Tag Archives: Marblehead

No Filter: A Magnificent Marblehead Garden

Today’s post is a special treat courtesy of the owners of a beautiful property on Peach’s Point in Marblehead, who graciously opened their garden to visitors as a benefit for the Marblehead Museum this past Saturday. I understand that this kind of generosity is a pattern for them, and I feel privileged to have spent some time in this beautiful space, even (actually especially!) though it was cloudy and rainy. I came down to Salem for several events, a few of which were washed out the by the rain, but not this one, and I’m so glad: the garden was a green seldom seen, and all of its flowering plants popped to perfection. I swear: I have used no filter on the photographs below taken with my trusty old Samsung (and if things look a little filmy, my lense was fogged up). I have long wanted to see this garden, as it is a restoration/recreation of the garden which was part of the estate of Louise DuPont Crowninshield, one of my personal preservation heroes, and her husband Francis Boardman Crowninshield. The Crowninshield House is no longer standing, but the present owners of the property have built a lovely modern Colonial Revival Home which is well-situated on the Point, looking back at the town of Marblehead and out to its outlying islands and open sea. And then, an allee to the side which leads you to the formal gardens in a more protected space: a rose garden, a knot garden, lots of little garden nooks enclosed by topiaries, lovely (warm) brick enclosure tying everything together. Finally you come to a pool and a gorgeous greenhouse/garden house, in that same warm brick. I’m going to give you the tour the same way I walked it in the rain.

Approaching the property; encircling the house.

And on to the Gardens and Garden House……………

It’s not a poolhouse, it’s a garden house (or building): while this expansive garden is obviously the work of professionals (Doug Jones and Rick Elder), clearly the homeowners (Brian and Nancy McCarthy) were and are involved intimately in its creation and maintenance. There were personal touches everywhere you just don’t see in purely professional gardens, principally the mature houseplants, brought out of the garden house for the summer to embellish further several garden “rooms”.  And towering over everything was a very obvious sign of respect for what was there before: a HUGE and ANCIENT copper beech tree.

 


One Hero and 17 Rescinders

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.


(Reen-)Action in Marblehead

There is filming or preparation for filming all around us this July: on Salem Common, in Forest River Park, in nearby Danvers and Marblehead. On Saturday I drove over to see Marblehead’s Old Town dressed as Salem during Halloween for a Netflix film starring Adam Sandler titled Hubie Halloween. I knew that the Revolutionary reenactment company Glover’s Regiment would also be camped out at Fort Sewall in Marblehead, and I thought the two “sets” might make for an interesting cultural clash. I was right: it was a theatrical afternoon. I have to admit to being a little annoyed that Salem could not play itself: we have to deal with the real Halloween but aren’t good enough to play the fake one? But watching the set designers put together their perfect Halloween town, it was obvious that they were going for a cute, hometown Halloween, not the darker version that has emerged in Witch City. At least Salem Common will see some action. The camp at Fort Sewall was well-established by the time I got there, with cream canvas tents all in a row, and visiting “French” and “British” soldiers—the latter were appropriately camped outside the fort’s walls!  For an hour or so, it really did seem like I was wandering around some Hollywood backlot to go from Halloween in July to an eighteenth-century encampment.

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Hawthorne Summer

Every single year I think about Nathaniel Hawthorne in the first week of July, as his birthday was on July 4, but this particular summer he—or his inspiration–is everywhere in Salem as this year marks the 350th anniversary of the house most closely associated with him: the House of the Seven Gables. In some ways, the Gables is as much of a creation as the story after which it was named, but it’s still a 350-year-old house overlooking the harbor, and therefore a standing symbol of Salem’s multifaceted past: in this year when so much of the city’s historic fabric has been removed by the Peabody Essex Museum I believe that its existence–and the role it plays in our city today–is more important than ever.

Gables PC Harvard

Gables Harvard 1910The newly-restored House of the Seven Gables, 1910, Harvard Fine Arts Library Postcard Collection

Not only does the House of the Seven Gables Settlement Association serve as a solicitous steward of this iconic house, it maintains a packed schedule of programming, continues to fulfill the social welfare mission of its founder, Caroline Emmerton, and partners with other regional institutions to interpret and present Salem’s history and culture. Even though its focus is limited necessarily, in many ways it is as close to a historical society as we have in this “historic” city. Both the organization and the House stand as authentic and educational antidotes to Salem’s more sensationalistic offerings. And again–given what has happened to Salem over this past year, it’s more important than ever that the city’s existing historical organizations work together to shore up—and celebrate–our heritage. So I’m particularly happy to see the first big Hawthorne event of the summer: an ambitious and aptly-titled public reading called “Enduring Hawthorne: A Marathon Reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter”, a collaboration between the Gables, Salem Maritime National Historic Site, the Salem Athenaeum, and the Essex Heritage National Area on June 7 in front of the Custom House. The following weekend, Salem State University will screen the first film of a three-film series based on Hawthorne novels at Salem Maritime’s Regional Visitor Center, with a preceding symposium in which English faculty will discuss the historical context of The House of the Seven Gables. Then we will see the 1940 film, with The Scarlet Letter and Twice-Told Tales coming up on successive Wednesdays in July–with Q & A sessions after both. Scenes from The Scarlet Letter (1934) were apparently shot in then recently-constructed Pioneer Village, so I’m pretty excited to see that film in particular.

Summer at Salem State July 2018_Web Version

Scarlet Letter 3 Still from The Scarlet Letter, 1934. Pioneer Village?

With August comes Gables Fest: Celebrating 350 Years of Stories and Songs, a day-long event on the 4th which will take attendees on a musical “journey” through the history of the Gables (with food and drink) and a collaboration with another historic site celebrating a big anniversary this year: the Marblehead Museum’s Jeremiah Lee Mansion, built in 1768. Through “Architectural August” there will be architectural tours, visiting member events, and a comparative focus on these two structures built a century apart.

Interesting Houses collageFrom Burroughs & Company’s Interesting Houses of New England, 1915: with a photograph of the Gables before its restoration/recreation.

Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set. (Proverbs 22:28)


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