Intro

Music

Jake:
[0:04] 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 1 95 Boston goes to bleeding Kansas Hi, I’m Jake.
This week, I’ll be talking about a bloody guerrilla war that was fought on the Kansas Plains in the decade before the U. S Civil War officially began.
When the violence peaked, the conflict be known as bleeding Kansas fought with guns, newspapers, artillery and sometimes even broad swords.
It was fought by so called border ruffians from Missouri and support of slavery on one side and by Ernest Abolitionists from New England on the other.
I’m gonna talk about the Boston based company that seated those Ernest abolitionists into that wasteland and eventually looked the other way is they transform themselves from farmers to vigilantes and soldiers.
But before I talk about bleeding Kansas, it’s time for this week’s Bustin Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

Boston Book Club

[1:12] My pick for the Boston Book Club this week is Cloudsplitter, a novel by Russell Banks.
I don’t usually feature historical fiction on the show, but when I realized John Brown would make an appearance this week. It was the first book that sprang to mind.
It’s a sprawling, 750 page attempt at the Great American novel telling the story of John Brown and his family through the eyes of his son, Owen.
A 1998 review of the book said the picture that no one draws of his father is that of a fierce, self righteous profit, a man who did everything with greater intensity than the rest of us.
A patriarch who took advice badly but gave it without stent, an absolutist who divides the world into an US and them.

[1:59] The old man, we’re told, uses the Bible to justify everything from his domineering control of his family to his preaching the violent overthrow of slavery.
He has a tireless proselytizer, a self deluding dreamer, an Old Testament vigilante and, it appears, a manic depressive given to periods of dark, brooding and interludes of equally frenetic activity.
He willfully imposes his own obsession with slavery on its entire family, and he exhorts his sons to become cold blooded warriors willing to use any means to achieve their ends,
where so in recounts his father’s embrace of violence is a tool to wage war against slavery had tragic consequences for his Children.
Some of his sons would become heartless killers. Some would become martyrs to his cause.

[2:48] Banks creates a portrait of the brown family, full of complex resentments between sons and their father.
His fictional approach means that banks can describe the events at Pottawatomie or Harpers Ferry with a level of grizzly disturbing detail that just isn’t available to historians.
It’s not an easy book, but it is rewarding, though be aware that the author pretty flagrantly revise, is the historical facts to support his narrative.

Upcoming Event(S)

[3:16] And for my upcoming event this week, I have a discussion sponsored by Revolutionary Spaces and the Up Standard Project.
This Wednesday, July 29th a panel will discuss the impact of covert 19 and past pandemics on indigenous peoples in New England.

[3:33] The panel consists of the chairwoman of the Native Land Conservancy, the executive director of the Tom A Quad Museum, and the Learning director at the Up Standard project.
Two of the three Panelists and the moderator are members of New England Native American nations.
Here’s how revolutionary Spaces described the event from smallpox and measles to cholera, dysentery and tuberculosis.
Indigenous peoples have suffered disproportionate loss of life from disease since European settlers began to trade with um and later occupy their land.
The novel Corona virus has impacted indigenous peoples with a familiar ferocity, flagging their perennial lack of good jobs, housing and health care.
Join a distinguished panel of experts to learn about the historical and present day conditions that have made indigenous people especially vulnerable to disease and the strategies required to break this pattern of discrimination and social violence.
This events free but advanced registration is required, and through the magic of nepotism.
We have a bonus event from the Old North Church Historic site, where co host American Nicky is now the executive director.

[4:48] On Tuesday, the 28th they’re hosting a webinar about the connections between Old North and Boston’s historic maritime culture.
On the podcast, we’ve talked about everything from the royal governor who made his fortune by raising sunken treasure to the Maritime Underground Railroad that ran right through Boston Harbor.
We’ve even talked about Old North’s maritime tradition and our episode about the so called pirate tunnels under the North End.
Education manager T. J. Todd will focus on this maritime tradition, as described on the event page in almost every way, Boston was a city that relied on the maritime industry.
The Old North Church was similarly shaped in many ways by its relationship to the sea.
Using the church’s connection to the sea is a launching point. We will examine a narrative that goes beyond the walls of the building, how the sea affected the lives and fortunes of its congregants.
And even the look of the church itself specifically will dive into the stories of Captain Samuel Nicholson and captain Thomas Gucci. In addition, to much more.
The event starts at 7 p.m. On Tuesday, and tickets are $15.
We’ll have the links you need to register for either virtual event or to buy Cloudsplitter in the show notes. This week. A Hub history dot com slash 195.

[6:11] Before I start the show, I want to pause and say thanks to Kurt M and Kathy Em.
Carts are most recent Patri on sponsor, and Kathy is a longtime sponsor who just increased our monthly pledge.
Folks like Curtain Kathy make it possible for me to create hub history by contributing $2.5 dollars or even $10 a month to offset the cost of making a podcast.
With their help, we’ve been able to add transcripts to each show, get access to Richard historical sources, get listed and Spotify and continue to pay for Web hosting and security.
And podcast Media hosted a big thank you to Kurt, Kathy and all our sponsors.
If you’d like to join them, just go to patri on dot com slash hub history or visit HUD history dot com and click on the Support US link.
And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Main Topic: Boston Goes To Bleeding Kansas

[7:06] On the night of May 24th 18 56 a detachment of abolitionist militia led by John Brown raided a farming community along Pottawatomie Creek in eastern Kansas.
The sparsely populated valley have been mostly settled by pro slavery Missourians, and that night five of them would die.

[7:27] The militia unit, perhaps more aptly described as a posse, consisted of John Brown, four of his sons and three or four other followers at three different settler cabins.
That night, the posse forced their way into the home, dragged the adult male residents out into the darkness and then hacked nearly all of them to death with broad swords, finishing at least one off of the pistol shot to the head.

[7:54] That would be hanged three years later for attempting to start a slave rebellion at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia.
It was the Pottawatomie massacre that cemented John Brown’s reputation as a radical and violent zealot in the cause of freedom.
His group’s actions that night would set off a cycle of violence that led to three months of open warfare in bleeding Kansas.
While it’s fairly common knowledge that Brown’s later raid at Harpers Ferry was financially supported by a secret six group of financial supporters from Massachusetts, People often overlooked the fact that the Pottawatomie massacre was carried out.
His revenge for the sacking of Florence, a town in Kansas conceived, financed and populated almost entirely by Bostonians.
Our story this week begins with the Kansas Nebraska Act of 18 54.
As the question of slavery heated up throughout the 19th century, the 18 20 Missouri compromise kept an uneasy peace.
This congressional compromise was put in place to maintain the balance between slave and free states in the Senate, beginning with the admission of Missouri is a slave state and main the former eastern counties of Massachusetts as a free state.

[9:07] The Missouri compromise succeeded in kicking the can down the road for about three decades until Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas decided that opening up the unincorporated Nebraska territory and creating a transcontinental railroad,
was more important than maintaining that existing balance of power in the Senate.
Until Douglas got his bright idea. The land that we now know is Kansas in Nebraska had been part of Indian territory after Andrew Jackson’s genocidal Indian removal policy went into effect.
Members of the Shawnee, Delaware, Kickapoo, Miami and many other nations were forcibly uprooted and relocated to Indian territory.
Now they’d be forcibly relocated again toe Oklahoma or onto smaller reservations within Kansas territory.

[9:56] Under Douglas’s leadership, the Kansas Nebraska Act created two new territories, and it effectively repealed the Missouri compromise.
The careful balance between slave and free states was replaced by the concept of popular sovereignty, where in the voters of each territory, all white men at the time would decide whether the territory was admitted to the union as slave or free.

[10:21] In the North.
Abolitionists believe that the Kansas Nebraska Act spell doom for their movement.
Missouri was right next door to Kansas and the expected pro slavery settlers to flood across the border into the new territory Kansas would be admitted to.
The union is a slave state, Nebraska would follow, and the balance of power in the Senate and through the Senate, the judiciary and the Electoral College would forever tip in favor of slave power.

[10:50] On the day of the vote, New York Senator William H. Seward, who would eventually Servas Lincoln secretary of state, said,
the sun is set for the last time upon the guaranteed in certain liberties of all the unsettled in unorganized portions of the American continent that lie within the jurisdiction of the United States,
tomorrow’s sun will rise Indem eclipse over them.
How long that Obscuration shall last is known only to the power that directs and controls all human events.
For myself, I know only this that no human power can prevent. It’s coming on.
That it’s passing off will be hastened and secured by others than those now here, and perhaps by only those belonging to future generations.
So it would be almost factious to offer further resistance to this measure here.
Indeed, successful resistance was never expected to be made in this hole.
The Senate is an old battleground on which have been fought many contests and always at least since 18 20 with fortune adverse to the cause of equal and universal freedom.

[11:56] A few optimistic abolitionists believe that there was still hope for their movement.
But it would rely on somehow converting Kansas from a territory presumed to be populated by slavers, the one that would soon vote to be admitted to the union as a free state.
Among these optimists was Eli Fair. Ah, historian, writing about this period in 1935 would say,
the plan to save Kansas by means of organized emigration from the Northeast seems to have had its inception in the enthusiastic mind of Eli Fair As early as March 18 54,
more than two months before President Pierce signed the Kansas Nebraska Act,
he later be elected to the U.
S Congress. But at the time the Kansas Nebraska Act was passed a life, there was just a second term member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
In 18 86 he described what he believed was a stroke of genius that struck him soon after learning the Kansas Nebraska Act would pass.

[12:58] I began to have a conviction which came to be ever present, that something must be done to end the domination of slavery.
I felt a personal responsibility, and though I long struggled to evade the question. I found it to be impossible.
I pondered upon it by day and dreamed of it by night. By what plan could this great problem be solved?
What force could be effectively opposed to the power that seemed about to spread itself over the continent?
Suddenly, it came upon me like a revelation. It was organized and assisted immigration.
Then came the question. Was it possible to create such an agency to save Kansas?
I believe the time for such a noble and heroic development had come, but could hope he inspired and the pulsations of life be started beneath the ribs of death.
The projected plan would call upon men to risk life and property in establishing freedom. In Kansas, they will be called the pass over millions of acres of better land than any in the disputed territory was supposed to be.
And where peace and plenty were assured to meet the revolver in the Bowie knife, defending slavery in a sailing freedom.
Could such men be found, they would certainly prove themselves to be the very highest type of Christian manhood, as much above all other immigrants as angels are above men.
Could such men be found.

[14:25] A month before President Pierce signed the Kansas Nebraska Act into Law, the life they are introduced into the state Legislature, a bill creating a charter for a new corporation called the Massachusetts Immigrant Aid Company.
I know it’s hard to distinguish, but throughout this episode I’m using the word e M I G r A n t.
Meeting someone who leaves the place there from toe permanently settled in a new place there was looking for abolitionist New Englanders who would sacrifice everything to move to Kansas and fighting in slavery.
As he described it, the Kansas immigration was emphatically a self sacrificing immigration, a power hitherto unknown in history.
All previous immigrations had either been forced or voluntary and, if voluntary, were self seeking.

[15:18] So these self sacrificing immigrants would be called on to move to the violent, lawless Kansas territory to resist.
And it would become later known to fight pro slavery settlers and eventually vote to admit Kansas as a free state.
However, unlike the myth of the frontier that’s been passed down and I would argue, perverted, our self image of America, these were not rugged individualists.
There would be Massachusetts families steeped for centuries in the tradition of Commonwealth of Communal Action toward common goals.
When they went out onto the prairies of Kansas, they would take Massachusetts with um in the form of theirs.
Massachusetts Immigrant Aid Corporation, the organization’s first annual report, written by Fairer and by Edward Everett Hale, begins to explain the purpose behind the group.

[16:14] The immigrants suffers whenever he goes alone into his new home.
He suffers from the frauds of others, from his own ignorance of the system of travel and of the country where he settles, and again from its one of support from neighbours, which results in the impossibility of any combined assistance or of any division of flavor.
The Immigrant Aid Society will relieve him from these embarrassments by sending out immigrants and companies and establishing them in considerable numbers.
It will provide shelter and food at the lowest prices after the arrival of immigrants. While they make the arrangements necessary for their new homes, they will render all the assistance which the information of its agents can give.
It is recommended that it’s such points is the director’s select for places of settlement.
They shall at once construct a hoarding house or receiving house, in which 300 persons may receive temporary accommodation on their arrival and that the number of such houses be enlarged and that the number of such houses be enlarged.
As necessity may dictate, the newcomers or their families may thus be provided for in the necessary interval, which elapses well. They’re making their selection of a location.

[17:25] It’s recommended that the directors procure and send forward steam. Sawmills.
Chris Mills and other such machines shall be of constant service in a new settlement, which cannot, however, be purchased or carried out conveniently by individual settlers.
At the same time, it’s desirable that a printing press should be sent out and a weekly newspaper established,
this would be the organ of the company’s agents would extend information regarding its settlement and be from the very first and index of that love of freedom and of good morals, which, it is, to be hoped, may characterize the state now to be formed.
So while popular imagination of life on the Kansas Plains is largely informed by myths, many of which were created by Little House on the Prairie, the reality was an effort to transplant the Massachusetts system of communal living toe what was then the frontier.
Settlers who signed up with the immigrant aid company would receive assistance in arranging travel to Kansas, and upon their arrival they’d be given food and lodgings while they selected the land they wanted the homestead.
Each party would be centered around a newly created town, complete with new England style mills and town newspapers to reinforce the importance of anti slavery.

[18:38] As word spread about this new immigrant aid company, their public representatives like Edward Everett Hale on Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson, we’re in none dated with letters from prospective immigrants.
In June of 18 54 Higginson was dealing with the fallout from his arrest in the attempt to free Anthony Burns, who had in turn been arrested under the Fugitive Slave Act.
As if he wasn’t busy enough, he received letters like this one from Mr Mason. Newburyport.
Can you tell me anything about the Immigrants Aid Society? My wife and I have been thinking for some time that it might be better for us to go into some new country.
And perhaps if we could get to Nebraska or Kansas, we might not only better our own condition, but do some good in the cause of freedom.

[19:26] People like Mr Mace made up the first party of immigrants sponsored by the aid company.
They left the Boston and Worcester Depot at the corner of Beach Street in Lincoln in today’s Chinatown on July 17th 18 54 a newspaper report said.
The pioneer party of immigrants from this city to Kansas started from the Worcester Depot yesterday afternoon.
A large number of persons were present to witness their departure, and as the train was leaving, all joined in three hearty cheers.
The party consisted of 16 persons, mostly highly intelligent and enterprising young men.
Three of the number were from Roxbury to from Lynn, four robust intrepid Vermonters and three from this city, meaning Boston.
When the party change trains at Worcester, they picked up 11 more immigrants than to Maura’s.
They passed through Rochester, New York Upon reaching Buffalo, the group transferred from a train toe, a steamboat, which they took to Detroit from Detroit.
They went by train to Chicago, transferred to another train and arrived in ST Louis.
There they boarded the final steamboats that would take them to Kansas on July 25th.

[20:42] They also started meeting resistance from pro slavery Missourians. There as recorded in a letter by immigrant Daniel Anthony in ST Louis.
And on the boat, a certain class of political hacks who manifested a great interest in our welfare told us that we would not be permitted to land at Kansas, that the people of Missouri were determined at all hazards.
To prevent the settling of Kansas territory by the immigrants from the northern states.

[21:11] On board the Steamer Polar Star, the anti slavery immigrants encountered the reality of slavery for the first time.
Dr. John Doi, one of the late comers to the party from Rochester, wrote what a volume might be written concerning our noble boat in its fixed cargo.
We had four Pottawatomie. He’s going to the Kickapoo Indians from Milwaukee.
We have six slaves with their masters going to work hemp in Lexington, Missouri.
Some of them appear happy in their midnight ignorance. The master of one said he paid $1400 for him.
One poor fellow has a wife and five Children in Kentucky, but his master was compelled to sell him to save himself from ruin.
We had many slave owners on board, some of whom talked aloud about tar and feathers on our arrival.

[22:03] The Polar Star docked in Kansas City, Missouri, on July 28th.
And that same evening they set out over land for Kansas territory and a strip of fertile land between the Kansas and Walker Roosa rivers that the immigrant aid companies agents had scouted as a good location for a town.
They travel in darkness as much as possible for the next four nights, while the daytime temperatures reached nearly 120 degrees on the dusty plains on August 1st, BR Nap wrote.
We started early and made good progress during the day and in the evening arrived at the Walker Roosa River here. We established our camps and pitched are 25 tents, which made a fine appearance, although a little soiled.

[22:49] George S. Park on a scouting mission for the aid company that June, described this chosen settlement between the Walker, Roosa and Kansas Rivers in an early 18 54 book published by the company and an attempt to attract more settlers,
on both sides of the river above the Walker Roosa.
They’re excellent bottomlands and a short way beyond these.
Another fine site for a town presents itself on the north side while still farther up the South Bank, the high prairie comes right down to the water’s edge, presenting another appropriate place where the busy hum of commerce may by and by speak, the presence of a city,
and away as far as the eye could reach in a southwesterly direction.
The prairies were high, enrolling, like the waves of old ocean southward.
Beautiful grove Stop the prairie on the dark line of timber that stretches along the Walker Roosa Valley with the great prairie mound, so to speak, fixed.
There’s the landmark of perpetual beauty, the meandering river, with its dark skirting forests of timber. On the north.
All our scenes in nature’s magnificent panorama here brought within range of vision proceeding north. High rich bottoms extend from many miles, and we saw vast thickets of grapevines, pea vines, raspberries and pop pause.
The timber was principally oak, walnut, ash, hickory, mulberry, hackberry, Lyndon cottonwood and coffee bean.

[24:18] Edwin Davenport recorded the minutes of a meeting that was held on the very day of that first parties arrival, despite the intense heat and sun.
After full discussion by the members present, it was voted without a dissenting voice to stop here, to proceed, to make claims upon the land.
It being understood. The immigrant aid company at home will make this spot that base of their future operations and will forthwith or, as soon as possible, send men and money to effectually carry forward their grand enterprise.

[24:50] This base of operations that was established by the immigrant aid company would become the town of Florence.
Within just a few days, all the members of the party had staked out 160 acre claims and began setting up homesteads.
Those some would return to New England to finalize business arrangements, get their families or to never return.
For those who just weren’t up for homesteading in the 120 degree summer heat.

[25:19] This newly established town of Lawrence was the first step in realising a light. There’s vision that we should put a cordon of free states from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico and stop the forming of slave states.
After that, we should colonize the northern border slave states and exterminate slavery that our work was not to make women and Children cry in anti slavery conventions by sentimental appeals, but to go and put an end to slavery.

[25:48] Lawrence also immediately became a thorn in the side of the Walker Russo Association,
a group of pro slavery Missourians who, despite mostly not owning land or living in Kansas, consider themselves the rightful government of the walkers, a valley where the immigrants had founded their town.
When the new settlers from the immigrant aid company met on August 12th to hammer out the details of their representative government, members of the Walker Russo Association demanded to be included.
John Maley of Lin said, I thought I had heard politics discussed by all kinds of men and in every possible style,
but for bombast, rant and an almighty patriotic devotion to the great principles of the Star Spangled Banner and revolutionary blood, it beat everything I ever listened to in my life.
Well, we managed to get through amalgamated the two parties in tow, one called it. The Mutual Settlers Association passed laws and regulations which would be binding upon all and extending the protection of the association to each and every member thereof.
The meeting broke up with the best feeling possible, and all went to their several ways, satisfied that they had gained a glorious victory.

[27:03] Within weeks the next party of abolitionist Yankees was on its way from Boston to the Plains of Kansas, with a notice in the Boston Papers announcing.
The second party for Kansas, under the auspices of the immigrant aid company, will leave Boston on Tuesday, 29th Instant at two and 1/4 o’clock PM.

[27:24] Years later, a member of that second party named Joseph Savage would recollect I had gone alone to Boston to seek a home among the Western prairies for myself and family, and had bidden to do toe home and friends with a sad heart.

[27:40] When August 29th rolled around, The Boston Post said. The second party of immigrants from New England for Kansas started from the Boston and Worcester Depot yesterday.
At quarter past two, the party numbered 67 in all, eight or 10 of whom were females and about a dozen Children.
From the age of infancy to that of 15 or 16 years, the larger part of the adults of the party we should judge were under 35 years of age, and taken together they were a company of which New Englanders need not feel ashamed,
Joseph Savage remembered.
At Boston, a large crowd gathered at the depot to see the second party off for Kansas, the great American poet John Greenleaf Whittier had written a poem expressly for us.
It was printed on nice large cards and distributed freely among the crowd and a request given by Dr Webb for all to join in the song, which they did in good earnest.

[28:38] 1/3 party left Boston on September 26th and 1/4 on October 17.
The last two parties took extra supplies to store over the harsh Plains winter and used to build houses for more immigrants in the spring,
the sudden concentration of abolitionist northerners in Lawrence and the Walkers, a valley set off alarm bells among Missourians and across the Slave Society of the South.
An article in the Charleston, South Carolina, Mercury said If the South secures Kansas, she will extend slavery in tow all the territory south of the 40th parallel of North latitude to the Rio Grande.
And this, of course, will secure for her pent up institutions of slavery and ample outlet and restore her power in Congress.
If the North secures Kansas, the power of the South in Congress will be gradually diminished.
The states of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas, together with the adjacent territories, will gradually become abolition. Ized in the slave population confined to the states east of the Mississippi will become valueless.
All depends upon the action of the present moment.

[29:49] From the halls of respectability in genteel Charleston, the call to action reached all the way to the bluffs of the Missouri River, and Missourians began pouring into Kansas territory.
Some, like the eventual victims of John Brown’s vigilante killings, settled for good,
but many more stayed just long enough to vote in the territories first election in November 18 54 the’s pro slavery border ruffians started arming themselves and openly threatening the New England immigrants.
Sharps rifles started pouring into the immigrant aid companies, Kansas towns and crates labeled as Bibles provided by Henry Beecher Stowe.
Within a year, the conflict over slavery turned violent, with the border ruffian murdering a free stater.
From then on, the violence quickly spiraled out of control. The bloodshed started in earnest with the raid on Lawrence escalated with the Pottawatomie massacre continued with the months of warfare known, it’s bleeding.
Kansas travelled east with John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry and wouldn’t stop until Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox.

Wrap-Up

[31:02] To learn more about the founding an early history of the Massachusetts immigrant aid company, Check out this week’s show Notes hub history dot com slash 195 I’ll have copies of the founding documents of the company,
first person accounts of the early parties of immigrants who made their way from Boston to the Kansas Wasteland.
Founder Eli Failures history of the organization. And I’ll have a number of evaluations of the company by historians of different eras.
And, of course, I’ll link to information about our upcoming events and Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.

Listener Feedback

[31:40] Before I wrap up today, I want to share some listener feedback we’ve gotten recently.
First up, Roberto BC sent us a message on Facebook.
We discovered your blogged about a month or so ago. We’ll be moving to Boston soon, so this has been a Jewell.
My boyfriend will be an Internet BMC. We’re so excited. We found the podcast to learn more about Boston’s history. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the kind words, Roberto. I hope your boyfriend enjoyed the story of the body snatching physicians and revolutionary Boston from Episode 1 88,
as well as their episodes on the use of ether and surgery, advancements in X rays, the development of the Iron Lung and our other shows about medical advancements. In Boston.

[32:26] On Twitter, new listener Mike says listeningto hub history discovered thanks to their recent viral tweet and just got the Episode 18 about the first black woman to become a doctor. Go Listen. It’s great.
Follow up for the hosts. Did you succeed in getting their graves marked?
I replied with the details of a plan that was then in motion. But I now have breaking news.
I recently attended the dedication of new headstones for both Dr Rebecca Davis, Lee Crumpler and her husband, Arthur Crumpler, thanks to the Hyde Park Historical Society and the friends of the Hyde Park Library,
now America’s first black female doctor and her husband, a self liberated slave, became Boston’s oldest public school pupil are no longer for gotten.

[33:15] Along with that update. I warned Mike that are old episodes air pretty rough by our current standards and encouraged him to listen to the new stuff.
To that, he said, I’ll get to it. I plan on listeningto, all of it.

[33:31] A listener named E F. Tweeted. I’ve been flying through history podcasts in Lock Down, so have returned to the beginning of hub history.
I listen to episodes here and there over the years, but not all of them bust in history. Nerds head over to hub history.

[33:49] I have to admit, I’m a little scared of all these podcasts. Completists. The early stuff is really pretty rough, you guys.
Thanks for the kind words that we f a listener with the initials PG Road in.
After hearing our show about the Italian prisoners held on Petits Island during World War Two, he said, A really great listen here, and I’m not much of a podcast guy in particular.
Jakes, telling of the 1944 soccer riot in Southie is outstanding as a fan of obscure sports events over New England’s history.
I absolutely love this story and how you told it lots of fascinating layers I had no clue about. Thanks for sharing.
One question. Is it fair to assume that ethnic tensions between the Italians and the Irish, who comprise the bulk of Boston’s police personnel back then played a heavy role in escalating this conflict?
It’s attempting theory, but I didn’t find any evidence of it in my research.
The injured police were named Charles Clap Lindsay Laugh Erred Martin Kelly and Robert Thompson.
So the surnames aren’t a lock for an ethnic grudge.
Given the events leading up to the riot at Carson Beach, I pin responsibility on soldiers, sailors and recent veterans on the beach who are jealous of all the attention the prisoners got from local girls.
Want to know more? Go back and listen to Episode 1 94 Thanks for the question PD.

[35:18] A listener named Brendan sent us an email when he heard about co host America. Nikki’s moved to Old North.
He said, Hi, Nikki. Hope all is well with you and yours.
I just wanted to share. I came across your podcast focusing on Boston history and am a huge fan.
It’s now part of my regular rotation.
I also see that you’re transitioning to a new role in Old North. Congratulations.
That’s no doubt a history enthusiasts, which I am a swell dream job in the midst of these challenging times. I just wanted to take the opportunity to share something positive.
Thanks again for the podcast and all the good work you do. Take care, Brendan.

[36:00] Thanks on Nikki’s behalf. Brendan, that was a very kind email. And for anyone out there who misses hearing Mickey’s voice, you can see an interview with her in her new role, which will link to in this week’s show notes.
Or you can go see her in person on any day that old North is open.
We love getting listener feedback. Whether you’re following up on promises we made in early episodes or just offering us a pat on the back, we’re happy to hear your episode suggestions, factual corrections and alternate sources that we might have missed.
If you’d like to leave us some feedback on this show or any other, you can email us podcast a hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you could go toe hub history dot com and click on the Contact US link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing a PSA Brief review.
If you do drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history sticker is a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake:
[37:03] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.