Cape Cod History

May 22 - 1912: Hyannis girl's murderer executed

1912: Hyannis girl's murderer electrocuted in Charlestown

Clarence Richeson, a Former local Baptist Minister, Pays Law's Penalty for Slaying Avis Linnell

Read all about it in
"Cape Cod Confidential."

On this day in 1912, Clarence Virgil Thompson Richeson was put to death in the electric chair in Charlestown Prison at 12:17 o'clock for his confessed crime of murdering Avis Linnell of Hyannis in Boston on October 13, 1911.

Reverend Clarence Virgil Thompson Richeson (15 February 1876 - 21 May 1912) was executed for the sensationalized murder of Avis Willard Linnell of Hyannis. Avis Linnell was first reported to have "committed suicide" October 14, 1911 at the YWCA in Boston. The story got the attention of the Boston Post, who assigned every available reporter to the story.

It was the Post that called for police to investigate her suicide.  It was also the Post that found the druggist in Newton who had sold Clarence Richeson the cyanide and called for the Rev. Richeson's arrest, which occurred 10 days after Avis's death.

An early electric chair like the one Richeson was executed in an electric chair on May 21, 1912.

"Murdered by the Minister"

The Post with its blaring, front-page headlines, worked all of New England into a fever pitch. The New York Times also provided extensive coverage extending beyond the date of execution. The New York Daily Post reviewed the episode Mar 24, 2007 under the headline "Murdered by the Minister."

In 1912, Richeson later claimed to Dr. Briggs that his first sexual encounter was not until 1904 and that he had no others until 1910 with Avis Linnell. He was expelled from college for cheating in 1905.  Although, an officer of the college wrote Richeson's father that "Clarence had become deranged" and they could no longer keep him as a student.

He took a pastorate at the Baptist Church in Hyannis, MA on Cape Cod in June, 1908 where he first met Avis Linnell. Avis' mother stated that she loved him as a son. On her 17th birthday, 19 December 1908, he gave her a gold engagement ring and the engagement was announced at a small party. Miss Linnell left Hyannisport in September 1910 to study at the New England Conservatory of Music.  She took a room at the Boston YWCA and the date of her marriage was set for October, 1910.  She wore the engagement ring until Christmas, 1910 when she gave it back to Richeson "to be repaired."

May 21 - 1833: Mashpee Indians demand self-rule. 1962: The day the South sent Black Americans to Hyannis. 1960 JFK wins Oregon

1833: Mashpee Indians demand self-government

On this day in 1833, the Mashpee Tribe of Cape Cod signed what amounted to an Indian Declaration of Independence.

They reminded officials in Boston that "all men are born free and Equal, as says the constitution of the country" and spelled out the details of what had become an intolerable situation — the appropriation of their woodlots, hay fields, pastures, and shellfish beds by whites.

The Mashpee declared that they would take action against further encroachment by white settlers. A group of Barnstable farmers decided to test the Indians' resolve. When they arrived to cut wood on Mashpee land, the Indians resisted, and a violent confrontation followed.

Fearing an insurrection, the legislature granted the Mashpee the right of self-government in 1834.

1962: Segregationists try to embarrass JFK

Lie Laid to Southerners by State Rep

On this day in 1962, Massachusetts State Representative Allen Jones, a Republican, accused Southern Segregationists from Little Rock Arkansas of attempting to embarrass Democratic President John F. Kennedy by urging unemployed black southerners to come to Hyannis for jobs.

The Little Rock Citizens Council flyer read "President Kennedy's brother assures you a grand reception to Massachusetts. Good jobs, housing, etc.... are promised you..."

A different bi-partisan era

It wasn't even unusual forty-six years ago for a Republican to come to the defense of a Democrat, that's how greatly the religous right in the GOP has sullied the American political scene in our lifetime.

It was also a time when Black Americans were called Negroes or worse.

Read the wire service story about this event on the top right.

1962: JFK Wins Oregon Primary. Comes to Cape to celebrate

On the same day two years prior, John F. Kennedy was still fighting to win the nomination to run for President in the fall.

When he won the important Oregon Primary the day before, he flew to Hyannisport for a birthday celebration at the Kennedy Compound although his actual birthday wasn't until the 29th when he would be back in Washington to continue the campaign.

A brief wire service report is on the right.

May 20 - 1963: President Kennedy creates a Summer White House here; 2007: Babesiosis is spreading, and hard to diagnose

2007: Babesiosis is spreading, and hard to diagnose

Carried by same insects that spread Lyme disease

The Deer tick here is magnified several time on the rim of a penny.

On this day in 2007 the Newburyport News reported Rick DiMichele, a physically fit 55-year-old, came down with a mysterious disease last summer. He had a fever of 103 degrees, he looked pale and puffy, and he had a terrible pain in his side. It turned out to be a rare infection called babesiosis, which is similar to malaria. While malaria is common in tropical climates, DiMichele believes he caught this disease in his own Ipswich backyard.

Babesiosis is spread by deer ticks, the same insects that spread Lyme disease. DiMichele, who works at New Balance in Lawrence, lives on a wooded road about two miles from the center of Ipswich, where deer eat people’s shrubs and Lyme disease is a major concern.

Many doctors still think of babesiosis as a problem limited to Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Cape Cod, where it has been circulating for nearly a generation, Matyas said...  Read the reast of this Newburyport Daily News story here.

1963: Jack and Jackie to spend summers in Hyannisport

On this day in 1963, the New York Times heralded the news: A Second White House--For the Summer?

The story went on; a recent proposal for an official Presidential vacation spot raises the question of how presidents can escape the misery of Washington's sweltering summers. A Summer White House?

"The one essential," Franklin Roosevelt wrote to his wife in the anxious days after Pearl Harbor, "is complete lack of any distraction on the very occasional weekend I can get away from Washington"...  See a photocopy of the complete story below.

Second summer on Cape as President
The summer before, the Kennedys had stayed at a Squaw Island house owned by singer Morton Downey, father of future television talk show host Morton Downey Jr.

Squaw Island, a geographical misnomer, is a half-mile west of the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport where JFK owned a house next to his brother and sister-in-law, Robert and Ethel Kennedy, whose summer home was situated next to that of Kennedy elders Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Ted and Joan Kennedy also owned a house on Squaw Island.

JFK's house in the compound "is not large enough for a combination house and office," the AP reported, though the Secret Service was said to prefer isolated Squaw Island to the compound for security reasons.  The photo above shows Jack and Jackie on the President's Wianno Senior off Hyannisport.

May 19 - 1896: Worst fire in Cape Cod History; 1713: Boston poor riot for bread

1713: Boston's poor riot over cost of bread

A half century before "Let them eat cake"

56 years before Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat brioche", the people in Boston were also rioting for bread.

On this day in 1713, more than 200 people rioted on Boston Common over the high price of bread. The lieutenant governor tried to intervene but was shot and wounded for his efforts. This was the third such riot in four years. With grain in short supply, merchants were hoarding it to drive up prices. If they exported the grain to the West Indies, they could make even greater profits by selling to the sugar planters there. Boston selectmen tried without success to restrict grain sales to the domestic market. The riots helped persuade the colonial legislature to pass regulations designed to manage food shortages. Even with these laws on the books, however, hoarding and food riots continued throughout the eighteenth century.

Bostonians like to think of themselves as cultured, law-abiding people, but in fact colonial Boston had a well-deserved reputation for street violence. Between 1700 and 1764, there were four riots in New York and six in Philadelphia. Boston had 28.

Compared to other cities, Boston's economy was stagnant in the eighteenth century. There was an ever-wider gulf between the "haves" and the "have-nots." A significant number of men were barred from voting because they owned no property. Mariners, unskilled craftsmen, apprentices, common laborers, slaves, indentured servants, free blacks, men under the age of 21- and, of course, women - were all excluded from the political process. When the hardships seemed unendurable, disenfranchised Bostonians essentially "voted with their feet": they rioted.

There were frequent protests against customs regulations, brothels, and the impressment of sailors; several "Pope Day" riots targeted Catholicism. A common cause of rioting was the chronic shortage of the grains produced and consumed by people in Massachusetts - corn and rye.  And this was fifty-six years before the French Revolution and "Let them eat cake".

1896: Cranberry Bogs burned; Great dmage don by fires on Cape Cod

Many Houses in the Path of the Flames Destroyed -- The Most Disastrous Fire in the Cape's History -- Thirty Fires to be Seen from Gouverneur -- Even the Earth Is Burning

On this day in 1896 the New York Times front page shouted the news that a forest fire which destroyed such a large amount of property in and around Sandwich only a month ago was at the time considered the worst ever heard of on the Cape, but the Tremont fire, which started at Kelly's sawmill yesterday afternoon, has surpassed even that in the amount of damage done to property. The photo is of a firefighting apparatus of the era.

Flames were worse than the famous fire of a month prior, read the story below.

May 18 - 1967: Canal pilots end service. 2007: State Trooper busted for running Oxycontin ring

2007: State Trooper with local ties busted for running Oxycontin ring

On this day in 2007 a Massachusetts State Police trooper who once broke up drug rings in New Bedford was arrested along with his retired state trooper partner Wednesday on federal charges of running their own OxyContin trafficking ring. Trooper Mark V. Lemieux of Norfolk, who served on the Bristol County Drug Task Force from 2002 to 2004, appeared in federal court Wednesday to face charges of conspiring to distribute OxyContin and using extortion to collect drug debts, according to the affidavit filed in U.S. District Court.

Appearing with Trooper Lemieux in federal court was his former partner on the task force, Joseph M. Catanese of Sandwich, a retired state trooper. Mr. Catanese allegedly arranged to have a convicted felon threaten drug dealers who did not pay for the OxyContin pills they were supposed to sell. Also charged in the conspiracy were Tara Drummey, Mr. Lemieux's live-in girlfriend, and Patrick "Pain" McCarthy, the Falmouth man who Mr. Catanese allegedly used to threaten drug dealers.

1967: Pilots end service on Cape Cod Canal as business lags

A 1960s era Cape Cod Canal pilot boat.At the end of May in 1967 the pilots on the canal said they were stopping their service due to lack of business.

BUZZARDS BAY, MA:  May 18 - The Cape Cod Canal, one of the most important waterways on the East Coast, will be without local pilot service after May 31 for the first time since it opened in 1914...

Least traffic since opening in 1914

Most ships using the canal pick up their pilot at either New York or Boston, and today their are only 15-20 ships entering this waterway and most of them already have pilots aboard. The 1967 NY Times story is reprinted below.

May 17 - 1986: Summer labor panic; 2008: Sen. Kennedy rushed to hospital; 1954: School segregation ends

2008: Ted Kennedy stricken

On this day in 2008 Sen. Edward Kennedy was flown to a Boston hospital after suffering a seizure at his Hyannisport home. He was later diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor.
He died a year and a half later.

1986: Cape had a severe summer worker shortage

The more things change
the more they stay the same

During this same spring period in 1986, Cape Cod's tourism sector was kvetching as loudly as it is today about the dire need for low-cost summer workers.

Like today there was little interest in matching the areas of severe unemployment an hour west of the Cape with those needs here. The emphasis was on low-cost and people willing to live like sardines for a few months.

If we were to change the dates and the prices in this New York Times story from 1986 to 2008, we could run it today as a current news item;

CAPE COD HUNTING FOR SUMMER HELP

To Cape Cod each year, April brings cold, wind-driven rains, flocks of northbound Canada geese and the start of the spring hunt for workers to fill thousands of summer jobs.

The winter employment of about 72,000 people compares with more than 101,000 in August last year.This summer, Cape Cod employers expect to need 22,000 to 23,000 people to work here from late May until well after Labor Day. At least 10,000 other summer jobs are expected to be available on Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard.

Employers are again looking for people to be retail clerks, chambermaids, cooks and kitchen helpers, waiters and waitresses, landscapers, skilled construction workers, qualified truck drivers, and beach maintenance workers and lifeguards.

In addition, there is an increased demand for security personnel. As the Cape's population has increased, so has its crime rate.

Most employers now offer at least $5 or $6 an hour, even for fast-food workers. Many fast-food outlets offer as many hours a week as a worker wants.

Housing Scarce and Expensive

But with all these advantages, there are some catches. Temporary housing is painfully expensive and scarce. Public transportation is minimal... But neither he nor Mr. Branton minimalizes the problems of finding and paying for housing and transportation.

Many summer jobs are not near affordable housing. And only a handful of the Cape's large resort hotels offer living quarters for their summer employees. Many residents rent rooms to summer workers, but the going rates for most are $60 to $75 a week per person. Furnished houses and beach cottages are available for rent but cost from $1,000 to more than $2,000 a month... Source.

1954: Supreme Court ends segregation in schools

Boston did the same a century earlier

On this day in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the doctrine of separate but equal. "Segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race . . . deprives the children of a minority group of equal educational opportunities," the justices ruled in Brown v. Board of Education. In 1848 Boston's black community had turned to the courts to integrate the city's public schools. In ruling against them, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court asserted that separate was equal.

The cause was won only when the fight moved from the courts to the state legislature, which voted to outlaw segregated public schools in 1855. A century later, attorneys in Brown v. Board used some of the same arguments lawyers had made in the Boston case.

May 16 -1935: Fishing Schooner jams prop in nets, needs aid

1935: Marconi Station in Wellfleet and WCC in Chatham aid in schooner's rescue

Above is a typical Grand Banks fishing schooner of the era

Cutter Sent to Help Vessel With Fouled Propeller

On this day in 1935 a Grand Banks Fishing Schooner, the "Babe Sears", got its propeller snarled in a fishing net a 100 miles east of Cape Cod. She hailed a passing merchant ship to ask for help from the Coast Guard which subsequently towed her into Boston. Read the newspaper report from that day on the right. 

The Marconi Station in Wellfleet and WCC in Chatham Port were still relatively new aids to mariners back then, and the old schooners seldom had radios aboard, but the merchant ship did have one and radioed the Cape stations for help.

The Grand Banks Schooner

As the New England fishing industry grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, so did other related industries and technology. Once the US gained independence, New England soon became a commercial power. This affluence can be attributed to fishing and the ever-improving design of the schooner. The fishing schooner had been invented in 1713, and their design gradually improved, allowing for faster travel and larger catches. Support industries also prospered by making gear, boat parts, and tools for the fishermen. As fishing techniques evolved, so did society.  The graceful, elegant schooner shown above is among the ultimate in that class which was made obsolete by gas powered fishing boats.

May 15 - 1602: Cape Cod was named today. 2007: Cape woman to get degree posthumously

1602: Gosnold sailed the coast of Maine and arrived here on May 15

   Albert Beirstadt's 1858 Oil Painting entitled: "Gosnold at Cuttyhunk, 1602", where the adventurers set up a camp but gave it up when they were unable to find sufficient food for the winter, and sailed back to England. Note the bark Concord moored offshore on left.

He named Cape Cod and probably Martha's Vineyard too

On this day in 1602, Bartholomew Gosnold sailed into Provincetown Harbor and named the peninsula "Cape Cod" for the huge schools of fish sighted.  He didn't "discover" the Cape as many references cite. Champlain had a fight with our Nausets in Chatham in 1609, and others had visited our shores before him including the Portuguese who had set up fishing camps here for decades.  But Gosnold is the man who named us and the Pilgrims who stayed for a week in 1620. By 1638 "eight men from Saugus" took refuge from the crowded mainland, and Cape Cod had its first permanent settlement in what is today's Sandwich.

He pioneered a new route to the New World

Gosnold had sailed from Falmouth, England in a small Dartmouth bark, the Concord, with thirty-two crew on board, and like the Pilgrims fourteen years later in 1620, they had come to North America to establish a colony in New England, which was then known as Northern Virginia.

Bartholomew Gosnold pioneered a direct sailing route due west from the Azores to New England, arriving in early May 1602 at Cape Elizabeth in Maine near today's Portland (Lat 43 degrees). He skirted the Maine coastline for several days before anchoring in York Harbor, Maine, on May 14, 1602.

The next day, he sailed across Massachusetts Bay into Provincetown Harbor, where he is credited with naming Cape Cod. Following the Atlantic coastline south for several days, he discovered Martha's Vineyard, and named it perhaps after his daughter or wife. He established a small post on one of the Elizabeth Islands, which is now called Cuttyhunk Island and is part of the town of Gosnold. The post was abandoned when the settlers decided to return the ship to England because they had insufficient provisions to last over the winter.

2007: Cape woman to get degree posthumously
Shanna Litterst of Falmouth died with Jessica Hamlyn of Dennis

On this day in 2007 Westfield State College has reversed its decision and will award a posthumous diploma to a senior who was killed in an automobile accident on Cape Cod in March.

The decision came following what was described as considerable discussion among college administrators.  The college came under heavy public criticism after the parents of the accident victim, Shanna Litterst, could not persuade the college to issue the diploma.
 A senior biology major from Falmouth, Litterst, 21, was a star field hockey player at the college. She was rookie of the year in both the Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference and the regional Little East Conference.

A senior biology major from Falmouth, Litterst, 21, was a star field hockey player at the college. She was rookie of the year in both the Massachusetts State College Athletic Conference and the regional Little East Conference.

Litterst was with Jessica Hamlyn, 22, of South Dennis and a student at Plymouth State College, on March 4 in Centerville, when Hamlyn's vehicle slid off Route 28 and down an embankment, catching fire. Both women died at the scene... 

Read the rest of this Springfield Republican story here.  
See original CWN story here.
Read Marot Russell's eulogy "Our Lost Youth" here.

May 14 - 1978: Entire Provincetown postal staff arrested; 1990: Cape Cod was an auction-lovers cornucopia

1990: Cape Cod is a Shopper's World

A Guide to Cape Cod's Auctions & $5 lunches of two decades ago

Bob Eldred is a congenial auctioneer who moves fast, matter-of-factly announces good buys and lets the audience know when a feigned lack of interest is misplaced, saying, ''You're sleeping out there!''This week in 1990 the New York Times was extolling our auctions saying "Auctions on Cape Cod, a year-round phenomenon, are a cross between shopping, work and dinner theater. In fact, they combine the best of all three: you can shop sitting down, play the commodities market with real commodities that you carry home in the trunk of your car, catch a comedy act without paying a cover charge and eat for under $5."

The writer went on to say that if you bid, a host of treasures can be yours. If you don't, there's vicarious fun in watching desire and thrift square off in other bidders' hearts. All auctions offer these pleasures, but how they unfold - in a crowded barn thick with the smell of fried Portuguese sausage or in an elegant, 19th-century sea captain's house - varies from auction to auction.

The Sandwich Auction is also known for its auctioneer, Russell Johnson, who effortlessly mixes stand-up comedy with the biddinHere's a little more of the text with a link below to the rest: "On the advice of antique dealer friends, I sampled five auctions that cover the scale of most traveler's budgets and interests and don't intimidate people like me who know a little about antiques but aren't experts. There were bargains for every price range: a red armchair that sold for $5 at the Merlyn Auction in North Harwich and Oriental rugs that went for an average of $5,000 at the Eldred Auction in East Dennis. I also sat in on the Sandwich and Hyannis auctions and the Sullivan Auction in Acushnet"...  New York Times.

1978: Entire Provincetown Postal Staff Arrested
Postmaster Jasper Stoddard, five clerks charged with embezzlement & fraud

On this day in 1978,  newspapers all over America reported that the postmaster of the Cape Cod resort town of Provincetown and his entire clerical staff had been arrested and charged in connection with embezzlement of post office funds.

The culprits faced ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted.

It was thought to be the only time in US history when an entire US Post Office staff was arrested.

May 13 - 1948: Kathleen Kennedy, 28, Marchioness of Hartington, dies in plane crash

1948: Kathleen Kennedy dies on way to seek father's blessings on her wedding
"Most exciting debutante of 1938" she was dead ten years later

On this day in 1948, Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington, the second daughter of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., sister of U.S. President John F. Kennedy and widow of the heir to the Devonshire dukedom, died in a plane crash en route to secure her father's blessings on her second marriage. She was born on February 20, 1920, and was only 28 at the time of her death.

Background

Kathleen, Marchioness of HartingtonWhen President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed JFK's father Joseph Kennedy ambassador to the Court of St. James, his daughter Kathleen spent a year and a half living in London. She was educated in London at Queen's College.

Beautiful and spirited, she was named the "most exciting debutante of 1938." In 1943 she returned to England to work in a center for servicemen set up by the Red Cross.

Despite the opposition of her intensely Catholic mother, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy, known to friends as "Kick", married William John Robert Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, a Protestant and the eldest son and heir of the 10th Duke of Devonshire on May 6, 1944.

1944 was a year of deaths

Other than her eldest brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. who died in a plane crash three months after the wedding, no one from the Kennedy family attended the marriage ceremony. Her husband was killed in action only four months later in World War II, and his younger brother Andrew Cavendish, married to Deborah Mitford, became the heir to the dukedom.  See the newspaper report of her death on right.

Popular on the London social circuit and admired by many for her high spirits - though more traditional members of British society found fault with her boisterousness - the dashing young widow eventually became the mistress of Peter Wentworth-FitzWilliam, 8th Earl FitzWilliam. The couple planned to wed after Fitzwilliam's planned divorce. Instead, while on a trip to visit Joseph Kennedy Sr. and gain his blessing for their relationship, Lord Fitzwilliam and Lady Hartington died in an airplane crash in Saint-Bauzile, Ardèche, France.

Religious prejudice to
the grave and beyond

Only her father represented the Kennedy family at her funeral. Her mother, Rose, declined to attend supposedly because of Kathleen's intention to marry outside the Catholic Church a second time. It is also said that Rose Kennedy also discouraged Kathleen's siblings from attending for the same reason. Rose apparently forgave Kathleen not long thereafter, and in 1951, she was reportedly delighted that her first grandchild, Robert F. Kennedy's daughter, Kathleen Hartington Kennedy, was named after her late daughter. However, the family requested that the child not be nicknamed Kick.

The Marchioness of Hartington is buried in the Cavendish family plot at Saint Peter's Church, Edensor, near Chatsworth in Derbyshire, England. Among the wreaths that covered her coffin was one with a handwritten note from Sir Winston Churchill. The gymnasium at Manhattanville College is named in her honor.