e-Newsletter | January 20, 2023
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Newburyport’s Airship Commander:
Charles Gray “Petit” Little
Part I: “Blimp, Blown to Sea”
by Tom Bateman and Bethany Groff Dorau
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Some of you, our illustrious readers, are familiar with Henry Bailey Little, a Newburyport banker who lived for 106 years and was involved in nearly every business endeavor and civic and charitable organization in town. We trust that all of you are familiar with his great-grandson, former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. But during and just after World War I, the member of the Little family who was most often in the news was Henry Bailey’s son and Governor Baker’s great-uncle, Charles Gray Little. |
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Henry Bailey Little, age 101, in 1951; His son, Charles Gray Little, somewhat younger, around 1898. |
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Charles Gray Little, born July 9, 1895, was the eighth of nine children born to Henry Bailey Little and Frances (Fanny) Gray, both descendants of long-established Old Newbury families though Fanny was born in Worcester where her father had a law practice. H.B. Little was born at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm in Newbury. By the time Charles was born, the Little family was firmly established on High Street, living first at 215 High and later moving to 227 High. Charles had two older brothers, Edward and Leon (another two brothers, Allen and John, had died young), and three sisters, Eleanor, Josephine and Nancy (another sister, Marion, died in infancy). The family shared their home in 1900 with at least two resident, Irish-born servants, Nellie Casey and Margaret Ryan, and other day laborers to meet the needs of a large family and a substantial home. Charles attended the prestigious Noble and Greenough School, and then went on to Harvard. |
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From CG Little’s emergency passport application, we have this wonderful description of his “square” chin and “long” face.
In July 1914, still a student at Harvard, Charles set off for London. By the time he arrived, Europe was convulsing. Just ten days before Charles left for England, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was assassinated by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, setting off a chain of events that led, one month later, to the Austria-Hungarian declaration of war on Serbia on July 28, 1914, and the beginning of World War I. As Great Britain began frantic war preparations, Charles just wanted to get home. On August 14, 1914, he visited the U.S. Embassy in London and filed for an emergency passport. He was back in New York via Liverpool by August 23 on the RMS Campania, an old Cunard ocean liner that later did service in the Royal Navy as a converted aircraft carrier.
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The now HMS Campania, the ship on which CG Little fled back home, in service in World War I as one of the first aircraft carriers (note the plane in the water to its left).
Charles’ older brother, Leon, seven years his senior, was the first to join the Navy. In May, 1915, Leon M. Little is listed as one of the 24 cadets of the newly formed officer cadet corps of the Massachusetts Naval Militia. He was an ensign by 1916 and ended the war as a lieutenant. Leon’s little brother Charles seems to have spent the first two years of the war finishing college at Harvard and coming back to Newburyport. The 1916 directory lists him as a boarder at his parents’ house at 227 High (those of us with college kids can relate). Of course, the United States was not yet involved in the war – officially at least – until April, 1917. One month later, on May 9, 1917, with a draft looming, Charles travelled to the Boston Navy Yard and enlisted.
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Charles Gray Little’s official Navy portrait, c. 1917. Courtesy of Alex Baker, his great-nephew. The French award, the Brevet de Pilote de Dirigible.
Charles Gray Little began his military service with a posting to the Naval Air Station in Akron, Ohio, where he was commissioned an Ensign on October 31, 1917. He left for service in France on November 12, where he served at various Naval Air Stations until his promotion to Lieutenant and Senior Flight Commander in March, 1918. Charles was no prop-plane flying ace, however. His service was as the commander of a dirigible, perhaps less celebrated but no less dangerous than its streamlined cousin.
Dirigibles were slow-moving, engine-powered balloons, some over 700 feet long. They were difficult to steer and easy for aircraft to target, but they were excellent for detailed reconnaissance, and they could carry men, machine guns, and tons of bombs. The Germans had perfected the dirigible in the form of the Zeppelin, and understood that, more than actual firepower, these massive airships had the ability to terrify civilians as they blocked out the sun over England and dropped their massive payload, a less-lethal foreshadowing of the Blitz that followed three decades later.
Lieutenant Charles Gray Little was not dropping bombs over German cities, but he was part of a coordinated effort to support the Allies by protecting troops and supplies and providing reconnaissance information. Charles won the Navy Cross, for “extraordinary heroism as Commanding Officer and Pilot of a dirigible engaged in patrol and convoy flights in connection with operations against enemy forces in the French theater of operations from November 1917 to March 1919. ---By his aeronautical skills, cool courage, and, inspiring devotion to duty, Lieutenant Little fulfilled an extremely important, exacting and hazardous assignment.” The French also recognized his service, awarding him the Brevet de Pilote de Dirigible on April 21, 1918. During the war, Charles was given the nickname “Petit”, a play on his last name in French. It stuck.
Unlike his brother Leon, who returned to banking after the Armistice of 1918, Charles remained in naval service, convinced that dirigibles were the weapon of the future, and caught up in an international dirigible craze. The Daily Mail, a British newspaper had established a prize of 10,000 pounds for the first airship to fly across the Atlantic.
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The C-5 dirigible prepares to leave Montauk Point in spring 1919
Cape May, New Jersey, was the home base for the C-5, a 196-foot flexible hydrogen blimp constructed by the Goodyear Aerospace Corporation, a branch of the famed tire and rubber company that specialized in dirigible construction. The C-5 was a quarter the size of some of the massive dirigibles Charles had piloted during the war and carried a crew of four. It was considered the pinnacle of dirigible technology at the time, and in May, 1919, with Charles Gray Little as the second in command, it set out to break a world record and win the prize.
On 14 May 1919, the C-5 left Montauk Point, New York, en route to Newfoundland, where it would attempt the trans-Atlantic crossing. Though the day was clear and the airship initially made good time, the crew battled a storm off the coast of Labrador and the C-5 was blown off course. Charles and the other three crew members, all experienced airmen, were thrown around the command bay so severely that they all became airsick. The engines repeatedly stalled and had to be restarted and their navigation equipment failed. The airship was lost somewhere over Newfoundland, but managed to make voice contact with U.S. Navy cruiser Chicago. With the help of the Chicago, the C-5 was able to orient itself to the Colonial Railroad, which ended at Newfoundland’s capital, St. John’s. The dirigible finally landed safely at 11:00 a.m. on May 16. The commander, Lieutenant Commander Coll, described the journey as the roughest trip he had ever taken, and the exhausted crew was “conveyed by motor cars to the warship (Chicago) where they were fed and rested.”
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New York Times, May 16, 1919, page 1, column 8. |
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There was no rest for Charles Gray Little, however. The New York Times told the story on its front page. “The blimp had been anchored at her grounds, but strong winds made it exceedingly difficult to manage her, and when the breeze changed at 4:00 o'clock, it became evident that extra precautions would have to be taken to ensure her safety. About 100 men from the cruiser Chicago were holding her down with manned ropes in addition to her anchors, fixed in the earth, and Lieutenant Little, who was in charge of the operations, proposed to partly deflate the craft and thus lessen the strain on her moorings… In response to an order from Lieutenant Little, who pulled a cord connected with the safety panel to deflate the gas bag, the men relaxed their hold on the ropes, but the cord broke in Lieutenant Little's hand and the dirigible, relieved of the strain, broke her anchor moorings and began to ascend skyward. Little ordered two mechanics, Boyne and Lynch, who were in the machine with him, to jump, and he followed them just in time to prevent going up with the balloon. A strong easterly wind quickly sent the dirigible out over the hills and the ocean, to the amazement of thousands of watching citizens, who imagined for a time that the transatlantic flight was being attempted. By sundown, she had passed from sight.”
Charles Gray Little jumped from the C-5 when it was some thirty feet in the air (reports placed the jump at 25, 30, and 40 feet), breaking his ankle and horrifying the assembled spectators. The C-5 was never seen again.
Join us for the next installment, where Charles Gray Little finds love with a Jersey girl and tragedy strikes in the skies over England.
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"Bread and Roses": The Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912
Thursday, January 26, 7 p.m.
Museum of Old Newbury, 98 High St.
In January 1912, nine days after striking workers had shuttered the Merrimack River valley’s textile mills, Lawrence city police arrested seven strike leaders, including a Syrian-born tailor, whom they charged with conspiracy to dynamite the mills. Sam Marad stitches together a vivid tableau of that historic drama and its pivotal role in the famed nine-week “Bread and Roses” Strike. It’s a tale of turpitude with a surprising twist, a story that Sam has uncovered through his study of archival records, contemporaneous newspaper reports, and his family’s mementos of their Syrian ancestor, Farris Marad.
Sam Marad, a senior at The Governor’s Academy from Andover, is keen to learn about his family’s history. In his A.P. U.S. History class last year, Sam chose to investigate his great-grandfather’s central role in the 1912 “Bread and Roses” strike of mill workers in Lawrence, MA.
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"Sailing to Freedom:
Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad"
Friday, February 24, 2023, 7 p.m.
Museum of Old Newbury, 98 High Street
Sailing to Freedom will highlight little-known stories and describe the less-understood maritime side of the Underground Railroad, including the impact of African Americans’ paid and unpaid waterfront labor. This talk will reconsider and contextualize how escapes were managed along the East Coast, moving from the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland to safe harbor in northern cities such as Philadelphia, New York, New Bedford, and Boston. While scholarship on the Underground Railroad has focused almost exclusively on overland escape routes from the antebellum South, this new research expands our understanding of how freedom was achieved by sea and what the journey looked like for many African Americans.
Dr. Timothy Walker, Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, is a scholar of maritime history, colonial overseas expansion, and trans-oceanic slave trading. Walker is a guest investigator of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a contributing faculty member of the Munson Institute of Maritime Studies, and Director of the NEH “Landmarks in American History” workshops series, titled “Sailing to Freedom: New Bedford and the Underground Railroad” (2011–2022).
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Woman on the MOON
...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director
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Kevin O’Connor of This Old House at the Museum of Old Newbury
This Old House Visits Our Old House
On February 1, 2022, the producer and director of This Old House called the Museum to ask me some questions that had arisen as the team prepared for work and filming at 44 Oakland Street. That phone call led to a Zoom meeting, then another. The house was a mystery, and the team was curious about what we could find out about the people who lived there. The researchers at the Museum got to work sleuthing out the story behind the house. What we uncovered was a rich and unexpected history of a little-documented life.
Meet Hannah Twomey. I wish I could show you a picture. What I can show you is the first time her name appears on a Newburyport census, in 1880. She is 20 years old, a servant in the household of Caroline Johnson on Federal Street. From the 1900 census we learn that she arrived from Ireland as a 15-year-old.
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Hannah Twomey (also spelled Toomey in several sources) spent most of her life living in the homes of her employers, but on August 7, 1889, just shy of her thirtieth birthday, she bought a piece of land from John Casey on Oakland Street. Sources are somewhat hazy about when the house was built, but we know that a house is there by 1892, with directories listing Byron S. Hatch, silversmith, as a tenant at 44 Oakland Street from 1892-1898, joined by his brother George H. Hatch, clerk, in 1898.
Over the next four decades, the house is home to a variety of family configurations and professions, most connected to the industries that had steadily moved west from downtown and were now stretched along the Merrimack River along the bottom of Oakland Street. From 1902-1925, Fred H. Stover, iron moulder, was listed, joined by Ernest Stover, shoe-cutter from 1904-1925 and Bertha T. Stover, stenographer, in 1912. Another moulder, Thomas Bruce, was in residence from 1927-1935, and from 1937-1939, C. Henry Kelleher, chauffer, lived there with his family. We can assume that other tenants came and went, and that the house was sometimes divided between multiple families, as the designation “rear” is sometimes used.
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The 1912 directory lists Hannah Twomey at 20 Fruit Street while across town... |
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four members of the Stover family are living at Hannah's house at 44 Oakland St.
What we know, is that Hannah Twomey did NOT live at 44 Oakland Street during her lifetime. As we followed her through the directories and other records, we found her living and working as a servant at prestigious addresses on Federal, High, and Fruit Streets, as a cook at the “Old Ladies Home”. When not living in service, she helped her sister Nora’s family with their grocery business, and lived with them on Carter Street.
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Hannah Twomey was a challenge to research. Her name was common in both Ireland and Newburyport and she lived where she worked rather than in the house she owned. We looked for a record of her death, but came up empty. Intrepid researcher, assistant director Kristen Fehlhaber, was on the case, and after an exhaustive search, she found the estate of Johanna Twomey being settled in 1937. Board member Jane Wild helped to understand the probate records, which split her estate between two siblings in Ireland and two in Newburyport. Searching Newburyport deaths year by year, we eventually found a Johanna Twomey dying in 1934; a quick walk to Newburyport City Hall and$25 gave us her death certificate. She died on April 5, 1934 at her sister's house after a ten day illness. |
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Hannah Twomey’s July, 1937 probate notice offered the biggest clue, listing her as both Hannah and Johanna; this led to finding her 1934 death certificate, obtained from city hall
In 1939, five years after her death, 44 Oakland Street was sold to Lawrence & Mary Twomey by Hannah Twomey’s siblings. While it is natural to assume that these families were related, no evidence has been found, and the house was sold at roughly market rate. Lawrence “Larry” Twomey worked at Leary’s Package Store and had owned the Park Lunch restaurant on the corner of Kent and Merrimac Street since 1933 or 1934.
This Old House came to the museum to film in mid-March. I was NOT a natural. I could not remember what I had just said when asked to do a take a second time. My neck and my ears went bright red, and I repeatedly referred to host Kevin O'Connor as Kevin Connell. Despite all this, the entire experience was wonderful. Apparently I was not the first nervous civilian to flub her lines on the show, and everyone was extremely patient, including the homeowner, Melissa, who was a seasoned cast member by this point.
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This Old House Cameraman Steve D'Onofrio and I ham it up at the wrap party with my husband James Dorau.
It helped a great deal that the head cameraman and I have mutual friends and that I worked with one of the producers years ago at Historic New England. And, of course, Kim Turner, Newburyport’s Manager of Special Projects at City Hall, and a longtime friend, was on two seasons of the show as a landscape designer. It also helps that the dining room of the Cushing House, whatever nonsense is occurring within it, is stunning from every angle.
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This Old House host Kevin O’Conner holds the elusive death certificate of Hannah Twomey while I chat with homeowner Melissa during filming.
This Old House came back a month later to film again, and it was a joyous reunion. I think I finally got the hang of it, though much of that visit wound up on the cutting room floor.
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Host Kevin, producer and director Adam, and yours truly on the boardwalk on a cold, damp day in April.
In addition to the national visibility that our appearance on the show affords the Museum of Old Newbury, it was personally deeply gratifying for me. My dad and I watched This Old House together for years, back in the days when you had to block off the time and rush to the tv to see Norm and Bob. Upon hearing this at the wrap party in August, Charlie Silva of Silva Brothers' Construction ran out to his car and gave me a shirt for my dad, which he wears, along with his Silva Bros. hat, while he reads This Old House magazine. And Kevin, who sat through multiple retakes and had to shake my clammy hand over and over again, turned out to be just as funny, happy, and kind as he seems on television.
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My dad is sporting his new favorite shirt, courtesy of Charlie Silva.
The most gratifying part of the experience for me, however, was talking about (Jo)Hannah Twomey. In a city long associated with Federal Houses, old English families, and the sea, this plucky woman worked hard to make a life for herself here, invested in real estate at just the right time, and helped to support her family in life and in death, even as she disappeared down the back stairs and into the kitchens of the grand houses of Newburyport’s elite. I will never forget her, and it was my great honor to bring her alive, in a small way, to a national audience. I am eternally grateful to This Old House for the opportunity to do her this service.
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Last night, the Port Tavern was filled with fans of Newburyport history for a live viewing of This Old House. |
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Something Is Always Cooking... |
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Red Lentil Soup
Red lentils cook quickly - this soup can be ready in about 45 minutes. This recipe was published in 2008, so I guess I've been making it for 15 years, as I have the original newspaper tucked in a cookbook. The only change I make is to sometimes leave out the cayenne. From the New York Times. -Kristen Fehlhaber
3 T. olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 T. tomato paste
1 t. ground cumin
1/4 t. kosher salt plus more to taste
1/4 t. black pepper
Pinch of chili powder or cayenne, to taste
4 cups broth (veggie or chicken)
2 cups water
1 cup red lentils
1 large carrot, peeled and diced
Juice of 1/2 lemon
3 T. chopped cilantro or parsley
Saute the garlic and onion about 4 minutes. Add tomato paste, cumin, salt, pepper and chili powder and saute an additional 2 minutes. Add broth, 2 cups of water, lentils and carrot. Bring to a simmer, then partly cover pot and turn heat to medium low. Simmer until lentils are soft, about 30 minutes. Blend half of the soup, reheat if necessary, and stir in lemon juice and cilantro. Drizzle with olive oil and dust with chili powder, if desired. Enjoy!
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Click the image to do the puzzle |
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"James K. Allen balloon being filled at 275 High St., Newburyport for the 2nd fair." 1890s.
Notice the weights holding down the balloon and the fire box creating hot air.
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Museum e-Newsletter made possible through the
generosity of our sponsors:
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Museum of Old Newbury
98 High Street
Newburyport, MA 01950
978-462-2681
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