Lynnteresting!

This is the first of a new monthly feature exclusively for the Lynn Museum website! Little-known, interesting tidbits about this great city’s amazing history.

Look! Up There - A Hot Air Balloon!

The long and brutal Civil War was finally over. The loss of life was enormous, but the victory had been won, and the people of Lynn were ready to celebrate. The young city felt full of patriotism and excitement as the festivities of July 4^th finally arrived. A parade, firecrackers, and bands playing patriotic songs were certainties for the July 4^th celebration, but a new attraction was going to be the center of attention in this year, 1865 - Lynn would have its first-ever hot air balloon lift off from the Lynn Common.

A few hot air balloons had passed through the Lynn sky 20 to 30 years earlier. Those distant memories had landed in the ocean, the Lynn Woods, and a third near Alonzo Lewis’s oceanside home, but none had taken off from Lynn - until now.

Since those first man-made exclamation points had floated over Lynn, hot air ballooning had captured people’s hearts and imaginations, and their pilots, called aeronauts, were admired as daring heroes of a new frontier. During the Civil War, the Union forces organized a Balloon Corps for birds-eye spying of Confederate positions. The obvious danger of being far off the ground under a huge bag of explosive gas became even more perilous with enemies trying to shoot it down. Now the war was over and one of those dashing young aeronauts visited Lynn and arranged to take off in his balloon, named Fairy, from the Lynn Common on July 4^th 1865, but high winds rearranged his plans for him, so the ascension had to be delayed until July 6^th. A crowd still came to watch and the aeronaut tried to keep patriotic excitement in the air by tossing small flags from his basket as he flew over Lynn.

No one brought their balloon to Lynn for July 4^th 1866 and this was not acceptable to Parker Wells, a watchmaker and jeweler in Lynn. With no balloon making skills but lots of enthusiasm, he made his own hot air balloon - Lynn’s first. It was 35 feet in diameter, made of cotton that was oiled and varnished. It was decorated with an eagle and was named the City of Lynn; townspeople said it was the most beautiful they had ever seen - and it was ready for Lynn’s 4^th of July celebration in 1867. Wells had planned to fly his balloon, but he suffered from a partial sun-stroke just a few days before the 4^th, so he worked quickly to find someone to take his place in the balloon. He chose John H. Hall of Lynn who had served in the Balloon Corps. Interest in Lynn’s very own aeronaut and inflatable swelled like the balloon. The gas was supplied free, so it was a surprise to no one that the gas company’s superintendent got to ride with Hall. The balloon rose “slowly and majestically, the people cheering and waving their hats, and the band playing a national air.”

Valve trouble caused a rapid descent into the ocean off Lynn’s coast, but it did not dampen Lynn’s enthusiasm for hot air ballooning. Within a month the Essex South Balloon Association was formed in Lynn to collect and diffuse information on the subject of ballooning, and in August, Parker Wells offered citizens of Lynn their first opportunity to ride in one of the giant balloons. It was a “captive ascension” - the balloon was tethered to earth by a 500-ft rope. Rides were $2.00 and 25 people bought tickets.

The City of Lynn was a July 4^th celebration attraction again in 1868, but people wondered why it did not fly in 1869. Then in 1870 it flew once again on July 4^th, but in Lewiston, Maine and it had been renamed City of Lewiston, letting the air out of Lynn’s short-lived July 4^th tradition.

Front and back of the 1867 Captive Balloon Ascension ticket for the “City of Lynn”. The fact that this ticket is numbered 69 and only 25 tickets were sold suggests that while there was a lot of excitement about seeing the balloon, there were not many in Lynn able or at least willing to pay the $2.00 fee. The need for more income from the balloon was the most likely reason that Wells would have gone through the expense of taking his balloon up to Lewiston in 1870. Collection of Andrew V. Rapoza

-- by Andrew V. Rapoza

Visit Andy’s blog for fascinating facts about 19^th and early 20^th century medical quackery in Lynn and elsewhere: http://quackcogitations.blogspot.com