Our river by Joe Doherty “a life in the Air”
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OUR RIVER by Joe Doherty“A Life in the Air”What was it in the skies of the Blackstone Valley that caused so much excitement in the 1870s? ( This was supposed to be Part 3 of “Blood on the Blackstone,” but I’m awaiting some further research materials. In the meantime, let’s try some lighter fare, maybe some “Barnum on the Blackstone,” if you will.) “Regardez!” cried the French Canadian lads rushing down Hamlet Avenue in Woonsocket. “In the sky! Look!” Like a tribe of wild-eyed aborigines, they scattered through the heart of Hamlet village, ducking between tenements and shouting at the top of their lungs. “Come see! Come see!”
Ladies and gentlemen! Children of all ages! In 1874, the world’s greatest showman, P.T. Barnum, debuted one of the biggest circus shows of the 19th century. “Occupying the entire block bounded by Fourth and Madison avenues and 26th and 27th streets” in New York City, the show was christened “Barnum’s Great Roman Hippodrome.” An evening at the Hippodrome was a spectacle in the truest sense. By Barnum’s own reckoning, the dazzling show “required nearly 1,000 persons, several hundred horses, besides elephants, llamas, camels, ostriches, etc.” Each performance began with a lavish parade called “The Congress of Nations,” followed by a nail-biting, palm-sweating series of acrobatic and wire-walking exhibitions. Then came the show-stopper – a tournament of “Roman” chariot races around the arena’s indoor track. Tickets to the Hippodrome sold almost as fast as they came off the press. In fact, the phenomenal sales gave rise to a new kind of circus performer – the ticket seller. At Barnum’s show, a man named Ben Lusbie once sold an amazing 6,000 tickets in an hour. Sure enough, Lusbie’s mustachioed face soon adorned circus posters billing him as “the quickest dispenser of show tickets in the world.” Following his success in New York, Barnum took his new show to other major cities. By August of that year, the Hippodrome had arrived in Boston. According to circus historians, Barnum had realized the potential of railroad travel early on. He regularly loaded his show onto custom-designed box cars for overnight jaunts into the Northeast, where the massive troupe played only the bigger and better towns. The gritty mill city of Woonsocket probably wasn’t included on the Hippodrome’s schedule -- that is, until fate pencilled it in. “Barnum’s balloon, which makes semi-weekly ascents from the Hippodrome, left Boston at a quarter to 5 o’clock last Friday,” reported the Woonsocket Patriot, August 21, 1874, “and landed in the Hamlet village, a little after 8 o’clock on the same evening. Probably no ascent should have been attempted that day. “It will be remembered that the afternoon was stormy, with the wind in the North-East,” the Patriot observed. But given that four of the five aboard were Boston newspaper reporters, and the fifth was Barnum’s famous daredevil aeronaut, “Professor Donaldson,” it’s easy to see why the trip was made anyway. “After passing up through the clouds the party could not tell where they were until about 6 o’clock, when they found themselves sailing over Medway and Franklin. The remainder of the voyage was made at low altitude, from one to two hundred feet above the earth,” the Patriot stated. “At five minutes past 7 the basket touched the ground in a field, on the farm of Thomas Wood, in the easterly part of Woonsocket. Here the party alighted amid a drenching rain, and were soon entertained by the nearest residents, Wm. M. Whitaker and James Sweet.” The average person would had enough balloon travel for one day, thank you. But a Bostonian? Rubbish! The crew voted to try for the sky one more time. First, however, they had to boot someone out of the basket: “as the balloon would not carry all the party, lots were drawn, and to Mr. Childs, representative of the Boston Traveller, was left behind. We would hope that the rain had tapered off by then, for the Patriot doesn’t say. Weather or not, “the remainder of the voyage was of short duration.” After lifting off from East Woonsocket, roughly in the vicinity of today’s Wood Avenue, Barnum’s balloon failed again. It drifted west, gradually losing altitude. “A mile distant, in the Hamlet village, the balloon made its final descent.” The exact landing site was never recorded. However, a Woonsocket map drawn during that decade suggests that a broad span of riverside meadows, owned by Mr. I.M. Bull, offered the only safe haven for the great balloon. Today, these lands are occupied by the former Lafayette French Worsted Mills. Imagine the four people in the basket, how their hearts must have raced as the balloon dropped lower and lower, closer to the Blackstone River. How high above the stream did they pass? Forty feet? Thirty? Doubtless it gave those reporters something to write about once they got back to Boston. The landing must have been rougher than the first, as the Patriot noted that “the balloon had received some rents.” Although the inflatable missed the river, it nevertheless made a splash upon touch-down. “As soon as the strange arrival was made known, the curious villagers flocked to the scene. The voyagers were invited to the neighboring houses, and acknowledged courtesies from Messrs. I.M. Bull, J.A. Burnett and D.S. Morton. According to the Patriot, the wayward balloon “was packed up, and the next morning it accompanied the party to Boston by the early train over the B.H. and E. Railroad. The distance traveled by the balloon in this voyage was over 37 miles. And so ended Woonsocket’s first brush with P.T. Barnum’s “Great Roman Hippodrome. In a way, the unexpected balloon visit was probably more exciting than the circus show itself. Ideally, the story should end right here, nice and tidy. But believe it or not, the Blackstone Valley was treated to yet another performance of the wayward balloon, piloted once again by the one and only Professor Washington Donaldson. We should note that Professor Donaldson had a rather checquered record when it came to balloon navigation. At different points in his career he had attempted flights in balloons constructed of materials as diverse as cotton twill and manila paper. In January of 1872, a balloon under his command at Norfolk, Virginia simply burst in mid-air. Unfortunately for the Professor, he was a mile above the ground at the time. Incredibly, he survived the long fall to earth. He described his experience thus: The balloon did not collapse, but closed up at the sides, and, swaying from side to side, descended with frightful velocity. I clung with all my strength to the hoop. I could not tell how badly I was frightened, but felt as though all my hair had been torn out. I scarcely had time to realize that I was alive, when, with crash, I was projected with the velocity of a catapult into a burr chestnut tree. The netting and rigging, catching in the tree, checked my velocity, but I had my grasp jerked loose, and was precipitated through the limbs and landed flat upon my back, with my tights nearly torn off, and my legs, arms, and body lacerated and bleeding. A short time later he attempted another lift-off from Norfolk. On this occasion he merely wound up entangled in some trees, with his balloon wrecked beyond repair. Donaldson’s next feat was to build a balloon he named Magenta. He and his lighter-than-air lady made several ascensions, including a memorable voyage from Chicago in which winds carried him out over Lake Michigan. Magenta lost altitude and Donaldson was dragged more than a mile through the water, coming to a stop only when the basket smashed into a stone pier and he was knocked unconscious. One wonders whether those intrepid newspaper reporters from Boston knew anything of Donaldson’s previous career when they accepted his offer of a ride. In 1873, the year before Donaldson’s first visit to the Valley, he and two other hearty souls attempted to cross the Atlantic in a balloon – yes, the man who was keelhauled by his own balloon on Lake Michigan believed he could conquer the world’s second largest ocean. A new balloon was specially commissioned for the trip. Monstrous in size, it was said to weigh over three tons and could accommodate 700,000 cubic feet of gas. Rather than a traditional basket, or “car,” as it was called, this balloon had a lifeboat suspended beneath it. The boat was loaded with provisions and great quantities of sand (for ballast). Donaldson and his two companions, named Ford and Lunt, planned to use the boat as they would a basket. And on the off-chance that the balloon went down in the Atlantic, a lifeboat would be a nice thing to have. As it turned out, the balloon never quite made it to the Atlantic. Leaving from Brooklyn, New York, it headed northwest into Connecticut where after about 100 miles it became painfully apparent to everyone aboard that Donaldson was completely incapable of controlling the monster balloon. It started to descend, skittering over treetops and fences, dipping perilously close to the ground. Spying an opportunity to escape, Donaldson shouted to his companions to jump – possibly one of the few times in history when people were advised to jump out of a lifeboat to save themselves. Donaldson and Ford dropped safely to the ground, but Lunt either lost his nerve or tarried a moment too long. Lunt and the runaway balloon careened across the landscape of northern Connecticut. A 1000-lb. drag rope trailed from the balloon, preventing it from rising any higher but at the same time keeping it on a collision course with trees, barns and houses. Finally, fright got the better of Lunt. He abandoned ship, leaping into the first tree he brushed against, in the town of Canaan. The poor man crashed through the branches and hit the ground hard. He died six months later. Professor Donaldson, meanwhile, had a new job six months later. That year, 1874, he made his first balloon ascension as an employee of P.T. Barnum. While biographies of Professor Donaldson include descriptions of his many misadventures, they make no mention of his descent into Woonsocket in 1874. Nor do they record his other appearance in our skies. Luckily for us, the correspondents of the Woonsocket Patriot did just that. (Due to an uncharacteristic gap in my records, it’s unclear at this point whether the following incident occurred during the 1874 or 1875 season.) “Aerial Visitor,” the headline announced. “Barnum’s balloon, from the Hippodrome in Boston, which left that city at 5 P.M. sailed over this [Woonsocket] and neighboring towns on Tuesday evening, between 7 and 8 o’clock. It was distinctly seen here, and at Chestnut Hill, Blackstone, its altitude was so low as to permit conversation between the voyagers and people on terra firma,” reported Patriot editor S.S. Foss. It was far and away the most exciting thing to happen in Millville all year. “The staid farmers of this rural district were thrown into quite a sensation Tuesday evening, about 7½ o’clock, by the aerial passage of the veritable ‘P.T. Barnum’ over this section from Boston,” wrote the Patriot’s Chestnut Hill correspondent. “The balloon, when first observed, was approaching from a northeasterly direction, and so low that it apparently purposed to take a look at the ‘old meeting house.’ “Passing over the farm of Mr. Estes Burdon, its living freight within the basket called put to Mr. Wm. O. Burdon and Caleb Thayer, ‘What town is this?’ and who seemed to hear the response of ‘Blackstone.’ At this point the drag rope, the general contour and the creaking of the aerial machine were distinctly seen and heard. “Men, women and children filled the roads, leaped fences, scrambled over rugged walls, and run the fields in their eagerness to be first at its pretended place of descent; and everyone believed that dead old Millville was for a while to be resuscitated. But in this anticipation they were doomed to disappointment: for discharging a shower of sand, it shot up like a thing of life, following the precise route of the proposed new road from this place to Millville … “On and on, we watched it until the shades of night concealed it from our view, and we fancied that it was over the territory of wooden nutmegs and sawdust clocks, on some message to Bridgeport, the home of the great showman. [Note: P.T. Barnum was the most famous resident of Bridgeport, Connecticut – in fact, in 1875 he was elected mayor of the city.] “We returned home to seek repose, only to dream of a perilous voyage, hair-breadth escape, broken bones, torn flesh, and nervously awaited the dawn of morning to scan the daily paper, hoping that the ready pen of the reporter might be enthusiastic in his description of a life in the air.” Off into the evening sailed the vagabond balloon, following the setting sun west. It tacked not towards Bridgeport but Burrillville, where it announced its presence in fine Donaldson style. “At about 8 o’clock the balloon made its appearance at Glendale, Burrillville,” the Patriot’s editor noted, “where its drag-ropes struck the mill of Francis Carpenter, tearing shingles from the roof. Mr. Carpenter, his brother and the clerk were in the counting room, and attracted by the noise of the villagers, came out just as the balloonists seemed to be in the act of alighting, a short distance west of the village. “To a shout of ‘Halloo, Donaldson,” a voice from the car cried ‘catch the ropes.’ This was done by several men, but they were drawn and thrown about like corks, and were glad to let go of the ropes after blistering their hands, and while in danger of being dashed to pieces against stone walls and trees. “At this juncture sand ballast was thrown out by the voyagers, and the balloon arose rapidly and sailed off to the south, in the direction of Glocester, where it landed three minutes after nine o’clock, on the farm of Mrs. Nathan Page. After packing up the balloon, the party were conveyed to Chepachet by Mr. S. Steere, where they arrived about midnight. “The place where the balloon came down was in an orchard, and there was some ‘grand and lofty tumbling’ among the trees. The party consisted of Professor Donaldson and six reporters of the Boston press, all of whom escaped harm,” Foss concluded. “On Wednesday morning they went to Providence, and thence to Boston. The distance travelled by the balloon was about fifty miles. Half of this distance was made in the first hour.” Professor Donaldson made many ascensions during his time with Barnum’s Hippodrome, some successful, some pure Donaldson. In his first year he completed trips from New York City up into the Hudson Valley and once even roamed as far as Vermont. In October, 1874, he escorted a bride and groom to a dizzying height above Cincinnati, where the couple exchanged vows. In June, 1875, he took off from Buffalo and crossed Lake Erie, landing safely on the Canadian shore. Of course, that same month he tried an ascent from Toronto in the company of three reporters. The party was carried out over Lake Ontario and dragged through the water for several miles, finally being rescued by a passing schooner. To the best of my knowledge, the Professor and his balloon were never again seen gallivanting through the skies of the Blackstone Valley. The last anyone saw of him was in July, 1875, when the Hippodrome was playing the lakefront at Chicago. After one of Barnum’s managers complained because Donaldson had cut his trip short one day, the Professor replied, “Wait till tomorrow, and I'll go far enough for you." The flight lifted off as promised at 5 pm, in winds of 10-15 miles per hour. Knowing the conditions might be more strenuous than usual, the Professor permitted only one passenger on the trip, a Mr. Newton S. Grimwood of the Chicago Evening Journal. The balloon steadily rose to a height of about one mile and started up Lake Michigan, soon shrinking from sight. About two hours later, the crew of small boat spotted it about about thirty miles off shore. The balloon was running parallel to the surface of the lake, dragging the car through the water. They tried to reach it, but suddenly it shot skyward, as if it were suddenly free of some weight. Darkness closed in, and with it came a violent storm. Mr. Grimwood’s body washed ashore one month later. No trace of Professor Donaldson, or his balloon, was ever found. NEXT: BLOOD ON THE BLACKSTONE, PART 3 (really!) © 2006 by Joe Doherty PO Box 31 South Salem, NY 10590-0031 riverwritr@aol.com Download 30.51 Kb. Share with your friends:
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