Author: jake

Old North and the Sea (episode 255)

Independent researcher TJ Todd recently gave a presentation about Old North Church and the sea.  TJ’s talk focuses on two notable sea captains, both of whom longtime listeners will remember from past episodes.  Captain Samuel Nicholson was the first, somewhat hapless, captain of the USS Constitution, and Captain Thomas Gruchy was the privateer who captured the carved cherubs that keep watch over the Old North sanctuary from the French.  Exploring the lives of these two famous captains will reveal what life was like for the ordinary sailors and dockworkers who made up a significant portion of Boston’s population in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as drawing connections to other incidents from Boston’s maritime past, including many that we’ve discussed in past episodes.

Thanks to our friends at the Old North Foundation for allowing us to share this presentation with you.


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Celebrating Cy Young (episode 254)

Cy Young Day, an exhibition game to celebrate the greatest pitcher of all time, was bracketed by days of sports celebration, from prizefighters in the squared circle to old time baseball in the Harbor Islands.  Held at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds on August 13, 1908, the Cy Young celebration drew a record crowd of 20,000 fans to the now long gone ballpark.  By this time, Young had been playing professional baseball for 20 years, and he was starting to slow down.  Nobody knew if the old Ohio farmboy would be playing for Boston when the 1909 season rolled around, so it seemed as if the whole city turned out to show the pitcher their love, and to make sure he would have a comfortable nest egg for his expected retirement.


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Hostibus Primo Fugatis: The Washington Before Boston Medal (episode 253)

Back in 2015, I was at the Boston Public Library for a special exhibition called “We Are One,” which showcased items from their collection dating from the French and Indian War to the Constitutional Convention, showing how thirteen fractious colonies forged a single national identity.  Libraries have a lot more than just books, of course.  The BPL has everything from streaming movies and music to historic maps to medieval manuscripts to Leslie Jones’ photos to one remarkable gold medal.  Some of the items on display were breathtaking, like a map hand drawn by George Washington, Paul Revere’s hand drawn diagram showing where the bodies fell during the Boston Massacre, and a gorgeous 360 degree panorama showing the view from the top of Beacon Hill during the siege of Boston.  What stopped me in my tracks, though, was a solid gold medal.  It was about three inches in diameter, but it was hard to tell through the thick and probably bulletproof glass protecting it. 

On the side facing me, I could see a bust of George Washington and some words, but they were too small to read.  A special bracket held the medal in front of a mirror, and on the back I could make out more lettering, as well as a cannon and a group of men on horses.  Later, I learned that this was the Washington Before Boston Medal, commemorating the British evacuation of Boston.  It was the first Congressional gold medal, and the first medal of any kind commissioned by the Continental Congress during our Revolutionary War.  This illustrious medal’s journey to the stacks of the Boston Public Library will take us from Henry Knox’s cannons at Dorchester Heights to John Adams at the Second Continental congress in Philly to Ben Franklin in Paris to a Confederate’s dank basement in West Virginia during the Civil War.  


Continue reading Hostibus Primo Fugatis: The Washington Before Boston Medal (episode 253)

The North End Draft Riot (episode 252)

By the summer of 1863, the Civil War had dragged on longer than anyone thought at the outset, and leaders on both sides were desperate for more money, arms, manufactured goods, and most of all men.  That growing desperation had inspired secretary of war Edwin Stanton to authorize Massachusetts governor John Andrew to start enlisting the nation’s first Black troops a few months before, including the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, whose well deserved fame was refreshed with the movie Glory.  The influx of fresh and motivated troops contributed to Union gains throughout the rest of the war, but the so-called colored regiments were not enough.  In July of that year, Congress passed a law compelling able bodied men into military service for the first time.  Here in Boston, the burden of that draft law fell disproportionately on the working class Irish Americans of South Boston and the North End.  And as we’ll see, the Irish had strong resentments based in class, race, religion, and economics that made them suspicious of compulsory service.  These tensions boiled over on the evening of July 14th, 1863 as marshals attempted to serve the first draft notices in the crowded and narrow streets of the North End, with the US Army eventually firing artillery and small arms into a crowd of civilian protesters at point blank range.  


Continue reading The North End Draft Riot (episode 252)

Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston (episode 251)

In this episode, Seth Bruggeman discusses his recent book Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston. In it, he traces the development of the Freedom Trail and our Boston National Historic Park, examining the inevitable tension between driving tourism revenue to Boston and doing good history.  He delves into the politics surrounding our local historic sites during the trauma of urban renewal in Boston and the violence of the busing era that followed.  He also argues that the Freedom Trail and related sites have been used to defend dominant ideas about whiteness at several different points in Boston’s contested history.


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Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution, with Eric Jay Dolin (episode 249)

Eric Jay Dolin joins us this week to discuss his new book Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution.  We’ll discuss the role of privateers in the American Revolution, with a special focus on the many privateersmen who sailed out of Boston and New England.  Privateers were civilian ships that were outfitted for war by optimistic investors, with volunteer crews who were willing to risk their lives fighting for a share of the profits.  From the mouth of Boston Harbor to the very shores of Britain, these private warships sailed in search of rich English merchant vessels, while risking the lives and freedom of their crews.  While their role is mostly forgotten today, Eric will explain how privateer crews helped turn the tide of Revolution in favor of the Americans, and we’ll discuss how our modern habit of associating privateering with piracy leads to a distaste for the privateersmen who helped win our independence.   Rebels at Sea will be available in bookstores everywhere on May 31, 2022.


Continue reading Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution, with Eric Jay Dolin (episode 249)

Sailing Alone Around the World, part 2 (episode 248)

This episode continues our story of Joshua Slocum and his solo circumnavigation of the globe. We’ll follow Captain Slocum as he builds the little sloop Spray and hatches a plan to make money for his family by sailing alone around the world for the first time.  We’ll follow his astounding path from Boston to the rock of Gibraltar, back to South America, and through the months long ordeal of the Straits of Magellan.  We’ll learn how he sailed thousands of miles across the South pacific to Samoa without ever touching the wheel of the sloop, while his family worried that he had perished at sea.  And we’ll follow him on his pilgrimage to the home of Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson, his adventure in South Africa, and finally across the Atlantic and home, covering about 46,000 miles in three years, two months, and two days.


Continue reading Sailing Alone Around the World, part 2 (episode 248)

Sailing Alone Around the World, part 1 (episode 247)

Captain Joshua Slocum’s adventure began in Boston, and it took him to nearly every corner of the world, nearly costing him his life on multiple occasions, and probably costing him his marriage.  But in the end it earned him a place in history as the first person to circumnavigate the world completely alone, covering about 46,000 miles in three years, two months, and two days, without so much as a dog or a ship’s rat for company.  The saga begins long before that legendary 1895 voyage, when the growing and very seafaring Slocum family lived at sea for 13 years, until they were visited by unspeakable tragedy.  It follows them as they attempt to pick up the pieces, only to encounter further misfortunes that drove a wedge into the family and drove the Captain out to sea in his handmade sloop on what seemed like an impossible mission: sailing alone around the world.


Continue reading Sailing Alone Around the World, part 1 (episode 247)

How two of Boston’s strangest shootings fueled the gun control debates of their times (episode 246)

Two deadly murders were committed in and around Boston using military grade assault weapons, and both of them happened in the middle of a raging debate around gun control in this country. You might assume I am talking about an incident that happened after the school shootings in Parkland Florida in 2018 or Columbine in 1999, but I’m not. The first crime took place in the sleepy Boston suburb of Needham in 1934, when three gangsters used a stolen Tommy gun to rob the Needham savings bank and murder two policemen. Sadly, this deadly crime took place just months before the 1934 federal firearms act made it illegal for civilians to own machine guns. The second crime we’ll discuss took place a generation later, in 1989, in the middle of a heated national debate that resulted in George HW Bush’s 1989 limited assault weapons ban, and the stronger 1994 ban that was allowed to expire in 2004. In what has to be the only recorded example of someone going postal in the sky, a disgruntled postal worker killed his ex wife, stole a plane, and spent hours shooting up downtown Boston with an AK-47.


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