HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan.  Today, she's best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston's Fenway neighborhood (and if we're being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist).  This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune.  They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabella's life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy.  Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings.   Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/283/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Enjoy two classic stories this week. First up is the story of the Cocoanut Grove fire. In November 1942, Boston was on a wartime footing, business was booming, and the streets were packed with soldiers and sailors on their way to fronts around the world. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a fire broke out at the popular Cocoanut Grove nightclub, and in the moments that followed, 492 people were killed, making it Boston's most deadly disaster. After that, the podcast visits December 1917, when another world war raged in Europe. When confusing reports of a disaster to the north reached Boston, the city sprang into action, loading a special train with doctors, nurses, and medical supplies. After the most massive explosion before the advent of the atom bomb, Boston rushed relief to the town of Halifax. In return, they send us a Christmas tree each year. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/282/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/ Maui relief: https://www.mauinuistrong.info/support/

80 years ago this month, on a tiny Pacific island, a legend was born. In the darkness before dawn on August 2, 1943, a Japanese destroyer rammed and sank a small, plywood boat commanded by a 26 year old Lieutenant Junior Grade named John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In the hours and days that followed, young Jack Kennedy would prove to be a true American hero, swimming mile after mile through shark and crocodile infested waters, while towing an injured crew member by a strap clenched in his teeth. In the ensuing decades, PT-109 has become one of the most famous small craft in US Navy history, largely due to Kennedy's actions. However, it also became a craven political ploy, when JFK and his father Joseph Kennedy used the story of PT-109 to launch a political career that would carry Jack Kennedy to the Oval Office. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/281/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This week, enjoy three classic stories about Bostonians and their adventures on the Pacific Ocean. First, we'll hear about the voyages of the Columbia to the Pacific Northwest starting in 1787, then we'll move on to the Congregational missionaries who descended on Hawaii in 1823, and finally, we'll talk about the Boston whaler who brought the industrial revolution to Spanish California. While you're listening to these three classic stories, see if you can figure out what I'm working on that would involve a Brookline native on a small boat in the Solomon Islands in August 1943! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/280/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This week's story ties one of modern Boston's iconic Freedom Trail sites to the earliest days of English settlement in the Shawmut Peninsula. It's a story that ties the first Puritan to die in Boston to the hated Royal governor Edmund Andros, and it ties some of the earliest non-English immigrants in Boston to Ben Franklin and Abigail Adams through the invention of two local industries. King's Chapel is beloved in Boston today, but it was seen as an unwelcome invasion when it was first proposed in 1686. In this week's show, we'll look at how Boston found room for an unwanted church, how the church was reinvented three times, and how it launched local glassmaking and founded the granite industry in Quincy. We'll also see where you can still find the last traces of the original, wooden King's Chapel hiding inside the walls of a more modern church, but not here in Boston. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/279/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Between the John Adams miniseries on HBO and the musical 1776, everyone knows that John Adams was one of the leading voices for independence in the Continental Congress. And along with negotiating the treaty of Paris and keeping the US out of the Quasi War, Adams always considered the Declaration one of his chief accomplishments. 50 years after Congress adopted it, John Adams remembered it on the morning of July 4, 1826, remarking “it is a great day. It is a good day.” That evening, he died, with many sources reporting that his last words were “Jefferson still lives.” He was wrong, though. Earlier that day, Jefferson had woken briefly, asked “is it the fourth” and then declined further medical treatment before slipping into a coma and himself dying. For someone who was so closely associated with America's founding document, why did John Adams believe we should celebrate it on July 2nd? And how did his closest and most trusted advisor, his wife Abigail, urge him on toward independence in a letter that history remembers for other reasons? Let's find out! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/278/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Thomas Jefferson visited Boston in 1784, arriving in town on June 18th. That also happened to be the same day when Abigail Adams left her home in Quincy to start making her way to France to join John at his diplomatic posting, though her ship didn't actually leave Boston until the next day. In this episode, we'll explore how the friendship that was kindled during their single day together in Boston carried on through their shared months in France, their decades of correspondence, and even through the years when Jefferson and John Adams were feuding. We'll also examine Thomas Jefferson as an early New England tourist, who explored not only Boston, but also New Haven, Portsmouth, and other key regional population centers, as well as taking a fun look at his epic Boston shopping spree just days before he too boarded a boat to Europe. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/277/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

The new play “Revolution's Edge” will debut at Old North Church in June 2023. It tells the story of three Bostonians and their families on the eve of the Revolution. Mather Byles is the Loyalist rector of Old North Church, Cato is an African American man who's enslaved by Byles, and John Pulling is a whiggish ship's captain and member of the Old North vestry. The three men have very different stations in life, but they all have young families with intertwined lives, and on April 18, 1775, they all had very different decisions to make about those lives. My guests this week are Patrick Gabridge, producing artistic director of the Plays in Place theater company, and Nikki Stewart, executive director of Old North Illuminated. Together, they'll tell us how this, um, revolutionary new drama came to be. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/276/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

If you walk down Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, you might notice a small stone marker that states, “on this spot in the year 1000, Leif Erikson built his house in Vineland.” You might be surprised to learn that Leif Erikson had a house in Cambridge, and if so, you'll be even more surprised to learn that the lower Charles River was the seat of a thriving Norse city around the turn of the first millennium. Learn about Harvard professor Eben Norton Horsford's theory that the legendary Viking city of Norumbega was situated along the Charles River in this week's podcast! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/275/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Thanks to the Hamilton musical, it's almost impossible to hear the names Angelica, Eliza, and Peggy without bursting into song. The play made the three eldest daughters of Philip Schuyler famous, and in this episode we're talking about the first two sisters, but mostly just Angelica. Fans know that there was a flirtation between Angelica and Hamilton, but that relationship was exaggerated for the show. Angelica's actual romance and marriage were downplayed for the show, but it was this union that brought Angelica Schuyler Church to Boston, where she lived for over two years under an assumed name. What was she doing here, and who was the mysterious John Carter who escorted her here? Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/274/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Spring in Boston means baseball, and this week we're talking about the time in 1874 when the Boston Red Stockings tried to bring America's national pastime to Britain.  120 years before the World Baseball Classic, Boston's biggest baseball promoter did his level best to get the cricket fans in “jolly old” hooked on his game… and the fact that he could sell them all the mitts, bats, and gloves they would need was just a happy accident, I'm sure.  Red Stockings pitcher and future sporting goods magnate Al Spalding led the team on the World Baseball Tour, but would they be able to convert English strikers to batters and bowlers to pitchers?  And for the team, would their nearly two month long diversion mean the end of their pennant race for 1874? Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/273/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

John Adams later described the prosecution of William Corbet as a case “of an extraordinary Character, in which I was engaged and which cost me no small Portion of Anxiety.” In 1769, four common sailors were brought into Boston to stand trial for murder. The victim was an officer in the royal navy, and the crime had taken place just off Cape Ann, almost within sight of home. As Boston suffered under military occupation, could a military victim receive justice in a radicalized Boston? And what really happened on that ship near Marblehead? Had the dead officer really just been searching for cargo that the captain hadn't declared and paid customs on? Or were they up to something darker, like illegally kidnapping Massachusetts sailors and forcing them to serve in the Royal Navy? Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/272/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory

On April 9, 1863, a shooting was carried out in a basement just off of Court Street, behind Boston's Old City Hall. The gunman was a Union cavalry officer, who belonged to one of Brahmin Boston's most wealthy families. The victim was a new Irish American recruit in his brigade. The shooting would result in accusations of cowardice and an execution, but was either justified? Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/271 Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory

Just a quick bonus episode, so I can tell you about a change to my personal life and what it means for the show.

Starting in 1884, audiences of veterans, schoolchildren, and everyday Bostonians streamed into a cavernous, castle-like building on Tremont Street in the South End to witness the closest thing to virtual reality that existed at the time. The building still exists, though a series of renovations have rendered it much more ordinary and less palatial than it was back then. The painting still exists too, and it still offers an immersive experience for visitors that blends reality and art, but not in Boston anymore. The building was known as the Cyclorama, and it was purpose built to hold the painting, which was also known as the cyclorama, one of the most audacious artistic endeavors of the 19th century. Together, they commemorated the turning point of the bloody Civil War that had ended two decades earlier. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/270/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Last winter, the Old North Church historic site hosted a series of conversations about radical Black abolitionist David Walker, and his book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. As part of their Digital Speaker Series, education director Catherine Matthews moderated a discussion between artist, educator, and activist L'Merchie Frazier and playwright Peter Snoad on December 15. This edition focused on the text of the Appeal as a piece of rhetoric that pointed out the brutality and hypocrisy of slavery and urged the enslaved to rebel by any means necessary. Thanks to our friends at Old North for allowing us to share this panel with you. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/240/

Annie L. Burton was an entrepreneur and restaurateur, who moved to Boston as a young woman after spending her childhood enslaved on an Alabama plantation. Annie spent decades as a domestic servant, first in the south, and then in the north, in Newton, the South End, Wellesley, Jamaica Plain, and other neighborhoods in and around Boston. For most Black women in the years and decades after emancipation, cooking, cleaning, raising children, and washing and ironing for white families were among the only opportunities available for paid work, making Annie's experience utterly typical. Two things make her life unique: her decision to bet on herself and open a series of restaurants, first in Florida, then in Park Square in Boston, and then in a number of New England resort towns; and her decision, just after the turn of the 20th century, to put pen to page and write her story down and publish it, preserving the details of her life in a way that wasn't available to most of her peers. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/269/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Dr. Rebecca Davis Lee Crumpler was the first Black woman to earn a medical degree in the US in 1864, and she spent most of her adult life in Charlestown, Beacon Hill, and the Readville section of Hyde Park. She devoted her career to pediatrics and obstetrics, published the first medical text by an African American author, and made a point of caring for the marginalized, even moving to Virginia to tend to formerly enslaved people at the end of the Civil War. The nation's first Black female physician lay in an unmarked grave for 125 years, but there were important developments in the story of Dr. Crumpler during our first pandemic year. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/200/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... “The Birth of a Nation” was one of the most controversial movies ever made, and when it premiered on February 8, 1915 it almost instantly became the greatest blockbuster of the silent movie era. It featured innovative new filmmaking techniques, a revolutionary score, and it was anchored by thrilling action scenes shot on a never-before-seen scale, with thousands of actors and extras, hundreds of horses, and battlefield effects like real cannons. “Birth of a Nation” was unapologetically racist, promoting white supremacy and glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as the noble, heroic saviors of white America from the villainous clutches of evil black men bent on rape and destruction. Upon the film's 50th anniversary in 1965, NAACP president Roy Wilkins proclaimed that all the progress that African Americans had made over the past half century couldn't outweigh the damage done by “Birth of a Nation.” When the film debuted in Boston in April of 1915, audience reaction was split along racial lines, with white Bostonians flocking to see the movie in record numbers, while black Bostonians organized protests and boycotts, with leaders like William Monroe Trotter attempting to have it banned in Boston. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/121/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... African American inventor and draftsman Lewis Latimer's parents self-emancipated to give their children the opportunities afforded to those born into freedom. A Chelsea native, Latimer's career took him from the Navy, to a patent law firm, to the prestigious circle of Thomas Edison's pioneers. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/120/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Historian Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, author of Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, joins us this week to talk about the evolution of partisanship and political loyalty among Boston's African American community, from just after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century. It was a period that at first promised political and economic advancement for African Americans, but ended with the rise of lynching and codified Jim Crow laws. It was also a period that began with near universal support for Lincoln's Republican party among African Americans, with Frederick Douglass commenting “the Republican party is the ship and all else is the sea.” However, after decades of setbacks and roadblocks on the path of progress, many began to question their support of the GOP, and some tried to forge a new, non-partisan path to Black advancement. Dr. Bergeson-Lockwood will tell us how the movement developed and whether it ultimately achieved its goals. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/154/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Frank Hart was a transplant to Boston who became a famous star in a sport that no longer really exists. Hart was a pedestrian, competing in grueling six-day races where the winner was the person who could run, walk, or even crawl the most miles by the time the clock ran out. He made his debut in the Bean Pot Tramp here in Boston, but he followed the money to races in New York, London, San Francisco, and beyond, becoming one of America's first famous Black athletes. However, Frank Hart's career declined along with the popularity of pedestrianism, while the rise of Jim Crow raised new hurdles for a Black competitor. Joining us this week to discuss the rise and fall of Frank Hart is Davy Crockett, the host of the Ultrarunning History podcast and author of the new biography Frank Hart: The First Black Ultrarunning Star. original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/265/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month. When five year old Sarah Roberts was turned away from the schoolhouse door in Boston simply because of the color of her skin, her father sued the city in an attempt to force the public schools to desegregate, in compliance with a state law that had been intended to do just that years before. Unfortunately, the suit was unsuccessful. Not only did the Boston schools remain segregated, but the court's decision provided the legal framework of “separate but equal,” which would be used to justify segregated schools across the country for a century to come. Original show notes: http:HUBhistory.com/162/

Joseph Lee was a hotelier, caterer, and one of the richest men in his adopted hometown of Newton. By the time of his death in 1908, Lee had worked as a servant, a baker, and for the National Coast Survey; he had worked on ships, in hotels, and at amusement parks. He had earned a vast fortune in hotels, lost most of it, and earned another one through his patented inventions that helped change the way Americans eat. He had entertained English nobles and American presidents. And he had raised three daughters and one son, who was a star Ivy League tackle before graduating from Harvard. If you make bread at home, or meatballs, or fried chicken, or casserole, you are the beneficiary of the technology Joseph Lee developed. That would be a remarkable life for anyone, but Joseph Lee was enslaved in South Carolina until he was about 15 years old, making his accomplishments even more remarkable. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/268/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... Professor Richard T Greener grew up in Boston in the shadow of the abolition movement, graduated from Harvard, and became one of the foremost Black intellectuals of his era. However, soon after publishing his most influential work, when it seemed like he would take up the mantle of Frederick Douglass, he instead sank into obscurity. He was nearly forgotten for over a century, until his legacy was rediscovered in 2009 in a discarded steamer trunk in a dusty attic on the South Side of Chicago. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/217/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... From his Harvard graduation in 1895 to his death in 1934, William Monroe Trotter was one of the most influential and uncompromising advocates for the rights of Black Americans. He was a leader who had the vision to co-found groups like the Niagara Movement and the NAACP, but he also had an ego that prevented him from working effectively within the movements he started. He was a critic of Booker T Washington, and an early ally of Marcus Garvey. Monroe Trotter was the publisher of the influential Black newspaper the Boston Guardian, and he is the subject of a new biography by Tufts Professor Kerri Greenidge called Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/183/

For Black History Month, we're dropping a classic episode into the feed as a bonus every few days... In 1773, an ad appeared in the Boston Gazette for a Black artist who was described as possessing an “extraordinary genius” for painting portraits. From this brief mention, we will explore the life of a gifted visual artist who was enslaved in Boston, his friendship with Phillis Wheatley, the enslaved poet, and the mental gymnastics that were required on the part of white enslavers to justify owning people like property. Through the life of a second gifted painter, we'll find out how the coming of the American Revolution changed life for some enslaved African Americans in Boston. And through the unanswered questions about the lives of both these men, we'll examine the limits of what historical sources can tell us about any given enslaved individual. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/229/

Today, we're revisiting a classic episode about the radical Black abolitionist David Walker. Walker was a transplant to Boston, moving here after possibly being involved in Denmark Vesey's planned 1822 slave insurrection in South Carolina. At a time when very few whites spoke of ending slavery, Frederick Douglass said Walker's book An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World “startled the land like a trump of coming judgement.” He demanded an immediate end to slavery, and he endorsed violence against white slave owners to bring about abolition. After the book helped inspire Nat Turner's 1830 uprising in Virginia, southern slave states banned his book and offered a reward for anyone who would kill or kidnap him. With a price on his head, many people believed that David Walker's mysterious death in a Beacon Hill doorway just a year after his landmark book was published was an assassination. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/190

In the 1760s, the town gaol (jail) where prisoners were held while awaiting trial was a cold, dark, and truly terrifying edifice on Queen Street, just up the hill from the Old State House. When a fire was discovered in the jailhouse just after 10pm on January 30, 1769, it briefly became the focal point of the long-simmering tensions between the town and the occupying British soldiers that would eventually culminate in the Boston Massacre. Who deliberately set the fire in the jail, and why were some of the prisoners grievously injured before they could be rescued? Who was responsible for patrolling the streets of a city under military occupation? What was the legal role of the occupiers during a fire emergency, and how did the fire at the old Boston jail become a surprising story of cooperation between the rival factions in Boston? Listen now for all those answers and more! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/267/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

How can something as simple as streetlights transform a city? What can the Boston Massacre teach us about how dark the streets and alleyways of Boston were in the years before streetlights? How did the town decide to buy English oil lamps for the streets but fuel them with American whale oil? How did Boston's very first street lamps survive a shipwreck and the Boston Tea Party, and who decided where they would be installed and how they would be maintained? In the era of climate change, what does the future hold for Boston's quaint remaining gas street lamps? Let's find out! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/266/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Frank Hart was a transplant to Boston who became a famous star in a sport that no longer really exists. Hart was a pedestrian, competing in grueling six-day races where the winner was the person who could run, walk, or even crawl the most miles by the time the clock ran out. He made his debut in the Bean Pot Tramp here in Boston, but he followed the money to races in New York, London, San Francisco, and beyond, becoming one of America's first famous Black athletes. However, Frank Hart's career declined along with the popularity of pedestrianism, while the rise of Jim Crow raised new hurdles for a Black competitor. Joining us this week to discuss the rise and fall of Frank Hart is Davy Crockett, the host of the Ultrarunning History podcast and author of the new biography Frank Hart: The First Black Ultrarunning Star. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/265/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

How did Boston come to host the first concert ever performed in what's now the United States? Why was Boston resistant to the idea of a concert until almost 60 years after they became common in our ancestral city of London? When did Puritan Boston relax its rules and customs enough to allow public performances of secular music? Who brought the idea of charging for admission to a musical performance to colonial Boston, and what artistic legacy did he leave behind here? Listen now to find out! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/264/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Boston witnessed a grim Christmas in 1774, at the height of the British occupation. There had been redcoats in Boston for six years at that point, but after the Tea Party the previous December, the number of occupying troops skyrocketed, until there was nearly one British soldier for every adult male Bostonian. They were there to enforce the intolerable acts, and their presence only fanned the flames of rebellion in the colony. An increased Army presence in Boston always led to an increase in desertions, and December 1774 was no exception. On the 17th, while his unit was away on exercises, Private William Ferguson got really drunk, and then he either tried to desert and start a new life here in America, or he went to see about getting some laundry done. Either way, he was convicted, and Boston was shocked to bear witness to an execution by firing squad in the middle of Boston Common, bright and early on Christmas Eve. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/263/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

For a couple of months now, I've been hinting around about a lawsuit that HUB History has been caught up in. We have finally reached a settlement, so I can tell you a little more about what happened and why I've been so thirsty recently when I make my Patreon appeals. Speaking of which: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/ or http://HUBhistory.com/support/

For Thanksgiving, we are revisiting three classic episodes of HUB History. First, learn how the carol “Over the River and Through the Wood” started out as a Thanksgiving song, and why the songwriter's extreme beliefs almost cost her livelihood. Then, hear how 19th century Boston got the vast flocks of turkeys needed for a traditional Thanksgiving to market, and then to the dining room table. And finally, prepare to be surprised when you hear that college students, even Harvard students and even John Adams' kids, have been known to drink and cause trouble, such as the 1787 Thanksgiving day riot. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/262/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

106 years ago this week, a terrible accident took place within sight of South Station. November 7, 1916 was election day in Boston, but it was an otherwise completely ordinary autumn afternoon for the passengers who packed themselves into streetcar number 393 of the Boston Elevated Railway for their evening commute through South Boston to South Station and Downtown Crossing. The everyday monotony of the trip home was shattered in an instant, when the streetcar crashed through the closed gates of the Summer Street bridge and plunged through the open drawbridge and into the dark and frigid water below. How many could be saved, and how many would have to perish for this evening to be remembered as Boston's greatest moment of tragedy for a generation? Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/261/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

What did TV character Fox Mulder have in common with John Winthrop, the Puritan founder of Boston? They both believed in the paranormal, and they both recorded strange lights in the sky and other unexplained phenomena. This classic podcast explores the close encounters Winthrop described in 1639 and 1644. There were unexplained lights darting around the sky in formation at impossible speeds, ghostly sounds, and witnesses who claimed to have lost time. It's a scene straight out of the X-Files, except these are considered the first recorded UFO sightings in North America. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/63

19th Century Boston was a riotous town, and in past episodes, we've examined everything from anti-draft riots to anti-catholic riots to anti-immigrant riots that took place in this city in the 19th century.  The incident on Washington Street on October 21, 1835 was different, however.  Where most of Boston's 19th century riots erupted from street violence among and directed by the working classes, the mob's attack on the Female Anti Slavery Society and abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison was led by a group characterized as “gentlemen of property and influence.”  Enraged by the audacity of radical calls for immediate abolition, this mob of respectable gentlemen broke down the doors, scattered members of the Female Anti Slavery Society, nearly lynched William Lloyd Garrison, and inspired abolitionist leader Maria Chapman to exclaim, “If this is the last bulwark of freedom, we may as well die here as anywhere!” Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/260/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

When it came steaming into Boston Harbor 81 years ago this week, the fishing trawler Buskø was escorted by a Coast Guard cutter, with armed guards watching over her crew. The next day's headlines declared that the US had captured a Nazi spy ship manned by Gestapo agents who were setting up secret bases in Greenland, but the truth turned out to be more complicated. The Busko was sailing under the Norwegian flag and manned by a Norwegian crew, yet their peaceful voyage to deliver supplies to isolated Norwegian hunters in the arctic was used to cover up Nazi intelligence gathering, so what would the fate of the ship be? And while war was raging in Europe, the United States was technically at peace, so on what charges were the Norwegian crew held at the East Boston immigration station? Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/259/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Professor Charles R. Gallagher's recent book The Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front is an in depth accounting of an organization that was wildly popular in Boston and beyond in the years before the US entered World War II. The Christian Front was deeply rooted in Catholic doctrines, but the value at its core was a form of anticommunism that members treated as interchangeable with antisemitism. Professor Gallagher will tell us how the group was founded and how the doctrine of Catholic Action and the Mystical Body of Christ theory enabled their hateful ideology. He'll also introduce the intellectual leaders of the group, the streetfighters who led it down the primrose path to paramilitarism, and the Nazi spymaster who turned the group toward treason. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/258/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

The West End and the North Slope of Beacon Hill have gone through extreme transformations over time. At the turn of the 20th century, these neighboring communities welcomed Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, though very few signs of those vibrant communities remain today. As the last of the purpose-built immigrant synagogues still standing in downtown Boston, the Vilna Shul is a unique building with a rich history of immigration, community, and the evolving American identity. Vilna Shul Executive Director Dalit Horn joins us this week to talk about the history and future of this unique synagogue. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/257/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

During the summer of 1775, when the siege of Boston was at its peak, about 1500 Pennsylvania Riflemen answered a call for volunteers. By the time they reached the American lines in Cambridge, expectations for these troops were through the roof. Thanks in no small part to a publicity campaign engineered by John Adams, the New England officers commanding the troops around Boston believed that these fresh troops were capable of nearly everything. Their reputation was based in part upon the riflemen's origins on the frontier, and in part on the advanced weaponry they carried. While they're the status quo today, rifles were new to both armies that were facing off in Boston and nearly unheard of here in New England. However, fame went to these soldiers' heads, and after only a couple of months on the front line, they were nearly ungovernable. They refused to take part in the regular duties of an American soldier, they staged jailbreaks when their comrades were locked up for infractions against military discipline, and on September 10th, they staged the first mutiny in the new Continental Army. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/256/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Independent researcher TJ Todd recently gave a presentation about Old North Church and the sea.  TJ's talk focuses on two notable sea captains, both of whom longtime listeners will remember from past episodes.  Captain Samuel Nicholson was the first, somewhat hapless, captain of the USS Constitution, and Captain Thomas Gruchy was the privateer who captured the carved cherubs that keep watch over the Old North sanctuary from the French.  Exploring the lives of these two famous captains will reveal what life was like for the ordinary sailors and dockworkers who made up a significant portion of Boston's population in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as drawing connections to other incidents from Boston's maritime past, including many that we've discussed in past episodes. Thanks to our friends at the Old North Foundation for allowing us to share this presentation with you. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/255/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Cy Young Day, an exhibition game to celebrate the greatest pitcher of all time, was bracketed by days of sports celebration, from prizefighters in the squared circle to old time baseball in the Harbor Islands. Held at the Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds on August 13, 1908, the Cy Young celebration drew a record crowd of 20,000 fans to the now long gone ballpark. By this time, Young had been playing professional baseball for 20 years, and he was starting to slow down. Nobody knew if the old Ohio farmboy would be playing for Boston when the 1909 season rolled around, so it seemed as if the whole city turned out to show the pitcher their love, and to make sure he would have a comfortable nest egg for his expected retirement. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/254/ Support the show: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Back in 2015, I was at the Boston Public Library for a special exhibition called “We Are One,” which showcased items from their collection dating from the French and Indian War to the Constitutional Convention, showing how thirteen fractious colonies forged a single national identity. Libraries have a lot more than just books, of course. The BPL has everything from streaming movies and music to historic maps to medieval manuscripts to Leslie Jones' photos to one remarkable gold medal. Some of the items on display were breathtaking, like a map hand drawn by George Washington, Paul Revere's hand drawn diagram showing where the bodies fell during the Boston Massacre, and a gorgeous 360 degree panorama showing the view from the top of Beacon Hill during the siege of Boston. What stopped me in my tracks, though, was a solid gold medal. It was about three inches in diameter, but it was hard to tell through the thick and probably bulletproof glass protecting it. On the side facing me, I could see a bust of George Washington and some words, but they were too small to read. A special bracket held the medal in front of a mirror, and on the back I could make out more lettering, as well as a cannon and a group of men on horses. Later, I learned that this was the Washington Before Boston Medal, commemorating the British evacuation of Boston. It was the first Congressional gold medal, and the first medal of any kind commissioned by the Continental Congress during our Revolutionary War. This illustrious medal's journey to the stacks of the Boston Public Library will take us from Henry Knox's cannons at Dorchester Heights to John Adams at the Second Continental congress in Philly to Ben Franklin in Paris to a Confederate's dank basement in West Virginia during the Civil War. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/253/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

By the summer of 1863, the Civil War had dragged on longer than anyone thought at the outset, and leaders on both sides were desperate for more money, arms, manufactured goods, and most of all men. That growing desperation had inspired secretary of war Edwin Stanton to authorize Massachusetts governor John Andrew to start enlisting the nation's first Black troops a few months before, including the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment, whose well deserved fame was refreshed with the movie Glory. The influx of fresh and motivated troops contributed to Union gains throughout the rest of the war, but the so-called colored regiments were not enough. In July of that year, Congress passed a law compelling able bodied men into military service for the first time. Here in Boston, the burden of that draft law fell disproportionately on the working class Irish Americans of South Boston and the North End. And as we'll see, the Irish had strong resentments based in class, race, religion, and economics that made them suspicious of compulsory service. These tensions boiled over on the evening of July 14th, 1863 as marshals attempted to serve the first draft notices in the crowded and narrow streets of the North End, with the US Army eventually firing artillery and small arms into a crowd of civilian protesters at point blank range. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/252/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

The US Supreme Court can't stop women from having abortions, but they can stop women from surviving abortions.

In this episode, Seth Bruggeman discusses his recent book Lost on the Freedom Trail: The National Park Service and Urban Renewal in Postwar Boston. In it, he traces the development of the Freedom Trail and our Boston National Historic Park, examining the inevitable tension between driving tourism revenue to Boston and doing good history. He delves into the politics surrounding our local historic sites during the trauma of urban renewal in Boston and the violence of the busing era that followed. He also argues that the Freedom Trail and related sites have been used to defend dominant ideas about whiteness at several different points in Boston's contested history. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/251/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

For our 250th episode, we're trying something different.  This week, Aaron Minton from the Pilgrim's Digress podcast is turning the tables on your usual host, Jake.  And instead of asking the questions, this time Jake has to answer them. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/250/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/ Aaron hosts Pilgrim's Digress: https://pilgrimsdigress.com/

Eric Jay Dolin joins us this week to discuss his new book Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution. We'll discuss the role of privateers in the American Revolution, with a special focus on the many privateersmen who sailed out of Boston and New England. Privateers were civilian ships that were outfitted for war by optimistic investors, with volunteer crews who were willing to risk their lives fighting for a share of the profits. From the mouth of Boston Harbor to the very shores of Britain, these private warships sailed in search of rich English merchant vessels, while risking the lives and freedom of their crews. While their role is mostly forgotten today, Eric will explain how privateer crews helped turn the tide of Revolution in favor of the Americans, and we'll discuss how our modern habit of associating privateering with piracy leads to a distaste for the privateersmen who helped win our independence. Rebels at Sea will be available in bookstores everywhere on May 31, 2022. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/249/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This episode continues our story of Joshua Slocum and his solo circumnavigation of the globe. We'll follow Captain Slocum as he builds the little sloop Spray and hatches a plan to make money for his family by sailing alone around the world for the first time.  We'll follow his astounding path from Boston to the rock of Gibraltar, back to South America, and through the months long ordeal of the Straits of Magellan.  We'll learn how he sailed thousands of miles across the South pacific to Samoa without ever touching the wheel of the sloop, while his family worried that he had perished at sea.  And we'll follow him on his pilgrimage to the home of Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson, his adventure in South Africa, and finally across the Atlantic and home, covering about 46,000 miles in three years, two months, and two days. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/248/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/