New England Book Festival Honorable Mention 2023

When the Algonquin hunted and gathered on Gibbet Hill, the land was thickly forested and dotted with lakes. Centuries later, General William Amos Bancroft, mayor of Cambridge and president of the Boson Elevated Railway, built what is now known as the Castle-and set the scene for 100 years of drama.

This is the surprising story of the Castle on Gibbet Hill in Groton, Massachusetts-and the

hundreds of lives lived out here. The Hill was witness to a major battle of King Philips War. After it was suddenly sold by Bancroft in 1912 it became a private hospital and admitted patients returning from WWI, only to be closed when its owner became embroiled in the US Contract Hospital scandal.

Gibbet Hill was purchased by the super rich Danielson family, owners of The Atlantic Monthly and heirs to the Deering Tractor fortune. They founded the Groton Hunt Club in the 1920s. So symbolic was the hill that the Ku Klux Klan decided to erect a giant cross and set it on fire.

Daughter Marion Danielson bought the hill from her mother and founded one of the most important herds of purebred Angus cattle in America, influencing practices that created the modern breed we see today.

So why did General Bancroft abandon his plan for a grand baronial estate in Gibbet Hill? Was it the terrible Boston El Strike of 1912 or was it something else? Cherie Dumont presents compelling new evidence.