in a nuclear detonation in our own backyards, with tens of thousands of Americans killed or injured.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/226/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
In the last decade of the 18th century, a group of investors called the Proprietors of the Middlesex Canal turned a crazy idea into reality. After some initial stumbles, they were able to successfully build a navigational canal from Boston Harbor to the Merrimack River in Lowell. In an era before highways and airports, it became the first practical freight link between the markets and wharves of Boston and the vast interior of New England in Central Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Against all odds, it was a success, and an unparalleled feat of engineering. However, its perceived success was short lived, with the coming of the railroad spelling doom for the canal business and commercial failure for the Proprietors.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/225/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
On June 10, 1768 a riot swept through Boston that forced Royal officials to flee for their lives, saw a boat bodily carried onto the Common and burned, and in the end helped bring on the Boston Massacre less than two years later. John Hancock, later a prominent patriot and owner of America’s most famous signature, was at the center of the controversy. Known then as a leading merchant and possibly the richest man in the British colonies, Hancock would find himself on trial as a smuggler before a court that was originally set up to deal with pirates and defended by none other than future President John Adams.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/224/
Support the show: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
When Starr Faithfull’s body washed up on a Long Island beach 90 years ago, the case became a national obsession. At the center of the story was a beautiful young flapper, with a diary full of covert sexual conquests, a sordid history with a prominent politician, and a drug and booze fueled nightlife in the speakeasies of two major cities. Was her death a suicide, driven by her dark past? A tragic accident after one too many? Or was it something darker, a murder for hire on behalf of a former Boston mayor… or his underworld adversaries?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/223/
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At the outbreak of World War II, president Roosevelt decided to create a single centralized agency to organize the nation’s many competing intelligence services. Not the CIA, which would come a few years later, but the Office of Strategic Services. Before the CIA, the OSS was America’s chief spy service. And before Julia Child was a famous chef on PBS, young Julia McWilliams was recruited by the OSS, where she traveled the world and fell in love with Paul Child and exotic food. Listen to this week’s episode to learn about Julia Child at war: how she was recruited and trained, where she served in the Asian theater of war, and why that experience helped lead her to a Cambridge house with its now famous kitchen.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/222/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
On May Day in 1919, Roxbury socialists marched in support of a textile workers' strike in Lawrence. The afternoon turned violent, with police firing shots to disperse the crowd. In the aftermath, two officers were killed and a mob formed that hunted down and viciously beat many of the marchers. As the smoke cleared, it became evident that one of the leaders of the march was a celebrity: William James Sidis, the boy wonder.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/221
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In the 1820s, waves of Christian missionaries were dispatched from Boston, believing they might never return. They didn’t know much about the land they were going to settle in or the people they were trying to convert, but what little they had heard was frightening. The missionaries came from a church that was directly descended from the harsh Christianity of the Puritans, and they were on their way to a land where the people worshipped a pantheon of many gods. From a society where both men and women were basically always covered from neck to ankles, they were going to a land where the people wore tattoos and very little else. They had heard rumors of graven idols and human sacrifice, and believed they were on their way to do battle with the devil himself. Many of them believed that they were being sent into the gates of hell, but they were on their way to heaven on earth itself… the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/220/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
During the Kennedy administration, a group of Boston businessmen led by a millionaire dairy farmer hatched an audacious plan. They proposed building an experimental city of the future on made land, piers, and floating platforms connecting Columbia Point in Dorchester with Thompson Island in Boston Harbor. This new city would be the site of a World’s Fair timed to celebrate America’s Bicentennial, and the site would then be reused to solve all of Boston’s problems with housing, race relations, environmental damage, and economic decline. Spoiler alert: We don’t have a futuristic city connecting Columbia Point with the Harbor Islands. But the story of how a plan ripped straight out of science fiction almost came to be built in Boston reveals a lot about an optimistic city torn apart by the busing crisis.
March 14 is the anniversary of one of the worst railroad accidents that ever happened in Massachusetts. On March 14, 1887, a train filled with suburban commuters was on its way from Dedham to Park Square station in Boston, stopping in West Roxbury and Roslindale along the way. Moments before it would have passed through Forest Hills, disaster struck. By the time the engineer turned around, he saw a cloud of dust and a pile of twisted rubble where nine passenger cars should have been. In a split second, a normal morning commute was transformed into a nightmare of death and dismemberment for hundreds of passengers.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/218
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Professor Richard T Greener grew up in Boston in the shadow of the abolition movement, graduated from Harvard, and became one of the foremost Black intellectuals of his era. However, soon after publishing his most influential work, when it seemed like he would take up the mantle of Frederick Douglass, he instead sank into obscurity. He was nearly forgotten for over a century, until his legacy was rediscovered in 2009 in a discarded steamer trunk in a dusty attic on the South Side of Chicago.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/217
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
A little more than three years ago, cohost emerita Nikki and I were on our way to see the Hamilton musical for the first time. In our excitement, we decided to record an episode about an 1806 political duel in Boston that had a lot of parallels with the Hamilton-Burr duel. We dug into the history of dueling in Boston, how dueling laws evolved in response to the duels that were fought here, and why a young Boston Democratic-Republican and a young Boston Federalist decided they had to fight each other to the death in Rhode Island. Unfortunately, we also peppered samples from the Hamilton soundtrack throughout the episode in our excitement, stomping all over Lin Manuel’s intellectual property. The unlicensed music even got the episode pulled from at least one podcast app. This week, I went back to our original recording and re-edited it to clean it up and remove all the Hamiltunes. So get ready to meet Charles Sumner’s dad and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s dad, sail on the USS Constitution, and Alexander Hamilton himself will even put in a brief appearance. Plus, we’ll learn why fighting a duel in Massachusetts could get you buried at a crossroads with a stake driven through your heart.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/216/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
They stockpiled guns and ammunition. They built homemade bombs. They had a hit list of a dozen members of Congress who were targeted for assassination. They believed themselves to be patriots, with soldiers and police officers among their ranks. They rallied under the motto of America First, but they planned to overthrow our Constitutional government and install a fascist dictatorship. Believe it or not, I’m not talking about the insurrection on January 6, 2021, but instead a plot that the FBI uncovered in January 1940. The subsequent investigation threw a spotlight on a group called the Christian Front that made its headquarters at Boston’s Copley Plaza hotel, promoting violent attacks on Jewish Bostonians while accepting covert funding and support from a Nazi spymaster who flew the swastika proudly from his home on Beacon Hill.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/215/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The first commercially viable telephone network was created by a Boston inventor and entrepreneur. Not Alexander Graham Bell, who is credited with inventing the telephone, but Edwin Thomas Holmes. Starting in the 1850s, his father Edwin Holmes created the first burglar alarm company here in Boston, then Edwin Thomas Holmes adapted the alarm company’s network of telegraph wires in the 1870s to work with the telephone switchboard he invented. Working with Alexander Graham Bell, the Holmes company turned his invention into a business and helped him build the Bell Telephone Company.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/214/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
In November 1718, a tragedy on Boston Harbor cut short the lives of six people, including the first keeper of Boston Light and four members of his household. To find out what happened that morning, we’re going to look at what Boston Harbor was like before the construction of Boston Light, why Boston Harbor needed a lighthouse, how it got built, and who was chosen as the first keeper. We’ll also look at the founding father who was moved to poetry by the tragedy, as well as the centuries long search for Ben Franklin’s lost verses and a 20th century hoax that got repeated as truth. Then we’ll close out the show with a quick look at the present and future of Boston Light on Little Brewster Island.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/213
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
The Puritan dissenters who founded the town of Boston are remembered as a deeply religious society, so you might think that Christmas in Puritan Boston would be a big deal. You’d be wrong though. Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more. What were the Puritans’ theological misgivings about Christmas? What were the practices of misrule, mummery, and wassailing with which Christmas was celebrated in the 17th century? And why did the Puritans literally erase Christmas from their calendars?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/212
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Ice seems like such a simple thing today, when I can just go to my freezer and grab a few cubes to cool down my drink. But before artificial refrigeration, New Englanders would cut and store ice during the long winter to keep their food fresh and their drinks cold during the summer. That was all well and good for people who lived near an ice pond anyway, but what about people in the faraway tropics who might want to get their hands on some ice? Until the early 1800s, the idea of shipping ice to the tropics was seen as a crazy pipe dream, but then along came Frederic Tudor, the Boston entrepreneur who built a fortune and a global reputation as the Ice King!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/211/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
The show this week is all about Wonderland, the early 20th century amusement park at Revere Beach. Dr. Stephen Wilk has deeply researched the investors and entrepreneurs who bought 27 acres of land along Revere Beach Boulevard and opened the park; the inventors behind rides like Shoot the Chutes, Hell’s Gate, and Love’s Journey; and the people who ran attractions like a firefighting demonstration, a wild west show, and a model Japanese village. His new book Lost Wonderland: The brief and brilliant life of Boston’s million dollar amusement park reveals all of that, as well as changes in the broader economy that doomed Wonderland nearly from the beginning. After opening in 1906, the park went through periods of success and bankruptcy in a meteoric run that lasted just four short years, while leaving a major cultural impression on the Boston area, and Revere in particular.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/210/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
From our viewpoint in modern Massachusetts, with stringent gun licensing and background check laws, it’s hard to imagine how a young man with an extensive criminal record who had been involuntarily committed to multiple mental health institutions could walk into a store and walk back out with a shiny new handgun. And from a post-9/11 point of view, with security at the forefront of every public space, it’s hard to imagine how an uninvited visitor could walk right into the governor’s State House office and open fire. But on December 5, 1907, that's exactly what happened, when a disturbed man with a gun and a grudge decided to pay a visit to our seat of government.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/209/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
In honor of Halloween, I’m going to be sharing eight of my favorite Boston ghost stories this week. From haunted houses and inexplicable premonitions recorded by Cotton and Increase Mather in the years leading up to the Salem Witch hysteria, to Nathaniel Hawthorne encountering his friend in the reading room at the Athenaeum for weeks after the friend’s death, to the apparition that only seems to appear in Boston’s most venerable gay bar when only one person is there to see it, we’ll cover nearly four hundred years of paranormal claims. And if you’re wondering why parts of the recording aren’t up to our usual standards, it’s because I was recording this after midnight, and I fell asleep in the middle of recording multiple times.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/208/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
This week marks the fourth anniversary of HUB History. Listen to this brief bonus track to learn how the show has changed in the past four years, what our most popular episodes have been, and where the show is going in the future. Be sure to listen to the end for an important announcement about some changes to the show's format and schedule.
The USS Constitution is the most famous ship in Boston history, and perhaps in the history of the US Navy. When the Navy was reborn in 1794, the Constitution was among the first fleet of frigates that made up its backbone. A decade later, the USS Constitution would earn a brilliant, nearly flawless record of naval combat against the British in the war of 1812, and today it stands as the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world and the last American ship to sink an enemy in a ship-to-ship duel. However, the Constitution’s origins were far from flawless. It was part of a procurement program that was nearly cancelled, and the famous frigate was almost scrapped before it was even completed. After it was rescued and completed, the USS Constitution took not one, not two, but three attempts to successfully launch.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/207/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Your humble host really misses travel, so this week’s episode is inspired by travel, both historic travel and my own. In the early 19th century, a Boston shipwright’s apprentice went to sea with a whaling voyage, and ended up being recruited into a crew that was assembled in the Hawaiian Islands, then captured by Spanish authorities on the California coast and accused of piracy. Escaping the gallows through hard work and Yankee ingenuity, Joseph Chapman would build a New England style mill for the San Gabriel mission, the first of its kind in Alta California. He would live through tumultuous times, witnessing the independence of Mexico, the downfall of the mission system he had become part of, and eventually the American annexation of California.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/206/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
This week, Jake sits down with Matthew Dickey, the Communications and Operations Manager at the Boston Preservation Alliance to discuss the organization’s important work in saving the historic nature of Boston’s many diverse neighborhoods. They fight to preserve individual buildings of historic importance, but they also work to keep the cohesion of historic neighborhoods and raise awareness with the public through efforts like the Boston Preservation Awards. Stay tuned to the end to learn how you can attend this year’s virtual awards ceremony, where HUB History will be one of the nine honorees.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/205
Vote for us: https://www.bostonpreservation.org/fan-favorite
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Since last week’s show was about Boston’s 1851 Railroad Jubilee, which was an enormous celebration at a time when the nation was in the midst of a rush toward civil war, it seemed appropriate to discuss the Grand Peace Jubilee this week. Held in Boston in 1869, when the war was still a raw wound on the American psyche, the Peace Jubilee was a musical spectacular unlike anything the world had ever seen. Composer Patrick Gilmore hoped to bind the country together and help it heal… and if he happened to get rich in the process, that would just be icing on the cake. This week’s show also revisits another peacetime memory of the Civil War in Boston. In 1903, after the pain of the Civil War had dulled, Boston gathered at what is now the “General Hooker Entrance” to the State House to dedicate a statue to the highest ranking general from Massachusetts during the war.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/204
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Vote for us as the "fan favorite" at the Boston Preservation Awards: https://www.bostonpreservation.org/fan-favorite
In September 1851, Boston threw an enormous party, a party big enough to span three days. After 15 years of development, the railroad network centered on Boston stretched out in every direction, linking the port of Boston to the American Midwest and the interior of Canada, with the Cunard line’s steamers giving access to markets in England. To celebrate the new era of railroading, the city threw a grand Railroad Jubilee and invited President Millard Fillmore, the Governor General of Canada, and dignitaries from all over the country. Besides commerce and steam locomotives, this episode will highlight a growing split within the Whigs old political party; Boston’s ever-present competition with New York City; and the seemingly unavoidable rush toward a civil war over the question of slavery.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/203
Vote for us as the “Fan Favorite” at this year’s Boston Preservation Awards! https://www.bostonpreservation.org/fan-favorite
Co-host emerita Nikki and I are camping this weekend, so instead of a brand new episode, we’re giving you three classic stories about advances in transportation in Boston. First up, we’re going to take a look at a precursor to today’s MBTA. In the late 19th century, a bold entrepreneur built a full sized, working monorail in East Cambridge, but failed to convince the city to adopt it for public transportation. Then, inspired by last week’s show about the World Fliers, our second story will be about the first people to take to the skies in Boston. In the early 19th century, daring aeronauts made a series of increasingly ambitious balloon ascents in Boston. Finally, we’ll turn the clock back to the 1780s, just as the Revolutionary War was concluding. At the time, the town of Boston was on a tiny peninsula, almost completely surrounded by water. The ferry connecting Boston to the mainland struggled to keep up with demand, and Bostonians were looking for a better way… but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/202
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
The early 20th century was a time of aviation firsts, and one of those firsts dropped into Boston for three long, exciting days in 1924. Five months after they started their journey in California, the Army Air Service pilots who made the first flight around the world were expected to touch down on US soil for the first time 96 years ago this week.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/201
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US in 1864, and she spent most of her adult life in Charlestown, Beacon Hill, and the Readville section of Hyde Park. She devoted her career to pediatrics and obstetrics, published the first medical text by an African American author, and made a point of caring for the marginalized, even moving to Virginia to tend to formerly enslaved people at the end of the Civil War. The nation’s first Black female physician lay in an unmarked grave for 125 years, but there have been important developments in the story of Dr. Crumpler while we’ve been in quarantine this year.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/200
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Kick back and enjoy our interview with Stephen Ujifusa, author of Barons of the Sea, and Their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship, which originally aired in July 2018. Stephen takes us back to an era when the fastest, most elegant ships in the world were built in the East Boston shipyard of Donald McKay. He also describes how they were used to trade for tea in China or gold in California, and how they helped America’s most prominent families amass fortunes through opium smuggling.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/199
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In the 1940s, Boston was still an industrial city, and when the US entered World War II, that industrial might would be turned to wartime production. With industry comes labor disputes, and a new government agency was given extraordinary powers to resolve them. In other early cases, the National War Labor Board used its authority and the might of the military to break strikes by organized labor. However, in August 1942, they would step in to force an employer to honor their union contract, using the US Army to enforce workers’ rights. That employer was the SA Woods Machine Company of South Boston, and this Wednesday marks the anniversary of the military takeover of their plant, setting up an epic battle of wills between the SA Woods corporation and the US government, and between the company’s cantankerous president and the young major sent to take over his company.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/198
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
One morning in August, redcoats fanned out across the province, taking entire families into custody, burning farms and crops, and killing livestock. Falling in the middle of two centuries of intermittent warfare, this grand derangement, or great upheaval, didn’t take place in Boston or even in Massachusetts. But Boston bore responsibility for the acts carried out in its name, and Boston would host the “French Neutrals,” the human byproducts of the purge that we remember as the expulsion of the Acadians who were confined in our city for nearly a decade.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/197
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Faneuil Hall’s grasshopper weathervane is 4 feet long, weighs about 80 pounds, and is made out of copper that’s been covered with 23 carat gold. It’s found at the top of an 8 foot spire above Faneuil Hall’s cupola, which is in turn seven stories above ground level. So imagine the surprise that swept Boston on a January day in 1974 when people looked up and realized that the grasshopper was gone.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/196/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Bloody Kansas was a deadly guerrilla war between so-called Border Ruffians from Missouri in support of slavery on one side, and earnest abolitionists from New England on the other. The violence peaked on Kansas prairies in the decade before the US Civil War officially began, fought with guns, newspapers, artillery, and sometimes even broadswords. A Boston-based company that seeded those earnest abolitionists into that prairie and eventually looked the other way as they transformed themselves from farmers to vigilantes and soldiers.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/195
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
You may have heard stories about the Confederate prisoners who were held at Fort Warren on Georges Island during the civil war. In this episode, we’ll explore a different island that housed prisoners during a different war. Our story will start with the only soccer riot in recorded Boston history, which broke out at Carson Beach in South Boston on July 16, 1944. It will end up with Italian war prisoners confined at Fort Andrews on Peddocks Island in Boston Harbor. Along the way, we’ll meet bootleggers, artillerymen, Passamaquoddy seal hunters, opium fiends, and Portuguese-American fishermen. We’ll also be taking a virtual visit to one of my personal favorite places in the Boston area, and one that is on the brink of being sold off to luxury hotel developers.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/194/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Prescott Townsend was one of the most interesting figures in Boston’s LGBTQ history. He was the ultimate Boston Brahmin, coming of age at Harvard in the shadow of Teddy Roosevelt and enlisting in the Navy during World War I. He served time in prison after getting caught in a Beacon Hill tryst back when homosexuality was a crime in Boston, and spent decades as an activist, helping to found the gay liberation movement, and marched at the head of the nation’s first pride parade on the first anniversary of Stonewall. We’re also going to meet a researcher who has uncovered new information about Prescott Townsend as part of an effort to improve how the National Park Service interprets the LGBTQ history of Boston.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/193
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
A People’s Guide to Greater Boston is a new kind of guidebook to Boston and surrounding towns. Instead of giving an overview of the Freedom Trail and introducing readers to the hot restaurants and hotels of Boston, this guide uncovers the forgotten stories of radicals and activists hidden in every neighborhood and suburb. It has sections covering Boston’s urban core, the neighborhoods, adjoining towns, and suburbs from Brockton to Haverhill. In each section, the authors unearth a wide range of sites, and in some cases former sites, that are tied to Black, indigenous, labor, or other radical historic events and figures. For listeners who complain that our normal episodes are too political, or our point of view is too liberal… well, sorry in advance. This guide definitely doesn’t keep politics out of history, and its point of view is well to the left of our usual editorial voice.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/192/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
In June 1700, a brief pamphlet titled The Selling of Joseph was published in Boston. It’s considered the first abolitionist tract to be published in what’s now the United States. Authored by Salem witch trial judge Samuel Sewall, the three page pamphlet uses biblical references to argue that enslaving another person could never be considered moral. Listen to find out what motivated Sewall to write the tract, how his peers in Boston reacted to it, and what its effect was on the wider world. In light of recent events, we’ll also consider the current debate around statues and their removal.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/191
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This week, we’re revisiting a classic episode about the radical Black abolitionist David Walker. Walker was a transplant to Boston, moving here after possibly being involved in Denmark Vesey’s planned 1822 slave insurrection in South Carolina. At a time when very few whites spoke of ending slavery, Frederick Douglass said Walker’s book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement.” He demanded an immediate end to slavery, and he endorsed violence against white slave owners to bring about abolition. After the book helped inspire Nat Turner’s 1830 uprising in Virginia, southern slave states banned his book and offered a reward for anyone who would kill or kidnap him. With a price on his head, many people believed that David Walker’s mysterious death in a Beacon Hill doorway just a year after his landmark book was published was an assassination.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/190
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
For almost 400 years now, Boston has never needed much prompting to start a riot. There have been anti-Catholic riots, anti-immigrant riots, anti-Catholic immigrant riots, anti-draft riots, pro-draft riots, anti-slavery riots, pro-slavery riots, bread riots, busing riots, and police riots. In the 20th century, sports began to be a driving factor behind riots in Boston. Long before Victoria Snelgrove was killed by a police pepperball after the 2004 World Series, before the fires and overturned cars after the 2001 Super Bowl, there was the Gamblers’ Riot. 103 years ago this week, gamblers at Fenway Park got mad at the umpires, at Babe Ruth, and at the Chicago White Sox and stormed the field. Listen now to learn what happened next!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/189
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Levi Ames was a notorious thief who plagued the Boston area in the years just before the Revolutionary War began. He stole everything from shirts to silver plate, crisscrossing New England, until he finally got caught right here in Boston. Tune in to learn about his criminal background, his supposed jailhouse religious conversion, and the desperate race between some of the most prominent Bostonians to steal his body after his execution.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/188
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
HUB History loves the Boston Marathon almost as much as we love Boston history. Patriots Day is one of Nikki’s favorite days of the year, and Jake has run Boston for charity. Just days before the BAA announced that the 124th Boston Marathon would have to be held as a virtual event, we had an opportunity to chat with a Boston Marathon legend. Bill “Boston Billy” Rodgers is a four-time winner of the Boston marathon, so we were excited to talk to him about marathon history, the runners he looks up to, and his own historic runs.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/187
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
245 years ago this week, provincial militia and royal marines battled it out in what is now East Boston. The battle of Chelsea Creek was sandwiched between the battle of Lexington in April and Bunker Hill in June, and it’s often overshadowed by the larger battles in our memories. While the casualties and stakes were lower than those familiar battles, this skirmish over livestock was an important testing ground for the new American army. It proved that the militias of different colonies could plan and fight together, it confirmed the wisdom of maneuvering and firing from cover instead of facing the redcoats head-on, and it bolstered provincial morale with a decisive victory. The ragtag American army even managed to destroy a ship of the Royal Navy in the fighting!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/186/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In the 1860s, Bostonians could pay 20 cents and watch a captive whale swim in a custom built aquarium on Washington Street in Boston’s Downtown Crossing. Today, there’s no sea world near Boston, and our New England Aquarium doesn’t hold any whales or dolphins. Perhaps that’s for the best, as we now realize how intelligent these giants of the sea are. However, things were different 160 years ago, when an entrepreneurial inventor did the impossible, bringing a beluga whale alive from the arctic ocean to Boston and keeping it alive here for at least 18 months, before being betrayed by the greatest showman, PT Barnum himself.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/185
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Henry Knox commanded the Continental Army’s artillery, founded the academy that became West Point, and went on to become the first Secretary of War for the new United States. Before any of that, though, he was a young man in Boston. He was a Whig sympathizer who was in love with the daughter of a Tory, and he owned a bookstore frequented by both sides. Young Henry Knox was catapulted to prominence after one nearly unbelievable feat: bringing 60 tons of heavy artillery 300 miles through the New England wilderness in the dead of winter, from Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to Cambridge. William Hazelgrove joins us on the show this week to describe how Knox accomplished this nearly impossible task. He’ll also tell us about his new book Henry Knox’s Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller’s Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution, which comes out this week.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/184
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
From his Harvard graduation in 1895 to his death in 1934, William Monroe Trotter was one of the most influential and uncompromising advocates for the rights of Black Americans. He was a leader who had the vision to co-found groups like the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, but he also had an ego that prevented him from working effectively within the movements he started. He was a critic of Booker T Washington, and an early ally of Marcus Garvey. Monroe Trotter was the publisher of the influential Black newspaper the Boston Guardian, and he is the subject of a new biography by Tufts Professor Kerri Greenidge called Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter.
For show notes and to register for our Boston History Happy Hour, check out http://HUBhistory.com/183
Or support us on http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This week we’re revisiting two classic episodes to highlight injustice in how the death penalty has been applied in our city’s history. First, we’re going to visit early Boston, in a time when execution by hanging was a shockingly common sentence for everything from murder and piracy to witchcraft and Quakerdom. During this period, hanging was the usual, and execution by fire was decidedly unusual. This punishment was reserved only for members of one race and one sex, and in Boston’s history, only two enslaved African American women were burned at the stake. After that, we’ll fast forward to the mid-19th century, when it seemed like the death penalty would soon be abolished. After 13 years without an execution in Boston, a black sailor was convicted of first degree murder. Despite the fact that white men convicted in similar circumstances were sentenced to life in prison, he was condemned to death. And despite tens of thousands of signatures on petitions for clemency, he was hanged at Leverett Street Jail in May of 1849.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/182
support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In the late summer of 1775, a terrible epidemic struck Boston, and much of New England. As the Revolutionary War heated up, and the siege of Boston reached its peak, both armies faced an invisible enemy. Judy Cataldo will join us on the show this week to explain the disease that was known at the time as the bloody flux. Today, we might know it better by the name dysentery or shigella. The bloody flux was a diarrheal disease that took a terrible toll on the region’s children, but now it’s barely remembered, as it’s overshadowed by a smallpox outbreak of the same year.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/181
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In the early 20th century, car dealerships, tire companies, parts distributors, and other related businesses lined a section of Commonwealth Avenue in Allston that was known as Automobile Row, a sort of urban forefather of the suburban Auto Mile today. Local historian Ken Liss joins the show to tell us what made these early dealerships special, who some of the personalities behind Automobile Row were, and where you can see traces of this history today.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/180
Support the show: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Doctor Thomas Young was a native of New York’s Hudson Valley who seemed to be present at all of Boston’s revolutionary events, from the creation of the committee of correspondence, to the Boston Massacre, to the Tea Party. He had been an early and influential friend of Ethan Allen, and he was a critic of established religious practice at the time. Though he died early in the Revolutionary War, he was instrumental to the revolutionary movements in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. Strategy consultant and independent researcher Scott Nadler will explain who Thomas Young was and why he is a forgotten revolutionary today.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/179
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Built in 1637, the Fairbanks House in Dedham is the oldest building in Massachusetts and the oldest wood-framed building in North America. It was occupied by the members of the Fairbanks family for nearly 300 years. In this interview from August 2018, Fairbanks House curator Dan Neff shares evidence he’s uncovered showing that generations of residents, perhaps spanning hundreds of years, used charms and hex marks in an attempt to ward off evil forces that might have included witches, demons, and even disease. That doesn’t mean that the family was irreligious, because belief in magic could actually be reinforced by 17th century Puritan beliefs, which said that the devil was a literal presence in the world that was trying to harm them physically and spiritually, by afflicting them with disease or diverting them from righteousness.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/178
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Instead of profiling a historic Bostonian or bringing you a dramatic story, let’s read a letter together. This brief letter gives an account of a strange and frightening occurrence on Boston’s Long Wharf in the summer of 1797. Along with one delightfully funny incident, the letter includes details about Boston’s infrastructure and commercial port at the turn of the 19th century. Don’t worry, we’ll flesh out the letter with context from other sources, as well.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/177
Support us: http://patreton.com/HUBhistory
I had planned an episode on a different topic for this week, but in light of our current COVID-19 state of emergency, I decided to share some classic clips about Boston’s experiences with epidemics and public health. Speaking of public health, I hope you’re already practicing social distancing, staying at home as much as you can, limiting contact with strangers, and staying six feet away from other people whenever you can. During the 1918 “Spanish” flu, cities that practiced social distancing fared much better than those that didn’t, and in that case Boston was slow to close schools, churches, theaters, and other gathering places. I hope we’ll do better this time around. Along with the 1918 flu pandemic, we’ll be discussing an 1849 cholera epidemic that Boston fought with improved sanitation, and the 1721 smallpox season, when Cotton Mather controversially used traditional African inoculation techniques that he learned from Oneismus, who was enslaved in the Mather household.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/176
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
World Airways flight 30 landed at Logan Airport on January 23, 1982, in the middle of an ice storm. The plane touched down late on a slippery runway, sliding into Boston Harbor and breaking in half. The passengers and flight attendants pulled off an impressive self rescue, and fewer than 40 of the 198 passengers and 12 crew were hospitalized. While the FAA, Massport, and World Airways all argued publicly about who was to blame for the accident, they all agreed that it was a miracle that nobody had been killed in the crash… Or had they?
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/175
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
March 5th marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, when a party of British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians, killing five. It was a terrible personal tragedy in a small town of 15,000 residents, and it almost immediately became politicized. Nat Sheidley, the president and CEO of Revolutionary Spaces, is going to remind us what happened on that terrible night, how tightly intertwined the lives of the soldiers and town residents were at the time, and how every generation reinterprets what the tragedy means.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/174/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
March 5th marks the 250th anniversary of the Boston Massacre, when a party of British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians, killing five. It was a terrible personal tragedy in a small town of 15,000 residents, and it almost immediately became politicized. Nat Sheidley, the president and CEO of Revolutionary Spaces, is going to remind us what happened on that terrible night, how tightly intertwined the lives of the soldiers and town residents were at the time, and how every generation reinterprets what the tragedy means.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/174
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
On February 24, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson visited Boston on his way home from the peace conference that ended World War I, expecting to find adoring supporters. Instead, he was greeted by members of the National Women’s Party. After a long campaign that had the 19th amendment on the verge of passing, they now blamed Wilson for dragging his feet and shifting his attention from suffrage to the peace treaty and the League of Nations. The protesters marched to the Massachusetts State House, where they refused to disperse for the president’s arrival. 25 women were arrested and taken to the Charles Street Jail, where sixteen of them would become known as the last women to be jailed for suffrage.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/173
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Draft riots are nothing new in Boston. A 1970 protest at Northeastern University over the draft and the Vietnam War devolved into a riot. In 1863, the North End was torn by a draft riot that ended with the militia firing a cannon at a crowd of mostly Irish-American men, women, and children. We even covered a violent 1747 riot in which Bostonians resisted forced impressment into the Royal Navy. What all those incidents have in common, though, is that the rioters were opposed to the draft. The riot on July 1, 1917 was different. In that case, rioters supported the draft and focused their violence on antiwar protesters.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/172/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
You don’t grow up to walk two steps behind your husband when you’ve met Jo March. The same could be said of Louisa May Alcott, in which case you may not take a husband at all, choosing instead to paddle your own canoe. It has been said that, with the penning of the semi-autobiographical novel Little Women, Alcott launched the notion of the of the All American Girl. With both Sewall and Quincy ancestry, a sharp mind coupled with a determination to succeed, and a life guided by progressive values, Alcott herself was certainly an All Boston Girl. Learn about Louisa May Alcott’s long journey to overnight success, and hear how Sirena Abalian portrays Jo in the Wheelock Family Theater’s production of Little Women, the Musical.
Full show notes at http://HUBhistory.com/171
Support us at http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
86 years ago today, on February 2, 1934, the first murders were committed in Massachusetts using a fully automatic weapon. Sadly, the victims were the first police officers to be killed in the line of duty in the sleepy Boston suburb of Needham. At the center of the case were a stolen Tommy gun, a pair of brothers, and a ragtag assortment of followers. Before it was all over, the Millen-Faber gang would be tied to at least five murders, a long string of robberies, and an attempted jailbreak. Three of the crew would be sentenced to death, and the shocking spectacle of military grade weapons being used on the streets of a quiet Boston suburb would stoke the already raging debate about gun control and the 1934 federal firearms act.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/170/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In February 1879, Jennie Clarke’s body was found jammed into a leather trunk on the bank of the Saugus river on her 20th birthday. Every detail of the case reveals yet another tragedy in the life of Jennie Clarke, who died after attempting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, and it reveals the unexpectedly permissive approach of Massachusetts law to abortion in the mid-1800s.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/169/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
Author Barbara F. Berenson joins us this week to discuss her book Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement: Revolutionary Reformers. She’s also the author of Boston in the Civil War: Hub of the Second Revolution, and Walking Tours of Civil War Boston: Hub of Abolitionism. In the interview, she tells us about the critical roles that Massachusetts women played in the fight for women’s right to vote and step fully into the public sphere.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/168
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Dr. Russ Lopez joins us this week to discuss his recent book, The Hub of the Gay Universe: An LGBTQ History of Boston, Provincetown, and Beyond. Russ called in from a vacation in California to talk about Puritan attitudes toward sin and sodomy, the late 19th century golden age for LGBTQ Boston, the tragic toll of the AIDS crisis, and the long fight for marriage equality.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/167
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
The most popular song of the Union Army during the Civil War was inspired by the most hated man in America, it borrowed the tune from an old church hymn, and it was first sung right here in the Boston Harbor Islands. In this week’s episode, learn about the double meaning behind the title of the song, its holy and profane lyrics, and the tragic history of the “Hallelujah Regiment” who made it famous. The 12th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment marched out of Boston in 1861 with 1040 men and a song in their hearts, but when they returned three years later, they numbered just 85, and they had vowed never to sing their famous song again.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/166
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Early one April morning, the people of Boston rose up in revolt against the royal government of Massachusetts. Militia marched in the streets, while an alarm brought more armed men from towns all over the area. Soon, the rebels controlled the mainland, while the royal navy still commanded the harbor. You might think I mean the “shot heard ‘round the world” that started the American Revolution in Lexington. Instead, we’re talking about the 1689 Boston revolt, when the people rose up and overthrew their royal governor, 86 years and one day before the battles at Lexington and Concord.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/165/
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/
In lieu of a brand new story, this week we are sharing two classic tales from the earliest years of Puritan Boston. One of them might be considered comedy, while the other is high drama. First, we’ll visit the diaries of Boston founder John Winthrop and find two accounts of unexplained lights in the sky and other phenomena that might have been the first UFO sightings in Boston. After that, we’ll fast forward to the era of the English Civil Wars, when two men who had signed the death warrant for a king decided that Boston was the only safe refuge from his heir’s assassins.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/164
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
At just 19 years old, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette joined our American Revolution. Commissioned as a Major General in 1777, he served with distinction as an aggressive combat commander and trusted adviser to George Washington. Nearly a half century later, the aging general would return to his beloved United States for a nationwide tour, and his first and urgent destination after arriving on this continent was Boston. In the summer of 1824, he arrived in our city as the greatest celebrity it had yet seen. He was received by Governor William Eustis, former President John Adams, and Boston mayor Josiah Quincy before launching his national tour. The next spring, he returned, presiding over the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument on the 50th anniversary of the battle.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/163
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month. When five year old Sarah Roberts was turned away from the schoolhouse door in Boston simply because of the color of her skin, her father sued the city in an attempt to force the public schools to desegregate, in compliance with a state law that had been intended to do just that years before. Unfortunately, the suit was unsuccessful. Not only did the Boston schools remain segregated, but the court’s decision provided the legal framework of “separate but equal,” which would be used to justify segregated schools across the country for a century to come.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/162
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Cholera is a truly horrifying disease, with severe diarrhea causing death through dehydration, while the patient remains awake and in agony. The disease is carried by fecal bacteria, so it’s virtually unknown in highly developed countries today, because of our sophisticated sewage and drinking water systems. Back in 1849, Boston had just begun to address its drinking water needs, with the Cochituate aqueduct opening the year before. We had not, however, even begun to deal with our sewage. In most of Boston, raw sewage ran in open gutters down the sides of the street. When the first major cholera epidemic hit Boston in the summer of 1849, hundreds died. There were no antibiotics or IV rehydration to treat victims with. Instead, the city government took a public health approach that was focused on sanitation first.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/161
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
We know the song “Over the River and Through the Wood” as a Christmas carol, but it was originally titled “The New England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day.” Despite the song’s quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer, the woman who wrote it was anything but traditional. Medford native Lydia Maria Child had been a pioneering children’s author, but her increasingly radical positions on abolitionism, women’s rights, and freethinking jeopardized her earning power and helped galvanize a movement. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/160
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Just in time for your fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving meal, we’re going to introduce you to Boston’s matriarch of modern cooking this week. You probably thought that Julia Child was Greater Boston’s original top chef, but a generation before Julia launched her career, Fannie Farmer published a cookbook that revolutionized the way that recipes are presented, made cooking accessible to the average home maker, and put Boston at the center of kitchens across the nation.
As a side note, your humble hosts moved this weekend, so this episode will be on the shorter side, but we hope to be back next week in full force.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/159
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Since we “fell back” to Standard Time this past weekend, Boston has been forced to adjust to 4:30 sunsets. To help us understand why the sun sets so early in Boston in the winter and what we could do about it, we’re going to replay a classic episode about how the idea of time zones and standard time was born in Boston, with the help of the Harvard Observatory. And because we’re talking about the observatory, we have to share the story of the women who worked as human computers at the Harvard Observatory.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/158 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
We’re joined this week by Dr. Jessie Morgan-Owens, who called from New Orleans to discuss her book Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement. Mary was born into slavery in Virginia, the child of an enslaved mother and father. Through the remarkable efforts of her father, the entire family was emancipated when Mary was 7 years old. Shortly thereafter, Mary caught the eye of Senator Charles Sumner. Her complexion was light enough for her to pass as white, making her a powerful political symbol for the abolitionist cause. The books details her life and deep ties to the Boston area.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/157 Support us: http://patreon.com/157
We’re joined this week by Nancy Seasholes, editor of the new book The Atlas of Boston History, which just came out on Thursday. It’s a historic atlas of Boston that covers the period from the last ice age, right up to the present day. It contains essays contributed by a wide range of well regarded local historians, as well as many written by Seasholes herself. However, what sets this book apart is its beauty. As the name Atlas indicates, it is richly illustrated with maps, charts, diagrams, infographics, historical photos, paintings, and more. It’s a book that I will use as a reference far into the future, and one that any of my fellow Boston history nerds will love.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/156 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
We’re joined this week by Yale history professor Mark Peterson to talk about his new book The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865. In the interview, Professor Peterson will tell us why he believes that, from its settlement a century and a half before the US Constitutional government was founded until the end of the US Civil War, Boston had a political, economic, and social identity completely independent from the rest of what is now the United States. He’ll also tell us surprising stories about money in early Boston, a French-born British army officer who embodied Boston’s relationship with Acadia, and what it meant for Boston to be a slave society where the enslaved people were kept out of sight.
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/155
Historian Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, author of Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, joins us this week to talk about the evolution of partisanship and political loyalty among Boston’s African American community, from just after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century. It was a period that at first promised political and economic advancement for African Americans, but ended with the rise of lynching and codified Jim Crow laws. It was also a period that began with near universal support for Lincoln’s Republican party among African Americans, with Frederick Douglass commenting “the Republican party is the ship and all else is the sea.” However, after decades of setbacks and roadblocks on the path of progress, many began to question their support of the GOP, and some tried to forge a new, non-partisan path to Black advancement. Dr. Bergeson-Lockwood will tell us how the movement developed and whether it ultimately achieved its goals.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/154 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Before the Bomb Cyclone, before Superstorm Sandy, a historically severe storm hit Boston in 1804. Meteorologists say that the tropical cyclone would be counted as a category 2 hurricane today, with winds of 96 to 110 miles per hour. It wasn’t just the wind that made 1804 storm so memorable, although the wind was damaging enough, causing problems for industries representing a large sector of the early 19th economy and wrecking buildings that are major Freedom Trail attractions today. What made the storm so memorable was the fact that it was the first known tropical cyclone to carry snow, giving it the enduring nickname, the Snow Hurricane.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/153 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Between 1648 and 1688, four women were executed for witchcraft in Boston and Dorchester. Witchcraft can be loosely defined as the act of invoking evil spirits or consulting, covenanting with, entertaining, employing, feeding, or rewarding any evil spirit. In practice, it often meant the failure to conform. This week, we’re discussing the trials and executions of Margaret Jones, Alice Lake, Ann Hibbins, and Ann Glover, who fell victim to superstition and Puritan morality.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/152 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
From the mid-19th century through the nation’s centennial in 1876, some of Boston’s most important historic sites and attractions were destroyed or nearly so. Starting with the Beacon Hill home of founding father John Hancock in 1863, and going right through the 20th century, Old South Meetinghouse, the Old State House, the Old Corner Bookstore, and many other buildings that help lend Boston its unique character, were threatened with demolition in the name of progress. After early losses, Boston was faced with the prospect of midwestern cities like Chicago or St Louis buying up and moving iconic buildings in order to save them from the wrecking ball. Through this threat, Bostonians learned to value their cultural heritage and banded together to protect early historic sites, especially those connected to the Revolutionary War that were of importance to all Americans.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/151 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This week’s show dusts off two classic stories about times in Boston history when women’s volunteer organizations had a big impact on Boston. First, we’ll talk about the Massachusetts Emergency and Hygiene Association, whose members introduced the concept of a playground to the American public in late 19th century Boston. Then, we’ll fast forward a few decades to the 19 – teens, when the Women’ Municipal League sponsored Boston’s first (and so far only ) Rat Day. Both of these projects made valuable contributions to Boston’s quality of life, and they happened at a time when society didn’t generally approve of women’s work outside the home.
Boston has never needed much of an excuse to riot. Over almost four centuries, we’ve had political riots, racist and xenophobic riots, and plenty riots that seem to be about nothing at all. Of all the things Bostonians could choose to riot over, a rock and roll show might just be the most frivolous of all. And yet Boston, like many other cities, has a rich history of riots and near-riots at rock concerts. If you take enough excited young people and pack them into a tight enough space, with with enough hormones (and quite possibly booze or drugs) coursing through their veins, it doesn’t take much of a spark to set off the powderkeg. From Chuck Berry to Led Zeppelin, and from the Rolling Stones to Green Day, we’re looking into the causes and consequences of some of the most iconic melees in Boston’s rock and roll history.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/149 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan expanded into New England and tried to make Boston a capital of their invisible empire. However, their deep hatred for Catholics and Jews, as well as their promotion of “100% Americanism,” made the KKK a hard sell in an area where the population was growing rapidly, with a constant stream of Jewish and Catholic immigrants. After staying on the sidelines at first, Boston’s colorful mayor James Michael Curley made it his mission to drive the KKK out of Boston. After a few highly publicized Klan rallies in and around Boston, Curley began to fight them with rhetoric and questionably legal manipulation of the city permitting process.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/148 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
History records that Rachel Wall was the last woman to be hanged in Massachusetts, and legend remembers her as the only woman pirate from Boston. Her highly publicized trial took place as America implemented its new constitutional government. The state attorney general who prosecuted her had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A few weeks after the trial, the presiding judge became one of the first US Supreme Court justices, and her defense attorney, who had helped ratify the constitution, soon became the first US Attorney for Massachusetts under the constitution. Not only that, but her death warrant carried perhaps the most famous signature in US history, that of governor John Hancock. On this week's episode, we uncover the fascinating true story of Rachel Wall’s life, trial, and death that's hiding within the legend.
Full show notes at http://HUBhistory.com/147/
Boston and Quebec City share a deeply intertwined history that goes back to the earliest days of English settlement in North America. Puritan Boston could hardly stand the idea that their closest European neighbor was a Catholic colony, and they made many attempts to drive the hated French from the continent. To defeat the French, the New Englanders would have to take fortresses at Louisbourg, Quebec, and Montreal. We recently talked about the 1745 siege of Louisbourg, but this week we’re going even further back in time. In 1690, Sir William Phips, the frontier shepherd who found a sunken treasure and became a knight, led a large fleet of ships and over 2000 soldiers out of Boston. Their goal was to reduce the defenses of Quebec and force the French colonists to submit to the British crown, but the result was a total disaster.
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/146
The brilliant sunsets and dramatic weather reports inspired by smoke drifting into our area from Canadian wildfires last month got me thinking about two past HUB History shows. There have been at least three smoke events in Boston history that caused darkness in the middle of the day and made people wonder if the end of the world was coming. Our first clip will be about the dark days in 1780, 1881, and in 1950. Of course, people who witnessed dark days compared them to solar eclipses. Our second classic segment is from the summer of 2017, exploring the solar eclipses that early Boston witnessed, from soon after European colonization to the turn of the 19th century.
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full Show Notes: http://HUBhistory.com/145
Sky Jockeys, Knights of the Air, and Man-Birds were just a few of the terms that newspapers around the country used to describe the early aviators who converged on Boston in September 1910. The first Harvard-Boston Aero Meet was the largest and most exciting air show that the world had ever seen, and it left Boston gripped by a bad case of aeroplane fever. Famous pilots from the US and around the world, including even Wilbur Wright, would compete for cash prizes in a number of categories, including a high-stakes race to Boston Light in the outer harbor. Tens of thousands of spectators gawked at the spectacle, reporters provided breathless coverage, and the military watched carefully to see if these newfangled flying machines could ever be useful in warfare. The event was so successful that the organizers extended it by three days beyond what was originally scheduled, then followup meets were scheduled for the next two years.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/144 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
If you’ve ever taken a walking tour of Boston’s North End, or if you’ve talked to the old timers in the neighborhood, you’ve probably heard stories about the network of so-called secret pirate tunnels or smugglers’ tunnels that connects the wharves to the basements of houses, Old North Church, and even crypts in Copp’s Hill burying ground. Sometimes the tunnels are attributed to a Captain Gruchy, who’s often called a pirate or a smuggler, and who is portrayed as a shadowy figure. It doesn’t take much research to debunk this version of the story, and yet there is historical evidence for tunnels under the streets of the North End. This week, we’ll take a look at that evidence and try to separate fact from fiction.
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/143
This week, our show brings you the story of what might be the only example of someone “going postal” in the air. We’re discussing a bizarre 1989 incident involving a North Shore man, a veteran and postal worker. Alfred J Hunter III had always wanted to be a pilot, and thirty years ago this summer, he got the chance. He murdered his ex-wife, stole a plane at gunpoint, and then flew around shooting up the city of Boston with an assault rifle.
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/142
This week’s show revisits two classic HUB History episodes that are all about the boundaries of the city of Boston. First, we’ll go back to a show that originally aired last January to learn why independent towns like Roxbury, Dorchester, and Charlestown were eager to be annexed into the city of Boston in the mid- to late-19th century, and we’ll examine why Boston hasn’t annexed any other municipalities since Hyde Park in 1912. Of course, once you make the boundaries of the city bigger by annexing your neighbors, you have to keep track of those new boundaries. So our second clip will be from a show that aired way back in September of 2017, about the ancient practice of perambulating the bounds. Since the 1650s, Massachusetts law has required towns to clearly mark their boundaries with other towns, and to send somebody out to walk the line and examine the markers every five years.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/141 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
For decades, a 1967 riot that rocked Roxbury’s Grove Hall neighborhood was generally referred to in the mainstream media as a "race riot" or as "the welfare riot," while a handful of articles and books by Black authors called it "the police riot." A group of mostly African American women who led a group called Mothers for Adequate Welfare were staging a sit-in protest at a welfare office on Blue Hill Avenue. When tensions escalated, the police stormed in and used force to remove the group. Onlookers were outraged by the violence and attempted to stop the police. The resulting riot spanned three nights in Roxbury, with arson, looting, and shots fired both by and at the police, and the scars it left behind took decades to heal.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/140 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Boston has long been known as the Hub of the Universe, but it’s also a hub of world class arts institutions. One of those institutions is the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This week, we’re looking at the founding of the BSO and the construction of its iconic home, Symphony Hall. We’ll discuss the characters that brought the BSO and Symphony Hall to life, as well as the remarkable features of the concert hall, known for its near-perfect acoustics.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/139 Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Hooker Day was a one-time holiday celebrated in Boston in 1903. While it might sound like this is going to be an X-rated podcast, we’re not talking about that kind of hooker. Civil War General Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker was briefly the commander of the main Union force called the Army of the Potomac. Forty years after his command, he was immortalized with a massive statue in front of our State House. When the statue was dedicated, the entire city celebrated a holiday that was called Hooker Day in his honor.
Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/138
For centuries before the Quabbin reservoir opened, Boston struggled to provide enough clean, fresh water for its growing population. One of the solutions to this problem was a new reservoir built at Chestnut Hill in the 1880s. The pumping station at this reservoir was home to enormous steam powered pumping engines, and it’s preserved today as the Metropolitan Waterworks Museum. Eric Peterson joins us this week to talk about the history of Boston’s water supply, steam power, and a brilliant engineer who designed the steam pumps that provided Boston’s water.
Show notes at http://HUBhistory.com/137 Support us on http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
A new form of relationship arose between 19th century women, which had all the emotional trappings of romantic love, but was long considered to be merely an intense form of friendship. More recently, however, critics have wondered whether Victorian assumptions about the inherent chasteness of womankind allowed couples who would consider themselves lesbians today to hide in plain sight.
These relationships came to be known as “Boston marriages,” both because a number of high profile Bostonians engaged in them, and because Henry James popularized the concept in his novel The Bostonians. As the story of the name indicates, real relationships between women were influenced by contemporary literature by James, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendall Holmes, but these authors also drew inspiration from the apparently romantic relationships they saw between women in their lives.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/136 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
In the 19th century, a network of abolitionists and sympathizers in Boston helped enslaved African Americans find their way to freedom in the Northern states or Canada. It’s a topic we’ve talked about before, but this time there’s a twist. We’re going to be examining how Boston’s position as an important port city changed the dynamic of seeking freedom. Jake sat down with National Park Service ranger Shawn Quigley to discuss how the underground railroad ran right through Boston Harbor.
Full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/135 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
15 years ago, the landmark case Goodridge v. Department of Public Health granted marriage rights to same-sex couples in Massachusetts. The November 18, 2003, decision was the first by a U.S. state’s highest court to find that same-sex couples had the right to marry, and it was grounded in the language of equal justice that John Adams wrote into our state constitution. Despite numerous attempts to delay the ruling, and to reverse it, the first marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples on May 17, 2004.
Check the show notes at http://HUBhistory.com/134 and support us by going to http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
You may think taking the T is painful today, but back in the days of horsedrawn streetcars, public transportation was slow, inefficient, and frequently snarled in downtown traffic. In the 1880s, proposals for elevated railways and subways competed for attention as Boston’s rapid transit solution. Then, an ambitious inventor stormed the scene with a groundbreaking proposal for a monorail. He even went as far as building a mile long track in East Cambridge, showing that the monorail worked. If it hadn’t been for bad luck and bad politics, we might all be taking monorails instead of today’s Red and Orange lines, but instead the monorail turned out to be more of a Shelbyville idea.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/133 Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This week’s show is about the namesake of the famous Louisbourg Square on Beacon Hill, an astonishing 1745 military victory won by a Massachusetts volunteer army made up of farmers, seamen, and merchants. After war broke out with France the year before, Governor William Shirley proposed a daring plan to attack the French fortress of Louisbourg. Located on Cape Breton Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, Louisbourg was considered impregnable. Through a combination of luck, good leadership, and gallant conduct, the New England army conquered the Gibraltar of North America. However, the victory was short lived, setting the stage for two wars that American history remembers more clearly.
Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/132
We’re trying something new this week by bringing in a guest for our upcoming historical event segment. Clara Silverstein from Historic Newton tells us about their “Crossing Borders” series. Sticking with the theme, our show this week recounts a romance between young lovers that crossed enemy lines and political allegiances, uniting patriot Billy Tudor and loyalist Delia Jarvis. Even as the Revolutionary War began and Boston was besieged, Billy risked everything and swam across the harbor to visit Delia. As the war continued and they were separated by many miles, Billy would address his letters to Delia to “my fair loyalist,” and then sign them from “your ever faithful rebel.”
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/131/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This week, we interview Earl Taylor, president of the Dorchester Historical Society and one of the founders of the Tide Mill Institute. He tells us how early Bostonians harnessed the power of the tides in Boston Harbor to grind their grain, manufacture products like snuff and spices, and even produce baby carriages. Plus, he shows us the advantages tidal power had over other types of mills, how tide mills shaped the landscape of Boston, and why tide mills went out of fashion.
Among the many medical breakthroughs that are attributed to Boston, surgical anesthesia is among the most impactful. It’s hard to overstate the importance in medical history of ether for the treatment of pain, particularly for those undergoing surgical procedures. Many believe that this technique was pioneered at MGH under the famous Ether Dome, but history tells us a different origin story.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/129 Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
This episode is being released on April 14, 2019, which means that Abraham Lincoln was shot 154 years ago today. That’s why we’re talking about the links between the Lincoln assassination and the city of Boston. President Lincoln, his assassin John Wilkes Booth, and Boston Corbett, the man who killed Booth, all had transformative experiences in Boston.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/128 Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
The Boston Marathon was first run in April of 1897, after Bostonians were inspired by the revival of the marathon for the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens. It is the oldest continuously running marathon, arguably the most prestigious, and the second longest continuously running footrace in North America, having debuted five months after the Buffalo Turkey Trot. Women were not allowed to officially enter the Boston Marathon until 1972. In 1966, Bobbi Gibb became the first woman to run the Boston Marathon. In 1967, Kathrine Switzer, who had registered as “K. V. Switzer”, became the first woman to run and finish with a race number – despite the race director’s best efforts.
Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/127
It’s probably a familiar tale… Late at night, after the museum is closed, a man talks the guard into unlocking the door. Once inside, he pulls out a gun, and within seconds, the guard is tied up and blindfolded, while a gang roams through the museum, picking out rare masterpieces. By the time the guard gets himself free and calls the police, the gang has made off with millions of dollars in stolen artworks, in a case considered the largest art heist in US history. Yes, the tale may sound familiar, but we’re not talking about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum case, we’re talking about a different art heist, one that was carried out 17 years earlier and across the river in Cambridge. This is the story of the Fogg Museum coin heist.
Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Complete show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/126
Artist and author Julia Glatfelter joins us this week to discuss her upcoming children’s book The Little Glass Treasure House. The Children’s Art Centre was incorporated in 1914 under the direction of FitzRoy Carrington, curator of prints at the Museum of Fine Arts. When the building was completed in 1918 on Rutland Street in Boston’s South End, it became the first art museum for children in the world. In 1959, the organization merged with 4 settlement houses to become United South End Settlements (USES). Julia taught at the Children’s Art Centre as part of the vacation arts program at USES in 2017, and during that time, she researched the history of the building, the evolution of its programs, and the people who brought the space to life. Her new book, The Little Glass Treasure House, narrates this story through the eyes of Charlotte Dempsey, who directed the center from 1930 to 1971.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/125 Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
https://www.associatesbpl.org/events-and-programs/pierce/
Join us at the Boston Public Library to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Grand National Peace Jubilee held in Copley Square in 1869. The Peace Jubilee was a week-long musical celebration of the Union victory in the Civil War. It was a concert of unprecedented scale, performed before an audience of up to 50,000 in a purpose-built Coliseum in the Back Bay that was one of the largest buildings in the world. People came from far and wide to take in the spectacle, including President Ulysses S Grant and many other dignitaries. The climax of the show was a piece by Verdi called the Anvil Chorus. Jubilee director Patrick Gilmore conducted 10,000 vocalists, who were backed by 1000 instrumentalists, a battery of cannons, a convocation of church bells, a custom made bass drum eight feet in diameter, the world’s largest pipe organ, and a company of 100 Boston firefighters carrying sledgehammers and pounding anvils in unison.
To help celebrate the 150th anniversary of this musical spectacular, the Associates of the Boston Public Library are throwing a party at the Copley branch of the BPL on March 29. Nikki and I will be giving a brief talk discussing who Patrick Gilmore was, how he conceived of the enormous Coliseum where the Jubilee was held, and what the concert was like. Boston’s poet laureate Porsha Olayiwola will give a reading, and the keynote address will be delivered by Theodore C. Landsmark. The highlight of the evening will be a musical performance by a brass band from the New England Conservatory of Music, featuring some of the same arrangements that were performed in 1869, complete with firemen hammering anvils.
If you’d like to join us at the BPL on Friday, March 29, make sure to pre-register. The event is free, but you have to pre-register to get in. Doors open at 7pm, and the program begins at 7:30. There will be a cash bar.
Our description of the Grand Peace Jubilee originally aired as episode 102.
Instead of writing and recording a new episode, your humble hosts are going to History Camp this weekend. We’ll leave you with two stories about Boston’s weird neighborhood history from our back catalog. We’ll be sharing a story from Jamaica Plain about a politically motivated crime in the early 20th century that led to a series of running gunfights between the police and what the newspapers called “desperadoes.” Then, we’re going to move across town to Brighton, which — speaking of desperadoes — used to be home to saloons, card games, and hard drinking cowboys, when it hosted New England’s largest cattle market.
Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/124 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
Sir William Phips was the first royal governor of Massachusetts under the charter of William and Mary. As governor, he would implement the notorious Court of Oyer and Terminer that led to the executions of 20 innocent people during the Salem witch hysteria. But long before he was a royal governor, he was a poor shepherd boy in rural Maine, who dreamed of Spanish gold. Eventually, he made that dream a reality, leading one of the most successful treasure hunts in history and amassing one of the continent’s greatest fortunes.
Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/123
This week we’re discussing the riots and destruction of Charlestown’s Ursuline convent, which we first covered back in January 2017. This episode touches on themes of xenophobia, anti-immigrant prejudice, and religious intolerance - lessons we can all learn from today. On a hot summer's night in 1834, rumors swirled around a Catholic girls' school in Charlestown. Catholicism was a frightening, unfamiliar religion, and Catholic immigrants were viewed with great suspicion. People said that the nuns were being held in slavery, or that Protestant children were being tortured and forcibly converted. A crowd gathered, and violence flared. When the sun rose the next morning, the Ursuline Convent lay in smoking ruins. Thirteen men were tried, but none served time. What deep seated biases led Yankee Boston down this dark road? Listen to this week's episode to find out!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/122 Patreon: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory
“The Birth of a Nation” was one of the most controversial movies ever made, and when it premiered on February 8, 1915 it almost instantly became the greatest blockbuster of the silent movie era. It featured innovative new filmmaking techniques, a revolutionary score, and it was anchored by thrilling action scenes shot on a never-before-seen scale, with thousands of actors and extras, hundreds of horses, and battlefield effects like real cannons.
“Birth of a Nation” was apologetically racist, promoting white supremacy and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as the noble, heroic saviors of white America from the villainous clutches of evil black men bent on rape and destruction. Upon the film’s 50th anniversary in 1965, NAACP president Roy Wilkins proclaimed that all the progress that African Americans had made over the past half century couldn’t outweigh the damage done by “Birth of a Nation.”
When the film debuted in Boston in April of 1915, audience reaction was split along racial lines, with white Bostonians flocking to see the movie in record numbers, while black Bostonians organized protests and boycotts, with leaders like William Monroe Trotter attempting to have it banned in Boston.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/121 Support us on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/HUBhistory
African American inventor and draftsman Lewis Latimer’s parents self-emancipated to give their children the opportunities afforded to those born into freedom. A Chelsea native, Latimer’s career took him from the Navy, to a patent law firm, to the prestigious circle of Thomas Edison’s pioneers.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/120
In the years immediately before English Puritans settled on the Shawmut Peninsula, a series of epidemics nearly wiped out the indigenous population of New England. The worst of these plagues was centered on Boston Harbor, and swept from Narragansett Bay in the south to the Penobscot River in the North. It was the greatest tragedy to befall Native peoples of the region, who sometimes referred to it as “the Great Dying,” while English settlers called it a “wonderful plague” or a “prodigious pestilence.” They believed the disease had been sent by God to purge the native inhabitants of the continent and make way for his chosen people.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/119
This week’s show revisits three classic episodes about disasters in Boston history. We’ll start with episode 21, which spotlighted the 1897 subway explosion on Tremont Street. Episode 39 discusses the tragedy at the Cocoanut Grove, followed by episode 91 on the collapse of the Pickwick nightclub. They key takeaway this week? We should all be thankful for modern building codes, safety measures, and government oversight.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/118
David Walker was one of America’s first radical abolitionists, a free African American man who moved to Boston in 1824 to escape the danger and humiliations of life in the slave states. He became a prominent member of Black society in Boston before writing and distributing An Appeal to the Colored People of the World. This radical work called for the immediate abolition of slavery, and even advocated violence against whites to bring about emancipation. At the time, few white leaders were talking openly about ending slavery, and those who were favored gradual emancipation. Frederick Douglass would later say that the book “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement,” and it shook the slaveowning society of the white South to the core.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/117
Boston has always been a city that valued education, and few people did as much to improve our educational system as Horace Mann. He started from modest means, living out the one-liner in Good Will Hunting about getting a $150,000 education for $1.50 in late fees at the library. Mann served as a tutor and a librarian before being elected to the Massachusetts legislature. It was, however, as the Commonwealth’s first Secretary of Education that Horace Mann transformed education in Massachusetts by fundamentally reforming how our teachers are trained. His method would eventually be adopted by much of the country. You’re welcome!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/116
What do you know about the earliest crossings over the Charles River in Boston? When it was founded, the town of Boston occupied the tip of the narrow Shawmut Peninsula, with the harbor on one side and the Charles RIver on the other. Residents relied first on ferries, and later on a series of bridges to connect them with the surrounding towns and countryside. The progression of bridge construction illustrates not only the state of construction technology, but also the birth of corporations in America and a landmark Supreme Court case defining the limits of private property rights.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/115
Although Cotton Mather is best known for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, he also pioneered smallpox inoculation in North America. This week, you’ll hear about Boston’s history with smallpox, including multiple epidemics, the controversy surrounding Mather’s inoculation movement, and the final outbreak in the 20th century. We first covered this topic way back in Episode 2, but these days we’re better at researching, writing, and recording, so this episode should be a step up.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/114
With New Year’s Eve comes the ball drop in Times Square at the stroke of midnight. But in the late 1800s, Boston dropped a ball every day to mark the stroke of noon, because telling the time was serious business. The time ball, along with telegraphic signals and fire alarm bells, announced the exact time to the public, at a time when the exact time was critical to navigation on the high seas and safety on the newfangled railroads. With ultra-precise clocks made by local jewelers and true astronomical time announced daily by the Harvard Observatory, Boston Standard Time became the de facto standard for a wide swath of the country long before time zones were officially proposed and adopted.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/113
Boston abolitionists rallied in response to the Fugitive Slave Act, ushering in an era of more active resistance that we chronicled in episodes 15-17. This week, we’re spotlighting the role that Theodore Parker, a radically liberal Unitarian minister, played in securing the safety of self-emancipated African Americans and inciting the city to oppose slavery with violence if necessary.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/112
In the late 19th century, a new revolution in play was born in Boston. In an era when urban children had few spaces to play except in the alleys and courtyards around their tenements, and child labor meant that many kids had no opportunities to play at all, an immigrant doctor inspired a Boston women’s group to take up the topic of play. From its humble beginnings in a single sandpile in the North End, the playground movement grew to a quasi-scientific pursuit, until it was finally adopted as a national goal. By the early 20th century, safe playgrounds with structured, supervised play were seen as vital to children’s moral and educational development.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/111
This week we’re digging into our archives to bring you discussions of three Bostonian ladies who forged new paths for women. Katherine Nanny Naylor was granted the first divorce in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, allowing her to ditch an abusive husband and make her way as an entrepreneur. Annette Kellerman was a professional swimmer who popularized the one-piece swimming suit and made a (sometimes literal) splash in vaudeville and silent films. And Amelia Earhart took to the skies after humble beginnings as a social worker in a Boston settlement house.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/110
Prescott Townsend was a classic Boston Brahmin. He was born into Boston’s elite in 1894, graduated from Harvard, and served in World War I. All signs pointed to a very conventional path through life, but Townsend’s trajectory would take him far from the arc followed by his contemporaries from the Cabot, Lowell, or Adams families. Instead, Prescott Townsend would be active in radical theater, experimental architecture, and, surprisingly late in his life, he would help found the American gay liberation movement and lead the first Pride parade in 1970.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/109
Mary Dyer was an early Puritan settler of Boston. Born in England, Mary moved to Boston in 1635 and was soon drawn to the Quaker religion, in part because of the opportunities it afforded women to learn and lead. New laws forbade her from professing her faith publicly. Not one to back down, Mary was arrested and banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony several times before finally being hanged on Boston Neck, becoming one of our city’s four Quaker martyrs. Today, a statue of Mary Dyer stands in front of the State House, just to the right of the Hooker entrance.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/108
When it comes to Boston history, it seems like there’s a riot for every possible season. It’s Thanksgiving season now, so this week we’re going to discuss a riot that took place at Harvard University… not during the tumultuous anti-war protests of the 1960s or 1970s, but on Thanksgiving day in 1787. There’s tantalizingly little in the historical record about what happened or how it started, but we know that some very famous historical figures were right in the middle of the action.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/107
In honor of Veterans Day, we’re talking about the women who served in World War II in a Navy outfit called the WAVES. Specifically, their commanding officer, Mildred McAfee (later Mildred McAfee Horton). When the war started, she was president of Wellesley College, but before it was over, she would be the first woman to become a commissioned officer in the US Navy, commanding a force of nearly 100,000 people.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/106
Emma Snodgrass defied the gender roles of the 1850s, getting arrested multiple times in Boston for appearing in public unchaperoned and dressed as a man. Was she a troublemaker looking for thrills? Was she trying to pass as a man in order to find work and independence in a society with few opportunities for women? Or was she a trans person in an era that didn’t yet have words to describe that concept? Unfortunately, the historic record leaves us with just as many questions as answers.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/105
In 1928, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital demonstrated a groundbreaking medical advancement – the iron lung. Prior to the arrival of the polio vaccination in 1955, the deadly disease was the most feared illness in America. With this invention by two Harvard faculty members, the diaphragm paralysis that accompanied polio no longer had to be a death sentence.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/104
In this week’s show, we are talking about all things Joseph Warren. Author Christopher di Spigna joins us to discuss his book Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero, a new biography of our favorite patriot. We’ll start with his boyhood in a Roxbury filled with farms and apple orchards, then cover his education at Harvard, his rise in politics, his untimely death at the start of the revolution, and the recent discovery of living descendants.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/103
In 1869, an eccentric entrepreneur and musical visionary built one of the largest buildings in 19th Century Boston. It was a concert hall with twice the capacity of the modern TD garden, and it was built to house the largest musical spectacular the world had ever seen up to that point. It was the Boston Coliseum, built to house the Grand National Peace Jubilee celebrating the end of America’s Civil War.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/102
For this week’s show, we’re revisiting three highlights from Boston’s long and storied history of rioting. We’ll include stories from past episodes covering the 1919 Boston police strike, 1747 impressment riots, and the 1837 Broad Street riot.
Listen to the end to find out how you can get some free HUB History swag in celebration of our 100th episode!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/101
250 years ago this week, British troops landed in Boston. Author J.L. Bell joins us to discuss the British government's decision to send troops in an attempt to keep peace after Boston's years of upheaval. Instead of bringing peace, the tense occupation would culminate in the Boston Massacre less than two years later.
Listen to the end to find out how you can get some free HUB History swag in celebration of our 100th episode!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/100/
Brighton is one of our westernmost neighborhoods, and it’s often associated with Boston’s large and sometimes unruly student population, but in the mid 19th century, Brighton was home to all the elements of a western movie. There were cattle drives, stockyards, saloons, and stampedes through the streets. Before it was tamed, unruly Brighton was our own wild west.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/099
his week, we’re discussing Margaret Sanger’s thwarted attempt to present a lecture on birth control to the good citizens of Boston in April of 1929. The 1920s were a fairly liberating time for women – women were voting, drinking alcohol socially, cutting their hair short, and dancing the Charleston in short dresses. However, Boston was slow to let its hair down under the stern gaze of the Watch and Ward Society, and birth control remained one of the ultimate taboos.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/098
This week, we tell a story from very early in Boston’s history, a story partly shrouded in legend. The cast of characters includes everyone from Increase Mather to Nathaniel Hawthorne, encompassing two kings, two continents, two colonies, and Royal governors Endecott, Andros, and Hutchinson. It is the story of two judges who signed the death warrant for a king, famously known as the regicides, or king killers. Edward Whalley and William Goffe became celebrities in Boston, before being forced to flee in the face of what one historian called "the greatest manhunt in British history."
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/097/
This week, author Skip Desjardin tells us about his new book September 1918: War, Plague, and the World Series. He introduces us to a pivotal month, when world history was being made in Boston and Bostonians were making history around the world. The cast of characters ranges from Babe Ruth to Blackjack Pershing to EE Cummings. During our discussion, you’ll learn about the Massachusetts National Guardsmen who fought the first American-led battle in World War I, you’ll hear about the uncertainty surrounding the 1918 World Series, and you’ll encounter more details about the deadly 1918 influenza outbreak.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/096
On August 27, 1918 Boston became acquainted with the epidemic that has gone down in history as the “Spanish flu.” A more accurate name for this disease outbreak might be the “Boston flu,” because our city is where this influenza variant mutated and first turned truly deadly. The first cases of this new and deadly disease were reported in South Boston 100 years ago this week. Soon, Boston would suffer nearly a thousand deaths per week as the disease peaked. Before it was over, up to 20% of the world’s population would be infected. With up to 100 million people killed, the 1918 flu was the most deadly disease in human history.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/095
You probably know about Amelia Earhart’s famous career as a groundbreaking aviator, and you almost certainly know about her famous disappearance over the Pacific. But you may not know about Amelia Earhart’s first career as a social worker in one of Boston’s many settlement houses. This week, we discuss her early exposure to aviation, the famed Friendship crossing, and also her reflections on her career of service to newly immigrated Americans.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/094
In this episode, we're joined by the curator of one of the oldest houses in North America. He'll tell us about evidence that's been uncovered that generations of residents may have believed in an ancient form of countermagic. The inhabitants of Dedham’s Fairbanks House used charms and hex marks deriving from Puritan, Catholic, and pagan religious traditions in an attempt to ward off evil forces that might have included witches, demons, and even disease. Fairbanks House Museum curator Daniel Neff will be joining us in just a few minutes to explain the evidence he’s found and what it can tell us about the Fairbanks family and the world they lived in.
Correction: call 781-326-1170 to book a ghost tour.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/093
On August 8, 1920, an epic brawl broke out on Revere Beach when police attempted to arrest a group of four disorderly sailors. In the chaos that followed, 400 sailors attempted to storm the police station to free their comrades, even stealing rifles from the beachfront shooting galleries and turning them against the police. Soldiers from nearby Fort Banks had to be called out to restore order at the point of a bayonet. It was the height of Revere Beach’s early 20th century popularity, when it was seen as Boston’s Coney Island, with roller coasters, restaurants, and dance halls lining the beach just north of the city.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/092/
On the evening of July 3, 1925, Boston’s Pickwick nightclub collapsed while couples packed the dance floor. Dozens were trapped in the rubble, while firefighters, police, and laborers worked desperately to free them. In the end, 44 people were killed and many more were injured. A rumor circulated that the disaster had been caused by a popular dance called the Charleston. This fake news soon became one of the most viral stories of the newspaper era, causing many cities to ban couples from dancing the Charleston. This week’s show has it all… dirty dancing, illegal speakeasies, and a heroic rescue effort.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/091/
For many people, summertime in Boston means canoeing, kayaking, paddle boarding, fishing, and even swimming in the rivers that run through and around our city. To celebrate the season this week we’re coming three classic episodes about industry, adventure, and romance on the water. We’ll hear about the nearly 400 year history of corn, cotton, and condos on the Mother Brook; some late-nineteenth century fake news about Vikings on the Charles; and the early 20th century canoe craze that drove the state police to ban kissing in canoes on the Charles River. Listen now!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/090
In this week’s episode, we sit down with author Steven Ujifusa to discuss his new book “Barons of the Sea, and their race to build the world’s fastest clipper ship,” which will be out this Tuesday, July 17. Steven will tell us about 19th century drug smuggling, what it meant to trade for tea in China or gold in California, and why America’s most prominent families were involved in the shipping business. Most of all, he’ll tell us about the East Boston shipyard where Donald McKay built the fastest, most graceful ships the world had ever seen.
http://HUBhistory.com/089
In January 1941, the two masted fishing schooner Mary O’Hara collided with a barge in Boston Harbor. At least 18 sailors died in the ice cold waters of Boston Harbor, while they were almost in sight of their own homes. Only five members of the crew managed to cling to the exposed mast for hours until help arrived. At the time, headlines called it Boston Harbor’s worst disaster.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/088/
This week, over a half a million people from near and far will flock to the banks of the Charles River to celebrate our nation’s Independence Day. Why did Boston decide to create new land dedicated to recreation along the river, and how did some of that land end up dedicated to a highway? The story begins with the Storrow family. Listen now!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/087
In this week's episode, we use three classic episodes to turn the Trump administration's anti-immigrant rhetoric on its head. The President teaches us to be afraid of Central American and Middle Eastern immigrants and asylum seekers because of terrorism, crime, and an unfamiliar religion. Our ancestors had these same fears about earlier immigrant groups, groups that are today considered part of the fabric of America. In their day, Italian Americans were suspected of terrorism, Chinese Americans were blamed for organized crime, and Irish Americans were feared because of their unfamiliar and potentially dangerous religion.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/086
This week’s show relates three incidents across three centuries when daytime turned to darkness in the skies over Boston. They weren’t solar eclipses. Instead, they were a different natural phenomenon, one that was completely unpredictable and each time led to speculation that the end of the world was at hand.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/085
The Broad Street Riot of 1837 was one of Boston's many historical melees. This one took place when a company of Yankee firefighters ran into an Irish funeral. Despite our reputation as a coastal liberal enclave, Boston has a history of hostility towards newcomers. When Irish immigrants began arriving in our harbor en masse, Yankee nativists welcomed them with violence and prejudice. Before long, a funeral procession in the wrong place at the wrong time led to a brawl with well over 10,000 participants and onlookers.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/084
It's Pride Week in Boston, so we're bringing you the story of Boston's first Pride parade. While most early Pride celebrations were joyous occasions, Boston's 1971 Pride parade was a protest march. Inspired by Stonewall, activists confronted representatives of religion, policing, and government.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/083
We’re taking you to the beach for Memorial Day weekend. 111 years ago, champion swimmer Annette Kellerman was arrested on Revere Beach. Her crime? Appearing in public in a one piece bathing suit of her own design. Along with being a record setting swimmer, Kellerman was a fitness and wellness guru, a vaudeville producer, movie actress, and a clothing designer. Besides her athletic prowess, she was known for her physical beauty, appearing in Hollywood’s first nude scene. A Harvard professor would go so far as to claim that he had scientific proof that she was “the most beautifully formed woman of modern times.” Puritanical Boston wasn’t prepared to see the exposed arms of such a specimen, so Kellerman was arrested for indecent exposure.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/082
Meet the Sacred Cod, a five foot long wooden fish, carved and painted to resemble a cod. The mighty cod holds great prominence in Massachusetts history, as cod fishing was the first industry practiced by Europeans in the region. For perhaps 270 years or more, the Sacred Cod has served as a sort of mascot for the state House of Representatives, except for two days in 1933, when it went inexplicably missing.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/081
Arrrr, matey! Nikki and I are running a pirate themed relay race on Cape Cod this weekend instead of recording a new episode, so of course we’re going to play three classic pirate stories this week. The first two clips will highlight the role Boston played in the golden age of piracy, while the third discusses Puritan minister Cotton Mather’s complicated relationship with the pirates whose execution he oversaw. Listen now!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/080
What started as a simple holdup in a bar in Jamaica Plain in 1908 soon turned into a bloody battle, as a small group of radical anarchists engaged hundreds of Boston Police officers in a series of running gun fights across the neighborhood. The shootouts and a bloody siege at Forest Hills Cemetery left a total of 11 wounded and two dead. Most of the suspects escaped, only to be killed years later by British soldiers on the streets of London under the command of Winston Churchill himself. Listen now!
Show notes at HUBhistory.com/079
Boston’s history with gangsters and goons goes far beyond the legacy of Whitey Bulger. This week we’re featuring three stories from our back catalog about very different aspects of organized crime in Boston. We’ll be discussing Charles “King” Solomon’s reign in the South End, the Tong War’s place in Chinatown history, and the Brinks Robbery in the North End, known as the crime of the century.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/078
50 years ago this week, residents of one Boston neighborhood carried out an act of civil disobedience, bringing attention to the city’s need for affordable housing. A group of mostly African American residents occupied an empty lot where rowhouses once stood. It was Boston’s 1968 Tent City protest, and it helped change how the city approaches development and urban planning.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/077
In honor of Patriots Day and the anniversary of Paul Revere’s famous ride, we are focusing on some of Paul Revere’s less famous rides this week. When Paul Revere set out to warn the Provincial Congress that the British Regulars were coming in April of 1775, it wasn’t his first gig as an express rider for the patriots. For almost three years, he had been carrying messages from the Boston Committee of Correspondence on horseback to patriots in New York, Philadelphia, New Hampshire, and beyond. It’s just that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow didn’t write poems about the other rides.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/076
This week, we’re revisiting the bizarre holiday known as Pope’s Night that was celebrated in early Boston. Having evolved out of the British observation of Guy Fawkes Day, Boston took the event to extremes. The virulently anti-Catholic colonists in our town held festive bonfires, parades, and plenty of drinking. Almost every year, the celebration would lead to massive street fights and riots that sometimes turned deadly, all to commemorate a thwarted plot against the British Parliament. Pope’s Night was the subject of our very first podcast, and we’re happy to revisit it here with better research, more practiced storytelling, and hopefully better audio quality.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/075
The Boston slave trade began when a ship arrived in the harbor in the summer of 1638 carrying a cargo of enslaved Africans, but there was already a history of slave ownership in the new colony. After this early experience, Massachusetts would continue to be a slave owning colony for almost 150 years. In this week’s episode, we discuss the origins of African slavery in Massachusetts and compare the experience of enslaved Africans to other forms of unfree labor in Boston, such as enslaved Native Americans, Scottish prisoners of war, and indentured servants.
Warning: This week’s episode uses some of the racialized language of our 17th and 18th century sources, and it describes an act of sexual violence.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/074
This week we’re revisiting Boston’s great Molasses Flood, the subject of one of our earliest podcasts. We’re giving you an update, now that our technology, research, and storytelling skills have improved. Stay tuned for tales of rum, anarchists, and the speed of molasses in January. It’s not slow!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/073
The Boston Women’s Municipal League was a civic organization made up of mostly middle and upper class women, at a time when most women didn’t work outside the home. In 1915, they declared war on rats. Over the next few years, Women's Municipal League published literature on eradicating rats, carried out an extensive education campaign, and in 1917 hosted a city-wide Rat Day with cash prizes for the citizens who killed the most rats.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/072
In 1848, railroad worker Phineas Gage suffered an unusual injury, in which a three foot tamping iron was blown through his skull, making him on of the greatest medical curiosities of all time. We’ll discuss his time in Boston, his life post-injury, and the impact of his case on modern neuroscience.
Content warning: The details of Gage’s accident and injury are a little gory.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/070
This week, Ryan Walsh joins us to discuss Boston in 1968, the James Brown concert that might have prevented a riot, a cult that took over Roxbury’s Fort Hill, the strange history of LSD in our city, and a musical movement called the Bosstown Sound. Most of all, though, we will discuss his book Astral Weeks, a Secret History of 1968 and the Van Morrison record that inspired it.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/070
We’re joined this week by Lauren Prescott, the executive director of the South End Historical Society and author of a new book simply titled "Boston’s South End." It’s part of Arcadia Publishing’s “Postcard History Series,” and it features hundreds of images from the South End Historical Society’s collection of historic postcards dating from the 1860s to the mid 20th century.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/069
In 1848, a murder case nearly brought an end to the death penalty in Massachusetts. When a young black man named Washington Goode was convicted of first degree murder that year, there hadn’t been an execution in Boston for 13 years. White men who had been convicted of the same crime had their sentences commuted to a life in prison, and tens of thousands of petitions poured in asking the governor to do the same thing for Goode. Yet even so, he was sent to the gallows. Why?
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/068
We used our studio time this week to record something special that will air next month. Without a new episode, we didn’t want to leave you without any HUB History this week. Instead, here are three classic episodes honoring black and white abolitionists in 19th Century Boston. Recorded last February, in the wake of President Trump’s attempt to implement a “Muslim Ban,” these episodes focus on Boston’s resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act, which was seen as an unjust law.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/067
This week, we’re talking about the conflict between Puritans and pirates in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Cotton Mather is remembered for his role in the Salem Witch Trials, but he was the childhood minister to Ben Franklin, ultimate symbol of the American Enlightenment, and he died less than fifty years before our Declaration of Independence was signed. In a way, Mather was one of the last Puritans, and some of his most famous sermons are the ones he wrote for mass executions of pirates. Times were changing, setting up a conflict between rigidly hierarchical Puritan societies and fledgling democracies that could be found on board pirate ships.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/066
For almost two years in the early 1960s, women in Boston lived in fear of a killer who became known as the Boston Strangler. Thirteen women were killed, and the murders were eventually attributed to Albert DeSalvo, based on his confession, details revealed in court during a separate case, and DNA evidence linking him to the last murder victim. It’s been over fifty years since DeSalvo was imprisoned on unrelated charges, leaving many people to question whether he was really the lone killer.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/065
There's an oft forgotten clause written into Harvard’s 1650 charter promising to educate the Native American youth of Massachusetts. This week's episode looks at the early, mostly unsuccessful efforts to create an Indian College on the Harvard campus, the abandonment of that plan after King Philip’s War soured the English settlers on their earlier plans for Christianizing local Native American tribes, and how modern scholarship is helping to rediscover this legacy and rededicate Harvard to embracing Native Americans.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/064
What did TV character Fox Mulder have in common with John Winthrop, the Puritan founder of Boston? They both recorded strange lights in the sky and other unexplained phenomena in extensive detail. This week, we’re going to explore the close encounters Winthrop described in 1639 and 1644. There were unexplained lights darting around the sky in formation at impossible speeds, ghostly sounds, and witnesses who claimed to have lost time. It’s a scene straight out of the X-Files, except these are considered the first UFO sightings in North America.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/063
Early in the morning of March 31, 1806, two young men of Boston faced each other across a marshy field outside Providence, Rhode Island. With the sun beginning to peek above the horizon, they marked out ten paces between themselves, then stood facing one another. Each had a friend at his right hand, as they coolly leveled their pistols at one another. Now, one of the friends called out, “Are you ready… Present… Fire!” And both men squeezed the triggers on their dueling pistols.
If that sounds an awful lot like the famous duel that Alexander Hamilton fought against Aaron Burr two years earlier, you’re not wrong. In ways that we’ll examine, it’s even more similar to the duel that Alexander’s son Philip Hamilton fought against a man named George Eacker in 1801.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Boston transformed itself from a town on a tiny peninsula to a sprawling city. In part, this was done by creating new land in the Back Bay and South Boston, but the city gained a great amount of area by annexing its neighbors. The first was Roxbury, which joined the city of Boston 150 years ago this week. Dorchester, Brighton, West Roxbury, and Charlestown would follow. Other towns, like Cambridge and Brookline would not. Find out why in this week’s show.
Show notes: http://hubhistory.com/061/
If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you’ll know that the Boston Harbor Islands are one of our favorite local destinations. This week, we’re sharing three stories from the Harbor Islands, all of which originally aired within the first 20 episodes of the podcast. We’ll hear about the zoo shipwreck, a hermit who made her home on the harbor, and the secret Harbor Island base where Nazis were smuggled into the country after World War II.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/060
Everyone knows the Charles River and the Neponset River, but have you ever heard of the Mother Brook? It is America’s first industrial canal, built by Puritan settlers in the earliest days of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and vital to the development of Dorchester, Hyde Park, and Dedham. Plus, by connecting the rivers on either side, it turns the landmass occupied by Newton, Brookline, and most of Boston into an island!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/059
During an era more associated with the Wild West, a group of women in Cambridge made historic advances in the field of astronomy, discovering new stars and fundamental principles about how our universe works. In the beginning, they were treated as menial clerical workers and paid a fraction of what their male counterparts got. Only decades later did they win academic respect, earning advanced degrees and finally the title Professor. They were the Human Computers of the Harvard University Observatory.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/058
On December 6, 1917, a munitions ship blew up in Halifax Harbor, causing the largest explosion until the atomic bomb was invented. The city was devastated; thousands were killed and injured. Before the day was over, Boston had loaded a train with doctors, nurses, and supplies. The train raced through the night and through a blizzard to bring relief to the desperate city. Today, Nova Scotia gives Boston a Christmas tree each year as a token of thanks.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/057
Last week's episode got us thinking about serial killers in Boston. In this week's show, we're revisiting two classic episodes about Boston's lesser known serial killers. Meet The Nightmare Nurse and a chilling figure who called himself The Giggler.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/056
Jesse Pomeroy was a Victorian era serial killer who stalked the streets of Boston. He predated Jack the Ripper by a decade, and the Boston Strangler by almost a century. At only 14 years old, he was known as the Boy Fiend, a child who tortured and killed his fellow children, becoming Boston’s youngest serial killer.
Show Notes: http://HUBhistory.com/055
In 1747, a British Commodore began kidnapping sailors and working men in Boston, and the people of the city wouldn’t stand for it. Three days of violence followed, in a draft riot that pitted the working class of Boston against the Colonial government and Royal Navy.
Show notes: http://hubhistory.com/054
This week’s show profiles Angela and Ezra Heywood: writers, activists, free-love advocates, suffragists, socialists, labor reformers, and abolitionists who shocked the sensibilities of Victorian Boston.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/053
We're celebrating our first "podcastversary" with a look back at our favorite episodes so far, some reflections on podcast production, and our plans for switching things up in the year ahead. Stay tuned for the end, where we ask our listeners an important question about the future of the show.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/052
During the Civil War, thousands of Confederate soldiers, diplomats, and politicians were imprisoned behind the walls of Fort Warren on Georges Island. Today, the fort is home to the only Confederate monument in Massachusetts, but not for much longer.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/051
The Brinks robbery, an infamous 1950 heist in Boston’s North End, captivated the nation and baffled the FBI. It was the largest robbery in American history up to that time.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/050
This week's episode takes on the early history of Boston’s Chinatown, two murders that took place there at the turn of the twentieth century, and a terrifying crackdown on Chinese Americans in Boston that sparked an international incident and has parallels in today’s headlines.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/049
This episode examines the life of Walter Dodd, who started his career as a janitor at Harvard Medical School before becoming a pharmacist, physician, and the Father of American Radiology. Though as you will hear, his journey was not without great personal sacrifice.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/048
Your humble hosts are out of town and off the air this week. Never fear, Jake is here, and he has this week’s historical anniversaries for your enjoyment.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/047
Early Boston aeronauts used balloons to perform scientific experiments, cross the English channel, take the first aerial photographs, and provide public entertainment. Whether by hot air or hydrogen, these pioneers made their way into the air, and into the history books.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/046
The Skin Book was written by highwayman George Walton and dedicated to the only man to best him in combat. While he was a prisoner at Charlestown Penitentiary, Walton wrote a memoir. According to his wishes, after his death, the book was bound in Walton's own skin and given to the man who defeated him. Today, this example of anthropodermic bibliopegy is a prized possession of the Boston Athenaeum.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/044
Since 1651, Boston has had a legal responsibility to mark and measure its boundaries every few years. Despite advances in technology, the practice of "perambulating the bounds" means that someone has to go out and walk the town lines. This law is one of the oldest still on the books, but when was the last time Boston perambulated its bounds? Listen now!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/044
When young Albert Tirrell killed his lover Maria Bickford on Beacon Hill, it sparked a scandal that rocked Victorian Boston in the 1840s. It was a tale of seduction, murder, and the unlikeliest of defenses. In the end, he would be found not guilty, in the first successful use of sleepwalking as a defense against murder.
We apologize for Nikki's head cold, some rough cuts that resulted from editing out her sniffles, and the couple of sniffles that made it into the final cut.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/043
While your humble hosts are away chasing the total solar eclipse, enjoy this show about the history of eclipses in Boston.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/042
(We're aware of some glitches in this recording and trying to fix it with our podcast hosting provider.)
During a late nineteenth century canoe craze, recreational canoeing became Boston's hottest leisure time activity. Young lovers took advantage of the privacy and intimacy of a canoe to engage in a little bit of illicit romance, leading a humorless state police agency to ban kissing in canoes on the Charles River.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/041
Despite our liberal reputation today, for years Boston was a bastion of official censorship. Authors and playwrights whose works were considered obscene had to create a watered-down "Boston version." The Watch and Ward Society decided what art, theater, and literature was permissible, and what would be Banned in Boston!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/040
492 people were killed in a 1942 fire at Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub that lasted barely a half hour. It was the deadliest disaster in Boston history. Only the smallpox epidemics of the early 1700s and the 1918 Spanish flu rival it for loss of life.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/039
This week's show is about Charles “King” Solomon, also known as Boston Charlie, whose criminal enterprise placed him at the head of organized crime in Boston throughout the prohibition era. He reached influence at the national level, set policies in play that led to tragedy at the Cocoanut Grove, and in death, left a wake that may have led to the rise of Whitey Bulger.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/038
Your humble hosts are out having summertime fun this week. Don't worry, though... Jake is flying solo this week, and bringing you this week's historical anniversaries.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/037
In this episode, we continue our tale of Boston in the Golden Age of Piracy, picking up at the end of the War of The Spanish Succession. We’ll learn about some of the most fearsome and notorious pirates in history, as well as one of the most ineffective. We’ll see how one of these pirates gave a founding father his start in public life, which US president’s great grandfather bought a former pirate as a slave, and what other president’s great grandfather decapitated a pirate with an axe.
Show note: http://HUBhistory.com/036
With a partial "Muslim Ban" in place, it's important to remember that vilifying "enemy aliens" is one of the darkest chapters of our nation's history. A hundred years ago, Americans were all too willing to imprison or even deport their neighbors of German descent. Here in Boston, the preeminent director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was affected, along with almost a third of the orchestra’s musicians.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/035
Shiver me timbers! This is the first in a two-part series about Boston’s role in the Golden Age of Piracy, from 1650 to 1726. A few pirates set sail from our city, some preyed on the shipping coming in and out of our port, and even more met their ends on the gallows in Boston. We’ll hear stories of daring raids and buried treasures, of mutiny, jailbreak, and double crossing.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/034
Dr. Joseph Warren was the greatest Patriot leader you've never heard of. His many accomplishments led the royal governor of Massachusetts, General Thomas Gage, to remark that “The death of Joseph Warren is akin to the death of five hundred Patriots.” He was so in demand that his body was moved three times after his death at the Battle of Bunker Hill.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/033
Everyone knows the story of the Boston Strangler. Fewer people know the tale of The Giggler, Boston’s lesser known serial killer. The victims fit no pattern, they were a young boy and girl, a grown man, and an old lady. The Giggler would simply feel what he described as an irresistible urge to kill.
Show notes at http://HUBhistory.com/032
Your humble hosts weren't able to sit down together and record a full episode this week. However, we wouldn't want you to have to go a whole week without hearing from us. So here's a brief look at what happened this week in Boston history.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/031
Boston, today a city rich with world-class hospitals and medical schools, has a long history of medical innovation. This week, we take a look at the characters who laid the foundation for these advancements - Resurrection Men. What founding father was a member of a secret grave robbing club? What were the steps to pulling off the perfect heist? Tune in this week to find out!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/030
Wonder Woman debuted in a December 1941 issue of All Star Comics, just as the attack on Pearl Harbor was drawing the US into World War II. In the comics, Wonder Woman’s origin story said that she was born to a race of Amazon women from Paradise Island, then disguised herself as the Boston career woman Diana Prince. In real life, Wonder Woman was inspired by early feminist fights for suffrage and access to contraception, and she was the brainchild of one very unique family who called Cambridge home. Wonder Woman drew as much inspiration from pinup girls in Esquire Magazine as she did from the suffragists who chained themselves to the gates of Harvard Yard and the founders of Planned Parenthood. And she was directly inspired by the women in her creator’s life. Her trademark exclamation “Suffering Sappho,” was taken from one of these women, and her looks and bulletproof "bracelets of submission" were taken from the other.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/029
This week, we take an in depth look at the 1919 Boston Police Strike and ensuing riots. In the post-WW1 inflation of the summer of 1919, Boston police officers were earning wages set in 1857. Around the country, workers were striking, while the upper classes feared a Bolshevik-influenced revolution. When 72% of the police force walked off the job, lawlessness ruled in Boston for several days. Governor Calvin Coolidge sent in the state militia, and emerged a hero, paving his way to the White House. Listen to the story!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/028
Despite what a lot of people think, the victims of the Salem witch trials were hanged, not burned at the stake. However, in the history of Massachusetts, two women were executed by burning them at the stake, one in 1681 and another in 1755. If witchcraft was a crime against both the state and God, what crime could be worse in Puritan Boston? A note about the content this week. We frankly describe acts of brutal violence, and we at times use the racial language of our 17th and 18th century sources. If you usually listen with children, you might want to listen to this episode alone first and decide if it’s appropriate for them.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/027
This week, we’re going to talk about Isaiah Thomas. Not the NBA star, but the colonial printer and founder of the Massachusetts Spy, whose office became known by the British as the Sedition Foundry. He snuck his presses out of Boston on the eve of war, helped Paul Revere spread the news of the British march, and shared first-hand accounts of the Battles of Concord and Lexington. Later, he would spread his business empire across multiple states, and become a historian, founding the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. Listen to his story!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/026
This week we celebrate Patriots’ Day, and the anniversary of Paul Revere’s famous ride. It’s easy to forget that Paul Revere’s story didn’t end on April 18, 1775. This week, we bring you a less glorious story about Paul Revere, one that’s not shrouded in myth. In 1779, Revere was among the leaders of a military expedition in Maine that ended with the greatest US Naval defeat prior to Pearl Harbor, and eventually led to his court martial on charges of cowardice and insubordination.
Show Notes: http://HUBhistory.com/025
In 1849, Boston was rocked by the crime of the (19th) century when Professor John Webster murdered Dr. George Parkman in his lab at Harvard Medical School. The world was riveted by the investigation and trial that ensued, while the Boston Brahmins were shaken to the core by the scandal in their ranks. The courtroom drama lived up to our modern-day CSI standards, offering one of the earliest uses of forensic evidence and a legal standard still in use today. Listen to the show!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/024
In March 1870, forty-two women marched into their polling place in Hyde Park and illegally cast ballots in the local election. They were led by local residents and radical activists Sarah and Angelina Grimké. The Grimké sisters were born into a slave owning family in South Carolina, but then spent their lives fighting for abolition, suffrage, and equal rights. Listen to their remarkable story!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/023
This week's episode features a conversation with Brooke Barbier, founder of Ye Olde Tavern Tours and author of the new book Boston in the American Revolution: A Town Versus an Empire. We talk about a forgotten Revolutionary War story, why the Revolutionary period isn't as simple as good guys and bad guys, and which Founding Fathers we'd like to have a beer with. Stick around after the interview to find out what's coming up this week in Boston history, and how you can win a private tour of the Back Bay with hosts Nikki and Jake. Listen to the show!
Show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/022
On March 4, 1897, a giant explosion rocked the corner of Tremont Street and Boylston across from Boston Common. Ten people were killed, and dozens were injured. How did construction of America’s first subway lead to this disaster? And why was it so difficult for survivors to get compensation for their injuries? Listen to the show to find out! And be sure to stay tuned to the end, so you can find out how to win a free walking tour with hosts Nikki and Jake.
(updated 3/20/2017 to correct a mixing issue)
Full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/021
When British General Thomas Gage arrived in Boston in 1774, he was met on Long Wharf by the patriot leader John Hancock at the head of an armed militia unit... But not for the reason you think. Since 1772, Hancock had been the Captain of The Governor's Independent Company of Cadets, an elite unit that provided ceremonial bodyguards to the Massachusetts governor. When Gage took over as military governor of the province, sparks flew. He summarily fired Hancock, and war broke out soon after. They have been known through the centuries as the Governor's Cadets, the Independent Company of Cadets, the Boston Independent Company, and the First Corps of Cadets, and they've served Massachusetts and the United States in domestic emergencies, and wars from the Revolution to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Learn more about this unique unit, and their role in the lead up to the Revolutionary War, in this week's show!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/020
This week's episode examines two people who chose to live as hermits in and around Boston. When you think of a hermit, your mental image is probably a monk or an aging eccentric in a cabin in the woods somewhere. But our subjects this week sought out that kind of solitary existence among the hustle and bustle of the growing city of Boston in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. James Gately was known as the Hermit of Hyde Park, and Ann Winsor Sherwin was the Hermit of Boston Harbor. Listen to the show to meet these unique characters!
Show note: http://HUBhistory.com/019
This week, we’re going to talk about a woman who studied medicine at a time when very few women could access higher education at all, and an African American who became a physician at a time when half of this country believed that she could be owned by another American. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler would study in Boston and become America’s first black female doctor. Listen to this week's show for her story!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/018
Your hosts Nikki and Jake are away this week, but through the magic of podcasting, we’re still able to bring you this mini-sode. Since we’re exploring Iceland, land of the Vikings, it only makes sense to bring you the story of a 19th Century Boston millionaire who was convinced that Vikings had once settled along the Charles River. Listen to this week’s episode to find out why!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/017
This week, we’re going to wrap up our series on the Fugitive Slave Act, and the efforts of black and white abolitionists in Boston to resist what they saw as an unjust law. In last week’s show, we discussed how Lewis Hayden and the Vigilance Committee rescued the fugitive Shadrach Minkins from being returned to slavery. This week, we’re going to learn how that act of resistance led to a federal crackdown in Boston, look at two unsuccessful rescues that followed, and see how the unrest galvanized the apathetic population of Boston into a hotbed of radical abolitionism. Listen to this week's episode for the exciting conclusion!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/016
With our new President doing his best to enforce unjust executive orders, we thought this would be a good moment to revisit an era in which Boston resisted an unjust law. After Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, abolitionists in Boston felt that the values of Southern slave power were being forced upon a free city. In 1851, Shadrach Minkins was the first fugitive to be arrested in Boston, but before he could be returned to slavery, a multiracial mob stormed the courtroom and forcibly delivered him to the Underground Railroad. Listen to this week's episode for the story!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/015
Lewis Hayden was born into slavery in Kentucky. When he was ten years old, his owner traded him to a traveling salesman for a pair of horses. But Hayden and his family eventually escaped to freedom, and they settled in Boston. Their Beacon Hill home was a refuge for enslaved people seeking freedom on the Underground Railroad, and he would go as far as threatening to blow the house up instead of cooperating with slave catchers, saying "Go in peace, or go in pieces!" After Lewis Hayden's death, his wife Harriet endowed a scholarship for African American students at Harvard Medical School, the only endowment contribution to a university made by a formerly enslaved person.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/014
Boston in the 1600s was a theocracy, where the Puritan church ruled, and women were seen in many ways as the property of their husbands or fathers. Against that backdrop, a woman named Katherine Nanny Naylor stands out. She was able to win a divorce against her abusive and unfaithful husband, then spent the next 30 years as an entrepreneur. She provided herself and her family with a prosperous lifestyle, while living her life independently. In honor of the Boston Women's March, listen to this week’s episode, and celebrate Boston’s original nasty woman!
Show notes: HUBhistory.com/013
Welcome to part two of our inauguration special. On August 22, 1927, Bartolomeo Sacco and Nicola Vanzetti were executed in the electric chair at Boston's Charlestown State Prison. They were foreigners, accused of murder and ties to a shadowy terrorist group. Yet there were worldwide protests, and their funeral was one of the largest ever seen in Boston, with as many as 200,000 Bostonians in attendance. On the fiftieth anniversary of their deaths, Governor Dukakis officially cleared their names and declared a day of remembrance for them. How did these men go from hated foreign enemies to victims of a politicized justice system? Find out in this week's episode!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/012
Welcome to part one of our inauguration special. On a hot summer’s night in 1834, rumors swirled around a Catholic girls’ school in Charlestown. Catholicism was a frightening, unfamiliar religion, and Catholic immigrants were viewed with great suspicion. People said that the nuns were being held in slavery, or that Protestant children were being tortured and forcibly converted. A crowd gathered, and violence flared. When the sun rose the next morning, the Ursuline Convent lay in smoking ruins. Thirteen men were tried, but none served time. What deep seated biases led Yankee Boston down this dark road? Listen to this week’s episode to find out!
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/011/
In August of 1801, a young man named Jason Fairbanks showed up on his sweetheart's doorstep. He was covered in blood, and telling the story of a suicide pact gone wrong. This tale of a rich kid gone astray could be ripped from the today's tabloid headlines. Fairbanks and his presumed sweetheart Eliza Fales were the center of a sensational trial, a daring escape from jail, and a manhunt that stretched to the Canadian border. Does this story of star crossed lovers have a happy ending? Listen to this week's show to find out!
Show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/010
There is a long history of shipwrecks in Boston Harbor. Many are terrifying, some are tragic. But one shipwreck is such an oddity that Boston hasn't stopped talking about it for the past 75 years. When a freighter called The City of Salisbury steamed into Boston Harbor in 1938, it was loaded with exotic, tropical zoo animals. When it ran aground near Graves Light, you'll never guess what happened next!
Show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/009
Life got in the way this week, and we didn't have a chance to prepare a full episode. We're going to do a miniature episode (minisode!), on this week’s historical anniversaries, with a quick discussion of Christmas in Puritan Boston. Enjoy!
Show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/008
In 1901, a woman named Jane Toppan was arrested on Cape Cod for murder. By the time she went on trial, she had confessed to killing 31 people in Boston, Cambridge, on the Cape, and around the region, and she’s suspected of killing 100 or more. From a tragic childhood, she grew up to be a nurse. She tortured and murdered her patients in dark experiments, while being praised for her caring bedside manner. Before she was caught, she had graduated to killing entire families. Learn about the life and crimes of Jane Toppan, Nightmare Nurse in this week’s show.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/007
Early one April morning, Boston rose up in revolt, overthrowing the widely hated royal governor. A provincial militia surrounded the city, while the Royal Navy backed British authorities. But this wasn't Lexington or Concord. This was the 1689 revolt against Governor Edmund Andros, 86 years to the day before Paul Revere's ride. Listen to this week's episode to learn more!
Show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/006
At the end of World War II, the Allied powers raced across Germany, competing to capture technology related to Nazi super-weapons and the scientists who developed them. The US military operated a secret program that located high-value scientists, smuggling them into the US and falsifying their wartime records. For many of the scientists who went on to work on the Manhattan Project or the space race, their first stop in America was a secret base in Boston Harbor.
Show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/005
Happy Thanksgiving everybody! This week, we’re doing a mini-sode (miniature episode, get it?) on this week’s historical anniversaries, with a quick discussion of Boston’s first Thanksgiving. Enjoy!
Show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/004
When an industrial tank collapsed in Boston’s North End in 1919, a wave of molasses destroyed the surrounding neighborhood. 21 people were killed and at least 150 were injured, along with an untold number of horses. This tragedy is made all the worse by the fact that it was entirely preventable. Find out more in this week’s episode!
Show notes at http://HUBhistory.com/003
When smallpox threatened Boston in 1721, Cotton Mather was a leading advocate of inoculation. How did this influential Puritan, best known for his role in the Salem witch trials, become an advocate for scientific medicine? Listen to this week’s episode to find out!
Show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/002
How did early Boston “celebrate” on November 5th each year? By drinking, brawling, and burning effigies of the Pope, of course. That story, and all the important historic anniversaries for October 31 to November 6 in our debut episode.
Show notes at http://HUBhistory.com/001
Welcome to HUB History! We can't wait to share our favorite stories from Boston's long history. The first episode will air on October 30. In the meantime, visit http://HUBhistory.com/ to subscribe.