CivilWarTalk Throwback Thursday, 4-20-17

[James N.]

I realize this isn't likely what anyone was expecting for a CWTTT subject, but it's one of the closest things I have to a "selfie" since it was taken with my favorite small 90mm Nikon camera using the shutter delay feature. It was made during an April, 1995 visit to see the battle sites of Lexington and Concord, Mass. around the time of their 220th anniversary; I stayed at my favorite historic hostelry in the area, Longfellow's Wayside Inn. Here, I'm seated in the taproom, one of the two oldest rooms in the rambling structure, built over the course of a century near Sudbury, Mass., starting in 1703 up until around 1800 or so.

The colonial inn does have a Civil War connection, however, as the subject of Tales From a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published in 1863. At the time Longfellow was President of Harvard at nearby Cambridge and recalled day trips made to the Inn in bygone years before the war; the last member of the family that built the Inn died in 1860 and the building had been shuttered. One of the poems included in Tales was the famous Paul Revere's Ride which had been written the previous year in the wake of the failed Peninsula Campaign and successful Confederate ventures and was written as support for the then-flagging enthusiasm for the Union war effort.

For more on the Wayside Inn: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/henry-wadsworth-longfellow-and-the-wayside-inn.110640/

For more on Concord, Mass. and its literary heritage relating to the Transcendentalist Movement, abolitionism, and the war: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/literary-concord-massachusetts.109919/


Now it's your turn! Show us your turn to share an oldie but goodie!!!

 

[bdtex]

Close enough. Nice picture. I have no throwback selfies/photos anything close to CW related.

 

[Booklady]

My favorite place in Concord is Orchard House, shown here in a 2012 photo (a selfie only in the sense that mySelf is peering through the viewfinder). I've been through the Alcott house many times, and never get tired of it. Of course, Louisa May Alcott does have a Civil War connection, though for me Concord will always be a Revolutionary War town. Have stayed at the Colonial Inn there, and eaten many meals there, too; will have to venture to Longfellow's place one of these days soon! Love the taproom photo!

 

[KansasFreestater]

View attachment 133133
I realize this isn't likely what anyone was expecting for a CWTTT subject, but it's one of the closest things I have to a "selfie" since it was taken with my favorite small 90mm Nikon camera using the shutter delay feature. It was made during an April, 1995 visit to see the battle sites of Lexington and Concord, Mass. around the time of their 220th anniversary; I stayed at my favorite historic hostelry in the area, Longfellow's Wayside Inn. Here, I'm seated in the taproom, one of the two oldest rooms in the rambling structure, built over the course of a century near Sudbury, Mass., starting in 1703 up until around 1800 or so.

The colonial inn does have a Civil War connection, however, as the subject of Tales From a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published in 1863. At the time Longfellow was President of Harvard at nearby Cambridge and recalled day trips made to the Inn in bygone years before the war; the last member of the family that built the Inn died in 1860 and the building had been shuttered. One of the poems included in Tales was the famous Paul Revere's Ride which had been written the previous year in the wake of the failed Peninsula Campaign and successful Confederate ventures and was written as support for the then-flagging enthusiasm for the Union war effort.

For more on the Wayside Inn: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/henry-wadsworth-longfellow-and-the-wayside-inn.110640/

For more on Concord, Mass. and its literary heritage relating to the Transcendentalist Movement, abolitionism, and the war: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/literary-concord-massachusetts.109919/


Now it's your turn! Show us your turn to share an oldie but goodie!!!

Wouldn't have recognized you without the mustache, James!

Thanks, as usual, for all the interesting info. When was it that the Inn opened back up?

I did not know about the Civil War origin of "Paul Revere's Ride" -- although I once knew the poem itself by memory. What a classic.

 

[LoriAnn]

ETA: Why is my photo showing up tiny like that?

You may have selected the "thumbnail" option, which posts a smaller photo in the thread itself, but will open up to full size when clicked on. It opens up nicely for me. Great picture!

 

[Jimklag]

View attachment 133133
I realize this isn't likely what anyone was expecting for a CWTTT subject, but it's one of the closest things I have to a "selfie" since it was taken with my favorite small 90mm Nikon camera using the shutter delay feature. It was made during an April, 1995 visit to see the battle sites of Lexington and Concord, Mass. around the time of their 220th anniversary; I stayed at my favorite historic hostelry in the area, Longfellow's Wayside Inn. Here, I'm seated in the taproom, one of the two oldest rooms in the rambling structure, built over the course of a century near Sudbury, Mass., starting in 1703 up until around 1800 or so.

The colonial inn does have a Civil War connection, however, as the subject of Tales From a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published in 1863. At the time Longfellow was President of Harvard at nearby Cambridge and recalled day trips made to the Inn in bygone years before the war; the last member of the family that built the Inn died in 1860 and the building had been shuttered. One of the poems included in Tales was the famous Paul Revere's Ride which had been written the previous year in the wake of the failed Peninsula Campaign and successful Confederate ventures and was written as support for the then-flagging enthusiasm for the Union war effort.

For more on the Wayside Inn: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/henry-wadsworth-longfellow-and-the-wayside-inn.110640/

For more on Concord, Mass. and its literary heritage relating to the Transcendentalist Movement, abolitionism, and the war: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/literary-concord-massachusetts.109919/


Now it's your turn! Show us your turn to share an oldie but goodie!!!

The gang and me on Seminary Ridge ca. 2000. I'm the fat guy in orange. The guy on the right is one of the country's foremost anesthesiologists.

 

[Booklady]

Lots of internet problems this afternoon. @$#@&!@ Comcast.

 

[Booklady]

You may have selected the "thumbnail" option, which posts a smaller photo in the thread itself, but will open up to full size when clicked on. It opens up nicely for me. Great picture!

Thanks! Fixed it, I think.

 

[LoriAnn]

Now it's your turn! Show us your turn to share an oldie but goodie!!!

Argh, I wish I could. I have some photos from the Carnton Plantation BUT...my guy always insists on me posing and smiling for the camera. I do it to make him happy, but I just can't bring myself to post photos of me smiling at a cemetery, or on the porch where they laid out dead generals. Or in front of a slave cabin! (I think that was at Belle Meade.)

I get real quiet and contemplative. I know what he's thinking: I'm happy to be there, right? And I am. But I can't help but think about it all on a more serious level. It's not a smiling-with-your-thumbs-up, I'm-on-vacation situation for me.

It's one of the few times I'm actually serious!

 

[LoriAnn]

Lots of internet problems this afternoon. @$#@&!@ Comcast.

Us too! I'll join you in cursing Comcast!

(ETA: It actually kicked me off the net while I was typing this.)

 

[James N.]

My favorite place in Concord is Orchard House... I've been through the Alcott house many times, and never get tired of it. Of course, Louisa May Alcott does have a Civil War connection, though for me Concord will always be a Revolutionary War town. Have stayed at the Colonial Inn there, and eaten many meals there, too; will have to venture to Longfellow's place one of these days soon! Love the taproom photo!

I'm sorry to say that during my visit I didn't make the time to actually visit Orchard House, and that's the reason I don't have my own photo of it in my thread on Concord, but instead a "historical" photo I found online. Of course, I visited next-door Wayside where the Alcott's lived previously and also L.M.A.'s grave on Author's Ridge.

 

[MaryDee]

For some unknown reason, no photos currently exist of my family trip to a Revolutionary War Battlefield--that was Saratoga in the summer of 1965. Nor do I remember where we stayed. The battlefield itself and the interpretive stuff were impressive, though!

I hadn't realized the CW connection of "Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere/'Twas the eighteenth of April in 'seventy-five/Hardly a man is now alive/Who remembers that famous day and year." (Unfortunately, that's as much as I can remember.)

Comcast must be having problems out here, too--one of their trucks was parked in front of my house all morning. I have Frontier Communications, which, I can assure you, is definitely not an improvement!

 

[Booklady]

View attachment 133133
....
The colonial inn does have a Civil War connection, however, as the subject of Tales From a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published in 1863. At the time Longfellow was President of Harvard at nearby Cambridge and recalled day trips made to the Inn in bygone years before the war; the last member of the family that built the Inn died in 1860 and the building had been shuttered. One of the poems included in Tales was the famous Paul Revere's Ride which had been written the previous year in the wake of the failed Peninsula Campaign and successful Confederate ventures and was written as support for the then-flagging enthusiasm for the Union war effort.

For more on the Wayside Inn: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/henry-wadsworth-longfellow-and-the-wayside-inn.110640/

For more on Concord, Mass. and its literary heritage relating to the Transcendentalist Movement, abolitionism, and the war: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/literary-concord-massachusetts.109919/

I didn't know this about Paul Revere's Ride. My class of 3rd graders read and wrote about it earlier this year, and as we venture into our Civil War study and project, I'm going to tell them this (perhaps to support their flagging enthusiasm as the end of the year is in view??? ). I think they'll like knowing it.

 

[James N.]

Wouldn't have recognized you without the mustache, James!

Thanks, as usual, for all the interesting info. When was it that the Inn opened back up?

I did not know about the Civil War origin of "Paul Revere's Ride" -- although I once knew the poem itself by memory. What a classic.

It was purchased and reopened sometime after the Civil War, but according to the book on the inn and it's history, it was really rescued around the turn of the century by a man named Lemon whose widow later sold it to Henry Ford in the 1920's when it became a sort of prototype for what he later did at his Greenfield Village at Dearborn, Michigan.

 

[Booklady]

I'm sorry to say that during my visit I didn't make the time to actually visit Orchard House, and that's the reason I don't have my own photo of it in my thread on Concord, but instead a "historical" photo I found online. Of course, I visited next-door Wayside where the Alcott's lived previously and also L.M.A.'s grave on Author's Ridge.

View attachment 133154

I'll have to look for your thread on Concord. Such a lovely town. I've not been to L.M.A.'s gravesite. Will have to put it on the list.

 

[James N.]

...I did not know about the Civil War origin of "Paul Revere's Ride" -- although I once knew the poem itself by memory. What a classic.

... I hadn't realized the CW connection of "Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere/'Twas the eighteenth of April in 'seventy-five/Hardly a man is now alive/Who remembers that famous day and year." (Unfortunately, that's as much as I can remember.)

I didn't know this about Paul Revere's Ride. My class of 3rd graders read and wrote about it earlier this year, and as we venture into our Civil War study and project, I'm going to tell them this (perhaps to support their flagging enthusiasm as the end of the year is in view??? ). I think they'll like knowing it.

According to its article on Wikipedia, Longfellow wrote the original poem in 1860; but Tales From A Wayside Inn wasn't published until 1863. In Tales... the format has eight or nine different "visitors" to the inn sitting around the hearth on an evening in October, each taking turns telling a story appropriate to his character. The landlord of the Inn starts off with what is now called The Landlord's Tale - but it's the by-then-familiar Paul Revere's Ride, recycled for the new purpose. (The "real" innkeeper of what was then known as either the Red Horse Tavern or How's Tavern, Lyman Howe, was the grandson of a man who had been a captain of a Sudbury militia company during the British retreat from Concord.) Rather than the first and most famous verse of the poem which you quoted, it's the last one that reveals its true purpose during the equally turbulent time in which it was written:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm, —
A cry of defiance, and not of fear, —
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

Interestingly enough, at the time Longfellow wrote, Paul Revere and his role in the Revolution had been generally forgotten by the public and the poem resurrected both him and his place among the Heroes of the Revolution!

 

[James N.]

I'll have to look for your thread on Concord. Such a lovely town. I've not been to L.M.A.'s gravesite. Will have to put it on the list.

The link is at the top of the page, but I'll repeat it here: https://www.civilwartalk.com/threads/literary-concord-massachusetts.109919/

 

[MaryDee]

What puzzles me--would anyone (even "hardly a man") have been alive in 1862 who would have been old enough in 1775 to remember those events? That's why I always thought the poem must have been written quite a bit earlier.

Ah well, poetic license!

 

[James N.]

What puzzles me--would anyone (even "hardly a man") have been alive in 1862 who would have been old enough in 1775 to remember those events?

Yes - there were a handful left, and around that time an enterprising photographer or two set out to record their images for posterity. So you can find maybe a dozen actual photographs of old men in their 90's who had been some of the young boys who fought the Revolution!

 

[Jimklag]

View attachment 133153 View attachment 133153

View attachment 133141 The gang and me on Seminary Ridge ca. 2000. I'm the fat guy in orange. The guy on the right is one of the country's foremost anesthesiologists.

View attachment 133141 The gang and me on Seminary Ridge ca. 2000. I'm the fat guy in orange. The guy on the right is one of the country's foremost anesthesiologists.

On the same trip as the previous post in 2000, we visited Tom's house. The giant tulip poplars framing the house are still stunning.