Wicked Yankee is a blog dedicated to all the obscure bits of New England history and folklore that don't often get recorded in history books or taught in history classes.
As I sit waiting for my vegan wife’s Tofurkey to bake in order to bring it to my parent’s home for our contribution to Thanksgiving, I am researching a much more traditional recipe for this year’s holiday recipe post. New England does have a ton of traditionally Yankee recipes, most including either a good deal of molasses or cornmeal. So, in honor of this somewhat peculiar taste preference, I present Anadama bread
Like many things New England, the origins of Anadama bread extend too far into our past to completely understand where and when it first appeared. Most articles seem to give credit to the Cape Ann area, and its fishing tradition, as the impetus for the creation of this sweet type of bread.
As the legend goes, there was once a Gloucester fisherman who worked long and hard, only to return to his wife named Anna, who could not cook to save her life. Now she must have been particularly horrible, because all she ever made for him was a cornmeal porridge, sweetened with molasses. Finally, after eating this slop every day, he grew frustrated and angry enough that he simply tossed some flour and yeast into the porridge mix and threw the whole thing into the oven, obviously hoping anything that resulted from the concoction would be better than what he already had. As he sat waiting for his creation to bake, he continually muttered, "Anna, damn her. Anna, damn her." Thus, the name was born.
I have about the same ability poor Anna had when it comes to my baking, but I found this recipe for Anadama bread from Yankee Magazine.
Ingredients:
- Two packages of dried yeast
- ½ cup of lukewarm water
- 2/3 cup of molasses
- 2 cups of water or milk, or 1 cup of each
- 1 ½ tsp. of salt
- 2 Tbsp. of shortening
- 1 cup of cornmeal
- 7 – 8 cups of flour
Directions:
- Dissolve the yeast into lukewarm water and set aside
- In a large bowl combine the molasses, water or milk, shortening, cornmeal, salt, and 3 cups of flour.
- Add the yeast and mix until you have a smooth dough.
- Continue to add the flour until the dough is stiff and no longer sticky.
- Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Estimated time is 10 minutes.
- place the dough in a greased bowl, turning it once to grease the top, then cover it and allow it to rise until double the bulk. Estimated time 1 ½ hours.
- Gently punch he dough down, then let it rest for 10 minutes.
- Shape the dough into 3 loaves, then place then into 3 greased 9x5 loaf pans.
- Let the rise until just about doubled, then bake at 350 degrees for 35 – 45 minutes.
- Invert loaves to cool onto a wire rack.
Although I have had Anadama bread and liked it, I have never actually attempted to bake it. If you try, I hope you enjoy it. Just typing this makes me hungry for the upcoming meal. Plus, the Tofurkey is done. Have a great Thanksgiving!!!
I recently had the time and opportunity to visit the Jonathan Bourne Historical Center in Bourne, Ma. Visiting the Historical Center allowed me to see a few of their exhibits which I have been meaning to check out for a long time. It also allowed me to see a few I had not known about. Of course these have now peaked my interest and propelled me into future research projects.
The Jonathan Bourne Historical Center is located on 30 Keene Street, in Bourne Ma. The Center itself was built in 1897 by Emily Howland Bourne, who is a descendant of the prolific and regionally important Richard Bourne.
I have written about Richard Bourne several times now, as he was one of the first Christian missionaries to the local Wampanoag tribe and is also connected to the Wampanoag Indian Museum through one of his descendants.
The Historical Center building originally served as a town library. Emily Bourne had the library built in honor of her father, Jonathan Bourne. Jonathan, though a prominent resident of New Bedford at the time, was instrumental in helping the residents of Bourne achieve separation from the town of Sandwich in 1884. Because of his assistance, the new town was named after Jonathan Bourne and the Bourne family.
Bust of Jonathan Bourne at the Historical Center
The building houses the Bourne Historical Society, the Bourne Historical Commission, and the Bourne Archives. Not only does the Historical Center advise the town of Bourne on issues of historical preservation, but it also contains town records like historical maps, photos, family records, oral histories, and historic books through the inclusion of the archives. This makes the center a valuable historic resource in its own right.
The building also houses many interesting exhibits. Among the most famous is the mysterious Bourne Stone, which I will be researching for a post in the very near future. However, their largest and most current exhibit is a display containing posters and artifacts from both the First and Second World Wars.
WWI and WWII Posters and Artifacts
This exhibit not only contains several interesting propaganda posters from the allied persepctive, but also contains a display which details information on the military career of Sergeant Stubby, the most decorated war dog of World War I. Although he appears to be an early Boston Terrier type, his true breed appears to have been unknown. However, he did originate in Connecticut, which makes him a Yankee, and worthy of a more detailed post in the near future.
Stubby the War Dog
An additional exhibit which caught my attention was on one of the few serial killers to grace the shores of Cape Cod. Nicknamed Jolly Jane, she was reportedly responsible for the deaths of nearly every member of an entire family.
Jolly Jane's Exhibit
While visiting the Historic Center, I drove a couple miles down the road to check out the recreation of the Aptuxet Trading Post. The building sits on the foundation of what is thought to be the original 1627 trading post, which once sat alongside the Manamet River. The original course of the river was incorporated into the digging of the Cape Cod Canal. The current museum is a recreation of what the post was thought to have looked like.
Aptuxet Trading Post Museum
The Jonathan Bourne Historical Center is open Mondays and Tuesdays 9am to 2:30pm. It is also open the second and fourth Wednesday of the month from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.
I had a great time visiting the Bourne Historical Center and the Aptuxet Trading Pos Museum.. Not only did I once again visit a museum dedicated to local history, but I learned several new things and was inspired to continue learning about what I saw. To me, that’s what its all about. As I’ve said, during the next few weeks, I hope to continue researching the Bourne Stone, Jolly Jane, and Stubby the war dog in order to create detailed posts about each.
Until then, if you are in the area, take time to visit the Jonathon Bourne Historical Center for yourself. It’s a great opportunity to admire objects and exhibits dedicated to some of the odder, more mysterious, and less well known subjects within New England History. In addition, it is a great example of how important smaller local museums are to the continued effort to preserve an archive our Yankee heritage for posterity.
Yankee Doodle is a song most American school children learn sometime between the ages of 5 and 8. Most adults recognize the song, if not all the lyrics. I hope that most people probably know that, at least in legend, the song and phrase “Yankee Doodle” were both created by the English to be derogatory and insulting to Americans.
By examining the common lyrics, it’s not difficult to see the slight. Even the version school children learn is a little insulting. It reads:
Yankee Doodle went to town,
Riding on a Pony;
He stuck a feather in his cap,
And called it macaroni.
On my first post on this blog, I attempted to trace the meaning of the very complicated term “Yankee.” Although, no one really knows its exact origins, it essentially refers to someone of New England. The term “Doodle” is easier to understand. It simply means something like idiot, half-wit, or simpleton. As in all the many versions of this song, the term Yankee Doodle is synonymous with a country bumpkin, or what some would call a “hick.”
The entire scene these first four lines paint is of someone who is simple and uneducated. He rides on a pony instead of a horse. When he calls his feathered cap macaroni, he is not referring to the pasta, but rather to a fashion popular in England during the mid 18th century. A Macaroni was someone who dressed and acted at the extremes of fashion, often to the point of being somewhat ridiculous. The term is actually related to the Italian pasta (oddly), because eating macaroni was fashionable for well traveled European men of the 18th century. These rich young men would describe fashionable things as being extremely “macaroni.” In fact, they belonged to a group popularly known as the Macaroni Club.
One of these very Macaroni styles was wearing an extremely tall powdered wig topped by a small hat which could only be removed with a pole. These guys seem somewhat like our 20th century “metro-sexual.” Fashion, hygiene, and popular trends were identity defining among these men. In fact other English of the 18th century made use of the macaroni style in satire. However, in Yankee Doodle, the line is used to suggest that this Yankee is so simple he actually believes putting a feather in his plain old cap equals the extremes of European fashion.
According to legend, British troops created the lyrics during the French and Indian War between 1754 and 1763 to describe their under-trained, uneducated, home-spun colonial allies. Several prominent Americans like Benjamin Franklin even tried to play up to this character while in Europe during the Revolution by dressing in animal furs and acting as if he were from the extreme frontier. Apparently, this is what many Europeans expected colonial Americans to look like.
It’s interesting that this little anthem turned from being a derogatory insult into a national ballad of pride. In fact, it is said the tune was played so much during the Civil War that General Grant admitted he only knew two songs. The first was Yankee Doodle, he said, and the second one wasn’t.
However, as with most things in history, the origins of the lyrics and the tune are cloudy. Even how the song switched sides during the Revolution is a little murky. However, the two schools of thought point to either an English or an American origin for the song. Hence, whether it was truly originally created to be used to insult the colonials is even in question.
In his book Liberty and Freedom, David Hackett Fischer argues that the legend is correct. Yankee Doodle was a song created by an Englishman targeting colonial Yankees for their backward ways. In fact, he credits Dr. Richard Shuckburgh, an English surgeon stationed in New York during the French and Indian War, with the creation of the tune and certain lines.
During the French and Indian War, British regular troops were shipped over the Atlantic to protect the original American colonies from the French and their Native American allies. Of course, they were not doing this out of kindness or concern. Great Britain was mostly acting out of self interest by protecting their profitable colonial territories from a rival European power.
Hackett explains, according to the records of three New York families, the lines of Yankee Doodle written by Shuckburgh between 1759 and 1760 while he was stationed in Albany. Hackett States:
“The Regulars laughed at the antics of the Yankee militia. Their quaint clothing, curious speech, and clumsy manners became the butt of British humor.”
One must understand that the early colonies were very agricultural and rural. Though Yankees could be fierce warriors, they were very different than British regulars. Colonials were more used to irregular guerilla warfare and scouting, if experienced in warfare at all. They did not all have uniform clothing, weapons, or training. Each colonial area provided what they could to their militia. Among these provisions would have been odd assortments of hunting rifles, few bayonets, and perhaps scraps of military dress. Obviously most Yankees were more used to shooting rabbits, deer, and squirrels, than enemy soldiers.
Assembled as a whole in Albany, the New England militias must have looked like a rag-tag, back woods, odd looking, sounding, and probably smelling collection of provincials. In fact, from the prospective of the British, they probably were.
Though Hackett states it is quite possible Shuckburgh penned the verse of Yankee Doodle we all know so well, in The Story of Our National Ballads, CA Browne argues that the original opening verse was probably different. Set to the tune of an old English country dance, Shuckburgh might have actually written:
Father and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding.
There we see the men and boys,
As thick as hasty pudding.
Apparently, Shuckburgh attempted to convince the colonial leaders that the song was a well respected military tune in England. Though, the regulars knew this was a joke, the colonials took up the song as their own. According to Browne, the song called at that time “The Yankee’s Return to Camp” found constant use in the militia camps. Of course the British, including Shuckburgh, must have thought this was hilarious.
However, this is somewhat disappointing. This means the most well known verse containing the pony, feather, cap, and macaroni was not the original. In fact, Roger Lee Hall, author of The Boston Yankee Ballad writes that this version does not show up in print until 1884 in a book entitled The Nursery Rhymes of England. Though, he also quotes author James J. Fuld, who explains that most authorities now believe the song was of American origin.
In fact, Hall quotes the author of Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents, who states that the original verses of Yankee Doodle can actually be attributed to a sophomore at HarvardUniversity named Edward Bangs. Edward served as a minuteman at the Battle of Lexington. The verses Edward Bangs wrote were printed in a popular broadside, which was created between 1775 and 1776. Hall records Edward’s original lyrics as being:
Father and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding.
There we see the men and boys,
As thick as hasty pudding.
Chorus:
Yankey doodle keep it up,
Yankey doodle dandy,
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.
Hall does not discount that Shuckburgh may have had a hand in the creation of Yankee Doodle. However, he states that it was not until the version created by Edward Bangs was printed that this song became popular. In addition, he states that the Bangs version would have been the most well known during the Revolution.
The broadside and lyrics attributed to Edward Bangs
It is now unclear whether the song was originally created by the British or the Americans. However, as the animosities created during the French and Indian War led to the conflicts which began the American Revolution, Yankee Doodle was being used as a morale lowering weapon. According to CA Browne, British troops occupying Boston prior to the massacre in 1770 were already playing Yankee Doodle to annoy and harass the Bostonians. They even played it outside colonial church services and aboard British ships anchored Boston harbor. Browne even goes so far as to state that the British marched out of Boston to reinforce their forces at the Battle of Lexington to the tune of Yankee Doodle.
It seems the song finally switched sides after the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775. Thomas Aubrey, a British officer during the Revolution, writes about this transition in his series of letters entitled Travels Through the Interior Parts of America.
In his writing, Aubrey claims that the term Yankee was originally created by the Cherokee to mean coward, though this is only one of many theories. He said that the soldiers stationed in Boston during the commencement of hostilities often used the term as an insult. However, he also writes:
“But after the affair of Bunker Hill, the Americans glorified in it. Yankey-doodle is now their paean, a favorite or favorites, played in their army, esteemed as warlike as the Grenadier’s March – it is the lover’s spell, the nurse’s lullaby. After our rapid successes, we held the Yankees in great contempt; but it was not a little mortifying to hear them play this tune, when their army marched down to our surrender.”
Though the colonial militia lost the Battle of Bunker Hill, Aubrey is probably referencing the 1781 British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia. General Cornwallis, claiming illness, refused to ride out and surrender his sword to General Washington. He had his second in command deliver the weapon is his stead. Even then, it was delivered first to the wrong man.
As the British officers and German mercenaries marched by the assembled American and French leaders, the British refused to salute the colonial generals and commanders. Washington had ordered the army to remain courteous in victory. The English band played an old song called, “The World Turned Upside Down.” In response, as Aubrey stated, the Continental army responded with Yankee Doodle. It was the old morale-busting weapon of the British now turned against them.
If Dr. Shuckburgh did invent the lyrics to Yankee Doodle, he did not live to see how his song would be used or what it would eventually become. The tune changed in both lyrics and meaning as the French and Indian War led to the American war for independence. Even if most of the known lyrics were written later by Americans, the song and term “Yankee Doodle” changed from colonial insult to national ballad as Americans embraced the peculiar, awkward, somewhat provincial, yet entirely independent character the song describes.
Even though Yankee Doodle no longer really holds its position as the “in your face” patriotic theme it once was, from my perspective I find it amazing that it has survived in any form in our blind-to-our-past modern American culture. Though we still sing the song to our children, I wonder if most people know the significance of the words, how they were directed, and eventually how they were used. I cringe a little as it sometimes seems hard to find that independent Yankee Doodle character represented in our 21st Century national identity. As I mentally scan through TV channels, news broadcasts, newspapers, the internet, and other forms of poplar media; It immediately becomes clear, perhaps we are now confused as to who is the Yankee and who is the Macaroni.
I was lucky enough to have recently been able to visit Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Ma. I had been wanting to drop by because the library contains several artifacts related to Reverend John Lothrop, who had been a large part of the story behind Sacrament Rock.
Not only does the Library contain some of his things, the building is actually an artifact in itself, as part of the library is made up of the original home of Lothrop. In this building the Lothrop congregation met to worship before the construction of the actual church.
Aside from the fact that Sturgis Library contains an area committed to Cape Cod History and a section dedicated to the Reverend, it also contains the Lothrop Bible. This book is quite important to the entire Lothrop story, because it is one of the few artifacts that remain which he actually carried when he fled from England.
Section dedicated to Lothrop
Including a children's book entitled
"Sometimes You Just Have to Move Across the Ocean"
The Lothrop Bible on display
The Lothrop Bible even has its own interesting story. Apparently, aboard the ship the Griffin, which brought many of the Lothrop congregation to New England, the Reverend accidently spilled hot candle wax on his Bible during evening prayer. The hot wax burned through several pages. However, Lothrop repaired each burned section, re-writing the damaged passages from memory.
The Lothrop Bible. Notice the repaired sections.
After the death of John Lothrop, the Bible fell into the hands of his son Samuel. From Samuel, the Bible passed through the hands of many Lothrop descendants. For a time, it seems the Bible even returned to England. However, in 1957, it came full circle when it was donated to the Sturgis Library.
I love stories like this. More often I hear and read stories about important pieces of history or artifacts completely lost. Its nice to know, at least in the case of Reverend John Lothrop, his history will be preserved for future New Englanders.
If you’ve ever seen a Maine Coon you probably ran through the list of comments and questions that many coon cat owners get all the time. Is that a wild cat? Is that thing tame? Is he a hybrid of something? Where do they come from? Wow, that thing is huge, how much does it weigh? Of course, the list goes on.
These are all actually pretty decent questions, and as the answers have not been wholly adequate when posed in the past, they keep getting asked. Although the Maine Coon was only recognized as a pedigreed cat in 1973, its history actually extends so far back into our colonial era that it has now become a certified New England mystery. I only call it a mystery because there are so few verifiable pieces of evidence to explain the earliest origins of the coon type cat in New England. These long haired, bigger than average, wild looking, domestic cats seemed to have simply emerged from the primordial forests of New England just like Yankee culture.
It is precisely this mysterious quality, mixed with New England story telling and exaggeration, which has allowed the creation of so many legendary versions of the Maine Coon origin story. What we lack in historical evidence is certainly made up for in historical folktale.
In comparison to other cats, the Maine Coon is a bit larger. According to the breed standard publish by the Cat Fancier’s Association; the Maine Coon should be a medium to large cat. This generally seems to translate into a 15 to 25 pound (25 lbs being unusual) male cat, females would be proportionately smaller. This makes the Maine Coon slightly larger than the average house cat. In addition to their shaggy fur, tufted ear tips, long fluffy tail, and solid rectangular body shape, the Maine Coon can look quite large and wild. Undoubtedly, it is this wild appearance which helps to generate the majority of the Maine Coon origin stories.
In fact two of the most repeated stories about Maine Coons claim that they are the product of hybridization between either raccoons or the New England bobcat. Although a brown tabby Maine Coon superficially resembles a raccoon, it is impossible for a raccoon and any species of cat to hybridize, as they are not genetically closely related.
However, this fact did not stop New Englanders from believing that their coon cats might actually have raccoon origins. In an 1893 publication of the journal Science, a New Englander writes in with what must have been a common question. In his letter he wrote:
“I saw in a private house in Chicago recently, two cats which the owners called ‘coon cats.’ They had been obtained around the edge of the forest around Moosehead Lake, and it was claimed that they were hybrids, or descendents of hybrids of the common domestic cat and raccoons.”
The writer went on to explain that the cats were bigger than normal, had bushy coon-like tails, and they even ran around like raccoons. He even mentioned that one liked to climb on high things to stretch out for a rest. He seemed pretty convinced that what he had seen was a raccoon hybrid.
However, in a later issue of Science two readers also write in response to the original coon-cat letter. Both agree that a hybrid between a raccoon and domestic cat would be impossible. They state that these cats are common all throughout New England and most people believed that they were the result of long haired Angoras from Canada breeding with local domestic shorthair cats. This idea is at least more reasonable.
The idea that the Maine Coon is a bobcat hybrid is also implausible. Though many have recently claimed otherwise, according to a 2007 article published on the site Messybeast.com, there have so far been no proven hybrids between either the North American lynx or bobcat and a domestic cat. Not only would bobcats generally view the domestic cat as a meal option, but attempts at forcing the two to mate have so far produced no offspring.
To see a bobcat in comparison to a domestic cat, check out the following video. This would be cool, but scary.
So, if the Maine Coon is not a hybrid, where in the world did this wild looking cat come from? According to the Maine Coon breed profile belonging to the Cat Fancier’s Association, the Maine Coon is the native long haired cat of the United States. This is somewhat misleading, as North America is not the native homeland of Felis Catus, the domestic cat. Nor is it the homeland of the ancestor of the domestic cat, Felis sylvestris lybica, the African Wildcat.
African wildcat- which still resembles a modern tabby
According to a 2007 study published in Science, all domestic cats can trace their ancestry back to at lest five African Wildcats who may have been domesticated in the Near East roughly 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. From there, cats spread everywhere agriculture did. Like today, cats were used to keep rodents and other pests away from food stores. Since cats don’t generally eat grains or vegetables they could be used to control the pest species that did.
In addition, though Native American tribes had various types of domestic dogs, they did not keep domestic cats so far as we know. Therefore, the first domestic cats to arrive in the New World would have arrived with Europeans. However, when that might have taken place is precisely the mystery at the heart of another one of the most enduring Maine Coon stories.
It seems as though most early colonists did not write much about their cats. Historians know that settlers kept cats aboard ships heading to the New World to control mice and rats, but there just aren’t a lot of sources describing them. Some have posed that cats may have been introduced to North America by Norse explorers who may have come from Greenland and Newfoundland to New England around AD 1000.
Believers in this tale cite the fact that the Norwegian Forest Cat, which is another so-called naturally occurring breed from Scandinavia, looks remarkably like a Maine Coon. However, the Norse explorers did not leave any record of the cats they may or may not have brought with them on their trips to Iceland, Greenland, or Newfoundland.
Norwegian Forest Cat - They do look like Maine Coons
Yet, in Ring of Seasons: Iceland - Its Culture and History, author Terry G. Lacy states that a DNA connection has been found between cats from Iceland and the cat populations in other places that have or may have experienced Norse visitation. She lists New York and Boston as being two of these areas. However, she also states that there have been no archeological findings to support this connection so far. Therefore, the theory is interesting, but so far unproven. If remains of cats are found in areas of Norse settlement in North America or more DNA research is done to find connections between Maine Coons and Norwegian Forest Cats, I’d be happy to look into this idea further.
The earliest colonial record describing the domestic cat, at least in the New England area, seems to be William Wood’s New England’s Prospect, originally published in 1634. In his book, Wood describes how colonists struggled against the ravenous population of New England squirrels, something anyone with a birdfeeder knows something about. Wood States that colonial farmers were forced to carry their cats into the cornfields to fend off the rodents.
Although he doesn’t mention anything about what their cats might have looked like, from this source we know that the domestic cat had arrived in New England sometime before 1634. In fact they probably arrived in New England with the Plymouth settlers in 1620, but the early Puritans did not make reference to them. In addition to Wood’s source, archeologists have also found that Jamestown settlers ate their cats during the Starving Time between 1609 and 1610.
Between the 1600’s and 1800’s there are many sources describing the presence of cats in the developing New England colonies. Of course many of these sources are connected to Yankee superstition and the fear of witchcraft. Some Puritans believed that witches could take the form of cats to harass and injure their victims. However, there are no references to coon cats or Maine cats as a particular type until at least the nineteenth century.
In fact, according to an 1883 article in The Boston Journal, a coon-type cat by the name of Angora Dick was shown by a Mr. Robinson of BangorMaine. The author describes the cat as being a savage looking animal of fourteen pounds. In 1895, at the first national cat show held in Madison Square Gardens, a coon-type cat from Maine won first prize for best long haired cat. It’s apparent that in these early cat shows, cats were not classified by breed, but by type. A New York Herald article covering the 1895 cat show lists among the prizes, first place awards for best short haired tiger cat, largest and heaviest cat, best pair of kittens, and best short haired cat.
Cosey- winner of the 1895 cat show
So, sometime between 1630 and 1880, coon-type cats began showing up in New England. By 1883 they seem to have become very well known. In Frances Simpson’s 1903, The Book of the Cat, a chapter is dedicated to the mystery of the Maine cat. The chapter is authored by F.R. Pierce, a resident of Maine.
In her chapter, Pierce offers some insights into the history behind the origins of the Maine Coon. However, even she seemed a little unsure. According to Pierce:
“As to how and when they came, I would say, like Topsy, they just ‘growed,’ for their advent reaches far back beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitants.”
Hence, it seems that even the residents of Maine didn’t quite know how their coon cats came to be. However, Pierce offers what must be the most believable and probable origin story of them all. According to Pierce, Maine was one of the largest ship building states in the mid eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She states that captains and their crews imported many different types of animals freely, from seemingly everywhere in Europe, Africa, and South America. Among these imports were many different types of cats from all over the world. These cats would earn their keep in a similar fashion to the original domesticated cats of the Near East, by killing the rodents aboard ships.
Many of these cats were brought back to Maine, where they were basically left to live freely. From this large genetic stock of felines, Mother Nature selected only the most fit to survive and breed. New England’s harsh environment more or less naturally selected a larger than average, long haired cat.
Early Coon-type cat
Pierce states that these cats were once more prevalent within Maine coastal towns, but were soon gifted to relatives further inland. The cats continued to spread and dominate the feline populations of these areas until the coon-type cat became quite common throughout New England.
There are, of course, several other legends attributed to the development of the Maine Coon. One of the more probable states that an early English sea captain by the name of Coon often kept cats aboard his ship. These cats would often mingle with the local short haired cats when the ship was at port. Eventually, so the story goes, these cats came to be called Coon’s cats.
Another of the more improbable stories connects the development of the Maine Coon to the execution of Marie Antoinette. This story states that the former Queen of France, when faced with execution, loaded her most prized possessions aboard a ship captained by a man named Samuel Clough. Sadly, Marie Antoinette was killed before being able to escape. Captain Clough then brought his ship to Wiscasset, Maine, as per the original plan. Aboard this ship were six of Marie Antoinette’s Turkish Angora cats, which mingled with the local short haired Yankee cats, thus creating the Maine Coon.
If this were true, which I doubt, I don’t think six more long haired cats adding their genetics into a population, which already included possibly hundreds of other long haired cats smuggled into Maine by other ships, would make much more of a difference.
Although Maine Coons enjoyed success in the early American cat shows, its popularity began to decline in the later twentieth century. By 1950, it was believed that the Maine Coon had actually become extinct. However, with the creation of the first breed standard by the Central Maine Cat Club, the coon cat began making a come back.
Despite having to apply three times for recognition to the Cat Fancier’s Association, an organization created in 1906 as a registry for pedigreed cats, the Maine Coon was finally accepted in 1975. In addition, in 1985, the state of Maine declared the Maine Coon would become its official State Cat.
The Maine Coon continues to be a popular pedigreed cat. In 2010, it was the second most popular breed of cat behind the Persian. In addition, in 2010 a Maine Coon named Stewie earned the world record for being the longest ever domestic cat, at 48.5 inches from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail. The article states that the average cat is only about 18 inches long, which makes Stewie pretty impressive.
Longest cat in the world
Researching the origins of the Maine Coon proved to be pretty fascinating. I must admit I have only seen a Maine Coon a few times in my life, each time I thought they were large, handsome, and impressive cats. Although most of my friends and family have cats (we’re animal people), few people I know actually have a pedigreed cat of any sort. My fiancé and I have three cats (Cosmo, Coors, and Jaime), all of who have no pedigreed background of any note. However, like most Yankees, they seem to share this mixed un-specified, yet wild, background with the original coon type cats of New England, the ancestors of the pedigreed Maine Coons of today.
The United Health Foundation has just released their 2011 Report on the state of health in the US. According to the report, health improvement seems to have stagnated over the past year, most likely due to economic conditions. In many states there is an increase in obesity rates, preventable diseases, and children living in poverty.
The study looked at four groups of criteria which can be affected by positive change. Included in these categories are behaviors we adopt as individuals and groups, our community and environment, public health policies in place to help citizens maintain their health, and the quality and cost of our clinical care.
Although the country on a whole is not improving, New England states rank within the top ten healthiest. In order from healthiest to least healthy:
1. Vermont
2. New Hampshire
3. Connecticut
4. Hawaii
5. Massachusetts
6. Minnesota
7. Utah
8. Maine
9. Colorado
10. Rhode Island
Go New England! According to the breakdown by state, among the things the New England states have done to rank in the top ten include: decreasing the incidence of infectious disease, lowering the incidence of violent crime, maintaining a high rate of high school graduation, employing a healthy number of primary care physicians, organizing good immunization programs, and a lowering rates of obesity. There are several things we still need to work on including smoking and binge drinking.
Although New England scored well, many other regions were not so healthy. In fact, the southern states seemed to score the lowest in general. According to the report, the five least healthy states in the country are:
46. Alabama
47. Arkansas
48. Oklahoma
49. Louisiana
50. Mississippi
Among the things these states need to work on are high rates of smoking, binge drinking, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high school drop outs, and obesity. I know people are probably nodding and thinking about all the excellent southern fried food that seemingly has a negative impact on southern health, but I would argue that the recent economic conditions of the country have a lot to do with the general unhealthy status of the south as well.
The overall message of the article was not great news however. Rates of obesity have risen 15% over the last twenty years. According to the report, there are predictions that it will soon climb to reach 40% of American adults. I think we might all need to hit the tready for a few extra miles.
Its interesting to note that New England states are among the healthiest in the nation, but we are also top the charts as far as population loss over the last 10 years. At least Massachusetts has now lost so much population, we will lose a seat in the House of Representatives. This is a trend that needs to reverse.
However, I guess we should just accept the good news and count our blessings. At least for right now, it is very healthy to be a Yankee.
The Grave of Mercy Lena Brown
Last of the New England Vampires
Anyone who has looked into odd pieces of New England history has come across the now famous case of Mercy Lena Brown. From the perspective of most outsiders to New England, she might just seem like a late nineteenth century victim of a tuberculosis outbreak in Rhode Island. However, to many Yankees and others in the know, she has unwillingly earned the title of the last of the New England Vampires.
The strange case of Mercy Brown begins in Exeter, Rhode Island with the family of George T. Brown. George was born about 1842 in Rhode Island. According to the 1880 Federal Census, George had a growing family of six children with his wife Mary E. Brown in rural Exeter, Rhode Island.
However, as it often does, tragedy began to target the family. In 1883 George’s wife Mary died of consumption. Today, consumption is known as pulmonary tuberculosis, a serious bacterial infection.
Grvestone of Mary E. Brown
The first of the Browns to contract consuption
In the late nineteenth century, the understanding of bacterial infections and antibiotics was just beginning to develop. For instance, Alexander Fleming did not even discover the antibiotic properties of penicillin until 1928. Therefore, in 1883, the cause of consumption was still unknown. Victims of consumption would develop a cough which would produce blood. They would begin to lose weight, run a fever, become lethargic and sickly, and more than likely they would eventually die.
The name consumption is understandable in retrospect, as the disease seemed to consume the host. In many places, especially in New England, the cause of consumption was rooted in a folk belief associated with the visitation of undead spirits upon living victims. In The Animistic Vampire in New England, an article by George R. Stetson, published in an 1896 issue of The American Anthropologist, Stetson states:
“In New England, the vampire superstition is unknown by its proper name. It is believed that consumption is not a physical but a spiritual disease, obsession, or visitation; that as long as the body of a dead consumptive relative has blood in its heart it is proof that an occult influence steals from it for death and is at work draining the blood of the living into the heart of the dead and causing a rapid decline.”
Today, we would call these spirits vampires, but in the late nineteenth century the concepts which defined vampires, spirits, and ghosts were not as clear cut as our Hollywood and pop culture inspired margins of the supernatural. According to Stetson, sometimes these creatures were believed to literally walk out of their grave and prey on the living, and sometimes they only did so in spirit, floating through the cracks and keyholes of the homes of the living to cause sickness and death. Either way, these were not the type of vampire that sparkled in the daylight or romanced teenage girls.
These beliefs occurred all throughout New England. Stetson mentions that there are cases in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, as well as several in Rhode Island.
Of course, this folklore is not specific to rural New England. It came to the New World from Europe. In fact, according to Discovery News, two corpses have recently been unearthed in Ireland which demonstrate that as far back as the AD 700s Europeans were burying societal outcasts with stones shoved in their mouths to prevent them from rising from the dead. Although, the article makes it clear that archeologists do not believe these particular burials reflect vampire slaying rituals, because there was no vampire related folklore in the first century AD, this type of belief and ritual was certainly a predecessor to later vampire related beliefs in Europe and nineteenth century New England.
Stetson goes on to explain that in the New England vampire tradition, the undead were believed to begin with one family member, then work its way through the entire clan. Such was the case in the Brown family.
In 1884 George’s oldest daughter Mary O. Brown contracted consumption and died. According to an article published in the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner, George’s only son Edwin began to show signs of consumption sometime in 1890. Edwin Brown and his wife left Rhode Island for Colorado Springs, seeking the rumored healing properties of the area. Edwin stayed in Colorado for 18 months, but ultimately found that a change of scenery did not help his condition.
The gravestone of Mary Olive Brown
The second victim of consumption in the Brown family
While Edwin was away, his younger sister Mercy Lena Brown also began to show signs of the disease. The article in the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner indicates that Mercy had been sick for only about a year before she too passed away in January of 1892.
Although, not reflected in any of the contemporary newspaper articles written about the case, many modern sources indicate that Mercy’s body would have been placed in the local crypt in Exeter’s ChestnutHillCemetery, rather than buried in the frozen New England ground in the family plot with her mother and sister.
The crypt that supposedly held the body of Mercy Brown
In the winter of 1892 Edwin returned to ExeterRhode Island. Newspaper accounts indicate that he stayed with his in-laws rather than return home. While in Exeter, Edwin’s health continued to decline. Ultimately George Brown and the remaining members of Edwin’s family must have felt very desperate. In a final effort to save his son, George agreed to have the bodies of his deceased family members exhumed in an attempt to end what was perceived by some to be a vampiric curse on the Browns.
In Animistic Vampires of New England, Stetson explains that New Englanders would have been well versed on how to deal with vampires. He mentions several cases in which the bodies of consumptives were exhumed and the hearts of the corpses burned. In the folklore of the area, there were several cases where such a treatment was supposed to have worked.
This story was heavily covered by the newspapers of the time. Articles from New York to Massachusetts picked up the story and wrote about the event. Although the stories have some variability, most tell a very similar tale.
According to these accounts, George Brown called a doctor named Harold Metcalf from nearby Wickford to oversee the exhumations, which occurred on March 17. When the bodies of George’s wife and oldest daughter were unearthed, it was found that there was little left but bones. This makes sense, as both had been dead for many years.
However, when Mercy’s body was removed from her coffin, at least to the onlookers, it looked like it had not decomposed much at all. Her cheeks still had color and a couple articles even indicate that her body seemed to have changed position since its burial.
To some this was proof that Mercy was indeed a vampire. However, most of the articles also state that Dr. Harold Metcalf observed that the seemingly unchanged condition of Mercy’s remains reflected a natural state of decomposition for a body that had only been buried for nine weeks. In addition, as we all know, the freezing New England temperatures in January would have also preserved the body.
When Mercy’s body was opened, it was found that her heart and lungs still contained blood. These organs (some sources indicate her liver as well) were removed and burned on a nearby rock. The ashes were mixed with water and fed to the ailing Edwin Brown in an attempt to cure his consumption. Unfortunately, Edwin’s condition quickly worsened and he died roughly two months later.
The Brown family plot
See the rock- top right
This is the rock on which Mercy's heart was burned
The gravestone of Edwin Brown
The last of the Browns to contract consumption
Although Edwin was not saved by this folk remedy, it seems as though none of the remaining three Browns contracted the disease. In an attempt to further trace the family, I was able to find George Brown living with his second to youngest daughter Hattie in the 1900 and 1910 Federal Census records.
According to the census information George never remarried. I hardly blame him, after losing the majority of his family he must have been heartbroken. In addition, the articles printed in the Pawtuxet Valley Gleaner mention that George did not even believe in the vampire folklore. I’m sure he was simply desperate and would have tried anything to save the rest of his family. George himself died in 1922, unlike the graves of his family members, his shows no inscription.
The gravestone of George T. Brown
When examining this history, I was continually surprised that a vampire slaying ritual like this one would have occurred as late as 1892, so close to the twentieth century. When reading the articles like the one entitled Vampires in New England, which was printed by the New York World in 1896, I find that the authors were just as surprised as I was.
Most of the authors were shocked that this type of superstition would still exist in a modern country at the dawn of industry, scientific advancement, urbanism, and modern technology.
Anthropologist, George R. Stetson, believed that this modernization was part of the problem that explained the continuation of the vampire folklore. Stetson explains that even though Rhode Island was one of the most populated states per square mile in the nineteenth century, the villages and hamlets were actually quite isolated. In addition, much like today, many families were moving from very rural areas like Exeter to more urban areas. This left behind the aging population of the previous generations, acres of abandoned farms and farmland, and social isolation in villages like Exeter. Stetson states:
"Here Cotton Mather, Justice Sewell, and the host of medical, clerical, and lay believers in the uncanny superstitions of bygone centuries could still hold carnival."
In his notes Stetson mentions Exeter as being a part of Rhode Island that was specifically afflicted with this movement toward urbanism. He records that the town of Exeter had only 17 persons per square mile in 1890 and in 1893 had 63 abandoned farms, which equaled one fifth of its total number.
Lastly, Stetson also mentions the fact that it does not matter how educated and cultured a population becomes, because superstition and folklore will always exist to one degree or another. People hang horseshoes, pick four leaf clovers, hunt ghosts, participate in séances, and have their palms read even in the twenty-first century. In reality, maybe we haven’t really come too far.
Some researchers have ventured that the case of Mercy Brown might have actually been highly influential to Bram Stoker, the author the Dracula, which was published in 1897. Among the research papers Bram Stoker had in his notes for Dracula was the New York World article, Vampires of New England. Stoker clipped this article during his trip to the US in 1896.
However, Michael Bell, author of Food For the Dead, a book about the New England vampire folklore, discounts this belief. He states that by 1896, when the article was printed in New York, Stoker would have been nearly completely done with his novel.
So Mercy Brown may not have completely influenced the development of Dracula, but Stoker at least looked at the article in the final months of writing his novel. In addition, its hard not to see the similarities between Mercy’s case and the characters and plot line of Dracula. Perhaps the other pieces of folklore collected in Europe were just very similar to the New England tradition.
In conclusion, I was so excited to finally be able to make time to visit this great (though odd) piece of New England history. Yankees have always been an interesting bunch. This enduring belief in vampires having survived so late into the nineteenth century certainly proves the point.
As my fiancé and I walked through Chestnut Hill cemetery last week, I jokingly asked her if she was afraid because we were going to be seeing the grave of a supposed vampire. Having been recently told the story, she responded, “no, I think she was just a really sick girl.” As usual, she gets right to the point. The Brown family suffered a series of real tragedies, among them the death of Mercy.I certainly feel lucky to live in a time period where antibiotics are available and things like cavities and colds are no longer life threatening, never mind that tuberculosis is now treatable.
However, even in 2011, we Yankees remain somewhat peculiar. As we left Exeter and visited with friends who live close by, the topic of conversation was fitting and instructive of just how little we New Englanders have changed between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That’s right, with our friends we spent a good portion of the night discussing stories of the undead.
