New England

  May 5, 2012 Super Moon above an old stagecoach stop, the Vernon Stiles Inn, on Thompson Hill Common, Thompson, CT

NEW ENGLAND

The descriptions of the New England states, including a smattering of history, are excerpts from Inn Perspective: A Guide to New England Inns illustrated by my husband, architect Peter Vercelli, and written by me in the third person although I traveled alone to many of the inns.


Many innkeepers supposed I was a woman alone wandering the countryside to resolve personal issues because I asked for no favors from the inns. Often, they asked what was the purpose of my visit. Sometimes, I said I was writing a book about New England, but I didn't mention that I was writing about the inns.

CONNECTICUT: Gateway to New England

An old New England maxim goes, "Use it up, wear it out; make it do, or do without." Over the years, Connecticut Yankees have used it up, worn it out and made it do, but rarely have they done without.


Call it ingenuity, call it being practical, call it business acumen, call it the drive to make a fast buck.

Whether you consider them shrewd or frugal, the people in New England's southernmost state have traditionally been in the forefront of inventing, manufacturing, promoting and selling things.


Most of those things have been small in size - from thimbles and flutes to clocks and guns. But the figures alongside the dollar signs have been another story. Connecticut, the third smallest state in the nation, consistently ranks among the top states in per capita personal income.


Watch Jane's NORTHEAST CONNECTICUT MUSEUM TOUR 

Connecticut is the gateway to New England. It is bordered by New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Long Island Sound. 

Although Connecticut has half a dozen industrial cities, it is hard to believe when you are walking along the dirt roads in rural areas, listening to the geese honk overhead in late September, watching the leaves turn yellow, orange, and red. Then it is easy to forget that Connecticut is sandwiched between New York City to the southwest and Boston to the northeast.


From a traveler's point of view, you have to take some initiative to enjoy Connecticut fully. If you just drive through on the interstate highways, you are apt to feel you could be anywhere in America. But leave those highways, and you'll find picturesque pockets in each section of the state with wooden-steepled villages and narrow country lanes as inviting as any in New England.


The two most scenic areas are Litchfield County in the northwest corner and Windham County in the northeast corner.


In Litchfield County, U.S. 7 from Bull's Bridge in Kent north to Canaan is an appealing drive. It takes you past two of the state's three covered bridges, the Sloane-Stanley Museum in Kent, where old farm implements are imaginatively displayed, and Kent Falls State Park, now handicapped accessible with a ramp and viewing deck. North of Cornwall Bridge the road meanders along the lovely Housatonic River, where fisherman wade in high rubber boots, and people in red canoes maneuver around the rocks.

In Windham County, drive north-south on state Route 169 for views of bucolic scenery between the historic town greens, called "commons," surrounded by stone walls and well-preserved houses from the 18th and 19th centuries.

MASSACHUSETTS: Hub of New England

Massachusetts, stretching from the Berkshires to Cape Cod, is the geographical and cultural hub of New England. It is this region's most populous state. Boston is New England's major city and metropolitan area. 

It's known for baked beans, banking, the Boston Symphony Orchestra (affectionately called the BSO), and 52 institutions of higher learning in the city and environs, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and Berklee College of Music.


When Gov. William Bradford, who came on the Mayflower, recalled the Pilgrims' landing in 1620, he wrote, "They had no friends to wellcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodys." It was not long before the Massachusetts settlers had inns, and from the beginning, the American inns provided a lot more than refreshment.




Until 1639, the only "postmasters" were ship's captains who brought mail from overseas and received a penny for each letter, collected from the sender or the addressee. In 1639, the General Court of Massachusetts stated that if you wanted to send a letter, you could deposit it with anyone you chose, but from then on, all incoming mail would be delivered to one place in Boston. That place was Richard Fairbanks' Tavern.


In New England, inns were used as post offices for more than 150 years. In 1773, a British postal inspector, Hugh Finlay, complained about the careless way letters were kept on tavern tables and bars so that anyone could sift through the mail.


In the 1600s New England inns were called "ordinaries," and they were built not so much for travelers as for the townspeople. Sometimes religious services were conducted in the inn until a church or meetinghouse could be built. Other times, the church was built first, and licenses to keep inns were granted on the condition that the inn be sited near the church.


Before and after Sunday services, parishioners gathered and drank in the inn. The idea was that the inn was a warm place in the winter to wait for church services to begin and to stop on the way home. But in the mid-1600s so many parishioners went to the inn before church began and never got to church at all that the General Court of Massachusetts ordered inns within a mile of a church to close during church services.


In Vermont, some parishioners went one step further. They took their cider to church with them: a resident of one town remembered, "I have known even ministers of the Gospel who made no secret of taking a glass of grog before entering the pulpit to preach; and many of their hearers carried their flasks of cider brandy in their pockets to church, and they were freely and fearlessly passed around at intermission, with the understanding that if it assisted the minister to preach, it also assisted them to hear and understand."

VERMONT: New England's maverick state

For 14 years - from 1777 to 1791 - Vermont was an independent republic. New England's maverick state maintained a militia, carried on "foreign" trade, regulated weights and measures, and naturalized its own citizens. Vermont's five post offices at Bennington, Brattleboro, Newbury, Rutland, and Windsor connected with the United States postal system at Albany, New York.


Not that Vermonters were united on the issue of independence. They were not. Vermont's complicated boundary dispute with New York and New Hampshire resulted in controversy. Even George Washington got involved. 

In 1784 Washington wrote to the president of the Congress that in his opinion Vermont would have to be conquered by force of arms. In time, Vermont joined the United States on March 4, 1791. Of course, a Vermonter might tell you, "The United States joined us." But, then, this is Vermont.


Vermont, bordered by Canada on the north, Massachusetts on the south, New York on the west, and New Hampshire on the east, is New England's only state that does not confront the Atlantic Ocean.


People who know both Vermont and New Hampshire often speak of them as a pair. In 1923 Vermont poet laureate Robert Frost wrote of New Hampshire, "She's one of the two best states in the Union. Vermont's the other." But a lot of people who have never been here confuse the two. The Georgia legislature made that mistake in the 1800s.


Vermont's 1777 constitution was the first in history to prohibit slavery in any form. Vermonters were so outspoken in their opposition to slavery that from 1833 until 1837 alone, 83 antislavery organizations were formed in the state. In the decade before the Civil War, the legislature passed more than 15 antislavery resolutions.


This so infuriated the Georgia legislature that it advised President Franklin Pierce, a New Hampshire native, "to employ a sufficient number of able-bodied Irishmen to proceed to Vermont, and to dig a ditch around the limits of the same, and to float 'the thing' into the Atlantic." 

It would have been difficult to accomplish, especially because Vermont is bordered on the east by New Hampshire, which separates it from the ocean.

NEW HAMPSHIRE: The world's worst recorded weather

Located in New Hampshire's White Mountains, Mount Washington is New England's highest peak at 6,288 feet. It is notorious for high winds, low temperatures, rime-forming clouds and sudden storms. The Mount Washington Observatory, a weather station staffed all year, is chained to the ground. 

In the winter the building is coated with rime, ice particles caused by supercooled water droplets that freeze on contact with an object. When the wind screeches and howls, the rime creates frost feathers that look like flags of layered ice jutting into the wind.


Since the first recorded fatality on Mount Washington in 1849, scores of people have died in all seasons in these mountains from exposure and exhaustion and from falls, ski accidents and drowning.


Most visitors come to the White Mountains from May through October. You can ascend Mount Washington by taking the cog railway off U.S. 302, by driving up the carriage road in your car, by riding up the mountain in a four-wheel drive vehicle operated by the Glen and Mt. Washington State Company or by hiking up via several different routes.



No matter how you get to the summit, you will be rewarded on a clear day with a breath-taking, spectacular view that extends 100 miles in all directions over sections of five states and the Province of Quebec.


If you drive through the White Mountains during the foliage season in the autumn, the chances are you will find bumper-to-bumper traffic in places, especially in Conway, but if you travel to the Connecticut Lakes region in northern New Hampshire, you may find the solitude you seek.


The Connecticut Lakes region is the least well-known section of New Hampshire. In this region, the rugged terrain is extensively forested with balsam fir, red spruce and white spruce. There are four Connecticut lakes - and they are beautiful - in an area largely owned by timber companies. The rough, remote environment here is unspoiled, undeveloped and often overlooked with logging roads and foot trails leading to streams, ponds, lakes and waterfalls.