Eben Norton Horsford, the Northmen, and the Founding of Massachusetts RICHARD R. JOHN

The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past — as it is to some extent a fiction of the present — the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology. —Henry David Thoreau, "Walking"

On a grassy knoll overlooking the Charles River near Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one can find a commemorative stone tablet with a curious inscription. Here once stood a house of Leif Erikson's, or so we are told. The inscription is so authoritative, and the tablet itself so sim- ilar to the myriad historical markers in the immediate vicinity, that it has doubtless been taken at face value by many of the Eben Norton Horsford countless passersby who have paused to make it out. After all, so many famous people have lived in Cambridge at one time

117 118 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford 119

or another that it would hardly seem remarkable if Leif Erik- The Erikson tablet, it turns out, was the work of neither son had, too. Yet those with at least a passing acquaintance a crank nor a fraud. Rather, it was the gift of Eben Norton with the byways of early American history are bound to find Horsford (1818-93), an industrial entrepreneur and one- this inscription more than a little odd. Though there is wide- time Harvard professor who is probably best known today as spread agreement that Norse voyagers could conceivably have the inventor of Rumford's baking powder, an artificial leav- landed somewhere in New England in the eleventh century, ening agent used in baking. At the time of his death, Hors- there is no proof that their landfall was in Massachusetts, ford was among the eminent chemists of his generation. Yet much less on a particular patch of earth in West Cambridge it was as an archaeologist that he hoped to gain his most 1 on the left bank of the Charles. enduring renown.3 This curious tablet first came to my attention in the early In the last years of his life, Horsford became convinced 1980s, when I was a resident fellow at the Cambridge His- that he had discovered incontrovertible proof of the existence torical Society, which happened to be just down the street. As of an extensive Norse settlement in Massachusetts that ante- a graduate student in American civilization, I quite naturally dated the settlements of the Pilgrims and Puritans by more found its inscription intriguing and set out to discover what I than six hundred years. It was in conjunction with this dis- could about its installation. This essay brings together my covery that he commissioned the Erikson tablet as well as sev- findings. Intended less as an exercise in retrospective social eral similar commemorative markers in Cambridge, Water- psychology than in cultural history, it seeks above all to town, and the surrounding towns.4 In addition, Horsford explore why the idea of a Norse settlement in Massachusetts underwrote the publication of a series of lavishly illustrated 2 could once have seemed a matter of such pressing concern. books and went so far as to hire his son-in-law to erect a thir- ty-five-foot-high replica of a Norse fort, complete with a scenic overlook. The fort, handsomely restored by the Metro- politan Park Commission, remains in Newton's Norumbega Park, where, like the Erikson tablet, it still tempts the curious.5 Horsford's initial interest in the Northmen was spurred by a chance acquaintance with the celebrated Norwegian vio- linist Ole Bull.6 Horsford met Bull sometime around 1870 during one of Bull's extended visits to Cambridge, and the two men soon became close friends.7 As a Norwegian nation- alist, Bull took enormous pride in Leif Erikson — whom, with pardonable exaggeration, he hailed as a fellow Norwegian — and the two men spent many a happy hour discussing how the celebrated Northman might have found his way up the Charles.8 Horsford would already have known about the pos- sibility of a Norse landfall in Massachusetts, since local poets and antiquarians had discussed this theme for almost half a century.9 But it was Bull who persuaded him to set the record straight. Tablet marking the probable site ofErikson's house in Cambridge 120 Richard R. John

Bull's inspiration furnished the backdrop for Horsford's first major foray into Norse history: the erection of an ideal- ized statue of Leif Erikson. Prior to Bull's death in 1880, he had worked tirelessly to build an Erikson statue somewhere in the United States, and by 1887 Horsford had helped raise the funds necessary to win the honor for Boston. Though Hors- ford had figured prominently in the planning of this project and gave the principal address at its dedication, he was by no means its only distinguished backer. The Erikson statue also had the support of a host of local luminaries, including the mayor of Boston, the governor of Massachusetts, and the poets James Russell Lowell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.10 Notwithstanding this impressive base of support, the pro- ject did not go unopposed. Among its most determined crit- ics were the officers of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who complained that it constituted an affront to the memo- ry of the Pilgrims and the Puritans, since it implied that they had not been the original founders of the state. It looked for a time as if the historical society might prevail. Though sup- porters of the project secured the necessary financing to erect the Erikson statue near the heart of the central business dis- trict in what is now Government Center, at the last moment their principal backer withdrew, presumably because of pres- sure from the opposition. In the end, however, even the Massachusetts Historical Society proved powerless to block the installation of the Erikson statue, which stands to this day on Commonwealth Avenue near Charlesgate East in what was then the city's western fringe. It might seem inevitable that Horsford, having backed the statue, would soon throw himself into the search for possible Norse sites. In fact, however, he approached the subject in a decidedly skeptical spirit. In his Erikson statue address, he took pains to distinguish his approach to the Norse voyages from those of earlier Norse enthusiasts and heaped special scorn on writers who traced a Norse ancestry for such curiosi- ties as the Stone Tower in Newport, Rhode Island." In the 122 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford 123

following years, when he set about to investigate the historic- topography, artificial structures, to which description dating ity of the Norse voyages, he did his best to avoid making a back nine hundred years fits to-day, without a wanting ele- similar mistake. ment, cannot apply to two groups of entities. A little reflec- Given his background, it should come as no surprise that tion will satisfy the candid mind on this point.'"7 And all this Horsford approached the study of the Norse voyages in a he claimed, incredibly enough, to derive from the "strict con- decidedly scientific spirit. In his youth, he had studied for a struction" of the sagas.18 time in the laboratory of the noted German chemist Justus To test his hypothesis, Horsford set out to discover Liebig, whom Horsford credited with instilling in him an whether Erikson had indeed built his house on the site Hors- abiding faith in the value of hypothesis testing as a tool of ford predicted. As luck would have it, this proved to be rela- research.12 As a chemistry professor, Horsford introduced tively straightforward, as the site turned out to be a mere Liebig's methods to a generation of Harvard undergraduates, three blocks from Horsford's Craigie Street home. Shovel in including the noted logician Charles Sanders Pierce, who hand, Horsford strode confidently down to the Charles River, would later praise Horsford for having taught him how to dug a hole, and found a jumble of rocks. Here, or so he pro- think in the laboratory.13 He would apply an identical tech- claimed, was the site of Erikson's house. Horsford used an nique to what he was wont to call the problem of the North- identical method to discover the supposed site of the Norse men. As his first step, Horsford undertook to frame a suitable fort. Having deduced its location from the "literature of hypothesis; as a second step, he subjected this hypothesis to geography," Horsford wrote, he drove directly there and empirical proof. Should his hypothesis fail in a "single partic- found it on his first visit.19 Not surprisingly, given these initial ular," Horsford promised, he would not hesitate for an triumphs, he felt sure that the discovery of other sites would instant to abandon it at once.14 To this end, Horsford invited be merely a matter of time. And what a grand opportunity criticism, subsidized the publications of a number of his crit- this would offer the archaeologist! After all, Horsford exult- ics, and on at least one occasion formally admitted that he ed, there was not one square mile in the entire Charles River had made a mistake.15 basin that did not contain "incontestable traces" of the pres- 20 But how was Horsford to frame a hypothesis to test the ence of the Northmen. plausibility of an event that had occurred almost one thou- Horsford's approach to the problem of the Northmen sand years before? Casting about for an answer, he found it in went well beyond his discovery of supposed archaeological the mariners' instructions in the Icelandic sagas, the standard sites. In addition, he compiled a remarkably full account of sources, then and now, for all students of the Norse voyages. the Norse settlers themselves. He characterized Leif Erikson Like the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who and his compatriots as pious, civic-minded, "industrial adven- had broken with conventional wisdom in his quest for the turers" who had initially come to the New World to seek their ancient city of Troy by trusting the veracity of the Homeric fortune and decided to stay on as "human beings of common epics, Horsford put his faith in the historicity of the sagas. sense" intent upon "bettering their condition" and, Horsford The acid test was the location of Erikson's house. "Here is a added portentously, "all that means in its train."21 He was sketch ... of the outlines of Leif's house," Horsford postulat- well aware that his thumbnail sketch was sharply at variance ed, "or, for the present, let us say a house on the spot where, with the conventional understanding of the Northmen as according to the Sagas, Leif must have built one.'"6"I say roving marauders. But Horsford stood firm. His Northmen, must," Horsford added, "because ... movements of tides, as he never tired of explaining, had nothing in common with 122 124 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford

the notorious maritime pirates known as the Vikings, who at Watertown, but I deduce the dam and seaport and docks had conducted "predatory excursions over the then known and wharves as essential to the maser industry as revealed in seas."22 To the contrary, they were a peace-loving, sedentary, the Sagas."27 and commercial-minded people who put down solid roots in For four centuries, Horsford posited, the settlement the region that lasted for almost four hundred years. In his flourished. In the fourteenth century, however, the North- more expansive moments, Horsford envisioned this settle- men ran out of maser wood, which they had harvested far ment's consisting of as many as ten thousand people, with more quickly than it could reproduce itself. As a conse- offshoots extending throughout North and even South quence, they found that they had no choice but to abandon America.23 their settlement and return to Europe. Like the mining camps To clinch his point, Horsford turned once again to a pas- of the old West, Norumbega was a boom town whose for- sage from the sagas. By itself, this passage seemed unremark- tunes rose and fell with the supply of the nonrenewable nat- able enough: "Thorfinn had wood felled and hewn and ural resource upon which it had been built. As long as this brought to the ship, and the wood piled on the cliff to dry."24 resource remained abundant, the settlement grew and pros- But for Horsford, it opened up vistas on the past that until pered; when it was depleted, the settlement collapsed. In the that moment had never been glimpsed. As he later remi- end, all that remained were the Indians, who, having intermar- nisced, when he had first read that passage, he felt sure that ried with the Northmen, bore traces of their Norse heritage in he had not only reached the "heart of the problem" but their physical features, their language, and their culture.2" could also now "feel its beat."25 The key to the problem of the Horsford never wavered in his conviction that it would Northmen, he explained, was the wood that Thorfinn had one day be hard to find anyone in Massachusetts who did not left on the cliff to dry. This, Horsford added, was not ordi- "always know" that the Northmen had once settled "some- nary lumber, but an exotic lumber by-product known as where about the basin of the Charles."2'' He could not have maser wood, which was highly prized by European craftsmen, been more mistaken. In fact, after enjoying a brief period of who fashioned it into luxury goods ranging from communion intense interest in the 1890s, Horsford's ideas were soon for- chalices and furniture to beer steins. In Europe it had become gotten outside the immediate environs of Cambridge; there relatively scarce; in the "primitive forests" of the New World, they lingered sporadically until the 1920s, after which they however, it could be found in abundance.26 All that the became little more than curiosities of a vanished age. Northmen had to do to make their fortune was to build a The response to Horsford's ideas owed a good deal to the series of dams to facilitate its transportation from the interior widespread public interest in the four hundredth anniversary to the coast, where they dried and sorted the wood before of the European discovery of America by the Genoese explor- loading it onto ships for its final journey to Europe. Though er Christopher Columbus. Today, of course, we are far more this intricate system of inland waterways had long since fallen likely to focus on the ecological, economic, and cultural con- into disuse, Horsford believed that he could detect traces of sequences of Columbus's landfall than on the voyage itself. In its remains throughout eastern Massachusetts, particularly in the nineteenth century, however, the voyage remained the modern Watertown, which, he maintained, was the site of overriding concern.3" No single event in the history of civiliza- Norumbega, the Northmen's major port. All this, predictably tion, declared the well-known orator Edward Everett, was of enough, Horsford claimed to derive from his reading: "I do comparable significance, and many Americans agreed." not deduce the maser industry from the presence of the dam Yet if Horsford were right, this vital chapter in the annals 122 126 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford

of discovery would have to be radically revised. Horsford of Justin Winsor, the librarian of Harvard College. Most his- himself always denied that his findings did anything to tarnish tory students, Winsor freely conceded in an anonymous the memory of Columbus. As he once explained, "If it were review for the influential Nation magazine in 1888, agreed possible today to prove that the Phoenicians visited and long that the Northmen had landed somewhere in North Ameri- occupied parts of this country, or that this country was the ca. Yet only uncritical enthusiasts like Horsford could find Atalantis of Pliny and Solon, — either or both of them would "clearness in obscurity" and "decisiveness everywhere." dim, by the measure of the faintest Indian-summer haze only, Horsford's books might reveal a "wealth of cartographical the transcendent glory of the life-work of Columbus."32 Nev- adornment" and a "sumptuousness of page," but they con- ertheless, he was well aware of the revolutionary implications tributed nothing to scholarship and, indeed, were more sig- of his own research. "In view of the great interests involved," nificant in the "study of psychology" than in the "elucidation 36 Horsford mused on the eve of the Columbus anniversary in of the problem to which they are addressed." In private, 1892, "one might almost wish — say you?" that the Norse Winsor's colleagues were even more damning. "Cranks and sites he had discovered might have "remained lost for a few boosters I suppose we shall always have with us," chortled years longer."33 Professor Herbert Baxter Adams of Johns Hopkins in a letter While Horsford always assumed that his ideas would to Winsor shortly after his editorial appeared, "but fortunate- 37 eventually carry the day, he never made much headway with- ly they are sometimes easily managed." in the tight-knit and notoriously conservative circle of schol- Horsford's neighbor John Fiske was decidedly more even ars who made up the historical establishment. The closest he tempered but hardly uncritical. Though Fiske lacked a uni- ever came to an outright endorsement from a prominent his- versity affiliation, he was widely respected as a gentleman torian was probably in 1891, when Professor Albert Bushnell scholar and the author of a popular history, The Discovery of Hart of Harvard wrote him a polite note after visiting the America, which he published to coincide with the Columbus Erikson house site. Though Hart was a bit surprised at the anniversary celebration. Though he felt it necessary to take modest size of the site, he conceded that he had no special up Horsford's ideas in his Discovery, he found his conclusions knowledge of the sagas and praised Horsford for educating far from compelling. If Horsford were right, Fiske observed, the community about its antiquities.34 Following Horsford's what had become of the Northmen's cattle and horses? Why death in 1893, Hart retained his interest in Horsford's theo- do we find no vestiges of their burial sites and of their iron ries. Indeed, he went so far as to join the University of Penn- tools and weapons? Why is there no documentary mention, sylvania historian John Bach McMaster in serving on a special in Scandinavia or elsewhere, of this transatlantic trader "Until prize committee that Horsford's daughter Cornelia had such points as these are disposed of," Fiske concluded, "any established to publicize her father's ideas.35 In so doing, of further consideration of the hypothesis may properly be post- 38 course, neither Hart nor McMaster necessarily endorsed poned." Horsford's conclusions. Still, their service lent the prestige of It has long been assumed that Winsor and his historical col- two of the country's leading universities to the premises on leagues reflected the views of the public at large. In fact, how- which these conclusions had been based. ever, it may be that they provided Horsford with a perfect foil; While Hart and McMaster proved willing to entertain the at least this was what he thought. Freely quoting from Winsor's possibility that Horsford might be on to something, no other review, Horsford chided him for its "undertone of recognized historian went even that far. Far more typical was the response authority" and its "intimation" that Horsford lacked the prop- 122 128 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford er credentials to pursue historical research. "One may ask," he Winsor's position was, if anything, even more complex. responded sarcastically, "Is Massachusetts a preserve?"39 For Winsor was an officer of a university that remained, even at some, this was a highly effective retort. this seemingly late date, acutely aware of its Puritan past; he In the years immediately after Horsford announced his was also the corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts discoveries, his theories met with a solid base of support from Historical Society, which saw itself, along with Harvard, as such prominent public figures as Charles Daly, the chief jus- the Puritans' principal intellectual conservator. In addition, tice of the New York Supreme Court and the president of the he was the author of a Columbus biography and the editor of American Geographical Society. According to E. H. Clement, a collaborative history of the United States that placed great the editor of the Boston Evening Transcript, Horsford's geo- stress on the role of Columbus in the annals of discovery. To graphical society supporters found Winsor's assault outra- complicate matters still further, Winsor was a proud descen- geous, adding encouragingly that they had much damaged dant of seventeenth-century Pilgrims and retained an almost Winsor's "position and standing."40 Prior to Horsford, added proprietary stake in the traditional account of the founding of one admiring journalist in Horsford's obituary, in a clear ref- Massachusetts. Under the circumstances, it is no surprise that erence to Winsor and his historical society cronies, most stu- he responded to Horsford's ideas with almost visceral disgust. dents of early Massachusetts history had confined themselves By dislodging Winsor's ancestors from their privileged place to the "crabbed chronicles" of the Pilgrims and Puritans. in the annals of the state, Horsford challenged one of the Thanks to Horsford, however, the annals of Massachusetts defining features of Winsor's personal identity and profes- had been expanded to embrace the literature of all of sional career. Europe.41 Even some of Horsford's critics found Winsor a bit Just as Horsford's most determined critics tended to have much. The linguist Julius Olson found much to fault in Hors- a vested interest in his ideas, so, too, did his most enthusias- ford's handling of Old Norse, but he was even more critical tic supporters. Consider, for example, the remarkable letter of Winsor's implicit denigration of the historicity of the sagas that Horsford received in December 1891 from Charles upon which so much of Horsford's research had been based. Sanders Pierce in which Pierce praised the "surprising force" "I am very anxious," Olson wrote to Horsford in 1891, that of Horsford's application of the deductive method and found the "historical phases" of the Norse voyages be put on a much to applaud in his hypothesis regarding the location of secure enough footing so that they "cannot be disputed by Leif Erikson's house.43 Even more effusive was a draft of this such men as Justin Winsor."42 letter that Pierce chose at the last moment to keep to himself. Further complicating the position of Horsford's critics It had "put the thing beyond respectable doubt," Pierce within the historical establishment was the undeniable fact observed. "That Leif came up Symond's Hill seems to me as that none could be said to be entirely disinterested. Fiske had certain as a fact in the tenth century could be."44 Pierce's an obvious stake in the status quo, having timed the publica- interest in Horsford's notions may well have been sincere but, tion of his Discovery to coincide with the traditional date for the it is worth noting, hardly disinterested. Desperately in need of landfall of Columbus, while Adams had built his academic money for his sick wife, Pierce was not above flattering his career on the then fashionable "germ" theory of institutional former professor's vanity to secure a personal loan. development, which traced the origins of American institutions The response of the Norwegian nationalist Rasmus B. to the forests of Germany. If Horsford were right, both would Anderson was no less complicated. Much like Ole Bull, whom have to reconsider some of their most cherished beliefs. he greatly admired, Anderson was disposed to be sympathet- Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford 122 133 gle artifact that could indisputably be linked to the Norse, he posed," the very fact that she had secured publication in such felt sure that such discoveries would soon be made.57 Fowke a prestigious journal testified to the high esteem in which her 64 found especially convincing the supposed house site of father's ideas had come to be held. Thorfinn Karlsefni — the first Northman who had sailed to Predictably enough, given all this favorable publicity the New World with the intention of establishing a perma- Horsford's sites soon became an obligatory stop on the itin- nent settlement — which Fowke may very well have been the erary for the intrepid out-of-town visitor. Shortly after Hors- first to explore, because it had remained unopened until ford died, his close friend Elizabeth Shepard prepared a shortly after Horsford's death. Like Horsford, Fowke regard- guidebook that focused exclusively on the sites he had found. ed Thorfinn's career as of particular importance and made Entitled A Guide-Book to Norumbega and Vineland: Or, the much of this site. Here, Fowke observed in the Naturalist in Archaeological Treasures along Charles River, it featured a 1894, was the house site of the very individual who had generous selection of illustrations, a brief text, and informa- "planted the first colony in a.d. 1007, within a few rods of the tion about how to reach the sites by public transportation.65 present site of the Cambridge Hospital."58 Horsford's ideas also received prominent attention in the Several years later, Fowke returned to the theme in an early editions of Edwin M. Bacon's highly regarded Walks extensive article that he published in the American Anthro- and Rides in the Country around Boston. As you reach the top pologist. Expanding on his earlier Naturalist piece, Fowke of the hill, Bacon noted in his first edition, you will see a itemized the "points of difference" between the sites that "large flat stone with a bowl cut into it, which is exactly like the Horsford had discovered and the English and Indian sites 'blotsteinn' frequently found in Iceland near old ruins. ...A with which he was familiar and reiterated his conviction that Norse dam and canals ... we shall come upon farther along in 66 they included indisputable "evidences" of Norse settlements our walk." A few miles away was the amphitheater where the in the valley of the Charles.59 Norse general assembly met, as well as the house of Thorfinn Before long, Fowke's enthusiasm rubbed off on McGee. Karlsefni. Journeying to Cambridge to see for himself, McGee met with The publication of these guidebooks, along with Cor- Cornelia, toured the various archaeological sites, and came nelia's article in the National Geographic, marked the high away impressed.60 Before long, McGee assured Cornelia, her point of Horsford's posthumous reputation. In conjunction father's critics would all be forgotten, and the "verity of with the enthusiastic response Horsford had elicited from the Vineland" would be acknowledged by all.61 To help hasten this Smithsonian's Bureau of Ethnography, it provided com- day, McGee aided Cornelia in her repeated efforts to publicize pelling evidence that, at least in the years immediately fol- her father's work and raised the issue of whether it might not lowing his death, his ideas had received a respectful hearing be important to guarantee the future preservation of the sites in the scholarly world. If, as has been suggested, Horsford that her father had found.62 McGee even assisted Cornelia in were indeed a "rogue professor" whose conclusions fell out- the preparation of a feature article on the "Dwellings of the side the boundaries of scholarly research, he had managed, at Saga-Time" in the National Geographic magazine. Be sure to least for a time, to fool some of the very authorities who were add footnotes, McGee coached Cornelia, since this would "add best equipped to call his bluff.67 somewhat to its weight in scientific circles."63 Though Cornelia By 1900, however, interest in Horsford's theories began conceded in her article that she had yet to discover any "relics," to wane. Almost a decade had passed since his death, and it and while the accompanying illustrations labeled the sites "sup- had become increasingly plain that, barring the discovery of 122 134 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford

actual artifacts, Horsford's ideas could no longer be given the to the act directly, he was obviously sympathetic to Horsford's respectful attention they had once received. Symptomatic of implicit glorification of the northern European Leif Erikson at this new trend was the devastating critique of Horsford's the expense of the southern European Christopher Columbus. beliefs that the geographer Juul Dieserud published in 1901 Leif Erikson's landfall, Packard explained, had set Amer- in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society. "If I am ican civilization on a thousand-year mission that would cul- not mistaken," he wrote, "very few competent archaeologists minate in the ultimate triumph of "Christian Nordic stock" or historians take Prof. Horsford's extremely uncritical philo- over every other race on earth. So overblown was Packard's logical deductions or his Norse ruins seriously."68 Dieserud's rhetoric, so inflated its mingling of local pride, racial chau- critique was particularly notable since, in previous years, the vinism, and millennial zeal, that it is tempting to speculate American Geographical Society had given Horsford a consid- that his editorial might have been intended as a spoof. There erable measure of editorial support.69 can be little question that it was not: Packard later reiterated By the 1920s, support for Horsford's theories had reced- his views, in even greater detail, in a curious collection of 71 ed to the journalistic equivalent of the lunatic fringe. Illustra- essays published in 1929. Still, it is hard to repress a smile tive of this new development was a feature article that the at its almost cosmic rhetorical excess. How else, after all, is maverick journalist Edward H. Packard prepared for the one to respond to Packard's calm insistence that the Erikson Cambridge Tribune in February 1924. Intent on reviving house site would one day become the "American Mecca" to Horsford's fading reputation, Packard urged that his theories which Americans from all over the country would reverently be dramatized in an educational film in the tradition of such repair? Or, for that matter, to his confident prediction that cinematic classics as the The Birth of a Nation. Such a film, Horsford deserved to be remembered as the divine agent Packard predicted, would awaken American youth to the idea who had revealed the "design of Providence" in selecting that it was here, in the Norse settlements of Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the "radiating center of Amer- 72 that one could discover the taproot of the "spiritual Nordic ican discovery, civilization, and destiny"? ideals" that through some mysterious process — Packard If xenophobia seems a sufficient explanation for Packard's never said just how — would later reemerge to shape the lives appropriation of Horsford's ideas, Horsford's own motives of all true Americans. For Packard, these spiritual heirs to the were more complex. Horsford himself, of course, always Northmen included the Pilgrims, the Puritans, and every claimed that his conclusions were the inevitable product of president of the United States, including Calvin Coolidge — his rigorous application of the scientific method. From the whose ancestors, Packard added, fairly bursting with pride, standpoint of hindsight, however, it is worth considering hailed from Watertown, the "site of the 'Ancient City of whether they may have owed a good deal more to his res- Norumbega."'70 olutely Protestant approach to the printed word. Like the inner- Packard's editorial was tinged with the xenophobia that was directed individual described by David Riesman in The Lonely 73 then a common feature of the popular press. It was almost cer- Crowd, Horsford treated the printed word with an almost tainly timed to coincide with the passage of the highly restric- superstitious awe that worked like a mental gyroscope to deflect tive Immigration Act of 1924, which significantly limited the criticism and to focus his attention on a particular goal. further entry into the United States of the immigrants from As a pillar of Cambridge's Shepard Congregational southern Europe who had arrived in such enormous numbers Church and the son of a missionary to the Seneca Indians in during the previous thirty years. Though Packard did not refer upstate New York, Horsford had long been accustomed to 136 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford 137

treating the Bible as a practical guide to the trials and tribu- placed onto reservations. And, like Smith, Horsford spent lations of everyday life. Given this cast of mind, it required many a happy hour exploring the landscape for clues to the but a short step to apply an identical technique to the expli- meaning of the past. For Smith, the Indian ruins he found in cation of the sagas. Like the Bible, the sagas could be invest- the vicinity of his home revealed the truths of the Bible and, ed with the authority of a sacred text. And like the Bible, they eventually, of the new revelation that became known as the could be interpreted with the confidence of a true believer Book of Mormon. For Horsford, the fossils he found in such even if their interpreter lacked a firsthand knowledge of the abundance on his father's farm had no such effect. Only later, language in which they had originally been composed. In this after he had moved to Massachusetts, would he, too, assume context, it is notable that Horsford saw nothing peculiar in the mantle of the prophet and use the sagas to invest the identifying the Indian word "sagamore" as a variant of the rocky soil of Massachusetts with the authority of a sacred text. Icelandic for "saga-men," or "America" as a variant of "Erik's Horsford's Protestant approach to the printed word may land," the Icelandic word for the land of the Norse explorer explain how he approached the problem of the Northmen, Erik the Red. When Horsford was rebuked by Julius Olson for but it fails to explain why he reached the conclusions he did. his ignorance of Icelandic, he responded, with true Protestant Here one must turn to the larger contours of his career. self-assurance, that the sagas, like the Bible, were properly Horsford's retrospective boosterism doubtless offended tra- accessible to all. "All that one needs of Icelandic literature," ditionalists like Justin Winsor, but Horsford had hardly Horsford asserted, taking the offensive, "might... be printed intended it as a slight. By extending the history of European on less than half a page of the New York Daily Tribune™ settlement backward by over half a millennium — and above Given his assumptions, it is perhaps understandable that all, by highlighting the commercial motives that spurred the Horsford rarely evinced more than perfunctory interest in an original settlers — Horsford hoped to allay the "blind skepti- actual dig. He may have been quick to fault his critics for their cism" amounting practically to "inverted ambition" that was preoccupation with the literature of the Pilgrims and Puri- preventing Massachusetts from taking its rightful place in the tans, but in his own way he was no less insistently bookish. annals of discovery and to "widen the base" of its glory.77 According to Cornelia, the only archaeological fieldwork that In so doing, Horsford solved a perennial problem. Histo- her father ever sponsored involved sinking a few test pits at rians of Massachusetts have always had trouble explaining the supposed site of Leif's house.75 All this was entirely com- how the backward agricultural economy of the colonial peri- patible with Horsford's premises. He may have insisted that od evolved into the bustling industrial economy of the Gild- the most important sources to be consulted were not the ed Age. Horsford's account provided an ingenious solution. annals of New England but the "book" of "the coast and the It was precisely the sort of explanation one might have field."76 Yet his approach to this landscape had been profound- expected from an individual who had himself played such a ly conditioned by his prior familiarity with the printed word. conspicuous role in this great transformation. Just as Hors- Further insight into Horsford's motives are suggested by ford had invented a chemical by-product to improve on comparing his career with that of an almost exact contempo- nature, so too he invented a mythic past that helped Massa- rary, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. Like Smith, Hors- chusetts residents of his generation explain their origins and ford spent much of his childhood in a region of upstate New destiny. At last, or so Horsford implied, their state could York in which the English settlers mingled freely with the boast a past that was truly commensurate with its present. older Indian population, which had not yet been entirely dis- Like so many of the explorers who set out in search of the 136 138 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford

meaning of America, Horsford's archetypal American came to past. However, in at least two respects it did manage to antic- resemble no one so much as Horsford himself: a successful ipate certain themes that have come to loom large in con- industrial entrepreneur who had turned nature to profit. temporary historical writing. To a much greater extent than "Industries for 350 Years," proclaimed a plaque on the site of Justin Winsor — and, indeed, to a greater extent than most Horsford's Norse fort, "Maser wood — burrs — fish — furs— nineteenth-century historians, with the notable exception of agriculture."78 Such promotional language was the stock-in- Francis Parkman — Horsford organized his account around trade for the industrialists of Horsford's day. Yet it rarely, if the epochal encounter of the European with the Indian and ever, had been used to describe the earliest settlements of the the environment.80 Few historians today would share Hors- Pilgrims and the Puritans. Several of the photographs that ford's ultimately condescending approach toward the Indians Horsford used to illustrate his books reinforced his basic of Massachusetts, whom, in flat contradiction of the sagas, point. The factories of Watertown, these photographs sug- Horsford assumes to have been decisively defeated by the gested, had evolved naturally — indeed, almost organically — Norse in their initial encounter. Still, Horsford understood out of the stone walls the Northmen had left behind. the need to find some way to fit the Indians into the story and Horsford's notions were relevant to the needs of his day so can be said to have anticipated a major trend in the histor- in a further respect. By supplanting John Winthrop with ical sensibilities of the present. Even more notable was his Thorfinn Karlsefni as the prototypical Massachusetts settler, insistence on the symbiotic relationship between the human Horsford crafted a potentially usable past for the thousands of population and the natural environment. Here Horsford pre- European immigrants of non-English and non-Protestant figured the current preoccupation with the potentially devas- stock who had come by his day to make up such a large por- tating ecological implications of the exhaustion of a nonrenew- tion of the population. Few of these residents could have able resource. Now that historians have come to put such con- been expected to identify particularly closely with the storied cerns near the top of their agenda, perhaps it will once again be exploits of the seventeenth-century English Protestant dis- possible to appreciate the imagination that inspired Horsford's senter. Yet as relative newcomers determined to improve their quixotic quest. condition, they had, at least potentially, a good deal in com- March 27, 1983 mon with Thorfinn Karlsefni, the Norse entrepreneur. Whether Horsford himself was fully aware of this implication of his ideas remains an open question. Though he champi- oned the cause of immigrant groups like the Norwegian- Americans— whom, like Ole Bull, he hailed as the descen- Richard R. John is an associate professor of history at the dants of the Norse — he was equally solicitous of the native University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his Ph.D. in the born, who he hoped would return to Leif Erikson's house site History of American Civilization from Harvard University in 79 to rekindle pride in their "birthright." Still, Horsford's 1989. Between 1981 and 1986, he served as an Emerson Resi- account of the founding of Massachusetts was far more inclu- dent Fellow of the Cambridge Historical Society. His publica- sive than the mean-spirited Nordic racialism that Edward H. tions include Spreading the Nnvs: The American Postal System Packard would one day champion in the Cambridge Tribune. from Franklin to Morse (1995), which was awarded the Herman Today, of course, Horsford's account no longer com- E. Kroos Prize of the Business History Conference and the Allan mands assent among serious interpreters of the American Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians. 136 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford 141

5. John W. Sears to Richard R. John, January 1984, in author's pos- session. 6. Horsford, Sketch, 1. 7. Inez Bull, (Me Bull's Activities in the United States Between 1843 and Notes 1880 (Smithtown, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1982), 58, 68. 8. Mortimer Smith, The Life of Ole Bull (Princeton: Princeton Univer- 1. For a survey of the evidence, see David B. Quinn, North America sity Press, 1943), 208. from Earliest Discovery to First Settlements: The Norse Voyages to 1612 (New 9. Oscar J. Falnes, "New England Interest in Scandinavian Culture and York: Harper & Row, 1977), 2CM:0. Quinn identifies Vinland with New- the Norsemen," New England Quarterly 10 (June 1937): 211-42. foundland, though he freely admits that the subject remains controversial 10. Garrett exaggerated Horsford's role in the erection of the Erikson (p. 40). For a translation of the sagas, see Magnus Magnusson and Her- statue when he contended that Horsford was its "chief instigator." Even mann Palsson, trans., The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America more important were Bull, who had been collecting money for the project (New York: New York University Press, 1966). Like Horsford, Magnusson since 1873, and Rasmus B. Anderson, who suggested the idea to Bull. Gar- and Palsson conclude that it is "impossible to avoid the conclusion that rett, "Discovery," 102; Rasmus B. Anderson, Life Story of Rasmus B. Vinland cannot have lain very far from New England" (p. 42). Anderson (Madison, Wise.: n.p., 1915), 189-91, 206-8. 2. Wendell D. Garrett, "The Discovery of the Charles River by the 11. Horsford, Discovery of America, 24-27. As Horsford became more Vikings According to the Book of Horsford," Cambridge Historical Soci- involved with his Norse explorations, he later changed his mind and cred- ety Proceedings 40 (1964-66): 94-109, and Samuel Eliot Morison, The ited the Stone Tower to the Norse. Horsford, Remarks, 12. European Discovery of America: The Northern Voyages, A.D. 500-1600 (New 12. Samuel Rezneck, "The European Education of an American York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 67, 469. Chemist and Its Influence in Nineteenth-Century America: Eben Norton 3. Horsford's principal publications on the Norse voyages are: Discov- Horsford," Technology and Culture 11 (July 1970): 366-88. ery of America by Northmen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888); The Prob- 13. Charles Sanders Pierce to Eben Norton Horsford, 11 December lem of the Northmen (Cambridge: John Wilson, 1889); The Discovery of the 1891, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y. (hereafter RPI). Ancient City of Norumbega (n.p., n.d); Remarks at the Second Anniversary 14. Horsford, Problem of the Northmen, 12-13. of the Watertown Historical Society (n.p.: [1890]); Sketch of the Norse Dis- 15. Horsford, Review, 14. covery of America (n.p.: [1891]); The Defences of Norumbega (Boston: 16. Horsford, Leif's House, 9. Houghton Mifflin, 1891); The Landfall of Leif Erikson (Boston: Damrell 17. Ibid. and Upham, 1892); Leif's House in Vineland (Boston: Damrell & Upham, 18. Horsford, Discovery of Norumbega, 37. 1893). Horsford also oversaw the publication of Julius Emil Olson, Review 19. Ibid., 15. of the Problem of the Northmen ... and a Reply by Eben Norton Horsford 20. Ibid., 18. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1890). 21. Horsford, Review, 19. The publishing history of these books is surprisingly complex. In 1890, 22. Horsford, Discovery of America, 54. Houghton Mifflin issued two editions of The Problem of the Northmen as 23. Horsford, Defences of Norumbega, 83. well as an edition of The Discovery of Norumbega. Though the various edi- 24. Horsford, Discovery of Norumbega, 23. tions of Problem appear to be identical, the Houghton Mifflin edition of 25. Ibid., 24. Discovery differs from the privately printed edition in various respects. 26. Ibid., 24, 29. For a related discussion, see Oddvar K. Hoidal, Unless otherwise noted, all references to Horsford's Discovery are to the "Norsemen and the North American Forests," Journal of Forest History 24 privately printed edition. (October 1980): 200-203. 4. Following Horsford's death, his daughter Cornelia carried on his 27. Horsford, Discovery of Norumbega, 37. work. Her publications include "Graves of the Northmen," in Eben Nor- 28. Ibid., 43. ton Horsford, Leif's House in Vineland: An Inscribed Stone (Cambridge, 29. Horsford, Defences of Norumbega, 12. Italics omitted. Mass.: John Wilson, 1895); "Dwellings of the Saga-Time in Iceland, 30. Claudia L. Bushman, America Discovers Columbus: How an Italian Greenland, and Vineland," National Geographic 9 (March 1898): 73-84; Explorer Became an American Hero (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of and "Vinland and Its Ruins," Appleton's Popular Science Monthly (Decem- New England, 1992). ber 1899): 3-17. 31. [Edward Everett], "The Discovery of America by the Northmen," 136 142 Richard R. John Eben Norton Horsford

North American Review 98 (January 1833): 162. ford, Discovery of America, 14. 32. Horsford, Discovery of Norumbega, 16; Houghton Mifflin edition. 51. Frank Hamilton Cushing to Eben Norton Horsford, 18 January 33. Ibid. 1892, RPI. 34. Albert Bushneil Hart to Eben Norton Horsford, 8 March 1891, 52. Ibid., 1 February 1892, RPI. Eben Norton Horsford papers, RPI. 53. Anderson, Norse Discovery, 309. 35. W. J. McGee to Cornelia Horsford, 17 January 1899, Bureau of 54. Cornelia Horsford to W. J. McGee, 12 January 1894, BAE. Cor- American Ethnography, National Anthropological Archives, National nelia also commissioned reports from scholars familiar with Norse sites in Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Europe and with Eskimo sites in North America. Horsford, Leif's House, 7. (hereafter BAE). Among the scholars Cornelia commissioned were the anthropologist Franz 36. [Justin Winsor], Nation, 3 May 1888, 368. For the attribution, see Boas and the archaeologists Valtyr Gudmundson and Thorsteinn Erlings- Horsford, Problem, 5, 20. See also Justin Winsor, ed., Narrative and Crit- son. Horsford, "Vinland and Its Ruins," 15-17; Thorsteinn Erlingsson, ical History of America, 8 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889), vol. 1, Ruins of the Saga Time in Iceland (London: David Nutt, 1899). 98. 55. Gerard Fowke to W. J. McGee, 29 April 1894, BAE. 37. Herbert Baxter Adams to Eben Norton Horsford, 15 January 56. Gerard Fowke, "Norse Remains in the Neighborhood of Boston 1889, Justin Winsor scrapbook, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Bay," American Naturalist 28 (1894): 623-26. Fowke returned to Cam- Mass. bridge for an additional five weeks of fieldwork in 1895. Horsford, 38. John Fiske, The Discovery of America, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton "Dwellings of the Saga-Time," 83. Mifflin, 1892), vol. 1, 256. 57. Fowke, "Norse Remains," 626. 39 Horsford, Problem, 8. 58. Ibid., 624. 40. E. H. Clement to Eben Norton Horsford, 3 February 1892, RPI. 59. Gerard Fowke, "Points of Difference between Norse Remains and 41. Boston Advertiser, 2 January 1893. Indians Works Most Closely Resembling Them," American Anthropologist 42. Julius Olson to Eben Norton Horsford, 2 May 1891, RPI. 2(1900): 550. 43. Charles Sanders Pierce to Eben Norton Horsford, 3 December 60. Horsford, Inscribed Stone, 6. 1891, RPI. 61. W. J. McGee to Cornelia Horsford, 10 March 1898, BAE. 44. Draft of ibid., Charles Sanders Pierce papers project, Indiana Uni- 62. Ibid., 22 May 1900, BAE. versity. I am grateful to Professor Max Fisch of Indiana University for draw- 63. Ibid., 18 January 1898, BAE. ing this letter to my attention. 64. Horsford, "Dwellings of the Saga-Time," 81-82. 45. Rasmus B. Anderson, The Norse Discovery of America (London: 65. Elizabeth G. Shepard, A Guide-Book to Norumbega and Vineland: Norroena Society, 1907), 303-4, 311-12. Or, the Archaeological Treasures along the Charles River (Boston: Damrell 46. Horsford's interest in Norumbega was initially spurred by its & Upham, 1893). appearance on a number of early French maps. For a discussion of this 66. Edwin M. Bacon, Walks and Rides in the Country Round about mythical city, see Sigmund Diamond, "Norumbega: New England Boston (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898), 271. Xanadu," American Neptune 11 (April 1951): 95-107. 67. For the traditional view, sec Einar Haugen, trans., Voyages to Vin- 47. John F. Whitman, Watertown Historical Society, to Eben Norton land: The First American Saga (New York: Knopf, 1942), 154; Garrett, Horsford, 12 December 1890, RPI. "Discovery," 99; and Stephen Williams, Fantastic Archaeology: The Wild 48. Horsford, Remarks. Side of North American Prehistory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania 49. Joan Mark, Four Anthropologists: An American Science in Its Early Press, 1991), 209; quotation, 285. Tears (New York: Science History Publications, 1980); Curtis M. Hinsley, 68. Juul Dieserud, "Norse Discoveries in Amcrica," Bulletin of the Jr., Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development American Geographical Society 33 (1901): 15. of American Anthropology, 1846-1910 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian 69. See, for example, Journal of the American Geographical Society of Institution Press, 1981). New York 20 (1888): 113. 50. Eben Norton Horsford, Sketch, 3. Horsford found especially 70. [Edward H. Packard], "Leif Erikson Beat Chris Columbus to It, notable Frank Hamilton Cushing's pioneering fieldwork among the Zuni Five Centuries," Cambridge Tribune, 16 February 1924. The attribution is Indians, which, Horsford contended, lent support to his confidence in the based on the copy at the Cambridge Historical Society. reliability of orally transmitted sources such as the Icelandic sagas. Hors- 71. Edward H. Packard, New England Essays: The Challenge of an Indi- 144 Richard R. John

vidualist (Boston, 1929). 72. Ibid. 73. David Riesman, in collaboration with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). 74. Horsford, Review, 14. 75. Horsford, "Vinland and Its Ruins," 9. 76. Horsford, Review, 14. 77. Horsford, Discovery of Norumbega, 41, and Horsford, Defences of Norumbega, 3. 78. Cited in Bacon, Walks and Rides, 271. 79. Horsford, Sketch, 4. 80. William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (New York: Hill & Wang, 1983), and Bernard Bai- lyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York: Vintage Books, 1986). CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

ESSAYS ON CAMBRIDGE HISTORY

PROCEEDINGS, 1980-1985

PUBLICATIONS • VOLUME 45

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 1998 Contents a^s

INTRODUCTORY NOTE 5

REMEMBRANCE: CHARLES W. ELIOT 2ND BY CHARLES M. SULLIVAN 6

THE HOOPER-LEE-NICHOLS HOUSE: AN ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY BY ANNE A. GRADY 12

THE CAMBRIDGE YMCA: IOO YEARS OF SERVICE BY BURDETTE A. JOHNSON 30

GEORGE H. BROWNE OF BROWNE & NICHOLS Editors Luise M. Erdmann, Edward T. James, BY THOMAS H. ELIOT 44 Elizabeth D. Meyer, and Charles M. Sullivan

THE SUBURBAN ARCHITECTURE OF DANA HILL BY ARTHUR KRIM 62 Design Ellen Shapiro, Half Suit Creative

LONGFELLOW IN PERSPECTIVE BY EDWARD WAGENKNECHT 80

A VIEW THROUGH THE LENS: PHOTOGRAPHY AND CAMBRIDGE, 1844-1906 BY PATRICIA RODGERS 94

EBEN NORTON HORSFORD, THE NORTHMEN, AND THE FOUNDING OF MASSACHUSETTS BY RICHARD R. JOHN 116 Cover captions Eben Norton Horsford H. H. RICHARDSON IN CAMBRIDGE The Washington Elm, 1861 BY M. DAVID SAMSON 146

A PIONEER IN WOMEN'S EDUCATION: FROM © 1998 by the CAMBRIDGE HISTORICAL SOCIETY MOORHEAD, MINNESOTA, TO CAMBRIDGE, Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-73933 MASSACHUSETTS, WITH ADA LOUISE COMSTOCK ISBN 1-878284-46-0 by Barbara Miller Solomon 168