Thanksgiving Classics (episode 262)

Intro

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to hub history where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 262 thanksgiving classics.
Hi, I’m jake This week. I’m talking about my favorite holiday, thanksgiving.
I know that the simplistic story of the first thanksgiving that we all grew up with has fallen out of favor recently since it relegates the wampanoags to the silent background of a story about the,
english settlers who colonized their land, decimated their population with novel epidemics and soon declared an apocalyptic war on their descendants, enslaving the survivors.
I don’t really think of my thanksgiving celebration as descending from the Plymouth feast or from the many thanksgiving fast days that were held in early puritan boston.

[0:56] Instead, I think of the thanksgiving holiday George Washington declared in the first year of his presidency.
Giving thanks for the peace and plenty that the nation enjoyed under the new constitution and the civil and religious liberty that it guaranteed.
Or I think of Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation giving thanks in the midst of a bloody civil war for the sacrifices so many American families had made and looking forward to a near future when the wounds of a nation would be healed.

[1:24] I look at Thanksgiving is a time to gather with the family that I was born into and the family that I’ve chosen for myself over the years.
A time to cook. An enormous feast as I have for nearly 20 years now and a time to reflect on everything that I have to be thankful for this year. That’s a long list.
As I write this introduction, I’m sitting at the counter in my mother’s kitchen, where I’ve spent a couple of weeks leading up to thanksgiving, helping her recover from surgery.
Today we got a report back from the pathologist saying that there’s no more detectable cancer. So that’s good news.

[2:00] At nearly 14 years old, my dog duke is moving slower than he used to and he won’t go up most stairs, but he’s happy and he’s remarkably healthy for his age.

[2:11] Co host emerita Nikki, also known as my wife, has a challenging and rewarding career at Old North.
That remains a dream job for a history nerd at my work. I’ve had the opportunity to work with a great group of new people from the Atlanta area this year, as well as my regular team and we’re in the middle of an exciting series of projects.

[2:32] As the U. S. Seems poised to tear itself apart along party lines.
I’m grateful to live in massachusetts where we should be at least somewhat sheltered from the worst of our country’s potentially fascist future.

[2:44] And even the lawsuit that I’ve been embroiled in this fall turned out better than I feared.
While the suit was frustrating and our settlement was expensive, it could have been a whole lot worse if I’d had to defend myself in a federal court in California, tune into our black friday special episode if you’d like to hear a little bit more about that suit.
Speaking of the lawsuit, I’m also grateful this time of year for everyone who supports hub history financially.
The loyal listeners who sponsor the show on Patreon commit to giving as little as $2 or as much as $50 a month to make it possible for me to keep creating this podcast.
Their ongoing support helps pay for our podcast, media host, web hosting and security for hub history dot com, online audio processing tools.
And at least lately, my legal defense fund.

[3:34] The final settlement was less than $15,000, obviously more than I wanted to pay, but less than I feared.
The whole thing makes me more grateful than ever for everyone who supports the show financially.
I thank some of our new Patreon sponsors a few weeks ago and since then, Joshua s became a sponsor.
While ted in also gave a nice one time gift via paypal.
A big thanks to josh and ted and all our existing supporters if you’re not yet supporting the show and you’d like to start, just go to patreon.com/hubhistory or visit hubhistory.com and click on the support us link.

[4:15] And during this thanksgiving season, Thank you all again.
Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[4:24] The day before thanksgiving and the sunday after the holiday are typically the worst days to try to drive or fly in America.
Everyone’s on the move on those days trying to spend thanksgiving with their families,
for thanksgiving 2019, episode 1 60 examined a song about traveling to spend thanksgiving with family, but when I was growing up, I always thought over the river and through the wood was a christmas carol.
Little did I know that the original title was The New England Boys Song about thanksgiving Day and despite the songs, quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer.
The woman who wrote it was anything but traditional Lydia Maria child of Medford made her name in her living writing books and magazines for Children, but are increasingly radical positions on abolitionism.
Women’s rights and free thinking jeopardized her earning power After publishing a radical appeal in 1833, calling for immediate abolition of slavery and equal rights for former slaves nearly bankrupted her.
This thanksgiving song was part of her comeback attempt as a children’s author.

Over The River And Through The Woods

Over The River And Through The Woods:
[5:32] With the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house. We go just the slave of the white.

[5:40] Perhaps we’ve come to think of this as a christmas carol because of the references to white and drifting snow and jingling sleigh bells.
While these days snow on thanksgiving is fairly rare.
However, our older listeners will remember plenty of snowy New England thanksgivings and there would have been many more when the New England Boys song about thanksgiving was originally published,
When it first appeared in 1840 for North America was still experiencing the tail end of a period known as the little ice age during which winters were much harsher than they are now,
interestingly jingle bells with its references to sleigh bells and snow drifts was also originally composed as a thanksgiving song.
A Georgia native was inspired dependent lyrics about sleigh races that he witnessed while briefly living in Medford in the 1850s.

[6:28] A few years before that, the author of a new England boys song about Thanksgiving was born in Medford as Lydia Maria Francis in 1802,
her father Converse was a baker and her grandfather was said to have been killed by redcoats during the concord fight.
Lydia Maria Francis always hated the name Lydia. So she went by her middle name, which was spelled Maria, but she pronounced it as Mariah.
She was the youngest of six Children and she was very close to the next oldest, her brother Converse Francis, jr Mariah at first received a fairly typical girl’s education for the time attending what was essentially a finishing school.
Converse Junior however, was destined to be an influential Unitarian minister and he went to Harvard University and then to Harvard divinity.

[7:16] Knowing from the beginning that his little sister was remarkably intelligent, he made sure that she was challenged When he was preparing for his entrance exams.
To Harvard at age 16, Mariah was just nine years old, but she read homer Milton and Shakespeare alongside him and understood it at least as well as he did.
She was finally able to attend a teacher’s college in Maine as well as completing one year at a women’s seminary.
When she was just 22 years old, she published her first book, a historical novel set in colonial New England.
Later that same year, she started a private school in Watertown, which she closed just two years later in order to focus on writing full time And to focus on David Child who courted her briefly before the two wed.
In 1828, her early novels would likely be called historical romances today.
And in 18 26 she began publishing juvenile miscellany, the first monthly magazine for Children in the United States.

[8:18] After their marriage, the child’s family moved into boston where David was the editor of the massachusetts journal, a highly partisan wig paper.
He rapidly became very politically connected, but didn’t make much in the way of money when he attacked Andrew Jackson’s policy of indian removal subscriptions declined and he even spent time in jail for libel.
Maria. Now, Maria Child would be the primary breadwinner for the family for most of the rest of their marriage, she published a series of helpful household how to books, starting with the frugal housewife in 1829,
later re titled to the frugal american Housewife.
This volume along with follow ups, the mother’s book and the girl’s own book would be Mariah Child’s most financially successful works through his wig connections.
David child adopted an abolitionist outlook very early, While she was already supportive of David’s abolitionist work, Mariah became energized after befriending William Lloyd Garrison in the early 1830s.
She later right, I was then all absorbed in poetry and painting, soaring aloft on psych wings into the ethereal regions of mysticism.
He got hold of the strings of my conscience and pulled me into reforms.
It is of no use to imagine what might have been if I had never met him.
Old dreams vanished. Old associates departed and all things became new.

[9:45] With her literary success in David’s connections. The trustees of the boston Athenaeum offered Maria a three year free membership to the library, where she immersed herself in the history of american chattel slavery.

[9:58] In 1833 Maria’s writing, took a hard left turn away from children’s magazines, household tattoos and historical fiction.
She published a book called an appeal in favor of that class of americans called Africans and several brief online profiles of Mariah. I saw Mariah’s appeal referred to as the first anti slavery book.
Long time listeners will immediately realize that it wasn’t as both the topic and the title owe a debt of thanks to David walker.
In episode 1 17, we discussed walker and his book Appeal to the colored citizens of the world, a very early and very radical abolitionist tracked.
However, Mariah’s appeal was nevertheless a very early and influential book, predating Harriet Beecher, Stowe’s uncle tom’s cabin by almost 20 years.
When Mariah wrote her appeal, William Lloyd Garrison had only been publishing the Liberator for two years and abolition was considered an extreme and unreasonable position for a white person to hold.
Not only that, but she deeply criticized the so called colonization movement, which called for freed slaves to be shipped off to Africa to civilize that continent while creating a white nation in America.
Instead, she envisioned a future where emancipated slaves were completely integrated into the fabric of american society with false citizenship and participation in the political process.

[11:26] However, her most radical position may have been asserting that one day in the future, quote, 100 years, hints, interracial marriage might become accepted.

[11:36] In the preface to a book she wrote, I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken, but though I expect ridicule and censure, I cannot fear them.
She was right. The sensor came in a sudden drop off in the sales of her popular books, especially her writing for Children.
In a profile of Mariah, for a book about extraordinary women of the era, radical abolitionists, supporter of john Brown’s insurrection and civil war veteran thomas Wentworth Higginson quoted Harriet martin knows the martyr age in America as saying that child was,
a lady of whom society was exceedingly proud before she published her appeal and to whom society has been extremely contemptuous ever since.
She added, her works were bought with avidity before, but fell into sudden oblivion as soon as she had done a greater deed than writing any of them subscriptions to juvenile. Miscellany declined precipitously, and Mariah was forced to resign as editor.
Her next helpful household book. The Family Nurse, didn’t find the same wide audiences that The frugal Housewife, the Mother’s book, and the girl’s own book had found just a few years before.

[12:47] Writing to a friend in later years, she thinks wistfully about returning to Children’s literature with regard to the juvenile Miscellany.
The copyright never belonged to me.
I have for some time wished to publish a revised edition of it under the title of Mrs Child’s Library for Children, and volumes of uniform, sort One volume containing what was suitable for Children of three or four years old.
Another for Children of seven or six others for 10 or 12, My idea was only to use my own writing in it, together with the best parts of my juvenile souvenir evenings in New England, and whatever else I had occasionally written for Children,
should the Spirit Move and the sale warranted, this collection might be enlarged by some entirely new volumes.

[13:32] Most biographies of Child repeat her claim that the Athenaeum revoked her membership because of her abolitionist writings.
However, many other prominent abolitionists retain their privileges, and the Athenaeum disputes her version.
The Athenaeum itself simply says that the offer was rescinded, and the minutes of the Trustees meeting says, voted that the general permission heretofore given to mrs Child to use the Athenaeum be henceforth considered as terminated.

[14:02] For the time she’d have to satisfy herself with more activist forms of writing.
Her appeal was cited by William Ellery, channing thomas, Wentworth Higginson and Wendell phillips is helping to win them over to the abolitionist cause.
Her follow up work was a history of the condition of women in various ages and nations, which put her at the forefront of the nascent women’s rights and suffrage movements.
Her succeeding books, the anti slavery catechism, authentic anecdotes of american slavery, and especially the duty of disobedience to the fugitive slave act, cemented her abolitionist credentials.
In 18 41 she moved to new york city and accepted a position with the american anti slavery society as editor in chief of their journal, the National anti slavery standard.

[14:50] After three years in New York, David and Maria returned to Massachusetts and settled in Wayland.
In 1844, Mariah decided to jump back into the children’s literature game.
By this time she was a follower of Horace Mann, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, whom we profiled back in episode 1, 16,
man’s vision of free, high quality universal education for all Children inspired Mariah to begin a new series of Children’s books.
The fact that she and David desperately needed the money didn’t hurt either.
This new series was called Flowers for Children and it was meant to entertain, to educate and to inculcate Children with protestant morals as she describes in an introduction to a later edition.
This series consisted of a mix of new compositions and selections from her earlier work, all of which were revised and rewritten.

[15:45] About half of each of these volumes will consist of new articles written expressly for the occasion, and the other half will be a selection of what seemed to me the best of my own articles formerly published in the juvenile miscellany.
Upon reviewing the work for this purpose, I find that my mature judgment rejects some inaccuracies, some moral inferences and many imperfections of style.
I have therefore carefully rewritten all the articles used in this present selection, Rewriting her older pieces had the side benefit of circumventing any copyright claims on the stories by your previous publishers.
The poem, a new England Boys Song about Thanksgiving Day appeared in the second Flowers for Children volume, alongside stories about a saucy squirrel, a sailor’s dog, spring birds and many more.

[16:34] These stories attempted to indoctrinate the reader with Mariah’s own sense of morality, which wasn’t universally shared and appreciated at the time.
For instance, in that same edition of Flowers, there’s a story about a little girl whose pet sheep gives birth to a white lamb and a black lamb, which becomes a very heavy handed scene in which the little white girl has this exchange with her black governess in a barn,
nancy told her God made the white lambs and the black lambs.
God loves them both and made them to love each other.
Then mary said, I am my mother’s white lamb and thomas is nancy’s black lamb and God loves us both.

[17:15] It’s enough to make you gag, but the idea of interracial friendship and respect was still pretty radical in 1844.
In contrast to the educational and moral pieces, in that additional Flowers for Children, the New England Boys song about thanksgiving is a simple nostalgic look at a holiday in the country which many readers have connected to Mariah’s own childhood thanksgiving experiences.

[17:39] Thomas.
Wentworth Higginson profile described how Maria’s family celebrated thanksgiving when she was just a little girl.

[17:46] Their earliest teacher was a maiden lady named Elizabeth Frances, but not a relative, and known universally as Ma’am Betty,
she’s described as a spinster of supernatural shyness, the never forgotten calamity of whose life was that dr brooks once saw her drinking water from the nose of her tea kettle.

[18:04] She kept school in her bedroom, it was never tidy, and she chewed a great deal of tobacco, but the Children were fond of her, and always carried her a sunday dinner.
Such simple kindnesses went forth often from that thrifty home.
Mrs child once told me that always on the night before thanksgiving all the humble friends of the household, Ma’am Betty, the washerwoman, the barry woman, the wood sawyer, the journeymen, bakers, and so on.
Some 20 or 30 in all, were summoned to a preliminary entertainment.
They they’re partook of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pies, made milk pans, and heaps of donuts.
They feasted in the large old fashioned kitchen, and went away loaded with crackers and bread by the father, and with pies by the mother, not forgetting turnovers for their Children.
Such plane applications of the doctrine it is more blessed to give than to receive.
May have done more to mold the lydia Maria child of mature years than all the faithful labors of good dr Osgood, to whom she and her brother used to repeat. The Westminster assemblies, catechism once a month.

[19:07] So while we don’t get to peer into the Francis family thanksgiving dinner.
We do get to see the feast they put together on thanksgiving e for their employees and associates.
And at the heart of the celebration, where the crackers and bread that Mariah’s father. Converse Francis sent them all home. With Converse Francis was a former apprentice baker who took over his master’s business in 1797.
In 1855. History of Medford, by Charles Brooks describes how crackers became important to Mariah’s family history, and the image of Thanksgiving.

[19:41] Mr, Francis produced a cracker which was considered as more tasteful and healthy than any heretofore invented,
Every year, increased his reputation and widened his business, and as early as 1805 Medford crackers were known throughout the country, and frequently sent to foreign lands.
The writer of this was walking in the Street of London in 1834, and saw at a shop window the following sign Medford Crackers.
This bread deserved all the fame it acquired for never had there been any so good, and we think there is now none better.
It required great labor, and all the work was done by hand.
Each cracker was nearly double the size of those now made, and the dough was kneaded, rolled, weighed, pricked, marked, and tossed into the oven by hand.
Now all these are done by machinery.
The spread was called crackers because one of them would crack into two equal parts.
One piece of dough was rolled out just thick enough to enable it to swell up with the internal steam generated by baking on the hot brick floor of the oven,
and holds enough were pricked into the dough to allow a part of the steam to escape, and so leave the mass split into two equal parts adhering mostly by the edges.

[20:54] Mariah child must have had crackers in her D. N. A. Because even her recipe for a properly stuffed turkey included crackers.
The 1832 edition of the American Frugal housewife included this stuffing recipe as part of Maria’s instructions on cooking Turkey.
If you wish to make plain stuffing, pound a cracker or crumble some bread. Very fine chop some raw salt pork, very fine.
Sift some sage and summery savory or sweet marjoram if you have them in the house and fancy them and mold them all together seasoned with a little pepper, an egg worked in. Makes the stuffing cut better.

[21:31] In my humble opinion, you can’t have a proper thanksgiving without a good stuffing, though. My personal recipe is based on toasted bread cubes instead of cracker crumbs.
Cutting up the bread for the stuffing is one of the first things I’ll do when I start working on our thanksgiving dinner first thing on Wednesday morning, and maybe just maybe I’ll listen to over the river and through the wood while I work, now that I know that it’s actually a thanksgiving song.

Jake:
[21:58] Of course, once you make it over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house for dinner, there’s only one dish that’s traditional is the centerpiece of a new England thanksgiving turkey,
Back in episode 99, which originally aired in September 2018, co host America Nikki and I explored the rich history of Brighton, which was Boston’s own wild west even before the wild west itself.
In this excerpt from a longer episode, we discussed how the drovers who brought vast herds from Maine and Vermont to the stockyards in Brighton indulged in drinking, gambling and occasional violence, just like their more famous cowboy cousins out west,
We also discussed how once a year the drovers switched from cows and sheep to driving vast flocks of turkeys from northern Vermont to Brighton to feed boston’s appetite for thanksgiving dinner.

Turkey Drives

Turkey Drives:
[22:50] What could be a more iconic vision of the wild west than a cattle drive.
Perhaps as embodied by John Wayne in the 1948 film Red River.
They’re going to Missouri with 10,000 head.

[23:04] I want you all to know what you’re up against. We got 1000 miles to go. 10 miles a day will be good.
That movie traces the heyday of cattle drives, as large herds from texas, ranches were driven to railroads in Kansas and Missouri in the years following the civil War,
you might not realize that a generation earlier cattle drives were already regular features of the boston area economy and they all wound up in one place, brighten our own little wild West.
When the Brighton Stockyards reached their peak in the 1830s and 40s, the term Cowboy hadn’t really been coined yet.
Cattle drives were known as droves and instead of cowboys, the men who worked them were called drovers.
We begin with an article by David C. Smith and an E. Bridges in a 1982 issue of the Journal of the Agricultural History Society titled the Brighton market feeding 19th century boston.

[24:07] Droves in New England were relatively small, averaging approximately 200 per drive.
Animals were branded or tagged in their ears.
On the first day, a half dozen men with long whips moved the cattle out on the road for the remainder of the drive three men would be sufficient.
Dogs were not often used even with sheep. A dr from franklin County Maine to Brighton usually took about 14 days.

[24:35] Maine was a primary source during many of the market years for beef cattle, sheep, and especially working oxen, milk, cows and animals used for stores.

[24:46] Its place in the beef cattle trade went back a very long time.
The first drive south to Boston came as early as 1645, John Mason, one of the first proprietors immediately began importation of Danish cattle.
When he began settlement. In 1631, Heavy importations occurred through 1633.
By 1645, the surplus, some 100 head were driven south over land and were sold in Boston.
This was the beginning of the drover trade newspapers were filled with accounts of droves and persons living in Maine thought passing cattle and sheep droves. An item of everyday life.
10 to 15,000 cattle each year were sent to brighten before the Civil War.
Occasionally disasters occurred, but basically droving was a routine affair as cattle were rounded up, driven to the nearest marshaling yards, usually at clinton in Central Maine. For the majority of years.
Some droves especially of working oxen or young stock for stores continued to travel over land until late in the century,
Even before the herds reached Brighton and the market was convened, drovers and buyers might meet in surrounding suburban communities and reach a deal, as seen in a report on the agriculture of Massachusetts, published in 1841.

[26:09] In times of a quick market, droves of cattle and sheep are often waylaid.
Days or more journey from the market, and sales are affected without their reaching Brighton, large numbers of the droves reach.
On saturday night, the resting places within such a drive of the market as is easily accomplished on monday morning,
at these places, the Lord’s Day is too frequently desecrated by these premature negotiations, and the gathering of the droves towards the market proves many times a troublesome annoyance in the sober part of the community, in the vicinity of the Great avenues.
The Wild West style antics of those involved in the cattle trade continue to annoy the sober part of the community, both in the suburbs and in Brighton,
drovers and cattle traders quickly became known for heavy drinking, high stakes gambling and occasional crime and violence.
That 1841 agricultural report shows what an increasingly temperance minded community thought of the drovers in their midst.

[27:07] The facilities for intemperance and gambling, which have sometimes existed at Brighton,
have been dreadfully prejudicial to the drovers and others who visit there and are obliged to remain there, or in the capital for some days without occupation, for the return of the weight of their cattle.
Young men coming from the interior with cattle for sale are often ruined by here being entrapped and laying the foundations of fraud and drunkenness.
If there is a place in our community, Brighton is one where the friends of sobriety should combine their forces in this great cause of order and humanity, and where the banner of total abstinence should throw its broad folds to the breeze.

[27:49] Along with falling victim to the temptation of drink and gambling, drovers could fall victim to real crimes as well.
You may be thinking of the cattle rustling we’ve all seen in westerns, but where is the sense in stealing a herd that you then have to sell when you can simply wait and steal the money that Adrover got for selling the herd.
Instead, cattle trading was a cash business and that cash attracted criminals, smith and bridges tell the story of one unfortunate cowpoke.
On the way home from the Brighton market Drovers often carried large amounts of money and were sometimes the target of attacks.
The most significant of these occurred in waterville maine in 1847, A number of stories circulated about this event, but apparently a local doctor actually murdered a drover for his purse of $1,500.
A ballad was later written about this.

[28:46] Founded in 1830. The cattle Fair Hotel Corporation was the Second Corporation established in Massachusetts.
The company was a large land holder in Brighton and owned two assets vital to the cattle trade in New England.
The first were the Brighton stockyards themselves. The second was the large hotel located between today’s Market and Lester Streets,
that catered to the farmers, drovers, buyers and other wheelers and dealers that came to the market as described by William Marchionne.
The cattle fair hotel, with its 100 rooms, grand ballroom and great dining room, was the largest hotel in the boston suburbs.
The hotel’s manager in the early 1830s, Zachariah B.
Porter later founded the Porter House Hotel in Cambridge, from which Porter Square and the Porterhouse Steak derived their names,
Bostonians rode out along the Mill Dam Road, now Beacon Street and Mill Dam extension, Lower Commonwealth Avenue,
to the cattle fair to avail themselves of the liquid refreshments available in its giant saloon, which was said to be the largest watering hole in New England.
Of course cattle weren’t the only livestock being bought and sold at the cattle fair in Brighton.
There were also pigs, sheep and poultry, all of which were also driven to Brighton on foot smith and bridges, introduce us to some of these other herds.

[30:15] Driving sheep was similar to driving cattle, although fewer people were needed to do the work after about a day sheep moved steadily, stopping to eat by the verge when they wished, then falling into line behind others who had walked along,
Sheep droves were larger, 600 to 1000 were often moved in.
A drove, poultry was also sold at Brighton, killed eviscerated birds, ducks, geese, chicken and turkeys were crammed into barrels and covered with salt.
These birds were sold in the fall, especially as thanksgiving became a significant holiday. After mid century, drovers experimented with droves of live birds.
Reports of turkey drives from Vermont and maine are accurate, although the numbers of animals is unknown.

[30:59] Peter Gilbert of Vermont public radio describes how a mid 19th century Turkey drive would have worked before railroads.
The only way to get turkeys from Vermont to market in boston was to walk them there and that throughout much of the 19th century is exactly what vermonters did,
including vermonters from the northernmost parts of the state towns, people put their birds of a feather together and accompanied by wagons with camp supplies and tons of feed grain.
They escorted as many as 7000 birds at a time.
All the way to boston drives of 3 to 4000 birds were common in the 18 twenties and thirties, historian Charles mara Wilson says that about 1000 birds was the minimum necessary to make the 150 to 350 mile trek worthwhile.
It was a long haul. The flocks could only make 10-12 miles a day and at least one drover was required for each 100 birds.
Boys scattered shelled corn feet in front of the birds so they would walk forward.
While others heard it from behind, flocks might spread out for more than a mile ranging in width from a few feet to 50 yards,
to protect the birds feed on such a long hike over rough terrain and november’s frozen ground vermonters sometimes coated the bird’s feet with warm tar.
They lost about 10% of the turkeys to forded rivers. Foxes, hungry farm families they met en route and other perils of the journey.

[32:22] It must have been an eye opening experience for a farmer or drover from some far off rural corner of New England to come into Brighton on market Day.
Suddenly they would find themselves in a bustling urban center, one that was free of the puritanical sensibilities of the brahmin elite in its nearby neighbor and one that was swollen far beyond its usual population with fellow traders.
There were saloons to visit and cards to play, and of course cutthroat wheeling and dealing to engage in to get a fair price for your stock.
In an 1841 notebook that he kept while living at the Brook Farm Agrarian commune in West Roxbury, Nathaniel Hawthorne described his experience at the Brighton cattle fair.
On arriving at Brighton we found the village thronged with people, horses and vehicles.
Probably there is no place in New England where the character of an agricultural population may be so well studied.
Almost all the farmers within a reasonable distance make it a point, I suppose to attend bright and fair pretty frequently, if not on business.
Yet, as amateurs then there are all the cattle people, and butchers who supply the boston market and dealers from far and near, and every man who has a cow or yoke of oxen whether to sell or buy goes to Brighton on monday.

[33:34] Most of the people were of a bulky make with much bone and muscle and some good store of fat as if they had lived on flesh diet, with modeled faces too hard and red like those of persons who adhered to the old fashion of spirit, drinking,
great round punched country Squires were there, too, sitting under the porch of the tavern, or waddling about whipping hand, discussing the points of the cattle.
There were also gentlemen farmers, neatly trim lee and fashionably dressed in handsome trousers strapped under their boots.
Yeoman too, and they’re black or blue sunday suits cut by country tailors, and awkwardly worn.
Others like myself had on the blue stuff rocks which they were in the fields. The most comfortable garments that ever were invented.
Country loafers were among the throng men who looked wistfully at the liquors in the bar and waited for some friend to invite them to drink poor shabby out of elbow devils,
also dandies from the city, corseted and buck rammed, who had come to see the humor of bright and fair, all these and other varieties of mankind, either throwing the spacious ballroom of the hotel,
drinking, smoking, talking, bargaining, or walked about among the cattle pens.

Jake:
[34:44] Although they went to college, just across the river from the Brighton stockyards.
The Children of john and Abigail Adams were not the type of country loafers who would have hung around the cattle fair hotel bar, hoping that someone would have bought him a drink.
For one thing, they were a little too old. While the cattle trade in Brighton got started during the siege of boston in 17 75.
The cattle fair hotel didn’t open its stores until 18 30 the Adam’s sons would have been in their late fifties or early sixties. By then, they also consider themselves too refined.
While john Adams was the son of a simple farmer and fancied himself a gentleman farmer his whole life, his sons would grow up to be a lawyer, a judge and a diplomat and president of the United States.
However, those elevated stations in life didn’t keep the Adams boys from getting into the same sort of trouble that Brighton drovers would get into a few years later.
This story originally aired as part of episode 107, in November 2018.

Thanksgiving Riot

Thanksgiving Riot:
[35:45] A few weeks ago I was getting myself into the thanksgiving spirit and at the same time I was idly browsing through the mass historical society’s online Adams papers,
as I tend to do Since the holiday was on my mind, I did a word search for the word thanksgiving, and turned up a diary entry by John Quincy Adams.
From February 1, 1788, I had with mr shaw some conversation upon the subject of the disorders which happened at college in the course of the last quarter.
His fears for my brothers are greater than mine. I am persuaded that Charles did not deserve the suspicions which were raised against him, and I have great hopes that his future conduct will convince the governors of the university that he was innocent.
A footnote in the collection indicated that on Thanksgiving Day November 29, 1787, there had been some sort of disturbance in the Harvard dining hall after dinner.
Soon I found a letter from Elizabeth Smith Shaw to Mary Smith Krantz, which is to say, from one of Abigail Smith Adams Sisters to another from later in February 1788, that mentions the family’s troubles.

[36:50] I long to hear from Charles and thomas. I charged them to write me.
I do not know that Mr shaw and I could have given them better advice if they had been our own sons, I hope they will conduct agreeable to it and be wiser than they have been.
And more cautious of abusing government for what they from choice suffer the 10 shillings penalty, I mean, so both Charles and thomas Adam’s sons of john Adams and brothers of john Quincy Adams had been involved in.

[37:18] Well, whatever it is that it happened on thanksgiving another student, Pitt Clark, who was a sophomore at the time, kept a diary of his Harvard years, According to his entry from November 29, 1787.
Everything that happened at Thanksgiving dinner seems completely normal and above board, Thursday 29th, Thanksgiving very pleasant.
Went to meeting Mr Hilliard preached from psalms one oh seven versus 31,
32 after meeting, had an elegant dinner in the hall, each one carried in a bottle of wine, and all joined in drinking toasts and singing songs in praise of the day and with thankful Hearts,
that all sounds very prim and proper but boozed up.
College kids in 17 87 had a lot in common with college kids today.
Maybe Pit clark left a few things out of his diary, or maybe he left the dining hall early.
But before long those songs of praise and thankful hearts gave way to drunken rowdiness and destruction of university property.

[38:22] The next week a meeting was called at harvard, where the president, the professors and the tutors of the school spent three days considering how to react to the disturbance.

[38:33] The minutes of the meeting described what happened after Clark’s account leaves off.
It appeared that in a number of the students who dined in the hall on the 29th, being the day of public Thanksgiving were after dinner extremely disorderly and riotous, making tumultuous and indecent noises, breaking the windows of the hall,
throwing the benches out of the windows into the yard, etc, which conduct was greatly to the damage and dishonor of the college.

[39:03] Having established the facts, at least the facts as far as the college was concerned, the administration moved onto the topic of punishment, interestingly.
The standard of innocent until proven guilty did not seem to apply before the court of Harvard College.
The minutes list, a veritable who’s who of prominent New England families.
Proctor’s coffins, warren’s ingles, Pierre ponts, gardeners and Emerson’s.
Then it lays out the punishment that the science of these famous families would face saying all of the above company who did not prove themselves to have left the hall before the riotous proceedings,
shall be charged in their quarterly bill to repair the damage is done in the hall.

[39:48] Among these famous families was a senior referred to as Adam’s 2nd and a junior who went by Adam’s 3rd.
That would be Charles and thomas as john Quincy who was adam’s first had already graduated. By that point also among the list of the punished was pitt clark.
The Harvard administration met on December 5, 7th and 8th on Saturday December eight, Clark wrote in his diary fair and pleasant for the season.
After prayers declaimed in the chapel a.
M. Red french to our french instructor very unexpectedly received from the president and the rest of the government, an unjust pecuniary punishment,
together with a number of my classmates for being in the hall at thanksgiving day a little while after supper.

[40:40] This pecuniary punishment was 10 shillings. As noted in the letter from Elizabeth Shaw, and further confirmed in the minutes of the administration meeting,
voted that all who are assessed to repair the damage is done in the hall be punished by pecuniary fine, 10 shillings.
Each students who dined in the hall, but who left it before disorders arose to a great height were accepted by the government from the assessment for repairing the damages.
Charles Adams, along with three classmates, was singled out for additional punishment.
It’s not clear whether he participated in the disorderly and riotous events or not, john Quincy said that he didn’t think so in a letter to his cousin Cotton Tufts, that february,
the riotous, ungovernable spirit which appeared among the students at the university in the course of the last quarter gave me great anxiety, particularly as I understood that one of my brothers was suspected of having been active and exciting disturbances,
but from his own declarations, and from the opinion I have of his disposition, I hope those suspicions were without foundation.
I converse with him largely upon the subject and hope his conduct in the future will be such as to remove every unfavorable impression.

[41:55] However, with the benefit of historical hindsight, we know that Charles Adams would struggle with alcoholism for most of his life and eventually die from cirrhosis of the liver when he was just 30 years old.
It’s certainly not beyond the realm of possibility to think that he already had a taste for wine at the age of 17.
His parents were out of the country and he might very well have gone along with a rowdy crowd.

[42:19] The college administration knew that he’d been in the room because he worked as a waiter in the dining hall.
Whether or not he had actively participated in the disorderly and riotous behavior with his classmates.
He was expected to inform on anyone who had young Charles. However, lived up to the ancient code of the Harvard student snitches get stitches.
So the administration voted that Adam’s Churchill, Emerson and Waterman, who were waiters, but upon examination did not give such evidence concerning the disorders, as the governors were convinced they might have given be dismissed from their waiter.
Ships picked Clark records, an attempt at an appeal of their sentence.
The following monday Monday December 10, I together with those who were punished, went to the president to know the justness of it and to desire him to take it off.
He promised us another hearing.

[43:13] There was nothing else in his diary about a second hearing. Either it never happened, or the result wasn’t worth taking note of Clark’s Harvard Diary runs through 1791, and each year’s thanksgiving is noted as uneventful.
The biggest news is attending, meeting at a new meeting house in Medfield.
The riot seems to have been quickly forgotten by the college, and it may have never been widely known outside the Harvard community, but it cast a long shadow within the Adams family,
John Quincy and his mother certainly thought differently of Charles and to a lesser degree thomas after the riot, and they continued to be concerned about Charles character for months or years afterward.

[43:56] 18 months after the disturbance, John Quincy wrote to his cousin William Krantz in May of 1789, that,
I am exceedingly gratified that your fraternal advice was given to mr Charles, and I flatter myself, that it will with that of his other friends have a very salutary effect.
The disorders at our university gave me much pain, and more especially on finding that my young friend was suspected to be deeply concerned in them.
Indeed, I had never felt so much anxiety with respect to him,
as some imprudence ease, at least, had given countenance to suspicion that, if well grounded, would have deprived him of that reputation which he enjoyed before, and which had given me a pleasure,
that I had often announced his dear parents, and from which they had derived no small satisfaction,
that same month.
Abigail wrote to john Quincy, asking him to keep a close eye on his younger brothers.

[44:58] I must request you, in my absence to attend to your brother. Tom to watch over his conduct, and prevent by your advice and kind admonitions his falling a prey to vicious company at present.
He seems desirous of pursuing his studies, preserving a character and avoiding dissipation.
But no youth is secure whilst temptations surround him, and no age of life, but is influenced by habits. An example, even when they think their character is formed.
I have many anxious hours for Charles, and not the fewer for the new scene of his life into which he is going, though I think it will be of great service to have him with his father.

[45:44] The new scene of Charles’s life that Abigail referred to, was a move to new york city at the time. It was the capital of the young United States, and moving there meant that the new graduate would be under his father. The Vice President’s watchful eye.
He was meant to study law under a successful but now mostly forgotten attorney named alexander Hamilton’s.
But then Hamilton’s was nominated to President Washington’s Cabinet, and Charles. Adams studied under a different attorney instead.
While everyone had high hopes, members of the Adams family didn’t have any illusions that being near john would necessarily inspire charleston, and his ways a letter to Abigail from her sister mary alludes to the Ignoble fate that would eventually befall Charles.
Adams, some 13 years after the thanksgiving riot at Harvard, My dear Charles will, I hope, guard against every temptation to evil.
Tell him that I love him with an affection, little short of what I feel from my own son.
Tell him also, if you please, that as he has his companions now to choose a new that I conjure him by all that is sacred, as he values his reputation among the virtuous and worthy of mankind,
as he would not embitter the declining years of his parents and wound the hearts of his friends to be careful who he admits to call him their friend and associate.

Jake:
[47:02] Charles Adams died in November of 1800 at just 30 years old, while his father was in office as president.
Although it’s not plainly stated in his parents letters, many historians believe that the young man basically drank himself to death.
So perhaps Abigail’s concern wasn’t too far from the mark to learn more about Harvard’s thanksgiving riot, The Brighton stockyards or how radical lydia Maria child’s produced one of the least radical songs of all time.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 262.
I’ll include the full original show notes for all three stories, including a ton of primary sources from the Adams, family papers, Mariah child’s published work pictures and stories about the Brighton stockyards and much more.
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Music

Jake:
[48:20] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.