Eagle Feathers #297 – Somerville’s Liquid Measure

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink,” is a line from, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It proposes that regardless of being enveloped by something, you cannot benefit from it. Like a sailor on a ship in idle waters, he is surrounded by salt water that he cannot drink.

Somerville, when she was part of early Charlestown, knew this well. In 1629, eleven families settled in Charlestown including Thomas Walford’s Dane Street palisade. These forefathers discovered that there was a lack of good fresh water from their only spring. In 1630, because of its brackish or salty water, most left Charlestown and settled in Boston. This move may have cost them becoming our capital city.

Liquids take the shape of their containers. Some Somerville liquids have been historic.

• The ocean’s liquid covers more than 70% of the earth’s surface, contains more than 97% of its water and delivered John Winthrop, our first Governor, to our shore.
• Somerville‘s liquid perimeter made her a tidal-marsh island made up of the Mystic, Charles and Miller Rivers and the Tannery and Alewife Brooks.
• For years, root beer was one of the nation’s most popular soft drinks. Hires, the nation’s oldest, was co-invented by Somerville’s Professor/Colonel Russell Conwell and his student Charles Hires. The liquid was originally called herbal tea until they changed it to root beer. Conwell founded the Somerville Journal and Temple University.
• Another tasty liquid is Somerville’s Tower Root Beer honoring Prospect Hill.
• Through the years, the favorite colonial spirit was rum. When it was diluted with water, they called it grog. Some say that Paul Revere’s liquid fuel on his midnight ride might have been Medford Rum.
• Dairies in Somerville were once very numerous, and the Somerville Museum highlights them in its excellent milk-bottle collection.
• Since 1846 Charlestown/Somerville was home to the business of H.P. Hood (Harvey Perley Hood) and his sons. The company continues to thrive today and its products can be seen in supermarkets across the country. Further reminders are its overhead blimp, the smoke stack at Charlestown’s Hood Park, the giant Hood Bottle in front of the Boston Children’s Museum and its memory of Milk Row and Milk Lane in Somerville. Today, as in 1846, this American dairy company giant still delivers our family’s most important liquid … milk.