Eclipses happen when the moon passes between the sun and the earth during the daytime, briefly blocking the light of the sun from the face of the earth. Over the past few years, observers in the US have been treated to every flavor of solar eclipse: a partial in 2021 when part of the sun’s disc remains unobscured; a total eclipse in 2017, when viewers in the narrow path of totality experienced daytime darkness, and an annular eclipse just last fall, when a ring of fire hung in the cold, bright sky. In honor of the April 2024 total eclipse, I’m sharing a clip that cohost emerita Nikki and I recorded within the first year of this podcast about some of the earliest experiences of eclipses here in Boston, most notably in 1780 and 1806. I’ll also share a clip about an unrelated phenomenon that darkened the skies over Boston for a second time in 1780, then again in 1881, 1950, and several times in the past 5 years. This was no eclipse however, but rather a much more terrestrial effect.
Tag: 17th Century
Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved, with Helen Gelinas (episode 296)
I’m pleased to share a recent talk called “Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved” that was part of the Congregational Library and Archive’s Valentines Day celebration. Helen Gelinas spoke about Cotton Mather and the women he was closest to: his three wives, his daughters, and his sisters, as well as his lifelong mission to understand the biblical Eve, the prototype for all women in his universe. Helen examined who he was behind closed doors, as a husband and father, and she challenged us to reconsider our assumptions that Cotton Mather would have been a tyrant over his wife and a strong disciplinarian who ruled his children with a rod. She also shared the surprising insight that between wives, Cotton Mather was one of Boston’s most eligible widowers, who was pursued aggressively by suitors.
Continue reading Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved, with Helen Gelinas (episode 296)
A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire, with Professor Adrian Chastain Weimer (episode 295)
In this episode, I’m joined by Professor Adrian Chastain Weimer, author of the recent book A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire. The book focuses on the period just after King Charles II returned the Stuarts to the English throne, during which he when he sought revenge against Boston Puritans for their perceived role in the execution of his father. Decades before the absolute rule of Edmund Andros, the crown sent four royal commissioners to Boston with secret orders that would upend every facet of public life, from voting to worship to the code of laws. Our conversation explores how the colonists defended their liberty within the constitutional system of colonial Massachusetts under restoration rule.
Water for Boston, Part 1 (episode 292)
This is the first of a three-part history of Boston’s water supply. First up is the early history of water in Boston, from its reliance on natural springs to the construction of the first aqueduct. We’ll compare today’s pure, plentiful drinking water to the challenges that early Bostonians faced in obtaining clean water. First, we’ll look at natural springs, hand-dug wells, and cisterns in early Boston, but as the city grew, these sources became increasingly scarce and polluted. Then we’ll talk about new technologies at the turn of the 19th century, such as drilled artesian wells and the Boston Aqueduct, which brought water from Jamaica Pond into the city. However, these new technologies were controlled by private companies, only providing water to the wealthiest Bostonians, leaving most residents desperate for a new, public source of water in the mid-19th century. Later episodes will explore the near-miracle that introducing a public water supply from the Cochituate reservoir represented and the engineering marvel of our modern Quabbin reservoir.
Granite, Glass, and the Construction of King’s Chapel (episode 279)
This week’s story ties one of modern Boston’s iconic Freedom Trail sites to the earliest days of English settlement in the Shawmut Peninsula. It’s a story that ties the first Puritan to die in Boston to the hated Royal governor Edmund Andros, and it ties some of the earliest non-English immigrants in Boston to Ben Franklin and Abigail Adams through the invention of two local industries. King’s Chapel is beloved in Boston today, but it was seen as an unwelcome invasion when it was first proposed in 1686. In this week’s show, we’ll look at how Boston found room for an unwanted church, how the church was reinvented three times, and how it launched local glassmaking and founded the granite industry in Quincy. We’ll also see where you can still find the last traces of the original, wooden King’s Chapel hiding inside the walls of a more modern church, but not here in Boston.
Continue reading Granite, Glass, and the Construction of King’s Chapel (episode 279)
Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands, with Dr Pavla Šimková (episode 239)
The new book Urban Archipelago: An Environmental History of the Boston Harbor Islands explores how the city of Boston has transformed the islands on its doorstep time and time again, as the city’s needs shifted over the centuries. From a valuable site for farming, to a dumping ground for all of Boston’s problems, to a wilderness of history and romance, to an urban park, these many transformations reflect a changing city. Author Dr. Pavla Šimková joins us this week to discuss how Boston initially embraced the islands, later turned its back on the Harbor, and more recently has embraced them both again. You’ll hear us argue about the 1960s plan to hold a bicentennial expo on the harbor and the role of storyteller Edward Rowe Snow in promoting the Harbor Islands to a new generation, and you’ll hear us agree about the beauty and importance of this urban asset.
The Original War on Christmas (episode 212)
The Puritan dissenters who founded the town of Boston are remembered as a deeply religious society, so you might think that Christmas in Puritan Boston would be a big deal. You’d be wrong though. Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more. What were the Puritans’ theological misgivings about Christmas? What were the practices of misrule, mummery, and wassailing with which Christmas was celebrated in the 17th century? And why did the Puritans literally erase Christmas from their calendars?
Continue reading The Original War on Christmas (episode 212)
Ghost Stories (episode 208)
In honor of Halloween, I’m going to be sharing eight of my favorite Boston ghost stories this week. From haunted houses and inexplicable premonitions recorded by Cotton and Increase Mather in the years leading up to the Salem Witch hysteria, to Nathaniel Hawthorne encountering his friend in the reading room at the Athenaeum for weeks after the friend’s death, to the apparition that only seems to appear in Boston’s most venerable gay bar when only one person is there to see it, we’ll cover nearly four hundred years of paranormal claims. And if you’re wondering why parts of the recording aren’t up to our usual standards, it’s because I was recording this after midnight, and I fell asleep in the middle of recording multiple times.
A People’s Guide to Greater Boston, with Joseph Nevins and Suren Moodliar (episode 192)
A People’s Guide to Greater Boston is a new kind of guidebook to Boston and surrounding towns. Instead of giving an overview of the Freedom Trail and introducing readers to the hot restaurants and hotels of Boston, this guide uncovers the forgotten stories of radicals and activists hidden in every neighborhood and suburb. It has sections covering Boston’s urban core, the neighborhoods, adjoining towns, and suburbs from Brockton to Haverhill. In each section, the authors unearth a wide range of sites, and in some cases former sites, that are tied to Black, indigenous, labor, or other radical historic events and figures. For listeners who complain that our normal episodes are too political, or our point of view is too liberal… well, sorry in advance. This guide definitely doesn’t keep politics out of history, and its point of view is well to the left of our usual editorial voice.
Unequal Justice in Boston (episode 182)
This week we’re revisiting two classic episodes to highlight injustice in how the death penalty has been applied in our city’s history. First, we’re going to visit early Boston, in a time when execution by hanging was a shockingly common sentence for everything from murder and piracy to witchcraft and Quakerdom. During this period, hanging was the usual, and execution by fire was decidedly unusual. This punishment was reserved only for members of one race and one sex, and in Boston’s history, only two enslaved African American women were burned at the stake. After that, we’ll fast forward to the mid-19th century, when it seemed like the death penalty would soon be abolished. After 13 years without an execution in Boston, a black sailor was convicted of first degree murder. Despite the fact that white men convicted in similar circumstances were sentenced to life in prison, he was condemned to death. And despite tens of thousands of signatures on petitions for clemency, he was hanged at Leverett Street Jail in May of 1849.