~ The Old Sachem ~ Alcohol and Rockport didn’t mix

By Bill Stewart

About 200 women in Rockport, Massachusetts, decided to do something about the use of alcohol in Rockport. Hannah Jumper was a 75-year-old-woman who believed that alcohol drinking was a very bad choice. Her group wielded hatchets and mobbed downtown Rockport, smashing any storage units of alcohol they could find.

Rockport was mostly a fishing town and the women objected strongly about the men spending family money for booze. The women had planned the raids in advance and marked their targets with a letter “X.” On the morning of July 8, 1856, at 9 a.m., the hatchet-wielding women unfurled a banner that had a black hatchet and red tassels. The women were armed with hatchets under their shawls. They stopped at various homes and shops that the women suspected of storing or selling alcohol beverages. When the women went inside, sometimes by force if necessary, they smashed the barrels or containers of alcohol.

Not everyone was happy with the attack. Jim Brown, a shop owner, whose alcohol was taken, threatened to hire a lawyer from Salem to “fight you for this.”

When the women finished after spending five hours dumping alcohol into the streets, they met at the town square, praised their actions and went home. They had destroyed alcohol in at least 13 places, caused about $700 in damage and broken about 50 barrels of alcohol.

Some of the men felt that their goods were stolen and proceeded to the court in Salem to recover their goods. The courts ruled to siding with the women.

Not everyone was happy about their wasted booze. A fellow named Pool stated, “Another citizen, lamenting the fact that his choice liquor was being dumped into the street, lay down and lapped some of it as it flowed along the gutter whereupon he became intoxicated and added more confusion to the already highly exciting scene.”

Over the next decade, sales in town continued to decline. Rockport became one of several dozen communities to prohibit sales of drinking alcohol.

In the early colonial days, alcohol – often hard cider – was the drink used in the American colonies. The drinking of water was considered unhealthy in that the water was contaminated.

Dr. Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia, who was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, worked within the temperance movement in the United States. He stated that “A people corrupted with strong drink cannot long be a free people.” He went on to compose a document, “An Inquiry into the Effects of Spirituous Liquors Upon the Human Body and the Mind,” which was published in Boston in 1790. He stated how cider, wine, porter and “strong beer” could result in “Cheerfulness, Strength, and Nourishment, when taken only in small quantities, and at meals” – while hard liquor would lead to various vices and diseases.

Massachusetts formed the Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, which later became the Massachusetts Temperance Society. Temperance workers collected pledges, held meetings and lobbied legislators. They published books of songs, including “Touch Not the Cup,” and wrote novels, one of which was “Ten Nights in a Barroom,” which told of three men debilitated by alcoholism and was published in Boston in 1854.

Rockport remained a dry town from 1856 into the early part of this century. In April of 2005, residents voted to permit inns, hotels and restaurants to serve alcohol with meals. In 2019, stores were allowed to sell alcohol.

Today there is no strong action by the temperance people. Their clashes have been throttled and liquor remains supreme.