Category: Episodes

Joseph Chapman, from Boston to L.A. (episode 206)

Your humble host really misses travel, so this week’s episode is inspired by travel, both historic travel and my own. In the early 19th century,  a Boston shipwright’s apprentice went to sea with a whaling voyage, and ended up being recruited into a crew that was assembled in the Hawaiian Islands, then captured by Spanish authorities on the California coast and accused of piracy.  Escaping the gallows through hard work and Yankee ingenuity, Joseph Chapman would build a New England style mill for the San Gabriel mission, the first of its kind in Alta California.  He would live through tumultuous times, witnessing the independence of Mexico, the downfall of the mission system he had become part of, and eventually the American annexation of California.

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Continue reading Joseph Chapman, from Boston to L.A. (episode 206)

Matthew Dickey: Saving History with the Boston Preservation Alliance (episode 205)

This week, Jake sits down with Matthew Dickey, the Communications and Operations Manager at the Boston Preservation Alliance to discuss the organization’s important work in saving the historic nature of Boston’s many diverse neighborhoods.  They fight to preserve individual buildings of historic importance, but they also work to keep the cohesion of historic neighborhoods and raise awareness with the public through efforts like the Boston Preservation Awards.  Stay tuned to the end to learn how you can attend this year’s virtual awards ceremony, where HUB History will be one of the nine honorees.

(Don’t forget to vote for us for the “fan favorite” award!)


Continue reading Matthew Dickey: Saving History with the Boston Preservation Alliance (episode 205)

Peace in Boston After the Civil War (episode 204)

Since last week’s show was about Boston’s 1851 Railroad Jubilee, which was an enormous celebration at a time when the nation was in the midst of a rush toward civil war, it seemed appropriate to discuss the Grand Peace Jubilee this week.  Held in Boston in 1869, when the war was still a raw wound on the American psyche, the Peace Jubilee was a musical spectacular unlike anything the world had ever seen.  Composer Patrick Gilmore hoped to bind the country together and help it heal… and if he happened to get rich in the process, that would just be icing on the cake.  This week’s show also revisits another peacetime memory of the Civil War in Boston.  In 1903, after the pain of the Civil War had dulled, Boston gathered at what is now the “General Hooker Entrance” to the State House to dedicate a statue to the highest ranking general from Massachusetts during the war.

Vote for us as the “Fan Favorite” at this year’s Boston Preservation Awards! Continue reading Peace in Boston After the Civil War (episode 204)

Boston’s Railroad Jubilee (episode 203)

In September 1851, Boston threw an enormous party, a party big enough to span three days.  After 15 years of development, the railroad network centered on Boston stretched out in every direction, linking the port of Boston to the American Midwest and the interior of Canada, with the Cunard line’s steamers giving access to markets in England.  To celebrate the new era of railroading, the city threw a grand Railroad Jubilee and invited President Millard Fillmore, the Governor General of Canada, and dignitaries from all over the country.  Besides commerce and steam locomotives, this episode will highlight a growing split within the Whigs old political party; Boston’s ever-present competition with New York City; and the seemingly unavoidable rush toward a civil war over the question of slavery.

Vote for us as the “Fan Favorite” at this year’s Boston Preservation Awards! Continue reading Boston’s Railroad Jubilee (episode 203)

Boston Transportation Firsts (episode 202)

Co-host emerita Nikki and I are camping this weekend, so instead of a brand new episode, we’re giving you three classic stories about advances in transportation in Boston. First up, we’re going to take a look at a precursor to today’s MBTA.  In the late 19th century, a bold entrepreneur built a full sized, working monorail in East Cambridge, but failed to convince the city to adopt it for public transportation.  Then, inspired by last week’s show about the World Fliers, our second story will be about the first people to take to the skies in Boston.  In the early 19th century, daring aeronauts made a series of increasingly ambitious balloon ascents in Boston.  Finally, we’ll turn the clock back to the 1780s, just as the Revolutionary War was concluding.  At the time, the town of Boston was on a tiny peninsula, almost completely surrounded by water.  The ferry connecting Boston to the mainland struggled to keep up with demand, and Bostonians were looking for a better way… but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.  


Continue reading Boston Transportation Firsts (episode 202)

The World Fliers in Boston (episode 201)

The early 20th century was a time of aviation firsts, and one of those firsts dropped into Boston for three long, exciting days in 1924.  Five months after they started their journey in California, the Army Air Service pilots who made the first flight around the world were expected to touch down on US soil for the first time 96 years ago this week.


Continue reading The World Fliers in Boston (episode 201)

Dr. Rebecca Crumpler, Forgotten No Longer (episode 200)

Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US in 1864, and she spent most of her adult life in Charlestown, Beacon Hill, and the Readville section of Hyde Park.  She devoted her career to pediatrics and obstetrics, published the first medical text by an African American author, and made a point of caring for the marginalized, even moving to Virginia to tend to formerly enslaved people at the end of the Civil War.  The nation’s first Black female physician lay in an unmarked grave for 125 years, but there have been important developments in the story of Dr. Crumpler while we’ve been in quarantine this year.


Continue reading Dr. Rebecca Crumpler, Forgotten No Longer (episode 200)

The Clipper Ships of East Boston (episode 199)

Kick back and enjoy our interview with Stephen Ujifusa, author of Barons of the Sea, and Their Race to Build the World’s Fastest Clipper Ship, which originally aired in July 2018.  Stephen takes us back to an era when the fastest, most elegant ships in the world were built in the East Boston shipyard of Donald McKay.  He also describes how they were used to trade for tea in China or gold in California, and how they helped America’s most prominent families amass fortunes through opium smuggling.  


Continue reading The Clipper Ships of East Boston (episode 199)

When the US Army Invaded South Boston (episode 198)

In the 1940s, Boston was still an industrial city, and when the US entered World War II, that industrial might would be turned to wartime production. With industry comes labor disputes, and a new government agency was given extraordinary powers to resolve them. In other early cases, the National War Labor Board used its authority and the might of the military to break strikes by organized labor. However, in August 1942, they would step in to force an employer to honor their union contract, using the US Army to enforce workers’ rights. That employer was the SA Woods Machine Company of South Boston, and this Wednesday marks the anniversary of the military takeover of their plant, setting up an epic battle of wills between the SA Woods corporation and the US government, and between the company’s cantankerous president and the young major sent to take over his company.


Continue reading When the US Army Invaded South Boston (episode 198)

The Grand Derangement (episode 197)

One morning in August, redcoats fanned out across the province, taking entire families into custody, burning farms and crops, and killing livestock.  Falling in the middle of two centuries of intermittent warfare, this grand derangement, or great upheaval, didn’t take place in Boston or even in Massachusetts.  But Boston bore responsibility for the acts carried out in its name, and Boston would host the “French Neutrals,” the human byproducts of the purge that we remember as the expulsion of the Acadians who were confined in our city for nearly a decade.


Continue reading The Grand Derangement (episode 197)