By Brendan Kieran, Reader Services

Last summer, I wrote a post for the Beehive based on my exploration of MHS materials relating to Lynn Woods, an outdoor public space I’ve enjoyed in my lifetime that I wanted to look at through a different lens. I decided to continue with that theme this summer by looking at another North Shore recreational area, Revere Beach. The MHS holds a handful of materials relating to the beach, including some of the Arthur Goss photographs. These photos, taken in 1912, provide brief but interesting snapshots of the Revere Beach landscape of the time.

“Revere Beach,” from the Arthur Goss photographs, 1912.

When I looked through these photos, I was struck by the number of rides and attractions that lined the road along the beach. One photo includes the sign for a merry-go-round, and multiple photos include a ride of some sort that looks like a miniature mountain. In Boulevard Landmarks: America’s First Public Beach, a book of postcards edited by Peter McCauley and the Revere Society for Cultural and Historical Preservation ([Revere, Mass.?: s.n., 1996]), this ride is referred to as the Thompson Scenic Mountain Railway.

“Revere Beach   Bath House,” from the Arthur Goss photographs, 1912

The Toronto Harbour Commissioners sent these photographs to the MHS in 1987. Their earlier provenance is not clear, but the Chief Engineer for the Harbour Commissioners, Edward L. Cousins, visited Massachusetts in 1912, the year in which the photos were taken. The waterfront development in Toronto was influenced by beach setups in Massachusetts, including Lynn Beach and Revere Beach.

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From the cover of the “Wonderland” score, words and music by Thos. S. Allen (Boston, Mass.: Walter Jacobs, 1906)

Additionally, the Revere Beach area was once home to the Wonderland amusement park. The experience of a night at the park with a date was the subject of a 1906 waltz song by Thos. S. Allen. The cover of the published score includes an illustration of Wonderland, which is billed as “The Largest Amusement Park in the World.” 

“Revere Beach = (Rests),” from the Arthur Goss photographs, 1912

A 2003 MHS publication, Faces of Community: Immigrant Massachusetts, 1860-2000, edited by Reed Ueda and Conrad Edick Wright, includes a chapter about Revere Beach. In “Lines in the Sand: Ethnicity, Race, and Culture at Revere Beach,” Mark Herlihy chronicles the development of the Revere Beach Reservation as a public park in the 1890s by the Metropolitan Park Commission (MPC) and the rise of recreational amusements along the beach shortly thereafter. He then explores the dynamics of ethnicity and race over the years at the beach, including the strong roles played by immigrants (mainly Jewish and Italian) in the development and use of the beach environment in the early decades after its conversion into a public space, tensions between immigrants and longer-established residents as well as among different immigrant groups, racism at the beach (including racist attractions along the boardwalk and at Wonderland), and difficulties as well as successes Black beachgoers experienced as they began to use the beach in greater numbers after World War II.

From the Arthur Goss photographs, 1912

The MHS holds some other items relating to Revere Beach. Revere Beach Chips: Historical Background from the Revere Journal, compiled by McCauley (Revere, Mass.: Revere Society for Cultural and Historic Preservation, 1996), includes transcriptions of Revere Journal newspaper articles relating to Revere Beach, with the earliest article in the book being from 1881 and the latest being from 1974. “Revere Beach Reservation : bath-house, shelters and beach” ([Boston: Metropolitan Park Commission, 1898]), removed  from the Metropolitan Park Commission Report, January 1898, depicts a crowded beach scene (this item was recently featured in a Beehive post by Lindsay Bina and Anna Clutterbuck-Cook).

From the Arthur Goss photographs, 1912

If you would like to catch a glimpse of Revere Beach in earlier periods, these materials are available for research here in the MHS library. 

By Rakashi Chand

On this date a century ago, two sailors stationed in Boston went to the sickbay with flu-like symptoms; the next day eight more, the following day 58 more, and this was just the beginning. As we make plans for flu season this autumn, we should remember that this year marks the centennial of the deadliest epidemic of Influenza in modern history. The 1918-1919 influenza, or “Spanish flu,” pandemic killed upwards of fifty million people worldwide and five thousand people in Boston alone, numbers only surpassed by Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The shocking morbidity pattern killed young, healthy people between 20-40 years of age at an alarming rate, with a rapid disease progression that could lead to multi-organ failure and death within twenty-four hours. The influenza strain was highly contagious and unfortunately spread at exponential rates. Although the origin of the outbreak is still debated, the Spanish media were the first to openly cover the outbreak because they were neutral in WWI. In part because of the war, the U.S. and non-Spanish European press were slow to report accurate information about the epidemic, and the high rate of casualties among military and civilian populations. Some lawmakers also suppressed coverage in an effort to reduce panic. 

At Camp Devens, an army training base for 45,000 soldiers just outside of Boston, the first soldier to come down with the flu was misdiagnosed with meningitis and influenza began spreading rapidly throughout the entire camp.  At the height of the crisis, 1,543 soldiers were reported ill on a single day. A poignant letter by Physician N. Roy Grist stationed at Camp Devens describes the scene in detail and can be read online: www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/influenza-letter/.

The epidemic soon spread to the civilian population of Boston.

The MHS has a public notice issued by the city for the care and prevention of Influenza. This broadside is an example of the advice given to the people of Boston during the Influenza outbreak by William C. Woodward, the Health Commissioner of Boston from 1918 -1922.  

The epidemic took over the lives of all Bostonians. In mid-September, the Boston Globe reported on that the city planned to keep schools open, saying:

Neither Dr. William H. Devine, medical director of the schools, nor Dr. W. C. Woodward, City Health Commissioner, is in favor of closing Boston schools. They say that by remaining at their studies pupils are less likely to become affected, especially since teachers, school physicians and nurses are doing everything in their power to head off the epidemic.

But things turned for the worse very quickly, and people started to panic. No one understood why the disease was spreading so quickly or how to prevent it. Officials in Boston began forbidding public gatherings as they were desperate to try to control the spread of the disease. Finally, the schools were closed, as well as theatres, bars, and even churches were asked to hold not services. City hospitals were flooded with patients, there was an urgent need for doctors and nurses especially since so many were oversees helping the War effort, and, sadly, even coffins could not be supplied at the rate they were needed. 

The diaries of Edith Coffin (Colby) Mahoney, from the Colby-Mahoney Family Papers, provide a glimpse of life in Massachusetts during the Influenza Outbreak. The diary Edith keeps is full of descriptions of lovely Golf outings at the Club, picnics, shopping, and friends’ visits during the final days of August, and into September of 1918. But then her daily entries suddenly mention Influenza, and with it, death.

September 22 1918

“Fair & cold. Pa and Frank here to dinner just back from Jefferson Highlands. Rob played golf with Dr. Ferguson and Mr. Warren. Eugene F. went to the hospital Fri. with Spanish influenza. 1500 cases in Salem. Bradstreet Parker died of it yesterday. 21 yrs old.”

September 24 1918

“Mr. Freeman here. Eugene has developed pneumonia from Spanish Influenza. Serious epidemic everywhere. Caned carrots. Went to 93 with children P.M. Myra and Ella go to Gray’s Inn tomorrow.”

September 26 1918 

“Torrential rain for 24 hours beginning at 3am today, some thunder in the P.M.. Most depressing day after bad news from Eugene. He died at 6:40am. Several thousand cases in the city with a great shortage of nurses and doctors. Theatres, churches, gatherings of everykind stopped. Even 4th Liberty Loan drivers parade postponed.”

September 27 1918

“Fair part of day but cold. Had Elwood Noyes get boiler ready and start furnace fire. Out with kiddies in P.M. Called at Ma’s. Belle there with a hoarse cold. Pa here right from office the past three days. Harry at Nasson School to see Agnes who has influenza. Rob home from N. Y. at midnight. Came instead of tomorrow accnt of Eugene’s funeral.”

September 28, 1918

“Beautiful, mild day. Rob in bed all day with high fever, bound up head and aching eye balls, so could not be pall bearer at Eugene’s funeral at grace Church. Prompt measures with hot lemonade, castor oil, aspirin etc.induced god sweat by afternoon so he felt much better in evening. Phoned but did not call Dr. Sargent”

September 29, 1918

“Beautiful, mild day. Rob very much better. Husky throat the only symptom left. Up at noon. Dr. Sargent said to keep him in tomorrow. Met him as I was going to 93 with children in the P.M.. James Tierney died Fri of pneumonia (37yrs). Dr says there is no sign of epidemic abating.”

The MHS houses another diary kept by young Barbara Hillard Smith of Newton, MA, describing her experience during the Influenza epidemic.

September 21, 1918

“Down at Station at 5:45. In town. Pegs for a dance.”

September 22, 1918

“Sunday School. Came down with Influenza.”

September 23, 1918

“In bed. Dr. G- came. Mother came home.”

September 24, 1918

“In bed. Felt rotten. School closed till Monday.”

September 25, 1918

“Got up and went out. Felt rotten.”

September 26, 1918

“Hung around. Sick.”

September 27, 1918

“Went over to Pegs”

September 29, 1918

“Church. No Sunday school. Over to Pegs in afternoon.”

October 2, 1918

“Over to Pegs. School still closed.”

Luckily, Barbara survived the influenza epidemic, and it seems the greater impact on her family was that of the school closure.

To learn more about the Influenza Epidemic of 1918, or more about diaries and letters from 1918 please visit the Library at the Massachusetts Historical Society. We welcome your questions and research queries at library@masshist.org. 

Bibliography:

https://www.massmoments.org/moment-details/flu-epidemic-begins-in-boston.html

https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/47/5/668/296225

https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-boston.html#

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/journal-plague-year-180965222/ 

https://www.wgbh.org/news/post/1918-influenza-outbreak-when-boston-was-patient-zero 

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/influenza-letter/

By Susan Martin, Collections Services

On 12 August 1895, Isaac A. Wetherby wrote to the firm F. W. Bird & Son of East Walpole, Mass. for a sample of their roofing material. But Wetherby recognized the name Bird, and what started as a perfunctory business letter became two pages of terrific stream-of-consciousness reminiscences about the “dark days of slavery.” Wetherby dropped so many names and references that I thought I’d create a kind of annotated version of the letter here. I’ll retain his eccentric capitalization, punctuation, and misspellings. Starting a few lines in…

& a Word more. I know your Family well. & it must be you are the Sons & Jr. F. W. Bird. but I still think your Father who I knew so well. as he was about my age which is 74. is yet with us on this Earth.

The recipient of this letter was Charles Sumner Bird, the son of abolitionist Francis William Bird. The elder Bird, unbeknownst to Wetherby, had died over a year earlier, and Charles carried on the family’s manufacturing business. Incidentally, sources indicate that Wetherby would have been 75 when he wrote this letter, not 74. And Francis W. Bird was actually ten years older.

ask him if he does not Rember the dark days of Slavery. when we were double geared Hustlers for Freedom as Free Soilers. at the time of our St Free Soil Convention held at Wocester Mass & Joshua. R. Giddings gave us the Ohio Statesmans Bugl Blast for Freedom. & Chas Sumner made his first Speach. & then our 1^st Anty Slavery torch light Parade at Boston same night.

The Free Soil Party, founded in 1848, opposed the extension of slavery into new territories annexed by the United States. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts and Joshua Reed Giddings of Ohio were both prominent Free Soilers, and Worcester had been a hot-bed of anti-slavery sentiment since the early 19th century. Wetherby’s reference to a “bugle blast” may be a call-back to an 1839 poem by John Greenleaf Whittier called “The World’s Convention.”

I am an old Boston Artist. & I Painted & Caried at Head of Procession. (Henery Wilson lead on Horseback) a Cuting Carriacture of Abot Lawrence. as Nothern Doughface. “a Slave Holder had him by the nose &c.”

Wetherby was a portrait and ornamental painter and early photographer. For the parade, he caricatured Abbott Lawrence, a cotton manufacturer, U.S. Congressman, and Massachusetts Whig with ties to Southern enslaver. At the front of the procession rode rising political star Henry Wilson. Wilson’s life story is fascinating—he was born into poverty and went on to serve as the 18th vice president of the United States under Ulysses S. Grant.

& such a Humans nest it stired up at the head of State Str. We could hardly get through the Crowd was so Excited it was red Hot. they tried to shove canes &c through our Banners & &. up by Tremont House we were met by Volleys of Stones Stale Eggs &c. as Harvard Southern Students Club Roomed near there. our Baners were riddled & torn Bad that night. I have that old Banner Packed away.

Tremont House was a luxury hotel located on the southwest corner of Tremont and Beacon Streets. The Harvard Southern Students Club may have been a precursor of the university’s Southern Club, established in 1888, and/or the modern-day Southern Students Association.

soon after this time, “I went west young man” came to Iowa as the Indian & wild deer were just leaving. & John Brown & his men I knew well they slept in my Log Barn with their Sharpe’s Rifles. at Iowa City often as they Passed Through with Contrabands Bound for Canada. I lived at Milton hill & Dorchester.

Wetherby had lived primarily in New England until 1854. He moved to Iowa City with his family in the late 1850s, where he opened a photography studio and became the town’s first recognized commercial photographer. He crossed paths with John Brown as the notorious abolitionist smuggled freedom seekers—i.e., “contrabands”—north via the Underground Railroad. Wetherby’s home in Iowa City is a protected historic site, though the barn no longer exists. And his portrait of Brown, probably painted from a photograph, is part of the collections of the State Historical Museum of Iowa.

we were together Hustling for Speakers & kept Potters Steam Press going Printing Handbills written by Eliza Wright. to wake up the then Sleeping North. with Garrison & his Press. & Edmond Jackson & Co who backed him up.

Wetherby almost certainly meant Elizur Wright, abolitionist, secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society, and prolific writer and editor of anti-slavery literature. His handbills were produced on a printing press manufactured by Charles Potter. William Lloyd Garrison and Edmund Jackson were also prominent abolitionists.

& I had then Just Returned from the South Ky. & Tenn & Predicted the War. I was drove out a Northen man’s life was nothing at that time there. a young Friend of mine was shot dead in the Streets of Louisville. named Bliss from Vermont. he only reported for Louisville Journal a Burlesque Speach of one Pope a Parasite Lawyer & a Turkey Buzzard Polittian. there never was anything done about it. no more than Shooting a Dog.

In 1842, a young teacher and writer named Leonard Bliss was shot by Godfrey Pope on a Louisville, Ky. street after reporting on a political speech by Pope’s cousin. Bliss died ten days later. The MHS holds a small collection of his letters, dating from 1832-1840. Here’s my favorite excerpt, written three days after his 23rd birthday: “I don’t know that I feel conscious of superior powers, but I feel determined to exert the powers I possess. […] I feel the stirrings of a spirit within me, that will not let me rest till I have made men feel that I have existed.” Godfrey Pope was arrested but acquitted of Bliss’ murder.

but years roll on & finds me in the Miss & Missourie river valleys. & in the Center of Civilization. & new England is on the Verge. & & the Grand Nation united & Slavery wiped out. the Giant West. East. & South a unit. & to remember not to be Caught with no Trained Soldiers. as we were just before the War. & that the German motto is right. “the World rests on the Point of the Sword.”

The rest of Wetherby’s letter consists primarily of information about his family, in which he obviously had great pride. His grandfather Judah Wetherbee (the name was spelled differently by other family members) fought at Bunker Hill. In the second letter of the collection, Isaac also boasted about his sister, Emily Greene Wetherbee, an “Educator, Orator & Poet, master of English Literature” with a school in Lawrence, Mass. named after her.

Isaac A. Wetherby died in 1904. I’ll let him take care of the sign-off…

Say to your Father we belong to Abolition Soldiers of the line

long live the line.

Truly yours for the cause.

I. A. Wetherby.

By Peter Drummey, Librarian

Joseph Pennell originally titled his dramatic depiction of war-ravaged New York City, a poster he created during World War I for a patriotic loan drive, “Buy Liberty Bonds or You Will See This.” In 1918, the idea of New York under aerial bombardment and in flames would have seemed to be a fantasy, but Pennell’s lithograph contained one element that reflected actual events a century ago. In the poster, just to the right of the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty, the sinister shape of a German submarine glides through New York Harbor. In the summer of 1918, “U-Kreuzers,” German long-range submarines, patrolled off the coast of Long Island where, at night, crewmembers could see light cast by the “Great White Way” of Manhattan on the horizon. The threat of enemy attack had come to North American waters and would soon arrive off the shores of Cape Cod.

July 21, 2018, marks the 100^th anniversary of the only attack on American soil—although probably inadvertent—during the First World War. On that summer Sunday morning, 21 July 1918, while shooting at the tugboat Perth Amboy and its towline of four large barges off Nauset Beach in Orleans, on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the German submarine U-156 fired shells that passed over their intended targets and landed on the beach. Town residents and vacationers, attracted by the rumble of artillery fire, gathered to watch the “Battle of the Barges,” also known as the “Battle of Nauset Beach.”

Dr. Joshua Danforth Taylor of East Boston, a loyal subscriber to the Boston Globe, telephoned the Globe newsroom from his vacation cottage overlooking the scene to give the editors and reporters, in real time, a blow-by-blow (shell-by-shell?) account of the one-sided “battle.” Almost miraculously, although some of the barge captains were accompanied on their ships by wives and children, there were only two serious injuries, both to members of the Perth Amboy’s crew. The casualties, John Bogovich and John Zitz, turned out to be immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then at war with the United States, so Bogovich and Zitz—although badly wounded—fell under suspicion of playing some sort of nefarious role in the attack.

As shown in the accompanying photographs (deck of tug / side of tug) , the Perth Amboy was badly damaged by shell fire and abandoned by its crew, but it survived the attack. The four barges were all sunk. Prompt action by the Coast Guard and local fishermen saved the barges’ crews, families, and even a ship’s dog named Rex. Jack Ainsleigh, a young son of the master of the sail barge Lansford, became an instant celebrity when he waved the American flag as his family abandoned ship and threatened to return the 150 mm cannon fire from the U-156 with his .22 caliber rifle.

The U-156 disappeared with all hands in September 1918 during its voyage home to Germany, probably sunk by a British or American mine in the North Sea, so some of its operations are conjectural or based on intercepted radio messages, but its presence off Nauset Beach probably had more to do with an attempt to cut the transatlantic telegraph cable to France that came ashore in Orleans than to sink empty coal barges and scare/thrill the local population. If cable cutting was the U-156’s mission that day, it failed, but the U-Kreuzer already had delivered a heavy blow: the mines it laid off the coast of Long Island sank the armored cruiser San Diego on 19 July, the largest U.S. warship lost during the war.

With no loss of life to darken the story and many human interest elements to enliven the very heavy press coverage of the event, the “Battle of the Barges” seems a long-ago and somewhat bizarre summer adventure at the beach for the people who witnessed it. The U-156 was a technological marvel, but it devoted most of its voyage to destroying sail-powered American and Canadian fishing vessels. Nevertheless, the German long-range submarine campaign in 1918 was, in some respects, a rehearsal for the much more dangerous and successful German U-boat operations in North American waters during the Second World War.

The photographs of the Perth Amboy after it was salvaged and towed into Vineyard Haven on Martha’s Vineyard are from the diary of Charles Henry Wheelwright Foster, an avid yachtsman, who inserted them between his entries for August 1918, but otherwise made no note of the attack on Orleans or the presence of German submarines along the coast. Joseph Pennell’s Liberty Loan poster is from the Massachusetts Historical Society’s large collection of World War I posters, many the gift of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the president of the Historical Society during the war.