#massachusetts history

[life-of-a-rat]

I saw this meme in a dream

[basementofthebizarre]

The Mysteries of the Bridgewater Triangle: Exploring New England's Paranormal Hotspot

Nestled in southeastern Massachusetts, the Bridgewater Triangle is an area shrouded in mystery, folklore, and paranormal phenomena. Spanning approximately 200 square miles, this region has garnered a reputation as one of the world’s most active paranormal hotspots, drawing in researchers, thrill-seekers, and curious visitors alike. From ghostly encounters to UFO sightings and cryptid sightings,…

[pussyandpetrichor]

Moswetuset Hummock

Today, I went for a walk and saw the above plaque. My partner and I read it and said to each other that something doesn't feel right about that. Namely, the last bit: With Chickatawbut Governor Winthrop made a treaty which was never broken. Was it possible? Yes, depending on the terms of the treaty it would have been possible for us to live in the world we do and also not have broken one specific treaty, but the lack of specifics concerned me. As such, when I got home, I decided to verify the information.

First step was fairly simple: who are these people. I knew them both basically, but was initially confused as I knew Chickatawbut as Sac'hem not Sagamore, but apparently these are regional dialects of the same word, so clarified well enough. And John Winthrop was the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony which was, at the time, separate from the Plymouth colony established about 10 years prior up the Cape. The Massachusett tribe at Ponkapoag, modern descendants of Chickataubut's Neponset band, spell his name thusly and refer to him as Sac'hem, and moving forward in this post I will do the same.

The treaty between Sac'hem Chickataubut and Governor Winthrop was harder to verify. Many sources I attempted to use cited the very plaque I was reading for information about the treaty.

The English colonists claim in histories that they paid Chickataubut for the land now known as Dorchester to his satisfaction, but the Massachusett have a different interpretation. Based on the conists' continued pursuit of land ownership as of at least 1666, the Massachusetts claim that it was not understood by either side of the deal that land was purchased in perpetuity and instead describe a tributary system as one might expect of a feudal lord. That is to say, it was understood by both the colonists and the natives that the land was owned/controlled by Chickataubut and that they were doing the equivalent of paying rent, rather than purchasing the land outright.

As such, I think it is invalid to claim that the treaty was never broken because, while I cannot find a written text of the treaty, it very much appears that the terms as they were understood are no longer in place.

Above is a link to a text used as citation by the Massachusett tribe on the previously linked article, included because it has some of the relevant information in its first chapter.

[rodeoradio]

Boulders in now abandoned Dogtown, MA. In the 1930s millionaire Roger Babson commissioned unemployed stonecutters to engrave 35 glacial erratics in the abandoned village where his relatives once lived with “inspirational” phrases after the announcement of the stock market crash that would lead to the Great Depression.

Edit: The “First Attacked” boulder was inscribed in 1892 at the site where local James Mary was gored by a bull while picking berries. Roger Babson would later inscribe a nearby boulder with “NEVER TRY NEVER WIN”

Most of these photos sourced from the interesting website: adeadguy.com

[muleydoestreasurehoard]

[forthosebefore]

Women pioneers of reparations

I’ve previously posted about Henrietta Wood. Here are some other early women pioneers for reparations.

Belinda Sutton

Belinda (Royal) Sutton was born in 1712 in Ghana. She was abandoned by her enslaver, who had offered emancipation upon his death or her transfer to his daughter. If she chose freedom he provided 30 pounds for three years so she wouldn’t be a public charge. In 1783, at 63 years old, Sutton filed a petition to the Massachusetts General Court requesting a pension from the estate of her former enslaver. In her petition she recalled her life in Africa as a joyful one full of love prior to her captivity and enslavement. Sutton’s testimony describing the happy times with family in Africa contradicted the narrative that the enslaved were happy in their captivity. She won her claim and was awarded 15 pounds and 12 shillings annually. She had to fight continuously for that award to be honored and paid.

Belinda Sutton’s […] petition of 1783 is among the earliest narratives by an African American woman. […] It has been seen by some commentators as the first call for reparations for American slavery [and] opens a rare window onto the life on an enslaved woman in colonial North America.

To read the full text of Belinda Sutton’s first petition, click here. All of her petitions are available through the Antislavery Petitions Massachusetts Dataverse, maintained by Harvard University.

Callie House

Callie House was born enslaved in Rutherford County, Tennessee, in 1861. In 1897, at 36 years old, she founded the National Ex-Slave Mutual Bounty and Pension Association (MB&PA) to seek financial support for former slaves left without resources. With Isiah Dickerson she traveled to former slave states to encourage others to join the organization. The organization was eager to petition Congress for a bill that would grant payments (reparations) and mutual aid for burial expenses. Their grass-roots advocacy grew in membership to hundreds of thousands of formerly enslaved residents all over the country. The government used three agencies to try to stop this movement: the Federal Bureau of Pensions, the Department of Justice and the Post Office Department. On September 1899, the Post Office issued a fraud order, without evidence, against MB&PA, which made it illegal for them to send mail, cash or money orders. House resisted by invoking the 1st, 14th and 15th amendments and hiring an attorney.

Congress rejected the pensions petition, as if it was not to be taken seriously, and postponed it indefinitely.

In 1909, when Dickerson died, House became the leader of the MB&PA. In 1915, under House’s leadership, the class action lawsuit Johnson v McAdoo was filed in U.S. Federal Court requesting reparations for slavery in the amount of $68 million. This amount was cotton tax money collected from 1862 to 1868 and held by the U.S. Treasury Department. A former slave, H. N. Johnson, led the charge as the plaintiff against U.S. Secretary of the Treasury William G. McAdoo. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the claim. This was the first documented litigation for reparations for American chattel slavery in a U.S. federal court.

The following year, House was arrested on charges of fraud from the Post Office, convicted by an all-white, all-male jury and sentenced to a year in jail, deliberately hampering the reparations movement.

Callie House died from cancer in Nashville, Tennessee on June 6, 1928, at the age of 67. Source: Greenbelt News Review, BlackPast.org, RoyallHouse.org

Visit www.attawellsummer.com/forthosebefore to learn more about Black history and read new blog posts first.

Need a freelance graphic designer or illustrator? Send me an email.

[faithandarisadventures]

History of Worcester's Blackstone River October 12, 2023 Blackstone Gateway Park Worcester, Massachusetts

[stavrosskundromichalis]

The Friday dinosaur dance theme continues with a pair of Podokesaurus holyokensis doing the Monster Mash in the woods of Massachusetts during the Early Jurassic 🎃🦖👻

[turtleislandhistory]

September 1, 1897

The first underground rapid transit system in North America, the Tremont Street Station, opens in Boston, Massachusetts.

[timetraveltasting]

ORIGINAL TOLL HOUSE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (1938)

Since I won't be home for the holidays this Christmas (we are going to Australia to spend a summery Christmas with my in-laws), I went home to Canada a little early for a quick trip - most importantly to meet my new, adorable niece! Surrounded by childhood favourites and nostalgia, I thought it would be a great idea to make a classic Tasting History treat with my mom: the Original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. This first ever chocolate chip cookie recipe, originally called Chocolate Crunch Cookies (a later newspaper typo created its now-common name), was created by Ruth Wakefield and her head pastry chef Sue Brides at The Toll House Inn in Whittman, MA in 1938. The restaurant was already quite popular among locals and food critics, and Ruth finally decided to share the recipe for these star cookies with the public. It was printed in newspapers, and the popularity of the chocolate chip cookie grew even further when Nestlé printed it on the back of their packaging. In the original recipe, Nestlé's chocolate is mentioned by name, and the growing popularity of the cookie recipe led to a 500% increase in profits for the company. Their chocolate bars originally had to be chopped up into 'pea-sized' pieces by hand until Nestlé began selling scored bars with the correct size, and eventually chocolate chips - created especially for making chocolate chip cookies. Interestingly enough, the original chocolate chip cookie recipe is very close to the one that is still on packages today. I have very fond memories of making chocolate chip cookies with my mother as I was growing up, and I thought, what better way to compare the two recipes than to also make this original chocolate chip cookie recipe with her! See Max’s video on how to make this dish here or see the ingredients and process at the end of this post, sourced from his website.

My experience making it:

Finally in my natural element in Canada, with easier to find ingredients that I recognized and could more predictably bake with, I was able to follow the recipe exactly. The one major change I made was to omit the chopped nuts completely, mostly because I'm not a fan of nuts in baked goods.

Because this recipe requires an overnight element, my mom and I began preparing the cookie dough the day before we wanted to bake and eat them. My mom began by beating the eggs, then creaming the butter with a hand mixer while I portioned out the other ingredients. She added in the sugars, eggs, baking soda dissolved in water, and vanilla and mixed them until combined. I then slowly sprinkled in the flour and salt mixture into the mixing bowl while she mixed, until that, too, was combined. I was worried the dough was looking a little too dry and dense, but my mom assured me it still looked right - I totally trust her baking instincts! We then folded the chocolate chips into the dough with a spatula, then covered it with Saran wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight. The next evening, we preheated the oven, took our dough out (which had really hardened up!), and began portioning it out into little balls of dough. My mom had to use a fork and a bit of force to portion it, since it was so cold and solid! We used a weigh scale to determine the 14 oz. size of ball, but honestly, we did end up going up to 20 oz. or so at some points - it would have taken a long time to weigh every ball. On a lined baking sheet, we fit about 14 balls of dough, spaced about 2 inches apart. After pressing down on each just a little bit, we tossed the first batch in the oven. It smelled so good, and the bits of raw cookie dough I snuck while waiting for the cookies to bake were heavenly! When we took them out, we transferred them onto cooling racks. I think we baked about 5 trays of cookies overall, leaving us with an absolute plethora of chocolate chip cookies by the end! They looked small, but classic - almost like the chocolate chip cookies you can buy in a store. Very photogenic, in my opinion.

My experience tasting it:

Of course, our patience got the best of us, and we did not wait for the cookies to cool before trying them. No regrets! They tasted wonderful - crisp on the bottom and edges, but soft and a little melty in the middle. Really ideal, this kind of cookie could please everyone. My mom likes her cookies on the crispier side, and I like mine on the soft and gooey side, yet we both were very happy with how this recipe turned out. So was my dad, sister, my brother-in-law, and my aunt! In fact, these cookies didn't taste much different from my mom's chocolate chip cookie recipe (as I remembered it). She claims she also got her recipe from a newspaper, so it may have also had the same origin as this one. The flavour of these cookies was sweet, but balanced by the salt and rich brown sugar. They were so tasty, I think this could even become my main chocolate chip cookie recipe, although I will probably make each cookie even bigger in order to get a large volume of soft gooeyness. And I will definitely halve the recipe! 100 cookies or so, as tasty as they are, is an awful lot to get through and would definitely become noticeable on the waist. Otherwise, I agree with Max that there is a reason this recipe has lasted so many decades in its nearly-original form - it really is a crowd-pleaser. I was happy I was able to take some cookies with me back to Germany so I can share some with my husband! If you end up making this dish, if you liked it, or if you changed anything from the original recipe, do let me know!

Original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies original recipe (1938)

Sourced from Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes by Ruth Wakefield (1938).

Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies Cream 1 cup butter, add 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, and 2 eggs beaten whole. Dissolve 1 tsp soda in 1 tsp hot water, and mix alternately with 2 1/4 cups flour sifted with 1 tsp salt. Lastly add 1 cup chopped nuts and 2 bars (7 oz.) Nestle’s yellow label chocolate, semi-sweet, which has been cut in pieces the size of a pea. Flavor with 1 tsp. vanilla and drop half teaspoons on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 10 to 12 minutes in 375° oven. Makes 100 cookies. 

Modern Recipe

Based on the recipe from Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes by Ruth Wakefield (1938) and Max Miller’s version in his Tasting History video.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 beaten eggs

1 tsp baking soda, dissolved in 1 tsp hot water

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1 cup chopped nuts

14 oz. chocolate chips

Method:

Cream the butter until smooth. Mix in the brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, baking soda water, and vanilla until combined.

Whisk together the flour and salt. Add this to the butter mixture and mix until just combined.

Stir in the nuts and chocolate chips just until evenly distributed.

Cover and chill the dough overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190° C).

Scoop dough into balls, about 14 grams each. A half a teaspoon is way too small of a measurement, so I found weighing the dough to be the best way. Place them on lined baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between each cookie. Press the cookie dough down a bit.

Bake for about 8 minutes, or until golden brown.

Take them out of the oven and let them cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Serve them forth!

[facts-i-just-made-up]

Could we please have some fun facts about the great state of Massachusetts?

Massachusetts is by far the likeliest state in America to have a Nantucket. Several reports of at least one Martha's Vineyard and possibly even a Cape Cod have also emerged. If true, it would make Massachusetts the spiralliest state, as Cape Cod is basically the golden spiral of Capes as well as Cods.

Massachusetts has a rich history, which for some reason my old schoolbooks only date back to 1620 despite the area likely having existed before then. History in Massachusetts consists of tea parties, men with the last name Adams, towns also named Adams, and also Matt Damon, who was born Adam A. Adams.

Massachusetts also has a rich future, including the Boston Retro Speedrun Festival where the Super Mario 4:50 barrier will be broken, the Boston Phoning-In Music Festival where Ariana Grande will reveal her next new ethnicity, and the Boston Molasses Factory Grand Reopening, at which nothing at all will go wrong.

[mrskennedy]

Senator John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy on Election Day, 1958.

[humanoidhistory]

Head-measuring device at the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, Massachusetts, ca. 1951-1984.

[thoughtartistry]

Salem, Massachusetts is a must visit spooky season. The heart of Halloween in New England. 🎃