Some other Massachusetts facts
In 1632, only 12 years after the first European settlers arrived at what would become Plymouth Colony, the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s General Court at Boston banned the smoking of tobacco at all public places within the young settlement. Not to be outdone, the sale of tobacco within the confines of Boston was banned three years later. Despite the anti-smoking stance of the legislators, Massachusetts Bay traders and merchants carried out a lively and profitable trade with the tobacco planters of Virginia, and by 1638 the laws were overturned. These were the first laws regulating the use and sale of tobacco in American history.
In public education, the city of Boston opened the first public school in the United States, the Boston Latin School. It was open to students of every social caste, as long as they were male, when it opened in 1635. This would remain its policy until 1972, when it allowed its first female student. It is still open and it now allows entry based on test scores and grade records. It offers curricula for grades 7 through high school, and limits its ranks to those residing in Boston. Among those educated there are counted Samuel Adams, singer and actor Ed Ames of the Ames Brothers, Henry Ward Beecher, Leonard Bernstein, and actress Christine Elise.
Prior to the invention of the wooden golf tee, by Harvard Professor George F. Grant in 1899, golfers built tees out of sand to raise the ball off the ground. The wooden golf tee isn’t golf’s only link with Massachusetts, the Titleist Company is based in the Massachusetts town of Acushnet. Before he invented the wooden tee, Professor Grant had already earned the distinction of being the first African American member of the faculty at Harvard University, itself the first university in North America. Professor Grant was also a doctor, with a degree in dentistry, and he practiced for a time in Boston.
In 1948 a donut shop was opened in Quincy, Massachusetts by William Rosenberg, who named his shop Open Kettle. In 1948 he introduced a product designed specifically for dipping into coffee or other beverage and these proved so popular that he changed the name of the shop to reflect the name of the product – Dunkin Donuts. He began selling franchises in 1955. In 2010 Dunkin Donuts topped $6 billion in sales worldwide, through more than 11,000 locations. Any visitor to Boston and its environs would swear that the majority of those locations are in the area.
There are but 14 counties in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (one of four states which identify as commonwealths, along with Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky). One of these counties is the site of the birth of four men who rose to be President of the United States. Two of these men were born before the county was created by legislation which was signed into law by John Hancock in 1793. Those two were John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams. The later Presidents of the United States born there were John F. Kennedy and George Herbert Walker Bush, allowing Norfolk County to dub itself “The County of Presidents”.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Shays’ Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle”, by Leonard L. Richards, 2002
“Cat People: What Dr. Seuss really taught us”, by Louis Menand, The New Yorker, December 23, 2002
“Center for Lowell History”, University of Massachusetts, online
“In 1895, William Morgan invents Mintonette”, by The New England Historical Society, online