President Calvin Coolidge's homes in Northampton, Massachusetts

Calvin Coolidge lived in Northampton through much of his political career, and here we have in postcard images his two homes.

First, the duplex on Massasoit Street where he and his wife Grace moved after their marriage in 1905.  Coolidge, a graduate of Amherst College and native of Vermont, came here to open his law practice.  His wife Grace had been a teacher at the Clarke School for the Deaf.  They rented the left side of this duplex and raised their two sons here.  

The Coolidges continued to make this their home through the next couple of decades as "Silent Cal" entered politics and served as Mayor of Northampton, Governor of Massachusetts, Vice President of the United States under President Warren G. Harding, and then assuming the presidency in 1923 after Harding's death in office.  

The Beeches

Coolidge's presidency ended in 1929 ("I do not choose to run.") and in 1930, he moved his home from the house on Massasoit Street to a new house called "The Beeches" on Hampton Terrace, for more privacy.  The tourists gawking at his rented duplex got to be a bit too much.

Calvin Coolidge died at "The Beeches" in 1933, at the age of 60.  

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Massachusetts - A Northern Factory Town's Perspective on the Civil War;   Comedy and Tragedy on the Mountain: 70 Years of Summer Theatre on Mt. Tom, Holyoke, Massachusetts;   States of Mind: New England; as well as books on classic films and several novels. Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.

St. Patrick's Day Parade - 1958 - Holyoke, Massachusetts

Photo by Ann B. Lynch. c. 1958, c. 2015 by Jacqueline T. Lynch



High Street in Holyoke, at the St. Patrick's Day Parade.  It's 1958.  A fifteen-year-old schoolgirl from Chicopee took these photos.  Here's a float passing in front of the old WT Grant's department store.  The store is, of course, long gone.



Photo by Ann B. Lynch. c. 1958, c. 2015 by Jacqueline T. Lynch

Here's a shot of her classmates, senior girls, from Holy Name High School in Chicopee.  Holy Name High, regular participants in the parade for years, shut its doors in the early 1970s.  

Photo by Ann B. Lynch. c. 1958, c. 2015 by Jacqueline T. Lynch

But this was the big attraction, the winner of the Outstanding American of Irish Descent Award, Senator John F. Kennedy, and his wife, Jacqueline.  The float bears the sign: "Here Come the Kennedys."  You can see the old Holyoke Daily Transcript office in the background.  It would merge with the Holyoke Telegram to become the Transcript-Telegram, but the newspaper shut its doors a couple of decades ago.   

Photo by Ann B. Lynch. c. 1958, c. 2015 by Jacqueline T. Lynch

In this close-up view we can see Senator Kennedy's back to us as he waves to crowds on the other side of the street.  Mrs. Kennedy is facing us, with what appears to be a baby in her arms.  Standing on a moving float with a baby seems like an incredible risk, but their daughter Caroline would have been about six months old on this occasion, and perhaps she did, indeed, go along for the ride.

In two years, John Kennedy would be elected President, the first Irish Catholic to be so honored.  Four years later, the Outstanding Irish American Award would be renamed the John F. Kennedy Award in his honor in 1964.

We could not predict the events, triumphant and tragic, that occurred only a few years ahead at the time of these photos were taken.  They are amateur shots, but show poignantly what was important to this young girl named Ann.  She, also, is no longer with us.  She was my sister.

JFK - A 50th Anniversary

Fifty years is a long time, but still only the blink of an eye in the measure of eras, only one small thread in the enormous tapestry of history.  We see this event, this assassination, as the beginning of our modern, cynical, chaotic era, and most who remember the day--indeed, that entire waking nightmare weekend--remember not just the news but where they were, what they were doing, who they were at that time, fitting themselves into the larger context of national history.

 

 

It happened on Friday.  By the time Monday morning arrived to a bleak new world, we had suffered the shock of assassination, the agony of a young widow, been stunned at another murder on live television, and had in the course of it all become newly educated on the protocol of personal, communal, and national mourning.  Our world shut down for one day at the end of it in tribute, honor, and respect--and something more; a desire simply to pause and reflect before the world--as we suspected it might--got even crazier.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 







 

 

The newspapers (shown here from three different Springfield, Massachusetts, papers) are yellowed and fragile with age, but their images and words are still overwhelming.

 



Church of the Presidents - Quincy, Massachusetts

 

In acknowledgment of Presidents Day yesterday, today we visit Quincy, Massachusetts and the United First Parish Church, which is also locally called The Church of the Presidents.  Both President John Adams and his son, President John Quincy Adams worshiped here.  They, along with their First Ladies, are buried in a family crypt below the church.

Grave of John Adams & Abigail Adams

The Greek Revival church, built in 1828 is also called The Old Stone Temple, as it is constructed of granite, much of which was donated by John Adams from a quarry site on land he owned.  It was designed by Alexander Parris, who also designed Boston’s Quincy Market.

Grave of John Quincy Adams & Louisa Catherine Adams

The congregation was established in 1636, and this is the fourth meetinghouse constructed.

For more on this beautiful and historic church, visit this website.

JFK Statue - Massachusetts State House

At first glance he could be any visitor to the Massachusetts State House in Boston, or a staff member, or a legislator, or anybody at all. 

He's the 35th President of the United States.  The figure, at this distance, seems so natural as if about to descend the stairs, we have to pause to recognize John Fitzgerald Kennedy on the west plaza, striding eternally into the future. 

The statue was completed in 1990, by scupltor Isabel McIlvain.  JFK never served in the state legislature, but visited the State House in 1961 and addressed the General Court.

The Mattatuck Museum - Waterbury, Connecticut

The Mattatuck Museum Arts & History Center, on The Green in Waterbury, Connecticut, showcases art and history, with a particular emphasis on Connecticut’s cultural past. The rare melding of art and history, and community, tells the story of the region, and of Waterbury, in a profound and valuable way.

The history exhibit, with changing displays, carries us from the 1600s through the industrial dynamo years of the late 1800s through the middle part of the 20th century, when Waterbury found itself a manufacturing bastion. We are taken through the years, socially, economically, and politically, right up to today, and see connections and timelines that continue to morph the community.

Along with products of the mills, experience the frightening 1955 Flood. In one display case, among notable persons from Waterbury, you’ll find the graceful, confident expression of Rosalind Russell captured in a sculpture. For more on Roz, as well as her own exploits during the 1955 Flood, have a look here at my Another Old Movie Blog.

In the art gallery are examples by John Trumbull, Frederick Church, Charles Ethan Porter, and many other 19th and 20th century artists, and contemporary artists as well.

Stepping back to Waterbury’s industrial heritage again, the museum also houses the Button Museum, a unique attraction. The variety of buttons represent tiny works of art in many materials, including examples from Asia, military buttons, Bakelite buttons from the 1930s, and four engraved buttons from the coat of General George Washington.

The collection was originally part of the Waterbury Button Company, which had made buttons here since 1812, and given to the museum by the Waterbury Companies, which succeeded the Waterbury Button Company.

This museum is Waterbury in microcosm, and other communities looking to establish museums preserving their regional culture and history would do well to visit The Mattatuck Museum.

Pres. Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site - Plymouth Notch, Vermont

The boyhood home of President Calvin Coolidge in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, is currently undergoing renovation.

On August 23, 1923, President Warren G. Harding died, and Vice President Coolidge, who was up here at his parents’ home on vacation, received the shocking news from Washington. A few minutes later, Coolidge placed his hand on the family bible. His father, a notary public, administered the oath of office, making his son President of the United States. The simple protocol was undertaken by the light of a kerosene lamp.

This quiet, rural farmhouse entered history. Even “Silent Cal”, looking back on the event, understood the remarkable greatness and poignancy of the moment.

"It seemed a simple and natural thing to do at the time,” he wrote, “but I can now realize something of the dramatic force of the event."

The President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site is comprised of 560 acres and several buildings, all preserved as they were, including a general store, barns, church, and the dance hall that was referred to as the Summer White House of the Coolidge presidency. That one’s a little hard to imagine, isn’t it? You’re just going to have to see for yourself. But not this season, there’s too much work to be done. Put it on your calendar for next year, after they’ve got it all spruced up for you.

For more on the President Calvin Coolidge State Historic Site, have a look at this website.

Adams National Historic Park - Quincy, Massachusetts

Since yesterday was Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts (and Maine), let’s have a look at some genuine patriots. We have endured many ersatz self-proclaimed ones of late.

Adams National Historical Park tells the story of four generations of the Adams family (from 1720 to 1927). The park has two main sites: the birthplaces of 2nd U.S. President John Adams and 6th U.S. President John Quincy Adams, and also Peace field, which all together were home to four generations of the Adams family

At the corner of Franklin Street and Presidents Avenue in Quincy, Massachusetts, there stand companionably close together two small salt-box style houses that date from the 1700s. John Adams was born in the older house, the weathered-looking, unpainted structure, in 1735. In the painted newer house, closer to the road, he lived with his wife, Abigail, whom he married in 1764.

That was all before he became President, before these roads were ever named Franklin and Presidents streets, before the town of Quincy came into being. This was still part of Braintree then. Today these two homes on this triangular plot of land form an island in otherwise noisy, hectic sea of 21st century traffic, high tension wires, and convenience stores. Yet, here it is still, believably, the 18th Century.

John Adams wrote in his diary a year after his marriage, on Thursday, December 26th, 1765, “At Home by the Fireside viewing with Pleasure, the falling Snow and the Prospect of a large one.”

It was a peaceful moment in the otherwise dramatic, tumultuous, and history-making life of the farmer-lawyer who rode circuit on his horse through all kinds of weather, snow included. As the years progressed, he would take a leading role in a Revolution, forge ties as a diplomat between Europe’s oldest monarchies and this new American country that was the first democratic republic in the world. He would become its first Vice President, and its second President, and his own son would be the 6th President.

Another house, about a mile away, is the more genteel manor President Adams and his remarkable wife Abigail moved to in 1788. Here they would spend their retirement years, and several generations of their family maintained the property until these three sites were turned over by the Adams descendants to the National Park Service in 1946. This country estate is called Peace field.

The Adams National Historical Park, which comprises these three homes in Quincy is a view not only on American history, but of its culture and artistry, and its ingenuity. There are thousands of artifacts here from the Adams family, including works of art, a library of over 12,000 volumes, furniture, and Abigail’s old bullet mold. She had melted down her pewter spoons to mold into bullets for the Continental Army.

John and Abigail Adams’ dramatic adventures during the Revolution and presidential years were chronicled in historian David McCullough’s “John Adams”, which won the Pultizer Prize and was made into the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries in 2008. In that year, after the miniseries was shown, the Adams National Historical Park was overwhelmed with visitors who had suddenly discovered John Adams through that program and now wanted to re-visit him and Abigail again in the best place that was possible.

Now that the crowds visiting these three homesteads have thinned out, it’s a great time to visit. Also down the street is the United First Parish Church where both President John Adams and President John Quincy Adams, and their ladies, are buried. More on that another time.

For more on the Adams National Historic Park, have a look at this website. For more on the HBO miniseries, have a look here.

Earthquakes in New England

Devastating earthquakes, most recently in Haiti and in Chile, draw our sympathy and response with aide to the anguished people suffering these mysterious events, and renew our curiosity about the peculiar horror of shaking earth.

The recent earthquake in the Baja Peninsula reminds earthquake-prone areas that these natural phenomena are always a factor. New England has its own, obviously much milder, history of earthquakes. An earthquake off Cape Ann, Massachusetts was noted by future President John Adams in his diary on November 18, 1755:

We had a severe Shock of an Earthquake. It continued near four minutes. I was then at my fathers in Braintree, and awoke out of my Sleep in the midst of it. The house seemed to rock and reel and crack as if it would fall in ruins about us. Chimnies were shatter’d by it within one mile of my fathers house.

It was fairly severe quake, and knocked the weather vane off the roof of Faneuil Hall in Boston. That month the plates under the Atlantic Ocean seemed particularly active, as earlier that month on November 1st, the city of Lisbon, Portugal was destroyed by an earthquake.

It is conjectured that the earthquake recorded in 1638 was an even bigger one, scaring the Puritans silly. Another famous diarist, John Winthrop, noted many aftershocks in the following weeks.

We’ve since had a fair scattering of smaller quakes through the late 1800s and 20th century, one of the larger probably being the January 10, 1982 quake that reached about 5.9 on the Richter Scale, followed by several days of minor aftershocks and a second quake on the 19th, reaching 4.8. Another that hit Quebec and was felt in all New England states occurred November 1988, reached 6.0 on the Richter.

During those shaky moments, diners at the Top of the Hub restaurant on Boston’s Prudential Center got as rattled as the dishes; the ceiling shook at the old Boston Garden where the Celtics were just about to play the Milwaukee Bucks; and in western Mass., the old 10-story control tower at Westover Air Reserve Base was evacuated.

Hardly the stuff of disaster such as what victims of very destructive earthquakes must endure. We wouldn’t want it any other way.

Washington Memorial Tablet - Hartford, Connecticut

This memorial tablet to George Washington stands in the shadow (literally in this photo), of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Washington came to Hartford a few times during the crucial years of the fight for American Independence, and then once as President.

General George Washington first passed this way in 1775 on his journey to take command of the Continental Army.

He met Comte de Rochambeau, the French ally of the fledging American revolutionaries at the Hartford home of Jeremiah Wadsworth in 1780, along with Lafayette and General Knox.  The site is now where the magnificent Wadsworth Atheneum stands. See this previous blog post on the Wadsworth Atheneum, and this one on the Rochambeau memorial in Rhode Island as a tribute to Rochambeau's valuable aide.

He returned to Hartford the following year, and made his final visit as President on a tour of the Eastern “States” in 1789. The memorial was dedicated in 1932 by the Connecticut Daughters of the Revolution “in abiding reverence”.

We have many memorials to heroes and events of the past, some magnificent structures and works of art, and some, like this, more modest tablets. It does not matter the size, or perhaps even a location of convenience. What matters is the abiding reverence.

McKinley Statue - Adams, Mass.

This statue of President William McKinley in Adams, Massachusetts would appear to be directing traffic. An easy job, considering there doesn’t appear to be much traffic at this tidy little rotary, now known as McKinley Square.

President McKinley supported legislation and tariffs favorable to the cotton industry, which was still a huge part of the economy and major employer in New England in the last days of the 19th century. Adams, a small town in the western Berkshires, was in its heyday as a mill town at this period, and the local Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company, headed by Plunkett Brothers, did very well at this time.

President McKinley, a friend of the Plunketts, visited Adams three times during his presidency, which tragically ended when McKinley was assassinated in September 1901. The new century, so anticipated with hopeful celebration, began miserably.

But the Town of Adams was not willing to let go of an old friend so easily. Shortly after the assassination, the town commissioned sculptor Augustus Lukeman to create a statue in honor of the slain president. The statue was unveiled on October 10, 1903, and still forms the centerpiece of McKinley Square.

For more on President McKinley’s ties to Adams, Mass., have a look at this website of the Adams Historical Society.

Presidents on Martha's Vineyard

President Barack Obama’s family vacation on the island of Martha’s Vineyard will play big in the news this week, but perhaps the Vineyard residents, even the tourists, may take it in stride after all. President Bill Clinton’s family vacations here through the 1990s gave them a little practice in dealing with the traffic of tedious motorcades and tight security. Other sitting US Presidents, and would-be presidents, and former presidents were visitors here, under vastly different circumstances.

For a detailed retrospective on these presidential visits, have a look at this article in Martha’s Vineyard magazine.Two that spring to mind as the most interesting, and in some ways coincidental (not just because they were also in August) and ironic as times of political turmoil, are when John Adams came for a court case in 1765. Lawyer Adams rode circuit at the time and the Vineyard was part of his jurisdiction.

In his diary, John Adams wrote, “After the 14 of August this Year 1765, I went on a journey to Martha's Vineyard, on the Tryal of a Cause before Referees, between Jerusha Mayhew and her Relations. The keen Understanding of this Woman, and the uncontroulable Violence of her irascible Passions, had excited a quarrell of the most invidious, inveterate and irreconcileable nature between the several Branches of the Mayhew Family, which had divided the whole Island into Parties.”

The “uncontroublable Violence” of “irascible Passions” was nothing compared to what was going on back in Boston as Adams waited to board his ship in Falmouth for the crossing to the island. His cousin Sam Adams, really annoyed at the Stamp Act, led the Sons of Liberty to riot against the stamp master on August 13th, and then on the 26th, burned down the fellow’s house. The Act had been voted on in Parliament that March, but wasn’t even going to take effect until November.

John Adams briskly summarized, “I forgot to mention that while We were at Falmouth waiting to be ferried over to the Island the News arrived from Boston of the Riots on the twenty fifth of August in which C.J. Lt. Governor Hutchinsons House was so much injured. My Business at the Bar was so The Stamp Act was repealed, and the Declaratory Act passed: but as We expected it would not be executed, good humour was in some measure restored.”

Well over one hundred years later in the nation that Adams helped to establish,
President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife visited the Vineyard in August 1874 at the Methodist Campgrounds. He was the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Vineyard. The previous year, the Panic of 1873 (they don’t call them Panics anymore even if we still panic a little), brought economic ruin when banking firms collapsed, the stock market crashed, and the depression that resulted (we don’t even like to call them depressions anymore if we can help it), lasted a good six years.

In the congressional elections that fall after President Grant’s vacation, the Democrats (Grant was a Republican you remember), took the House for the first time in many years in one of our many typical political shudders as a response to trouble.

These days we, too, are experiencing “uncontroulable Violence of…irascible Passions,” exciting “a quarrell of the most invidious, inveterate and irreconcileable nature.” Perhaps a little vacation is what we all need. May “good humour” in some measure be restored.

For a look at the town of Oak Bluffs, have a look at my article on Another Old Movie Blog on the Strand Theater. For a look at John Adams’ autobiography, see this site by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Abigail Adams Statue - Quincy, Mass.

This formidable, resolute woman with her hand gently placed on the young scholar’s shoulder is Abigail Adams. The boy with the book is her son, John Quincy Adams. We know Abigail chiefly as wife of one President and mother of another.

The statue gives us a hint as to what else she was: teacher, and also student. As was common in the 18th Century, women, even women from respected families as Abigail was, were denied a formal education. But those with means, and a supportive family, could teach themselves, and Abigail was a voracious reader, who displayed her keen intelligence in the many letters she wrote to her husband John Adams and other family and friends.

Abigail did not take education lightly, nor did she use it lightly. Along with educating her own children, she taught other children, including the incident she recorded in a letter to her husband, John Adams, in 1791, when she described trying to help a young black servant boy who asked for her help to get an education. She enrolled him in a local evening school, but several people objected to his admission to the school. Abigail responded he was "a Freeman as much as any of the young Men and merely because his Face is Black, is he to be denied instruction? How is he to be qualified to procure a livelihood? . . . I have not thought it any disgrace to my self to take him into my parlor and teach him both to read and write."

She also believed in equal education for boys and girls. In a letter from March 1776, she urged her husband to "remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebellion and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice or Representation."

Her husband acknowledged she was better at running the farm than he was.

Here in this statue she places her hand on the shoulder of the future. Her magnificent imprint remains with us.

The statue, which stands next to the United First Parish Church where Abigail and John Adams, and their son John Quincy Adams and his wife, Louisa, are buried, was dedicated in 1997. It was sculpted by Lloyd Lillie, who also did the Katherine Lee Bates statue of Falmouth, Mass., discussed in this previous post.

Toto's Zeppelin Nightclub

Today we visit a place that’s long gone and by probably most forgotten. It’s a 1930s nightclub in the shape of a zeppelin.

No, really. Have a look here at the photo posted by our friend John at his blog Robert Frost’s Banjo. These photos were taken by his roving amateur photographer father, and the caption he wrote notes it is a nightclub “outside of Springfield”. The photo was taken in 1938. Later that same year, in November, the restaurant caught fire and was destroyed (one wonders if there were morbid analogies to the Hindenburg disaster of the year before - see this post on the famous newsreel covering the event on Another Old Movie Blog).

Located in the neighborhood known as Smith’s Ferry on Route 5 in Holyoke, Mass., the nightclub in the shape of the world famous Graf Zeppelin was aluminum-coated, 100 feet long with an upper and lower deck. It was built in 1933, damaged in a 1934 fire. Under new ownership by Salavtore “Toto” LoBello, it was re-christened “Toto’s Zeppelin”, one of the most popular dine and dance restaurants in an age when aviators were heroes and “roadside” architecture a sign of the times.

According to an article by Springfield historian Larry Gormally in the now defunct Springfield Journal from 1998, Toto’s Zeppelin was popular for college dances, high school proms, weddings and a great place to stop and have a meal if you were on your way north or south in western New England. Before Interstate 91, Route 5 was the main artery from Connecticut to Vermont, occasionally hopping the Connecticut River which it followed like tag-along sibling. Likely John’s father found the restaurant as an unexpected discovery on his way either back to Vermont or leaving for the Cape and the sites of his other great photos (see John’s blog - Robert Frost’s Banjo).

Toto’s Zeppelin, however, was destroyed in the November 19, 1938 fire, possibly not long after the picture was taken, but rose from the ashes as a refurbished, rather Art Deco-looking modern restaurant without the zeppelin shell. The business was situated on six acres, and so there was an expansion of the building in 1947, including a picnic grove, a softball field, shuffleboard and handball courts.

According to Mr. Gormally’s article, Toto’s Restaurant was famous for its steaks, seafood, a menu of 40 different sandwiches, and rousing group sing-a-longs with the orchestra. John F. Kennedy, before his days as a Senator, was a guest here, as well as singers Vaughn Monroe and Patti Page.

Perhaps the only reference to the days of the restaurant’s former zeppelin motif was in the three triple-decker grinders (for those not from western Mass., a “grinder” is a submarine/torpedo/hoagy/po’boy/fill-in-the-blank sandwich), named for the three zeppelins owned by the United States Navy. You could order an Akron, a Macon, or a Shenandoah.

The ad for Toto's above was taken from a 1947 theatre program from Holyoke's The Valley Players (for more on The Valley Players, see this Wednesday my blog Tragedy and Comedy in New England). Thanks so much to John at Robert Frost’s Banjo for reviving the memory of Toto’s Zeppelin in the photo taken by his father.

Hartford - Insurance Capitol

A children’s coloring book from years ago taught about the 50 US state capitols. Each page in the coloring book featured an iconic image to color about each state capitol. I think Boston’s picture was of a Pilgrim, or possibly a Minuteman. State capitols from the Midwest featured ears of corn or Abraham Lincoln, or the St. Louis Arch. There were images of Alaska and Kansas, Florida orange groves, of fishing boats, the Liberty Bell, oil rigs, cowboys, and lobstermen.

The page for Hartford, Connecticut had a picture of an insurance policy.

Once called the insurance capitol of the world, Hartford continues to host many insurance company headquarters, and it is still a major industry here.

Here we have Travelers, Aetna, CIGNA, Phoenix Mutual, and of course, The Hartford. Some companies, like MetLife and MassMutual have moved out to the suburbs. Those that remain occupy buildings that are bastions, famous for their architure.

Aetna’s headquarters is considered the world’s largest colonial revial-style building. Above we have a shot of the distinctive Traveler’s building. Contrasting these traditional architectural forms, is the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Building, a modern structure reputed to be the first two-sided building in the world, and as such, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Aetna issued its first life insurance policy in 1850. According to the website of The Hartford, among its most famous customers was Robert E. Lee, who in 1859 took insurance out on his home, which as General of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War, he lost when the Union Army began to bury its dead in his front yard. His home is now Arlington National Cemetery. One wonders if he was insured for Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln also took insurance with The Hartford out on his home back in Springfield, Illinois in 1861, which he would never see again, after his Presidendency ended with his assanation.

In 1890 Buffalo Bill Cody collected on a claim after a fire on his property. In 1920, the same day Babe Ruth was traded by the Red Sox to the Yankees, Ruth bought a “sickness” policy to protect his income should illness threaten his career. The Red Sox should have bought a Curse of the Bambino Policy the same day.

In 1947, the Junior Fire Marshal Program began, and many of us were taught in school the basics of fire prevention, and took home one of these little toy badges. Check out eBay sometime and you’ll see many of them still exist.

Perhaps some of you fans of Old Time Radio will remember “Johnny Dollar” an insurance investigator working out of a fictional Hartford-based insurance company.

Next year The Hartford will celebrate its 200th anniversary. There is more to Hartford than the insurance industry, but page in a coloring book devoted to an insurance policy must tell us it’s at least as important as a cowboy or a Minuteman. Probably not as much fun to color, though.

Mineral Springs at Stafford Springs, CT

Here are some views of Stafford Springs, Connecticut. It is a quiet community now, but long before the quiet of this autumn day, long before its rise as a manufacturing town, even before it became known for the mining of bog iron ore, this place had the interesting reputation as a resort town based on the healing properties of its mineral springs.


The young lawyer and future President John Adams traveled west from Braintree on horseback in 1771 after overwork and exhaustion left him in a precarious state of health. He wrote in his autobiography,

“I was advised to take a journey to the Stafford Springs in Connecticutt, then in as much Vogue as any mineral Springs have been since. I spent a few days in drinking the Waters and made an Excursion, through Somers and Windsor down to Hartford and the journey was of Use to me, whether Waters were or not.”

One of the first published accounts of Stafford Springs as resort location is noted in Connecticut Historical Collections by John Warner Barber, (self published, New Haven, 1836). “The Indians first made themselves acquainted with the virtues of these springs…It has been their practice, time immemorial, to resort to them in the warm season, and plant their wigwams round them. They recommended the water as an eye water; but gave their own particular reason for drinking it, that it enlivened their spirits.”

By 1899 when another account of Stafford Springs was published in The Minerals Waters of the United States and Their Therapeutic Uses by James K. Cook, A.M., M.D. (Lea Brothers, NY, 1899), we are informed that the area was known as a resort since at least 1750 for travelers seeking to restore their health. The author notes, “During the latter part of the last and for many years of the present century the place was held in high favor throughout New England and the neighboring states.” At the time of this publication, the author notes that the spring water was now being bottled.

“The water is clear and sparkling and excellent for table purposes. It has attained its greatest reputation in the treatment of blood and skin infections. It is said to be actively diuretic.” This publication lists the mineral contents: sodium chloride, potassium sulfate, sodium sulfate, sodium bicarbonate, sodium phosphate, iron peroxide, iron protoxide, alumina, lime, silicic acid, and magnesia.

By 1938 when the WPA state guidebook for Connecticut was published, the heyday of the mineral springs were long past, and we are informed only that there had been two mineral springs around the Hyde Park area from which the town got its name, and which were “in the early 19th century the center of a flourishing health resort.” The unique feature which brought native people, colonial settlers and future Presidents to visit on a health pilgrimage is reduced to a single line of type.

Stafford Springs is still as charming a town as you will find on a country drive, but there is no longer a flourishing health resort to restore you to vigor. But a quiet walk across the bridge up along Spring Street to Hyde Park and the remnants marking an old springhouse may certainly enliven your spirits.

For more information on Stafford Springs, have a look at this website.

Been there? Done that? Let us know.