BOSTON'S HEMP HISTORY

See how cannabis hemp is intertwined and woven into Boston's history during colonial times and well into the 1800's. Learn how ropewalks used hemp to create the cordage and rigging for the sailing ships of the day. Did you know that ropewalk workers were involved in the Boston Massacre? See old maps showing that ropewalks used to be near the Boston Common, Beacon Hill and the Old State House. Visit the Plymouth Cordage Company's ropewalk that is now at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. Check out the immense granite ropewalk at the Charlestown Navy Yard.

Sources used for this include:

Boston's Workers: A labor History, James R. Green & Hugh Carter Donahue, 1979

History of Manufactures in the United States, Volume I: 1607-1860, Victor S. Clark, W. Farnam. New York, P. Smith, 1959

Boston; A Topographical History, Walter Muir Whitehill, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1959

The Book of Boston: The Federal Period 1775-1837, Marjorie Drake Ross, Hastings House Publishers, 1961

Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, Volume 4 (of 5), Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, The States History Company, 1927-28

The Story of Rope, The History and the Modern Development of Rope-Making, Compiled and published by Plymouth Cordage Company, 1916

Topographical and Historical Description of Boston, Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, Noyes, Holmes, & Co., 1872

Portrait of a Port: Boston, 1852-1914, W.H. Bunting, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971

Currier, History of Newburyport, Volume I

James Henry Stark's Antique Views of Boston, Burdette & Co., Inc., 1967

America, Russia, Hemp, and Napoleon - American Trade with Russia and the Baltic, 1783 - 1812, Alfred W. Crosby, Jr., Ohio State University Press, 1965

A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky, James F. Hopkins, University of Kentucky Press, 1951

Charlestown Navy Yard, Official National Park Handbook, Produced by the Division of Publications, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.,
1995

The Boston Massacre, Author: Hiller B. Zobel, 1970, Published by The Norton Library, Pages: 182-183

Category:

Education

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• rope
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• uss constitution
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• charlestown
• navy
• yard
• boston common
• boston public garden
• public
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• beacon hill
• education
• john
• dvorak
• hempology
• uss
• constitution

[boxa888]

@HempLogic so sad, the cotton big business destroyed this for us all! man! its criminal, its a violation of the constutution! the constitution was written on hemp,wake up people, its so sad all the brainwash! lol.

[HempLogic]

Thanks for the fascinating hemp history lesson!

[CameraOneStudios]

Want to learn about Massachusetts and laugh at the same time? Visit my channel and play my video "Funny Massachusetts History video"

[cannabistv]

Very informative, thanks. The Longfellow poem really takes one back!