Anti-Gravity, History, Rocks, Finance, and Genealogy

HERE AT NEW BOSTON, N.H.

ROGER W. BABSON

AND HIS ASSOCIATES

PIONEERED

IN ACTIVE RESEARCH

FOR ANTI-GRAVITY

AND A PARTIAL GRAVITY

INSULATOR

1959

This traffic island in the middle of New Boston, New Hampshire hides a secret! 

Under the plants and bushes is a monument to anti-gravity.  

I have been a fan of John J. Babson’s book The History of Gloucester, 1876, since it contains much genealogy information and historical stories about my ancestors.   In learning more about the Babson family, one of my favorite members has to be Roger Ward Babson (1875 – 1967).   He went to MIT, and worked for investment companies and invented Babson’s Statistical Organization in 1904.  His interest in business theory led him to found Babson College in Massachusetts, Webber College in Florida and the now gone Utopia College in Kansas.  He is famous for predicting the 1929 Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression.  On September 5, 1929, just a few weeks before the crash he gave a speech “Sooner or later a crashing is coming, and it may be terrific.”

Roger Ward Babson was also an odd character; he founded the Gravity Research Foundation in 1948, convinced that science could learn to harness gravity.  They also experimented with theories on anti-gravity and gravity insulators.  He built a headquarters for this foundation in the little village of New Boston, New Hampshire because he was convinced it was far enough from civilization to survive a nuclear bomb in Boston, Massachusetts. The Gravity Research Foundation still exists, and it gives a prize every year for the best essay about gravity. Don’t laugh because Steven Hawking is one of the prize winners (see, he’s not just a character on The Big Bang Theory).

Another odd interest of Babson’s was the early settlement in Gloucester, Massachusetts known as Dogtown.  He hired stonecutters during the Great Depression to carve inspirational mottos on the boulders throughout Dogtown.  You can still walk through this area today and read the boulders which say things such as “Keep out of Debt”, “Help Mother” and “Prosperity follows service”, as well as marking the location of Dogtown Square and the cellar holes of colonial era homes.

A "Babson Boulder" at Dogtown, Gloucester, Massachusetts

There is a Babson Museum in West Gloucester dedicated to James Babson, the first Babson in Gloucester, Massachusetts who was a cooper.  The museum is a cooperage, built in 1658.   Roger Ward Babson is a distant cousin to me through his ROGERS and WHIPPLE ancestors.

I would love to photograph all these monuments to anti-gravity and gravity research, but as you can see below, someone has already done that.  Here is a list of all the colleges with the Anti-Gravity Monuments (none are the three colleges he founded, nor his Alma Mater the Massachusetts Institute of Technology): 

Colby College in Waterville, Maine

Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont

Keene State College in Keen, New Hampshire

Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts

Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts

Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Massachusetts

We found this monument at Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts

THIS MONUMENT HAS BEEN 

ERECTED 1964 BY THE

GRAVITY RESEARCH FOUNDATION

ROGER W. BABSON FOUNDER

IT IS TO REMIND STUDENTS

OF THE BLESSINGS FORTHCOMING

WHEN SCIENCE DETERMINES

WHAT GRAVITY IS, HOW IT WORKS

AND HOW IT MAY BE CONTROLLED

For the truly curious:

The Babson Historical Association http://babsonhistorical.org/  Museum, genealogy and other Babson information and Images, including the Babson Family Association and Reunion.

http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/2010/03/anti-gravity-monuments.html      from the Odd Things I've Seen website, this is the post that got me driving around New England looking for these monuments.  There are photos of all the monuments at this page.

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-3-dogtown.html   my blog post about looking for the Babson Boulders in Dogtown, Gloucester, Massachusetts

http://cowhampshire.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/9/3/2208378.html   A blog post about Roger Ward Babson, from Jan Brown’s blog “Cow Hampshire”, it includes a genealogy of the Babson Family.

The Gravity Research Foundation http://www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/
Try your luck at writing a prize winning essay on gravity, or anti-gravity, just like Stephen Hawking

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To cite/link to this blog post:   Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Anti-Gravity, History, Rocks, Finance, and Genealogy", Nutfield Genealogy, posted November 18, 2013, (  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2013/11/anti-gravity-history-rocks-finance-and.html: accessed [access date]). 

Stone Wall Stories - #3 Dogtown, Massachusetts

Near Cherry Street in Gloucester, in a large tract of conservation land surrounding the reservoir, you can find the remnants of an early village.   This was the earliest settled place in Gloucester, when the town grew up inland.  After the War of 1812 the people felt safer about living near the harbor, and most left this area to move to the coast.  Only the poorest people stayed behind in what became known as “Dogtown” because of the abandoned dogs who scrounged the cellar holes and shacks.  Widows, vagabonds and the insane were left behind with the dogs.

This Babson boulder marks the spot
of Dogtown Square

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Gloucester resident Roger Babson hired Italian stonemasons to carve inspirational quotations on 22 boulders in Dogtown.  At the time, the land was clear of trees, and there were numbers marking the cellar holes of colonial residents identified in his grandfather John James Babson’s “History of Gloucester”.  Now, the area is heavily wooded, and hikers have to search for the numbers, cellar holes and Babson boulders.

An antique postcard showing what Dogtown looked like
before it was swallowed up with forest

I had several ancestors and their relatives live in Dogtown.  I previously posted a story “Tammy Younger, the Witch of Dogtown” at this link: http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/02/tammy-younger-witch-of-dogtown.html

Today’s post is part of a series of stories I wrote for this week all about stones and stone walls:

Story 1 – http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-week-1-americas.html

Story 2-  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-2-stone-walls-and.html

  

Story 4 - http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/06/stone-wall-stories-4-sheepcote.html

One of Roger Babson's inspirational boulders

Wikipedia story on Dogtown, Massachusetts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogtown,_Massachusetts

This Dogtown website http://www.thedacrons.com/eric/dogtown/visiting_dogtown_gloucester.php has maps and history, including the location of most of the Babson boulders.

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Copyright 2012, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Tammy Younger, the Witch of Dogtown

A "Babson Boulder" marking the former location
of Dogtown Square

Timeline of Tammy Younger's life:

28 July 1753 Thomasine Younger was born at Gloucester
19 April 1775 - Battle of Lexington, start of the American Revolution
23 August 1775, Tammy married to James McCormick
1812- War of 1812, many Gloucester men were impressed at sea
24 February 1829, Tammy died at Gloucester

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Thomasine Younger was born in 1753 in Gloucester, Massachusetts to William Younger and Lucy Foster. Her brothers grew up to be seamen, which is not surprising. Her younger brother, Levi, is my 5x great grandfather. Gloucester was a major fishing seaport in New England, famous for the Gorton’s frozen fish packing plant and the statue of the fisherman’s memorial. The majority of men in town were sailors or fishermen, the lucky few were ship builders, merchants and sea captains, and the paupers of Gloucester lived in Dogtown. For some reason, unknown to anyone, Tammy Younger became a resident of Dogtown.

Gloucester today is built up around the harbor. However, in the earliest days of its settlement the colonists hid inland and up on a hill, away from pirates and the native tribes. When the conditions became safer, especially after the war of 1812, the townspeople took advantage of moving to the water front and built their town at one of the best deep water harbors in Massachusetts. The abandoned inland village became home to sailor’s widows, vagabonds and free blacks, who were either too poor or not accepted in town society. When the last of these people died, only abandoned dogs were left, and the area became known as Dogtown.

Some of these last old women in Dogtown were known as witches. They probably didn’t deserve the epithet; they were poor, old and had no family or husband to defend them. Tammy lived on Fox Hill in Dogtown, and she was so poor that she would lie in wait for passing wagons, and “place a curse” on the oxen until the driver gave her food.

Little more is known about Tammy Younger, except for anecdotes in local history books. It is unknown whether she had children, or what happened to her husband. It is my guess that he died at sea, and this sad event started her downward spiral into poverty. She died intestate (of course!) Supposedly money and a snuff box were found in her cellar hole.

Today, if you visit Dogtown, it is forested and part of the town of Gloucester’s Conservation Land. The streets are now walking trails, dotted with cellar holes that have been numbered to identify the original owners from Babson’s book “The History of Gloucester.” Babson’s grandson employed Italian stonecutters during the Great Depression to carve inspirational quotations on dozens of boulders. It is a fun hike through Dogtown today, to look for the cellar holes and to find the “Babson Boulders.”

Today, visitors approach Dogtown by Cherry Street, going uphill to the parking area. This is Fox Hill where Tammy Younger once lived with her aunt, Luce George. This is the hill where she bewitched the oxen struggling to carry corn or dried fish from Gloucester Harbor. Poor Aunt Luce was also reported to be a witch, since she begged for fish at the wharves, and threatened the fishermen with curses until they gave her a portion. Living on the margins of society, these women were the subject of gossip, myth and legend.

I previously wrote about the Younger family on my blog posting on January 14, 2010 in the posting “Levi Younger, Mariner and Prisoner of War” at http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/01/levi-younger-mariner-and-prisoner-of.html  

My "Surname Saturday" link for the Younger Family:   https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2016/12/surname-saturday-younger-of-gloucester.html  

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For more information:

History of Gloucester by John James Babson and Samuel Chandler, published by the Proctor Brothers, 1860 (a book of “Notes and Additions” was written by Babson in 1876.)

In the Heart of Cape Ann; or The Story of Dogtown by Charles E. Mann, 1896 - This book described the inhabitants of Dogtown, with maps showing the cellar holes

The Last Witch of Dogtown by Francis Blessington, The Curious Traveller Press, 2001.

The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant, published by Scribner, New York, 2005. A novel based on the history of Dogtown, and the characters are based on the inhabitants named in Mann’s book, including Luce George and Tammy Younger. My book club read this book in 2006, and then we took a hike through Dogtown and I photographed the boulder you see at the top of this blog post.

Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town by Elyssa East, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2009. This is the most recent book about Dogtown, Gloucester, Massachusetts.

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To cite/link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Tammy Younger, the Witch of Dogtown", Nutfield Genealogy, posted February 22, 2010,  ( http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2010/02/tammy-younger-witch-of-dogtown.html: accessed [accesss date)]. 

Submitted for the Carnival of Genealogy, 91st Edition, A Tribute to Women!
http://creativegene.blogspot.com