If you spend a considerable amount of time reading turn-of-the-(twentieth)-century editions of the local papers of Lowell, Massachusetts, you'll soon come across the name of Samuel P. Hadley, who presided as a Justice for the Lowell Police Court for close to three decades. In fact, I think a few of the people I've researched for…Read more Abraham Lincoln’s Visit to Lowell, 1848
It turns out that wild turkeys are incredibly difficult to move across long distances. In the days before refrigerated travel, a national roadway system, and even railroads, driving turkeys across long stretches of land was the province of men called turkey drovers. From 1790 to about 1830, turkey drovers walked turkeys to market, literally, at a…Read more Turkey Drovers – Traditions from Thanksgiving Days Past
There's a story about the rather richly named Armand Jean du Plessis that circulated throughout Victorian-era New England during the 1880's. The story goes that du Plessis, better remembered by the world as the 17th-century Cardinal Richelieu of France, once exposed an impostor pretending to be a nobleman by the way the man ate his olives. Those watching this spectacle,…Read more The Etiquette of Eating Olives – Victorian-Era Table Manners
We New Englanders have long called Boston "the Hub". And there's a sense, just barely concealed, that we're really referring to the hub of the universe, and not merely the hub of the state or region. Undoubtedly, New England has a strong regional identity that includes the ubiquitous image of the "proper Bostonian" as well as a…Read more In His Words: Charles Dickens’ Perspective on New England and Public Transport, 1842
