Message in a Turkey | Stuffing the Ballot Box

In November 1888 a 22-year-old Vermont woman named Kate Gillette was plucking and dressing turkeys for the Boston market on her family’s East Randolph farm while waiting for a teaching job to start in December. Worried about how she would live on the $7 a week that the position paid, she tried a novel variant of the old message-in-a-bottle ploy. “I am a young schoolteacher,” read the note she placed inside the turkey, “and have no watch. I have taken a winter school. What shall I do without a watch? I hope some good Republican will remember me next Christmas. I don’t like the Democrats, but if one should send me a present, I should think better of them. I don’t think they like to give presents, do they? I am a Vermont girl and hope to hear from those who eat this turkey.” As luck would have it, the bird was purchased by the Democratic mayor of Boston, Hugh O’Brien. A former newspaperman and savvy politician, he sent Kate an avuncular letter and a handsome gold watch − then leaked the story to the Boston papers. Excerpt from “’Stuffing the Ballot Box,” Yankee Magazine, November 1995.