Eli Terry masterminded many of the time pieces that exist today, and in the process he helped ignite America’s industrial revolution. His legacy can likely be seen in clocks on…
Harriet Hosmer was one of the best known artists — and one of the best known professional women — of her time. She paved the way for women to become…
When Eleanor Estes was growing up in West Haven, Conn., her classmates mocked a Polish girl who wore the same hand-me-down dress every day. The girl claimed she had a…
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…
Had it not been for his May Day party with a giant Maypole, Thomas Morton might have established a New England colony more tolerant, easygoing and fun than the one…
As the Puritans set about eking out their survival in Massachusetts in the early 1600s, they naturally had to conquer some major problems: managing to obtain food, fighting their enemies…
Margaret Fuller, who spent her life protesting injustice, died at the age of 40 in a shipwreck off New York Harbor while onlookers watched from the shore. She was America’s…
New England Indians loaned many words and place names to the American English language. Now some of them are getting their own language back. When colonists first arrived in what…
The poem Paul Revere’s Ride took an obscure patriot of the American Revolution and elevated him to American myth. In 1860, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow first asked his children to listen…
Independence Day from the get-go has been a rowdy holiday with ringing bells, gunfire, cannon fire, fireworks, feasting, speeches and toasts. Over the years, people tried to turn it into…
Emma Willard was one of the first people – if not the first— to believe women could have it all: career, family and happiness. Then, in 1838 at age 51,…
The year 1816 was known as ‘The Year Without a Summer’ in New England because six inches of snow fell in June and every month of the year had a…
In the 1930s, Ida Tarbell sat down at her mahogany desk in the sunny library of her Easton, Conn., farmhouse. She wrote the story of her life as an investigative…
On a clear autumn night in 1847, 29-year-old Maria Mitchell climbed to the roof of the Pacific National Bank on Nantucket and swept the sky with her telescope. She saw…
You can count the fluffernutter sandwich among Paul Revere’s many descendants along with Tony award-winning actress Anne Revere and Civil War Gen. Joseph Warren Revere. The classic New England kids’ treat…
In 1704, Mohawk Indians raided the frontier town of Deerfield, Mass. They captured local pastor John Williams, along with his family. Most of the family (those who didn’t die in…
R. H. Macy took a long and winding path to becoming the merchant prince of New York City. Early in his journey, he introduced the Macy’s Parade — in Massachusetts.…
When Fannie Farmer approached Little, Brown & Co., to publish her cookbook in 1896, the company made her pay for printing the first 3,000 copies. They didn’t think the cookbook…
In 1950, Earl Tupper was sitting in his Leominster, Mass., office struggling with how to get his business off the ground when Brownie Wise called. He never met Brownie Wise,…
Stephen Hopkins settled both Jamestown and Plymouth, and many believe Shakespeare based a character on him. Though he wasn’t among the first Jamestown settlers, he did arrive within the first…
In 1704, Mohawk Indians raided the frontier town of Deerfield, Mass. They captured local pastor John Williams, along with his family. Most of the family (those who didn’t die in…
Mary Patten never set out to be a sea captain, but that’s what she became in 1856. She had married Joshua Patten, a sea captain, in 1853 at the age…
When the Marquis de Lafayette returned to America for an extended tour of the 50-year-old Republic, he was no longer the slim young nobleman in a powdered wig. At 66…
Emma Goldman could have made a fortune from her ice cream parlor in Worcester, Mass. It was 1892, and she was a Russian Jewish immigrant who’d discovered the anarchist movement.…
On Christmas day 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem we know as I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day in a case of hope conquering despair.
When the Marquis de Lafayette returned to America for an extended tour of the 50-year-old Republic, he was no longer the slim young nobleman in a powdered wig. At 66…
A Lebanese boy named Kahlil Gibran got a lift out of Boston’s slums from a wealthy Bohemian who liked to take pictures. The boy had arrived in 1895 with his…
Archduke Leopold of Austria, Prince of Tuscany, spent most of his life in exile trying to chase down money — at least when he wasn’t at a costume ball in…
People often wonder how and why the Jenny Lind Tower ended up on the sand dunes of North Truro, Mass. It’s an improbable sight, a medieval stone tower like a…
The rise of female impersonator Julian Eltinge was a twist on the old story of instant stardom. In it, an agent/producer spots an ingénue from an amateur play in the…
Sylvia Plath called McLean mental hospital the best mental hospital in the United States. U.S. News & World Report did too. Though McLean mental hospital has excellent staff and conducts…
In March 1623, leaders of the struggling Plymouth Plantation dispatched their paid military leader Myles Standish to a coastal settlement 25 miles north. They gave him a savage mandate: return…
Delia Bacon hated William Shakespeare so passionately she lost her mind and her health trying to prove he didn’t write those plays. She dismissed him as a vulgar, illiterate deer…
In 1788 Pierre de Sales Laterrière traveled from Canada to Massachusetts to study medicine. Born around 1743, he had been a practicing doctor for many years. Originally from France, he…
If Frederick Tuckerman had been born a woman, you might think he was Emily Dickinson’s twin. Like Emily, Frederick Tuckerman came from a well-to-do, public-spirited, intellectual family. He became a…
On a clear autumn night in 1847, 29-year-old Maria Mitchell climbed to the roof of the Pacific National Bank on Nantucket and swept the sky with her telescope. She saw…
In 1791, two Salem ministers let an 18-year-old apprentice named Nathaniel Bowditch use their private library. Maritime navigation would never be the same. It just happened to be one of…
Winslow Homer painted this scene of a country school in 1871, nearly two decades after Massachusetts became the first state to pass a compulsory education law in the United States.…
Childe Hassam liked to paint without his shirt on, and sometimes beat his chest while at work. He was fun, energetic and self-assured, and when he started going to Florence…
Colonial New England had no shortage of illness and no shortage of colonial remedies. Our forebears left records of suffering with diseases we still recognize, such as smallpox and gout,…
Hepsibeth Hemenway was a mixed-race laundress and cook who never ventured far from Worcester, Mass., but she fascinates people more than 150 years after her death. An unlikely portrait of…
Boston riots covered the gamut over the centuries from the food, impressment, Pope Day and brothel riots to the antibusing, ghetto and Kosher meat riots.
“A close correspondency,” and “A more speedy Intelligence and Dispatch of Affayres.” These phrases embodied the reasoning behind Royal Governor of New York Francis Lovelace’s establishment of a pos…
Northern New Englanders ran for cover in late October as the 1727 earthquake, more powerful than any they had experienced, shook the region late one night. Distressed livestock went running…
The Touro Synagogue in Newport, R.I., has long been a symbol of tolerance, beginning as a haven for Jews who escaped the Inquisition. Later it served as a sanctuary for…
In March of 1778, a traveler brought strange news to Sandwich, Mass., about an unnatural murder in Brookfield. A woman had hired two Russians to kill her husband. The woman…
