Massachusetts

Lowell National Historical Park

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Some of the old factories are empty ruins, and many have been remodeled into chic housing or modern offices. Lowell followed on the success of the cotton spinning mills of the Blackstone River Valley, but many times larger in scale: all stages of production automated from spinning to cloth, cotton & wool, printed patterns & carpets, powered by two rivers, two layers of canals running 6 miles through the city, 10 multistory mill complexes, and 10,000 mill workers. 19th century visitors from Europe were astounded to see England’s Industrial Revolution expanded on American shores. Today, visitors walk the canals (or take a park tour boat or trolley), see the power looms in action, and take in the exhibits & public art in this university town. While there are paid parking spaces all around the historic district, the visitor center will validate free parking in the neighboring structure.

Since the factories sold “Lowell” brand cheap cloth to the plantations for slave clothing, this was not a city that attracted many ex-slaves for work. The owners who profited from their slave-labor suppliers did not support abolition, but many workers did. There was an active Underground Railroad site under the Second Universalist Church, attended by many workers and led for many years by a staunch critic of slavery. The minister also supported the “mill girls” who organized strikes and agitated for their rights 90 years before women won the right to vote. Many suffragettes began their struggle in Lowell’s mills.

Lowell also teaches important environmental lessons. The forests were cut down and burned to bake bricks, the river was polluted with heavy metal dyes and untreated sewage, and the air was polluted with coal to power the steam engines that replaced the greener hydropower. By 1970, the Merrimack River was declared a “non-river”, since it was essentially slow-moving toxic sludge. Lowell was not a pleasant place to live, and many good jobs had moved elsewhere. Citizens voted to clean up the environment, and gradually the environment has improved. The river is now passably clean, and there are green spaces amid the old industrial sites (see photo above). In the long run, polluting for profit is terribly destructive and often irreversible. We need to make better decisions to stop carbon pollution now, or we will regret our lazy, thoughtless inaction later.

Springfield Armory National Historic Site

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America has a gun problem. No other country on earth has anywhere near as many gun deaths per capita as we do. Australia banned guns after a mass shooting in 1996, and they have had one mass shooting in the past 26 years. Many Americans worship guns (see “organ of muskets” above), and mass shootings are a daily occurrence.

George Washington started the Armory for the Revolutionary War, and it continued making guns until 1968. The Armory did an excellent job preserving its history, and their extensive collection covers the evolution of guns in exceptional detail. Smith (of Smith & Wesson) and his father worked here, as did William Ruger. The Colt factory was another of the precision gun manufacturers in the Connecticut River Valley, and the town of Coltsville will likely open as a new national historical park someday soon.

On this visit, I also learned that most of the ammunition for at least the Civil War was produced by women and children, and that the work was extremely dangerous. 178 women and girls were killed when the Allegheny Arsenal in Pittsburgh exploded in 1862, due to sparks from iron horseshoes & iron wheels on a flinty cobblestone road covered with sawdust and gunpowder. Actually, the lawn in the center is contaminated with lead, so kids shouldn’t play on it (like I did when I first visited decades ago).

Longfellow House – Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site

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The stately home to the right should be the subject of my photo, or perhaps the meticulously preserved interior, but I’ve always loved the garden. Brattle is a quiet street off of Harvard Square, and the garden is a lovely little oasis for contemplation. George Washington doubtless had little free time after he set up his command here to build a revolutionary army. The British had retreated to Boston (along with the owner of this house) after the Minutemen forced them back in Concord. A siege ensued, and the British were unable to break out of the city, taking heavy losses at Bunker Hill. Then Washington arrived here, organized, trained, and motivated his troops for nine months. In the middle of an exceptionally cold winter, using oxen to drag sledges quickly over the ice, Henry Knox delivered cannon captured in New York to the hills surrounding Boston, and the British evacuated the city permanently.

Some sixty years later, a young literature professor named Henry Wadsworth Longfellow arrived here to rent a room from the indebted landlord, and he was thrilled to stay in the famous headquarters of General Washington. His father in law bought the house for the young couple, and Longfellow wrote the poems that many of us memorized as children: A Psalm of Life, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, Song of Hiawatha, the Courtship of Miles Standish, and Tales of a Wayside Inn. Fortunately for us, his family protected his legacy in exceptional detail, along with heirlooms from his colorful relatives, such that “if Longfellow returned, he would be able to find his books and most of his things exactly where he left them”. The tour explains the history of all kinds of people who lived here, from the first owner’s slaves to the flamboyant Longfellow descendant who both preserved the original artifacts and entertained here in style.

“All are architects of Fate,

Working in these walls of Time;

Some with massive deeds and great,

Some with ornaments of rhyme.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1849

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site

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Yet again, I arrived at a site only to realize that I had visited before, possibly even before they became a park unit. I also realized that I’ve been to many of his architectural landscape sites: the National Cathedral, the El Tovar Hotel, Arlington National Cemetery, the Roosevelt Memorial, the Biltmore Estate, the US Capitol Grounds, St Francis Woods, Redwood National Park, Boston Public Garden, the National Mall, Everglades National Park, Riverside Park (NYC), Central Park (NYC), Niagara Falls, Yosemite, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, Balboa Park, and a number of other sites, mostly in New England. And that’s just a tiny fraction of his work. You’ve probably visited more of his sites than you realize.

Olmsted was a self-educated big-picture guy. He presented a vision and hired experts to make it real. When I visited as a child, I felt small next to the hemlock outside his front door, cozy in his sunken garden, curious on his path into the woods, and free as I burst out on his lawn. What I learned today, is that those feelings were intentionally created with earth, rocks, trees, vines, bushes and lawns. I recognized hints of the Suzhou Gardens that Olmsted must have seen on his trip to Asia, and small design elements that he employed on a grander scale across our country. He said that “nature abhors a straight line”, and unlike the formal gardens of Europe, his designs organically blend nature together in a way that people enjoy instinctively. His home here is a good place to see what landscape he chose for his family, and the (mostly weekend) tours, both inside and outside are educational and inspirational.

“You may thus often see vast numbers of persons brought closely together, poor and rich, young and old… each individual adding by his mere presence to the pleasure of all others, all helping to the greater happiness of each.”

Frederick Law Olmsted, describing the importance of lawns and public spaces

John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site

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I first visited Brookline decades ago, so this was a trip down memory lane: the corned beef “king“, the narrow tree-lined side streets, and the signs of progressive political activism. The site is being renovated until sometime in 2023, but there’s a film and an audio tour online, a neighborhood walking tour, and even a special exhibit at the JFK Library, which is excellent. Rose, JFK’s mother, bought the home where she gave birth to JFK and donated it to the public. It’s quite a traditional home, that evokes the moral, social, political and intellectual upbringing that she and her husband provided their many children. Both sides of the family were prominent Irish Catholic leaders, with Rose’s father mayor and Joe Sr’s father an important part of FDR’s administration (he later resigned his ambassadorship after saying he supported American isolationism).

The legend of the family wealth is that Joe Sr was a bootlegger, but it’s more accurate to say that his family legally acquired liquor prior to Prohibition, sold it legally to close family friends during Prohibition, and then acquired the rights to be the first post-Prohibition US importer of Dewar’s scotch, Haig & Haig and Gordon’s Gin. Joe Sr was successful as a banker, film producer, investor and in his other ventures, he came from a prominent political family, and he helped raise some of America’s most famous public servants: JFK, RFK, Teddy K, and Eunice K Shriver. The rumors that suggest illegal activity are unfounded and likely were pushed by the family’s political enemies. He later divested from the alcohol business to avoid political trouble for his children.

Boston African American National Historic Site

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From a pulpit here in the African Meeting House (the oldest African-American church building), Frederick Douglass opened “a meeting to discuss the best method of abolishing slavery” in 1860. Maria Stewart, a free black woman, risked scandal and gave one of the first public speeches by any woman in America here to a racially-mixed crowd of men and women in 1833: “for it is not the color of the skin that makes the man or the woman, but the principle formed in the soul”. The north side of Beacon Hill was the center of a vibrant African-American community, the site of the first African-American school, the first African-American Masonic Temple, and a hotbed of abolitionist intellectuals. Harriet Tubman raised funds for the Underground Railroad here and networked with both abolitionists and early suffragettes in Boston.

While Faneuil Hall is famous for Patriot meetings before the Revolutionary War, it deserves equal renown for Abolitionist meetings before the Civil War, especially those dedicated to foiling the Fugitive Slave Act. Similarly, Boston was where the Massachusetts 54th and 55th African-American regiments formed before the battle at Fort Wagner (see the movie Glory). The Black Heritage Trail is fascinating, and includes the story of Sarah Roberts, a young black girl who wanted to go to the white school near her home. Her father’s lawsuit lost but led directly to the outlawing of segregated schools in Boston in 1855, a hundred years before Brown v Board. Racism continues, but the morality of equality is indisputable.

Frederick Douglass

Boston National Historical Park

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“Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes.”

Colonel William Prescott, 1775

While the way to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument is currently closed, there is a live webcam. The monument is at the top of Breeds Hill, which the colonial soldiers defended against repeated attacks, before retreating to Bunker Hill. There’s a free museum facing Prescott’s statue across the street.

Boston has an embarrassment of historic sites in this park: the USS Constitution, Paul Revere’s house, the Old South Meeting House, the Old North Church, the Old State House, and Faneuil Hall. Each one is worth exploring to learn how we became independent, how we developed our democracy in town hall meetings, and how we debated our rights as Americans. Oh, and I’ve forgotten another historic ship (WWII), another historic battlefield (not open), another museum, a historic navy yard, living history exhibits, and other fascinating sites on the popular Freedom Trail.

Since the traffic and parking are even more horrendous than I remember, I definitely recommend taking the subway (electric and also historic) and walking. Many of the sites are clustered together, and the Rose Kennedy Greenway has beautiful art, flowers, and fountains along the way. Faneuil Hall is a great place to try local foods, and I recommend the thin cheesy Regina Pizzeria slices.

Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site

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So far, none of the New England sites are new to me, and as soon as I got here, I remembered visiting as a kid. The visitor center is in an original building, while the blast furnace, casting shed, forge and blacksmith’s shop were reconstructed on their foundations. There was some work being done to get the park completely reopened this summer, but the museum and most buildings were open. It’s an impressive site, and you can see an egret in the river to the right.

As at Blackstone in Pawtucket Rhode Island, the site is on a water fall, and the local tribe (now dispersed) was known as the Pawtucket, meaning Falls. To the left above, you can see the spillway where the diverted water turned the giant mill wheels, powered the bellows for the forge and worked the heavy trip hammer to make iron bars, and while the river isn’t as deep here, the marshes were filled with iron ore. While Blackstone had America’s first cotton mills in 1790, the English settlers here in 1640 built the first iron mill. The Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony owed much of its success (and all of its nails) to this mill. When the iron workers moved on for new opportunities, they built similar iron works where they settled.

Adams National Historical Park

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“Because power corrupts,

society’s demands for moral authority and character

increase as the importance of the position increases.”

John Adams

The Old House above was John & Abigail Adams’ dream house where they raised their son, John Quincy Adams, and where future generations of Adams would live, garden, read, write and serve our country. The Adams were all educated well-beyond American standards. John felt that we suffer due to our fear of thinking, and that we must “dare to read, think, speak and write”. The larger quote hints at their high ethical standards as well. John defended the British officers involved in the Boston Massacre, because no matter how anti-British he was, he knew they deserved a proper legal defense (most were acquitted).

I hope folks are familiar with John & Abigail through various movies and series related to the Continental Congress, but his negotiations with Europe were also critical to our fledgling country, as was his Presidency. But I suspect few remember our 6th President, John Quincy Adams. He was criticized for supporting the opposition party’s embargo of Britain which hurt the financial interests of Massachusetts, for supporting infrastructure & education investments, supporting science, for refusing to sign fraudulent treaties stealing Native American land, for defending the slaves who escaped on the Amistad, and for trying to legislate the end of slavery. Like his father, he believed that country was more important than state or party, fearing that states’ rights folk would tear the country apart. While protesting the Mexican American War, he had a stroke and died in the US Capitol.

America has a problem with voters who will elect bad people to achieve selfish or immoral goals. While an individual might not steal Native American land, hold someone in bondage or pollute, there’s a moral dilution that occurs when electing a leader. The leader can simply say they are responding to the will of the people, and the people can elect the person who will commit evil on their behalf, without having to get their own hands dirty. Back in John Quincy Adams’ day it was Andrew Jackson, then pro-slavery leaders, and today one party is committed to taking no action on climate change and taking the country backwards in women’s rights & voting rights, among other issues. Electing a leader for intellect and morality who will do the right thing for the long run even when unpopular seems an impossible, quaint, bygone concept.

Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park

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The river flows from northern Massachusetts into Rhode Island and has a natural waterfall not far from a navigable ocean ship channel. That made it a perfect location for an experimental mill, to see if the fledgling Americans could copy the British mill industry. Here Moses Brown, a Quaker and reformed transatlantic slave trader, gathered an English mill expert/ industrial spy, several inventors, blacksmiths, shipwrights and skilled craftsmen to build the first successful water-powered cotton-spinning machine in America. Here, America joined the Industrial Revolution.

The mill owners knew that the cotton came from slave-plantations and some later owners even invested in plantations while still claiming to be Abolitionists. (The Brown family founded the eponymous University here with slave trade money). The ranger at Slater’s Mill did an excellent job in describing this hypocrisy and the pros and cons of industrial capitalism, along with explaining the mechanics and the history of the mill company towns that grew up all along the valley, until electrification moved the mills south. Pollution from heavy dyes is still a problem as are the dams, but major clean ups have restored much of the riparian ecosystems, for birds, fish, plants, hikers, bikers and paddlers to enjoy. The entire area is interesting, with old shops, an Audobon park, and legacy industrial buildings.