Author: jake

When Boston Brought Baseball to Britain (episode 273)

Spring in Boston means baseball, and this week we’re talking about the time in 1874 when the Boston Red Stockings tried to bring America’s national pastime to Britain.  120 years before the World Baseball Classic, Boston’s biggest baseball promoter did his level best to get the cricket fans in “jolly old” hooked on his game… and the fact that he could sell them all the mitts, bats, and gloves they would need was just a happy accident, I’m sure.  Red Stockings pitcher and future sporting goods magnate Al Spalding led the team on the World Baseball Tour, but would they be able to convert English strikers to batters and bowlers to pitchers?  And for the team, would their nearly two month long diversion mean the end of their pennant race for 1874?  


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The Persuasive Powers of John Adams (episode 272)

John Adams later described the prosecution of William Corbet as a case “of an extraordinary Character, in which I was engaged and which cost me no small Portion of Anxiety.”  In 1769, four common sailors were brought into Boston to stand trial for murder.  The victim was an officer in the royal navy, and the crime had taken place just off Cape Ann, almost within sight of home.  As Boston suffered under military occupation, could a military victim receive justice in a radicalized Boston?  And what really happened on that ship near Marblehead?  Had the dead officer really just been searching for cargo that the captain hadn’t declared and paid customs on?  Or were they up to something darker, like illegally kidnapping Massachusetts sailors and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy?


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The Court Street Mutiny (episode 271)

On April 9, 1863, a shooting was carried out in a basement just off of Court Street, behind Boston’s Old City Hall.  The gunman was a Union cavalry officer, who belonged to one of Brahmin Boston’s most wealthy families.  The victim was a new Irish American recruit in his brigade.  The shooting would result in accusations of cowardice and an execution, but was either justified?


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The Gettysburg Cyclorama: Mystery of the South End (episode 270)

Starting in 1884, audiences of veterans, schoolchildren, and everyday Bostonians streamed into a cavernous, castle-like building on Tremont Street in the South End to witness the closest thing to virtual reality that existed at the time.  The building still exists, though a series of renovations have rendered it much more ordinary and less palatial than it was back then.  The painting still exists too, and it still offers an immersive experience for visitors that blends reality and art, but not in Boston anymore.  The building was known as the Cyclorama, and it was purpose built to hold the painting, which was also known as the cyclorama, one of the most audacious artistic endeavors of the 19th century.  Together, they commemorated the turning point of the bloody Civil War that had ended two decades earlier.  


Continue reading The Gettysburg Cyclorama: Mystery of the South End (episode 270)

Annie’s Restaurant (episode 269)

Annie L. Burton was an entrepreneur and restaurateur, who moved to Boston as a young woman after spending her childhood enslaved on an Alabama plantation.  Annie spent decades as a domestic servant, first in the south, and then in the north, in Newton, the South End, Wellesley, Jamaica Plain, and other neighborhoods in and around Boston.  For most Black women in the years and decades after emancipation, cooking, cleaning, raising children, and washing and ironing for white families were among the only opportunities available for paid work, making Annie’s experience utterly typical.  Two things make her life unique: her decision to bet on herself and open a series of restaurants, first in Florida, then in Park Square in Boston, and then in a number of New England resort towns; and her decision, just after the turn of the 20th century, to put pen to page and write her story down and publish it, preserving the details of her life in a way that wasn’t available to most of her peers.


Continue reading Annie’s Restaurant (episode 269)

Joseph Lee and his Bread Machines (episode 268)

Joseph Lee was a hotelier, caterer, and one of the richest men in his adopted hometown of Newton.  By the time of his death in 1908, Lee had worked as a servant, a baker, and for the National Coast Survey; he had worked on ships, in hotels, and at amusement parks.  He had earned a vast fortune in hotels, lost most of it, and earned another one through his patented inventions that helped change the way Americans eat.  He had entertained English nobles and American presidents.  And he had raised three daughters and one son, who was a star Ivy League tackle before graduating from Harvard.  If you make bread at home, or meatballs, or fried chicken, or casserole, you are the beneficiary of the technology Joseph Lee developed.  That would be a remarkable life for anyone, but Joseph Lee was enslaved in South Carolina until he was about 15 years old, making his accomplishments even more remarkable.


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Watchmen, Redcoats, and a Fire in the Old Boston Jail (episode 267)

In the 1760s, the town gaol (jail) where prisoners were held while awaiting trial was a cold, dark, and truly terrifying edifice on Queen Street, just up the hill from the Old State House.  When a fire was discovered in the jailhouse just after 10pm on January 30, 1769, it briefly became the focal point of the long-simmering tensions between the town and the occupying British soldiers that would eventually culminate in the Boston Massacre.  Who deliberately set the fire in the jail, and why were some of the prisoners grievously injured before they could be rescued?  Who was responsible for patrolling the streets of a city under military occupation?  What was the legal role of the occupiers during a fire emergency, and how did the fire at the old Boston jail become a surprising story of cooperation between the rival factions in Boston?  Listen now for all those answers and more!


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They Burnt Tolerable Well: In Search of Boston’s First Street Lamps (episode 266)

How can something as simple as streetlights transform a city?  What can the Boston Massacre teach us about how dark the streets and alleyways of Boston were in the years before streetlights?  How did the town decide to buy English oil lamps for the streets but fuel them with American whale oil?  How did Boston’s very first street lamps survive a shipwreck and the Boston Tea Party, and who decided where they would be installed and how they would be maintained?  In the era of climate change, what does the future hold for Boston’s quaint remaining gas street lamps?  Let’s find out!


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Frank Hart: the First Black Ultrarunning Star, with Davy Crockett (episode 265)

Frank Hart was a transplant to Boston who became a famous star in a sport that no longer really exists.  Hart was a pedestrian, competing in grueling six-day races where the winner was the person who could run, walk, or even crawl the most miles by the time the clock ran out.  He made his debut in the Bean Pot Tramp here in Boston, but he followed the money to races in New York, London, San Francisco, and beyond, becoming one of America’s first famous Black athletes.  However, Frank Hart’s career declined along with the popularity of pedestrianism, while the rise of Jim Crow raised new hurdles for a Black competitor.  Joining us this week to discuss the rise and fall of Frank Hart is Davy Crockett, the host of the Ultrarunning History podcast and author of the new biography Frank Hart: The First Black Ultrarunning Star.


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