Today’s blog post comes to you from our guest author, CHC volunteer Michael Kenney.
“Was there a city of Norumbega” on the Charles River just upstream from Cambridge? That was the rhetorical question posed in 1891 by Eben Norton Horsford, a chemistry professor at Harvard and developer of Rumford Baking Powder. And he was certain of the affirmative answer.
Horsford’s brook-no-doubt answer is to be found in his Defenses of Norumbega, now in the library of the Cambridge Historical Commission. It is an answer he proves to his satisfaction with a series of 16th century maps and the journals of an 18th century seaman, with the name itself derived from the Algonquin word for “a quiet place between the rapids.”
As for the “habit of ear” which was a key element of his researches, Horsford notes in an aside that he had spent his childhood among Indians as the son of missionaries.
It is a densely-argued thesis, with excursions into the accounts of voyages from those of Leif Ericsson to Samuel de Champlain, along with the narratives of explorers and merchants who visited the “city of Norumbega.”
Should one wonder what remains, Horsford offers, by way of an answer, speculative maps including the one reproduced here (above), as well as the curious photograph (below) of what he describes as “the dam, docks and wharves of the ancient city of Norumbega,” sitting alongside the Charles River at Weston.
And the still-curious will find, tucked into the farthest southwest corner of Cambridge, a collection of Horsford-themed streets — Thingvalla Avenue (named for a kettle-hole which Horsford thought was a Norse amphitheater), Ericsson Street, Norman Street, Norumbega Street, and Vineyard Street.
Stay tuned for a future blog post on the interesting Mr. Horsford and Rumford Baking Powder.
