Over the River and Through the Wood (episode 160)

We know the song “Over the River and Through the Wood” as a Christmas carol, but it was originally titled “The New England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day.” Despite the song’s quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer, the woman who wrote it was anything but traditional. Medford native Lydia Maria Child had been a pioneering children’s author, but her increasingly radical positions on abolitionism, women’s rights, and freethinking jeopardized her earning power and helped galvanize a movement. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!


Over the River and Through the Wood

Boston Book Club

We used Jared Ross Hardesty’s Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth Century Boston as a source for our discussion of the origins of slavery in early colonial Boston back in episode 74. Alongside Wendy Warren’s New England Bound and Margaret Ellen Newell’s Brethren by Nature, it’s part of a wave of recent scholarship that reexamines the practice of enslaving African Americans in New England.  Hardesty’s book in particular looks at chattel slavery in the context of the rigid class hierarchy of Puritan Boston, and he looks at it as the bottom rung of a ladder of unfreedom that also included penal servitude for criminals, hiring out pauper children, and even apprentices and indentured servants. Here’s how the publisher describes the book:

Instead of relying on the traditional dichotomy of slavery and freedom, Hardesty argues we should understand slavery in Boston as part of a continuum of unfreedom. In this context, African slavery existed alongside many other forms of oppression, including Native American slavery, indentured servitude, apprenticeship, and pauper apprenticeship. In this hierarchical and inherently unfree world, enslaved Bostonians were more concerned with their everyday treatment and honor than with emancipation, as they pushed for autonomy, protected their families and communities, and demanded a place in society.

Drawing on exhaustive research in colonial legal records – including wills, court documents, and minutes of governmental bodies – as well as newspapers, church records, and other contemporaneous sources, Hardesty masterfully reconstructs an eighteenth-century Atlantic world of unfreedom that stretched from Europe to Africa to America. By reassessing the lives of enslaved Bostonians as part of a social order structured by ties of dependence, Hardesty not only demonstrates how African slaves were able to decode their new homeland and shape the terms of their enslavement, but also tells the story of how marginalized peoples engrained themselves in the very fabric of colonial American society.

Upcoming Event

You may remember William Monroe Trotter as a central figure in our episode about Black Boston’s opposition to the racist movie Birth of a Nation, when he organized protests, petitioned the state legislature, and eventually met with President Wilson.  He was an author, a newspaper publisher, and a founder of the NAACP, but he has been largely forgotten by history, overshadowed by later activists. Dr. Kerri Greenidge’s new biography of Trotter, Black Radical: the Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter, puts him back into the center of the struggle for Black rights in the early 20th century as a radical counterweight to moderate figures like Booker T Washington.  

Dr. Greenidge is a history professor at Tufts, as well as the codirector of the African American Trail Project.  She’ll be discussing her the book at the Connolly branch of the Boston Public Library in Jamaica Plain at 6:30pm on Monday, December 2nd.  The event is free, and advanced registration is not required.

Transcript

Intro

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome Toe 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 60 over the River and through the Wood. Hi, I’m Jake.
This week I’ll be talking about a Christmas Carol, but we know it is a Christmas Carol. But over the river and through the Wood was originally titled The New England Boys Song about Thanksgiving Day.

Music Clips

Jake:
[0:44] Despite the songs quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer The woman who wrote it was anything but traditional.
Medford native Lydia Mariah Child had been a pioneering Children’s author, but her increasingly radical positions on abolitionism women’s rights in freethinking jeopardized her earning power and helped galvanize a movement.

[1:05] But before we talk about Mariah Child’s Thanksgiving song, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

[1:14] Our pick for the Boston Book Club this week is Jared Ross. Hardest ease.
Unfree DM Slavery Independence. An 18th century Boston we used.
This book is a source for our discussion on the origins of slavery and early colonial Boston, way back in Episode 74 alongside Windy Warren’s New England bound and Margaret Ellen, Newell’s Brother in By Nature.
It’s part of a wave of recent scholarship that re examines the practice of enslaving African Americans in New England.
Hardest ease book in particular, looks at chattel slavery in the context of the rigid class hierarchy of Puritan Boston,
and he sees it as the bottom rung of the ladder oven freedom that also would have included penal servitude for criminals hiring out popper Children and even apprentices indentured servants.
Here’s how the publisher describes the book.
Instead of relying on the traditional dichotomy of slavery and freedom, Hardisty argues that we should understand slavery in Boston as part of a continuum of on freedom.
In this context, African slavery existed alongside many other forms of oppression, including Native American slavery, indentured servitude, apprenticeship and popular press ship.
In this hierarchical and inherently unfree world, enslaved Bostonians were more concerned with their everyday treatment an honor than with emancipation as they pushed for autonomy, protected their families and communities and demanded a place in society.

[2:42] Drawing on exhaustive research in colonial legal records, including will’s court documents and minutes of governmental bodies, as well as newspapers, church records and other contemporaneous sources,
Hardisty masterfully reconstructs an 18th century Atlantic world oven freedom that stretched from Europe to Africa to America,
by reassessing the lives of enslaved Bostonians as part of a social order structured by ties of dependence,
Hardisty not only demonstrates how African slaves were able to decode their new homeland and shape the terms of their enslavement, but also tells the story of how marginalized people’s ingrained themselves in the very fabric of colonial American society.
You can find a link to purchase the book and this week’s show notes and for our upcoming event this week, we have a talk by Dr Carey Greenidge about our new biography of William Monroe Trotter called Black Radical.
You may remember Trotter as a central figure in our episode about black Boston’s opposition to the racist movie Birth of a Nation.
When Trotter organized protests, petition the state Legislature and eventually met with President Wilson, he was an author, a newspaper publisher and a founder of the N Double A. C P.
He’s been largely forgotten by history. Overshadowed by later activists, this new biography puts William Monroe Trotter back into the center of the struggle for black rights in the early 20th century as a radical counterweight to moderate for years like Booker T. Washington.

[4:07] Dr Greene Itches, a history professor at Tufts as well as the co director of the African American Trail Project.
She’ll be appearing at the Connelly branch of the BPL in Jamaica Plain.
The talk begins at 6:30 p.m. On Monday, December 2nd. The events free and advanced registration is not required.
We’ll have the link you need for more information about Dr Greene and just talk and buy a copy of a kn freedom and this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 160 As we kick off this Thanksgiving episode, I have a lot to be thankful for.
This year, Nikki and I are finally moving forward with the home improvement project that’s about 10 years overdue.
I have a great group of staff and co workers at my non history related day job, and I get to make a podcast about one of my favorite topics.
Bust in history from interviewing incredibly intelligent and interesting historians to digging into little known connections between a nostalgic holiday Carol and the Boston abolition movement.
I love having an outlet for my passion for my adopted city.
I’m especially thankful this year for the listeners who’ve decided to sponsor this passion project on Patri on contributing a small amount each month to help me make up history.
If you’re also thankful for the show or passionate about Boston history, please consider becoming a sponsor by going to patriot dot com slash hub history or by going to hump history dot com and clicking on the support link.

[5:36] And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Music Clips

Jake:
[5:47] Perhaps we’ve come to think of this as a Christmas Carol because of the references to whiten drifting snow and jingling sleigh bells.
While these days No. One Thanksgivings fairly rare, however, our older listeners will remember plenty of snowy New England Thanksgivings, and there would have been many more. When the New England Boys Song about Thanksgiving was originally published.
When it first appeared in 18 44 North America was still experiencing the tail end of a period known as the Little Ice Age, during which winters were much harsher than they are now.
Interestingly, Jingle Bells with this references to sleigh bells and snowdrifts, was also originally composed as a Thanksgiving.
So a Georgia native was inspired, dependent lyrics about slave races that he witnessed while briefly living in Bedford in the 18 fifties.

[6:35] A few years before that, the author of a New England boys song about Thanksgiving was born in Medford as Lydia, Mariah Francis in 18 02 her father, Converse, was the baker, and her grandfather was said to have been killed by red coats during the Concord fight.
Lydia Mariah Frances always hated the name Lydia, so she went by her middle name, which was spelled Maria, but she pronounced it as Mariah.
She was the youngest of six Children, and she was very close to the next oldest. Her brother, Converse Francis Jr Mariah at first received a fairly typical girl’s education for the time, attending what was essentially a finishing school.
Converse Junior, however, was destined to be an influential Unitarian minister, and he went to Harvard University and then the Harvard Divinity,
knowing from the beginning that his little sister was a remarkably intelligent, he made sure that she was challenged when he was preparing for his entrance exams to Harvard.
At age 16 Mariah was just nine years old, but she read Homer Milton and Shakespeare alongside him and understood it at least a CZ. Well as he did, she was finally able to attend a teacher’s college in Maine, as well as completing one year at a women’s seminary.
When she was just 22 years old, she published her first book, a historical novel set in colonial New England.

[7:55] Later that same year, she started a private school in Watertown, what she closed just two years later in order to focus on writing full time and to focus on David Child, who courted her briefly before the to wed in 18 28.

[8:11] Her early novels would likely be called historical romances today, and in 18 26 she began publishing Juvenile Miscellany, the first monthly magazine for Children in the United States.

[8:24] After their marriage, the child’s family moved into Boston, where David was the editor of the Massachusetts Journal. Ah, highly partisan wig paper.
He rapidly became very politically connected but didn’t make much in the way of money.
When he attacked Andrew Jackson’s policy of Indian removal. Subscriptions declined, and he even spent time in jail for libel.
Mariah, Now Mariah Child would be the primary breadwinner for the family.
For most of the rest of their marriage, she published a series of helpful household How to books, starting with The Frugal Housewife in 18 29 later re titled to the Frugal American Housewife.
This volume, along with follow ups, the mother’s book and the girl’s own book, would be Mariah Child’s most financially successful works to his wig connections. David Child adopted an abolitionist outlook very early.
While she was already supportive of David’s abolitionist work, Mariah became energized after befriending William Lloyd Garrison in the early 18 thirties. She later right.
I was then all absorbed in poetry and painting, soaring the loft on psych wings into the ethereal regions of mysticism.
He got hold of the strings of my conscience and pulled me into reforms. It is of no use to imagine what might have been if I had never met him.
Old dreams vanished, old associates departed and all things became new.

[9:52] With her literary success in David’s Connections, the trustees of the Boston Athenaeum offered Mariah a three year free membership to the library, where she immersed herself in the history of American chattel slavery.

[10:05] In 18 33 Mariah’s writing took a hard left turn away from Children’s magazines, household How twos and historical fiction.
She published a book called An Appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans and several brief online profiles of Mariah. I saw Mariah’s appeal referred to as the first anti slavery book.
Longtime listeners will immediately realize that it wasn’t as both the topic and the title owe a debt of thanks to David Walker.
In Episode 1 17 We discussed Walker in his book Appeals With Colored Citizens of the World, a very early and very radical abolitionist tracked.
However, Mariah’s appeal was nevertheless a very early and influential book predating Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
By almost 20 years, when Mariah Rotor appeal, William Lloyd Garrison had only been publishing the Liberator for two years, and abolition was considered an extreme an unreasonable position for a white person to hole.
Not only that, but she deeply criticized the so called colonization movement, which called for freed slaves to be shipped off to Africa to civilize that continent while creating a white nation in America.
Instead, she envisioned a future where emancipated slaves were completely integrated into the fabric of American society, with full citizenship and participation in the political process.

[11:32] However, her most radical position may have been asserting that one day in the future quote, ah, 100 years hints interracial marriage might become accepted.

[11:42] In the preface store book, she wrote, I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken, but though I expect ridicule and censure, I cannot fear them.
She was right. The sensor came in a sudden drop off in the sales of our popular books, especially her writing for Children.

[12:03] In a profile of Mariah for a book about extraordinary women of the era radical abolitionists, supporter of John Brown’s insurrection and Civil War veteran Thomas Wentworth, Higginson quoted Harriet Martin knows the martyr age in America is saying that child was,
a lady of whom society was exceedingly proud before she published her appeal and to whom society has been extremely contemptuous ever since,
she added her works were bought with avidity before but fell into sudden oblivion as soon as she had done a greater deed than writing any of them.

[12:36] Subscriptions to juvenile miscellany declined precipitously, and Mariah was forced to resign. His editor.
Her next helpful household book, The Family Nurse, didn’t find the same wide audiences that the Frugal Housewife, the mother’s book and the girl’s own book had found just a few years before writing to a friend.
In later years, she thinks wistfully about returning to Children’s literature with regard to the juvenile miscellany. The copyright never belonged to me.
I have for some time wish to publish a revised edition of it under the title of Mrs Childs Library for Children in volumes of Uniforms, Sword one volume containing what was suitable for Children of three or four years old,
another for Children of seven or six others for 10 or 12.
My idea was only to use my own writing in it, together with the best parts of my juvenile souvenir evenings in New England and whatever else I had occasionally written for Children, said the spirit move in the sale warranted.
This collection might be enlarged by some entirely new volumes.

[13:38] Most biographies of child repeat her claim that the Athenaeum revoked her membership because of her abolitionist writings.
However, many other prominent abolitionists retain their privileges, and the Athenaeum disputes her version.
The Athenaeum itself simply says that the offer was rescinded and the minutes of the trustees meeting says,
voted that the general permission heretofore given to Mrs Child to use the Athenaeum be henceforth considered as terminated for the time she’d have to satisfy herself with more activist forms of writing.
Her appeal was cited by William Ellery Channing, Thomas Wentworth, Higginson and Window. Phillips is helping to win them over to the abolitionist cause.
Her follow up work was a history of the condition of women in various ages and nations, which put her at the forefront of the nascent women’s rights and suffrage movements.
Her succeeding books, the anti slavery cataclysm, authentic anecdotes of American slavery and especially the duty of disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act cemented her abolitionist credentials.
In 18 41 she moved to New York City and accepted a position with the American Anti Slavery Society as editor in chief of their journal, the National Anti Slavery Standard.

[14:57] After three years in New York, David and Mariah returned to Massachusetts and settled in Wayland.
In 18 44 Mariah decided to jump back into the Children’s literature game.
By this time she was a follower of Horace Mann, the Massachusetts secretary of education, whom we profiled back in Episode 1 16,
Man’s Vision of Free, high quality Universal Education for All Children inspired Mariah to begin a new series of Children’s books.
The fact that she and David desperately needed the money didn’t hurt either.
This new series was called Flowers for Children, and it was meant to entertain toe, educate and inculcated Children with Protestant morals.
As she describes in an introduction to a later addition, This series consisted of a mix of new compositions and selections from her earlier work, all of which were revised and rewritten.

[15:51] About half of each of these volumes will consist of new articles written expressly for the occasion, and the other half will be a selection of what seemed to me the best of my own articles formerly published in the juvenile miscellany.
Upon reviewing the work for this purpose, I find that my mature judgment rejects some inaccuracies, some moral inferences and many imperfections of style.
I have therefore carefully rewritten all the articles used in this present selection.

[16:20] Rewriting her older pieces had this side benefit of circumventing any copyright claims on the stories by your previous publishers.
The poem, a New England Boys song about Thanksgiving Day, appeared in the second Flowers for Children volume alongside stories about a saucy squirrel.
Ah, sailors, dog spring birds and many more thes stories attempted to indoctrinate the reader with Mariah’s own sense of morality, which wasn’t universally shared. Appreciated at the time.
For instance, in that same edition of Flowers, there’s a story about a little girl whose pet sheep gives birth to a white lamb and a black lamb, which becomes a very heavy handed scene in which the little white girl has this exchange with their black governess in a bar,
Nancy told her, God made the White Lambs and the black clams.
God loves them both and made them to love each other.
Then Mary said, I am my mother’s white lamb and Thomas is Nancy’s black lamb and God loves us both.

[17:22] It’s enough to make you gag. But the idea of interracial friendship and respect was still pretty radical in 18 44.
In contrast to the educational and moral pieces in that addition of Flowers for Children, the New England Boys song about Thanksgiving is a simple, nostalgic look at a holiday in the country, which many readers of connected to Mariah’s own childhood Thanksgiving experiences.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s profile described how Mariah’s family celebrated Thanksgiving when she was just a little girl.

[17:52] Their earliest teacher was a maiden lady named Elizabeth Frances, but not a relative and known universally as ma’am Betty.
She’s described as a spinster of supernatural shyness that never forgotten calamity of whose life was that Dr Brooks. Once our drinking water from the nose over tea kettle, she kept school in her bedroom.
It was never tidy, and she chewed a great deal of tobacco.
But the Children were fonder and always carried her a Sunday dinner.
Such simple kindnesses went forth often from that thrifty home.
Mrs. Child once told me that always on the night before Thanksgiving, all the humble friends of the household ma’am Betty the Washerwoman, the Barry Woman, the would Sawyer, the journeymen, bakers and so on some 20 or 30 in all were summoned to a preliminary entertainment.
They they’re partook of an immense chicken pie, pumpkin pies, made milk bands and heaps of doughnuts.
They feasted in the large, old fashioned kitchen and went away loaded with crackers and bread by the father and with pies by the mother, not forgetting turnovers for their Children.
Such plain applications of the doctrine it is more blessed to give than to receive may have done more to mold the Lydia Mariah child of mature years than all the faithful labors of good Dr Osgood,
to whom she and her brother used to repeat the Westminster assemblies cataclysm once a month.

[19:14] So while we don’t get to peer into the Francis family Thanksgiving dinner, we do get to see the feast they put together on Thanksgiving E for their employees and associates,
and at the heart of the celebration, where the crackers and bread that Mariah’s father, Converse Francis, sent them all home with Converse.
Frances was a former apprentice. Baker took over his master’s business in 17 97 and 18 55. History of Medford, by Charles Brooks describes how crackers became important to Mariah’s family history and the image of Thanksgiving.

[19:47] Mr. Francis produced a cracker, which was considered as more tasteful and healthy than any heretofore invented every year, increases reputation and widened his business.
And as earliest, 18 05 Medford crackers were known throughout the country and frequently sent to foreign lands.
The writer of this was walking in a street of London 18 34 and saw at a shop window the following sign Medford crackers.
This bread deserved all the fame it acquired for. Never had there been any so good, and we think there is now none better.
It required great labor, and all the work was done by hand.
Each cracker was nearly double the size of those now made, and the dough was needed, rolled wade pricked, marked and tossed into the oven by hand.
Now all these air done by machinery.
The spread was called crackers because one of them would crack into two equal parts.
One piece of dough was rolled out just thick enough to enable it to swell up with the internal steam generated by baking in the hot brick floor of the and holds enough rip wrecked into the dough to allow a part of the steam to escape.
And so leave the mass split into two equal parts, adhering mostly by the edges.

[21:00] Mariah Child must have had crackers in her D N A. Because even a recipe for a properly stuffed turkey included crackers.
The 18 32 edition of the American Frugal Housewife included this stuffing recipe as part of Mariah’s instructions on cooking turkey.
If you wish to make plain stuffing pound a cracker, or crumble some bread. Very fine.
Chop some raw salt. Pork. Very fine. Sifts, um, sage and summary savory or sweet marjoram if you have them in the house and fancy them and mold them altogether. Seasoned with a little pepper, an egg worked and makes the stuff and cut better.

[21:37] In my humble opinion, you can’t have a proper Thanksgiving without a good stuffing, though my personal recipe is based on toasted bread cubes instead of cracker crumbs.
Coming up the bread for the stuffing is one of the first things I’ll do when I start working on our Thanksgiving dinner first thing on Wednesday morning.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll listen to over the river and through the wood while I work. Now that I know that it’s actually a Thanksgiving song toe, learn more about Mariah Child and her Thanksgiving song.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 160 We’ll have links to several online volumes of Mariah’s writing, including an 18 54 addition of Flowers for Children and her anti slavery appeal.
We’ll also linked to some of her household house who’s including that stuffing recipe.
I’ll throw in a link to Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s profile of her plus more information about our fathers Medford crackers also special thanks this week to Grant Raymond Barret.
He made a royalty free version of Over the River and through the Wood available on the Internet archive, and it’s his recording that you’ve heard clips of throughout this episode.
And, of course, we’ll have links to information about our upcoming event and Jared Ross hardest. He’s a kn freedom, slavery, independence and 18th Century Boston, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.

[23:02] We have some recent reader feedback to share, most of which is from Twitter.

[23:07] After our interview with Millington Bergersen Lockwood aired Professor Paula Austin tweeted.
We’re reading this next week with my African American History course, which Millington responded. Well, thanks.
I hope your students find it interesting, and I’m happy to share any more information you think might be helpful. I’d love to hear how it goes.
Listener and occasional sponsor of the podcast Tyson from Liberty and Co.
Tweeted this after hearing our interview with Nancy Seashells about the new Atlas of Boston. History.
Ordered it the moment I finished the podcast. Browse the first few pages and can’t wait to dive in Boston.
Tour Got extraordinary. Ben Edwards tweeted a photo of a newspaper article from his personal collection about the 80 No force No hurricane With comment.
We’ll be sharing this issue of the Colombian Sentinel from October 10th 18 04 with today’s fifth graders and recommend the teachers listen to your podcasts on the Great Snow Hurricane.
A couple of weeks later, been tweeted another clipping from his collection and said,
from the Massachusetts Sentinel, June 21st 17 86 The opening of the bridge over Charles River, connecting the north end of Charlestown at 1503 feet.
It’s America’s first long, deep water bridge.
Toe learn Maur. Listen to this podcast from hub history.
Thanks been for incorporating our humble podcast into the supporting material for your great tours.

[24:34] A few people listen to our recent re airing of our episode about Boston’s history of annexing its neighbors, and they had thoughts to share.
Mike B and Es Mi be both had comments about Brookline’s decision not to be annexed.
I am equipped, Brookline said. We will not be suffocated.
Well, Mike said. Brooklyn said we’d rather be the People’s Republic of Brookline, referring to the same episode.
John C. Had a perfect example of constructive criticism.
Jake One Quick thing. You called Dorchester a city. At one point, Charlestown was legally a city, and I know Roxbury was for its last few years.
Dorchester was always a town.
I love the podcast, by the way.
That’s great feedback to get because it shows that he was really listening. He enjoys the podcast and he’s quite knowledgeable about the topic.
Another listener, who will remain nameless, wrote in with an example of un constructive criticism.
Speaking of Josiah Quincy, I listen a episode one yesterday and noticed you pronounced Quincy incorrectly.
I hope you’ve since addressed the discrepancy for future listening.

[25:46] So he dug up a show that’s over three years old on a topic that we’ve covered in more detail in the later show.
And his only feedback is to curtly scold us about our pronunciation.
You know what we’ve said the word Quincy in many episodes Since then, listen to a few and let me know how my pronunciation, waas or better yet, just don’t.

[26:10] We love getting listener feedback, at least most of it.
We’re happy to hear your episode suggestions, factual corrections and alternate sources that we missed, but maybe keep your snide elocution lessons to yourself.
If you want to leave us some constructive feedback on this show or any other, you can email us at podcast of hub history dot com. Were hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Or go to 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, police consider rating and reviewing the show.
If you write us a review, drop us a line and we’ll send you a Hub history sticker as a token of appreciation.
Or just tell a friend about us. Word of mouth is truly the best way to help new listeners discover the show.
That’s all for now. We’ll be back next time to talk about the deadly 18 49 cholera epidemic in Boston.

Music Clips

Jake:
[27:10] In the meantime, happy Thanksgiving.