Was Cotton Mather a victim of 18th century cancel culture? In December 1719, Bostonians were astounded at the spectacle of the northern lights dancing in the sky, a sight that nobody alive could remember seeing before. One of the Bostonians who watched in astonishment was Cotton Mather. Confronted with this unprecedented natural phenomenon, Mather was torn. His instinct was to see signs and portents in the aurora borealis, but the world around him was changing, and his fellow natural philosophers were more likely to see the clockwork rules of Newtonian physics than the hand of God or the devil moving the universe around them. Mather’s report focuses on the secular experience of the phenomenon, but had he really changed his tune, or was he following the new political correctness of the modern era?

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/289/

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Daniel Dain is the author of an ambitious new history of Boston, called A History of Boston. A few years ago, a listener got in touch with the show to say that he was a lawyer by trade, but working on a manuscript on Boston history by night. When he shared the manuscript with me, I was shocked by it’s sweeping scope, and impressed when a bound copy found its way to my door earlier this year. A History of Boston blends his interest in urbanism and his deep love of Boston history to describe a series of boom and bust cycles in the longterm health and viability of Boston. I will ask him not only what has happened in Boston’s past but also what challenges and opportunities he sees on the horizon.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/288/

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When he’s not studying this city, Daniel Dain is the president and cofounder of the boutique lawfirm Dain Torpy, which specializes in real estate and development. You can also find Dan’s upcoming book events on the firm site. He sits on a number of boards, including the board of Vilna Shul, the historic immigrant synagogue on Beacon Hill that we recently featured on the show. He is a true Boston history nerd, and he’s an enthusiast of cities more broadly. Back in early 2021, he emailed me a draft of his manuscript about Boston history that he’d been working on for a couple of years.

We traded a series of favorite Boston history anecdotes over email. He said he liked the incident where the crew of the USS Constitution had to resort to kedging, or towing, the ship to outrun a British foe during a battle with no wind. I responded that I always chuckle over the time when Captain Stewart ordered the sails thrown aback, letting the wind catch the front edge of the sails and suddenly stopping the ship, but at the risk of shearing off the mainmast. I joked that it always reminded me of the scene in Top Gun when Maverick says, “I’m going to hit the brakes, he’ll fly right by” before dropping the flaps and letting Jester pass under his guns. Guess what?? He used it in the book, A History of Boston When my copy came in the mail Dan had helpfully flagged page 217 with a post-it to point out the footnote. magine my surprise when I got a package in the mail two years later with a bound copy of that manuscript. Dan had helpfully flagged page 217 with a post-it note. Calling me a Boston historian is a bit of a stretch, but those are his words, not mine.

190 years ago, Bostonians awoke to an unexpected light in the sky before dawn on November 13, 1833. Some began their morning routines, thinking the sun had risen, a few dashed outside to douse the fire they expected to see consuming a neighbor’s house, and some simply looked out the window in curiosity. When they looked up to the heavens, they saw an unparalleled celestial spectacle. A meteor shower of unprecedented intensity erupted in the night sky, filling it with tens of thousands of shooting stars per hour, which observers said fell as thickly as snowflakes in a winter storm. Star Wars fans might picture the Eye of Aldhani from episode 6 of Andor, a spectacular feat of special effects that allowed the protagonists to make their escape from the empire during a meteor shower that lit up the sky. The real 1833 meteor shower was no less spectacular. The event, which came to be known as the Leonid meteor storm, was one of the most remarkable astronomical events in recorded history, both because of its breathtaking beauty and its importance to the development of science.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/287/

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In King Hancock, the Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father, Brooke Barbier paints the portrait of a walking contradiction: one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, but a man of the people; a merchant who made his fortune in the warm embrace of empire, but signed his name first for independence; and an enslaver who called for freedom. Perhaps most of all, he’s portrayed as a moderate in a town of radicals. Hancock didn’t leave behind the same carefully preserved, indexed, and cross referenced lifetime of papers like our old friend John Adams. He wasn’t immortalized as the indispensable man, like George Washington. But Brooke weaves together the details that can be found in portraits, artifacts, official records, and surviving letters to create a nuanced portrait of a founder who should be remembered for more than a famous signature.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/286/

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Brooke Barbier is a public historian, tour guide, and the proprietor of Ye Olde Tavern tours, offering a boozy look at Boston’s revolutionary history. Speaking of the revolution, Brooke is our first repeat guest, as she joined the show back in March of 2017 to talk about her first book, Boston in the American Revolution: A Town versus an Empire. Brooke holds a PhD in American History from Boston College, with a specialty in social and cultural life in Boston during the revolutionary era. Her new book is out this month, King Hancock: The Radical Influence of a Moderate Founding Father. In it, she examines revolutionary Boston through the life of John Hancock, including his deep longing for connection to friends and family, his love of entertaining, and his embrace of fashion in crafting his public image.

In this episode, professor Patrick O’Brien of the University of Tampa will be examining the loyalist experience of our Revolutionary War, mostly from the perspectives of women and enslaved African Americans. From our vantage point 250 years later, it’s easy to view the War for Independence as a simple story of good and bad. The good patriots battled the bad British from Lexington to Yorktown, until we had a country to call our own. Look a little closer, however, and the story isn’t so simple. Many of the tens of thousands of loyalists who were eventually forced to flee the new United States had roots that went back a century and a half in this country, every bit as long as the patriots who drove them out. And, as Dr. O’Brien points out, many of those who left everything behind to start new lives in London or Halifax didn’t really have much say in the matter, as enslaved people, indigenous groups, and women were more or less forced to adopt the political positions of the white men in their lives. Dr. O’Brien will bring those stories to light by focusing on a few prominent Boston loyalist families.

This talk was delivered as part of Old North Illuminated’s Digital Speaker Series. Many thanks to ONI and Dr. O’Brien for sharing it with us.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/285/

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Dr. O’Brien is a historian of the American Revolution who studies British-sympathizing women and families, their experience as exiles in Nova Scotia and their return to the United States in the late 18th century. He is an associate teaching professor of history at the University of Tampa.

This week, Aaron Stark joins the show to discuss his new book Disrupting Time: Industrial Combat, Espionage, and the Downfall of a Great American Company, which chronicles an attempt by a foreign power to infiltrate, emulate, and eventually annihilate a great American company. In the late 19th century, watches were at the forefront of technological innovation, and the Waltham Watch Company made some of the finest watches in the world. Unlike their Swiss competitors, whose products were fancy, handcrafted works of art, the Watham company specialized in mass produced, affordable, and reliable watches for the masses. At an 1876 World’s Fair, they announced their arrival on the world’s stage, and the world took notice. The Swiss, in particular, took notice, and they took it by sending spies to steal the secrets of Waltham’s success.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/284/

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Aaron Stark is a West Point graduate and veteran of the war in Afghanistan, where he served as an Apache helicopter pilot in the US Army. After attending Harvard Business School, he returned to the US Military Academy at West Point as a professor of finance, before moving on to a career in business. Disrupting Time is his first book. Visit aaronstarkbooks.com to read primary sources and view historical images related to the books, including portraits of Eliza Putnam and Jacques David.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was a consummate collector, generous philanthropist, and rabid Red Sox fan. Today, she’s best known as the namesake of an art museum in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood (and if we’re being honest, the museum is probably best known for a famous 1990 heist). This week, Jake interviews author Emily Franklin, whose new novel The Lioness of Boston explores the person behind the Gardner fortune. They discuss the great romance, tragedy, and scandal of Isabella’s life, the different personas she tried on throughout different eras of her life, and her obsession with the idea of a legacy. Emily will tell us why Boston at first turned up its nose at wealthy young Isabella, but later came to embrace the flamboyant and eccentric Mrs Jack as one of our most colorful and generous characters. Emily will also describe what makes historical fiction different from biography, and the freedom and limitations that the genre brings.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/283/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Emily Franklin is the author of over 15 novels for young adults and adults, as well as contributing to anthologies on topics as varied as surviving high school and the films of John Hughes. The Lioness of Boston is her first work of historical fiction, recounting the life and imagining the inner world of adoptive Bostonian Isabella Stewart Gardner. She was inspired to write the book by a lifetime of visits to Isabella’s museum, and now having written the book gives her a new perspective on the museum she’s known so long. Emily lives in the Boston area with, as her bio points out, “two dogs large enough to be lions.”