Massachusetts

George B. Boomer Monument, Worcester, Massachusetts

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The monument at the gravesite of George B. Boomer at Rural Cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts, around 1895. Image from Picturesque Worcester (1895).

The scene in 2021:

These two photos show the gravesite of George B. Boomer, a Civil War officer who was killed in action during the Siege of Vicksburg on May 22, 1863. Born in Sutton, Massachusetts in 1832, Boomer grew up in the Worcester area, but later moved west to St. Louis, where he was involved in bridge building. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he found himself in a border state that had divided loyalties. Missouri ultimately remained in the Union, as did Boomer, who helped to raise a regiment of Missouri soldiers.

Boomer was commissioned as colonel of the 26th Missouri Infantry Regiment in 1862. He suffered serious wounds at the Battle of Iuka in September 1862, but after his recovery he returned to action, including participating in the Vicksburg campaign. Vicksburg proved to be a major turning point for the Union during the war, and Boomer fought with distinction, including at the Battle of Champion Hill, a major Union victory on May 16, 1862 that directly led to the Siege of Vicksburg. He was also involved in the Battle of Big Black River Bridge on the following day, and in the assault on Vicksburg itself on May 22. However, this assault proved unsuccessful, and the Union sustained many casualties, including Boomer, who was killed instantly by a gunshot wound to the head.

He was initially buried in Louisiana, then in St. Louis, before his remains were eventually returned to Worcester. His funeral was held at the Third Baptist Church on June 28, and he was subsequently buried here in Rural Cemetery. Less than a week later, on July 4, Union forces finally succeeded in taking the city of Vicksburg. This, combined with the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg a day earlier, proved to be a decisive blow that the Confederacy was never able to recover from.

George Boomer would ultimately be memorialized here by the large monument that is shown here in these two photos. It is 27 feet tall, carved of Connecticut sandstone, and it takes the form of an ancient Roman victory column with a large eagle at the top. It was designed by local sculptor and gravestone carver Benjamin H. Kinney, and it was installed here in early 1865, shortly before the end of the Civil War. On the monument, he is referred to by the rank of Brigadier General, as do many other contemporary accounts of his military career. However, it seems unclear as to whether he actually received this promotion, because other sources indicate that the highest rank that he held was that of colonel.

The first photo was taken about 30 years after the monument was installed here, and more than 125 years have passed since then. During this time, very little has changed here except for the landscaping of the cemetery, which now features much larger trees than in the first photo. Otherwise, though, the cemetery looks much the same as it did in the 1890s, and many of the gravestones from the first photo are still easily recognizable in the present-day photos, including the Boomer memorial, which still stands as one of the most distinctive monuments in the cemetery.

Bancroft Monument, Worcester, Massachusetts

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The monument to George and Elizabeth Bancroft in Rural Cemetery in Worcester, Massachusetts, around 1895. Image from Picturesque Worcester (1895).

The scene in 2021:

These two photos show the final resting place of historian and politician George Bancroft and his wife Elizabeth. Although he spent much of his life elsewhere, George Bancroft was a native of Worcester and was born here in 1800. He died in 1891, and his body was subsequently returned to his hometown, where he was buried here in Rural Cemetery. Then, two years later a large granite monument was constructed on the plot, as shown here.

As a historian, Bancroft’s magnum opus was his extensive multi-volume History of the United States of America, from the Discovery of the American Continent. However, he also had a successful career in politics and diplomacy. He served as Secretary of the Navy under James K. Polk from 1845 to 1846, and during this time he established the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He then served as the U.S. Minister to the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1849, and he was later the U.S. Minister to Germany from 1867 to 1874.

George Bancroft’s first wife was Sarah Dwight, from the prominent Dwight family of Springfield. They lived in Northampton and later in Springfield, where Sarah died in 1837. He subsequently remarried in 1838 to Elizabeth Davis Bliss, and they were married for nearly 50 years until her death in 1886. She was interred here in Worcester, as was her husband after he died five years later.

Their grave monument is one of the largest in Rural Cemetery, and it was designed by prominent architect Paul J. Pelz, whose most famous work was the Library of Congress building in Washington, D.C. The monument is 22 feet high, made of Vermont granite, and it features four large pillars with a dome above them. The original intent was for a bust or statue of Bancroft to be placed in the center of this space between the pillars, but this evidently did not happen. In total, the monument cost $7,000, and it was installed here in November 1893.

The first photo was taken within about a year or two after the monument was installed, and not much has changed in this scene since then. There have obviously been more burials since the 1890s, but overall this particular section of the cemetery remains essentially the same, including the same gravestones from the first photo. Aside from Bancroft, other prominent burials here in this scene include Bancroft’s sister Eliza and her husband John Davis. He had a lengthy political career in the first half of the 19th century, including serving as a U.S. representative, governor of Massachusetts, and U.S. senator. They are buried beneath the rectangular gravestone near the road on the right side of the scene.

Levi Lincoln Jr. House, Worcester, Massachusetts

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The former home of Governor Levi Lincoln Jr. on Elm Street in Worcester, around 1895. Image from Picturesque Worcester (1895).

The scene in 2021:

The house, now located in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, in 2021:

The house in the first photo was built in 1836 as the home of Levi Lincoln Jr., who served as governor of Massachusetts from 1825 to 1834. His nine years in office is still a record for the longest consecutive governorship in the history of the state, and it occurred at a time when governors were elected annually, meaning that he won nine consecutive elections. He came from a prominent political family; his father, Levi Lincoln Sr., served as U.S. Attorney General under Thomas Jefferson and later as lieutenant governor and acting governor of Massachusetts, and his brother Enoch was a congressman who subsequently served as governor of Maine. He was also much more distantly related to Abraham Lincoln, who was his fourth cousin once removed.

Lincoln built this Greek Revival house shortly after the end of his final term as governor. By this point he was serving in Congress, where he represented the 5th Massachusetts district from 1834 to 1841. He would later serve as collector of the port of Boston, and then as a state senator, before concluding his time in elected office as the first mayor of Worcester, from 1848 to 1849. However, he would remain active in politics over the next few decades, including serving as a presidential elector in 1864, when he cast his vote for his distant cousin Abraham Lincoln.

The 1864 election would not be the first time that Levi Lincoln would cross paths with his more famous cousin. The first time that the two men met was in Worcester in 1848, when the future president visited Massachusetts while campaigning for Whig presidential candidate Zachary Taylor. At the time, Abraham Lincoln was not a particularly noteworthy political figure. While Levi Lincoln came from a well-connected family, Abraham had a much more modest background. When he arrived in Worcester in September 1848, he was a small town lawyer from Illinois who was in the midst of his only term in Congress, and it would be another decade before he would begin to gain significant national attention for his speeches and debates.

Abraham Lincoln came to Worcester for the Whig state convention, and while here he delivered a speech at city hall in support of Zachary Taylor. Although Taylor was a southern slave owner, he was opposed to the expansion of slavery into newly-acquired territory. Here in Massachusetts, many Whigs were inclined to support the newly-formed Free Soil Party, which took a stronger stance against slavery. However, the Free Soil Party’s candidate, former President Martin Van Buren, had no chance of carrying the election, so in his speech Lincoln argued that a vote for Van Buren would effectively just be a vote for Democrat Lewis Cass, who supported the expansion of slavery. Instead, Lincoln believed that it was best to vote for Taylor, who had a realistic chance of winning and who shared many of the same beliefs as the Free Soilers when it came to limiting the spread of slavery.

On the same night that Lincoln delivered this speech, he was invited to dine here at Levi Lincoln’s house on Elm Street. The dinner included a number of other dignitaries, among them Henry Gardner, who would later serve as governor. He recalled the events of that evening many years later, as quoted by Abraham Lincoln’s former law partner, William Henry Herndon, in his biography Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life:

Gov. Levi Lincoln, the oldest living Ex-Governor of Massachusetts, resided in Worcester. He was a man of culture and wealth; lived in one of the finest houses in that town, and was a fine specimen of a gentleman of the old school. It was his custom to give a dinner party when any distinguished assemblage took place in Worcester, and to invite its prominent participants. He invited to dine, on this occasion, a company of gentlemen, among them myself, who was a delegate from Boston. The dining-room and table arrangements were superb, the dinner exquisite, the wines abundant, rare, and of the first quality.

I well remember the jokes between Governor Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln as to their presumed relationship. At last the latter said: “I hope we both belong, as the Scotch say, to the same clan; but I know one thing, and that is, that we are both good Whigs.”

Gardner later went on to describe how, in 1861, he visited Abraham Lincoln in the White House. During this visit, the president remembered the dinner in Worcester, and according to Gardner, Lincoln told him:

You and I are no strangers; we dined together at Governor Lincoln’s in 1848. . . . I had been chosen to Congress then from the wild West, and with hayseed in my hair I went to Massachusetts, the most cultured State in the Union, to take a few lessons in deportment. That was a grand dinner—a superb dinner; by far the finest I ever saw in my life. And the great men who were there, too! Why, I can tell you just how they were arranged at table.

In the meantime, Levi Lincoln continued to live here in this house on Elm Street throughout Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, and he died here in 1868, at the age of 85. The 1860 census, the last federal census to be taken during his lifetime, shows him living here with three generations of Penelopes: his wife, their widowed daughter Penelope Canfield, and her 14-year-old daughter, who was also named Penelope. The family also had two live-in domestic servants, Mary Johnson and Angeline Rich, along with a coachman, Philip O’Conell. Five years later, the same people were living here during the 1865 state census, with the exception of a different coachman, Patrick Harmon.

This house was later owned by Levi Lincoln’s son, Daniel Waldo Lincoln, who was living here during the 1880 census with his wife Frances and two servants. He was an accomplished horticulturalist, but he was also involved in politics, serving as mayor of Worcester from 1863 to 1866. In addition, he was the vice president of the Boston and Albany Railroad for many years, and he became president of the company in 1878. However, he had a relatively short tenure as president, because he was killed in a railroad accident in 1880. He had been in New London for the Harvard-Yale Regatta, and was watching the race from the platform of an observation car on a train. At one point during the race, a mishap caused Lincoln and another spectator to be thrown from the car and onto the tracks, where they were both fatally crushed by the wheels.

The house was subsequently inherited by his son, Waldo Lincoln, who would live here for the rest of his life. Waldo was involved in several different manufacturing companies, but he retired from active business at a relatively young age and spent much of his life as a historian and genealogist. For many years he served as president of the American Antiquarian Society, which is headquartered in Worcester, and he also researched and wrote about a wide variety of topics, with publications ranging from family genealogies to a history of American cookbooks, to a history of newspapers in Bermuda.

Waldo Lincoln was living here when the first photo was taken around the 1890s, and the 1900 census shows him here with his wife Fanny, their five children who ranged in age from 10 to 25, and two servants. By 1920, the household had grown even more, and the Waldos were living here with their daughter Josephine, her husband Frank Dresser, their four young children, and four servants.

Frank Dresser died in 1924, but the rest of the family was still living here in 1930, with the exception of Fanny Lincoln. That year’s census lists her as being a patient at McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Belmont. She appears to have eventually returned to Worcester, though, because her 1939 obituary indicates that she died here at her Elm Street home at the age of 87. In the meantime, her husband Waldo Lincoln died here in 1933 at the age of 83.

Their daughter, Josephine Dresser, continued to live here until as late as 1950, but by this point the location of the old house was being eyed for commercial development. It was acquired by the Worcester Mutual Fire Insurance Company in the early 1950s, in order to build a new office building on the site. However, rather than demolish the historic house, the company offered it to Old Sturbridge Village. The house was moved and reassembled there in 1952, although it was not placed in the village itself. Such a large mansion would have been vastly out of place in the recreated rural village, so it was instead rebuilt at the entrance to the village on Route 20. It has stood there ever since, as shown in the third photo, and over the years it has been occupied by a variety of commercial tenants.

Isaiah Thomas House, Worcester, Massachusetts

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The former home of newspaper publisher Isaiah Thomas, seen from Court Street in Worcester, Massachusetts, around 1895. Image from Picturesque Worcester (1895).

The scene in 2021:

The house in the right-center of first photo was built around 1782 as the home of Isaiah Thomas, the prominent printer and newspaper publisher of the Revolutionary era. It was originally located on Main Street, where the former Worcester County Courthouse now stands, but it was moved back from the road around 1843, in order to make way for the construction of the courthouse.

Isaiah Thomas was born in Boston in 1749, and he trained to become a printer. In 1770, at the age of 21, he started the Massachusetts Spy, which would become one of the most influential newspapers in New England in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Thomas actively promoted the patriot cause in his newspapers, to the point where he fled Boston three days before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, after hearing that he was likely to be arrested. He took his printing press with him and ended up in Worcester, where he continued publishing the Spy.

According to tradition, Thomas had the distinction of being the first person to publicly read the Declaration of Independence, when he obtained a copy of it from a messenger heading from Philadelphia to Boston. This is said to have occurred on the steps of Old South Church in Worcester, on July 14, 1776, although it does not seem to be corroborated by contemporary accounts. Either way, though, Thomas was definitely the first person to publish the Declaration in Massachusetts, when the text of it appeared on the front page of the Spy on July 17.

Near the end of the American Revolution, around 1782, Isaiah Thomas built the house that is shown here in the first photo. Aside from the fact that it was originally located on Main Street, it was also much smaller when it was first completed. It consisted of just the central part of the building, with a square floor plan that had rooms arranged around a large chimney in the middle of the house. On the first floor was a parlor, dining room, kitchen, and bedroom, and there were five bedrooms on the second floor.

The first major expansion came in 1808, when Thomas added two-story wings to either side of the house. Part of the motivation for this was to accommodate his growing library, which would later become part of the American Antiquarian Society’s collections. Thomas founded the organization in 1812 and served as its first president, and it is still active today as the oldest national historical society in the country. For the first eight years of its existence, Thomas kept the collections here in his house, until the completion of the society’s first building in 1820.

Isaiah Thomas died in 1831, and much of his property was subsequently acquired by the county, in order to build a new courthouse. The house was moved to the rear of the lot, and the courthouse was completed in 1845. The courthouse was later expanded many times over the years, including an 1878 addition that is visible on the right side of both photos.

The house, now in its new location, then became the home of attorney Rejoice Newton, who lived here until 1851. He then sold it to carriage manufacturer Moses T. Breck, and the house would later change hands several more times in the 19th century. During this time, it saw further alterations and steadily fell into disrepair, with the interior eventually being divided into different tenements. By the 1910 census, there were five different families living in the house, with a total of 22 people here.

The house was ultimately purchased by the county and demolished in 1923. There were some who advocated for preserving the house, but this was evidently not a feasible option, perhaps because of the poor condition of the house. The county later built a large addition to the rear of the courthouse. It was completed in 1957, and it included the parcel where the house had once stood.

Today, the courthouse is still standing on the right side of the scene, including the 19th century sections and the 20th century addition behind it. However, this building was closed in 2007 after the courts moved to a new facility a few blocks south of here on the east side of Main Street, and the old building here has since been converted into residential units.

Old Hadley Cemetery, Hadley, Massachusetts

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Gravestones at Old Hadley Cemetery, around 1905. Image from History of Hadley (1905).

The scene in 2021:

Hadley was settled by European colonists in 1659, and incorporated as a town in 1661. Around the same time, this burying ground was laid out in a meadow just to the northwest of the town center, with the earliest known burials dating back to 1661. Among these was John Webster (1590-1661), who had served as governor of Connecticut before relocating to Hadley. As was the case for most of the other 17th century burials here, his grave was not marked by a stone, although a monument to him was installed in the cemetery in 1818 by his great-great-great grandson Noah Webster, the famous lexicographer and dictionary author.

The earliest surviving gravestones in the cemetery are two matching tablestones for Rebecca and John Russell. They died in 1688 and 1692, respectively, and their stones were installed in 1693, although they are not visible in this particular scene. Otherwise, though, gravestones were rare here until the 1710s, when Hadley resident Joseph Nash began carving gravestones. He used tan sandstone, and his gravestones were typically small, irregularly shaped, and with crudely-cut lettering. Despite the primitive appearance of the stones, he was evidently popular because his work appears in most of the early burying grounds in the Connecticut River Valley of Massachusetts. Several of his stones are visible in this particular scene, including those of Mehetebel Marsh (1694-1739) on the far right, and Aaron Cook (1641-1716) and Sarah Cook (1644-1730) near the foreground on the far left side.

The two large tablestones in the center of this scene are for Joanna Porter (1665-1713) on the left and her husband Samuel Porter Jr. (1660-1722) on the right. Joanna was the daughter of Aaron and Sarah Cook, and she was also the mother of Mehetebel Marsh, so this was evidently their family plot. Tablestones were relatively uncommon because of the high cost, and were typically only used for clergymen and other prominent town residents. In this case, Samuel Porter was a wealthy merchant, and he also served as a representative in the colonial legislature, and as a judge and county sheriff. The Porter tablestones were not carved by Joseph Nash, as this was likely seen as too costly of a job to leave to a rather amateurish local stonecutter. Instead, these stones appear to have been carved by the Stanclift family in Middletown, Connecticut, who specialized in monuments such as these.

The Mehetebel Marsh gravestone was likely one of the last that Joseph Nash carved before his own death in 1740. By this point, gravestones in Western Massachusetts were starting to become more refined, in part because of an increased number of stones brought up the river from the skilled Middletown-area carvers. Among these was the gravestone of Samuel Porter III (1685-1748), the tall stone just to the right of the tablestones. He was the son of Samuel and Joanna, and although he died less than a decade after his sister Mehetebel, their two gravestones show the vast differences in skill level between local carvers like Nash and the professionally-trained carvers of Middletown. His gravestone was carved by the prominent Johnson family of Middletown, and its design suggests that it may have been carved somewhat later, perhaps in the 1750s or early 1760s.

The carvers from the Johnson family dominated the gravestone business along the Connecticut River Valley during the mid-1700s, but there were also some skilled local carvers who emerged in Western Massachusetts during this period. Foremost among them was Nathaniel Phelps of Northampton, who was active from the 1740s until the 1780s. Aside from Joseph Nash, perhaps no other 18th century carver is better represented here in Hadley, and one of his gravestones stands in the lower center of this scene, marking the grave of Joanna Porter’s brother Samuel Cook (1672-1746). This stone is a close imitation of the Johnson family’s style, but Phelps would subsequently develop his own style, and he occasionally carved highly ornate gravestones that featured full-body figures of angels. Among these was the gravestone of Sarah Porter (1741-1775), the wife of Samuel and Joanna’s grandson Elisha Porter. Her gravestone is visible in the background of this scene; it is the fourth one from the left in the back row.

By the early 19th century, gravestone styles had shifted away from the ornate carvings of the 18th century. Instead, these gravestones tended to either have generic designs of willows and urns, or no images at all. And, rather than sandstone, these 19th century stones were typically carved in slate or marble. Most of these burials were further to the east of the original section of the cemetery, but there are several 19th century marble stones here in the old section, including one in the back row in the distance for Nathaniel Porter (1709-1779). Although he died in 1779, the style of his gravestone suggests that it was probably carved at some point in the first half of the 1800s.

Aside from Nathaniel Porter’s backdated gravestone, perhaps the most recent gravestone in this particular scene is that of Elisha Porter (1742-1796). Like his grandfather Samuel had done many years earlier, Elisha served as sheriff of Hampshire County, and he was also a colonel in the state militia during the American Revolution. His gravestone is carved in marble, and it has a fairly plain design that is decorated only with an urn in the upper part of the stone.

More than a hundred years would pass between Porter’s burial in 1796 and when the first photo was taken at the turn of the 20th century. It is hard to say to what extent this scene changed during that time. Colonial-era burial grounds were often laid out in a somewhat haphazard manner, and during the 19th century many were rearranged into orderly rows of gravestones, often with little concern for whether the stones on the surface corresponded to the remains underground. This was often done for aesthetic reasons or to make maintenance easier, but it seems unclear whether it happened here in Hadley. However, the 18th century gravestones here are all arranged in parallel rows, suggesting that perhaps their positions may have been adjusted at some point.

Today, nearly 120 years after the first photo was taken, the background of this scene has changed significantly. Rather than the open meadows of the first photo, there is now a house directly to the west of the cemetery, with a tall hedge marking the property line. However, here in the foreground the cemetery has remained remarkably unchanged during this time. Sandstone gravestones are often vulnerable to weathering and erosion, and many in the river valley are badly deteriorated, especially those from the Middletown area. Here in Hadley, though, the stones have generally remained well-preserved, and this cemetery is one of the finest colonial-era burial grounds in Western Massachusetts.

Joseph Hooker Birthplace, Hadley, Massachusetts

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The birthplace of General Joseph Hooker on West Street in Hadley, Massachusetts, around the 1890s. Image from History of Hadley (1905).

The scene in 2021:

The house in the center of the first photo was likely built at some point during the 1700s, and it stood on the west side of West Street, just north of Cemetery Road. It is best remembered for having been the birthplace of General Joseph Hooker, who was born here on November 13, 1814. Hooker’s father, who was also named Joseph, purchased the house from the Porter family in 1805, shortly before his marriage to Mary Seymour. They had four children who were born here, including Joseph and his three older sisters: Nancy, Mary, and Sarah.

The family would only live here in this house for a few more years, before selling it in 1817 and moving to a house nearby on Middle Street, where Joseph Hooker spent much of his childhood. He attended Hopkins Academy here in Hadley, and he lived with his family in several other houses on West Street before entering West Point in 1833. He graduated in 1837, and that same year his parents left Hadley and relocated to Watertown, New York.

Upon graduating from West Point, Hooker was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the army. He served throughout the Mexican-American War, and after the war he was stationed in California. In 1853, he resigned from the army and took up farming in Sonoma County in California, and from 1859 to 1861 he served as a colonel in the California state militia.

Like many of his fellow West Point peers who had entered civilian life in the 1850s, Hooker returned to the army following the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. He was appointed as brigadier general, and he served in the Peninsula Campaign, where he earned his nickname, “Fighting Joe Hooker.” The nickname originated because of an error in a newspaper dispatch that was intended to have read “Fighting – Joe Hooker Attacks Rebels.” However, perhaps because of his reputation for aggressive fighting on the battlefield, the name stuck with him.

Hooker would subsequently serve in the Second Battle of Bull Run, and at Antietam, where he was wounded early in the fighting. Then, in January 1863, President Lincoln appointed Hooker as commander of the Army of the Potomac, replacing General Ambrose Burnside. After the failures of both Burnside and his predecessor, George B. McClellan, Lincoln hoped that a more aggressive commander like Hooker would have greater success against Robert E. Lee. As it turned out, though, Hooker’s one major battle as commander was Chancellorsville, where he suffered a severe concussion and was ultimately defeated in one of Lee’s most decisive victories of the war.

Despite the loss, Hooker retained command of the Army of the Potomac, but he ultimately resigned in late June 1863, after a falling out between him and Lincoln. However, he remained in the army, and served with distinction in the western theater, including at the Battle of Lookout Mountain and during the Atlanta Campaign. Again, though, he had disagreements with his superiors, including General William T. Sherman, and in 1864 he was transferred to Cincinnati, where he commanded the Northern Department. He held this position until the end of the war, and he would continue to serve in the army until 1868, when he retired with the rank of major general.

Aside from his actions on the battlefield, Hooker would become the subject of an oft-repeated myth that his name was the origin of the term “hooker” for a prostitute. As the story goes, Hooker was a hard-drinking, hard-partying womanizer during the war, to the point where his prostitutes were referred to as “Hooker’s Brigade,” which became the origin of the term. In reality, while Hooker was a bachelor for most of his life including during the war, it seems unclear as to exactly what kinds of drunken debaucheries, if any, he was involved in. And, in any case, the word was being used in reference to prostitutes for at least a few decades prior to the war, although it is certainly plausible that his reputation—whether deserved or not—may have helped popularize the already-existing term.

In the meantime, Hooker’s birthplace here in Hadley changed hands several times over the course of the 19th century. His father had sold the house to John Hopkins in 1817, and it was later owned by Hiram Thayer. He died in 1854, and the house was subsequently owned by two of his sons, Ezra Thayer (1827-1895) and Chesmin Miller Thayer (1829-1882). The brothers evidently lived here together, and the 1860 census showing Ezra here with his wife Rebecca (1831-1916) and their 2-year-old son Charles (1858-1932), along with Chesmin and his wife Julia (1831-1912).

Hooker’s 1863 appointment as commander of the Army of the Potomac drew attention to the house. A February 8, 1863 article in the New York Times, which had originally appeared in the Northampton Free Press, described the house as “an old-fashioned, two-story house, with the gambrel-roof so peculiar to olden times, and altogither [sic] is a fit place for the early home of genius, whether it be an embryo Poet, President, or Major-General.”

The Thayer family would continue to live here for many years. Charles seems to have been the only child of Ezra and Rebecca, and Chesmin and Julia evidently did not have any children of their own, so the size of the family remained the same in the 1870 and 1880 censuses. Hooker apparently visited his birthplace at least once after the war, but otherwise he does not seem to have had much of a connection with his old hometown in his later years. He died on Long Island in 1879, at the age of 64, and he was buried alongside his wife in Cincinnati.

Here in Hadley, Hooker’s birthplace would find itself in the spotlight in 1895, when it became the focal point for a large reunion of soldiers from the III Corps in honor of their general. The festivities were held on May 7, 1895, starting early in the morning with a parade in Northampton. The veterans, guests, and spectators then boarded a train for Hadley, and about 3,500 people gathered here on the town common, in a tent in front of Hooker’s birthplace.

Among the many distinguished speakers at the event was General Daniel Sickles, who presented the town with a portrait of Hooker. He had served with Hooker in the III Corps and two men had been friends, but Sickles was a controversial figure whose debaucheries exceeded even Hooker’s supposed reputation. Prior to the war, Sickles had become the first person in the country to successfully use the temporary insanity defense for murder, after he killed his wife’s lover, Philip Barton Key II, the son of the Star Spangled Banner author. During the war, probably his most controversial action came at the Battle of Gettysburg, when he defied orders and moved his unit into a highly exposed position, losing his right leg in the process. Despite this, his wartime service was enough to earn him the post of U.S. Minister to Spain, which he held from 1869 to 1874. There, in addition to his diplomatic work, he also had an affair with the recently-deposed Queen Isabella II, and he then married one of her attendants, Carmina Creagh.

By the time he arrived here in Hadley for the ceremony in 1895, he was 75 years old and had been estranged from his second wife for many years. Citing his poor health, his speech was moved to an earlier spot in the program of events so that he could leave early. Notwithstanding these health issues, he spoke at length about Hooker, highlighting his military accomplishments while also defending him against accusations of drunkenness. In his address he also explained how meaningful it was to visit Hooker’s birthplace, comparing it to a visit to Napoleon’s tomb. He went on to explain:

I have never been assigned to a more pleasant duty than the one which calls me here to-day. The birthplace of the most brilliant soldier given to the late war by Massachusetts has an interest for all her citizens. To the survivors of the 3d army corps this spot has peculiar attractions. Our loyalty to the memory of Hooker is a sentiment in which affection and admiration are blended. His comrades loved him because he gave them confidence in themselves; because he hade them soldiers. They loved him because he was proud of them, and jealous of their honor and fame. We admired him as the intrepid brigade and division commander whose plume was always in the front of the battle. We admired his fearless bearing, his picturesque figure in the saddle, at the head of a column or in line of battle—the type of the soldier who shared every peril to which his command was exposed. We admired his thorough knowledge of his profession—from the duty of a soldier to the responsibility of a commander.

Aside from Sickles’s address, other speakers included state auditor and Civil war veteran John W. Kimball, Medal of Honor recipient General Henry E. Tremaine, and Worcester poet John Howard Jewett, who recited a poem for the event. Lunch came after the speeches, followed by other festivities here in Hadley, such as a concert, a cadet drill exercise, and a baseball game. Aging veterans relaxed in the shade and shared stories about General Hooker, and many people in the crowd visited his birthplace, which was decorated for the occasion.

At the time of the event, the house was still owned by the Thayer family, but neither of the brothers lived long enough to see it. Chesmin died in 1882 and Ezra in January 1895, only a few months before the Hooker celebration here. Their widows would continue to live here for a few more years, but the house was ultimately destroyed by a fire on April 6, 1898. The fire started around 3:00 p.m. in a barn on a neighboring property, and it soon spread to the Hooker birthplace. High winds, combined with a lack of sufficient firefighting equipment in Hadley, helped contribute to the spread of the fire, and several other barns and outbuildings were also destroyed.

Although the Hooker birthplace is gone, its location is commemorated by a large boulder that is visible in the center of the second photo. It was installed here in 1908, and it has an inscription that reads “Birth-place of / Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker / Born Nov. 13, 1814 / Erected by the D.A.R. / 1908.” Just to the left of the boulder is a much more modern house that now stands on the lot. Although built in the late 20th century, it has an exterior that—whether intentional or not—echoes the appearance of its predecessor here.