HUB History - Our Favorite Stories from Boston History

Have you ever wondered where the tradition of sending Christmas cards every year came from?  While the first Christmas cards appeared in Britain back in the 1840s, it was a German immigrant named Louis Prang who made them popular in the United States and around the world.  Using a revolutionary new color printing technique that he called chromolithography, Prang’s Roxbury factory made the most popular greeting cards in the country from the 1870s until the turn of the century.  Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/316/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

94 years ago this week, Boston’s second television station aired the first commercial in American history, and they did it almost two decades before Boston’s first television station went on the air. In this episode, we use this blunder and a confusing technological landscape to examine Boston’s pivotal role in the early development of American television. This will be a story of innovation, some of the earliest experimental television broadcasters in the country, and the parallel development of mechanical and electronic television technologies. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/315/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This is the last of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. Just in time for your fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving meal, we’re going to introduce you to Boston’s matriarch of modern cooking this week. You probably thought that Julia Child was Greater Boston’s original top chef, but a generation before Julia launched her career, Fannie Farmer published a cookbook that revolutionized the way that recipes are presented, made cooking accessible to the average home maker, and put Boston at the center of kitchens across the nation. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/159/

This is the sixth of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. 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. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/269/

This is the fifth of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. 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. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/269/

This is the fourth of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. Brighton is one of our westernmost neighborhoods, and it’s often associated with Boston’s large and sometimes unruly student population, but in the mid 19th century, Brighton was home to all the elements of a western movie. There were cattle drives, stockyards, saloons, and stampedes through the streets. Before it was tamed, unruly Brighton was our own wild west. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Original show notes: http://HUBhistory/99/

This is the third of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. 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. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Original show notes: http://HUBhistory/268/

This is the second of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. At the outbreak of World War II, president Roosevelt decided to create a single centralized agency to organize the nation’s many competing intelligence services. Not the CIA, which would come a few years later, but the Office of Strategic Services. Before the CIA, the OSS was America’s chief spy service. And before Julia Child was a famous chef on PBS, young Julia McWilliams was recruited by the OSS, where she traveled the world and fell in love with Paul Child and exotic food. Listen to this week’s episode to learn about Julia Child at war: how she was recruited and trained, where she served in the Asian theater of war, and why that experience helped lead her to a Cambridge house with its now famous kitchen. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Original show notes: http://HUBhistory/222/

This is the first of seven past episodes for Thanksgiving week. We know the song “Over the River and Through the Wood” as a Christmas carol, but it was originally titled “The New England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day.” Despite the song’s quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer, the woman who wrote it was anything but traditional. Medford native Lydia Maria Child had been a pioneering children’s author, but her increasingly radical positions on abolitionism, women’s rights, and freethinking jeopardized her earning power and helped galvanize a movement. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/160/

The annual Transgender Day of Remembrance calls attention to an epidemic of violence against trans people, and Black trans women in particular, but did you know that this solemn event was inspired by a brutal 1998 Allston murder? In this episode, we hear from the friends of Rita Hester about a vibrant life that was inspired by music and cut short by violence. We’ll see how her murder fit a pattern of crimes in the Boston area in the late 90s and how Rita’s family and friends channeled their grief into activism. You’ll also have to suffer through some meandering personal anecdotes, because this is one of the only episodes of the show to recount an event in Boston history that took place since I lived here. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/314/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

In this episode, we explore the 1936 Boston cowboy strike, a one-day wildcat strike that became the founding moment for a labor union that still exists today. Staged by an organization that became known as the Cowboy Turtle Association at the old Boston Garden, this was the first rodeo strike in the world. While I call it a cowboy strike, cowgirls were an important feature of this particular rodeo, and the union’s longterm success is due in no small part to the wife of a champion cowboy. Why was a cowboy union formed in Boston, of all places? And how did it get the name Cowboy Turtle Association? Listen now! Hat tip to listener Sam S for suggesting this week’s topic! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/313/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

In this episode, we dive into the lasting folklore of Boston’s sea serpent, a supposedly true tale rooted in the early colonial history of New England. The story begins with a dubious 1639 account, continues through repeated sightings in the early 1800s, and extends into the 20th century. From the beginning, skeptics poked holes in accounts of the serpent, even when the scientific Linnaean Society fell for the story hook, line, and sinker. However, the idea of a sea monster on Massachusetts shores helped transform Nahant into a summer tourist destination, drawing curious visitors eager to spot the serpent and keeping the legend alive for a century. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/312/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

After last night's spectacular light show over New England, listen to this show from last December explaining how Cotton Mather had to wrestle with faith, science, and cancel culture when Boston experienced the northern lights for the first time in 1719. Original show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/289/

The construction of Boston’s Charles River Dam was a monumental project that transformed the tidal estuary of the Back Bay into a fresh-water basin, providing a 20th century solution to problems that the city inherited from the 19th, including issues with industrial waste, sanitation, and general public distaste for the acres of mudflats that were exposed at low tide. Temporary floodgates closed on October 20, 1908, which marked the first separation of the waters of Boston Harbor from the Back Bay’s brackish salt marsh. In the lead-up to this moment, earthen dams were constructed on both sides of the river, with a lock allowing boats to pass through the dam on the Boston side and a sluiceway to regulate water levels in the upstream basin on the Cambridge side. A temporary wooden dam was built to close the center of the river, allowing for the construction of a permanent dam made of dirt and rock. Despite facing opposition and challenges, the dam was successfully completed in 1910, resulting in the creation of the Charles River Basin, the Esplanade, and some of Boston’s most iconic sites for outdoor recreation. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/311/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

September 22nd marks the anniversary of a storm. 209 years ago today, the wind was building over the sea off Boston while the skies grew dark with clouds. The next day, the strongest hurricane in generations slammed into the New England coast, causing devastation on Boston Harbor, in city streets, and in fields and forests all around the region. The storm is remembered as the Great September Gale, and it had wide-ranging effects, causing everything from a collapse in the local glass industry to a construction boom to an acceleration in westward migration from Boston and New England. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/310/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

We all know the old mnemonic device, right? Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November, but what if September suddenly had only nineteen days? That’s exactly what Boston experienced in 1752, when the town went to bed on September 2nd and woke up on the 14th. It sounds like something that would have a supernatural explanation, like a mass alien abduction, or maybe something contaminated the water supply to make the entire town go into a brief coma, but the explanation is more pedestrian. Almost two centuries after most of Europe had switched to a new calendar system, the British Empire was following suit, including its overseas colonies like Massachusetts. How did Bostonians adapt to the change? Were they as confused as I would be if my calendar suddenly changed? Did Bostonians riot, demanding their 11 days back? How did the generation that lived through the change remember key dates like their birthdays after the switch? Listen now! Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/309/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This week, Erica Lome and Tripp Evans join the show to discuss a new exhibit at the Eustis Estate called “The Importance of Being Furnished.” In the wake of Oscar Wilde’s 1882 lecture tour focusing on The House Beautiful, outlandishly decorated bachelor households became an aspirational style that helped define American homes from the Gilded Age to the Jazz Era. The new Aesthetic Movement brought beauty and artistic sensibility to American homes, replacing conservative styles that reinforced traditional morality. “The Importance of Being Furnished” introduces four decorators who helped revolutionize interior design during this period: Charles Gibson, Ogden Codman, Charles Pendleton, and Henry Sleeper, as well as their homes in Boston’s Back Bay, Gloucester, Lincoln, and Providence. In their own time, all four men were known as bachelor aesthetes, born into privileged families but hiding their queerness to greater or lesser degrees in an era when homosexuality was punishable by jail time in Boston. In this interview, exhibit curators Tripp Evans and Erica Lome will tell us how these men took inspiration from their personal lives in decorating their own homes, and how they leveraged those lavish homes into careers in decorating for everyone from robber barons to Hollywood stars. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/308/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This week, Patrick Gabridge joins us to talk about his new play “A Light Under the Dome,” which opens at the Massachusetts State House on August 12. The first in a series of works exploring the intersection between abolition and suffrage in the 19th and early 20th centuries, A Light Under the Dome recreates a specific moment in history that took place under the dome of the Massachusetts State House 186 years ago. Angelina Grimke grew up in Charleston, South Carolina in a family of enslavers, witnessing the cruelty of America’s peculiar institution under her own roof. Leaving her comfortable life behind, she risked threats and acts of violence to become a radical abolitionist. Listen to this conversation with Patrick to learn how she got invited to speak to the Massachusetts legislature, why her address was groundbreaking, and how she tied the cause of abolition to the novel idea of rights for women. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/307/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Long before becoming a haven for software and biotech giants, Kendall Square was a center for manufacturing during the era of steam. Here, in the 1860s, two crucial advancements emerged: the standardization of threaded iron pipes and fittings for use in household plumbing, gas fixtures, and steam power and the invention of the modern pipe wrench that allows us to work on them. This episode explores the story behind the Stillson pipe wrench, a tool so revolutionary that its inventor’s name became synonymous with pipe wrenches and so innovative that its design remains nearly unchanged over 150 years later. We’ll meet Daniel Chapman Stillson, the Civil War veteran and ingenious machinist who, frustrated by the limitations of existing tools, designed an adjustable pipe wrench that revolutionized plumbing, pipefitting, and his employer, the Walworth company. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/306/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This episode explores the impact of the Cunard Line of steamers and its flagship Britannia on Boston in the mid-19th century. Before the Britannia, transatlantic travel relied on fickle winds, making each crossing perilous and unpredictable. The introduction of steamships revolutionized transatlantic travel by offering faster and more reliable journeys. Boston became a central hub for this new era of maritime transportation, benefiting from its proximity to Europe and the construction of railroads and modern wharf facilities. However, the challenges of winter ice necessitated innovative solutions, such as cutting a seven-mile canal for the Britannia to depart. Cunard’s regular service between Liverpool and Boston not only boosted the local mercantile economy but also transformed Boston into a center for European news dissemination. However, as the 19th century progressed, technological advancements and shifting economic factors led to a decline in Boston’s dominance in transatlantic shipping, with New York eventually overtaking it as the primary port for Cunard and other steamship lines. Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/305/ Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/