HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

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.

Please check out the transcript and full show notes at: http://HUBhistory.com/201/

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• The diagrams above are taken from this book by Meigs about his monorail system, and the photographs are via Historic New England.
• The 1885 patent on the Meigs monorail system.
• The 1887 engineering report prepared by George Stark for the Board of Railroad Commisssioners.
• Expanded version of Stark’s report.
• July 1886 Scientific American article (text reproduced here).
• A Q&A with Joe Meigs about rapid transit.
• An 1882 article in the Crimson announcing a demonstration by Meigs.
• JP Morgan takes over.
• Using the Meigs charter to build elevated lines roughly following today’s Red and Orange lines.
• Erecting one sad section of track in 1894.
• The archives at Yale hold the Joe V Meigs papers.
• Celebrate Boston collected a number of sources related to the Meigs monorail.

In this 19th century Photoshop job, see the elevated railway that Bostonians feared would block out the sun.

• A modern crew attempts to recreate Bostonian John Jeffries’ maiden voyage across the English Channel.
• John Quincy Adams records the difficulties Jeffries encountered.
• Blanchard’s first flight in the US.
• An almost certainly fake account of a balloon ascent in Boston in 1790.
• The first balloon ascent in Boston leads to the first aviation lawsuit in Massachusetts.
• A newspaper account of Charles Durant’s first ascent from Boston in 1834.
• Irish actor Tyrone Power describes an ascent by Durant.
• Durant’s memorable final flight from Boston on September 13, 1834.
• The oldest surviving aerial photo is taken of Boston in 1860. It’s now in the collection of the Met.
• Google Earth tips its hat to that 1860 photo.
• Just for fun, here are a few pictures from the time your hosts went soaring in New Hampshire, including the Boston skyline from somewhere near Salem, NH.

• Documents about Harvard’s financial stake in the Charlestown Ferry.
• The first bridge over the Neponset.

• • A useful history of the early ferries and bridges over the Charles written for the Boston Transit Commission in 1899.
  • Town records related to the debates and first authorization of a bridge.
  • Legislation authorizing the Proprietors of the Charles River Bridge to form a corporation.
  • Lucy Cranch writes to her aunt Abigail Adams about the new Charles River Bridge.
  • John Quincy Adams writes to his mother about the opening of the Charles River Bridge, and shares a little more candidly in his diary.
  • July 4, 1786 oration at Charlestown, using the “phoenix” metaphor that so annoyed JQA.
  • Josiah Bartlett’s description of the Charles River Bridge.

• Advertising shares in the West Boston Bridge.
• A centennial article about the West Boston Bridge in the Cambridge Tribune.
• A 2000 masters thesis on the West Boston Bridge.
• The Bridge, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

In Episode 80 of the Dispatches podcast from the Journal of the American Revolution, host Brady Crytzer sits down with former White House webmaster and author Jane Hampton Cook to discuss one of our favorite Americans. As the wife of one US President and mother of another, Abigail Adams’ private influence could often be seen in public discourse and policy. For example, John Quincy Adams’ lifelong crusade against slavery was no doubt inspired by the mother who wrote in 1774 that she wished most sincerely that there was not a slave in the province.

The correspondence between Abigail Adams and John is one of the most powerful glimpses into our founding era, and from three decades of letters, the most famous words Abigail wrote were “remember the ladies.” In a series of letters written while John was attending the Second Continental Congress in the spring of 1776, Abigail constantly urged him to get Congress to declare an American independency. In one of them, she considered what would come after independence, and suggested a new role for women in the new society. On March 31, 1776, she wrote:

By the way, in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation.

That your Sex are Naturally Tyrannical is a Truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute, but such of you as wish to be happy willingly give up the harsh title of Master for the more tender and endearing one of Friend. Why then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity with impunity. Men of Sense in all Ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the vassals of your Sex.

In his response, John called Abigail “saucy,” and he essentially ignored her suggestion to incorporate rights for women in the new code of laws. It would take nearly 150 more years to pass the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote in America. In the podcast, Cook explores what John’s dismissal of Abigail Adams’ most famous letter tells us about her role in promoting women’s rights in the early republic.

On September 21, Luke Nichter from Texas A&M will be leading an online author talk about his book “The Last Brahmin: Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and the Making of the Cold War.” Here’s how the event sponsors at the Massachusetts Historical Society describe his talk:

A key figure in American foreign policy for three decades, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. of Massachusetts, a well-heeled Eastern Establishment Republican, put duty over partisanship to serve as advisor to five presidents from Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford and as United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Vietnam, West Germany, and the Vatican. Historian Luke A. Nichter gives us a compelling narrative of Lodge’s extraordinary and consequential life and his immense political influence.

Tune in at 5:30pm on Monday, September 21 to learn about the oft-overlooked younger Henry Cabot Lodge.

Revolutionary Spaces operates both Old South Meeting House and the Old State House, including the site of the Boston Massacre. As part of their commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the massacre this year, the Reflecting Attucks series explores different aspects of the life and times of Crispus Attucks, who has become the most famous victim of the Boston Massacre. Here’s how they describe this installment:

“Attucks and the Politics of Liberty & Sovereignty in 18th Century New England” reflects on the political conversations that were taking place around the time of the Boston Massacre among white colonists and the African- and Native-descended communities. The Revolutionary period is most often associated with colonists arguing for their rights as British subjects to tax themselves under a locally elected government, but that is only part of the story. Blacks were also seeking to make the case for liberty to end the practice of slavery, while Native peoples continued to reclaim their sovereignty after more than a century of colonial expansion.

That talk will begin at 4pm on Tuesday, September 22.

On September 7, 1630, Boston, Dorchester, and Watertown were all officially named, and the anniversary always kicks off a month or more of terrific programming from the Partnership of Historic Bostons. As the name suggests, the partnership celebrates the historical connections between Boston, Massachusetts and Boston, Lincolnshire. Their mission is to educate people about the 17th century history of both Bostons, and their peak season kicks off with Charter Day.

Their event on Wednesday, September 23 will be called “Into the Wilderness: Leadership in Early New England,” and it will begin at 7pm. Here’s how the Partnership describes the event.

2 governors. 2 colonies. 4 moments that defined a decade. Join expert staff from Plimoth-Patuxet (formerly Plimoth Plantation) and the Center for 17th-Century Studies at Plimoth for an immersive exploration of the complicated relationship between Plymouth Colony’s William Bradford and Massachusetts Bay Colony’s John Winthrop. Delving into their personal correspondence and published writings from the 1630s, Plimoth brings its unique approach to living history to bear in an exploration of each man’s unique approach to leadership and community in New England’s earliest decades.