Post by sader1970 on May 23, 2022 5:48:12 GMT -5
Fascinating to see some of the people with Worcester roots on the 300th anniversary of our beloved adopted city - native for some (the link will probably show the pictures of the individuals). I only knew of #7,8, 9 & 10:
www.telegram.com/story/news/2022/05/23/meet-worcesters-terrific-tercentennial-top-10-these-historic-figures-helped-put-city-map/9794463002/
www.telegram.com/story/news/2022/05/23/meet-worcesters-terrific-tercentennial-top-10-these-historic-figures-helped-put-city-map/9794463002/
Meet Worcester's tercentennial top 10: These historic figures helped put city, state on national, international map
Marco Cartolano
Telegram & Gazette
Beginning as a town in pre-Revolutionary America, Worcester has been home to several people who have shaped Massachusetts and American history since its inception.
As Worcester approaches its tercentennial and plans to celebrate its 300 years of rich history, there are some people whose historic ties to the city are worth recounting.
Below are 10 important figures who have a connection to Worcester — they arguably left their mark on both the city and the wider world.
They were selected after discussion with William Wallace, executive director of the Worcester Historical Museum. They range from statesmen to activists to trailblazing athletes.
Several are also honored throughout the city in the names of rooms in City Hall, in paintings, statues and museum exhibits.
One Worcester resident beat back racism and won a cycling world championship in 1899, while another was the first woman to serve as a presidential Cabinet secretary. Another was a 1960s radical and notorious showboat convicted of inciting a riot at a presidential convention.
1. Levi Lincoln Sr. (1749-1820)
Levi Lincoln Sr. established a law practice in Worcester after completing the legal education he put on hold to join the minutemen militia and march to Cambridge, where the militia was besieging Boston.
Lincoln's legal career included serving as probate judge and serving as probate judge of Worcester County from 1775 to 1781, and serving as the Massachusetts’s prosecutor in attaining restitution from loyalist estates. In addition, Lincoln participated in the convention that drafted the 1779 Massachusetts Constitution.
As an attorney, Lincoln's most notable legal work was in 1781, when he represented the runaway slave Quock Walker in a series of cases to secure Walker's freedom in the state. In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that slavery was incompatible with the state's constitution.
Lincoln would later serve in the State House, state Senate and U.S. House of Representatives before he was named U.S. attorney general under President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 and briefly served as acting secretary of state that same year.
As acting secretary of state, his carrying out of Jefferson's order not to deliver commissions that prior President John Adams ordered played a role in the landmark Marbury V. Madison case that established judicial review.
After serving in Jefferson's Cabinet, Lincoln was elected lieutenant governor in 1806 and became acting governor from 1808 to 1809, after the death of Gov. James Samuels.
2. Levi Lincoln Jr. (1782–1868)
Like his aforementioned father, Levi Lincoln Sr., Levi Lincoln Jr. served as governor of Massachusetts. Serving for nine years starting in 1825, Lincoln is the governor who served the most consecutive years in state history.
Lincoln joined the state Senate as a Republican and a supporter of the War of 1812. He later served in the state House of Representatives and eventually became Speaker of the House in 1820. Lincoln became lieutenant governor in 1823 and would be governor two years later.
As governor, Lincoln's office focused on the economic development and infrastructure tasks that defined his tenure. Lincoln regularly supported development initiatives and ordered the state's first geographical and topographical surveys. The Blackstone Canal was also opened in 1828 during his tenure. Lincoln also took on several road and railway initiatives, including chartering the first stage of a railroad between Boston and Worcester.
A figure whose life tracked the growth of Worcester, Lincoln developed his inherited properties to define the burgeoning city and the economic initiatives he took part in as governor led to population growth. He purchased and later donated the land that would become Elm Park.
After serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1834 to1841, Lincoln was elected as the city's first mayor when it was incorporated as a city in 1848.
3. Ichabod Washburn (1798-1868)
Ichabod Washburn is one of Worcester's most famous industrialists began his time in Central Massachusetts as an apprentice blacksmith in Leicester. He also worked for an armory in Millbury.
After he went into business on his own, Washburn began to focus on manufacturing copper wiring. He took in Benjamin Goddard as a partner and created the firm Washburn and Goddard. In 1830, Washburn developed a method for drawing wire from steel rods. Eventually, the process could draw up to 2,500 pounds of wire a day.
Washburn and Goddard would eventually dissolve and Washburn would bring in his brother Charles as a partner and eventually his son-in-law Philip Moen to form Washburn and Moen Manufacturing Co.
By the 1860s, Washburn and Moen was the largest manufacturer of copper wiring in the country. The company had a North Works operation on Grove Street and a South Works operation in Quinsigamond Village.
Through his wealth Washburn helped finance the founding of Mechanics Hall, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and other endeavors such as the Home for Aged Women in 1869.
4. George Bancroft (1800-1891)
George Bancroft could have been considered one of the greatest American historians of his era.
Born on what is now Salisbury Street, Bancroft graduated from Worcester schools before attending Harvard and spending a year at the University of Gottingen in Germany.
Bancroft had a brief, unsatisfying stint as a clergyman before entering politics and education. He established the Round Hill School in Northampton in 1823, and was appointed collector of customs of the port of Boston by President Martin Van Buren.
Bancroft was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1844. Following his loss, President James K. Polk appointed him secretary of the navy. One of Bancroft's first acts was to establish the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.
Bancroft also served as U.S. minister to the United Kingdom during his tenure in the Polk Administration. Later, he served as the U.S. minister to Prussia, which became the German Empire during his tenure.
As a historian, his "History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent" is considered one of the most comprehensive published histories of Colonial America in its era. The history is a 10-volume nationalistic ode to the American experience written over a 50-year period. However, his triumphalist take on American history has fallen more out of fashion.
Bancroft Tower was built by Stephen Salisbury in 1900 in memory of Bancroft, a childhood friend.
5. Andrew Haswell Green (1820-1903)
Andrew Haswell Green may be known as the "Father of Greater New York," but the New York lawyer and city planner was born in Worcester.
Born on a farm in Worcester owned by his family, Green was part of a prominent Worcester and Leicester family. Green moved to New York City in 1835, where he would leave his mark on the city's development.
Elected to the New York City School Board in 1854, Green eventually came into conflict with William "Boss" Tweed, head of the Tammany Hall political machine that ruled the city. However, Green's reformist approach managed to eke out victories against the machine.
As a city planner, Green was key in creating Central Park, the New York Public Library, the Botanical Gardens, Riverside Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Niagara Falls Park.
Late in life, he achieved a life's mission by consolidating the five separate boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx and Queens, into one city.
6. Marshall W. “Major” Taylor (1878-1932)
The first Black cycling world champion, Marshall W. “Major” Taylor was a Worcester resident for 35 years and the inspiration for Major Taylor Boulevard.
Born in Indianapolis, Taylor worked in bicycle shops and began racing in track and speed cycling events. While Taylor showed great promise, he struggled with racism during races. He later left Indiana in his mid-teens to live in Worcester in order to become a better bicyclist after segregation prevented him from joining the Indianapolis YMCA.
Louis D. "Birdie" Munger, Taylor's mentor, moved his business to Worcester and opened Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company with the hopes that the more tolerant northeast would help Taylor further as a champion.
After competing in several regional races, Taylor became professional in 1896. While he continued to face racism as a professional athlete, Taylor amassed records and became the fastest bicyclist in the country.
At the 1899 world championships in Montreal, Taylor won the one-mile sprint and became the first Black American to win a world championship in cycling.
7. Frances Perkins (1880-1965)
Frances Perkins was born in Boston, but raised in Worcester. After attending the defunct Classical High School, Perkins went to Mount Holyoke College and set forth on a path that led her to being a trailblazing Cabinet secretary.
After settling into a career as a social worker, Perkins campaigned for women's rights and workers' rights. In 1910, Perkins headed the New York office of the National Consumers League. The next year, she would be profoundly affected by seeing firsthand the devastation of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, a New York City tragedy that sparked a wave of labor activism.
Then-New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Perkins industrial commissioner in 1928. When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he named Perkins secretary of labor, a position she held for 12 years. One of her key projects was the establishment of the system of social security.
The first woman to ever serve as a Cabinet secretary, Perkins was a strong supporter of FDR and worked to include labor in his New Deal coalition. Perkins also served during the tumultuous period of recovering from the Great Depression.
8. Robert Goddard (1882-1945)
Robert Goddard helped to usher in the space age, but he started in a house near Webster Square.
In 1907, while studying as an undergraduate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Goddard fired a powder rocket inside the basement of the college's physics building.
Goddard's first successful rocket using liquid fuel was launched March 16, 1926, in neighboring Auburn.
Goddard's 1920 report laid out his mathematical theory of rocket propulsion and outlined the then-inconceivable possibility that a rocket could land on the moon. Goddard spent most of the 1920s and 30s conducting further groundbreaking research on rocketry that set the stage for later advancements.
Goddard’s work anticipated the later German V-2 missiles. His rocket flight in 1929 carried the first scientific payload, a barometer, and a camera.
He also developed the basic idea of the military rocket launcher weapon known as the bazooka in 1918. During World War II, Goddard developed practical jet assisted takeoff and liquid propellant rocket motors capable of variable thrust for the U.S. Navy.
In October of 2021, Goddard's childhood house in Webster Square was sold.
9. Harvey Ball (1921-2001)
Harvey Ball crafted one of the symbols most strongly associated with Worcester. As a freelance artist, Ball drew the iconic smiley face graphic to help raise morale at State Mutual Life Assurance Co., now The Hanover Insurance Group.
Born and raised in Worcester, Ball started his own advertising business after World War II. When a merger between State Mutual Life Assurance Co. and Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio resulted in low morale, Ball was brought in to design an illustration for the company's morale campaign.
The smiley face was reportedly drawn in fewer than 10 minutes. Ball never trademarked the logo.
Ball also founded the World Smile Foundation in 1999, a nonprofit charitable trust to support children's causes. The group licenses Ball's Smileys and organizes World Smile Day on the first Friday of October.
Worcester Red Sox mascot Smiley Ball was inspired by Ball's smiley face logo.
10. Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989)
Abbie Hoffman was one of the most influential political activists to emerge from the 1960s counterculture.
Born Abbot Howard Hoffman in Worcester, he was rebellious from a young age, being expelled from the now-defunct Classical High School after a fight with an English teacher. After eventually graduating from Worcester Academy, Hoffman attended Brandeis University in Waltham and University of California at Berkeley before he returned to Worcester in 1960, where he honed his skills as an activist.
After his political awakening in college, Hoffman would take on several leftist causes in Worcester, being able to draw crowds with his messages against racial discrimination and the war in Vietnam. He attacked poverty, the arbitrary use of power and the repression of dissent.
In New York, Hoffman formed the radical Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, in 1967. As Hoffman's fame grew and he became a national figure in the counter-culture, he adopted a theory of street theater where he would use high-profile satirical stunts to advance his message.
Hoffman is most famous for being one of the Chicago Seven, defendants convicted by the federal government with crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot during protests held in front of 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Hoffman's courtroom antics were dramatized in the 2020 movie "The Trial of the Chicago 7."
Marco Cartolano
Telegram & Gazette
Beginning as a town in pre-Revolutionary America, Worcester has been home to several people who have shaped Massachusetts and American history since its inception.
As Worcester approaches its tercentennial and plans to celebrate its 300 years of rich history, there are some people whose historic ties to the city are worth recounting.
Below are 10 important figures who have a connection to Worcester — they arguably left their mark on both the city and the wider world.
They were selected after discussion with William Wallace, executive director of the Worcester Historical Museum. They range from statesmen to activists to trailblazing athletes.
Several are also honored throughout the city in the names of rooms in City Hall, in paintings, statues and museum exhibits.
One Worcester resident beat back racism and won a cycling world championship in 1899, while another was the first woman to serve as a presidential Cabinet secretary. Another was a 1960s radical and notorious showboat convicted of inciting a riot at a presidential convention.
1. Levi Lincoln Sr. (1749-1820)
Levi Lincoln Sr. established a law practice in Worcester after completing the legal education he put on hold to join the minutemen militia and march to Cambridge, where the militia was besieging Boston.
Lincoln's legal career included serving as probate judge and serving as probate judge of Worcester County from 1775 to 1781, and serving as the Massachusetts’s prosecutor in attaining restitution from loyalist estates. In addition, Lincoln participated in the convention that drafted the 1779 Massachusetts Constitution.
As an attorney, Lincoln's most notable legal work was in 1781, when he represented the runaway slave Quock Walker in a series of cases to secure Walker's freedom in the state. In 1783, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that slavery was incompatible with the state's constitution.
Lincoln would later serve in the State House, state Senate and U.S. House of Representatives before he was named U.S. attorney general under President Thomas Jefferson in 1801 and briefly served as acting secretary of state that same year.
As acting secretary of state, his carrying out of Jefferson's order not to deliver commissions that prior President John Adams ordered played a role in the landmark Marbury V. Madison case that established judicial review.
After serving in Jefferson's Cabinet, Lincoln was elected lieutenant governor in 1806 and became acting governor from 1808 to 1809, after the death of Gov. James Samuels.
2. Levi Lincoln Jr. (1782–1868)
Like his aforementioned father, Levi Lincoln Sr., Levi Lincoln Jr. served as governor of Massachusetts. Serving for nine years starting in 1825, Lincoln is the governor who served the most consecutive years in state history.
Lincoln joined the state Senate as a Republican and a supporter of the War of 1812. He later served in the state House of Representatives and eventually became Speaker of the House in 1820. Lincoln became lieutenant governor in 1823 and would be governor two years later.
As governor, Lincoln's office focused on the economic development and infrastructure tasks that defined his tenure. Lincoln regularly supported development initiatives and ordered the state's first geographical and topographical surveys. The Blackstone Canal was also opened in 1828 during his tenure. Lincoln also took on several road and railway initiatives, including chartering the first stage of a railroad between Boston and Worcester.
A figure whose life tracked the growth of Worcester, Lincoln developed his inherited properties to define the burgeoning city and the economic initiatives he took part in as governor led to population growth. He purchased and later donated the land that would become Elm Park.
After serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1834 to1841, Lincoln was elected as the city's first mayor when it was incorporated as a city in 1848.
3. Ichabod Washburn (1798-1868)
Ichabod Washburn is one of Worcester's most famous industrialists began his time in Central Massachusetts as an apprentice blacksmith in Leicester. He also worked for an armory in Millbury.
After he went into business on his own, Washburn began to focus on manufacturing copper wiring. He took in Benjamin Goddard as a partner and created the firm Washburn and Goddard. In 1830, Washburn developed a method for drawing wire from steel rods. Eventually, the process could draw up to 2,500 pounds of wire a day.
Washburn and Goddard would eventually dissolve and Washburn would bring in his brother Charles as a partner and eventually his son-in-law Philip Moen to form Washburn and Moen Manufacturing Co.
By the 1860s, Washburn and Moen was the largest manufacturer of copper wiring in the country. The company had a North Works operation on Grove Street and a South Works operation in Quinsigamond Village.
Through his wealth Washburn helped finance the founding of Mechanics Hall, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and other endeavors such as the Home for Aged Women in 1869.
4. George Bancroft (1800-1891)
George Bancroft could have been considered one of the greatest American historians of his era.
Born on what is now Salisbury Street, Bancroft graduated from Worcester schools before attending Harvard and spending a year at the University of Gottingen in Germany.
Bancroft had a brief, unsatisfying stint as a clergyman before entering politics and education. He established the Round Hill School in Northampton in 1823, and was appointed collector of customs of the port of Boston by President Martin Van Buren.
Bancroft was the Democratic nominee for governor in 1844. Following his loss, President James K. Polk appointed him secretary of the navy. One of Bancroft's first acts was to establish the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland.
Bancroft also served as U.S. minister to the United Kingdom during his tenure in the Polk Administration. Later, he served as the U.S. minister to Prussia, which became the German Empire during his tenure.
As a historian, his "History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent" is considered one of the most comprehensive published histories of Colonial America in its era. The history is a 10-volume nationalistic ode to the American experience written over a 50-year period. However, his triumphalist take on American history has fallen more out of fashion.
Bancroft Tower was built by Stephen Salisbury in 1900 in memory of Bancroft, a childhood friend.
5. Andrew Haswell Green (1820-1903)
Andrew Haswell Green may be known as the "Father of Greater New York," but the New York lawyer and city planner was born in Worcester.
Born on a farm in Worcester owned by his family, Green was part of a prominent Worcester and Leicester family. Green moved to New York City in 1835, where he would leave his mark on the city's development.
Elected to the New York City School Board in 1854, Green eventually came into conflict with William "Boss" Tweed, head of the Tammany Hall political machine that ruled the city. However, Green's reformist approach managed to eke out victories against the machine.
As a city planner, Green was key in creating Central Park, the New York Public Library, the Botanical Gardens, Riverside Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Niagara Falls Park.
Late in life, he achieved a life's mission by consolidating the five separate boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx and Queens, into one city.
6. Marshall W. “Major” Taylor (1878-1932)
The first Black cycling world champion, Marshall W. “Major” Taylor was a Worcester resident for 35 years and the inspiration for Major Taylor Boulevard.
Born in Indianapolis, Taylor worked in bicycle shops and began racing in track and speed cycling events. While Taylor showed great promise, he struggled with racism during races. He later left Indiana in his mid-teens to live in Worcester in order to become a better bicyclist after segregation prevented him from joining the Indianapolis YMCA.
Louis D. "Birdie" Munger, Taylor's mentor, moved his business to Worcester and opened Worcester Cycle Manufacturing Company with the hopes that the more tolerant northeast would help Taylor further as a champion.
After competing in several regional races, Taylor became professional in 1896. While he continued to face racism as a professional athlete, Taylor amassed records and became the fastest bicyclist in the country.
At the 1899 world championships in Montreal, Taylor won the one-mile sprint and became the first Black American to win a world championship in cycling.
7. Frances Perkins (1880-1965)
Frances Perkins was born in Boston, but raised in Worcester. After attending the defunct Classical High School, Perkins went to Mount Holyoke College and set forth on a path that led her to being a trailblazing Cabinet secretary.
After settling into a career as a social worker, Perkins campaigned for women's rights and workers' rights. In 1910, Perkins headed the New York office of the National Consumers League. The next year, she would be profoundly affected by seeing firsthand the devastation of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, a New York City tragedy that sparked a wave of labor activism.
Then-New York Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Perkins industrial commissioner in 1928. When Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he named Perkins secretary of labor, a position she held for 12 years. One of her key projects was the establishment of the system of social security.
The first woman to ever serve as a Cabinet secretary, Perkins was a strong supporter of FDR and worked to include labor in his New Deal coalition. Perkins also served during the tumultuous period of recovering from the Great Depression.
8. Robert Goddard (1882-1945)
Robert Goddard helped to usher in the space age, but he started in a house near Webster Square.
In 1907, while studying as an undergraduate at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Goddard fired a powder rocket inside the basement of the college's physics building.
Goddard's first successful rocket using liquid fuel was launched March 16, 1926, in neighboring Auburn.
Goddard's 1920 report laid out his mathematical theory of rocket propulsion and outlined the then-inconceivable possibility that a rocket could land on the moon. Goddard spent most of the 1920s and 30s conducting further groundbreaking research on rocketry that set the stage for later advancements.
Goddard’s work anticipated the later German V-2 missiles. His rocket flight in 1929 carried the first scientific payload, a barometer, and a camera.
He also developed the basic idea of the military rocket launcher weapon known as the bazooka in 1918. During World War II, Goddard developed practical jet assisted takeoff and liquid propellant rocket motors capable of variable thrust for the U.S. Navy.
In October of 2021, Goddard's childhood house in Webster Square was sold.
9. Harvey Ball (1921-2001)
Harvey Ball crafted one of the symbols most strongly associated with Worcester. As a freelance artist, Ball drew the iconic smiley face graphic to help raise morale at State Mutual Life Assurance Co., now The Hanover Insurance Group.
Born and raised in Worcester, Ball started his own advertising business after World War II. When a merger between State Mutual Life Assurance Co. and Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio resulted in low morale, Ball was brought in to design an illustration for the company's morale campaign.
The smiley face was reportedly drawn in fewer than 10 minutes. Ball never trademarked the logo.
Ball also founded the World Smile Foundation in 1999, a nonprofit charitable trust to support children's causes. The group licenses Ball's Smileys and organizes World Smile Day on the first Friday of October.
Worcester Red Sox mascot Smiley Ball was inspired by Ball's smiley face logo.
10. Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989)
Abbie Hoffman was one of the most influential political activists to emerge from the 1960s counterculture.
Born Abbot Howard Hoffman in Worcester, he was rebellious from a young age, being expelled from the now-defunct Classical High School after a fight with an English teacher. After eventually graduating from Worcester Academy, Hoffman attended Brandeis University in Waltham and University of California at Berkeley before he returned to Worcester in 1960, where he honed his skills as an activist.
After his political awakening in college, Hoffman would take on several leftist causes in Worcester, being able to draw crowds with his messages against racial discrimination and the war in Vietnam. He attacked poverty, the arbitrary use of power and the repression of dissent.
In New York, Hoffman formed the radical Youth International Party, known as the Yippies, in 1967. As Hoffman's fame grew and he became a national figure in the counter-culture, he adopted a theory of street theater where he would use high-profile satirical stunts to advance his message.
Hoffman is most famous for being one of the Chicago Seven, defendants convicted by the federal government with crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot during protests held in front of 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Hoffman's courtroom antics were dramatized in the 2020 movie "The Trial of the Chicago 7."
