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New England Historical Society New England History

The Miracle of the Woonsocket Mill Order

The instant Henry Boucher walked into the weave room of the Woonsocket mill on a Friday morning in 1...
Jackie Robinson Buys A Home in Connecticut

Integrating Major League baseball was just one of the challenges facing Jackie Robinson, the Brookly...
How the New England State Names Came to Be

New England state names came from a variety of sources. The English, French, Italians and Native Am...
In Love With A Loyalist

William Tudor was in love with a loyalist, an awkward position for a rebel who would become the firs...
The Ageless Love Story of John and Abigail Adams

The enduring love story of John and Abigail Adams began with a whimper rather than a bang in 1762. ...
Dorothea Dix and Franklin Pierce: The Battle for the Mentally Ill

Before she led the Union Army nursing corps during the Civil War, New England’s Dorothea Dix led the...
Amelia Earhart, Reluctant Bride

Amelia Earhart handed an extraordinary letter to the man she was about to marry just hours before th...
Ona Judge Staines, the Fugitive Slave Who Outwitted George Washington

During George Washington’s final months as president, a 20-year-old slave named Ona Judge Staines sl...

Religion and Social Movements

Arts and Leisure

The Two Loves of Louisa May Alcott

11 hours ago 3 Comments

Before Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, she wrote a book about ...
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The Civil War Provenance of the Boston College Eagle

4 days ago 2 Comments
Teddy Roosevelt Humiliates Dr. Seuss

5 days ago 3 Comments

Business and Labor

Lucy Larcom Lets Her Thoughts Fly High

Lucy Larcom Lets Her Thoughts Fly High

1 day ago

Moxie, The Path to the Good Life

Moxie, The Path to the Good Life

2 days ago

Isaac Stephenson, Bullwhacker on the Aroostook

Isaac Stephenson, Bullwhacker on the Aroostook

3 days ago

The Miracle of the Woonsocket Mill Order

The Miracle of the Woonsocket Mill Order

4 days ago

Alvan Fuller Rode the Automobile Business to the Top

Alvan Fuller Rode the Automobile Business to the Top

7 days ago

The Colt Revolver Misfired Before it Became Legend

The Colt Revolver Misfired Before it Became Legend

10 days ago

The Revenge Drama of the First Ski Tow Rope

The Revenge Drama of the First Ski Tow Rope

11 days ago

Another Look at Hetty Green, The Witch of Wall Street

Another Look at Hetty Green, The Witch of Wall Street

11 days ago

The Boatload of Ginseng That Launched the China Trade

The Boatload of Ginseng That Launched the China Trade

12 days ago

The Great New England Shoemakers Strike of 1860

The Great New England Shoemakers Strike of 1860

12 days ago

February 1879 : The Deadliest Month for the Gloucester Fishing Fleet

February 1879 : The Deadliest Month for the Gloucester Fishing Fleet

15 days ago

The Texas-Size Story of William Marsh Rice

The Texas-Size Story of William Marsh Rice

16 days ago

Politics and Military

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New England Historical Society

March 6, 2014 at 2:45 pm

Before Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women, she wrote a book about a young girl named Sylvia in love with an intellectual like Ralph Waldo Emerson and a naturalist like Henry David Thoreau.

It was called Moods, and it wasn’t all that fictional.

Louisa May Alcott had an unrequited love for her schoolteacher Henry David Thoreau – and for her generous next-door neighbor, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
http://bit.ly/1f2kNvH

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New England Historical Society

March 6, 2014 at 7:47 am

In the 1830s, New Englanders were increasingly concerned that as Americans moved west they were leaving behind their values. That concern sparked a westward migration of missionaries and educators who would establish colleges that dot the American Midwest, such as Oberlin in Ohio and Olivet in Michigan. Progressive from the start, these schools welcomed women, men, black and white. They were seed beds for abolitionist thought and Christian values. This cartoon comes from a parody of a children’s primer in Olivet’s annual Olive Leaf of 1893. For more: http://bit.ly/1icM65g

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New England Historical Society

March 5, 2014 at 9:31 pm

Happy 190th birthday, Lucy Larcom!

Lucy went to work in the Lowell Mills when she was 11 years old. 'I defied the machinery to make me its slave,' she wrote. 'Its incessant discords could not drown the music of my thoughts if I would let them fly high enough.'

Lucy became a well-known poet and author of a book about her New England childhood. Read more:

http://bit.ly/1fIVREF

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New England Historical Society

March 5, 2014 at 7:11 am

At 6’6” tall, Long John Wentworth of Sandwich, N.H., would become the giant who conquered Chicago. Born in March of 1815 into the historic New Hampshire Wentworth family, he was a mountain of a man with unquenchable thirsts for wealth, power, and alcohol. After barely dodging expulsion from Dartmouth College, this son of bucolic Sandwich joined the tide of New Englanders headed west to Chicago to establish a new city. There, he rose to become a larger-than-life Chicago mayor, crusading against crime and corruption, agitating against slavery at every turn and making himself a millionaire. For more on Long John’s story, visit: http://bit.ly/Nv5yAE

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New England Historical Society

March 4, 2014 at 9:59 pm

Calvin Coolidge celebrated his inauguration with it. Ted Williams endorsed it. E.B. White said it was the path to the good life. Read more:
http://bit.ly/1hKtFWl

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New England Historical Society

March 4, 2014 at 7:37 am

Happy 185th birthday, Isaac Stephenson!

Nothing he ever accomplished gave him as much pure pleasure as breaking in three yoke of green oxen and hauling the biggest loads of pine logs to the Aroostook River.

Isaac Stephenson accomplished a great deal in his long life, accumulating a fortune and winning a U.S. Senate seat from Wisconsin. But it was his skill as an ox teamster in Aroostook County, Maine, that put him on the path to fame and fortune. Read more:

http://bit.ly/1cqkhsi

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New England Historical Society

March 3, 2014 at 4:45 pm

On this day in 1931, the Star-Spangled Banner became the national anthem. Sixteen years earlier, members of Congress were surprised to learn from an Irishman that the United States had no national anthem. Find out why: http://bit.ly/1gNx5Wu

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New England Historical Society

March 3, 2014 at 1:02 pm

Happy 138th birthday, Isabel Weld Perkins Anderson!

When she was 5 years old, she inherited $17 million from her grandfather. When she was 20, she toured Europe with Julia Ward Howe's daughter. She met her future husband, Larz Anderson, in Rome. Among their many legacies in Boston is Baldwin, the Boston College eagle that spreads its wings 30 feet above the campus. Read more:
http://bit.ly/OTxU8M

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New England Historical Society

March 3, 2014 at 7:11 am

The story of Henry Boucher was typical of the French-Canadians who originally came from Quebec to work in the Woonsocket textile mills. By 1939, the textile industry had been collapsing in Woonsocket for a decade. Henry and his wife had enjoyed a beef period of prosperity, but then came the layoffs, the evictions, the relief. The mills would revive with the approach of World War II, and so would Henry's fortunes. He told his story to a Mr. Guilfoyle for the Federal Writers' Project's American Life Series. You can read it here:
http://bit.ly/1cwD13M

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New England Historical Society

March 2, 2014 at 7:35 pm

Henry Bililngs Brown was born in Lee, Mass., on this day in 1836. He served as a federal judge for 31 years and was considered fair and honest. However, he is remembered for writing the majority opinion in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson case, which established the 'separate but equal' doctrine that justified Jim Crow laws. Read more:
http://bit.ly/1mYgSBM

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New England Historical Society

March 2, 2014 at 2:30 pm

Exactly 67 years ago today, New England's first modern shopping mall opened in Stamford, Conn. The Ridgeway Center was a harbinger of the changes that would take place in land use patterns, commercial activity and teenagers' pasttimes. Read about the evolution of New England shopping malls from that first venture in Stamford:
https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/four-new-england-malls-landmarks-changing-times/

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New England Historical Society

March 2, 2014 at 12:15 pm

Happy 110th birthday, Dr. Seuss!

Theodor Seuss Geisel's birthday is celebrated as National Read Across America day. He was born in Springfield, Mass., and never really left it though he spent much of his life in New York and California. Springfield themes and images appear in many of his books. And something that Theodore Roosevelt said in Springfield stayed with him forever. Read more:
http://bit.ly/MG8WYr

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New England Historical Society

March 1, 2014 at 5:31 pm

Ted Williams' 1954 season started off horribly. On the first day of spring training he broke his collarbone. Since he'd been a military pilot during the Korean War before returning to baseball in late 1953, you'd think the sportswriters would have been charitable. Read more:
http://bit.ly/1dNzcY6

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New England Historical Society

March 1, 2014 at 3:17 pm

Iceberg, the Guernsey bull calf born on Admiral Byrd's second polar expedition, is arguably the most celebrated of his breed. He can claim Cow Island in Lake Winnipesaukee as his ancestral home. So can nearly all the 3 million Guernseys in the US. Read more:

http://bit.ly/MEnWWJ

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New England Historical Society

February 28, 2014 at 9:53 pm

Frances Perkins was having tea with her friend, Mrs. Gordon Norris, in Washington Square, New York City, when they heard fire engines screaming by. As the sirens kept coming, she followed them, and what she saw changed her life.

Frances Perkins

A 10-story factory was engulfed in smoke... http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/frances-perkins-god-fdr-common-workingman/

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New England Historical Society

February 28, 2014 at 9:03 am

Would you buy a car from this man? Tens of thousands of people did. Alvan Tufts Fuller was born in 1878, and he began his working life as a teenager, selling and repairing bicycles first in Malden, Massachusetts and later Boston. By age 21, he was dividing his time between racing bicycles, as a way to generate business, and repair and sales. But a trip to Europe that year (1899) opened Fuller’s eyes to the potential of the automobile and he brought two back home with him (the first two autos imported in to Boston). He was soon hustling up business for the newborn automobile craze and selling vehicles in places like Boston’s Motor Mart. The historic garage you see today was in Fuller’s day a much smaller building, and Fuller soon realized that the future of the automobile was not in the center of the congested city. He set his sights on Brighton, and as he was going into business with the Packard Motor Co., Packard’s Corner seemed an aptly named destination (though it was not named for the car company.) People laughed at “Fuller’s Folly,” built way out in the swamps. But they weren’t laughing for long. Soon they were stampeding to follow in his footsteps as he was on his way to becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. For more: http://bit.ly/1hpfbf4

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New England Historical Society

February 27, 2014 at 10:37 pm

Happy 207th birthday, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow!

He was once young, though, and in love. Terribly in love with Fanny Appleton. Longfellow spent seven years walking across the West Boston Bridge to court a woman who rejected him. Read what finally happened:
http://bit.ly/1bQa3AI

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New England Historical Society

February 27, 2014 at 3:09 pm

Happy 112th birthday, John Steinbeck!

When he was 58, Steinbeck packed his poodle Charley into a custom-fitted camper and set out for Maine. His literary agent insisted he visited Deer Isle. Steinbeck got lost in the magic of the place -- and got plenty lost, too. Read more:
http://bit.ly/NzQFwN

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New England Historical Society

February 27, 2014 at 7:13 am

Had enough snow yet? Given the staggering Great Snow of 1717, it’s somewhat surprising that this question isn’t the official New England motto. That year, historians report that New England had probably the roughest winter it ever recorded. So much snow fell that year, capped off by a series of storms that started in late February, that the Puritans in Boston held no church services for two successive weeks, reported Cotton Mather. The events were so unusual that he and other contemporary diarists made note of how exceptionally harsh it was throughout New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut. More: http://bit.ly/1ln8Eov

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More History Highlights

The Two Loves of Louisa May Alcott

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John Shipherd, Philo Stewart: Bringinng Education and Religion to the West

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Lucy Larcom Lets Her Thoughts Fly High

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Long John Wentworth, The New Hampshire Giant Who Conquered Chicago

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Isaac Stephenson, Bullwhacker on the Aroostook

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An Irishman’s Quest for the U.S. National Anthem

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The Civil War Provenance of the Boston College Eagle

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Henry Billings Brown Gives Jim Crow the OK

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Teddy Roosevelt Humiliates Dr. Seuss

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Ted Williams Breaks His Collarbone

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Iceberg, The Well-Traveled Guernsey Cow

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