Tag Archives: American Revolution

April 27, 2026

The Wilton House

By daseger

Virginia was the second leg of our southern road trip: we visited family in Richmond, toured historic gardens, and saw several Lost Cause and revolutionary exhibitions. I am enjoying the regional America 250 interpretations. For example, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture has branded Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington, Virginians all of course, as the “Voice, Pen, and Sword” of the Revolution. Now I am a big Patrick Henry fan, but I think we can identify a few other notable voices—perhaps the Adamses of Massachusetts? Different messaging in Philadelphia–which I’ll explore next week. I thought I’d just spotlight a beautiful house today: the Wilton House, also in Richmond, thought its original location was 15 miles outside of the city. It’s a very high-style Georgian mansion built in 1753 for William Randolph III and his family. Threatened by industrial development in 1933 (the year after the bicentennial of Washington’s birthday, cresting an intense Colonial Revival wave) it was purchased by the National Society of Colonial Dames, dismantled, and carefully resurrected on a beautiful site overlooking the James River in Richmond’s west end. Its detaled resurrection, or re-erection, is extremely notable in the history of historic preservation, and I wanted to learn about that as well as see the house. The story, as well as the house, did not disappoint.

I tried, but my amateurish photography can’t really do this house justice: it’s so textured and there was only natural light in many of the rooms. Every single room, downstairs and up, is panelled, and those amazing windowed alcoves seemed to let in different shades of light. The black walnut staircase was astounding! The largest and most public of the downstairs rooms—photos four and five above—was so gorgeous I gasped but I don’t think it’s really captured here. It is set up for General Lafayette, who stayed at the Wilton House just before Yorktown. The interpretation was both architectural (both design and construction) and historical in terms of the Randolph family history and general history, because this was a conspicuous house, visited by many, including George Washington. Ultimately the decline of the Randolph family fortune led to the decline of the house and the derelict status from which the Colonial Dames rescued it. But both the family and its restoration were set in a broad historical and social context, so we see the list of people enslaved by the Randolphs as well as family portraits (in close proximity), and photographs of those who contributed to the restoration of the house and that story too. A dual narrative, encompassing many “smaller stories,” exemplified by a beautiful house.

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

April 6, 2026

Naval History is so Competitive

By daseger

On either side of Salem, Beverly and Marblehead have a longstanding rivalry as to which is the birthplace of the U.S. Navy: the Hannah, owned by John Glover of Marblehead and the first ship to be commissioned for warfare by General George Washington, set sail from Beverly in September of 1775 with a Marblehead crew and munitions. Other places sustain that claim as well, including Whitehall, New York (where the continentals captured a British schooner and renamed her Liberty in the spring of 1775 and Benedict Arnold’s Quebec flotilla was built in the following year), Providence (or East Greenwich, where the Rhode Island passed a resolution to arm vessels in June of 1775), and Philadelphia (where the Continental Congress authorized the creation of a naval force on October 13, 1775), but these claims are of little concern to Massachusetts people. A century ago, Marblehead (seemingly unchallenged by Beverly at that time) was planning its big naval birthplace celebration when Salem historian Sidney Perley dropped a bombshell: it was Salem that was actually the birthplace of the navy with its commission of an armed vessel way back in the seventeenth century! And then all bets were off and other claimants quickly came forward: Kingston, New Bedford, Dartmouth and Somerville, Massachusetts and Machias, Maine. Somerville?

An exciting contest in the early summer of 1926! Sidney Perley was on fire at this time. He had just been through a protracted dispute over the date of the founding of Salem with the still-powerful Endicott family, who preferred 1628 when their ancestor came over. Stalwart Sidney stuck to 1626 when Roger Conant setted in what would become Salem, and resigned from the Essex Institute, then very much Salem’s pedigreed historical society, when he did not receive affirmation. Nevertheless he was slated to become the most-favored speaker of the Tercentenary celebrations that summer. I have enormous respect for him as a historian, but I suspect he was just stirring the pot with this navy assertion. His claim was based on a singular reference to a “man o’war ketch” in 1679, when the selectman of Salem reimbursed William Browne for its use. Ketches were popular vessels in Salem in the seventeenth century, used primarily for fishing, and they were small; it’s difficult to think of them as military ships. The early modernist in me has a vague recollection of the “bomb ketches” used by the French and then the English for coastal bombardment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but I don’t think that’s what we have here. A “man o’war ketch” does sound interesting though.

The Adventure (2008), a replica 17th century ketch moored at Charles Towne Landing in South Carolina.

The other claims seem more substantive than that of Salem. The Massachusetts state brigantine Independence was built in 1776 at Kingston’s Jones River Landing boatyard, one of the oldest in the country. Somerville went back even earlier than Salem: its claim was based on the Blessing of the Bay, “half-trader and half-fighter” and the first ship built in Massachusetts, which was launched on the Mystic River (some say at Medford, but I’m not getting into that rivalry) in the summer of 1631. The Battle of (or off) Fairhaven in May of 1775 is the basis of New Bedford’s and Dartmouth’s claims, although this brief battle is often consigned to the level of skirmish, giving the title of “First Naval Battle of the Revolution” to that of Machias, on June 11-12, 1775. So these are the rival claims, all of which Marblehead dismissed rather flippantly, especially that of Salem. Marblehead’s very public invitation to its naval anniversary celebrations dissed Salem several times: Like Boston, Marblehead, the second port of importance, was guarded by British warships, and so Gen Glover had the Hannah taken to his storehouses and wharf in Beverly, where quietly they worked and fitter her out, the first warship of the United States Government. But since Salem is going her own way and not sure of her own birthday, we of Marblehead have no hard feelings or malice in our hearts, but extend a cordial welcome to come to Marblehead and join with us in the celebration of the birth of the US Navy and we of Marblehead extend to that fine old city of Salem a most sincere with in the celebration commemorating the tercentenary.

The Schooner Hannah by John F. Leavitt, Naval Heritage and Command

By all accounts, Marblehead had a very successful 150th anniversary of the Navy celebration and Salem an even more robust Tercentenary in the summer of 1926 but that is not the end of the story. Less than a decade later, Beverly put forward its claim very assertively, and that claim is still standing! Not my story, so I’ll leave it at that. I think that Governor Maura Healey and Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll are quite wise to simply celebrate the Massachusetts origins of the Navy whenever the occasion calls for that salute.

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March 30, 2026

Personal Declarations

By daseger

I would love to hear about Revolutionary exhibitions, programs and events sheduled for your area in this 250th anniversary year: 1776 is certainly alive and well in the Boston area! Since I’m on sabbatical, I’ve been able to attend quite a few happenings, and my favorite collaborative initiative is the Declarations Trail, on which four institutions, the Boston Athenaeum, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Boston Public Library and Harvard University’s Houghton Library, have put more than a dozen copies of the Declaration of Independence on view, “originally created in different printings for different audiences” along with lots of other contextual objects. I’ve been to the first two exhibitions at the Athenaeum and MHS, and am looking forward to the opening of the last two later this spring.

Looking at, and thinking about, these paper Declarations has got me thinking about their popular and personal reception. I am very mindful of the words of historian J.L. Bell on his great blog Boston 1775: for the first generations of Americans it was a set of words, not an object they ever saw but at the same time, I know that one of the primary functions of print is to make things more permanent, and with tangible permanance comes possession as well as remembrance. Following that trail in my mind brought me to textile Declarations in general and Declaration handkerchiefs in particular–because there seems to have been a market for these words that you could literally put in your pocket. That market did not really develop until the first era of remembrance for the American Revolution—the 1820s, approaching its 50th anniversary with participants dying—but then it really took off. A great book (Threads of History. Americana Recorded on Cloth 1775 to the Present by Smithsonian curator Herbert R. Collins), an archived exhibition at the Museum of the American Revolution, and numerous auction archives introduced me to the copperplate-printed handkerchiefs produced by William Gillespie & Sons in Scotland for the American market beginning in 1821. Produced in blue, black and red colorways, there’s a blue one coming up at auction next week at Eldred’s Auctions, and this spectacular red textile was the banner lot at an important Sotheby’s auction in 2023. A black (more sepia) handkerchief was sold by Swann Auction Galleries in 2023, and the Yale University Art Gallery has a similar one, as well as a centennial quilt from fifty years later sewn around the same: what a perfect object linking two eras of patriotic remembrance.

Textiles seem less ephemeral than paper, so I assume that the Declaration handkerchiefs of the 1820s were in demand as commemorative items, but it’s important to remember that this was also an era that the Declaration was being issued as separate broadside for the first time too–it was evolving from words into an object which could take several forms. The motifs that were featured on these textiles, including the “chain” of states, big Revolutionary moments, and the founding fathers, will reappear again and again. Fifty years later, the Centennial will inspire another wave of patriotic production, but those objects will be more familiar than introductory.

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March 23, 2026

Remembering the Ladies: Two Talks in Salem

By daseger

A promotional post today: I’ve got two events coming up at the end of this week and the beginning of next on women’s history in Salem for the close of Women’s History Month. Both are free and all are welcome. The first is on Saturday at Old Town Hall, and very squarely focused on women’s organized philanthropy over the centuries, but particularly in the nineteenth. Because this year is the 400th anniversary of Salem’s European founding, I am going back into the seventeenth century but the nineteenth century is so busy I have labeled it the era of “benevolent activism”! This is certainly not a discovery on my part; anyone who glances at an archival list of Salem sources is going to see that Salem women were really busy in that particular century. So many organizations were founded, and with due diligence, quite a few have survived to the present. We really wanted to include a chapter on this topic in Salem’s Centuries, but it just didn’t happen, so I’m happy to focus in on it now even though it took a bit of work for sure. To tell you the truth, I think all of the women associated with all of the organizations you see on this flyer know the history of their institutions better than I do, so I’m just providing a bit of comparative context and a more sweeping view afforded by four centuries of perspective.

Salem Woman’s Friend Society Collection, Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

My other event is a bit more about women’s political history in Salem, though I definitely developed an appreciation for how political philanthropic work can be, as well as even more respect for disenfranchised women, when working on the charity talk. Just think about one decade for Salem women, 1920-1920: they provided care during several major epidemics (smallpox, tuburculosis) and relief after the Great Salem Fire of 1914, lost a crucial state vote on suffrage in 1915, participated in several “preparedness” initiatives during World War I and ministered to the sick during the “Spanish” Flu, and then finally won the vote in 1920. Just incredible: I would have been pretty darn mad following that 1915 referendum and retreated to my bedroom or study.

“Remember the Ladies” is a tea at the Hawthorne Hotel on March 31st at 4 (again, free and all are invited) in which I will focus more directly on women’s political activities. As the flyer asserts, the  “school suffrage”  election of 1879, when women across Massachusetts were allowed to run for, and vote in, elections for school boards, will definitely be a highlight. Salem women really turned out and won four seats, the most in the Commonwealth, and they continued to hold seats right up until 1920 and beyond. But because this is the 400th anniversary, I’m going to go back and forth from 1879. This event is the initiative of my friend Jane, a former Salem city councillor, and she chose the date because it it the 250th anniversary of Abigail Adams’ “Remember the Ladies” letter to her husband in Philadelphia. So I’m definitely going to shine a spotlight on this epistolary moment and also compare Abigail to her near-exact contemporary in Salem, Mary Toppan Pickman. Different women of the same age and time in very similar situations for very different reasons! Both minding the farm and their families while their husbands were absent: John on patriotic business and Benjamin Pickman in London hanging out with other conspicuous Loyalists.

In closing to what I intend to be BRIEF remarks, I’ll move forward to the bicentennial year of 1976, in which the first two women elected to the Salem City Council, ward councillor Frances Grace and councillor-at-large Jean-Marie Rochna, took their seats. Just as those women elected to the School Board in 1879 probably expected the vote a bit sooner than 1920, I bet those women who voted in 1920 likely thought that their city would see a female councilor before 1976, but as we all know, change takes time, and effort. But continuity does too.

I’m not sure if this is the 1976 or 1977 Salem City Council, but it is from the Salem News Collection at Salem State University Archives and Special Collections.

More information for “Organizing Generosity,” March 28, Old Town Hall @ 10: https://www.womansfriendsociety.org/events-1/organizing-generosity-centuries-of-women-supporting-women-in-salem

More information for “Remember the Ladies,” March 31, Hawthorne Hotel @ 4: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/remember-the-ladies-tickets-1985348533909?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

 

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February 23, 2026

A Major Revolutionary Engraver

By daseger

So many untold revolutionary stories in Salem’s history. SO MANY. I started thinking about Joseph Hiller, a soldier (Major, in fact), watchmaker, engraver, and Collector of the Port of Salem and Beverly, last week and put together a little visual sketch of his life, just to have everything in one place and illustrate how he both impacted and reflected his time. Hiller (1748-1814) was a Boston man, who came to Salem for reasons that are unclear to me, probably business. He is generally referred to as a watchmaker and sometimes a silversmith, though several sources refer to his more general “mechanical” abilities. In 1775, he became a Revolutionary player, in several ways. He is referenced as an officer in one of the Salem companies, and some sources indicate that he was at Lexington and Concord. I’m not sure about that, but his other early Revolutionary role is well-documented: he became an engraver and thus a disseminator of Patriot portraits. Just two weeks after the Battle of Bunker Hill, Hiller produced one of the earliest portrait prints of the Revolution: a mezzotint ot Major General Israel Putnam as portrayed in pastel by his fellow Salemite Benjamin Blythe. European publishers had been producing portrait prints for decades, and now Hiller was tapping into an emerging American market.

American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati. More about this print, Blythe, and Putnam here.

Hiller was in the right place at the right time to engage in patriotic publishing. He followed up the popular Putnam print with one of John Hancock, based on the John Singleton Copley portrait, and possibly (several of Hiller’s prints are “possibly by” or “attributed to” as we don’t always see the definitive signatures visible on the Putnam and Hancock prints above) with prints of the martyr of Bunker Hill, Major General Joseph Warren, and General George and “Lady” Martha Washington, based on portraits made by Charles Willson Peale for John Hancock in 1776. The smoking battlefield of Bunker Hill is in the background of George Washington’s portrait, placing him at Dorchester Heights in the foreground, ready to drive the British out of Boston in March 1776. There is no dramatic/poetic narrative to attach to him, but Hiller seems Revere-sque in his commercial pursuits.

“The Hon. John Hancock Esquire” mezzotint after Copley, 1775, Christies; Major Joseph Warren mezzotint after Copley, possibly Joseph Hiller, Yale University Art Gallery; His Excellency George Washington and Lady Washington, McAlpin Collection, New York Public Library.

The uncertainty of several of Hiller’s attributions might be one reason we don’t hear more about him. Even though I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on printing, I think art historians are far more equipped to analyze the transformation of portraits into prints, and there has been quite a lot of discussion among them over the attribution of the portraits I am featuring in this post. Context and connections must be considered. For the Blyth(e) portraits, I’m looking forward to reading a recently-published book by Bettina Norton entitled Benjamin Blyth, Salem’s 18th-Century Limner at a Time of Radical Upheaval, (Tidepool Press, available here and here) as it was she who identified the Bunker Hill-Dorchester Heights George Washington connection noted above. But for Hiller, publishing is only part of the story. After the Revolution, he was appointed Naval Officer for the port of Salem by Governor John Hancock and Collector by President George Washington thereafter: from 1783 until 1802, a busy time for the port, Hiller was Salem’s chief Customs official. Don’t let Nathaniel Hawthorne’s disdain for this post a half century later color its importance: during Hiller’s time import duties represented the vast majority of Federal revenues. A portrait in the Custom House is a testimony to his tenure, and his name is on a lot of paper, generally with more famous names! By all accounts Hiller was a professional officeholder, but he was also a conspicuous Federalist, so subject to the Jeffersonian purge. After he left his post, he left Salem for various locales, eventually ending up in Lancaster, where he died in 1814.

Hiller’s portrait in the Custom House (1819) built after his tenure and death, Salem Maritime National Historic Park; Cover of 1789 letter from Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to Hiller, Smithsonian/National Postal Musuem; Crop of 1794 Sea Letter for Two Friends signed by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and countersigned by Hiller, Library of Congress. Hiller’s various obituaries reference Lexington and Concord, but I can’t place him there—I am always eager to find ANY Salem soldier present on that day so if you have more information, let me know! More interesting details of Hiller’s life: he was a prominent Mason and Swedenborgian convert.

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February 9, 2026

Knox Sunday

By daseger

I know, there was a big football game yesterday, and I watched half of it at an actual party at night but the day was reserved for Col. Henry Knox. I’ve been watching online as commemorations of Knox’s Noble Train of Artillery moved across large swaths of New York and Massachusetts on its way to relieve the besieged citizens of Boston but had not made it to one live event—and Evacuation Day (better known as St. Patrick’s Day to those of you not in Massachusetts) is only a little over a month away. So I decided to drive out to Framingham to see some cannons and Patriots before the other Patriots took the field. The event was a bit more talk than action, as I listened to organizers and politicians and community leaders express their joy at being part of the festivities. Quite a few speeches, but earnest expressions all and it was nice to see such a large community gathering.

Scenes of the day; Revolution 250 Chair Professor Robert Allison and the official Trail.

Knox Trail 250 is an initiative of Revolution 250, which bears the motto: Your Town, Your History, Our Nation so the commemorative events of the past few years have always been community-based in terms of organization and participation. This particular event was a Middlesex County affair, with representatives from all the towns surrounding Framingham (Marlborough, Southborough, Wayland ) present. Besides community (then and now), there was also a notable emphasis on the two most heralded African American soldiers of the Revolution from Massachusetts: Salem Poor and Peter Salem. The former was representated by a reenactor (below) who sounded more like an actor as he recounted his life and service, while we saw Peter Salem’s name on a 1775 roster of Framingham Minutemen. (Why the two Salem names? The answer seems somewhat shrouded still, but the general concensus seems to be that Poor’s name, which occasionally appeared as “Salam” might have an Islamic connection or represent a form of salaam, the word for peace in Arabic, while Peter’s name designated the town of one of his enslavers.) I spent a long time looking at the roster.

I’ve been fascinated by Henry Knox’s story for a long time. It seems so sweeping and dramatic, like many Revolutionary personal narratives. Young Boston bookseller becomes inflamed with the cause, marries the daughter of prominent Loyalists who promptly disown her, sets out to liberate Boston by transporting 59 cannons from Fort Ticonderoga in the dead of winter, mounts said cannons on Dorchester Heights and drives the British away after the long siege, becomes Washington’s chief of artillery and later the first Secretary of War, retrieves his wife’s family’s confiscated land holdings and settles down in the midst of the Maine county that would be named for him (and then of course there’s Fort Knox too). Having physical places tied to your memory, in Knox’s case an actual trail, invites exploration.

Revolution 250 Executive Director Jonathan Lane and “Colonel Henry Knox”; a commemorative quilt sown by volunteers at the Framingham History Center; miniature of Henry Knox, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

There’s one more big Knox event if you are in the area: “To Win the Siege: the Noble Train Arrives” at the Hartwell Tavern within the Minute Man National Historic Park on February 21st.

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November 17, 2025

The Revolution in Color

By daseger

I decided to celebrate the debut of Ken Burns’ new series on the American Revolution by getting out two old books which I always enjoy browsing through, and which I now realize were quite foundational in how I look (and I do mean look) at American history in particular and history in general. The two books are The Pictorial History of the American Revolution by Rupert Furneaux and The Colonial Spirit of ’76 by David C. Whitney, and they were both published for the Bicentennial by Ferguson Publishing of Chicago with ample illustrations, including watercolors of noted Revolutionary spaces and places by “visual artist” Kay Smith. That’s how she is always described, and she died just this year at age 102! Every time I look at her watercolor buildings, I remember when I saw them for the first time; it happened just yesterday when I took the books out. And so it has finally dawned on me that my lifelong pursuit of history through houses began with her. The two books have lots of other cool illustrations too, including prints of every single tavern along the eastern seaboard which has any sort of Revolutionary connection, but Kay provides most of the color. I don’t know about reading these books—they’re definitely rather dated and devoted to storytelling rather than multi-causal analysis, but they are fun to look at. No Salem at all, sadly: colonial capital or Leslie’s Retreat or privateers. The Pictorial History has a chronological/geographical format and the Colonial Spirit is supposed to be more of a social history, I think, but its basic structure is biographical. Here are some of my favorite illustrations—all by Kay Smith, and most of buildings, of course—from Boston to Yorktown.

Kay Smith could depict people too—-her take on Major Andre’s famous sketch of Peggy Shippen Arnold is very charming. Interesting illustrations are scattered throughout both books liberally: uniforms, of course, firearms, vignettes of “daily life,” a great presentation of a Declaration of Independence cover sheet juxtaposed with a facsmimile of Thomas Jefferson’s hand-written and -corrected copy (used by Burns at the opening of episode one of The American Revolution). These books made for just as pleasurable browsing as all those years ago. And what do we think of the latest take on the Revolution?

 

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September 22, 2025

Escape to Old Newbury

By daseger

I had yet another “symbol trauma” (I have no other way to refer to it) on Friday when people starting sending me images of little anime cats with notes indicating that this was the new official mascot for Salem’s 400th commemoration, Salem 400+. Was this a joke? Apparently not. Here’s the press release text and the cat (in front of 1910 City Hall just to emphasize his/her official status).

Mayor Dominick Pangallo has announced an exciting new community engagment opportunity: a naming context for Salem 400+’s black cat mascot! Salem 400+ has unveiled a charming black cat character designed to strengthen the program’s connection with the community and celebrate Salem’s unique identity. Salem students in 3d through 8th grade have been invited to participate in naming this special mascot through a district-wide contest that opened a few weeks ago. “There was so much positive community spirit and creativity when it came to naming our new trash truck, Chicken Nugget, we wanted to open up this opportunity to our students as well, said Mayor Pangallo, “the Salem 400+ black cat will help represent Salem and this special moment, and we want our young students to be part of bringing it to life.” 

So of course engaging students in a naming contest is great but I’m sorry: the choice of this AI anime cat is not. He (or she—we don’t know yet!) is everything that Salem is not: superficial, generic, silly, not serious. I understand the political reality here (the Chicken Nugget roll-out was intense—it was very clear that whoever got in between the trash truck and a Salem politician was in trouble if photographers were nearby), but I’m just so tired of the triviality. There are always these gestures in Salem that go 3/4 of the way but never all the way: a Remond Park with incorrect information about where Salem’s 19th century African American residents actually lived, a Forten Park which loses Charlotte between gaudy installations and pirate murals. But this is a whole new dimension of dissing Salem history. Even my long-suffering husband, who has to hear me rant nearly every day, said wow. There’s nothing anyone can do but disengage, so when I woke up Saturday morning, I knew I had to get out of town. Fortunately it was a grand weekend of Revolutionary remembrance in Essex County, so up to Newburyport I went. It happened that this was the 250th anniversary of Benedict Arnold’s Quebec Expedition, in which Newburport played a large role. So I headed north, because even Benedict Arnold looked good to me.

The Quebec Expedition (I think the first poster is rather old) was a spectacular failure. With the new Continental Army ensconced in Cambridge, Colonel Arnold approached General Washington with the idea of an eastern invasion force aimed at Quebec City in concert with General Richard Montgomery’s western expedition from New York. Washington gave Arnold 1110 men, who sailed from Newburyport on September 19, 1775. Their destination was the mouth of the Kennebec River, from which they would progress upriver to Fort Western (Augusta, ME) after which they would navigate water, marsh and land to the Chaudiere and St. Lawrence Rivers and Quebec. They encountered so many difficulties along the way that ultimately a quarter of the regiment turned back (taking essential provisions with them), and Arnold arrived in Quebec with 600+ exhausted and starving men. A New Year’s Eve battle was a disastrous defeat, resulting in the death of General Montgomery, the injury of Arnold, and the capture of Captain Daniel Morgan and hundreds of his riflemen. Nevertheless, Arnold was promoted to Brigadier General for his leadership of the expedition. The weekend’s activities were definitely focused on Newburyport’s “early and ardent embrace of the Revolutionary cause” rather than on Arnold himself.

Everywhere I went in Newburyport and adjoining Newbury I ran into people engaged in their history: the celebration of a new plaque recognizing the patriots of Newburyport at the Old South Church (above), a parade of participants making their way down High Street following a reenactment of the 1775 dedication for departing troops at the nearby First Parish Church, glanced from the doorway of Historic New England’s Swett–Ilsley House after the guide and I paused our tour. The Museum of Old Newbury set out its revolutionary artifacts in the rooms of its 1808 Cushing House, including a reconstructed Newburyport rum jug taken out of the ground in shards amidst the “Great Carrying Place,” a 13-mile portage trail between the Kennebec and Dead Rivers through which Arnold and his men passed 250 years ago. Actually, the jug was on a brief loan to the Museum from the Arnold Expedition Historical Society and Old Fort Western Museum and Executive Director Bethany Groff Dorau drove up to Maine to retrieve it for just this commemorative weekend., but the Museum is full of its own treasures and I’ve featured just a few of my favorites below. I’m looking forward to going back, and back again.

Rooms and Collections at the Swett-Ilsley and Cushing Houses in Newbury and Newburyport: that’s a portrait of Lafayette leading into the south parlor at Cushing—what a punch they made for him when he visited in 1824! And I am obsessed with the c. 1786 portrait of the Reverend John Murray by Christian Gullager. Great Liverpool jugs! The Museum is the historical sociey of Newbury, Newburyport, and West Newbury, so its collections are vast and varied.

And on the way home, I encountered a handtub muster on Newbury upper common! What could be better? Just a perfect day away.

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June 21, 2025

The Battle of Bunker Hill: it’s Personal

By daseger

A grand reenactment of the Battle of Bunker Hill to be staged at Gloucester’s Stage Fort Park has been in the planning for months to mark its 250th anniversary and I planned to go on this past Saturday until just a few days before. On the actual anniversary, June 17, I started reading some diaries of participants and observers and I soon realized that I wanted continue on with this personal commemoration rather than travel to an offsite reenactment—although I heard it was amazing! As always, I try to find the local angle on big events, and so I have three Bunker Hill Salem stories today. The first is a revisit: a few months back I returned to this post on Lieutenant Benjamin West, the sole Salem casualty at Bunker Hill. I had remembered a reference to a portrait of West, perhaps lodged in the collection of the Essex Institute/Peabody Essex Museum. Could it be found? The answer is YES. I emailed Dr. Ruthie Dibble, the Robert N. Shapiro Curator of American Decorative Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, who solicited the aid of her colleague Dr. Jeff Richmond-Moll, the George Putnam Curator of American Art, and very quickly HE appeared on my screen, in somewhat distressed condition, but still there. It was very poignant to see him.

Artist in the United States, Portrait of Lieutenant Benjamin West, 1774-1775. Pastel on paper. Gift of Mrs. Sarah C. Bacheller, 1922. 116640. Peabody Essex Museum.

Lieutenant West, and all the Salem men who were at (or near) Bunker Hill on that day, did not march in a Salem regiment but rather with other companies. Apparently Salem’s chief military officer Timothy Pickering, who left very late for Lexington and Concord and saw no action, did not respond to the Bunker Hill call at all. But another man living in Salem did, for both professional and personal reasons. Dr. John Warren, the younger brother of General (and Dr.) Joseph Warren, saw and heard the fire in the direction of Charlestown and saddled up in the middle of the night. The younger Dr. Warren had moved up from Boston to study with the eminent Salem physician Dr. Edward Holyoke several years before, eventually establishing his own practice, by all accounts popular but not especially renumerative. His brother set an example for him in both his profession and patriotism, and the younger Warren volunteered for military medical service right after the Boston Tea Party. On his ride south on the night of the 17th, Warren stopped in Medford, where he “received the melancholy and distressing tidings that my brother was missing.” He continued to Cambridge, where he heard differing accounts of his brother’s fate.“This perplexed me almost to distraction,” he confessed, [amd so] “I went on inquiring, with a solicitude which was such a mixture of hope and fear as none but one who has felt it can form any conception of. In this manner I passed several days, every day’s information diminishing the probability of his safety.” And so a brother learns of a martyrdom, gradually. The surviving Dr. Warren left his Salem practice immediately and carried on the life and work of an army surgeon until 1777, after which he returned to Boston, married, and eventually resumed his civilian practice. Dr. John Warren went on to become was one of the founders and first professors at Harvard Medical School, and a President of the Massachusetts Medical Society. In the year of his marriage (which produced 17 children!) he adopted his brother’s four children, who had become a patriotic cause unto themselves after their father’s heroic death, with even Benedict Arnold contributing funds to their care and upkeep. Sometimes the world of Revolutionary movers and shakers seems very small and personal indeed. (Consider that Dr. Joseph Warren saved John Quincy Adams’ finger from amputation—the latter could never attend a Bunker Hill “celebration” afterwards—and that his remains were finally identified by the presence of a tooth fashioned for him by Paul Revere).

Portrait of Joseph Warren by John Singleton Copley, 1765, and John Trumball’s The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill June 17, 1775, Museum of Fine Arts Boston; Portrait of John Warren by Rembrandt Peale, Harvard Art Museums. Dr. John Warren was also Grand Master of all the Lodges of Freemasons in Massachusetts, and appropriately his medical trunk is in the collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library. John Warren’s journal entries are in a volume edited by his son, John Collins Warren (also a prominent physician) entitled Genealogy of Warren : with some historical sketches (1854).

The hero surviver of Bunker Hill was Colonel William Prescott: he’s right there in the Trumball painting above, in the midst of the Patriot contingent behind the fallen Warren. It happens that Prescott’s grandson is Salem’s most esteemed historian (well maybe excepting one or two of my colleagues at Salem State), William Hickling Prescott. The bronze statue of Colonel Prescott was actually created by Salem-born sculptor William Wetmore Story with the aid of a photograph of his grandson. When William H. Prescott married Susan Amory in 1820, he was gifted by her uncle a sword owned by his father Captain John Linzee, a British naval commander fighting on the opposite side on June 17, 1775!  (Linzee does not seem to have been as heroic, or perhaps as successful, as Prescott according to this account). This sword was donated by Prescott to the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Linzee sword was later donated by his wife to the same institution so that they might not be separated. And thus they exist together at the Society, a personal and public memento of conflict, cohabitation, and commemoration.

Plaque with Crossed Swords, Massachusetts Historical Society. Silver-hilted small-sword belonging to Col. William Prescott, created by Jacob Hurd, circa 1730-1750 and small-sword for an officer of the Royal Navy, belonging to Capt. John Linzee, created by unidentified maker, circa 1780s. More description here.

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June 16, 2025

Patriot Properties

By daseger

An eventful weekend—one of several coming up this summer! I’m going to focus on one event out of several I participated in—a house tour of Patriots’ homes in Marblehead—simply because it yielded the best pictures. Having done this a couple of times myself, I am always grateful to homeowners who open up their houses to the public. As I am focusing on Marblehead, right next door to Salem, today, I have to admit that I’m feeling a bit envious of our neighbor for three essential reasons these days. First of all, it seems to have a very engaged electorate which has much more power than we do in Salem. I had an appointment there last week which happened to fall on local election day, and saw tons of people and signs out and about. Marblehead residents elect their board and commission members and city clerk, while in Salem we only elect a Mayor and city councillors, and the former appoints all the commissioners with the rubber stamp of the latter. There are often uncontested elections in Salem and the voter turnout is very low: 28% in the last mayoral election I believe. Marblehead is a town so they have town meetings! I feel quite disenfranchised by comparison. The second reason I envy Marblehead is its Revolutionary fort, Fort Sewall, which is perfectly preserved and well-maintained in contrast to Fort Pickering, Salem’s major historic fort, which has been left to rot and ruin by the City of Salem. This is, I believe, another example of civic engagement or the lack thereof. The third reason I envy Marblehead, pretty much every single day, is that it has a professional historical society, unlike Salem. The Marblehead Museum was established as the Marblehead Historical Society in 1898, and it continues its mission “to preserve, protect, and promote Marblehead’s past as a means of enriching the present” today. Salem has no such institution; it failed to develop one as the Essex Institute served that role for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, before its assimilation into the Peabody Essex Museum. The Marblehead Museum combines its stewardship roles (of both Marblehead’s historic record and its three properties) in conjuction with a very active calendar of interpretive events, including this weekend’s house tour, which couldn’t have been more timely.

The tour of five houses was self-guided, and so the first house for myself and my friend Liz was the Robert Hooper House on Washington Street, a 1769 reconstruction of an earlier home which I always thought was a Federal house. It has recently been restored so we were both eager to get in, and once inside you could immediately tell it was pre-Revolutionary even with its vibrant decoration. The carriage house was open too, and the views down to its terraced garden were spectacular, even on a rainy day. At first, I was a bit confused as to why this house was on a tour of homes associated with Patriots as I had my Marblehead Robert Hoopers mixed up: the owner of this house was NOT the famouse Loyalist Robert “King” Hooper, whose house is located just across the way, but rather another Robert Hooper. It was also confusing to read that George Washington visited this house during his 1789 visit to Marblehead: I don’t think this is the case as he is recorded as having been greeted at the Lee Mansion just down the street. But Robert “NO KING” Hooper’s son, also named Robert Hooper, was married to a daughter of Marblehead’s most illustrious Revolutionary general, John Glover, and as they inherited the house after his father’s death in 1814 that’s quite enough of a patriot connection for me.

Then we walked over to Franklin Street and the Devereux House, a very classical Georgian house built in 1764 by Marblehead merchant Joseph Homan. Persons enslaved by him likely lived here before Homan sold the property to Eldridge Gerry of “Gerrymandering” fame. Gerry gifted the house to his sister Elizabeth, the wife of Selectman Burrill Devereux who welcomed President Washington to town in 1789. A lovely house, well-maintained over the years and now the home of another Patriot, with whom we discussed the Army’s (rather than the President’s) big birthday.

The most famous Marblehead Patriot (who was born in Salem) is undoubtedly General John Glover, who ferried General Washington and his troops across the Delaware on Christmas night 1776 in advance of their big victory at Trenton. There is a Glover Square named after him, and in the midst of this square is the house most closely associated with him. Like the Devereux House, it’s on the National Register, and features yet another impressive Georgian entrance hall.

On our way back to our final stop, the Jeremiah Lee Mansion, we realized we had missed a house, which is of course a capital crime on any house tour. So we made a little detour to see the Martin-Hulen-Lemaster House on Washington Street. Its generous owner allowed us to see the entire 1755 house, and you could really appreciate the space created by its gambrel roof on the third floor. Marblehead ship captain Elias Hulen, Jr., whose father served on the Seacoast Guards and as a privateer during the Revolution, owned and occupied this house after its orginal owners departed for Maine in the 1770s.

We finished up the tour at the 1768 Jeremiah Lee Mansion, a museum property which I’ve toured before and posted about here. It’s an amazing edifice, with interiors impressive in both detail and scale. Only the first floor was open for the tour so I took some photos of decorative details that I didn’t think I captured in my earlier post, and looked out the tall windows at the archeaological and structural evidence of the Marblehead Museum’s ambitious ongoing project, a $1.4 million renovation of Lee’s Brick Kitchen & Slave Quarters next door. When completed, this project will expand the Museum’s archival, office, and exhibition space in addition to revealing and interpreting spaces of enslavement and labor, a logical extension of the Museum’s continuous efforts to identify and document the lives of African American and Indigenous peoples in Marblehead’s history.

A few photos of the Jeremiah Lee Mansion interiors and the Brick Kitchen/Slave Quarters project behind and adjacent to the Mansion. The only king I was interested in this past weekend was the King of Prussia, as I was just fascinated by this plate! 

One more object of Marblehead envy popped up while I was looking at the Marblehead Museum’s website: the town retains reference to the original Pawtucket Tribe of our region in its land acknowledgement statement, while Salem’s excludes any reference to these native peoples in favor of the Massachusetts Tribe. I wish we could acknowledge the Pawtucket.

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