OF ALL THE theories as to the origin of the word Yankee, the one that makes the most sense to me is the so-called Dutch theory. It says that the early English settlers in Connecticut sold cheese to the early Dutch settlers in New York. So the New Yorkers began referring to the English as […]
Yankee
THE WEEKEND BEFORE Memorial Day is when a lot of wonderful commercial enterprises along the Maine coast open up for the summer tourist season. Bertha Nunan’s Lobster Hut, in the tiny fishing village of Cape Porpoise (just up from Kennebunkport), is a case in point. Multiple generations of Nunans have been hauling lobster traps off […]
NEW ENGLAND HAS often claimed the poems, songs, and ditties known as the Mother Goose nursery rhymes even though, I’ll have to concede, their origin was most assuredly in England during the 1600s. But at least there is a New England connection. That connection stems back to an Elizabeth Foster of Charlestown, Massachusetts, who married […]
1. Were “spring dance floors” built to spring? 2. Where, exactly, does “down east” begin? 3. Why were bridges covered? WELL, LET’S BEGIN with the term “down east.” We all know it’s a nautical way of referring to sailing with the wind or down wind when traveling northeast off the Maine coast. Where down east […]
EVERY REGION HAS certain words that reflect its history, its geography — and its personality. For instance, Southerners seem to me to be immediately open and friendly, even with total strangers. “Y’all come!” they’ll say, which would appear to include mankind. We New Englanders are more reserved about extending invitations, or anything else, and our […]
IT WAS UNSEASONABLY warm in Boston on Wednesday, January 15, 1919. Forty-three degrees above zero, to be exact. But during endless court hearings carried on later, it was determined that temperature played no role in what occurred that day in the low-lying section of Commercial Street, between Copps Hill and North End Park. That’s where […]
NEW ENGLANDERS WERE always so stuffy about love, sex, and romance, how come it was commonly approved practice for young couples to go to bed together before they were married? And also, more surprisingly, to get married in the nude? Both are true. Young New England unmarried boys and girls would indeed go to bed […]
History
It’s Fun to Believe in Ghosts
NEW ENGLANDERS WANT to believe in ghosts — and we have so many of them — but we’re often too practical and hardheaded to believe in anything we haven’t seen or heard. There’s the old story, for example, of the New Hampshire farmer who was cornered by a scholar researching New England religious history. The […]
THERE SEEM TO be certain New England legends that evolve out of no logical sequence of events at all. Merely a little something someone said can catch our imagination, be repeated and perhaps somewhat embellished, and eventually … voila! It takes its place among the New England legends we love. There are dozens of examples […]
IF I WERE TO compile a list of what I consider to be New England’s “bests,” I wouldn’t include many restaurants, resorts, specialty boutiques, museums, country fairs, and the like. Those things change too quickly and, besides, the current September issue of YANKEE Magazine, celebrating its 70th anniversary in grand style, is devoted to that […]
History
Yankee Sentimentality
ASKED SOME YEARS AGO by a Boston Globe reporter for his description of the “ideal wife,” Captain Eliot Winslow, a well-known tourist boat operator out of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, replied, “She ought to be able to dig clams. She ought to be able to split wood. And she ought to be able to row my […]
Oh, sure, people in the states of Delaware and Indiana still think Uncle Sam was a Sam Wilson, born in Wilmington, Delaware, and buried in Merriam, Indiana. But in the 1960s, even the United States Congress recognized the New England-born Samuel Wilson as the Uncle Sam. And, as is the case in so many so-called […]