Category Archives: Culture

September 12, 2023

The Summer of Old Photographs

By daseger

I worked all summer long on my chapters for Salem’s Centuries and a few other projects, researching and writing, researching and writing, researching and writing. Once I’m on the trail, I’m a pretty steady worker, but I do take breaks: I’ve learned from other writing projects that you have to pause to let your mind absorb and process information. Sometimes the break might be at night when you’re asleep—I got into the habit of leaving a notebook by my bedside when I was writing my dissertation and when I woke up in the morning sometimes I would see notations inside that I didn’t even remember writing! That must have been one of the benefits of a younger mind because it didn’t happen this summer, when all my breaks were conscious. Every time I went up to the Phillips Library in Rowley, I would dutifully call up boring municipal records but also collections which contained old photographs of Salem. I’d pore over them a bit and photograph them for later perusal, and by the end of the summer I had quite a collection. The Phillips has digitized two of its largest collections of Salem photographs: the Frank Cousins and Samuel Chamberlain collections, but there remain many seldom-seen images within collections. Fortunately there are great finding aids to locate such images, but also some very miscellaneous collections which yielded surprises, at least for me! I loved schoolteacher Grace Hood’s shots of the Salem and Massachusetts celebrations in 1926-1930 (PHA 67; including some completely new-to-me views of the opening day of Pioneer Village in 1930) and an unknown photographer’s depictions of a very gritty Salem encased in a large composite collection entitled Photographs of interiors and exteriors of Salem, Mass., circa 1890-1950 (PHA 151). And there’s much more.

Phillips Library PHA 67 & 151.

My favorite collection was the first one I accessed, back in May: a treasure trove of images contained in the scrapbooks of Francis Henry Lee of 14 Chestnut Street, mostly from the 1880s (Phillips Library MSS 128). Lee was the son-in-law of the woman who lived in my house, and a committed architectural antiquarian focused on documenting the history of every house on Chestnut and adjoining streets. He did not rely on hearsay, but sent queries to anyone who ever lived in the neighborhood, and his scrapbooks are filled with detailed responses, some written on black-trimmed stationery indicating that their authors were in mourning. I was familiar with his articles in the Historical Collections of the Essex Institute, but surprised to find his research materials accompanied by so many wonderful photographs.

Some of my favorites: (I filtered those that were really hazy or damaged).

Chestnut, Summer & Norman Streets from two perspectives. I’ll never get over how wonderful Norman Street was!

Riding and looking north on Summer Street, and then south (Samuel McIntire’s house is on the extreme left of the last photograph).

Broad Street, looking west.

Cambridge Street, looking north and south.

Work on Bott’s Court.

Hamilton Street, looking north.

Chestnut Street Houses—what’s going on with that figure at the third-floor level of the third photo above, which I think is #26?

Warren Street, looking towards the “Turnpike” (Highland Avenue).

There were several photographs which were especially exciting to see among the Lee papers, including those which show the magnificent formal garden in the rear of the Cabot-Endicott-Low House on Essex Street, which extended to Chestnut before no. 30 Chestnut was built in 1896. This garden was quite famous: it was prominently featured in many horticultural publications and was by all accounts quite the tourist attraction, especially in the spring. A 1904 Boston Globe article on “Beautiful Old Gardens of Salem” reports that for many years the tulip bed was the greatest feature of this garden, and each spring, when these flowers were in perfection, and upper portion of the high fence on Chestnut was removed to enable the public to view the exhibit.

Even more exciting than this lost garden were two photographs of my own house that I had never seen before, including one sans the apartment that was added on in phases between 1890-1910. Our house is the right side of a double house built in 1827: both sides were identifical until the 1850s, when one of our owners expanded the house considerably in back and altered the interior to look more fashionable at the time—round mouldings rather than square ones! The big entrance alteration reflects the changes inside, but I did not know that this guy also put new mouldings over the windows, and disdained shutters as too colonial, I guess. Several owners later, there was a sequential addition on the side of the house: first as an office for a very well-know opthamologist who lived here, and then bedrooms were built above: this is our present-day 7 1/2, a really cute apartment with the best views of Chestnut Street. I assumed that it covered up windows which were on the side of our house, but it looks like there were none. As you can see from all of the other photos of the street, Chestnut was driveway-less in the nineteenth-century: the larger houses had carriage access on Warren or Essex: the property of our house actually wrapped around Hamilton Hall next door and so our carriage house—long- demolished—accessed Cambridge Street.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, History, Salem

August 21, 2023

Salem’s Wooden Watchman

By daseger

Before there was Samuel McIntire, there was Lemon Beadle. Remember that name: Salem’s nineteenth-century antiquarians certainly wanted us to. Sometimes “Lemuel” is the spelling, but I’m going with Lemon, because Lemon Beadle!  On this past Thursday I went up to the Phillips Library in Rowley, source of most of Salem’s history in textual and material form, to look at some sources for the history of Town House Square, the subject of the last piece I have to write for our Salem’s Centuries book. I had ordered up a notebook entitled “Salem Estates and Localities 1629-1842” which included a “Chronological Chart of Churches in Salem, Mass.” mostly because I wanted to look at the latter (and it is pretty great). The notebook consitutes the notes of William Phineas Upham, the son of  Charles Upham, the first great historian of the Salem Witch Trials. William, who prepared what must be one of the most important maps in American history (perhaps an overstatement, but I live in Salem), a 1692 view of Salem Village for his father, was clearly gathering information for his own magnum opus. The notebook was filled with extraordinary detail about many structures in Salem, illustrated occasionally with marginalia drawings of little houses. I found it charming and informative, but not particularly relevant to my topic, and I was about to close it and move on when I came to William’s rather compelling depiction of Salem’s central 18th century watch house, with its life-sized watchman on top, carved by Lemon Beadle. 

From Phillips Library Fam. Mss. 1047, Salem Estates and Localities, 1629-1842 by William P. Upham.

This illustration really intrigued me: could the “soldier” (as Upham calls it above) or “watchman” (according to other sources) really have been that big? Were there any other depictions out there? Sadly, I have found none so far, but I did get more details from a variety of old Salem sources. This particular watch house was likely Salem’s second, and it was built on Schoolhouse Lane, later School Street and the present-day Washington Street, in 1712: the carved wooden figure on its roof bore the date Anno Regina 1712 in large gold letters. If it was not conspicuous enough, town records indicate the watchman/soldier was painted in 1725. Lemon Beadle was chosen for the commission because of his experience crafting figureheads, and the entire production seems to have been part of policy to improve and standardize the watch system and remind Salem men of their civic responsibilities. While real watchmen endured into the nineteenth century, I’m pretty sure that was not the case with their wooden representative; there are the references to the watch house’s survival fifty years after its construction, but that’s it. Upham clearly wanted to “see” and portray it in his notebook, along with its adjacent whipping post.

Upham’s whipping post and other Salem structures; a watchman by Albert Blaisdell; Salem printer Ezekiel Russell’s watch order, 1777, Sang Collection via Sotheby’s;  Salem Gazette.

Since my focus is on the watchman statue, I’m a little out of my depth and discipline, but I did find one text which asserted that Lemon Beadle’s work is “the first documentable piece of free-standing sculpture in Massachusetts” (Benno M. Forman, American Seating Furniture, 1630-1730: An Interpretive Catalogue, 1988). That’s a pretty big claim; I wonder if it’s still standing. Elias Hasket Derby commissioned woodcarvers John and Simeon Skillen to carve four “free standing figures of larger dimensions, ranging between 4 and 5 feet in height” for his summer estate near the end of the century, but I have to say that without a more detailed depiction, Upham’s watchman sketch reminds me more of the……….(searching for correct word here, can’t come up with anything really applicable) rather less elegant figures which “graced” the very notorious Timothy Dexter’s estate in Newburyport. There were 40, including one of Dexter himself, and the Reverend William Bentley was not impressed when he visited in 1803: “There is no horrid violation of proportion in the district objects but the vast columns, the gigantic figures, the extended arches, & absurd confusion of characters, tend to convince us of the abuse of riches….Dexter was within doors, drunk, having just suffered from a heavy beating from his drunken son, urged on by a drunken daughter.”

 I have no doubt that Lemon Beadle could have done better.

 John Rubens Smith (engraver), A View of the Mansion of the late LORD TIMOTHY DEXTER in High Street, Newburyport, 1810.

4 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Art, Culture, Salem

August 14, 2023

Twilight Time

By daseger

Pardon me, I’ve got to engage in some historiography. The history of historical interpretation can be a deadly topic in the context of precise historical events or periods, but is nevertheless essential engagement for comprehensive historical understanding. I feel like I’ve been swimming on the surface with all the Salem stuff this summer, so took advantage of a rainy cleaning-out-my-study afternoon to re-engage with two classic books that have been part of my life and work since graduate school, if not before: Johan Huizing’s Waning of the Middle Ages (1919) Otto Friedrich’s Before the Deluge (1972). I remember my first reading of both books very vividly: their ability to capture a mood and a time using a variety of sources and expressions and to illustrate the peak of their respective eras and civilizations in such captivating ways that you could feel the decline that followed. Both are “decline and fall” books that focus on the before, thus articulating the transition to after in such a way that you really don’t want to get there but you certainly appreciate the change. I think both books really set the standard for cultural history, and also for a succession of histories that focus on the late summer/autumn of civilizations, the waning, the twilight.

Late Summer and the onset of harvesting invokes feelings of seasonal change in general, but this particular summer has seemed almost apocalyptic to me in an environmental sense, so these books seemed to call to me when I was culling my library the other day—they will always be on my bookshelf but I don’t look at them every year. Huizinga’s period is my period so he’s always relevant for me, but even Before the Deluge felt timely when I opened it up the other day. The title is metaphorical, but it can apply literally now. Après moi le déluge, the famous phrase attributed alternatively to either Louis XV or his favorite, Madame de Pompadour, had a more specific meaning when it was uttered in the mid-18th century, but the overwhelming tide of change brought about by the French Revolution transformed it into both a prescient and universal statement by Marx in the 19th century and Great War survivors of the twentieth. I think both Huizinga and Friedrich have had a global impact in terms of imitators and successors, but I’m only familiar with European historiography so that’s going to be my focus in this post. The majority of “waning” books seem to dwell on the same eras as Huizinga and Friedrich, as well as that of the Revolution: they are seeking to explain and illustrate the great transitions from medieval to early modern and from modern to contemporary in classic European chronology. Not all are successful, as you will see from my comments below! 

Bouwsma’s book is inspired by two classical late medieval historiographical trends, that of Huizinga and his predecessor Jacob Burckhardt, whose Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy articulated a definitive Renaissance break and the beginnings of modernity. Unlike Burkhardt, Bouwsma sees the Renaissance as ending, and not just evolving into the early modern era. I really like this book, but it’s narrower in focus than most books focusing on transitions, maybe because it’s not. Norman Cantor was a great medieval historian, but in his later years I think he veered away from his expertise a bit too much: I really did not like In the Wake of the Plague, and I wanted to like The Last Knight, but I think many of his assertions about John of Gaunt were speculative: but just look at the subtitle!

This book by the intellectual historian Michael Sonenscher comes closest to my original understanding of the Après moi quote, and really conveys social perceptions of the coming financial deluge in the later 18th century. It’s more about the “coming” than the “waning” but still belongs in my subgenre. The medieval and early modern “twilight texts” are definitely academic and thus hard going in places, but the interpretations become a bit more accessible with the Friedrich-inspired texts below.

Before the Deluge is about the 1920s and there are several books about the Weimar Republic which mirror its approach in places (I like Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy by Eric Weitz) but books which attempt to recreate the pre-World War I mentality seem to me a bit more Friedrich-inspired. Frederic Morton and Juliet Nicolson both have family history to draw on for their social histories of Venice and England before the Great War, and while their works don’t quite approach the dazzling depths of Friedrich’s book, they are both very readable and often poignant. Nicolson’s book is very atmospheric: as I’m not really a fiction reader, for me, The Perfect Summer is the perfect summer read.

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August 7, 2023

Olmsted Central

By daseger

I have felt vulnerable all summer long, while working on my contributions for our Salem book: my chapters relate to academic fields for which I have no professional preparation, including African-American history (John Remond), art history (the Colonial Revival) and urban planning (Salem’s 20th-century development). I read widely and had support from my colleagues, and all the chapters will be peer-reviewed, so I don’t think I’ll embarass myself in the end, but I’m still a bit anxious. I’m co-writing the last referenced chapter, on Salem’s development from the Great Salem Fire of 1914 to the present, with my co-editor for the entire book, and after I plowed through rebuilding and urban renewal I simply dumped it on him, just done with it! It wasn’t fun to write and I needed some distance to reflect. So that’s what I have been doing for the last two weeks or so, trying to read histories of urban planning for pleasure. This is a field that intersects with the history of landscape design and garden history—and as the latter is more familiar to me I found a comfort zone. So I got some grounding and feel ready to go back into this chapter with some different perspectives and questions. I also realized I needed to cap off my weeks of reading with a visit to what must be the Mecca of landscape history: the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts.

So Chestnut Hill, a beautiful section of Brookline which extends over into Newton, was my weekend destination. This is where Boston Brahmins established their country seats in the later nineteenth century, and because of these considerable investments in land the area still retains its pastoral feel despite its proximity to Boston. At the height of his pathfinding career in 1883, Frederick Law Olmsted purchased an early 19th century farmhouse and several acres of land from two elderly spinster sisters who were reluctant to move: he built them a house next door. Another neighbor was Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose “Green Hill” summer house was built by Salem ship captain Nathaniel Ingersoll earlier in the century. Olmsted did not intend for his new house, named Fairsted, to be a seasonal showplace: it became the center of his business and his practice, as well as a center for the emerging new discipline of landscape architecture. This is the focus of the site’s interpretation: on the practice rather than the personal. The farmhouse was expanded in all directions, most conpicuously in the office addition which served as the headquarters of the Olmstead Brothers after the Frederick Law’s retirement in 1895. The firm endured (as the Olmsted Associates) until 1980, the same year that the National Park Service acquired Fairsted. As you can see from the photographs above, the orginal farmhouse its garden addition are not in the best shape: a planned and funded restoration has stalled due to the quality of the workmanship, and is delayed until the next funding process (but private donations can be made here). The interior of the farmhouse is pristine, and (again) dedicated to telling the story of the Olmsted practice. The office addition is like a time capsule of a 1920s-1930s architecture firm: with a drafting room, a photography room, a blueprint-printing room, a shipping room, and a vault, where all the Olmsted plans are archived.

In the main house: very few personal items, it’s all about the firm. I was primarily interested in the urban planning inititatives of the Olmstead firm as my chapter on Salem’s 20th century development begins with Harlan Kelsey’s 1912 City Plans Commission report. Because the Olmsted projects are so extensive, both in sheer number and geographically, the firm’s archives are always in demand and consequently the NPS has completed a major digitization project and also furnished researchers with an invaluable research guide to the collections. I found five Salem projects, the most important of which is the subdivision of the famous Pickman/Loring farm c. 1900: this was Salem’s first planned neighborhood, and I didn’t include it in my draft chapter (but I’m certainly going to do so now)!

The Olmsted site offers two tours, both of which were given by enthusiastic and articulate interns: one on the cultural landscape, the other on the office and practice. In the first, we learned all about Olmsted’s design philosophy (naturalistic and anti-Victorian, not particulaly interested in PLANTS, “borrowed view”) and the second focused primarily on how the firm was run during the era of the Olmsted sons/brothers. I just loved the office tour: forget AI and digital “reality”: this was immersion!

The Olmsted office wing: photography library with project #s (all materials are preserved in the vault now), drafting room, planting specifications, blueprint-printing room (and a very strange blueprint drying machine), shipping room, little cubbyhole office outside the vault.

3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, History

August 1, 2023

The Last Weekend in July

By daseger

I could have named this post “boats and blooms” because that’s about all I have to offer: this has been a working summer and I am running out of steam so no controversies, critiques or deep dives today. Just boats and flowers. We were up in York Harbor for the weekend and as usual, I bypassed the beach for Portsmouth. I just can’t stay away from that city: it was always the perfect place for me when I was growing up and I moved to Salem because it reminded me of Portsmouth but was a bit closer to Boston. Now it has become my anti- or ideal Salem: without witch kitsch and with smooth brick sidewalks. This year, Portsmouth is particularly festive because it is celebrating its 400th anniversary, and there were tall ships in the harbor, along with the usual display of exuberant gardens, shops, and architecture.

Back home, my father’s plentiful display of bee balm was kind of picked-over by all the hummingbirds it attracts, but still deserves honorable mention. And I never miss the gardens at Stonewall Kitchen’s flagship store in York.

And now for the boats! Something absolutely wonderful happened as Saturday night turned into Sunday morning: a windy storm came in and blew away all of the humidity that we’ve been living with for the past month. I know it’s nothing compared to the extreme conditions that other parts of the country are experiencing, but wow, Sunday felt like a whole new world. We decided to celebrate by going out on a sunset cruise of Portsmouth Harbor on the Piscataqua, a reproduction of a nineteenth-century gundalow, a coasting barge with a distinctive lanteen sail: it always looks medieval to me in the harbor! We sailed past the visiting NAO Trinidad, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (which is in Kittery, Maine), Fort Constitution in NH, Fort McClary in Maine and out to Wood Island, with a companion privateer, the Mystic, for the last leg.

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July 9, 2023

Sedgwick Sanctuary

By daseger

Yesterday I learned a new word, drumlin, a long, flat-topped hill formed by glaciers, during my visit to the appropriately-named Long Hill in Beverly, one of the properties of the Trustees of Reservations. At the top of this drumlin, away from the “gold coast” where many of their Boston friends summered, Ellery and Mabel Cabot Sedgwick built a Federal Revival House with bricks harvested from an Ipswich mill and detailed woodwork crafted by enslaved workers from a Charleston mansion. They planted a copper beech tree to mark the spot of their new summer home, and after it was built, kept on clearing and planting, crafting a series of inter-connected gardens around it, designed to frame the home and also blend in with the 100+ acres of woodland and meadows beyond. It’s a spectacular site in so many ways: I’ve visited it many times and posted it about here too, but the Trustees have been engaged in a garden revitalization initiative for their properties, and so I wanted to give Long Hill another look. I took a proper tour rather than just wandering around (highly recommended: it was particularly important for me as I know quite a bit about plants but nothing about trees, and Long Hill has some very unsusual specimens) and now I have a whole new appreciation for this amazing space, and the amazing women who created it.

When Ellery and Mabel Cabot Sedgwick purchased the Long Hill property in 1916, he was in the first phase of his long and successful run as owner and editor of the Atlantic Monthly, which extended to 1938. But she was pretty famous too, having published a popular (and still very useful) gardening guide entitle The Garden Month–By–Month in 1907. The pull-out color chart from The Garden graces Long Hill’s library, framed by silhouettes of Mabel and the second Mrs. Sedgwick, the former Marjorie Russell, who was also an accomplished plantswoman. Together, in succession, they built the spectacular Long Hill gardens, Mabel establishing the integrated “garden rooms” format and Marjorie adding more exotic varieties of plant material—and also focusing on plant propagation and experimentation, often in collaboration with Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum. The property served as the summer retreat for the the entire Sedgwick family, including the four children of Mabel and Ellery and their children, until the death of Marjorie Sedgwick in 1978, after which Theodore Sedwick Bond, Henrietta Sedgwick Lockwood, S. Cabot Sedgwick, and Ellery Sedgwick, Jr. donated Long Hill to the Trustees. It still feels a bit like a family house, even with an event tent on site: accessible rather than stately.

 

One way the Trustees has enhanced the accessibility of the property is to emphasize the fact that it is a place of activity, still a work in progress as it was under the administration of the two Mrs. Sedgwicks. There’s a cutting garden, a greenhouse and horticultural center, cold frames, ongoing plant propagation, workshops, and for those that don’t want to get their hands dirty, the horticultural library in the house. There are also trails for those who want to explore the rest of the 114-acre property, the “world” beyond cultivation. The overall message is appreciate and act.

plant propagation in action for those who don’t recognize it—like me!

I’m going to conclude with some of the spectacular trees on the property, just a sampling for sure. I’m just starting to look at trees after a lifetime of being unblissfully unaware, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to revisit Long Hill and will continue to do so. There’s a lot to learn, but yesterday I was just kind of awestruck by some of the textures and colors of the bark, let along the flowers and leaves. It got increasingly humid as we made our way through the garden(s), and so a weeping hemlock was a welcome rest stop, as it was 10 degrees cooling under its dense branches.

These last two amber trees are a Tall Stewartia and a Paperbark Maple.

A few last photos: the house is beautiful, but it’s really just an orientation center for the garden now—-BUT I want you to see this beautiful wallpaper in the center hall, purchased by the Sedgwicks in London during their house furnishing tours in the 1920s, as well an example of “enslaved craftsmanship,” a mantle from the Isaac Ball House in Charleston.

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Culture

June 5, 2023

One Hero and 17 Rescinders

By daseger

I am staying in my family’s house in York Harbor for the month of June, mostly writing with occasional breaks for gardening and sightseeing. But you know me: I can never really get away from Salem! On this past Saturday, a single word was uttered which provided me with a connecting link between my hometown and my principal place of residence: rescinders. This is not a word you come across often, but within a couple of days I did, quite by happenstance. I love it when that happens, so here’s the context and the connection, starting with yet another preservation challenge back in Massachusetts concerning a structure associated with Revolutionary War Brigadier General John Glover. Glover is associated with two standing structures, a landmark house not far from Marblehead Harbor and a “retirement” home located on the Marblehead/Swampscott/Salem line which had a long and varied history following his death in 1797. “Glover Farm” was most recently the “General Glover House,” a restaurant owned and operated by Anthony Athanas of Pier 4 fame, but the entire property, including the 1762 house in which John Glover lived and died, has been left to deteriorate following its closure in the 1990s. While various officials of the town of Swampscott have proclaimed the property “blighted,” the Swampscott Historical Commission (which seems to be 10x more proactive than its counterpart in Salem) voted to issue a demolition delay and is seeking ways and means to save it in collaboration with the Swampscott Historical Society and local preservationists and any- and everyone who is interested in material heritage.

Glover Farm as the General Glover Inn, part of Sunbeam Farm, 1920s-1930s, Swampscott Public Library. Anthony Athanas opened the General Glover House in 1957 and here are menu covers and ads from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s from guidebooks of those eras. It looks like the perfect “ye olde” restaurant: I wish I had went!

General Glover was a true American hero, outfitting his own ships as privateers, ferrying General Washington across the Delaware on that fateful Christmas night in 1776 and serving at Saratoga, Newport, and the Hudson River highlands successively between bouts of ill health on his part and returns to Marblehead to attend to his ailing wife. He sought retirement at the close of the Revolution, and General Washington notified him of Congress’s approval in a letter dated July 30, 1782, closing with wishes for a restoration of health, attended with every happiness in your future walks of life. Apparently Glover found that happiness at the rural farm some distance from Marblehead’s busy docks, in a house that its still standing despite decades of active development all around it. I started digging into this particular Glover House when my friend and former colleague, Nancy Lusignan Schultz, brought it to my attention: as chair of the Swampscott Historical Commission, she is right at the center of the preservation efforts (which you can learn much more about in this podcast). But as soon as I realized who built the house, I was caught, or caught up: it was William Browne, Salem’s richest and most notorious Loyalist, whose considerable properties were confiscated after he fled to Britain in 1776, eventually ending up as the colonial Governor of Bermuda. Browne deserves much more scrutiny than I can give him here, but he was a powerful man in Salem and Massachusetts, whose fall from grace came when he became one of the 17 “Rescinders” who were described by John Adams as Wretches, without Sense or Sentiment after they voted to rescind the Massachusetts Circular Letter which had been drafted by the provincial Assembly in response to the Townshend Acts in 1768. The Letter called for resistance, and was sent to all of the other colonies, prompting the protest of Governor Francis Barnard on behalf of London. Bernard ordered the Assembly to rescind the letter, and the Assembly put the matter before a vote: 92 nays and 17 yeas, with Salem’s representatives Browne and Frye loudly voting YEA. This lead to one of the most important moments in Salem’s political history, a town meeting assembled to vote for replacements for Browne and Frye which exposed the deep divisions of the day, and about 30 Salem Loyalists. Browne and Frye and their 15 fellow wretches were “memorialized” by the ever-ready Paul Revere in his adaptation of a British broadside entitled The Scots Scourge issued under the title A Warm Place—[in]Hell and Boston merchant John Rowe noted the names in his diary, “for my own satisfaction.”

A Warm Place—Hell by Paul Revere, American Antiquarian Society.

How I love Rowe’s sentiment: I record the 17 yeas, that were so mean-spirited to vote away their Blessings as Englishmen, namely their Rights, Liberties and Properties and how lovely that one of Browne’s properties should go to such a self-sacrificing patriot as General John Glover. But this is not the end of my rescinder rap. I was so focused on Frye and Browne and Salem that I did not take note of all the names on Rowe’s list immediately. I drove up to York on Friday and went to an open house at our local Historic New England property on Saturday: the Jonathan Sayward House, where I interned in college. As soon as I stepped in the parlor, I remembered: he was a rescinder too, and there he is on Rowe’s list, just above Browne (Maine was of course part of Massachusetts until 1820). Sayward did not suffer as much loss as Browne, who I believe was a much bigger fish: no exile (just confinement to this very home), no confiscation, and reconciliation after it was all over. George Washington and King George III share wall space in the Sayward House today.

Portrait of Jonathan Sayward, Rescinder, in his family home, anonymous artist, and the right parlor, above. Below, our hero, Brigadier General John Glover: a study by John Trumbull drawn while Glover was living at his farm, 1794. Yale University Art Gallery.

5 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Culture, History, Houses

May 10, 2023

A Visual History of Home

By daseger

My mind is whirling these days: we’re at the end of the semester, and a teaching-free summer lies ahead of me, but so do three writing projects, maybe more. I’m always thinking, but I’m also really tired, so it’s not all constructive. Thankfully gardening season has begun, but I did not feel particularly re-energized after my first foray out back last weekend—just sore! Then I remembered this book that I picked up down in Connecticut during our stay at the Griswold Inn a few weeks ago. The Griswold has no televisions in their rooms, which pleased me, but not my husband, so I suggested we go to a rather elegant used bookstore next door. We browsed, he more intently than I, but I came across a beautiful book that I thought I could add to my bedside stack of books I never read because I seem to only read for information, and all my informational books are in my study. I bought it, threw it in my suitcase, brought it home and forgot all about it until this past Sunday, when I poured myself a glass of wine and opened it up………….and immediately began to relax, in the best possible, almost entranced way. This book is entitled At Home. The American Family 1750-1870, and it was written by Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett (now Widmer), then (1990) a vice-president at Sotheby’s, and author of several books on historic interiors. Apparently Ms. Garrett had published a series of articles on “the American Home” in The Magazine Antiques in 1983 that was so well-received that it prompted the publication of this book and boy, I can understand why. Peter Thornton, whose book Authentic Decor: the Domestic Interior 1620-1920 I am familiar with, notes in his Forward that the “outstanding quality” of At Home is “the sheer weight of evidence that has been marshaled and the manner in which it has all been presented.” I agree, but I think the manner is more important, at least for my personal purposes: I seldom read for pleasure, and this book offered both pure pleasure and tons of information, in well-crafted text and well-curated pictures. It really took me away, and that never happens.

I really wanted this book to be a picture book, a coffee table book, which I could just breeze through from time to time. And I suppose it is that, if you want it to be. The illustrations are amazing, representing a full-spectrum of deep-hued oils from well-known American artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to seldom-seen (at least by me) watercolors of domestic scenes sourced from local historical societies. But once I started reading, I couldn’t stop: Garrett is a wonderful writer who favors narrative and literary sources, so her text is quite lively, and as Thornton observed, she manages to integrate a lot of information in a very accessible manner. I could take a lesson from her, but I’d rather just enjoy her book. The chapters begin with individual rooms in the house (their uses and all about their furnishings, in great detail) and then proceed to the myriad elements and tasks that go into making a home, all year round, and in the city and the country. So we have: parlors, the dining room, the kitchen, the bedchambers, lighting, “the daily dog-trot routine of domestic duties,” “the quest for comfort,” (probably my favorite chapter–a lot of heating and cooling advice, and bugs!), the tribulations of the early American housewife, and husband and wife as consumers. Here are some of my favorite images, and a few notes about how Garrett used them: I tend toward the vernacular, because so many of the paintings and prints in this book were new to me, but there are plenty of formal interior scenes as well. Since we’re in the beautiful month of May, I’m also going to focus primarily on summer homes: cozy parlors can come later.

The Children of Nathan Comfort Starr, Middletown, CT by Ambrose Andrews, 1855, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Garrett notes the elevation of the house, designed to promote healthy air inside. This looks like a happy scene of children playing shuttlecock, but Garrett believes that it is a memorial painting of the youngest son (in the dress, of course) who died when he was just over a year old.

York, Pennsylvania Family, 1828, anonymous artist, St. Louis Museum of Art. At Home is just as much about households as houses, including servants. Garrett discusses servants but she does not discuss race. This is a book of its time (1990), which is before the renewed historiographical focus on the roles of African-Americans in the northern US. She includes three images of African-Americans in the corners or the margins, but she does not digress on their identity or position beyond that of “trusted servants.” At Home is a study in material culture, not a social history, and so this painting is used to describe the vivid wallpaper and carpet (boy does this book have a lot to say about carpets!) contrasted with the simple painted furniture.

Rhode Island Interior by an anonymous artist, 1800-1810, collection of Fenton Brown. It’s really all about the carpets! They demanded so much time, and money. Women (or their servants) pulled them up in the spring, nailed them down in the fall, and spent a lot time worrying about moths. Garrett uses this particular image to present a European gaze on American interiors, which she does often throughout her book. An Italian observer noted that Americans “displayed few pictures, statues, or ornamented furniture, preferring instead mahogany furniture and fine carpets.”

Two paintings by Massachusetts artist Ellla Emory of Peter Cushing House in Hingham, MA: East Chamber and Old Laundry, c. 1878, both Private Collection. I love this artist! Back to the floors: this sisal-like straw matting was very popular in the summer for centuries—one of my favorite paintings of the Elizabethan court shows the same covering! Floors could be bare in the back of the house, and in hallways as well, and beach sand was spread around.

Garrett includes quite a few watercolors by new-to-me New Bedford artist Joseph Shoemaker Russell (1795–1860), all of which I found absolutely charming. Russell painted New England interiors, but spent some time in Philadelphia too, where he captured all the rooms of his boarding house: above are Mrs. A.W. Smith’s Parlor and Mrs. J.S. Russell’s Room at Mrs. A.W. Smith’s, both 1853 and in private collections. These are summer views, and present opportunities for Garrett to discuss shutters in detail, as well as the necessity of closing up the fireplace with fireboards or flowers during the warm months. The parlor view shows a gas-fed lamp of the 1850s, and also the American custom (noted by all of Garrett’s European sources) of placing all the furniture along the walls of the room. Silhouettes are everywhere in this book!

More summer images (and challenges): View from the House of Henry Briscoe Thomas, Baltimore, by an anomynous artist, c. 1841, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Tea, Alexandria by William Marshall Merrick, 1860, New York Public Library. Come Spring, the lady of the house (or her servants) had to change not only the carpet, but also the draperies. If she didn’t have shutters, she had to pull down the heavy drapes and replace with sheers. She (or her servants) also had to drag all the furniture outside for an airing: Spring cleaning was a really big deal. The battle against bugs intensified with the warm weather, but it was really fought all year long, the principal enemies being flies, mosquitoes, moths and bedbugs.

Ice Cart by Nicolino Calyo, c. 1840-44, New-York Historical Society. The provisioning of the household also varies with the seasons, and “the ice-cart was an integral part of the iconography of summer in the city” from May until October. The New England re-export ice trade was an Atlantic affair, and Garrett’s European observers frequently commented on the abundance of ice in American households.

Now refreshed: I can attack the (digital) pile of final papers and examinations before me!

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May 2, 2023

A Coronation Primer

By daseger

Time to put some of my day job perspectives out there: it’s not every day/year/decade/half-century that we get to see a British coronation! I’m kind of excited; I even dusted off some of my old grad school books about medieval monarchy and royal iconography last weekend. Over my career, I’ve taught about the interrelationships between spiritual and secular authorities pretty constantly in medieval and early modern courses, but I seldom have time to delve into all the expressions of these alliances and conflicts, and coronations are case studies in both symbolism and projection: in the distant past, the more recent past, and judging from all of the official imagery leading us to the coronation of King Charles III, even today.

Official Coronation “paper”: invitation by heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson, emblem by Sir Jony Ive KBE and his creative coalition LoveFrom, one of four thematic stamps produced from wood engravings produced by Andrew Davidson for Atelier Works.

I’ve always thought of King Charles III as a traditional man, primarily because of his preference for classical architecture, I think. The images above definitely reinforce this characterization for me, but they also reveal his interests in the natural world and diverse, hopefully harmonious communities. I love the tradition-embracing change aesthetic of these images, and I think the Coronation will have a similar tone. Coronations are absolutely traditional, but they are also flexible ceremonies which can embrace variant themes according to individual preferences: they evolved over time and reflect their historical contexts. Early medieval coronations seem to represent order, legitimacy, and the evolving sacred nature of kingship; later medieval coronations still embrace those themes but also a more independent divine authority of kings who were claiming unmediated mandates from God rather than through the Pope. This continues into the seventeenth century, but there were also increasing references to “the people” in both feudal fashion and a (slightly) more egalitarian manner. There were lots of changes in the 18th and 19th centuries: to accomodate and highlight the constitutional role of the monarchy and British and Imperial sovereignty. After the long reign of Queen Victoria, it was time for a “refresh,” but tradition sill reigned: this seems very similar to what we are experiencing now. Of course we enter the era of the intensifying power of both public opinion and public relations in the twentieth century, and the coronations of both Kings Edward VII in 1902 and George V in 1911 really reflect these developments. We get these great souvenir books (as well as a flood of material souvenirs) in the twentieth century too: one of my favorites, published by the Illustrated London News for the coronation of Edward III, features wonderful (though quite imaginary) images of previous coronations with Edwards past presented in color and gilt.

Images from The Coronation of King Edward VII, 1902, published by the Illustrated London News (cover against some great Queen Victoria wallpaper from the Victoria & Albert Museum.)

King Edward I, the Confessor’s role in coronation history derives principally from his commissioning of the Coronation Chair on which King Charles will be crowned, as well as the Crown itself, but I’m not sure that all of the other Edwardian coronations are singular, with the exception of that of King Edward II, in which he swore “to observe the future laws made by the community of the realm.” Those last three words constitute a very powerful phrase, and precedent. Most British historians assert that the first ceremonial coronation, or perhaps that which was recorded in detail, was that of Edgar “the Peaceful” at Bath Abbey in 973. This was orchestrated by the great Saint Dunstan and featured both an early version of the contractual oath and a coronation banquet (feasting is always associated with coronations). William the Conqueror was the first monarch to be crowned at Westminster Abbey, Tudor coronations featured a notable expansion of pomp and symbolism (particularly Arthurian symbolism) reflecting concerns of legitimacy after the Wars of the Roses and the new sovereignty over the English Church established by King Henry VIII, and Stuart coronations were more elaborate (and longer) still, particularly those after the Civil War. King Charles II’s coronation featured a mile-and-a-half-long procession and reconstituted regalia, as Oliver Cromwell had destroyed what he saw as profane objects. In the 18th century, King George I’s coronation oath replaced “Kingdom of England” with “Kingdom of Great Britain” after the Union with Scotland, and King George IV’s oath replaced “Great Britain” with “United Kingdom” in 1821. At the end of that decade King William IV seems to have desired to dispense with all the pomp and circumstance, bud did ride to Westminster Abbey in the 1762 Gold State Coach, establishing a “tradition” which continued thereafter. Queen Victoria “restored” everything in her coronation in 1838, which lasted for five hours and featured lots of mistakes, mandating rehearsals for the future.

Edgar the Peaceful among the Saints, c. 1050; Thomas More’s poem upon the occasion of the Coronation of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, 1509; Depictions of Queen Victoria’s Coronation looking back, 1897, Illustrated London News, all British Library.

There is room for variation and innovation in the order and elements of the Coronation ceremony as well as its overall presentation: to me, it seems to have evolved from a Christian and feudal ceremony to a secular and constitutional one, but there’s still quite a bit of religious overtone to it obviously, and more majesty than anything else. King Charles will maintain the four essential elements of every twentieth-century coronation: 1) the Recognition, derived from the recognition of the monarch observed by the Witenagemot, the Anglo-Saxon predecessor of Parliament; 2) the Oath, representing the contract between the monarch and the people; 3) the Annoiting (or Unction), representing the monarch’s consecration by the Church of England; and 4) the Homage: a feudal survival in which the “Lords Spiritual and Temporal” pledge fealty to the monarch. The King is crowned between the Annoiting (with the Restoration-reconstituted St. Edward’s Crown) and the Homage, and this is supposed to happen around noon, British time of course. But in addition to all this “tradition,” there will be some key changes, some very detailed, others rather momentous. King Charles and Queen Camilla will ride to the Abbey in Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Coach, rather than the golden Georgian coach. A new “Greeting of the King,” which will precede the Recognition, in which two chorus boys will welcome the King (and the Queen) to the Abbey. The Annoiting of a monarch is a sacred ritual, not be broadcast in any way, so iconographer Aidan Hart and the Royal School of Needlework have produced a privacy screen featuring a tree design representing the 56 Commonwealth countries, but there is a new annointing oil recipe! The Homage will be much shorter than in coronations past, as the 1999 House of Lords Act curtailed the peerage (but not short enough for most Britons, I think). But most important of all, the Coronation service will feature prominent roles for Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Jewish leaders, as well as prayers and readings in other British languages (Welsh and Scottish and Irish Gaelic), and a woman will present the Swords of State and Offering for the very first time.

From Old England:  A Pictorial Museum of Regal, Ecclesiastical, Municipal, Baronial, and Popular Antiquities, ed. by C. Knight (1860).

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April 25, 2023

The Aesthetics of Ancestry

By daseger

I’m still simmering with anger and frustration over Salem’s “new” “Heritage” trail, confined to the downtown, anchored by commercial establishments presenting the sad tale of 1692 with pathetic mannequins which inspire laughter rather than learning, marked by a line of yellow paint applied in an egalitarian manner to both new concrete and old brick. All of my original objections are still standing, but they’ve had almost a year to fester. I’ve lost faith in so many people and institutions: city councillors, various public officials, even fellow historians and organizations which I thought were committed to the preservation and presentation of Salem’s rich heritage. I don’t see any understanding of what heritage tourism is in the realm of official or quasi-official Salem, much less any desire to follow its path. Indeed I wonder what heritage means to the people who have put together this heritage trail.

The words in the graphics above illustrate my concerns: a recent review of one of the two commercial institutions featured on the trail, the Salem Witch Museum, and some definitions of heritage by the Center for Heritage & Society at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I find the review to be very representative of those that the Salem Witch Museum has received, but of course, I am biased. There are certainly much better reviews, and there are also those which are substantive indictments: you can read them for yourself at the Tripadvisor site. But even many of the good reviews point out the dated nature of the presentation, the fact that the attraction is not a “Museum,” and its blatant commercialism. What is fascinating to me is that these reviews go back years (the Salem Witch Museum recently celebrated its 40th anniversary) and they are very repetitive, yet still the people keep coming and the dated dioramas endure: this is the most successful business in Salem, I believe, certainly the most successful attraction. There’s no attempt to update or improve the presentation, and why should there be? The people keep coming. But what does this institution have to do with Salem heritage and why does it have to be on the Salem Heritage Trail? The Witch Trials are certainly part of Salem’s heritage, though not, I would argue, as large a part as the City of Salem presents them to be—but that argument is certainly a lost cause! But is a dated diorama how we want to acknowlege this tragedy? Is there anything public or in any way reflective of the inclusion of the Salem Witch Museum on on the Salem Heritage Trail? The Salem Witch Museum will continue to be successful, no doubt, regardless of its inclusion on the Heritage Trail, so why can’t this one trail represent a more public and thoughtful presentation of Salem’s heritage in the fullest sense of the word? (I will never get an answer to this question)

I am not a tourism naysayer; I simply respect the past and want both Salem’s visitors and residents to experience its heritage in a layered and an engaging way. As I am writing this, I am looking up Chestnut Street as the Salem Trolley is making its way down, and I’m glad to see it. At least the tourists on board are exposed to more of Salem’s material heritage. It remains absolutely mystifying to me why the Salem Heritage Trail would not include the city’s oldest and largest Historic District, home to the Pickering House, the Phillips House, Hamilton Hall, the Salem Athenaeum, the Ropes Mansion, the Quaker Burying Ground, and streets of beautifully-preserved houses. There are no shops or restaurants or witch “attractions” over here: could that be the answer? Unfortunately the selection of paint in general, and that striking shade of yellow paint in particular, made the exclusion of residential historic districts a foregone conclusion: I know that most of my neighbors would welcome more walking tourists, but I doubt that many of them would like to see that yellow line run in front of their houses. The trolley is running past houses associated with a trio of brothers from a famous Salem family, the Bensons, and I’m wondering if the tourists on board are hearing anything about them, because I think their lives and works are representative of several important strands of Salem’s heritage. I’m sure Frank Weston Benson (residing at 14 Chestnut, 1862-1951) is getting a mention, as he was a pretty famous artist in his day, producing accessible paintings in a light-filled American Impressionist style as well as a succession of distinctive etchings primarily focused on wildfowl. His younger brother Henry (1866-1942) lived around the corner on Hamilton Street and served two terms as Salem’s mayor as well as the president of Salem’s largest business, the Naumkeag Steam Cotton Company. But I think it’s the brother between them, John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947), who is more evocative of an enduring Salem heritage, even though he seldom lived here in his adulthood (though he did design the massive and fantastic Colonial Revival mansion at 30 Chestnut Street).

A 1943 self-portrait by John Prentiss Benson and photograph of his younger self in Salem; Captain Samuel Benson of Salem as depicted by his grandson, John Prentiss Benson and Benson’s copy of “Reaper of Salem, S. Benson, Master, painted originally by Antoine Roux. All of the images and much of the text from this point on is taken from a lovely book entitled The Artistic Legacy of John Prentiss Benson, which was edited and published by the husband of Benson’s granddaughter in 2003. It’s really fabulous–with lots of family pictures and anecdotes.

I’ve never really appreciated maritime art, but I saw a painting that I really liked last week and looked at the signature: John P. Benson! I thought he was an architect by profession and an artist by hobby, but I was wrong: he had two careers, first architecture, then painting. This one painting took me down a rabbit hole of John P. Benson paintings, and I found some really lovely Salem ones, inspired by his birthplace and his heritage, primarily his descent from Captain Samuel Benson, of Reaper fame. All three Benson brothers plus their siblings grew up in an Italianate house which once faced the Common, on a site which is now the parking lot of the Hawthorne Hotel. Frank’s predisposition towards an artistic career was evident pretty early, as was John’s, but apparently there could only be one artist in the family so their father steered the latter towards the more practical architecture. He went to Paris for training, and returned to a job at the prestigious New York architectural firm McKim, Mead & White before setting up his own partnership. By all accounts, Benson had a successful architectural practice focused on the greater New York area, while living in Plainfield, New Jersey and later Flushing, New York with his wife Bessie and their four children. He retired from architecture in his later 50s and began painting full-time, primarily in his studio at a house called Willowbank in Kittery, Maine. He was prolific, and even though he had not lived in his native city since his departure for Paris, a notable number of his paintings are of Salem ships and harbor scenes.

Ship Eliza of Salem, Salem Coal Wharf, and Derby Wharf, John Prentiss Benson.

I particularly like a series of paintings which Benson produced as murals for his son Philip’s Cohasset home, entitled Salem Harbor memories. I trust that they still survive and I wish they could be on public view, because they are a perfect illustration of a family’s heritage and the endurance of a city’s heritage: it’s so interesting that these images were in the home of a man (Philip) who was not born in Salem, who never lived in Salem, but still saw Salem as part of his heritage. I’m not a fan of the witch trials vs. maritime history either/or debate as I believe that Salem’s heritage is both plus MUCH more but these maritime views are so poignant, especially in their invocation of memories which we can “enjoy, regret, and learn from” at the same time. Believe me, I know that the Benson brothers cannot compete with the suffering mannequins of the Salem Witch and Witch Dungeon Museums of the Heritage Trail. I think there are some other Chestnut Street stories that might be able to do so, but that’s not my point or my concern. If this trail was called the “Tourism Trail” or the “Witch City Trail,” I would have no concerns. But it isn’t: it’s called the Heritage Trail. So I ask my fellow Salem residents: does it represent your heritage?

A Memory of Salem Harbor, in Cohasset.

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