Hannah Jumper (1781–1865) was a primary organizer of a Rockport, Massachusetts, temperance group. After months of planning in 1856, Jumper's "Hatchet Gang" raided Rockport establishments that sold legal and illegal spirits. As a result of the raids, Rockport became a dry town until a voter referendum in 2005.
Life
Early life
Hannah Jumper was born in 1781, the sixth of eight children to William and Susan (Parsons) Jumper. According to Eleanor C. Parsons, author of Hannah and the Hatchet Gang; Rockport's Revolt Against Rum, it is reasonable to assume that William, returning home from a Revolutionary War battle, might have named his new daughter after the USS Hannah, the first armed vessel to fly the flag of the United States colonies.
Though born to a family of seafaring men, Hannah grew up in Joppa, Massachusetts, the only farming community between Gloucester and Sandy Bay (later to become Rockport) harbors. Through her adolescent years, she grew tall and rawboned, and it was during her teens when Hannah learned how to carry on all the household tasks of her large and impoverished family. It was during this period that Hannah would learn to take care of the sick as well.
Hannah became versed at growing, drying, and steeping herbs as potent cures for all kinds of ailments during this period. When she reached thirty, her favorite sister, Suzanna, died from consumption, her mother two years later from the same disease. Consumption was one of the most common diseases of the 18th and 19th centuries. It would later become known as tuberculosis. No one during Hannah's time knew how to cure it, so liquor became a medicine.
It was because of these constant hardships in taking care of family members, "Hannah found meaning in her life by going wherever she was needed, by doing for others whenever she could." When she was no longer required on the farm in Joppa, Hannah moved to Rockport. It was there that she would earn her living administering to the sick with her homemade remedies and by laundering and mending clothing for the townspeople.
Lead up to the raids
By the early 19th century, excessive drinking was considered to be a sufficient social problem that led to the founding of temperance societies in the United States and in Europe. The first founded in the U.S. was in 1808 in Saratoga, New York. By 1833, there were more than 6,000 local societies in the country. At first the temperance groups' campaigns were directed only at distilled spirits, but after 1836 they were aimed at all alcoholic beverages. In Rockport, from its earliest days of settlement, there had been efforts to control excessive drinking. Vendors of spirits were legally bound to present good-conduct certificates in order to secure licenses. On March 11, 1847, townspeople formed an abstinence membership such as the "Bay Tent of Rechabites". This local organization would incorporate over one hundred abstainers.
As a result of its remote geographic location, residents of Rockport, especially women, were lacking economically and intellectually. All but illiterate, Hannah and the other villagers were informed of news events twice a week with the arrival of The Gloucester Telegraph, a newspaper that was delivered by stagecoach to Rockport. Editorials during this time were of slavery in the United States and the shameful extravagances of the people of New York and of Paris. The women of Rockport, and notably Hannah, became increasingly agitated at the lavish spending of what was vogue in Paris and the disgraceful overindulgence exemplified by American women of wealth. The ladies were offended by the newspaper's advertisements which flaunted such luxuries. But the most shameful, outrageous expense of all to Hannah and her gang, according to the author Parsons, was the more than four and half million dollars the country frittered away on wines and liquors.
The men of Rockport were spending large portions of their earnings on rum. They said rum was as much a part of fishing as bait. Still, the $157 each fisherman brought home at the end of nine months of fishing was not enough to feed a family. In an era when a pound of flour cost $10, the men were spending 1 3/8 cents for a drink of rum. Parsons adds that "all this profligate spending could not help but fan the women's content."