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The Mysterious 1644 Portrait of Roger Williams

A portrait of Roger Williams is easy to sketch in words: Baptist minister banished from Massachusetts, founding father of Rhode Island and champion of religious freedom. His achievements are literally woven into the fabric of early America.

The 1644 portrait of Roger Williams

Williams accumulated many admirers for his relations with native Americans, his views on religious freedom and his political leadership, which helped to create Rhode Island. But establishing a memorial for Williams proved difficult because once he died in 1683, there were no likenesses of him. For there was no portrait of Roger Williams – at least that’s what people thought.

He had come to America as a rabble-rousing, English minister who decried corruption in the Church of England. He soon rubbed the residents of Massachusetts the wrong way and was banished to Rhode Island where he studied the language of the local Indians and purchased land from them.

In 1644 he returned briefly to England to win a charter for the Providence Plantations and managed to again infuriate conservative English politicians by publishing a pamphlet calling for religious toleration and separation of church and state.

Back in Rhode Island, Williams turned his efforts to building a baptist church in America and stabilizing Rhode Island. Following his death in 1683, Williams’ house sank into ruin and his grave was lost track of.

More than 100 years later, Williams reputation underwent a revival and his writings and philosophy gained renewed respect as people began appreciating his impact. But connections to Williams, beyond his writings, were few. Images of Williams were created, but their authenticity was never established.

In 1844, Daniel Jones published an article about Williams in a Welsh-language journal, and along with it he published a print he said was a likeness of Williams. Thus a legend was born: While in England in 1644 Roger Williams had had a portrait painted of himself. Following the turmoil of the English Revolution, the portrait had made its way to America, along with other belongings of the Duke of York, and been auctioned in New York.

Daniel Jones had purchased the painting, or so he believed. As Rhode Islanders sought to create a proper memorial for Williams, a letter was sent to the Providence Journal offering to give the painting along with a donation of $500 to any group that would also put up $500 to create a memorial to Roger Williams.

Jones motive was probably not to deceive. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Roger Williams’ beliefs, most likely because he believed Williams had a Welsh heritage like his own. Though his claims about the portrait were invariably questioned, it made it into a number of books about Roger Williams.

Whatever the reason, Rhode Island historian Sidney Rider undertook an inquiry to examine the facts. Could the portrait be real?

Eventually, Rider and others concluded the painting was not authentic. The portrait undoubtedly celebrated Williams’ life; it showed him seated with the Rhode Island charter and had his books in the background. But a number of problems with the painting – including misspelling in one of the titles of his books – led them to conclude the painting was not authentic.

The painting was perhaps, some conjectured, a poor portrait of Benjamin Franklin that had been augmented with the background designed to make it look like a painting of Roger Williams.

Nevertheless, reprints of the painting made their way into numerous books about Roger Williams’ life and achievements. Sculptors have also made likenesses of Williams in numerous locations, including Salem, Mass. and in the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. But to the best of anyone’s knowledge his features were never documented.

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Captain Gideon Olmsted Fights the American Revolution – For 30 Years

Gideon Olmsted, a Connecticut sea captain, departed Hartford and put to sea in December 1777 with a cargo of horses, onions, tobacco, barrel hoops and bricks. He sailed his ship, the Seaflower, to Guadaloupe. There he off-loaded his wares and took on a cargo of molasses, coffee, tea and salt. But on his return trip to Connecticut, in April of 1778, the British warship Weir seized the Seaflower.

Gideon Olmsted as an old man

The capture of Olmsted’s vessel would lead to bloody battles at sea, near-civil war in Pennsylvania, a 32-year legal fight and the publication of a long-lost journal by Olmsted’s great nephew, Frederick Law Olmsted.

It also resulted in a landmark legal victory that established the authority of the Constitution of the United States.

Gideon Olmsted

He was born on Feb. 12, 1749, in East Hartford. His ancestors had arrived with the dissident Puritans led by Thomas Hooker. Olmsted grew up on his father’s farm, but he found the ships plying Hartford’s crowded waterfront more interesting than agriculture.

He shipped out to sea at age 20 as an apprentice seaman. For the next five years he sailed merchant ships between the West Indies and Connecticut. Then soon after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, he and his brothers joined the 50-man East Hartford militia and marched to Boston. When the British evacuated, he went home and started looking for a ship.

In July 1776, he bought a one-third share in the Seaflower, a 75-ton sloop. But that’s all he and his partner could afford. The Seaflower, with no cannon, made an easy target.

The Continental sloop Providence.

Prisoner and Privateer

After the British seized Seaflower, they held Olmsted and his crew on board ships and took them to Jamaica. After a short stay in a jail, Olmsted was released at liberty. His captors had taken all his valuables and left him with only the clothes on his back.

Interior of a British prison ship

He signed onto a privateer, the 200-ton Polly, as captain. Four days after setting sail from Port-au-Prince, he encountered the Royal Navy’s Ostrich, a vessel closely matched in size, cannon and crew. After a battle in which Olmsted lost half his men, he prevailed. But just as he was about to take Ostrich as a prize, another British warship sailed into view and opened fire.

Once again, Olmsted found himself in a British dungeon in Montego Bay. It was not a good place to be, as more American soldiers died in British prisons than in battle during the revolutionary war.

Montego Bay around 1820

Impressed Into Service

In August 1778 Olmsted was put aboard the British merchant vessel Active, along with three other prisoners. The British had learned that Olmsted had often navigated the dangerous waters off the Bahamas and thought he could prove useful.

They set sail for New York from Haiti under Capt. John Underwood in a convoy bringing supplies to loyalists and British troops. The Active had the protection of a 20-gun British vessel, Glasgow, and two warships. Also in the convoy was the Seaflower, sailing for New York under its new British captain.

The Active made its way up the Atlantic Coast, approaching the Virginia shore. A friendly British privateer with 16 guns pulled alongside the Active with a dire warning. The British had left Philadelphia and the waters around the city teemed with American privateers.

Captain Underwood of the Active adjusted his course to sail well east of the coast, working north off New Jersey. Another British ship pulled alongside the Active. Its captain had more bad news. All along New Jersey, the American privateers had control of the waters.

If the Active saw any sail at all, the captain could be certain it was an unfriendly privateer because the British had blocked any vessels from leaving New York harbor. Further, he warned, an encounter with a British warship would prove equally unfriendly. The British were capturing any seamen they found and pressing them into service aboard British vessels.

Line engraving depicting the Active hove to with a fishing vessel port side of its bow. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England.

Victory for Gideon Olmsted

The captain of the Active adjusted course once again. He would try to reach Long Island. On deck, he mounted two small guns that he would use if small boats tried harassing him. Musket shot was brought to the deck to be ready for any fight.

Knowing they sailed in friendly waters, Olmsted and his fellow American crew members hatched a plan. The following night, as the watch changed over at midnight, the Americans put their plan in action to capture the Active. They tightly secured the companionway, sealing the captain inside. The men had assumed that there were no usable weapons below deck. They were wrong.

A standoff followed. The captain and remaining crew fired from below deck attempting to kill Olmsted and his men. They also jammed the vessel’s rudder, restricting the ship’s movements. Captain Underwood threatened to blow up the ship’s gunpowder and send everyone to the bottom. “Do it and be damned,” shouted Olmsted.

Olmsted and his men, meanwhile, worked to seal off the cabin completely. The British melted spoons for shot, and the captain kept up his firing. Olmsted was hit in the leg. Finally, Olmsted’s men fired grapeshot with one of the small cannon into the cabin. That brought the fighting to an end. The ship’s captain agreed to cease hostilities and freed up the rudder, with promises from Olmsted to harm no one.

With that, Olmsted set course for Egg Harbor, N.J. But before he could bring the ship in, it was waylaid by an American privateer, the Convention, from Pennsylvania. Olmsted tried to convince the captain of the Convention that he should pursue the Seaflower and her rich cargo, bound for New York.

Philadelphia Bound

But the Pennsylvania captain had other plans. The Active, he said, was now his prize because Olmsted was acting without commission and thus could not legally seize the vessel. Unswayed by any arguments, the Convention led the Active toward Philadelphia.

As soon as he got off the ship, Olmsted sought out Benedict Arnold, American military commander at Philadelphia. He then explained to Arnold, a fellow Connecticut sailor, what had happened. Arnold assured Olmsted that he should have the Active as his prize, because he was acted under orders of the Continental Congress.

Benedict Arnold

The Philadelphia Court of Admiralty didn’t agree with Arnold’s interpretation. The court ordered that the proceeds from the sale of the Active should be divided. Olmsted and his fellow crew members would receive one quarter of the money. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the owners of the Convention, and another vessel that was sailing in support of the Convention, would divide the remainder.

Olmsted and his compatriots were due roughly $24,000. A healthy sum. But Olmsted rejected the offer and appealed to the Congress itself for justice. Congress did, in fact, side with Olmsted. But it would take 30 more years before he received his money.

The Nearly Endless Court Battle

Pennsylvania argued that Congress did not have authority to overrule a state court. Congress, meanwhile, needed Pennsylvania’s support for the Revolutionary War. It was reluctant to press the point.

Olmsted pursued his prize for decades. Finally, in 1809, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Olmsted’s favor. The landmark ruling established the supremacy of federal courts. The win, though, was somewhat of a pyrrhic victory. By the time Olmsted received payment, he was 84 and the value of the Active was adjudged to be just $27,000 in total. Deducting his legal fees, Olmsted made little for the capture of the Active.

John Marshall by Henry Inman

The case, however, was a victory for the U.S. Supreme Court over the state courts. Chief Justice John Marshall read the opinion.

If the legislature of the several states may at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the Constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery, and the nation is deprived of the means of enforcing its laws by the instrumentality of its own tribunals.

By then, the claimant who held Olmsted’s share had died, and his two daughters named executrixes of his estate. The high court ordered them to give Gideon Olmsted his money. The governor of Pennsylvania then called out the militia to prevent the court order from being carried out.

In March of 1809, the federal marshal, John Smith, tried to serve the women. He met the militia’s resistance at their house. So he went back and assembled a posse of 2,000 men. After broadcasting the incorrect date on which he intended to serve them again, he and his men sneaked past the militia and arrested the two women. The Pennsylvania Legislature then caved and ordered the militia back home.

Gideon Olmsted Rediscovered

After the Civil War, Supreme Court Justice Stanley Matthews gave an address to Yale Law School in which he explained the importance of the Olmsted case. “This appears to have been the first case in which the supremacy of the Constitution was enforced by judicial tribunals against the assertion of state authority,” he said.

Gideon Olmsted by then had faded into obscurity — until the discovery of his journal in his great-nephew’s papers. The Library of Congress published his journal in 1979.

Thanks to: The Journal of Gideon Olmsted. Also Treacy, Kenneth W. “The Olmstead Case, 1778-1809.” The Western Political Quarterly 10, no. 3 (1957): 675–91. https://doi.org/10.2307/443540. And A Privateer’s Tale: From Cannon Fire To Courtroom by Edmund H. Mahony, Hartford Courant, May 30, 2014.

Image of Continental sloop By U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph. Painting in oils by W. Nowland Van Powell – Naval Historical Center Photo # NH 85201-KN (color), CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9103147.

This story last updated in 2022.

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New England’s Yellow Day of 1881 Stokes Fears of Doom

On Sept. 7, 1881, Boston’s temperature hit 102 degrees, but New Englanders breathed a sigh of relief because the latest yellow day had cleared.

On a yellow day, as the name suggested, everything seemed to turn yellow.

A store in Boston during the 1880s

On September 6, a heavy, burnt yellow mist had covered New England and beyond, from Millinocket, Maine, south to Virginia and west to Chicago. It made blue flowers look bronze, silenced street vendors, forced farmers to stop work and made Second Adventists don their ascension robes for their trip to heaven.

It was twilight at noon – just like the Dark Day a century ago.

Dark Days

Yellow days, also known as dark days, seemed to happen more frequently in New England than any place else in the world.

Fred Gordon Plummer reached that conclusion in Forest fires: their causes, extent, and effects, with a summary of recorded destruction and loss, a U. S. Forest Service book published in 1915. He reasoned that storm centers and air currents converge over the region. When the great forest fires broke out in the northern United States, winds carried the smoke to New England.

Usually they begin with a gradually increasing gloom until artificial light is necessary. They may last from a half hour to several days.

Most dark days should more properly be called ‘yellow days,’ wrote Plummer, and even the Dark Day of 1780 was preceded by a gradually increasing yellowness and an odor.

The region’s first recorded yellow day occurred on May 12, 1706. Then followed:

Oct. 21, 1716 (11 am-11:30 am)
Aug. 9 1732
May 19, 1780
July 3, 1814
Nov. 6-10, 1819
July 8, 1836
Sept. 2, 1894
Sept 24-30, 1950.

Dark Day of 1780

The Dark Day of 1780 was the most famous of the yellow days. The skies darkened shortly after dawn, inspiring terror, panic and puzzlement. George Washington, fighting the American Revolution, noted in his diary, ‘Heavy & uncommon kind of Clouds–dark & at the same time a bright and reddish kind of light intermixed with them.’

The Dark Day of 1780, detail from mural painted by Works Progress Administration artist Delos Palmer in Stamford, Conn., Old Town Hall.

They have other names: dry fogs, Indian summers and colored rains.

The Yellow Day

A tremendous forest fire in Michigan’s thumb-shaped peninsula caused the Yellow Day of 1881. It burned about a million acres, killed 282 people and destroyed 20 villages. It sent smoke, soot and ash eastward high into the air.

An hour after dawn on the Yellow Day in 1881, “the moist air, saturated with smoke and perfectly still, seemed to thicken into a heavy screen of mist, that hung low and was of a strange yellow hue,” according to Harper’s Magazine.

Boston’s Equitable Building on Milk Street. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

The Yellow Day created strange, even lurid, atmospheric effects. Lights flashed and gleamed with dazzling brightness and distinctive whiteness, reported the Boston Globe.

In the Public Garden, “Flowers of pink turned pure white, and the scene blue of the lobelia became a deep bronze, while flowers of yellow became pearly in their whiteness.”

Quiet descended on city streets: The girls who sold peanuts stopped selling their wares, the fruit vendors stood stock still next to heaps of peaches and newsboys subdued their shouts.

Out in the country, farm work stopped, hens went to roost and the cattle stopped feeding. Factories closed for the day and teachers in Fall River and Lowell sent children home from school because it was so hard to read and write.

The Yellow Day kept all spectators away from a baseball game between the Bostons and the Worcesters. Instead, throngs of Bostonians rushed to the high roof of the Equitable Building to observe the Yellow Day.

In mid-afternoon, railroad men left depots carrying lanterns, and early afternoon trains lit their lamps. “Nine persons out of ten would have declared that it was evening when it was but 2 O’Clock,” reported the Globe.

End of the World?

A 16^th-century English soothsayer named Mother Shipton stoked fears that the Yellow Day meant the end of the world. She had supposedly made prophesies that first appeared in a book in 1641, 80 years after she died. A later edition contained the famous prediction,

The world to an end shall come
In eighteen hundred and eighty one.

Groups of Second Adventists believed the end was coming on the Yellow Day. They wore their ascension robes to local schoolhouses in Worcester, Woonsocket and Hartford to await the world’s end.

A rural deacon believed the end of the world was near, according to Harpers.

His neighbor said, “You allus said you wanted to be in heaven, and I guess you’ll be there before dinner. You ought to be happy, anyway.”

The deacon had no such luck. The air began to clear by 5 pm, and stars twinkled in the sky three house later.

This story about the Yellow Day of 1881 was updated in 2023.

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The Dover Mill Girls Walk Out in America’s 1st Women’s Strike

When Dover mill girls went on strike against the Cocheco Manufacturing Co., they said their bosses secretly ‘abused and insulted’ them by calling them ‘slaves.’

19th-century mill girls

It was 1828, and women had never organized and walked off the job before in New Hampshire. It was the first all-women strike in the United States. Four years earlier, women had led a widespread textile workers’ strike in Pawtucket, R.I.

The Dover mill girls viewed their cause in the spirit of the American Revolution. They marched to martial music outside the mill and fired artillery.

But they faced a tougher opponent than the British military: Boston bosses with a financial investment to protect.

Cocheco Manufacturing Co.

Manufacturing textiles by machine was relatively new when the Dover mill girls stopped work. Sam Slater’s water-powered cotton spinning mill, the country’s first, had only started running 35 years earlier in Pawtucket, R.I. The Waltham, Mass., mills began weaving and printing cotton cloth in 1813. And the giant Lowell mill complex was a mere six years old, having been opened by a group of Boston money men called the Boston Associates.

The Cocheco Millyard today

In New Hampshire, the Cocheco Manufacturing Company started out in 1812 as the Dover Cotton Company. It used waterpower from the Cochecho River to make cloth. The company thrived and expanded, shipping cotton cloth down the river to international ports. It attracted so many workers Dover’s population nearly doubled over a decade to more than 5,000 in 1830.

The company’s owners bought more land, built more mills and replaced the wooden blocks to print cloth with rolling cylinders.

But they needed financial help to expand. They got it from the Boston Associates.

The new printworks turned out to drain the Boston Associates finances. So they spun it off to the Boston investors as the Cocheco Manufacturing Company in 1827.

The new owners decided its employees made too much money.

Dover Mill Girls

In 1822, the textile mill had run a Help Wanted ad for smart, capable girls ‘between 12 and 25 years old,’ promising ‘constant employment and good encouragement.’

A 12-year-old mill girl. Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.

The Dover mill girls, mostly from farms in New Hampshire and southern Maine, earned 47 cents a day plus room and board. Two cents were taken from their paychecks for medical insurance. They needed it. The girls worked with only one break from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. They breathed noxious fumes and worked with noisy, dangerous machinery that mangled fingers and limbs.

Managers forbade the girls from talking to each other during the 11-hour day. They were paid in scrip and required to shop in the company store, which raised prices higher than other shops. Most lived in boardinghouses supervised by a widow, who enforced strict rules of behavior.

At the end of 1828, the Boston owners of the Cocheco Manufacturing Company lowered the wages of the 800 Dover mill girls by five cents a day and speeded up their work. Male millworkers and managers received no such pay cut.

Indignant, 600 of the Dover mill girls met that weekend to formulate a three-part resolution:

They would never agree to work for the lower wage. They believed the new owners had artfully manipulated the situation at the mill to promote their own wicked ends. Finally, they were far from home and they weren’t paid enough.

In a rhetorical flourish, the Dover mill girls concluded the owners’ aim was to turn them into slaves.

The Dover Mill Girl Strike

On the day after Christmas in 1828, about 600 of the Dover mill girls marched out of the factory yard, declaring war on the mill owners. They formed a half-mile procession and marched around the mill waving signs and banners, playing martial music and setting off artillery. They then marched through town.

The local newspaper, as is so often the case, sided with management. The Dover mill girls had walked out ‘over some imaginary grievance,’ the Dover Enquirer reported, and presented “one of the most disgusting scenes ever witnessed.”

The Dover mill girls underestimated management. The next day, the company ran a Help Wanted ad for several hundred scabs to break the strike.

By Tuesday, most of the Dover mill girls went back to work, except for the strike leaders who the company had blacklisted.

Though the strike failed, women like Harriet Hanson Robinson and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn would lead many more: in Lowell and Lawrence, in Bridgeport, New Haven and throughout New England.

Many would fail. But some would succeed in raising pay and improving working conditions.

Cocheco Mill: By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33639649. This story was updated in 2022.

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16 Fun Facts About Noah Webster, the Dictionary Writer Who Was Slightly Nuts

Noah Webster was an odd duck, a famously fussy lexicographer who not only Americanized the English language but created the idea of American patriotism.

He wrote the first real American dictionary, called, appropriately, An American Dictionary of the English Language, which took him 28 years to finish. His goal: to standardize American speech.

Noah Webster by James Herring.

He couldn’t afford law school after he graduated from Yale in 1778, so he taught schoolchildren. His students used books published in England, sometimes pledging allegiance to King George III. They didn’t learn American geography or American history. Noah Webster decided to change all that.

Noah Webster also advised Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, co-founded Amherst College, started America’s first daily newspaper and pushed Congress to pass copyright laws.

He was quirky and odd, thought highly of himself and didn’t always get along with people. But the qualities that made him annoying also made Noah Webster a Founding Father.

Noah Webster in 16 Takes

He personally counted all the houses in every town he visited. Traveling across America in 1785 and 1786, he tallied 20,380 houses in 22 cities. Webster exchanged that information with other people who counted houses.
He had the cheek to chastise George Washington over dinner at Mount Vernon in 1785. Washington mentioned he wanted a Scottish tutor for his step-grandchildren. Webster, then all of 26, told the 53-year-old hero of the Revolution that he should find an American for the job.
A lot of people didn’t like him because of his vanity. When he met Dr. Benjamin Rush at a dinner party in Philadelphia, Rush congratulated Webster on his safe arrival in the city. Webster replied, “Sir, you may congratulate Philadelphia on the occasion.” (Eventually, Rush and Webster became friends.)
George Washington by Gilbert Stuart

Dumped
He was dumped twice, the first time by a woman who found him too boring, the second time by a woman whose minister told her to marry someone else. Rebecca Greenleaf finally said ‘yes’ to his marriage proposal. “I suspect I am not formed for society,” he wrote to her before their marriage.
He probably had obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (see No. 1), often mentioning in his diary his ‘depression,’ ‘anxiety’ and ‘nervous affectations.’ He wrote his famous Blue-Backed Speller and later his dictionaries as a form of therapy.
Webster hated Shakespeare, complaining his language was ‘full of errors.’
He was often broke and in debt, though his wife was rich, his speller sold nearly 100 million copies and he landed America’s first blockbuster book deal, $42,000 over 14 years. He borrowed $1,500 from Alexander Hamilton so he could move to New York and start the country’s first daily newspaper, American Minerva.
Webster wrote the first American dictionary in 1806, A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language. Critics complained it had too many vulgar words. He replied he took out two-thirds of the vulgar words in Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, leaving out arse, bum, fart and turd. He did keep piss, boghouse, buggery, sodomy and catamite.

Such a Deal

9. Noah Webster got a good deal on a mansion in New Haven because Benedict Arnold had lived in it. (It cost him only $2,666.66.)

10. Like his friend Benjamin Franklin, Noah Webster wanted to reform American spelling. Unlike Franklin, he succeeded, at least in part. He took out excess letters, like the ‘u’ in colour and honour, the extra ‘l’ in traveler, the ‘e’ on ax and the ‘ough’ in plow. He also reversed the ‘re’ in theater and center. Some of his changes didn’t make it, like bred for bread, wimmen for women, tung for tongue and dawter for daughter.

11. When he turned 20, his father gave him a nearly worthless $8 bill, and told him he was on his own.

12. It took him 28 years to complete his magnum opus, An American Dictionary of the English Language. It included 70,000 words, and one in every six words had never been listed in a dictionary before. They included emerging Americanisms like squash, applesauce, hickory, chowder and skunk, as well as words of his own invention: afterwise (wise afterwards or too late); vernate (become young again); zuffalo (a little flute… especially that which is used to teach birds.)

Emily Dickinson

Noah Webster, Pious Blowhard

13. To write his dictionary, he learned 26 languages, including Old English, German, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Hebrew, Arabic and Sanskrit.

14. He founded Amherst College with Emily Dickinson’s grandfather, and Emily went to school with Noah Webster’s grandfdaughter. She later wrote that her lexicon (Webster’s dictionary) was her only companion.

15. He was an 18th century sock puppet who anonymously praised his own work and trashed his critics. The phrase ‘sock puppet,’ meaning ‘false online identity,’ made it into Merriam-Webster in 2009.

16. Though his blue-backed speller had no religious content, Noah Webster had a religious experience at age 40 and became a pious blowhard. As he was about to turn 80, he declared that he would rather be a bear and hibernate in winter than “be under the tyranny of our degenerate rulers.” He described Americans as “a degenerate and wicked people.”

This story about Noah Webster was updated in 2023.

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Six Indian Trails That Turned Into Scenic Highways and Byways

The Indian trails that crisscrossed New England go back to prehistoric times.

Native Americans migrated from summer to winter homes along the paths, often worn bare by centuries of travel. They used the trails for hunting, trading and making war.

When the English colonists arrived, they owed a debt of gratitude for the Indian trails, wrote Chester B. Price in his book, Historic Indian Trails of New Hampshire.

“[T]hanks to the Indians, the early New Englanders inherited a vast network of trails which not only covered the New England states, but extended as far west as the Rocky Mountains,” Price wrote.

The Mohawk Trail and Kennebec Trail were two of the most famous Indian trails in New England. During the American Revolution, they were used for military maneuvers. Benedict Arnold followed both, the Kennebec Trail to his regret and the Mohawk Trail to his satisfaction – he captured Fort Ticonderoga at the end of it.

We identified six scenic driving routes that follow old Indian trails, at least one in each state. Some have been researched more thoroughly than others. If you know of scenic old Indian trails that can be driven today, please share them in the comments section.

The Old Connecticut Path

The Oliver Ellsworth House lies near one of Connecticut’s Indian trails.

The Old Connecticut Path was one of the most important Indian trails, stretching from Massachusetts Bay to the Connecticut River. In the early 1630s Nipmuck Indians loaded their surplus corn onto birch-bark backpacks and walked from the Connecticut River to Massachusetts Bay. There they traded their corn for copper and iron goods and woolen cloth.

John Oldham, whose death started the Pequot War, followed the Old Connecticut Path to explore the continent’s interior in 1633.

In 1636, the Rev. Thomas Hooker spent two weeks on the Old Connecticut Path with his followers to Hartford.

The Rev. John Wareham also led his congregation along the Old Connecticut Path to Windsor, Conn. John Adams followed that route from Tolland to Windsor in 1771. “Today I rode through paradise,” Adams wrote.

There is no consensus the exact location of the Old Connecticut Path from beginning to end, though genealogical researchers are working on it.

They concluded Adams took a part of the path that goes from the Tolland Green Historic District through the towns of Ellington, East Windsor and South Windsor. Then he went on to the Palisado Green in Windsor.

Generally, the Old Connecticut Path went through Massachusetts heading west along the Charles River in Cambridge, curved south in Wayland through Framingham, to Webster and to Lake Chaubunagungamaug. In Connecticut it continued to Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor.

Today you can download apps that guide driving tours along parts of the Old Connecticut Path in Northeast Connecticut. You can follow John Adams’ route, or you can take other routes that go from Webster, Mass., to Tolland or Woodstock in Connecticut. Another Connecticut route goes from Woodstock to the Willimantic River. (Click here for more information about driving tours.)

Waldoboro Mast Trail (Route 220)

Downtown Waldoboro, which hasn’t changed much since this postcard was published, lies at the end of one of Maine’s old Indian trails.

Maine’s Indians used a vast network of canoe trails to get around, and to reach them they used a series of Indian trails from the interior to the coast. Carrying places, or portages, gave Maine tribes mobility throughout the region. It also let them trade extensively with each other and later with Europeans.

Indian paths from inland Maine to the coast also gave the Native Americans access to fur, birch bark and moose hide. One such path is known as the Waldoboro Mast Trail, which now follows Route 220 from Montville to Waldoboro. It was the most direct route from Lake St. George to the shellfish beds of the seacoast.

Wawenoc Indian families migrated along the path from the seasonal hunting camp to the seasonal fishing camp. They hunted for moose and beaver in the winter and brought their fur as trade goods to the coast using snowshoes, sledges and toboggans.

English settlers found the trail a convenient route to carry masts and spars for hundreds of the King’s ships built in Waldoboro.

Today Route 220 winds through rural Maine from Montville, which has several historic properties and the Frye Mountain Wildlife Management Area. It passes through the scenic towns of Liberty, home of Lake George and the Davistown Museum, and Washington. Travelers know Waldoboro for its commercial clutter on Route 1, which includes the popular eatery Moody’s Diner. The town itself has five nature preserves, a traditional downtown and eight sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

For a map of Route 220, click here.

Mohawk Trail

The Mohawk Trail.

The Mohawk Trail, one of the most famous Indian trails, today is one of the most beautiful drives in Massachusetts. Originally a trade route, it connected the Atlantic Indian tribes with the Iroquois tribes in Upstate New York and Canada.

The trail became a warpath when Mohawk war parties traveled it to destroy Pocumtuck settlements. Metacomet, or King Philip, took the Mohawk trail in 1676 to try to enlist the Mohawks in his cause (he failed). Benedict Arnold then took the Mohawk Trail on his way to capture Fort Ticonderoga.

In 1914, the Massachusetts General Court declared the 63-mile Mohawk Trail a scenic tourist route – the first in the United States.

Today Routes 2 and 2A follow the Mohawk Trail in Massachusetts from Athol to Williamstown. Boosters claim 100 scenic and culture attractions, including the Hail to the Sunrise statue, the Bridge of Flowers, a natural bridge, glacial potholes, pre-revolutionary homes in Old Deerfield, old growth forests and views of the Berkshire and Taconic Mountains.

Highway markers designate the trail. Click here for Mohawk Trail driving tours.

Winnicoek Trail

A seaside estate at Little Boar’s Head along one of New Hampshire’s many old Indian trails.

The Winnicoek Trail ran along the coast from the Merrimack River in Massachusetts through Winnicoek, now Hampton, and along the seashore to the Piscataqua River at Strawbery Banke, now Portsmouth.

The Pennacook and Abenaki Indians migrated along the path in the summer to what is now Odiorne Point. It’s a wooded park along the shoreline with sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean and the Town of New Castle.

When the English colonists arrived in 1635, they used the Winnicoek Trail as a bridle path. Today it’s scenic Route 1A, also known as Ocean Boulevard, running along New Hampshire’s 18-mile shoreline.

Ocean Boulevard passes the wide, sandy beaches in Salisbury, Mass., and Hampton, N.H., then climbs a rocky promontory. Seaside estates begin at the Little Boar’s Head historic district and continue through Rye. Take a detour along Route 1B to wind through the quaint town of New Castle and past the grand old Wentworth-By-The-Sea Hotel. Route 1A finally ends in Portsmouth, a historic seaside city with many fine restaurants and Federal style homes.

Click here for a map of Route 1A.

Pequot Path

Route 1A turns into Ocean Road and the Narragansett Pier.

For hundreds of years, Narragansett and Pequot Indians traveled along the Pequot Path. It ran about 69 miles near the mainland shore from Providence to New London, Conn.

In 1636, Roger Williams took the Pequot path through Apponaug (Warwick) on his journey from Providence to the trading post at Cocumscussoc (near Wickford). “It is admirable to see what paths their naked hardened feet have made in the wilderness in the most stony and rockie places,” he wrote. Williams probably saw a dozen Narragansett villages along 20 miles of the path.

English settlers began using the Pequot Path until it evolved into the lower part of the Boston Post Road. Today, parts of scenic Route 1A (not to be confused with US Route 1A) follow the old Pequot path along the South Coast.

Scenic Route 1A follows the shore from Wickford to Narragansett, past the John H. Chafee Nature Preserve, a good spot to get out and walk to Narragansett Bay. Or, take a detour to the Gilbert Stuart Birthplace. The road passes large, exclusive homes, with views of the bay and the historic Casey Farm. FInally it feeds into Ocean Road past Town Beach to Narragansett Pier.

Click here to see how the Lower Post Road follows existing roads in Rhode Island.

Route 22A

Vergennes, a city that grew up along one of Vermont’s Indian trails.

Route 22A through the Lake Champlain Valley in Vermont was once part of a network of well-worn Indian trails linking villages and other overland trail networks. The western Abenakis of Vermont also used waterways such as the Connecticut River and Lakes Champlain and Memphremagog.

The St. Francis Indians came down from Canada along the trail by Lake Champlain to find warmer fishing grounds. The trail finally stretched to the Bronx, N.Y., where it became known as ‘the road to Bedford and Vermont.’ Today Vermont Route 22A is a continuation of New York Route 22A and a scenic drive in foliage season.

Route 22A goes from Ferrisburgh to historic Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. It then runs through Addison, Bridport, Shoreham, Orwell and Fair Haven on the New York border. Along the way lie the Chimney Point State Historic Site, dairy farms, rolling hills, white church steeples, and country inns.

Images: Old County Jail and Museum, Tolland, Conn. By Photograph by Greg O’Beirne – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1391441; Hail to the Sunrise, By This mediaToddC4176 (talk)Original workJoseph Pollia, 1893-1954. – self-made, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36285807; Bridge of Flowers By FFM784 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61250392; https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594; Little Boar’s Head By Teemu08 at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1798424; Narragansett Pier By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57432594.

This story about New England Indian trails was updated in 2023.

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