December 26, 2025 • 38 mins
Bradley Jay Fills In On NightSide with Dan Rea:
From the Freedom Trail to the Boston Tea Party and Paul Revere's Ride...Boston and its surrounding area are chock full of history! Did you know the invention of woven fire hoses and microwave ovens came out of Cambridge, MA? Bradley discussed all things Boston with Kelley Leonhard, the CEO of the Boston History Company.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Night's Eyes with Dan ray On, Gelloging Beasy Boston's
News Radio, Indeed Nights Your Dad, Ray Bradley, Jay Dare,
and Tonight Hope you had a good holiday season. I
guess it's still kind of holiday eScout there. It feels
like it. We uh, We have three guests tonight, and
I think you're gonna love them all. And then in
(00:20):
the last hour of the final hour of the eleventh hour, no, yeah,
the eleventh hour or our fourth hour, I think I'm
gonna share with you the details of my ride share
ride home last night. Usually I take the tea. I
love the tea. I'm a big tea lover. So cold
last night I thought I'm gonna treat myself. It was
(00:41):
a mistake. It was awful and and and trust me,
I'm gonna give you so much, so many details on
this that you're gonna feel like you're with me and
you're gonna say what what was going on there? But
that's then. This is now. In the first up, we
have Kelly Leonard. I spend a lot of time on YouTube,
(01:02):
a lot of time learning about history and philosophy and biographies,
and I started that during the pandemic, and now I
continue it. I'll put on something long to go to
sleep too, So I'm learning something hopefully even when I'm
sleeping and I'm cruising around on TikTok, and every once
(01:22):
in a while you see something that you think that
I think, gee whiz, these people should be a guest
on night Side. And that's the case tonight we have
Kelly Leonard of the Boston History Company. Did I get
that right? Thank God? Wouldn't imagine if you came here
and I got it wrong, you would storm out and
(01:43):
it would all have been a waste of time.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, certainly not.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And the deal with y'all is that you think tend
to have a more niched information packet than many history sources.
A lot of folks give you the broad Strokes, the
Freedom Trail, the North Church, the South Church. But the
(02:09):
thing that interested me about you, plural was how detailed
it got, and you were telling me things that I
didn't know. And I talk about history a lot. Someone
you know slightly, Bob Allison, is a regular guest here.
He is very involved with the Constitution and the Revolution.
And I'd like to first find out a little bit
(02:32):
about what makes your company to How You Got Different?
That you're founder is named Daniel.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right, Yes, Daniel Berger Jones.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Daniel Berger Jones, and and he is just a high
energy person who really digs digs digs into the history.
What can you tell me about him and how he
got that way?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Daniel, to my knowledge, has always been an insatiably curious person.
So when he moved here to Boston for his undergraduate degree,
he was pursuing a degree in theater, which he has.
He's a fabulous performer, but he started working on the
Freedom Trail and really fell in love with it.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
What did he do on the Freedom Trail?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
He was an interpreter on the Freedom Trail for a
number of years.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, and a role if you will.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yes, yeah, a costumed tour guide on the Freedom Trail.
Oh yeah, and he really fell in love with that.
He ended up getting really curious about just the history
in Cambridge, especially around Harvard University Harvard Square, and he
and another Freedom Trail tour guide went in together to
found what was originally Cambridge Historical Tours, which is the
(03:45):
nonprofit that we are still. We've changed our name since
to Boston History Company to kind of broaden the scope
when people sort of.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
First right, want to just do Cambridge, but you know
a lot about.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
We do Square, and we do spend a lot of
time talking about Harvard Square. Still we still do a
lot of tours at Harvard University, the Natural History Museum,
the Art Museum. We love the area. It's really fabulous.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So anyone can go on these tours. Yep, even though
they are at Harvard University. You don't have to be.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Oh no, you don't have to be a student, or.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You're kind of associated with them in that they you're sanctioned.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yes, we're an approved herd.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Know you're there.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, they are aware.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Ye're going to come up and go who are you? People?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Generally not once a year we have a tour guide
forget to bring their pass and has to explain it
to a security guard.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
What do you have to do? What kind of hoops
do you have to jump through to be a tour.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Guide for It varies from company to company. We really
look for people who are curious and who are engaging
when we meet them. That's the big thing for us.
We can teach you the history, we can teach you
the information. But if folks aren't, yeah, if they're not
gregarious or if they're not excited about it, that kind
(05:06):
of rubs off on the people that they're taking that
they're giving the tour too, if.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
They're just kind of slouchy. And Yeah, and also I
learned this the hard way one time in my life.
I was thinking about being a Boston Harbor tour kay
and I went around a couple of times, and I
see them saying the same thing every time, and I'm thinking,
I don't think I can do this. Yes, so it
has to be somebody that can remain excited telling folks
(05:33):
the same information. Yeah, every time.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Some companies really carefully script excuse me, really carefully script
their tours so that they have a really consistent product
across the board, and that there's a great reason to
do that. We have tour guides who are really curious people,
so we try to give them the free reign to
(05:56):
be able to keep learning and keep incorporating new information. Yeah.
If you some of our tour guides have been tour
guides for a really long time. If they were giving
the same tour on the Freedom Trail that they gave
when they first started ten years ago, I can't imagine
how bored they might be right. Yeah, so we try
to make sure.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That they have it projects to the customer.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So recording must be kind of an issue for you
because you have to find talented people who know a
lot about history and care. I mean, it's, as I understand, it,
hard to recruit people to do anything that you have to.
You have a pretty specific pool you need to draw from.
How do you recruit?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, A lot of it is actually is word of mouth.
It's other tour guides on our roster who they meet
somebody at another job. A lot of folks on our
team are in theater here in the sort of Boston area,
So we we get a lot of folks who I
(06:56):
met this actor on this show that I was doing.
They're really fabulous, they're super interesting job other jobs that
they're working, friends of theirs who are really into it,
and they think, I think they might actually be a
really good fit. And we do hiring pushes on you know,
higher culture and you know, indeed.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Or a personal question you don't have to you don't
have to answer it, but that would be cool if
you did. A lot of times, if I just asked
something matter of fact, if folks think, well, I should
answer that, So I'll ask how much does a tour
guide make?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
It varies a little bit, so we pay. It varies
a lot from company. In a company, I can't really
speak for other companies. We pay between forty two and
sixty five.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
An hour, between forty two and sixty five. Yeah, plus tips. Yes,
so that's really good.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, and how many people on a.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Tour it can vary. So yeah, our public toures.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Old questions, Yeah, like this, just give me.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
The public tours can have up to twenty five. Our
private tours can be up to thirty five per guide.
But we often have multiple guides on large scale corporate tours,
so we might have, you know, upwards of ten guides
on a big corporate event. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I'm trying to figure out how much one really makes
including tips, and I know everyone out there is wondering
what does that add up to. So let's go through
the math. Let's just round off and say a tour
guide makes fifty bucks for an hour tour paid by you.
There's twenty people on a tour. What's the average tip?
Five bucks? Nobody's dipping a less than five bucks, are
they not?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Usually? They usually are averaging between a ten and twenty
dollars tip that a person might.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
A ten dollar tip, okay, bottom man, ten dollars twenty people,
that's two hundred dollars plus the fifty you pay, it's
two hundred and fifty dollars an hour.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That said, it's deeply, deeply seasonal work. We're heading into
the really quiet time, seasonal person and it also very
this isn't a full time position for most of our staff.
There there just isn't enough work you around to be
able to support that two.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Hundred and fifty bucks an hour. You don't need a
full time position.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
But yeah, it can be really deeply variable. Some of
our tour guides are folks that have retired, so they
only pick up one or two tours a week. Some
of them this is kind of their primary source, so
they pick up as many as they can during the
busy season and kind of you know, and we try
to disperse it as evenly as we can.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
People that quiz to ascertain if they know.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
It enough, we we do sort of like a flexible
hopefully four week training period per tour, and then they
have to give us the tour.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I see, yeah, and you and you pass or fail them.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, so if they do, if it needs more work,
then we'll send them back to the drawing board with
notes and then they can they can go back re
research and do it again.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
How many people pass on the first try?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Three or four out of ten? Really, see, that's awesome,
really if it's if it's a really good round them t.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Of you know of tour guiding, good for you, Thank
you for your frankness. Now, yeah, we're gonna take a
break and get into some of the share. Some of
the knowledge that gets dispersed on these gets disseminated on
these tours. Little details you might not hear about, know
about even though you walk by these places every day
(10:29):
on your way to work, or on your way to school,
or on your way to the Celtics to something at
the garden. You're gonna learn some fun stuff. Coming up
on WBZ, it's Night Side with Dan Ray on w
b Boston's news radio, Badly for Dan. We're with Kelly
Leonard of the Boston History Company, and we've gone through
(10:50):
how the company is different. But now I want to
get into some of the the tours themselves and what
makes them different. First, let me say I watch you.
Usually I don't like reanimations, reenactments, ai generations of things.
But I saw something on recently on what Boston looked
like and revolutionary times and before, and they had the
(11:17):
Green Dragon there. They didn't talk about the Green Dragon
Pub public house. But in this reenactment, it didn't look
like it was where I thought it should be. I thought,
it's a it's not supposed to be there. It kind
of looked like it was out on where the ChartHouse
(11:38):
restaurant is. It never was there, was it?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
No?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Okay? Because that's where it looked like. So the Green
Dragon is an interesting place and there are some misconceptions
about it. So why don't you school meeting school us.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
On that this is a really great example of how
there's the waterline around Boston has changed so drastically, because
it does make it. You look at some of these
really old maps and it looks like the Green Dragon
is right on the water's edge, and in the eighteenth
century it just about is. It's really really close to
(12:15):
the coastline. But that's because we have we have filled
that part of the harbor area down around Long Wharf
in so much there's just the very very end of
Long Wharf left, but that used to be the longest
wharf in the British Empire.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So you can see a little bit of long wolves there's.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right where the aquarium is. That's technically like that's Long Wharf.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Are there any original timbers down there?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I doubt it. Okay, if there are any, I wouldn't
expect them to be load bearing at this point.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So the Green Dragon was in more than one location.
Did it move from place to place?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
We give me the so's it's primarily on that little
street where the Union Oyster House is now it and
the Liberty bell or sorry, not the Liberty bell, oh
my gosh, bell in hand, and it's it's over the
Over the course of its lifetime, it has been moved
back a little bit from where it originally was. They've
(13:17):
kind of adjusted the street a little bit, kind of
straighten it out, make it a little bit more passable,
though it's very little car traffic at this point anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So when you look at that building, yeah, is that
the how far off the footprint? Would it be five
feet ten feet or one hundred feet?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Probably close to ten feet. It's not it's not totally
off the original.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Foot So that's pretty real. That place.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
It's it's not the original structure anymore. Oh okay, sorry,
one of the oldest structures in Boston is nearby. It's
or some of the oldest structural elements are nearby, and
that is actually some of the inside not visible, but
some of the kind of the bones of Old Corner
(14:03):
Bookstore or the Chipotle on School Street.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I don't think that bother you. I think it should
be against the law that a restaurant should be in
that anywhere in that Printer's block, the Ink block, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's for Chipotle is a wonderful place, but I wish
I would rather have it be a restored version of
the print place.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, it would be so cool for it to be
the Old Corner book store. That footprint originally was the
Anne Hutchinson House, and it was a timber frame structure,
as most were on that street in Boston in the
sort of early mid sort of initial wave of English
(14:46):
settlement in Boston. So they're they're kind of like second wave,
the Hutchinson's. They're coming in after the city has been established.
They build a fairly nice house, but it's timber framed.
Eventually that timber frame structure is just going to be
kind of enclosed around a much more solid, sturdy brick structure.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So that whole block was where printing was done.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, there's tons of printing happening there. There are in Boston.
There is a disproportionately high volume of newspapers and printers
in general in the eighteenth century because it is one
of the highest rates of literacy in the colonies.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Was that where Franklin had his brother had his press.
He Frankly worked for his brother James, Right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Ben Franklin apprenticed for his brother as a printer, as
a typesetter. But it's not the old corner bookstore that
they're kind of not in the super immediate downtown area
where that printing house was.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So the Green Dragon was basically there the whole time,
but the structure that we see is not the Green Dragon.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
No.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
That's such a bummer, and there are very few. How
about the history of the Union Oyster House one of
my favorite, favorite favorite places.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's a funky one. It's that building has been sort
of added and adjusted and augmented and added on to, yeah,
for so so many years that it's kind of like
a little a little timeline through through Boston, right, Yeah,
and it's got such a uh and a funky history.
(16:30):
There are so there are also so many bars and
pubs that claim to be like the oldest running or
the longest continuously running, and they you.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Know, I kind of have an affinity for the Unions.
For one thing, that Horseshoe Oyster Bar, which I think
is an oak bar. Yeah, it's it's tilted in a
strange ray and there's a reason for that and I
can't remember, but it's really low. And the reason it's
really low is because people were short back then. And
there you know the story Daniel Webster used to down
(16:59):
like six a dozen oysters and drinking class of brandy
with every one, with every plate of voyster. He he
was pounding oysters and brandy. By all accounts, there's a
little there's a little.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Sign there that does seem like an awful lot of brandy.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
And little non fact, the tie for the longest long
a while, the Tie Embassy was above the Union Oyster
House because the owner of the Union Oyster House, so
somebody associated knew was tied with the Ties and they said,
you know, you can have your embassy up above our building.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Oh, that's so funny. I don't think I've ever actually
heard those.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
See I'm hired, right.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, when can you start Green Dragon?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
And what was the function of the Green Dragon? George
Washington had aspiring network, and did the Green Dragon figure
into that?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
There were so uh yes and no. All of these
spine networks that exist are kind of they're working with
each other and communicating with each other to various degrees,
particularly when you're early in the American Revolution. It's it
hasn't quite when you're thinking of of like the like
(18:13):
the docu drama sort of version of it. That's a
that's a little bit more well established sort of spine
network when you're getting a little bit later on into
the war. But this is something that the Sons of
Liberty are also doing on their own time, and they're
also communicating with the Continental Army because there there's a
lot of overlap there and these militias that are also
(18:34):
sort of working and trying to find information, and they're
they're staying very busy. One of the things about Green
Dragon is that it's it's a it's like a bar,
so you get people across the political spectrum hanging out
and you.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Get them drunk. Yeah, yeah, in vino veritas.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And you get to chatting, right, And so there are
often British soldiers that are are up there in the
town talking and they're not really paying attention to what
they're saying in front of staff sort of service staff. Yeah,
particularly if it's women that are are, you know, moving
(19:15):
glasses and bottles and food around. Yeah, they're just they're
not paying super close attention to what the girls are
listening to. And so they're actually a huge part of
these spy networks.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, okay, we have so much to get to in
such a short time. Do you have a specific Smoots tour.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
We don't have a specific Smoots tour. I would love
to be able to build one out in smoots. That
would be a lot of fun, I think.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
But so talk about the tour that includes Smoots and
explain what a smoot is to those who are not
smoot savvy.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
So, a smoot is a very niche unit of measurement.
There's an there's a group of fraternity pledges at MIT
who are told by one of the fraternity members who
is leading their sort of hazing ritual that he's very
frustrated by how long that bridge is and how cold
(20:09):
it is, and he has to cross it every day
to get from Harvard. Yeah sorry, not from Harvard, from
his residence in Boston over to Mit where he's a student.
And he wants them to measure the length of this bridge,
and he said, They go, okay, so what unit of
measurement do you want? And he goes and he's looking
(20:31):
through this group. One of the the pledges. His last
name is Smoot, and he goes, I would like it
measured in smoots. And so they take a string and
they measure him and they start using the string the bridge. Well,
he sees them with the string, and he goes, what
are you doing And they go, we're measuring in smoots
and measuring in string, and so they he makes them
(20:58):
use basically chalk, and he has poor Smoot. He has
to lay down head to foot on these chalk lines,
and by the time they're at the end this is
a very long bridge. He can barely stand up by
himself and he needs quite a bit of assistance. But
they do measure it in smoots and it is still
marked in smoots today.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
The version of the Smoot story I heard and I'm
not a professional historian, but this is more colorful. Is
they've got Smoot pass out drunk and laid him end
to end all the way across the bridge. That's just sexier.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Verbal well, it would be so much easier for poor Smoot.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
He must have been pretty sore at the end of I.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Think the version of it that I heard was that
he was he was down for the count for a
few days, because he was quite sore by the time
they were done getting up and laying down and getting
up and laying down.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I have a couple of you know, trivia questions.
How how long is one smooth?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It's it's an odd he's like five foot seven.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Very good thing. Yeah, your boss is listening. Good your
boss Daniel is listening. It's a good thing. You got
it right. And for extra points, how many smooths is
it across the bridge?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Oh my gosh. I did check this earlier today, but
I'm now doubting myself. I believe it was five hundred
and seventy six point four. Is that that can't be right.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I didn't know this ahead of time. I'm not going
to try to kid you. I looked it up, but
according to AI Overview, and AI can be wrong. Three
hundred and sixty four point.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Smooth I'm far overestimated.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And they recently so the folks, if you've never seen this,
The really interesting thing about it is every year or
every so often they would have to repaint the smoot
max because they would wear off. Oh yeah, and so
many years have passed since the smooth thing became a
thing that there were huge this is before your time,
(23:04):
huge speed bumps made from the layers of paint. There
had to be tens and dozens of layers of paint
so that it must have come up, you know, two
three inches worth of layers of paint. And when they
redid the bridge, all the smoots went away and say
he had the stunt sadly one little coat of paint, two
(23:28):
little coats of paint that back in the day, back
when you had to walk you know, the school both
ways uphill, there were these big humps of paint made
because they made the kids, they made the students, they
made somebody paint these smooths over and number. So that's
the story of smoot on them MI I T Bridge.
We got more after this on WBZ It's Night Side
(23:52):
with Dan Ray on Boston's news radio. I tried Bradley
Jay for Dan, and we can we continue to talk
history with Kelly Leonard, our guest and Kellyeah. I could
have told you this during the break, but I discovered
something during the break that I wanted to share with
you and everyone in all the thirty eight states in
(24:13):
Canada that listen to the station.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Right at this moment, I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Well, we were discussing Smoot's Smoot is the person they
laid end to end over the MIT Bridge for some prank,
just to measure it not in feet or yards, but
in smoots so on it's body length, and we had
there were three different versions of the story that we
were bandying around. Look what I've found from the MIT
(24:43):
MIT Tech Talk September twenty four, two thousand and eight.
Not only is there an article that says Smoot reflects
on his measurement on the fiftieth anniversary, there's a picture
of Smoot laying on the bridge with four of his
wild I see buddies, and I'll just so that proves
(25:04):
there's a picture of him not passed out drunk. So
my theory was wrong. As his fraternity brothers laid his
five foot seven inch frame end to him to measure
the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge one night in October nineteen fifty eight.
Smoot was from the class of sixty two. There was
one distinct thought running through Oliver Smoot's mind. That thought was,
(25:28):
and I think you mentioned it. It's pretty cold. One
more paragraph. Smoot, class of sixty two, recall memories. Recently
during the night his name became a unit of measurement
as Mit prepared to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the
Quirky Hack. And they had a whole bunch of events
(25:48):
planned around that. So you can see. During the next break,
I'll Showia Smoot so you'll know, and there it is, folks. Okay, Next,
what kind of quirky tours or quirky things can we
learn on your Boston History Company tours? I like the quirky,
the quirky.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
There's so much out there, all right.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
How about the object on the top of the State
House is not a blank, but it is instead a blank.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It is not a pineapple, but is instead a gilded
pine cone.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Okay. People thought that pineapples were a sign of good
luck or something, right, That was the thing a pineapple.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, the pineapple often associated with good luck in the
colonial period, with wealth because it's very expensive to ship
a pineapple without it rotting. But instead it is a
pine cone, which is in a way also a symbol
of the colony's wealth. We were a major exporter of
pine that's what's used in ship masts in the eighteenth century.
So we have all of these beautiful old growth pine
(26:56):
forests have had, We had them, and that was all marked.
All of that old growth pine was marked as part
of the King's forest essentially, So.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Pine cones were our kind of cash crop. Yeah, very
responsible for the success of the town.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, So the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony is really the
wealth is built on pine trees, timber, and the codfish.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
And talk about the mackerel.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Oh, yes, so are and.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
What tour these two things on? They the Freedom Trail tour.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, these usually come up on the Freedom Trail.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
The Holy mackerel.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yes, some Massachusetts residents may be familiar with the Sacred
cod which hangs over our House of Representatives in our
state House. Our state Senate, not to be left out,
has a small gilded mackerel which hangs in their chamber same.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I mean the Sacred God was sacred because it was important,
just like the pine cone.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yes, the cod is well, that was a major export
for the Massachusetts Bay Province. It was. There's a story
about John Smith traveling this is before Massachusetts is settled
by English English settlers, that he travels up through what
is now Cape Cod and you can look out into
(28:27):
the water and he says that it is so plentiful
with codfish that you could step out and walk across
their backs.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I don't know if they're quite that plentiful still, but yeah, huge,
really massive codfish. And we do also have quite a
few mackerel, which we also ship out throughout the rest
of the British Empire in the eighteenth century. So there
is the there is the sacred cod and the holy mackerel.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Speaking with Kelly Leonard Boston History Company about the many
you have thirty two different tours, right, Yeah, So, folks,
if you're listening to me in Minnesota, are like maybe
phil in Ontario. You don't have to do the standard tour.
There all sorts of other tours, including one about Salem,
(29:19):
which is not what you might think. It's not a
whitch tour. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yes, it's difficult to do Salem without talking about the
Salem Witch Crisis, but we try to not have it
be the beginning, in the end, the end, all be
all of a tour in Salem, because there is so
so much history in Salem outside of that. Salem in
the nineteenth century was a massive, massive, hub of international
(29:44):
shipping on the East Coast, particularly in the Northeast. It
was at the hub of spice imports. Primarily there was
a massive trade with China, and that's where a lot
of the sort of like the well not sort of,
that's where a lot of the money in Salem ends
up coming from in the nineteenth century. So all of
those really grand houses that you see if you walk
(30:05):
around in downtown Salem that are part of the PbD
Essex Museum.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Spice built those.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, didn't the North Shore have a lot to do
with rum running as well, because you couldn't bring it
into Boston if you had caught, so they would drop
it off with some port north like maybe Salem. I
don't know why not Salem.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
There was probably some some rum running in Salem at
some point, but yeah, there's rum. Rum is actually domestically
produced for quite a long time in Massachusetts. We're getting
a lot of molasses and a raw sugar getting imported,
particularly in the colonial period. Medford is actually a big
hub of rum production in the eighteenth century. That molasses
(30:54):
import is also part of what gets us to the
molasses flood right eventually, Yep, do.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
You do a molasses flood tour?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
We don't have a molasses flood tour. We do talk
about it quite a bit in the North End if
we do a North End tour for someone.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So after this, we're going to talk to Nick and
Wilmington and we're going to dig into some details you
may not know about. I'm pretty sure you don't know
about the Boston Tea Party. As we continue with our guest,
Kelly Leonard, Boston History Company on w BZ. You're on
Night Side with Dan Ray on w b Z, Boston's
News Radio Bradley for Dan Tonight on Nightside. Kelly Leonard's
(31:28):
I guess from Boston History Company, a different kind of
history tour company, and we do have a call before
we go to talk about some interesting details on the
tea party. You probably don't know the Boston Tea Party
we go to Nick in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Hello, Nick, Hey, Bradley oile. Great nice the smooth story.
You missed detail. That's really cool about it. I think
I said three and sixty four smooths, yes, and some change.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I actually have a measuring tape and it measures and smooth.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I got. Did you get that?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I got they had a table set up one time
in mit and and they had them they were giving
them away, and uh, the measurement is uh, you said
three hundred and sixty four smooths and the ear because
the measuring tape has an ear on the end of it.
That's cool. Yeah, and I heard that it was October
(32:30):
fourth when it was done. And uh, when they got
up when they got up to the bridge, they didn't
have a measuring tape, so that's why they measured. But
now the smooth guy, and that's three hundred and sixty
four smoots in the ear.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
That's right, very good. Guy was five seven. If a
football player history would have been a different thing, that'd
be far fewer smooths. Don't get across that, Nick, that's
a great car. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, okay, good.
I'm excited to hear all these additional details about the
(33:09):
tea party. I did not know that you're going to share.
And that's the kind of thing that folks learned on
your tea party tour, right.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, this comes up on the Freedom Trail usually.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, all right, well give me the whole highly detailed
tea party story.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah. So the Boston Tea Party, we're all very familiar
with it. Folks who have done a Freedom Trail tour
have probably gotten to chant dump the tea into the
sea outside of the Old South Meetinghouse. But there is
this incredible sort of organizational effort that goes into the
Boston Tea Party. There are patrols of folks who are
(33:48):
part of it, who are tasked solely with making sure
that nobody steals any tea. They want to make sure
that it is thoroughly destroyed. So there is one gentleman,
Charles Uh from Charlestown, an Irish immigrant. He gets caught
stuffing tea into his coat pockets and into his boots,
(34:11):
and he's stripped and they shake all of the tea
out and he's sort of like rolled around in the
mud and and heckled and beaten up a bit and
sent on his way.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
He's lucky because he's quite lucky. Back then, people were
really the punishments were pretty severe. Pretym getting molten tar
on you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yes, yeah, that can kill you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
People think tyrant feathering is cute. Not cute at all.
It can burn you to death.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, you can be burned to death a lot of
times as secondary infection after the fact. That's what gets you.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
So from Charlestown, Yes, was allegedly, I don't I don't
know for sure. I haven't seen transcripts of the trial.
Allegedly stuffed tea into his shirt. He got busted. Yep, Hey,
what's that in your shirt? Nothing? Yeah, and they okay, yep,
all right.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Next the the ecological impacts. Oh yeah, the tea is
also pretty major for a town that is reliant heavily
on the ship the fishing industry. So for weeks and weeks,
fish are just turning up belly up in the harbor.
It's a disaster.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
It's similar to an oil spill because it clogs up
their gills.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yes, so it's it's clogging up their gills. It's something
that is presumably potentially toxic to a lot of fish.
There is a reason that they don't live in aquariums
of tea. And it's also it's just washing up on
the beaches as well, pots and piles of tea. Yeah, yeah,
there's so much tea as they're dumping it over the
(35:45):
sides of the ship. They're doing this at low tide
as well, which doesn't help. But they're having to send
people over the sides of the ship to push the tea.
It's just mounding up around the ship, so they're having
to push it all down to make sure that it
gets into the water so that it's destroyed.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Now, was I understand that they had the crown had
lifted a bunch of onerous taxes, but just insisted on
this one born on everybody's side, like tea. You can
you know, it's not food. You can live without tea? Yes,
at least I certainly could. They probably weren't a tea
more than I am. But still it was just a little,
(36:23):
a little needle to say, yeah, okay, fine, I'll lift
these other jax'es, but I'm going to keep this one
on tea. But we couldn't let that go, No, and
mostly Sam Adams couldn't let it go right.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Sam Adams and John Hancock is another big figure in
this because he's a merchant. He has plenty to gain
or lose by something like this, because it's really a
message about the smuggling that's happening.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
I heard, and it makes sense that John John Hancock
was kind of not an original gung ho revolutionary because
business as usual was good for him. Yeah, oh yeah,
and war is bad for business, and well at least
his businesses at the time. But gradually he gets more
and more fed up, and I guess gradually stuff started
(37:10):
to cost him money, and that may have been one
of the reasons for his patriotism is, yeah, this is
kind of costing me money.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah. So there's the colonial merchants, particularly in Boston, have
a really long history with a little bit of smuggling
here and there. Right, everything that they import is in
theory supposed to come by way of the British Empire,
but sometimes the Dutch have better prices, or sometimes it's
(37:40):
actually a little cheaper to get your madera directly from Spain.
So they're using the Caribbean as this sort of layover
to be able to purchase goods a little bit cheaper
more directly and having these taxes, particularly with the tea,
which is actually less expensive to purchase British tea with
the tax on it than it costs for someone like
John Hancock to ship.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Great, great job Kelly Leonard, Kelly Leonard from Boston History Company,
Boss Daniel, you should be proud and just we can't
even get through all your like thirty two tours. But
if you're coming into town, are you're looking for something
different to do, When you're looking for a tour company
that might might tell you stuff for a little more
than you thought, you might go home with some bonus knowledge,
(38:24):
you might want to try the Boston History Company.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Thank you very much, Thank you so much, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Coming up next, we have Micah Engberg who is an
airplane geek, and he's going to catch us up on
some of the things you need to know about aviation,
like if you don't have your real ID yet, it
could cost you some money at some time. We'll explain
on WBZ News Radio ten thirty
It's Night's Eyes with Dan ray On, Gelloging Beasy Boston's
News Radio, Indeed Nights Your Dad, Ray Bradley, Jay Dare,
and Tonight Hope you had a good holiday season. I
guess it's still kind of holiday eScout there. It feels
like it. We uh, We have three guests tonight, and
I think you're gonna love them all. And then in
(00:20):
the last hour of the final hour of the eleventh hour, no, yeah,
the eleventh hour or our fourth hour, I think I'm
gonna share with you the details of my ride share
ride home last night. Usually I take the tea. I
love the tea. I'm a big tea lover. So cold
last night I thought I'm gonna treat myself. It was
(00:41):
a mistake. It was awful and and and trust me,
I'm gonna give you so much, so many details on
this that you're gonna feel like you're with me and
you're gonna say what what was going on there? But
that's then. This is now. In the first up, we
have Kelly Leonard. I spend a lot of time on YouTube,
(01:02):
a lot of time learning about history and philosophy and biographies,
and I started that during the pandemic, and now I
continue it. I'll put on something long to go to
sleep too, So I'm learning something hopefully even when I'm
sleeping and I'm cruising around on TikTok, and every once
(01:22):
in a while you see something that you think that
I think, gee whiz, these people should be a guest
on night Side. And that's the case tonight we have
Kelly Leonard of the Boston History Company. Did I get
that right? Thank God? Wouldn't imagine if you came here
and I got it wrong, you would storm out and
(01:43):
it would all have been a waste of time.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, certainly not.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And the deal with y'all is that you think tend
to have a more niched information packet than many history sources.
A lot of folks give you the broad Strokes, the
Freedom Trail, the North Church, the South Church. But the
(02:09):
thing that interested me about you, plural was how detailed
it got, and you were telling me things that I
didn't know. And I talk about history a lot. Someone
you know slightly, Bob Allison, is a regular guest here.
He is very involved with the Constitution and the Revolution.
And I'd like to first find out a little bit
(02:32):
about what makes your company to How You Got Different?
That you're founder is named Daniel.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Right, Yes, Daniel Berger Jones.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
Daniel Berger Jones, and and he is just a high
energy person who really digs digs digs into the history.
What can you tell me about him and how he
got that way?
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Daniel, to my knowledge, has always been an insatiably curious person.
So when he moved here to Boston for his undergraduate degree,
he was pursuing a degree in theater, which he has.
He's a fabulous performer, but he started working on the
Freedom Trail and really fell in love with it.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
What did he do on the Freedom Trail?
Speaker 2 (03:16):
He was an interpreter on the Freedom Trail for a
number of years.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, and a role if you will.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Yes, yeah, a costumed tour guide on the Freedom Trail.
Oh yeah, and he really fell in love with that.
He ended up getting really curious about just the history
in Cambridge, especially around Harvard University Harvard Square, and he
and another Freedom Trail tour guide went in together to
found what was originally Cambridge Historical Tours, which is the
(03:45):
nonprofit that we are still. We've changed our name since
to Boston History Company to kind of broaden the scope
when people sort of.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
First right, want to just do Cambridge, but you know
a lot about.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
We do Square, and we do spend a lot of
time talking about Harvard Square. Still we still do a
lot of tours at Harvard University, the Natural History Museum,
the Art Museum. We love the area. It's really fabulous.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So anyone can go on these tours. Yep, even though
they are at Harvard University. You don't have to be.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Oh no, you don't have to be a student, or.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
You're kind of associated with them in that they you're sanctioned.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yes, we're an approved herd.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Know you're there.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, they are aware.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Ye're going to come up and go who are you? People?
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Generally not once a year we have a tour guide
forget to bring their pass and has to explain it
to a security guard.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
What do you have to do? What kind of hoops
do you have to jump through to be a tour.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Guide for It varies from company to company. We really
look for people who are curious and who are engaging
when we meet them. That's the big thing for us.
We can teach you the history, we can teach you
the information. But if folks aren't, yeah, if they're not
gregarious or if they're not excited about it, that kind
(05:06):
of rubs off on the people that they're taking that
they're giving the tour too, if.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
They're just kind of slouchy. And Yeah, and also I
learned this the hard way one time in my life.
I was thinking about being a Boston Harbor tour kay
and I went around a couple of times, and I
see them saying the same thing every time, and I'm thinking,
I don't think I can do this. Yes, so it
has to be somebody that can remain excited telling folks
(05:33):
the same information. Yeah, every time.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Some companies really carefully script excuse me, really carefully script
their tours so that they have a really consistent product
across the board, and that there's a great reason to
do that. We have tour guides who are really curious people,
so we try to give them the free reign to
(05:56):
be able to keep learning and keep incorporating new information. Yeah.
If you some of our tour guides have been tour
guides for a really long time. If they were giving
the same tour on the Freedom Trail that they gave
when they first started ten years ago, I can't imagine
how bored they might be right. Yeah, so we try
to make sure.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
That they have it projects to the customer.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
So recording must be kind of an issue for you
because you have to find talented people who know a
lot about history and care. I mean, it's, as I understand, it,
hard to recruit people to do anything that you have to.
You have a pretty specific pool you need to draw from.
How do you recruit?
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, A lot of it is actually is word of mouth.
It's other tour guides on our roster who they meet
somebody at another job. A lot of folks on our
team are in theater here in the sort of Boston area,
So we we get a lot of folks who I
(06:56):
met this actor on this show that I was doing.
They're really fabulous, they're super interesting job other jobs that
they're working, friends of theirs who are really into it,
and they think, I think they might actually be a
really good fit. And we do hiring pushes on you know,
higher culture and you know, indeed.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Or a personal question you don't have to you don't
have to answer it, but that would be cool if
you did. A lot of times, if I just asked
something matter of fact, if folks think, well, I should
answer that, So I'll ask how much does a tour
guide make?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
It varies a little bit, so we pay. It varies
a lot from company. In a company, I can't really
speak for other companies. We pay between forty two and
sixty five.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
An hour, between forty two and sixty five. Yeah, plus tips. Yes,
so that's really good.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
It's pretty good.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, and how many people on a.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Tour it can vary. So yeah, our public toures.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Old questions, Yeah, like this, just give me.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
The public tours can have up to twenty five. Our
private tours can be up to thirty five per guide.
But we often have multiple guides on large scale corporate tours,
so we might have, you know, upwards of ten guides
on a big corporate event. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
I'm trying to figure out how much one really makes
including tips, and I know everyone out there is wondering
what does that add up to. So let's go through
the math. Let's just round off and say a tour
guide makes fifty bucks for an hour tour paid by you.
There's twenty people on a tour. What's the average tip?
Five bucks? Nobody's dipping a less than five bucks, are
they not?
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Usually? They usually are averaging between a ten and twenty
dollars tip that a person might.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
A ten dollar tip, okay, bottom man, ten dollars twenty people,
that's two hundred dollars plus the fifty you pay, it's
two hundred and fifty dollars an hour.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That said, it's deeply, deeply seasonal work. We're heading into
the really quiet time, seasonal person and it also very
this isn't a full time position for most of our staff.
There there just isn't enough work you around to be
able to support that two.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Hundred and fifty bucks an hour. You don't need a
full time position.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
But yeah, it can be really deeply variable. Some of
our tour guides are folks that have retired, so they
only pick up one or two tours a week. Some
of them this is kind of their primary source, so
they pick up as many as they can during the
busy season and kind of you know, and we try
to disperse it as evenly as we can.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
People that quiz to ascertain if they know.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
It enough, we we do sort of like a flexible
hopefully four week training period per tour, and then they
have to give us the tour.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I see, yeah, and you and you pass or fail them.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, so if they do, if it needs more work,
then we'll send them back to the drawing board with
notes and then they can they can go back re
research and do it again.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
How many people pass on the first try?
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Three or four out of ten? Really, see, that's awesome,
really if it's if it's a really good round them t.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Of you know of tour guiding, good for you, Thank
you for your frankness. Now, yeah, we're gonna take a
break and get into some of the share. Some of
the knowledge that gets dispersed on these gets disseminated on
these tours. Little details you might not hear about, know
about even though you walk by these places every day
(10:29):
on your way to work, or on your way to school,
or on your way to the Celtics to something at
the garden. You're gonna learn some fun stuff. Coming up
on WBZ, it's Night Side with Dan Ray on w
b Boston's news radio, Badly for Dan. We're with Kelly
Leonard of the Boston History Company, and we've gone through
(10:50):
how the company is different. But now I want to
get into some of the the tours themselves and what
makes them different. First, let me say I watch you.
Usually I don't like reanimations, reenactments, ai generations of things.
But I saw something on recently on what Boston looked
like and revolutionary times and before, and they had the
(11:17):
Green Dragon there. They didn't talk about the Green Dragon
Pub public house. But in this reenactment, it didn't look
like it was where I thought it should be. I thought,
it's a it's not supposed to be there. It kind
of looked like it was out on where the ChartHouse
(11:38):
restaurant is. It never was there, was it?
Speaker 2 (11:40):
No?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
Okay? Because that's where it looked like. So the Green
Dragon is an interesting place and there are some misconceptions
about it. So why don't you school meeting school us.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
On that this is a really great example of how
there's the waterline around Boston has changed so drastically, because
it does make it. You look at some of these
really old maps and it looks like the Green Dragon
is right on the water's edge, and in the eighteenth
century it just about is. It's really really close to
(12:15):
the coastline. But that's because we have we have filled
that part of the harbor area down around Long Wharf
in so much there's just the very very end of
Long Wharf left, but that used to be the longest
wharf in the British Empire.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So you can see a little bit of long wolves there's.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right where the aquarium is. That's technically like that's Long Wharf.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
Are there any original timbers down there?
Speaker 2 (12:43):
I doubt it. Okay, if there are any, I wouldn't
expect them to be load bearing at this point.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So the Green Dragon was in more than one location.
Did it move from place to place?
Speaker 2 (12:54):
We give me the so's it's primarily on that little
street where the Union Oyster House is now it and
the Liberty bell or sorry, not the Liberty bell, oh
my gosh, bell in hand, and it's it's over the
Over the course of its lifetime, it has been moved
back a little bit from where it originally was. They've
(13:17):
kind of adjusted the street a little bit, kind of
straighten it out, make it a little bit more passable,
though it's very little car traffic at this point anyway.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
So when you look at that building, yeah, is that
the how far off the footprint? Would it be five
feet ten feet or one hundred feet?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Probably close to ten feet. It's not it's not totally
off the original.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
Foot So that's pretty real. That place.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
It's it's not the original structure anymore. Oh okay, sorry,
one of the oldest structures in Boston is nearby. It's
or some of the oldest structural elements are nearby, and
that is actually some of the inside not visible, but
some of the kind of the bones of Old Corner
(14:03):
Bookstore or the Chipotle on School Street.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I don't think that bother you. I think it should
be against the law that a restaurant should be in
that anywhere in that Printer's block, the Ink block, right, Yeah, yeah,
it's for Chipotle is a wonderful place, but I wish
I would rather have it be a restored version of
the print place.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
Yeah, it would be so cool for it to be
the Old Corner book store. That footprint originally was the
Anne Hutchinson House, and it was a timber frame structure,
as most were on that street in Boston in the
sort of early mid sort of initial wave of English
(14:46):
settlement in Boston. So they're they're kind of like second wave,
the Hutchinson's. They're coming in after the city has been established.
They build a fairly nice house, but it's timber framed.
Eventually that timber frame structure is just going to be
kind of enclosed around a much more solid, sturdy brick structure.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So that whole block was where printing was done.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Yeah, there's tons of printing happening there. There are in Boston.
There is a disproportionately high volume of newspapers and printers
in general in the eighteenth century because it is one
of the highest rates of literacy in the colonies.
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Was that where Franklin had his brother had his press.
He Frankly worked for his brother James, Right, Yes.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Ben Franklin apprenticed for his brother as a printer, as
a typesetter. But it's not the old corner bookstore that
they're kind of not in the super immediate downtown area
where that printing house was.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
So the Green Dragon was basically there the whole time,
but the structure that we see is not the Green Dragon.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
No.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
That's such a bummer, and there are very few. How
about the history of the Union Oyster House one of
my favorite, favorite favorite places.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
That's a funky one. It's that building has been sort
of added and adjusted and augmented and added on to, yeah,
for so so many years that it's kind of like
a little a little timeline through through Boston, right, Yeah,
and it's got such a uh and a funky history.
(16:30):
There are so there are also so many bars and
pubs that claim to be like the oldest running or
the longest continuously running, and they you.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Know, I kind of have an affinity for the Unions.
For one thing, that Horseshoe Oyster Bar, which I think
is an oak bar. Yeah, it's it's tilted in a
strange ray and there's a reason for that and I
can't remember, but it's really low. And the reason it's
really low is because people were short back then. And
there you know the story Daniel Webster used to down
(16:59):
like six a dozen oysters and drinking class of brandy
with every one, with every plate of voyster. He he
was pounding oysters and brandy. By all accounts, there's a
little there's a little.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Sign there that does seem like an awful lot of brandy.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
And little non fact, the tie for the longest long
a while, the Tie Embassy was above the Union Oyster
House because the owner of the Union Oyster House, so
somebody associated knew was tied with the Ties and they said,
you know, you can have your embassy up above our building.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Oh, that's so funny. I don't think I've ever actually
heard those.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
See I'm hired, right.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Yeah, when can you start Green Dragon?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
And what was the function of the Green Dragon? George
Washington had aspiring network, and did the Green Dragon figure
into that?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
There were so uh yes and no. All of these
spine networks that exist are kind of they're working with
each other and communicating with each other to various degrees,
particularly when you're early in the American Revolution. It's it
hasn't quite when you're thinking of of like the like
(18:13):
the docu drama sort of version of it. That's a
that's a little bit more well established sort of spine
network when you're getting a little bit later on into
the war. But this is something that the Sons of
Liberty are also doing on their own time, and they're
also communicating with the Continental Army because there there's a
lot of overlap there and these militias that are also
(18:34):
sort of working and trying to find information, and they're
they're staying very busy. One of the things about Green
Dragon is that it's it's a it's like a bar,
so you get people across the political spectrum hanging out
and you.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Get them drunk. Yeah, yeah, in vino veritas.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
And you get to chatting, right, And so there are
often British soldiers that are are up there in the
town talking and they're not really paying attention to what
they're saying in front of staff sort of service staff. Yeah,
particularly if it's women that are are, you know, moving
(19:15):
glasses and bottles and food around. Yeah, they're just they're
not paying super close attention to what the girls are
listening to. And so they're actually a huge part of
these spy networks.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, okay, we have so much to get to in
such a short time. Do you have a specific Smoots tour.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
We don't have a specific Smoots tour. I would love
to be able to build one out in smoots. That
would be a lot of fun, I think.
Speaker 1 (19:40):
But so talk about the tour that includes Smoots and
explain what a smoot is to those who are not
smoot savvy.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
So, a smoot is a very niche unit of measurement.
There's an there's a group of fraternity pledges at MIT
who are told by one of the fraternity members who
is leading their sort of hazing ritual that he's very
frustrated by how long that bridge is and how cold
(20:09):
it is, and he has to cross it every day
to get from Harvard. Yeah sorry, not from Harvard, from
his residence in Boston over to Mit where he's a student.
And he wants them to measure the length of this bridge,
and he said, They go, okay, so what unit of
measurement do you want? And he goes and he's looking
(20:31):
through this group. One of the the pledges. His last
name is Smoot, and he goes, I would like it
measured in smoots. And so they take a string and
they measure him and they start using the string the bridge. Well,
he sees them with the string, and he goes, what
are you doing And they go, we're measuring in smoots
and measuring in string, and so they he makes them
(20:58):
use basically chalk, and he has poor Smoot. He has
to lay down head to foot on these chalk lines,
and by the time they're at the end this is
a very long bridge. He can barely stand up by
himself and he needs quite a bit of assistance. But
they do measure it in smoots and it is still
marked in smoots today.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
The version of the Smoot story I heard and I'm
not a professional historian, but this is more colorful. Is
they've got Smoot pass out drunk and laid him end
to end all the way across the bridge. That's just sexier.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Verbal well, it would be so much easier for poor Smoot.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
He must have been pretty sore at the end of I.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Think the version of it that I heard was that
he was he was down for the count for a
few days, because he was quite sore by the time
they were done getting up and laying down and getting
up and laying down.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And I have a couple of you know, trivia questions.
How how long is one smooth?
Speaker 2 (21:59):
It's it's an odd he's like five foot seven.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Very good thing. Yeah, your boss is listening. Good your
boss Daniel is listening. It's a good thing. You got
it right. And for extra points, how many smooths is
it across the bridge?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Oh my gosh. I did check this earlier today, but
I'm now doubting myself. I believe it was five hundred
and seventy six point four. Is that that can't be right.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
I didn't know this ahead of time. I'm not going
to try to kid you. I looked it up, but
according to AI Overview, and AI can be wrong. Three
hundred and sixty four point.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Smooth I'm far overestimated.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
And they recently so the folks, if you've never seen this,
The really interesting thing about it is every year or
every so often they would have to repaint the smoot
max because they would wear off. Oh yeah, and so
many years have passed since the smooth thing became a
thing that there were huge this is before your time,
(23:04):
huge speed bumps made from the layers of paint. There
had to be tens and dozens of layers of paint
so that it must have come up, you know, two
three inches worth of layers of paint. And when they
redid the bridge, all the smoots went away and say
he had the stunt sadly one little coat of paint, two
(23:28):
little coats of paint that back in the day, back
when you had to walk you know, the school both
ways uphill, there were these big humps of paint made
because they made the kids, they made the students, they
made somebody paint these smooths over and number. So that's
the story of smoot on them MI I T Bridge.
We got more after this on WBZ It's Night Side
(23:52):
with Dan Ray on Boston's news radio. I tried Bradley
Jay for Dan, and we can we continue to talk
history with Kelly Leonard, our guest and Kellyeah. I could
have told you this during the break, but I discovered
something during the break that I wanted to share with
you and everyone in all the thirty eight states in
(24:13):
Canada that listen to the station.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Right at this moment, I can't wait.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
Well, we were discussing Smoot's Smoot is the person they
laid end to end over the MIT Bridge for some prank,
just to measure it not in feet or yards, but
in smoots so on it's body length, and we had
there were three different versions of the story that we
were bandying around. Look what I've found from the MIT
(24:43):
MIT Tech Talk September twenty four, two thousand and eight.
Not only is there an article that says Smoot reflects
on his measurement on the fiftieth anniversary, there's a picture
of Smoot laying on the bridge with four of his
wild I see buddies, and I'll just so that proves
(25:04):
there's a picture of him not passed out drunk. So
my theory was wrong. As his fraternity brothers laid his
five foot seven inch frame end to him to measure
the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge one night in October nineteen fifty eight.
Smoot was from the class of sixty two. There was
one distinct thought running through Oliver Smoot's mind. That thought was,
(25:28):
and I think you mentioned it. It's pretty cold. One
more paragraph. Smoot, class of sixty two, recall memories. Recently
during the night his name became a unit of measurement
as Mit prepared to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the
Quirky Hack. And they had a whole bunch of events
(25:48):
planned around that. So you can see. During the next break,
I'll Showia Smoot so you'll know, and there it is, folks. Okay, Next,
what kind of quirky tours or quirky things can we
learn on your Boston History Company tours? I like the quirky,
the quirky.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
There's so much out there, all right.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
How about the object on the top of the State
House is not a blank, but it is instead a blank.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
It is not a pineapple, but is instead a gilded
pine cone.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Okay. People thought that pineapples were a sign of good
luck or something, right, That was the thing a pineapple.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah, the pineapple often associated with good luck in the
colonial period, with wealth because it's very expensive to ship
a pineapple without it rotting. But instead it is a
pine cone, which is in a way also a symbol
of the colony's wealth. We were a major exporter of
pine that's what's used in ship masts in the eighteenth century.
So we have all of these beautiful old growth pine
(26:56):
forests have had, We had them, and that was all marked.
All of that old growth pine was marked as part
of the King's forest essentially, So.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Pine cones were our kind of cash crop. Yeah, very
responsible for the success of the town.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah, So the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony is really the
wealth is built on pine trees, timber, and the codfish.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
And talk about the mackerel.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Oh, yes, so are and.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
What tour these two things on? They the Freedom Trail tour.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah, these usually come up on the Freedom Trail.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
The Holy mackerel.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yes, some Massachusetts residents may be familiar with the Sacred
cod which hangs over our House of Representatives in our
state House. Our state Senate, not to be left out,
has a small gilded mackerel which hangs in their chamber same.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
I mean the Sacred God was sacred because it was important,
just like the pine cone.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Yes, the cod is well, that was a major export
for the Massachusetts Bay Province. It was. There's a story
about John Smith traveling this is before Massachusetts is settled
by English English settlers, that he travels up through what
is now Cape Cod and you can look out into
(28:27):
the water and he says that it is so plentiful
with codfish that you could step out and walk across
their backs.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
I don't know if they're quite that plentiful still, but yeah, huge,
really massive codfish. And we do also have quite a
few mackerel, which we also ship out throughout the rest
of the British Empire in the eighteenth century. So there
is the there is the sacred cod and the holy mackerel.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
Speaking with Kelly Leonard Boston History Company about the many
you have thirty two different tours, right, Yeah, So, folks,
if you're listening to me in Minnesota, are like maybe
phil in Ontario. You don't have to do the standard tour.
There all sorts of other tours, including one about Salem,
(29:19):
which is not what you might think. It's not a
whitch tour. Talk about that.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
Yes, it's difficult to do Salem without talking about the
Salem Witch Crisis, but we try to not have it
be the beginning, in the end, the end, all be
all of a tour in Salem, because there is so
so much history in Salem outside of that. Salem in
the nineteenth century was a massive, massive, hub of international
(29:44):
shipping on the East Coast, particularly in the Northeast. It
was at the hub of spice imports. Primarily there was
a massive trade with China, and that's where a lot
of the sort of like the well not sort of,
that's where a lot of the money in Salem ends
up coming from in the nineteenth century. So all of
those really grand houses that you see if you walk
(30:05):
around in downtown Salem that are part of the PbD
Essex Museum.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
Spice built those.
Speaker 2 (30:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Yeah, didn't the North Shore have a lot to do
with rum running as well, because you couldn't bring it
into Boston if you had caught, so they would drop
it off with some port north like maybe Salem. I
don't know why not Salem.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
There was probably some some rum running in Salem at
some point, but yeah, there's rum. Rum is actually domestically
produced for quite a long time in Massachusetts. We're getting
a lot of molasses and a raw sugar getting imported,
particularly in the colonial period. Medford is actually a big
hub of rum production in the eighteenth century. That molasses
(30:54):
import is also part of what gets us to the
molasses flood right eventually, Yep, do.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
You do a molasses flood tour?
Speaker 2 (31:01):
We don't have a molasses flood tour. We do talk
about it quite a bit in the North End if
we do a North End tour for someone.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So after this, we're going to talk to Nick and
Wilmington and we're going to dig into some details you
may not know about. I'm pretty sure you don't know
about the Boston Tea Party. As we continue with our guest,
Kelly Leonard, Boston History Company on w BZ. You're on
Night Side with Dan Ray on w b Z, Boston's
News Radio Bradley for Dan Tonight on Nightside. Kelly Leonard's
(31:28):
I guess from Boston History Company, a different kind of
history tour company, and we do have a call before
we go to talk about some interesting details on the
tea party. You probably don't know the Boston Tea Party
we go to Nick in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Hello, Nick, Hey, Bradley oile. Great nice the smooth story.
You missed detail. That's really cool about it. I think
I said three and sixty four smooths, yes, and some change.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
I actually have a measuring tape and it measures and smooth.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I got. Did you get that?
Speaker 3 (32:08):
I got they had a table set up one time
in mit and and they had them they were giving
them away, and uh, the measurement is uh, you said
three hundred and sixty four smooths and the ear because
the measuring tape has an ear on the end of it.
That's cool. Yeah, and I heard that it was October
(32:30):
fourth when it was done. And uh, when they got
up when they got up to the bridge, they didn't
have a measuring tape, so that's why they measured. But
now the smooth guy, and that's three hundred and sixty
four smoots in the ear.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
That's right, very good. Guy was five seven. If a
football player history would have been a different thing, that'd
be far fewer smooths. Don't get across that, Nick, that's
a great car. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, okay, good.
I'm excited to hear all these additional details about the
(33:09):
tea party. I did not know that you're going to share.
And that's the kind of thing that folks learned on
your tea party tour, right.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Yeah, this comes up on the Freedom Trail usually.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, all right, well give me the whole highly detailed
tea party story.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah. So the Boston Tea Party, we're all very familiar
with it. Folks who have done a Freedom Trail tour
have probably gotten to chant dump the tea into the
sea outside of the Old South Meetinghouse. But there is
this incredible sort of organizational effort that goes into the
Boston Tea Party. There are patrols of folks who are
(33:48):
part of it, who are tasked solely with making sure
that nobody steals any tea. They want to make sure
that it is thoroughly destroyed. So there is one gentleman,
Charles Uh from Charlestown, an Irish immigrant. He gets caught
stuffing tea into his coat pockets and into his boots,
(34:11):
and he's stripped and they shake all of the tea
out and he's sort of like rolled around in the
mud and and heckled and beaten up a bit and
sent on his way.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
He's lucky because he's quite lucky. Back then, people were
really the punishments were pretty severe. Pretym getting molten tar
on you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Yes, yeah, that can kill you. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
People think tyrant feathering is cute. Not cute at all.
It can burn you to death.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Yeah, you can be burned to death a lot of
times as secondary infection after the fact. That's what gets you.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
So from Charlestown, Yes, was allegedly, I don't I don't
know for sure. I haven't seen transcripts of the trial.
Allegedly stuffed tea into his shirt. He got busted. Yep, Hey,
what's that in your shirt? Nothing? Yeah, and they okay, yep,
all right.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Next the the ecological impacts. Oh yeah, the tea is
also pretty major for a town that is reliant heavily
on the ship the fishing industry. So for weeks and weeks,
fish are just turning up belly up in the harbor.
It's a disaster.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
It's similar to an oil spill because it clogs up
their gills.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yes, so it's it's clogging up their gills. It's something
that is presumably potentially toxic to a lot of fish.
There is a reason that they don't live in aquariums
of tea. And it's also it's just washing up on
the beaches as well, pots and piles of tea. Yeah, yeah,
there's so much tea as they're dumping it over the
(35:45):
sides of the ship. They're doing this at low tide
as well, which doesn't help. But they're having to send
people over the sides of the ship to push the tea.
It's just mounding up around the ship, so they're having
to push it all down to make sure that it
gets into the water so that it's destroyed.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Now, was I understand that they had the crown had
lifted a bunch of onerous taxes, but just insisted on
this one born on everybody's side, like tea. You can
you know, it's not food. You can live without tea? Yes,
at least I certainly could. They probably weren't a tea
more than I am. But still it was just a little,
(36:23):
a little needle to say, yeah, okay, fine, I'll lift
these other jax'es, but I'm going to keep this one
on tea. But we couldn't let that go, No, and
mostly Sam Adams couldn't let it go right.
Speaker 2 (36:34):
Sam Adams and John Hancock is another big figure in
this because he's a merchant. He has plenty to gain
or lose by something like this, because it's really a
message about the smuggling that's happening.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
I heard, and it makes sense that John John Hancock
was kind of not an original gung ho revolutionary because
business as usual was good for him. Yeah, oh yeah,
and war is bad for business, and well at least
his businesses at the time. But gradually he gets more
and more fed up, and I guess gradually stuff started
(37:10):
to cost him money, and that may have been one
of the reasons for his patriotism is, yeah, this is
kind of costing me money.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Yeah. So there's the colonial merchants, particularly in Boston, have
a really long history with a little bit of smuggling
here and there. Right, everything that they import is in
theory supposed to come by way of the British Empire,
but sometimes the Dutch have better prices, or sometimes it's
(37:40):
actually a little cheaper to get your madera directly from Spain.
So they're using the Caribbean as this sort of layover
to be able to purchase goods a little bit cheaper
more directly and having these taxes, particularly with the tea,
which is actually less expensive to purchase British tea with
the tax on it than it costs for someone like
John Hancock to ship.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Great, great job Kelly Leonard, Kelly Leonard from Boston History Company,
Boss Daniel, you should be proud and just we can't
even get through all your like thirty two tours. But
if you're coming into town, are you're looking for something
different to do, When you're looking for a tour company
that might might tell you stuff for a little more
than you thought, you might go home with some bonus knowledge,
(38:24):
you might want to try the Boston History Company.
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Thank you very much, Thank you so much, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
Coming up next, we have Micah Engberg who is an
airplane geek, and he's going to catch us up on
some of the things you need to know about aviation,
like if you don't have your real ID yet, it
could cost you some money at some time. We'll explain
on WBZ News Radio ten thirty
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