Silverware, Sex, and Stirpicults: John Humphrey Noyes and Oneida Community Silver

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Part Three This is a continuation of a previous article. For the last installment, click here.

Don't you worry, my friends. This is the last naughty spoon ad to which I will subject you. But still, it does get the point across, does it not? Over fifty years later, it still gets a "whoa!" from my very worldly officemate.

The overt sexiness of Oneida in the 1960's is a not-so-subtle nod to the Oneida Community of a century earlier, a bastion of "complex marriage" where all community members were considered equally married to each other, their sexual "interviews" charging the spiritual batteries of the community in which they lived, worked, and played.

When we left our dubious hero John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community, whose family hailed from Newbury, and whose exploits were breathlessly reported in the sizzling pages of the Newburyport Herald, he had fled from the law for the second time in his life. First, in 1848, he had hightailed it from Putney, Vermont, to establish the community in Oneida, New York which, by almost any measure, had been a roaring success. Then, thirty years later, amid internal upheaval and national debate over the Mormon practice of polygamous marriage, and believing he was about to be charged with statutory rape, Noyes left New York for Niagara Falls, Canada, never to return.

Two months after his exit, Noyes sent word to his followers that it was time to end the practice of complex marriage, the foundational principal of the Oneida community. At 10 a.m. on August 28, 1879, the doors closed on the last "interview." It should have been the end of it all, and in a way, it was. But it was also the beginning. 

John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886), leader of the Oneida Community, shortly before his flight to Canada.

The Community was in turmoil. Noyes' attempts to install his son Theodore as his successor had backfired after the younger Noyes turned out to be less devout and more monogamous than his father had realized. The industrial endeavors at the heart of the Community were increasingly complex and the Community was nearing bankruptcy. And so, in 1881, the group abandoned communal ownership, the other foundational principal of the group, and formed a joint-stock company. Members of the Community were given stock in this new company, Oneida Community Limited. Older members received support payments, and Noyes himself was provided with a house in Canada, a horse and carriage, and a stipend for life. John Humphrey Noyes lived for seven more years, dying on April 13, 1886. His body was returned to his beloved Oneida and buried there with other members of the Community.

And then what? I will admit that my heart goes out to the children of Oneida, those who had been raised to believe in the possibility of sinless perfection and a benevolent, sustaining community that would provide for them. And this is where my own experience of the end of communal life intrudes on this tale.

I was raised on a commune too, except we had no successful industry, no free love, and no mansion houses. My parents were followers of a charismatic preacher named Sam Fife, and, guess what? He was all about sinless perfection. Unlike John Humphrey Noyes, however, Sam Fife preached that the chosen people had to survive the end-times and the best way to do that was to decamp to the wilderness of northern Canada. So, I suppose we have that in common with Noyes as well. We all ended up in Canada, though I think he may have had the better deal.

Let's just say that I understand deeply and personally how difficult it is to transition to society at large when you have been raised apart. For the Oneidans, there was the sometimes desperate scramble for a spouse as the Community disintegrated. And there was the question of whose children were whose, since in some cases only the mother was known conclusively. And if men had fathered multiple children, there was the question of which mother to marry and which adult children could marry each other. In the game of marital chairs of the early 1880's, some lost out and experienced isolation and profound loneliness for the first time.

The managers of Oneida Community Limited did their best to parcel out the assets of the Community, building houses on formerly shared land and trying to provide some measure of financial and social stability, but the business, controlled by older members of the former community, was floundering.

John Humphrey Noyes was at it again, this time from beyond the grave. So attached were his former followers to the advice of their charismatic leader that the board members of Oneida would have seances to seek financial advice from Noyes who, perhaps unsurprisingly, generally came back from the dead to agree with whoever was asking.

Finally, in 1893, one of the "stirpicults," children born as part of the Oneida Community's genetic engineering project that began in 1869, put an end to the seances and wrested control, finally, from the cold dead hands of his father. Twenty-five year old Pierrepont Noyes replaced the elderly board, hired his half-brothers and sisters to help run the company, and at twenty-nine, became General Manager of the Oneida Corporation.

It was Pierrepont who decided that the company should sell off the animal traps business and focus on silverware. A new factory was built in 1913, and the company was reorganized to honor many of the principals that were the best of the Oneida Community. Decisions were made by consensus, intellectual pursuits, recreation, and leisure time were valued, and profits, which soared, were often put to community purposes. Still, the sexual exploits and fringe beliefs of their parents and grandparents was increasingly embarrassing, and a liability to the thriving international corporation, and in 1947, much to this historian's dismay, the documents and records of the Oneida Community and John Humphrey Noyes were taken to the dump and burned by their descendants.

By 1956, re-branding was in full swing, with a full-page advertisement in the Ladies Home Journal touting the company's "small beginnings in agriculture" and their principals of "hard work, meticulous craftsmanship, and never underestimating the value of a woman." And the clean-cut 1950's young executive looking back from the page? John Humphrey Noyes' grandson, P.T. Noyes, who controlled the company until 1981. No mention of communism, unsurprisingly.

Still, if the descendants of John Humphrey Noyes knew anything, it was the power of sex and industry, the twin pillars of the original Oneida Community, and by the late 1960's, a time when, once again, America was examining its feelings about monogamy, work, and spirituality, Oneida silverware was sold in the mouths of beautiful young women. John Humphrey Noyes must have been smiling.

Silverware, Sex, and Stirpicults: John Humphrey Noyes and Oneida Community Silver

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Part Two This is a continuation of a previous article. For the last installment, click here.

First, an apology. It has been a month since the last installment of the wild and wonderful tale of John Humphrey Noyes, founder of the Oneida Community, whose family hailed from Newbury, and whose exploits were breathlessly reported in the sizzling pages of the Newburyport Herald. When last we left our dubious hero, it was 1848, and the good people of Putney, Vermont had just called for his arrest, based on a scandalous letter inviting a woman into a "complex marriage". He was facing charges of “adulterous fornication”, and had failed to convince his neighbors of his Perfectionist inability to sin. It was high time for Noyes and his band of self-identified Bible Communists to get out of New England.

Destination: Oneida, New York, naturally, in an area of the country so swept with spiritual fervor, emotional revivals, and the fire of religious awakening, it had become known as the Burned-over District. It was here that Noyes would build his Perfectionist community, and where I would spend my 9th wedding anniversary. 

My one and only spouse, James, snaps a pic at the Oneida Mansion House, October 12, 2023.

Nothing says romance like a night in a free-love commune, right? Upon discovering that John Humphrey Noyes is my third cousin (5x removed), and that it was possible to stay in the mansion, I announced to my long-suffering husband that he would be joining me for ten hours in the car and an overnight in the place where spooning had a whole other meaning. "You mean Oneida like the silverware?" he said. I rolled my eyes. "I'll catch you up on the way," I said. And off we went.

The Oneida Mansion House in its current incarnation is part modern hotel, part museum, and part apartment complex. After five hours of highway, past a looming fluorescent casino and miles of cornfields, there she was, atop a rise, surrounded by neat little houses that seemed nearly all from the first half of the 20th century. We were the only hotel guests, though several of the apartments in the rear of the building were occupied. Our room was beautiful, clearly very recently renovated. We were given the keys to the building and left to wander at our leisure. When the staff left for the night and we were alone, the long halls and disorienting stairways took on a bit of "The Shining" vibe.

The Oneida Mansion House sleeping rooms, unlike public spaces, were plain and utilitarian.

Down the hall from our room was a very different kind of space. The "sleeping rooms" of the Oneida Community reinforced their core beliefs. They were sparse and plain, unlike the beautifully decorated, well-appointed common rooms nearby, which included a theater, libraries, and sitting rooms. Community members were encouraged to spend as much time as possible with each other. There was a small space for personal items, as most everything was to be held in common. And, of course, the bed was very small. Nobody was supposed to get too comfortable. "Sticky" or individual attachments were to be avoided.

The sexual visits or "interviews" held in these rooms were private, but prolonged coupling was discouraged. After all, everyone in the community was married to everyone else. At the core of Noyes' teaching was the idea that non-procreative (though heterosexual) contact produced a kind of electricity, charging the spiritual battery of the community and bringing its members closer to God. The more "interviews," the better.

One of several communal sitting rooms in the Oneida Community Mansion.

John Humphrey Noyes fled to Oneida in 1848, after his unorthodox sexual doctrine led to his arrest in Vermont. Noyes and his followers, now called the "Community" were given land by a Perfectionist sympathizer. Determined to live without "egoism and exclusiveness", Noyes oversaw the construction of a common house for all 84 members of the Community. Within the next five years, he also established branches in Brooklyn and Wallingford, Connecticut.

By the 1860's, the community had outgrown the original mansion house, and another, much larger complex was built, including a separate house for the rearing of children, who could be occasionally visited by their parents. Undue attachment was punished with prolonged separation, however.

Oneida Community founder John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886). Private collection.

Freed from the demands of motherhood and the management of a household, women were free to work at whatever best suited them. They cut their hair short, wore pants, and served as journalists, accountants, or worked in the fields and factories as they wished. Thus fortified with a full and vigorous workforce, the Community embraced capitalist endeavors, first attempting to grow and preserve fruit for sale, and then, when a Community member turned out to be an excellent trap-maker, throwing their energy into trap production. Later, the Community added silk thread twisting to their endeavors, and after 1877, they began to make the spoons that would found their silverware empire. Community members believed deeply in self-improvement, however, and work was limited to six hours a day, with the remainder of the time for socializing, music, and education.

The Oneida Trap Company laid the groundwork for a utopian community grounded in manufacturing.

John H. Noyes (standing, second row) and his community, shortly after the move to Oneida.

As the Oneida Community became more prosperous, an ageing Noyes began to look to the future. Inspired by current evolutionary theories, he began his own selective reproduction program in 1869. He called this "stirpiculture", and instituted a process whereby morally and physically suitable couples in the community could apply to have a child. Noyes, of course, thought of himself as the most evolved member of the community, and in the end, 10 of the 62 children, called "stirpicults", born between 1869 and 1879 were fathered by him.

This satirical illustration of a young couple applying to be parents was published in 1870.

The Oneida Community's success in its communal phase was dependent on the magnetism and energy of John Humphrey Noyes, and on the devotion of his followers. The stirpiculture program, from which some were excluded, caused rifts in the Community, and there was no clear successor to Noyes, who was growing increasingly deaf and inflexible. Then in June 1879, amid national debate over the Mormon practice of polygamous marriage, Noyes, believing he was about to be charged with statutory rape, left New York for Canada, never to return.

Stay tuned for Part 3, as the Stirpicults rebrand themselves as humble farmers and build an empire from the ashes of the Oneida Community.

Silverware, Sex, and Stirpicults: John Humphrey Noyes and Oneida Community Silver

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Part One

The Noyes family was in ascendancy this summer at the Museum of Old Newbury. This happens periodically. For a month, every visitor to the museum was a Plummer, it seemed. Then images and artifacts from the Morrill family came out of the woodwork - sometimes literally – every day for a while. This summer, visitor after visitor proudly proclaimed their lineage from Nicholas, reported to be first to come ashore on the hallowed shores of Newbury in 1635, and/or his brother James, beloved assistant minister to their cousin Thomas Parker. They recount, their bright eyes shining, how their families had made their way from New England to California, Iowa, New York, or in my case, well, all the way from Byfield to West Newbury. People as different in temperament, age, appearance, and political leaning as you can imagine embraced and hailed their long-lost cousins, examining noses and hairlines for a family resemblance. It gets weird. I love it. 

The James Noyes House, parts of which are believed to date to as early as 1646, is privately owned but visited by many Noyes descendants to Newbury. Image is from our collection

At the beginning of October, I went out to my old stomping grounds of Amherst to visit a former colleague from Historic New England at the Emily Dickinson House. My good friend Doris Noyes was with me, and as we wandered over to visit Emily’s grave, we both scanned the gravestones for familiar names. There were a few – Boardmans and Browns and Perkins, but no Noyeses. Doris mentioned that her husband (she is a Noyes by marriage) had an aunt named Dickinson, and we were off to the races.

The Dickinson family plot in Amherst, Massachusetts. Author photo.

Turns out Newburyport’s own Edmund Greenleaf Noyes married Sarah Stetson Dickinson, who shares an ancestor with Emily. Oh, and Edmund Noyes is the first cousin (once removed) of former Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. Noyeses, as I predicted, turn up everywhere. Doris went on to tell the story of how her children had given them a weekend getaway to another Noyes family landmark, the Oneida Community Mansion in New York.

“Oneida Community like the silverware?” I said.

“Oneida Community like the free love commune,” she whispered. “And silverware.”

Advertisements for Oneida Community Silver often included attractive women, including this advertisement from 1923.

I staggered back. Anyone with a drawer full of older silverware has some Oneida Community Silver. Oneida and Towle were neck and neck in the mid-20th century, vying for supremacy in the silver-plate market. And what did this have to do with the Noyes family? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Oneida Community founder John Humphrey Noyes (1811-1886). Private collection.

John Humphrey Noyes’ family had lived in Newbury since Nicholas, his 3rd great-grandfather, jumped off the boat in 1635. His father, a one-term Congressman, left the area and moved to Vermont a decade before John was born.

For three days, July 6-8, 1848, John Humphrey Noyes was front page news in the Newburyport Herald. The titillating coverage began, “(T)here was published in the Battle Axe, a Perfectionist paper, a letter dated January 1837 written by Mr. Noyes, of which the following is an extract. “When the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven, there will be no marriage The marriage supper…is a feast at which every dish is free to every man. Exclusiveness, jealousy, quarrelling, have no place there, for the same reasons as that which forbid the guests at a Thanksgiving dinner to claim each separate dish and quarrel with the rest for his rights. In a holy community there is no more reason why sexual intercourse should be restrained by law than eating and drinking should be and there is as little occasion for shame in one as in the other… I call a certain woman my wife - she is yours; she is Christ’s, and in him she is the bride of all saints. She is dear in the hands of the stranger, and according to my promise to her I rejoice.”

John Humphrey Noyes corresponded with Newburyport's own William Lloyd Garrison in the 1830's, hoping to explain his doctrine of Perfectionism through Garrison's Liberator newspaper.

Noyes was front-page news some decade after the publication of this original letter because of the release of a personal letter, written by John Humphrey Noyes himself, asking a woman to enter into a “novel and curious matrimonial relation”, an arrangement that would exist solely on a spiritual plane and would allow for unfettered sexual relationships between Noyes, the woman, and pretty much everyone else who was among the chosen people in their Godly circle. Of course, he was already legally married and had children with his wife and at least one other woman. Noyes and his merry band of Perfectionists were enjoying “complex marriage” up in Putney, Vermont.

Perfectionism, the belief that mankind, made in the image of a perfect God, could achieve perfection if they increased their spiritual vibration to a heavenly level, was one of many new religious movements sparked by the emotional revivals of the so-called Second Great Awakening in the first half of the 19th century. It was a turbulent, active, volatile time that also sparked movements like Adventism and Mormonism, as well as increasing interest in Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and the occult. Most Perfectionists were not interested in complex marriage, but Noyes’ assertion that he had surrendered his will to God and therefore could not sin was in line with their beliefs. 

Oh, but the good people of Putney, Vermont were not convinced. John Humphrey Noyes had just been arrested based on the contents of the letter reprinted in the Newburyport Herald, among other assertions, and was facing charges of “adulterous fornication”. It was time for Noyes and his band of self-identified Bible Communists to get out of New England.

John H. Noyes (standing, second row) and his community, shortly after the move to Oneida.

And where did they go? Oneida, New York, naturally, in an area of the country so swept with spiritual fervor, emotional revivals, and the fire of religious awakening, it had become known as the Burned-over District. Perfectionist sympathizers would offer land to build one of the most fascinating utopian communities in American history, and arguably the most successful. 

Stay tuned for Part 2, as John Humphrey Noyes builds a mansion, joins the fur trap trade, and produces an army of genetically engineered children, called Stirpicults, all while working just six hours a day.

The Towle Photos of Arthur Schuh

by Kristen Fehlhaber, Associate Director

Arthur Schuh made his career photographing babies. Lots of them. Founded in the 1950s, Hospital Picture Services offered new parents a photo of their baby, taken in the hospital, and delivered to them in three days (women were in the hospital for a week at that time). Schuh was president of the company responsible for developing the camera technology that was installed in hundreds of hospitals across the country. Hospitals got a percentage of the sales, parents got a sharp photo of their newborn, and Hospital Picture Services grew. 

Newborn photos by Schuh's Hospital Picture Service were often featured in local newspapers.

What does this have to do with Old Newbury? Schuh, born in Quincy, MA, lived in this area for about 18 months, beginning in the late summer of 1940. Fresh out of Harvard Business School, he got a position at Towle Silver and lived as a boarder at both 4 High Road and 49 High Street. His passion for photography was already in place when he came to Newburyport. 

Soon after starting at Towle, Schuh began taking personal photos of his workplace. After he took the photos and made prints, he pasted them in an album and had the subjects sign their names next to the photos. It seems that Schuh gave away prints, too, as one such print was given to the museum years ago. For a researcher, the album is a goldmine; the photos not only have names, but signatures next to them. 

Schuh’s daughter Joanne Smith donated this album, along with additional photos and negatives. Arthur Schuh seemed to spend his brief time here shooting portraits and weddings, as well as photographing historic homes in his neighborhood.  

Schuh in his Harvard Business School Class Book of 1940

The Towle photos show a mix of younger and older workers, both men and women, many of them workers in the Cost & Art Departments. Roy Hardison is working with Vena Searway. In February, 1941, a headline grabbed the attention of Louise Searway. Freda Bryant is working with spoons. For another photo, he interrupts Jean Kennedy while filing (more on her later). Future VP of Manufacturing Randolph Thurlow works at his desk.

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Schuh’s time in Newburyport would end abruptly in December 1941, when he received a commission as an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve. Many others at Towle would join the armed forces; his name would appear on a plaque of Towle employees in the war in late 1942.

Schuh was back in town in 1943 to marry Jean Kennedy, the woman he photographed at the filing cabinet. They would soon head together to San Francisco, and he would go on to serve in the Philippines. They would never live in Newburyport again.

The marriage announced next to photo of Roosevelt and Churchill.

The newlyweds stopping at West Point on their way to California

The couple received a set of Towle Silver (the Benjamin Franklin pattern) as a wedding gift from the company. It is still used by their daughter.

After the war, Schuh connected his passion for photography to his work life through his Hospital Picture Services.   Kudos to the man who believed in the importance of capturing life’s moments and who believed in labeling everything! 

Below is a list of people in Schuh’s 1940-1941 Towle album. If there is someone whose photo you’d like to see, please reach out to the museum at info@newburyhistory.org.

Parmira Arata, Mildred Ballou, Roderick Brooks, Freda Bryant, Walter Bryant, Hallett A. Carey, James M. Carey, Barbara Chesley, Donny Chisholm, Jack Coffin, Bob Davenport, Roger F. DeMerritt, Esther T. Dodge, Elizabeth Dow, Edith Erickson, J.O. Evans, Duncan Farr, Jack Farrell, Helen Fennelly, Julie Foley, Barbara "Bobby" Gagnon, Charlotte Gale, Gertrude  Gault, Martha B. Gremore, Roy P. Hardison, Ruth Hopkinson, June Hudson, Aram Kalashian, Peggy Kelleher, Gertrude M. Kelley, Jean Kennedy, Jerry King, Jack Learned, Gert Littlefield, Kay Lucey, Al Lunt, Evelyn L Melvin, Joe Morrow, Esther Noyes, Helen V. O'Brien, Sally Parsons, Thelma H. Plemmons, Betty Poland, Ross Pollard, Helen Poznek, Ethel Rand, Hazel Roberts, Louise Searway, Vena Searway, Camilla M Smith, Cato Smith, Evelyn Southwell, Robert J Stevens, Mary L. Taylor, Randolph L. Thurlow, Marion S. True, Hazel White, E. Whitney (female), Carmen Worcester.

With thanks to Joanne Smith for her generous assistance with this story.  

"Demoralized, Intemperate, and Vicious": Saving Star Island Souls

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Well, friends, another two weeks just flew by. Life races along at break-neck speed these late-summer days. Two weeks ago, before the kids went back to school, before the leaves on the maple tree on the lane began to hint at the red and gold to come, I was invited to speak at the New England Heritage Conference on Star Island on the Isles of Shoals. I could only get away from work, farm, and family responsibilities for one night, but I squeezed every drop from the experience, going out on the early morning boat on Monday and returning on the last boat Tuesday. I am a bit obsessed with the Isles of Shoals, I admit, though I’m not entirely sure when this passionate attachment began. Could it be the worn copy of Among the Isles of Shoals by Celia Thaxter on my grandmother’s bookshelf? A romantic longing for solitude and the sea? Whatever it is, there is no cure. I am smitten.

And, of course (and why would I be surprised), Newbury(port) is everywhere on the Isles of Shoals. First, I ran into Bob Cook, a garrulous architect who used to give fabulous tours with me at the Coffin House, and his sister, Amy, who convinced me to jump in the ocean shortly after sunrise the next morning. And then, there was Laurie, my friend for many Newburyport years and now helping to raise the Star Island Corporation to new fundraising heights. It was Laurie that said it first. “Newburyport follows me around,” she said, laughing. “Go read that monument over there.” 

The Tucke Memorial is the largest gravestone in New Hampshire at 46.5 feet. 

Across the wild roses and low bush blueberries, rose an obelisk, black against the grey-blue sky. “Go look,” she said, and floated away. Everyone seems lighter on the island. I floated up the boulder-strewn path, past the stone chapel with its pump organ, through the turnstile, exclaiming in delight at every little bit of it. And there, on top of the island, stood what I later learned is the largest gravestone in New Hampshire, atop the mortal remains of Reverend John Tucke, who became the minister to Gosport, the name of the town on Star Island, in 1732. One side of the obelisk was a wall of words.

Underneath
are the Remains of the
REV. JOHN TUCKE, A. M.
He graduated at Harvard
College A. D. 1723, was ordained
here July 26, 1732,
and died late in August, 1773,
Aet. 71.
---
He was affable and polite in his
Manner, amiable in his disposition,
of great Piety and Integrity,
given to hospitality,
Diligent and faithful in his
pastoral office, well learned
in History and Geography as
well as general science, and a
careful Physician both to the
Bodies and the Souls
of his People.
---
Erected 1800 in memory of the Just.
---
The inscription above is taken from
the sandstone slab placed over the
grave of the Rev. John Tucke
by Dudley A. Tyng of Newburyport, Mass. (emphasis my own)
---
In 1914 a kinsman,
EDWARD TUCK,
renewed in permanent form
this memorial.

“Dudley Tyng of Newburyport, Mass,” on the Tucke memorial. 

And so, like so many of you, I had myself a bit of a chin-scratch. What in the blue blazes was Newburyport’s customs officer Dudley Tyng doing erecting monuments to ministers on obscure islands in the middle of the sea in 1800? Now, Dudley Tyng is a story all by himself. Born Dudley Atkins, he changed his name to Tyng (which was once spelled THING) in order to qualify for a whopping great inheritance from his third cousin. Apparently, as Newburyport customs agent, he had dealings with, and heard stories about, Star Island’s “demoralized, intemperate, and vicious” fishermen who were “living in open violation of the laws of God and man”. These were the people who had repopulated the island after it was evacuated at the start of the American Revolution, not the formerly pious congregation of Rev. Tucke.

Dudley Atkins Tyng, painted by Gilbert Stuart, c. 1810

And so, Tyng first told these Shoalers to lay off the booze and “curb their evil passions and appetites”, and then he called his other wealthy friends and put together a spiritual first aid team to put things to right on the lawless neighbors to the north.

Tyng appealed to the Society for Propagating the Gospel Among Indians and Others in North America, who dispatched a missionary to the island in April, 1799, and Tyng went on a fundraising tour around New England with his equally fervent buddy Rev. Jedidiah Morse, another Newbury descendant, to raise money for a new church. Tyng arrived on the island on October 20, 1800 with materials and 14 carpenters and the church was built, and some island houses repaired, in less than 10 days.

Perhaps most importantly for our purposes, he tripped over the body of the community’s long-time minister, John Tucke, dead since 1773. Okay, he tripped over Tucke’s disintegrating grave marker, but the effect was the same. Tyng, never one to pass up the opportunity to make a moral message stick, erected the sandstone tablet mentioned in the current marker to remind the rag-tag residents that Star Island had once been a Christian community.   

Yours truly relaxing in front of the church that Tyng built in 10 days in 1800.

Star Island had long been a part of Rye, New Hampshire, but in 1715, it was established as the town of Gosport, and since a town had to have a minister at the time, lucky John Tucke got the job – to be paid in fish. Now, before you start feeling bad for Tucke, the fish paychecks were valuable and he did quite well for himself, being considered at one time to be the highest paid minster in New Hampshire (some say New England). Gosport was a busy, if tiny, town, and during his long four decades on the island, he managed to baptize some 700 babies. He died, conveniently, just before the American Revolution, and the evacuation of the Isles of Shoals, from which the town of Gosport never quite regained its spiritual footing, at least not enough to satisfy old Dudley Atkins Tyng. The 19th century in the Isles is a catalogue of murder, stand-offs, isolation, and, well, okay, thanks to Celia Thaxter, gardening, poetry, and art.

I must say that the lawlessness on Star Island these days seems to be kept to a minimum, though there were boxes of wine on the porch in the late afternoon. I did wonder as I sat on the sprawling porch of the Oceanic Hotel, what Dudley Tyng would think of the laughing day-trippers pouring out of the ferry Thomas Leighton. Would he meet them on the pier with his Bible? Or would he sit with me in a rocking chair and consider all the laughing, gentle people around us, the affirmations written on the blackboard in the lobby, the volunteers lovingly re-caning the dining room chairs, and think that Star Island turned out to be a sacred place, after all.   

Port to Port: A Sojourn to Remember

Two weeks ago, I filled my ageing minivan with members of the Museum of Old Newbury, and we set off on our (second annual) Summer Sojourn to Portsmouth. Last year we followed artist Cecilia Beaux around Gloucester. Each year we set off in a merry band to test my theory that Newbury(port) is the center of the universe. 

The gun ship USS Washington by John S. Blunt

This year’s sojourn began with a close examination of paintings of the Washington and the Constitution by artist John Blunt that hang in the front hall of the Cushing House. Board member and American art expert Monica Reuss kicked off the day with an insightful examination of the paintings, and then we were off to Portsmouth. The Washington (above, launched in 1814) was the first ship built in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard (PNSY), and so this was our first stop. Actually, we stopped in the parking lot of the USS Albacore, where we loaded onto a United States Navy bus where, as the carefully vetted guests of the Navy, we were charmed and enlightened by historian Joseph Gluckert. 

I’ll spare you the full travelogue, but anyone who knows me has heard about the PNSY cemetery, though I was unaware that behind the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Heritage Center, there is also a pet cemetery that contains the worldly remains of Old Tom, a United States Marine (horse), born in 1892. He served in Cuba and was retired in 1928 before dying in 1933, at the ripe old age of 39. I connect to the experience of animals the way some people connect to ceramics or wear patterns on floorboards, and so, perhaps uniquely for me, visiting Old Tom enriched the experience immensely. 

Inside the center is a great deal of information on the activities of the PNSY from the distant to the recent past, presided over by a group of enthusiastic volunteers, including World War II veteran Bill Tebo. Many of us spent some extra time with the model and memorial to the Thresher submarine, lost in 1963 with all hands, many with ties to Newburyport.

The U.S.S Thresher, seen here at her launch in 1960, was lost on April 10, 1963. The entire crew of 129 died and are memorialized at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Heritage Center. 

The afternoon began standing outside the Portsmouth Atheneum, discussing all the ways that Newburyport and Portsmouth had inspired each other. Once inside, we ogled the “pinky sky” in their famous Blunt painting, Piscataqua River from Noble's Wharf and discussed the future (and the past) of books and newspapers in the company of their gracious director, Tom Hardiman.

This painting by John Blunt hangs in the Portsmouth Athenaeum

Heading inside

Learning about the 2nd & 3rd floor library from Director Tom Hardiman.

We closed our day wandering through the enchanting gardens and exploring the jaw-dropping décor (and a staff favorite, the 1869 composting toilet) at the Moffatt-Ladd House. 

Inside Portsmouth’s 1763 Moffatt-Ladd house.

The height of modern convenience - a Moule's Patented Earth Commode, c. 1869, fascinated our group during the house tour.

I rolled back into town late in the afternoon, grinning from ear to ear. My history cup was full. I can’t wait to find more proof that Newbury(port) is the center of the universe as we plan next year’s sojourn!

The annual Summer Sojourn is a members-only event. Join us for this and many other adventures all year-round by becoming a member.

Newburyport's Albert Pike Toppled, Part Three

To read previous articles about Albert Pike, click here and here. 
Warning: this article contains racist language.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking downtown when an old acquaintance fell into step with me. We walked along together, chatting about this and that. She asked me what I was working on, and that, gentle readers, is often a mistake unless you want a ten-minute explosion of information about whatever long-gone Newburyporter I’m obsessed with at the moment. Generally, there is a pause and a smile, and my listener says something like, “well, you clearly love your work”. This time, I went into a tear about Albert Pike, stopping only when my companion’s eyes began to widen, and she looked visibly worried. I paused. “Well, that’s not very nice, is it,” she said, and turned a corner. 

Friends, Albert Pike is not very nice. In fact, one of my first interactions with him was this quote from a letter published in 1875, when he was the Grand Commander of the Supreme Council A.A.S.R (Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite) Southern Jurisdiction (Freemasons). 

“I took my obligations to white men, not to Negroes. When I have to accept Negroes as brothers or leave Masonry, I shall leave it…I am interested to keep the Ancient and Accepted Rite uncontaminated, in our country at least, by the leprosy of Negro association.”

Albert Pike in Masonic regalia, c. 1880, private collection.

Albert Pike, the only Confederate general whose statue stood in Washington D.C., was so honored because of his Masonic leadership, though his racist views clearly extended to Masonic governance. At least, this leadership was the argument made when the Masons began planning his monument shortly after Pike’s death in 1891. And he was a very important leader – the highest-ranking Mason in the world at the time of his death.  

Lest one argue that it is unfair to judge a man of the past by today’s standards, let me assure you that this memorial to a deeply racist man accused of war atrocities, treason, and a host of other crimes was objectionable from the outset. As the sculptor, Gaetano Trentanove, worked on the statue, Pike supporters looked for sympathetic Congressmen to offer public land on which it would be placed. Numerous branches of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal organization of Union veterans, petitioned Congress to reject the statue, submitting their case in the most strident terms. As one Connecticut GAR leader wrote:

“We desire to express our solemn and unqualified disapproval of said bill as pregnant with evil for the future welfare of our beloved country, and dangerous in its tendencies as a gross perversion of history (when northern statesman advocating its passage, eulogize said Pike as “a distinguished citizen and a brave soldier” instead of a traitor to his country and a convicted coward in battle). Further, we consider the bill an insult to the memory, not alone of those brave boys in blue who at Pea Ridge were murdered and mutilated by his orders but equally so to every patriot who gave his life for liberty and a source of deep and lasting regret and humiliation to every loyal citizen.” 

Newburyport's GAR Post 49 does not seem to have formally protested the installation of the memorial statue of Albert Pike, though chapters across the country testified against it.

Despite these objections, public lands were given for the memorial on April 9, 1898 with the agreement that Albert Pike would be portrayed as a citizen and not a soldier. The reconstruction of Albert Pike’s legacy had begun. Or, rather, it was enshrined in 11 feet of bronze on our national land. In his 1901 acceptance speech on behalf of the American people, President of the District Commission H. B. F. McFarland praised Pike as a “victor in the honorable rivalries of peace”. In fact, so thoroughly had Pike’s legacy been twisted to suit the times, McFarland set him up as a noble foil to the war memorials throughout the city. “It is well that you thus add to the comparatively small number of statues in the city of Washington that honor the victories of peace rather than of war.”

Back home in Newburyport and Byfield, as the years rolled by, Albert Pike became a bit of a local hero, his Confederate past described as unfortunate at worst, heroic at best. In 1943, George W. Adams, then the oldest living alumnus of Governor Dummer Academy, swelled with pride when he wrote of Pike, “perhaps the most distinguished and honored son of this (Byfield) parish…” As for his Confederate service, Adams wrote that he “naturally and properly went with his state”. And his firmly entrenched, well-documented support of slavery? Adams claims a reluctance that Pike's own words prove false. “Never a lover of slavery, his attitude was that of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln whose hand was forced by the fanatical abolitionists.” The enslaved people themselves, including those who fled from his service? “Pike’s own slaves were a few domestic servants who at the close of the war refused to leave him and whose support was a burden.”  

1957 Daily News article was even more effusive. “He had an unbounded physical energy, an avid mind, marked independence and a great determination, all of which he may have inherited from that old major Robert Pike of Salisbury, one of his early ancestors.” The piece ends with this apology. “It is felt by many that Gen. Pike was illegally imposed upon, and he did not deserve much of the opprobrium that was cast upon him. There is nothing to show that his conduct was other than honorable at all times.”

The Albert Pike Memorial at the corner of Indiana Avenue and 3rd St.NW, a decade after its installation in 1901. Library of Congress

Albert Pike, at least the bronze effigy of him, was not destined to rest in peace, however. In 1992, amid weekly protests, Washington D.C. Councilmember Bill Lightfoot introduced legislation to remove the statue, though according to Lightfoot, his efforts “kind of faded away”. D.C. had more pressing issues to attend to at the time. One protest saw Pike in the mask and robe of a Ku Klux Klan member. A Washington Post editorial reprinted his poem Death Brigade, long seen as a love-letter to the secret violence of the Klan, and this straightforward characterization. “Pike was not just another soldier poet. He was a supreme grand commander, chief justice and cofounder of the KKK, according to published histories of the Klan." Though Pike’s leadership in the Klan is disputed, the Post left no doubt as to his statue’s inappropriateness in a place called Judiciary Square, quoting Pike, “with negroes for witnesses and jurors, the administration of justice becomes a blasphemous mockery…"

A protest gathered at the memorial in August, 2017 in the wake of violence in Charlottesville. Photo credit Ted Eytan, DCIst.

As the far right became more visible following the 2016 election, there were protests and counter-protests at the feet of Albert Pike. The mayor and the majority of City Councilors called for its removal. The Freemasons, besieged, offered that they would not oppose the removal of the statue to private property. The Ward 2 Councilor hired a crane, but the statue could not come down without Congressional approval. In 2017 and 2019, Washington D.C.’s Congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced bills to that end, but no action was taken. 

And then, on Juneteenth, 2020, armed with ropes and chains, protesters were done waiting and pulled down Albert Pike themselves.

The toppling of Albert Pike, June 19, 2020. Courtesy images.

Washington D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, who fought for years to remove the Pike statue, has the last word before we pull the curtain on Albert Pike...for now.

"Adding to the dishonor of taking up arms against the United States, Pike dishonored even his Confederate military service. He certainly has no claim to be memorialized in the nation's capital. Even those who do not want Confederate statues removed would have to justify awarding Pike any honor, considering his history.." 

Newburyport's Albert Pike Toppled, Part Two

To read more about Albert Pike’s early life in Newburyport, click here. 

It’s almost too easy. Albert Pike, former Newburyport school teacher, enslaver, racist, secessionist, is not a complicated research subject. My feelings about him are equally uncomplicated. At every turn, when he had a chance to express his support of slavery, spew racist hatred, or feed his baser appetites, he did so publicly, and with gusto. The frightening thing about Albert Pike, to me, is how many people excused away the ugliness that came from his own mouth, and his pen.

In 1891, as Pike lay dying in Washington, D.C., the Newburyport Daily News called him “a venerable author and statesman”. Later contributors to the Daily News would describe him as a kindly enslaver (check that with the people who ran away from bondage in his Arkansas home), and a lukewarm secessionist who only joined the Confederacy to protect his property.

“HEY”, I find myself yelling at my computer screen. “This guy LITERALLY WROTE THE CONFEDERATE WAR SONG.” That’s right. Albert Pike wrote the lyrics to Dixie. Specifically, he wrote these stirring lines:

Southrons, hear your country call you! 

Up, lest worse than death befall you!  

To arms! To arms! To arms, in Dixie!

Apparently, the preservation of the Union and the eventual end of slavery was…worse than death. Not very ambiguous.

And, lest you think this version of the popular minstrel song fell into obscurity after the war, it was Albert Pike’s lyrics that became a hit once again 100 years later when Tennessee Ernie Ford recorded Dixie for Capitol Records in 1961. Oh, and also in 1961, Albert Pike was reimagined as the “Reluctant General” for a children’s book. 

Let’s just say, Albert Pike could have written the best-selling pamphlet, “Why I Love Slavery and the Confederacy and the KKK”, and thousands of people would still say, essentially, “there’s no way to know what he was REALLY like.” But I digress. Back to the narrative.

On November 22, 1861, former Byfield resident and Newburyport schoolteacher Albert Pike joined the Confederate Army as a brigadier general. He had already been working hard for the Confederate government, however, as his previous experience with Native American legal issues had resulted in his role as Confederate Commissioner to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, who had been promised their own free state at the successful end of the war. They had also been promised that they would only be called on to fight in the defense of Indian Territory. And so, after much negotiation – the Cherokee in particular were understandably skeptical about the arrangement – Pike was placed in charge of training three regiments of cavalry. He led two of these regiments into the disastrous Battle of Pea Ridge on March 7, 1862 near Fayetteville, Arkansas, a violation of the defense-only agreement in their treaty, which, to his credit, he protested. Once on the battlefield, well, I’ll let an eyewitness take it from here.

“On the morning of the 7th of March I was on the battlefield of Pea Ridge. While my command was engaging the enemy near Leetown, I saw in the rebel army a large number of Indians, estimated by me at one thousand. After the battle I attended in person to the burial of the dead of my command. Of twenty-five men killed on the field of my regiment, eight were scalped, and the bodies of others were horribly mutilated, being fired into with musket balls and pierced through the body and neck with long knives. These atrocities I believe to have been committed by Indians belonging to the rebel army. "

 - Cyrus Bussey, Colonel, 3rd Iowa Cavalry

This flag, the only known example of a Confederate American Indian regimental flag, is owned by the National Park Service and is associated with one of the regiments at Pea Ridge. 

How involved Albert Pike was with the atrocities committed at Pea Ridge is a matter of considerable debate. Suffice it to say, it made Pike one of the most hated men in the North and a pariah in the Confederacy as well. Later, Pike denied that he had any role in the behavior of the troops under his command, claiming that he was “angry and disgusted” with the whole affair. His hometown newspaper tells a different story entirely. In May, two months after Pea Ridge, and after widespread reporting on the atrocities, the front page of the Newburyport Daily Herald noted that Pike praised his troops for “gallantry”. It does rather upend his case for plausible deniability. 

The Boston Evening Transcript wrote a scathing article about the episode, concluding that “renegades are always loathsome creatures, and it is not to be presumed that a more venomous reptile than Albert Pike ever crawled upon the face of the earth…there is no pit of infamy too deep for him to fill”.

While Pike was being excoriated in the Northern press, his relationship with his fellow Confederates deteriorated as well. Pike was ordered by Gen. Thomas C. Hindman to turn over funds. Pike refused and issued angry missives against his commanding officers before hiding out in the hills of Arkansas. He was charged with stealing money and material and arrested for insubordination and treason. He was released from a Texas prison in 1863, having resigned from his command. Col. Douglas Cooper remarked to President Jefferson Davis that Pike was "either insane or untrue to the South."

Pike rode out the war in Arkansas, eventually becoming an associate justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court as the Confederacy disintegrated. Pike, considered a traitor in the South and a butcher (and also a traitor) in the North, saw his property confiscated and fled first to New York and then to Canada where he petitioned, and received, a pardon from Andrew Johnson in 1866. Upon his return to Arkansas, however, he was charged with treason, though the charges didn’t stick. He fled again, this time to Memphis, Tennessee, and then to Washington, D.C. His wife, Mary Ann, remained in Little Rock, and Pike began a very public affair with the ambitious 19-year-old sculptor Vinnie Ream, forty years his junior.

Albert Pike Klan chapters sprang up in Illinois, Kansas City, Oklahoma, Virginia, and New Jersey in the early 20th century.

But let’s go back to Tennessee. There is ample evidence that Albert Pike was instrumental in forming the Ku Klux Klan, established in 1865 in Tennessee and organized in 1867 under the leadership of former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Though early Klan membership remains largely secret, Pike published editorials essentially arguing for an expansion of the Klan. "If it were in our power, if it could be effected, we would unite every white man in the South, who is opposed to negro suffrage, into one great Order of Southern Brotherhood, with an organization complete, active, vigorous, in which a few should execute the concentrated will of all, and whose very existence should be concealed from all but its members.” Early, laudatory Klan histories published in the early 20th century praised Pike’s role as a high-ranking founding officer, appointed by Forrest himself as the Klan’s “chief judicial officer”, and a “grand dragon”. A cursory newspaper search turns up Albert Pike Klan chapters across the country by the 1920’s. 

In a 1905 history of the Ku Klux Klan, Susan Lawrence Davis, daughter of a founding member, reprints a portrait of Pike that she uses with permission of Pike’s son. It seems unlikely that such permission would have been granted unless the family fully embraced his Klan leadership.

Much has been written about Albert Pike’s Masonic leadership, enough, in fact, that I will give it short shrift here. Pike had been involved in Freemasonry since the 1840’s, becoming Sovereign Grand Commander of the Scottish Rite's Southern Jurisdiction in 1859. He spent much of his later life working on the rituals of the Scottish Rite, publishing Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1871.

Albert Pike died of esophageal cancer on April 2, 1891, at the Scottish Rite Temple in Washington DC. His remains were interred there in 1944, long after the ugly, bloody work of Albert Pike had been sanitized, excused, and explained away by generations of apologists. Still, today, his name is everywhere. North of Langley, Arkansas, the Albert Pike recreation area boasts “picnic tables, toilets, drinking water, and parking”. 

A 1922 traveler on the Albert Pike Highway could stop at the Albert Pike Café. The highway wound through the Ozarks from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Colorado Springs, Co.

A 1922 traveler on the Albert Pike Highway could stop at the Albert Pike Café. The highway wound through the Ozarks from Hot Springs, Arkansas to Colorado Springs, Co.

Readers of the first installment of this series (we love your emails!) found Albert Pike Road, Albert Pike Apartments, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Albert Pike Memorial Temple, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

At the close of Albert Pike’s memorial service, its details printed in the Evening Star, Washington D.C. edition, the following words were read:

“Who will be man’s accuser?” 

“His conscience.”

“Who his defender?” 

“No one.”

“Who will give testimony against him?” 

“No one.”

We beg to differ.

Join us for Part III of Albert Pike Toppled, where we explore the curious transformation of Albert Pike from Confederate traitor to peace-loving hero and revered son of Newburyport (and Byfield).  

The Fall of Newburyport's Confederate Albert Pike: Part One

a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

On June 19th, 2020, a group of demonstrators in Washington D.C. marked Juneteenth, a commemoration of the end of slavery in America, by tearing down the only statue of a Confederate general ever erected in the nation’s capital. George Floyd had been killed three weeks before, sparking protests around the nation and across the world. And so, drenching General Albert Pike, all 11 bronze feet of him, with lighter fluid, they set him ablaze. District police watched the crowd from a distance, intervening only to extinguish the flames. An irate President Donald Trump tweeted, “the DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our Country!” The protesters read the tweet into a megaphone and cheered as the spray-painted remains of Newburyport’s own Albert Pike smoldered in pieces on the ground.

Albert Pike’s Washington, D.C. statue was pulled down by protesters on Juneteenth, 2020. Credit: Sky News

There is a reason this is a blog and not the lead story in this newsletter. I cannot, nor would I wish to be, a dispassionate observer in the story of this hate-fueled man. But as much as I may wish otherwise, he was once an integral part of this community and my distant cousin. And so, Albert Pike, Confederate general, accused murderer and thief, author of the Confederate battle lyrics for “Dixie”, and founding member of the Ku Klux Klan, serves as a cautionary tale. He is a reminder that right here in William Lloyd Garrison’s backyard, Newburyport also bred, fed, and funded enslavers and human traffickers.

Albert Pike, c. 1865. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

Albert Pike was born in Boston in 1809, the son of Benjamin Pike, a shoemaker, and Sarah (Andrews) Pike, both born and raised, as were generations before them, in Newbury(port). He was descended from dozens of Newbury's English settler families - the Coffins, Littles, Moodys, and yes, the Poores. The family moved back home from Boston when Albert was four, and after attending Newburyport schools, he tested for Harvard at age 14 and passed. This is one of the many moments in Pike’s life that was re-written later by his many admirers. A 1957 article in the Newburyport Daily News said he “entered Harvard but did not complete his course”, while a 1938 article in the News claimed that Pike was “graduated at Harvard as one of the famous class of 1829”.

Nonsense. Pike did not go to Harvard because he could not afford the tuition, which is nothing shameful, but seemed to have stoked some resentment that eventually hastened his departure from New England, and his sense that dark forces were aligned against him.

At 15, Pike became a schoolteacher, first in Gloucester and Rockport and then, in 1826, he returned to Newburyport where he decided to give himself the equivalent of a Harvard education while teaching school in Newburyport and join his class at Harvard as a junior in the fall of 1827. This plan also failed, as Harvard was not interested in admitting a self-taught Albert Pike who would pay for only the last two years of his education. And so, Albert Pike angrily abandoned Harvard and became a teacher, then principal, at the Newburyport Grammar School. He was removed by the trustees in the fall of 1828 for “unbecoming conduct” and went to Fairhaven to teach for a term.

Back in Newburyport in 1829, the year when he did not graduate from Harvard, he had a new venture. “In the course of a month I wish to open a private School in this town—if a sufficient number of Scholars be obtained before that time to warrant the undertaking—for instruction in the studies commonly taught in High Schools and Academies, the price of tuition will be five dollars per term.” 

From the Newburyport Herald, August 28, 1829.

Albert Pike taught on Pleasant Street, on Green Street, boys and girls, day and night. He learned Spanish, likely from Senor Juan de Escobar, who had a school just a few doors down on Pleasant Street. During the day he helped his father mend shoes and wrote romantic poetry. 

The “hall” where Albert Pike offered his school was the Masonic Hall on Green Street (not the present building), which foreshadowed his later leadership in the Freemasons.

Two years later, dissatisfied with the life of a private tutor, Pike decided to seek his fortune out west, travelling first to Nashville and then on to Missouri and New Mexico before settling in Arkansas where he wrote for, and then purchased the local newspaper, taught school, married an heiress, and set himself up as a self-taught lawyer. 

In 1833, before setting up his law practice, Albert Pike offered translation services in Arkansas.

He was a very successful lawyer, despite his lack of college education, and represented several Native American plaintiffs in suits against the government. And, as soon as he had the means to do so, he purchased several enslaved people, one of whom, 22-year-old Rebecca, recently transported from Alabama, ran away in 1840.

Despite his advocacy for Native Americans, Pike was an early adopter of the unique brand of nativist, racist, anti-Catholic rhetoric that was the Know Nothing Party. He introduced the party to Arkansas, attended the national party convention in 1856, and walked out when they failed to be sufficiently strident in their support of slavery.

In 1858, as the momentum that would take the nation into war was building, Pike was one of twelve men to sign and circulate a demand to expel all free Black people from Arkansas, saying that "evil is the existence among us of a class of free colored persons". Notwithstanding, the following year, he finally got his Harvard degree for his poetry, receiving an honorary Master of Arts.

And then, on May 6 1861, Newburyport’s Albert Pike offered his allegiance and his services to the Secession Convention of Arkansas, offering his knowledge of Native American customs and language as his most valuable skill.

And this is how, that November, Pike joined the Confederate States Army as a brigadier-general, responsible for three cavalry regiments of Native Americans who had been promised their own free state if the Confederacy was victorious.

Stay tuned for Part Two of this story, as Albert Pike is accused of allowing atrocities, stealing money, abandoning his wife, and helping to spread the venomous message of the Ku Klux Klan.

Come stand with us in Brown Square on Sunday and read the words that Frederick Douglass penned in 1852 about the ways that our nation had not lived up to its ideals. And know that as Douglass was speaking those words, Albert Pike, who had taught school across the street, listed six people, one man, one woman, two teenagers, and two children, on his "slave schedule".

1850 U.S. Federal Census, Slave Schedule. City of Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas. Albert Pike household.

True Tour Confessions: Sleeping on the Job

...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

In 1998, I got married, and the trajectory of my life changed. Of course, the marriage itself had a lot to do with that, and the two children that followed, but a special wedding gift had an outsized impact. You see, friends and former dorm-mates from Butterfield at UMass gave me a membership to Historic New England (then SPNEA). My husband, Adam and I were history graduate students. Though we married in Newburyport, we went quickly back to Amherst. I wondered when on earth I would find a minute to go on a house tour. 

Hanging out the Butterfield window at UMass with my friend Kathleen in those carefree Amherst days.

The membership was a thoughtful gift, though. I was in love with history, dipping my toes into “public history,” UMass’s certificate program for practitioners. Still, I thought I would write and teach, not work in museums. Up to that point in my life, the transformational experiences I had in historic spaces had been disconnected from the mechanics of historic sites. I had failed to see all the ways that I had been guided through those experiences, whether by a human or printed guide (oh, the days of wandering about with a book in my hand), or by the scaffolding of signage, landscape wayfinding and text panels. I think, like so many must, that a historic place exudes some sort of special magic, and I was drawn to that. Until I worked in museums, I failed to understand what it takes to bring these places to life. 

Yours truly with a rare moment of quiet with newborn Jed in 1999. Do I look tired? I certainly was.

At any rate, my son was born in 1999, and for all the confidence I had that women can do anything, (which I still believe to be true), it was an exhausting and humbling experience. Jed was an intense baby – wanting to be held, then put down, then held again, squirming and always on the move. I was still in graduate school and, for a brief time, the acting co-director of two dormitories with 700 residents. It was a whole lot, and I made it through in part because I had a committed co-parent, though we both struggled. I took an additional year to complete my graduate studies, declined my offers for PhD programs, and in the spring of 2000, while Adam remained in Amherst, I moved back home to West Newbury, to the warm lap of patience and help that was my mom and Aunt Emily. And for the first time in years, I slept. Oh, boy did I sleep. 

My first view of the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm was down this bucolic lane, widened somewhat since then. 

When I finally pulled myself together a bit, I decided to put my wedding gift to use, though it had expired a year earlier. I called the nearest Historic New England site. I was a newly-minted history grad, I said. Did they need any help? I offered to live at a property, clean the house, anything. It just had to be flexible as I had a baby at home. I had no idea how it all worked. Maggie, the manager of the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm at the time, asked me to come in. I remember driving up Little’s Lane to meet her and Tracy, the regional manager. It was, and is, breathtaking.

While I worked, Aunt Emily tried to convince toddler Jed to put his pants on.

I was hired as a seasonal lead guide, and handed a pile of materials, including a tour outline and a heap of background information. I had never given a tour of anything in my life. Though I had worked at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, we were more like guards than guides, always able to answer questions but mostly trying to make sure nobody spat their gum off the Golden Gallery at the top of the dome. I met other tour guides from around New England, had a couple of training sessions, and that was that. I was now responsible for telling the story of a National Historic Landmark – accountable to hundreds of people who had lived their lives in that place, and especially beholden to the family that had given the property to be preserved in perpetuity.  

A rare glimpse of an SPL tour in action.

It was nerve-wracking trying to quickly get to a place where I could lead a group through nearly four centuries of history in 50 minutes, but with practice, I learned how to move smoothly through the house, using visual cues, objects, even sounds, to connect with visitors. Most importantly, I learned how to say that I did not know the answer, but I would find out.

At that time, I was the only tour guide on most days, entirely alone on weekends. I opened the door on the hour, welcomed whoever was there, locked it behind me, spent 50 minutes walking through the house, returned to the front door, said goodbye, and took the next group in on the hour. Some days there were no tours and I cleaned and puttered and read my packets of information. I had not been alone in years, and I was still just so exhausted.

One summer day, with no visitors and thunderstorms blowing through, I sat on the floor of the brick porch where tours began and fell into a deep sleep. I was awakened by the sound of visitors outside, and I realized that I had five minutes to pull myself together before the next tour began. I was about to be spotted, slumped over and disheveled, through the porch window. I army-crawled into the house, splashed some water on my face, took a deep breath, and threw open the door. 

“Welcome to the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm! What brings you here today?...”

I remember that day so clearly – my thoughts still gummy from sleep, the porch full of happy, chatty people, descendants of the Little family, excited to see their distant cousins’ house. I remember the surly teenager who had no interest in being there, and who therefore became my inspiration to give the best tour ever, the rain outside the wavy windows, the woman who asked, with no prompting, how old the baby was, and gave me such a smile...

On my last day at the Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm, I took this picture of the porch where I had fallen asleep waiting for visitors two decades before.

As my career unfolded, I moved into increasingly managerial and administrative positions, and I rarely lead tours these days. Still, when I can throw the doors open to a group of expectant faces, talk with them about some essential part of the human experience, represent my community in the most inclusive and nuanced way I am able while still keeping everyone engaged, I am brought back to those early days alone at the farm.

Tour guides serve as a conduit between the living and the dead, the present and the past. We help people place themselves in time and space. It is honorable, important work. 

How to Photograph a Garden

... a guest blog by Bob Watts, MOON Board member

I was my Mother’s first born…. born in early June when summer was approaching full swing. She always remarked how much she loved her red rose bush, climbing up the screened-in porch. The beautiful fragrance always reminded her of my first days. We have this one photograph and I treasure it…. made 60 years ago in New City, NY (a hamlet of Clarkstown, Rockland County).

I’ve been asked to share my best tricks for how to photograph a garden. You can use your camera phones or digital cameras - both can make for beautiful images.

Start with a general view - the entrance, a gate, a path. Think about the view the gardener hoped you would first see. This is an inviting garden gate from the 2022 Garden Tour with the roses at peak bloom!

Next you may be offered a full, sweeping view of the garden - this might be a nice horizontal view. Look for something of interest (flowers) to fill the bottom half of the image. This is where a wide angle setting on your lens choice could work well. Phones have a wonderful shooting mode called “Panorama”. Make it with your phone in vertical position and it’s not necessary to create it to be a full 180°, just swoop enough to get the full expanse of the garden.

Look for where the gardener means for you to spend some time. We at the Museum know that Margaret Cushing would sit and gaze upon her garden from the "summer house," which is still in place. This view should fill your frame and remember that vertical can work well, all dependent on the subject. (Filling the frame is a good general tip on almost all images.)

Next you can explore views from this spot.

Take a look at this bird bath. A straight-on image works but I prefer the one where I stood on my toes to look down from above. It gives a better view of the water plants and their beauty.

There will be the ever-changing palette of the various plants and flowers. Some tips:

• Get low to be at the level of the bloom

• Try a zoom/telephoto setting - you might need to step back (remember “fill the frame”)

• If you can control the lens opening, use a wider open aperture so that your depth of field is low and flowers in the background go out of focus. On your phone, you can get this effect in the “Portrait” setting.

• Get above and in tight to fill the frame

I love to look for special objects in the garden. Mirror balls or gazing balls go back to 13th century Venice and were used in royal gardens throughout Europe. I love the fun of them and this became a favorite “selfie” image with my daughters.

Just remember…. you are creating a historical record for the generations to come. It is a lovely gift to the future. Here is a favorite from the 2022 Garden Tour - the gardener and his view of his creation.

Come for a garden walk with me….

Cheers,

Bob Watts

Let's Call It October

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

For the past nine years, on the last weekend in April, I belong to the Newburyport Literary Festival, body and soul. Ghlee Woodworth and I were brought onto the steering committee for this event in 2014, after local history was spotlighted and we were identified as two purveyors of such heady material. Also, between Ghlee’s boundless energy and my passable tech skills, we make a good team.

Ghlee and I, local historians and Lit Fest buddies at Newburyport City Hall.

And so, after months of meeting, spreadsheeting, cajoling, arranging, and preparing, on the Literary Festival weekend, with a limited degree of success, I run a projector at City Hall, or a Zoom webinar in my guest bedroom. I try to remember to hydrate, to speak slowly, to pronounce names correctly. And, blessed beyond measure, I am immersed in the world of writers and readers. We float through the rare air of downtown Newburyport, thinking big thoughts and seeing everything anew. At least, that is my experience.

I am brought to tears every year at least twice – in the best way. And I am given a gift – some idea or turn of phrase or interaction that remains with me. This year, our first year back together in person since the beginning of the pandemic, the first gift came quickly. It was Friday night, and we were at the opening event at the Firehouse. Our own Andre Dubus was on stage talking with his friend Peter Orner. Orner read a short story from his new book, a memory of his mother at the sink washing dishes as Nixon takes off in a helicopter.

“I don’t know what month of 1974 Nixon called it quits. I could check. It’s exhausting being able to check anything and everything. Let’s say it was spring, late spring, when Nixon resigned.”

I instinctively bristled a bit. “Let’s say…” is not a way to go about writing about something that really happened, says the historian in me. Nixon resigned in August, 1974. But, of course, that was not the point. 

Peter Orner (above) and Andre Dubus opened the Newburyport Literary Festival this year; Peter spoke about his new book, "Still No Word From You."

Memory is slippery and subject to change as we remember the last time we remembered, an endless loop that, without a certain amount of anchorage, can spin off in all kinds of directions. But an essential element of memory is its changeability – its willingness to be informed by later experiences, to adapt to new information. Of course I want to know a true thing, but the true thing may be that the day Peter Orner watched his mother at the sink, it FELT like late spring.

And so, I did a little experiment with a memory of my own.

Let’s call it October. I am sitting at the kitchen table with my great-aunt Emily and my grandmother, who is in a wheelchair, and their brother, George, who is talking in gasping grunts about going to the hospital to have shrapnel removed. I ask Aunt Emily what that looks like. It’s terrible, she says. Like bits of metal and machine parts and things, always working themselves out of his legs. She says she once saw them remove a spring, part of a hand grenade that blew up behind him. He is missing a finger and most of one foot. He has a glass eye, but he has taken it out, and the hollow socket is red. His hair is shaggy, longer than any of his brothers, and he likes to look at me with his one milky eye, take off his cap, and thunk thunk on the metal plate on the back of his head with his knuckles. “Guam”, he says. He points to his eye socket. “Okinawa”. I say something and he cups his hand around his ear. “What?”, he shouts, then points to his deaf ear. “Midway,” he says, and laughs, his toothless mouth another socket in his wide, grey face. He is shifting his considerable weight in his chair, the sturdiest chair in the house, and over the years, his large, flat thumb has rubbed the end of the chair arm until a spoon has formed. He drinks, though there is no alcohol allowed in the Poore house, so he arrives drunk from his apartment in Newburyport. He dozes off, and he smells of mildew and cigarettes and liquor. I am scared of Uncle George, and I feel sorry for him, and I leave the room as soon as I can.

George Allen Poore’s military hospital record validates my memory of him.

Diagnosis: Wound(s), penetrating (point of entrance only: includes incised, puncture or stab wound) with nerve or artery involvement;
Location: Eyeball, generally;
Location: Metacarpal bones, generally;
Causative Agent: Artillery Shell, Fragments, Afoot or unspecified;
Diagnosis: Fracture, compound;
Diagnosis: Wound(s), penetrating (point of entrance only: includes incised, puncture or stab wound)
Type of Injury: Battle casualty
Medical Treatment: Enucleation with implantation; Amputation open, upper extremity, (includes amputation, unqualified, for traumatism)
Disposition: Discharged or Retired for Disability, Line of Duty, Yes

But there was another gift that I was given because of the Newburyport Literary Festival. 

Colleen and Frank Stiriti, whose new book Images of Life, Change & Beauty: Photographs, Poetry & Art - Selections from the works of Fran Dalton was the focus of one of the sessions at the festival, gave me these pictures of Uncle George, found in two envelopes marked “Mr. George Poore” in Fran’s distinctive hand. Uncle George, who I remember with such trepidation, was photographed with a palpable tenderness by Fran Dalton, whose experiences as a trans woman certainly informed her appreciation for outsiders and loners. She had endless empathy for the wounded.  

There are almost no family photos with Uncle George in them after 1970. To many of us, he had become unlovely. But through Fran’s eye, through Colleen and Frank’s gift, a changed memory.

Let’s call it October, and a wounded veteran is walking his dog down State Street. Soon he will catch a ride to West Newbury to visit his sisters and try to befriend his great-niece…

Familiar Finds from the Museum Archives

a blog by Sierra Gitlin, Administrative Assistant

At the Museum of Old Newbury, we maintain an extensive archive of records and documents pertaining to local government offices, business, clubs, families and individuals. We have a receipt for payment to Moses Kimball who whitewashed the schoolhouse in 1779, ledger books from ships and shipyards spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, transcripts of speeches delivered at the Fortnightly Club, and the City Improvement Society's 1905 survey of our many noteworthy trees, among other gems. Recently, I was asked to find some promotional materials for the Newburyport Chamber of Commerce. They needed images from Newburyport’s past that they could enlarge and use as displays for their upcoming Annual Meeting on May 18. Of course, every time you open a box (or closet, drawer, or cabinet) at the Museum of Old Newbury, there’s bound to be an interesting surprise inside. But I was stunned and delighted by what I found in the gray archival box labeled “Newburyport Business and Industry.”

Cover image of promotional booklet “Climate for Growth”

It was a strange feeling to find the very familiar looking cover of a promotional booklet called “Climate for Growth,” produced in 1978 by the Newburyport Economic Development Commission under Mayor Richard Sullivan.  Although the booklet was published by Newburyport Press the year I was born, the illustrations were immediately recognizable, even though I’d never seen them. “Could it be?” I thought to myself as I looked closer, and carefully flipped to the table of contents. There it was: "Cover and Art Illustrations by Barbara Frake." 

They had been drawn by my own mother, nearly 50 years earlier, when she was a recent graduate of Boston University’s Fine Arts program, living in Newburyport to take advantage of cheap rent and a thriving community of artists and musicians. I was stunned that during my regular workday at the Museum, I had just happened upon my mother’s artwork. I took a picture and immediately texted her to see if she remembered working on that book. “Oh yes,” she said, “I had to draw so many teeny little bricks,” and recalled that she had spent several months on it.

International Light, Inc. at 17 Graf Road.

M.V. Electroplating Corp. at 5 Greenleaf St. in the Industrial Park, featured in “Climate for Growth”

Designed to attract new industry to Newburyport after many years of decline for the port which was no longer among the busiest in the country, the booklet highlighted Newburyport’s economic, demographic, geographic, and historical resources. The then-12 year old Lord Timothy Dexter Industrial Green was featured prominently, as were City Hall, Plum Island Airport, Towle Silversmiths, and local schools and attractions. Some of the drawings’ subjects are unchanged, enduring gems of architecture like the High School atop Mt. Rural. Some will remember that Towle Silver was wrapped from head to toe in ivy back then, but otherwise looks the same. The Industrial Park’s facilities, which by today’s standards appear at best, dated, and at worst, kind of an eyesore, were at the time the height of mid-century modernity, and were deftly captured in painstaking detail by my mother’s pencil, down to the 1970s typefaces of their signs.

Without meaning to suggest, of course, that my mother’s art was anything but an ideal vehicle for showcasing an industrial park, I couldn’t help but wonder why they would hire an illustrator rather than just printing photographs. The answer, of course, which I was slow to realize: photo editing software did not exist yet! So in order to show the buildings looking their best, without power lines, parked cars, or other obstructions, and with tidy plantings, perfect lawns, trees in bloom, etc., an artists’ renderings gave them flexibility they’d otherwise lack to make something ordinary (like a manufacturing facility) look specific and inviting. Similarly, the inside cover of “Climate for Growth” advertises the City’s “Diversified, Tasteful Architecture,” and shows the Dexter Mansion, the Customs House, the Superior Court at Bartlet Mall, plus the Newburyport Lighthouse all grouped together - a photographic impossibility made real through the artist’s imagination.  

Barbara Frake's illustration, left, and the original photos she used, right.

Opportunities for illustrators like my mother, whose skill in architectural renderings and graphic design would soon be made obsolete by the advent of software like CAD and Adobe Photoshop, were still plentiful in the 1970s and early 1980s. I also found a 1981 fold-out business directory produced by the Chamber of Commerce. On its cover, a group of tourists young and old look off in the direction of Merrimac Street from Market Square, with three slightly abstract depictions of the buildings across Water Street in the background. Many will remember the slogan “Newburyport. Love at First Sight,” situated above her illustration as the directory’s headline, a simple, monochrome cover created when “cut and paste” involved an Exacto knife and rubber cement. My mother’s style was casual, friendly, detailed, yet restrained, and she drew from photographs she took and had developed at the drive-up Fotomat in Port Plaza or the Kodak store on Pleasant Street. 

Left: 1981 Chamber of Commerce Business Directory, Right: Reference photo for “Newburyport. Love at First Sight” brochure.

While digital photo editing and desktop publishing software have certainly made creating promotional materials easier and cheaper, human illustrators imbue advertising with homegrown style and personality. My mother says she really enjoyed working on the Climate for Growth project and many others, mostly for banks and other area businesses. The City of Newburyport was her main focus for several years. She still has shoe boxes full of photographs she took to draw from, a time-capsule of downtown street scenes most people wouldn’t have bothered to capture given the expense of buying and developing film. “When computers made it quick and easy to create precise plans and renderings, I stayed with my fine art background and have been drawing and painting commissions of many subjects, hopefully with a human touch that computers haven’t (yet) mastered,” my mother says. 

Pleasant St in the mid-1970s. Photo by Barbara Frake.

While most artists dream of having their work in a museum, having it tucked away and shelved inside an archival box isn’t exactly the fantasy. Still, my mother, who arrived in Newburyport before Urban Renewal, is proud to have helped promote Newburyport and play a small role in its revitalization. While most of her work now involves portraits, horses, landscapes, and an occasional boat, she loves Newburyport as an inspiring treasure-trove of amazing architectural details, and thinks it’s wonderful that ephemera like an events calendar from 1981 are being kept here at the Museum. They are all part of the fabric of the community, and help preserve the stories, people, and places that make us who we are…which is precisely what we at the Museum of Old Newbury are working hard to do.

For the Love of Cars

Guest blog by Kristen Fehlhaber, Assistant Director

This rare, low-number plate with Newburyport roots was recently donated to the Museum of Old Newbury by the Dodge family.

The recent article on Christiana Morgan elicited several interesting responses from readers. Will Rogers of Newburyport wrote to us, remembering his aunt fondly. Thus began a conversation about Christiana and her sisters Elizabeth and Isabella. Will’s mother was Dr. Elizabeth Councilman, a practicing physician in Newburyport from the 1930s-1970s. Her office was in her home at 83 High Street, right across the street from the Museum of Old Newbury. In addition to his mother the physician and his aunt the Jungian analyst, I asked Will about the third sister, thinking she must have led an interesting life as well. This led to a vivid memory of his “Aunt Bay,” an accomplished musician with peculiar car.

Aunt Bay played concert bass and when Will’s high school orchestra performed, she’d drive out from Cambridge to accompany them. The bass poked out of the roof and it was Will’s job to help her bring it in. The car was a tan 1960s Saab 96 with a rag top. It also had an engine that Will remembered as “silly:”  a two-stroke that required the owner to mix oil with gas before filling the tank.  

“That’s it!” said Will. A 1961 Saab Model 96. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

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Filling the tank might become a thing of the past. The first rumble and roar of classic cars out for Sunday drives started here in New England a few weeks ago, but how much longer will we be hearing those engines? Electric cars are becoming more common and a new EPA proposal announced this week would make gas engines increasingly rare. The first car dealership in Newburyport, opened in April 1905 on Liberty Street, actually featured an electric Pope Waverly car. They were largely marketed to women drivers because of the ease of operations (no gas or steam engine to mess with).

A 1905 electric car from the Pope Motor Car Company catalog. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.  

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A recent visitor to the Museum shared some stories of his great-grandfather's place in Newburyport’s automobile history. Laurence Paine Dodge (1885-1965) known as “L.P.,” grew up in a mansion at 71 High Street, the youngest child of shoe manufacturer E.P. Dodge. 

Built in 1885, this house left the Dodge family in 1926 and was torn down in the late 1930s.

L.P.’s father died on September 30, 1902 at age 54. Just ten days later, on October 10, the 17-year-old became the owner of Newburyport’s first gas-powered car. It was a 1902 Oldsmobile, the first car produced on an assembly line, sporting a curved dashboard and a tiller instead of a steering wheel. We don’t know if this was a gift to comfort the newly fatherless youth; we do know that L.P. remained passionate about cars and driving for the rest of his life.  

L.P. in his 1902 Oldsmobile. Top speed was 20 mph. Photo courtesy Laurence P. Dodge II.

n 1902, Newburyport wasn’t prepared for gasoline powered automobiles. There was no filling station, so L.P. fueled his car with five-gallon cannisters that he filtered with chamois cloth, both bought from William Dole at the corner of High and Parker Street in Newbury. L.P. didn’t have to tolerate this inconvenience for long; a gas tank was soon installed at his mother’s house on High Street.   

L.P. got his gasoline at Dole’s grocery. The other ads on these pages show that the horse-drawn era was still going strong. 1901-02 Newburyport City Directory. 

L.P. got a two-digit plate for this car when license plates became required in 1903. At some point, he lost the rights to the number due to a paperwork issue. However, in 1932, he finagled a way to get plate number 696, which he held onto for the rest of his life.  

Based on the number, this plate comes from 1904. Image courtesy porcelainplates.net

L.P.’s granddaughter, Adelaide, remembers that in the 1950s, L.P. lived at 106 High Street and had a pink Nash Rambler convertible, nicknamed “the Shrimp Boat.” 

A fine sight on High Street! The Nash Rambler featured bright colors and was compact compared to other American cars at the time. Image courtesy of amcrc.com. 

The 696 license plate was even mentioned in L.P.'s obituary! The plate passed down to his daughter Mimi, his granddaughter Anzie, and currently belongs to great-grandson Laurence P. Dodge II of Melrose who said his great-grandfather might not be pleased about his own choice of car. 

Laurence P. Dodge II and his 2019 Honda Fit on Fruit Street, sporting the family license plate. Laurence is holding a cup given to L.P. from the Tuesday Night Club. He donated the cup and a license plate to the Museum of Old Newbury. 

Laurence says that rules have become stricter and plates can only be passed on to immediate family, meaning that he will be the last Dodge to have plate 696. 

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Back to Will Rogers – he reports that he and his brother Henry, both still living in Newburyport, have their parents’ original license plate numbers from when they moved here in the 1930s. Will has 66132 (his father’s), Henry has 66137 (his mother’s). How Will, the younger brother, got the lower number is a story for another time! 

If you covet a low-number plate, you don’t need L.P.’s friends in high places – the allotment of these sought-after numbers is controlled in Massachusetts by an annual lottery . With thanks to Laurence P. Dodge II for his generous help with this story. Some details of L.P.’s early driving career come from an interview with him from the Newburyport Daily News, October 2, 1962. 

Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

When I travel, I have always tended to point myself north. I am the happiest in all the world in the Scottish Highlands. Imagine my surprise when, over a decade ago, I fell completely, head-over-heels in love with New Orleans. Of course, it had something to do with falling head-over-heels in love with James Dorau, whose connections to the city and its music go back decades. James had lived in Austin, Texas for many years, and regaled me with tales of driving his Isuzu Pup through the night with his best friend Patrick to see the sunrise over Lake Pontchartrain. They made an annual pilgrimage to Jazz Fest, the 10-day music extravaganza held on the old Fair Grounds Racecourse. When James asked if I would like to go to Jazz Fest with him in 2012, I knew I had made it into the deepest corners of his heart.

Still, I had no idea what I would find in New Orleans, nor did I care. I would have followed James to the moon. What I found there was a place both familiar and foreign, a place rooted in its complicated history and dealing with the legacy of this past as it looks to the future. New Orleans is ancient, steeped in mysticism, suffering, and ecstasy - all the things that I love about old Europe except you can wear a tank top in February and dance all day. There is an openness and a warmth, literally and figuratively, that gets into your bones and loosens up your muscles and those hips just swing all by themselves. New Orleans is hot yoga for the soul. 

My happy place, following James and a brass band down the street in 2021. Note: open containers are legal in New Orleans. 

That first visit changed me, as the best kinds of travel experiences should. I had been to Charleston and Savannah, so the American South was not foreign to me, but something about New Orleans stuck. Perhaps it’s inherited - my father, another escapee from the frozen North, spent his early college years at Tulane, and has been a trumpet player ever since. When he joined the religious movement that would define my childhood, it was a New Orleans preacher, Sam Fife, who led the group.

Over the past 11 years, with a two-year gap during the pandemic, James and I have returned to New Orleans as often as possible. Sometimes, when airfare suddenly spikes downward, we will go just for the weekend. We eat like kings and dance like loons and laugh and take naps all tipsy and sun-kissed and I wear big earrings and strut everywhere I go.

On the latest trip at the beginning of this month, I had a mission, and a vague sense that I was on the cusp of learning something important about the two most important places in my life – Newbury(port) and New Orleans. The research request for information about Huso and Short mentioned in the Poirier article above had come into the Museum of Old Newbury and I wanted to see the place that connected these two – the streets named after them. 

Five Newburyport friends visited the neighborhood where Charles Huso and Samuel Short lived and worked two centuries ago.

We were staying in the Marigny neighborhood, so we walked (strutted) down Royal to Canal Street and hopped on the St. Charles Avenue Streetcar. There were five of us, all Newburyporters, and a reward at the end – a frosty beer and fried pickles at Cooter Brown’s Tavern. I told my companions the story of Huso and Short, or at least the fragmented version of it that I could recall. We took the streetcar to the bend and hopped out. The levee and the Mississippi River were right in front of us, Short and Huso Streets right behind. I took a moment to imagine what this place must have looked and sounded like when Charles Huso arrived in 1824.

There is no substitute for standing in a place. Short and Huso Streets are parallel to each other, the signs marking a relationship between these two men that continued across time and distance. We have so little information about them, but they were clearly connected through commerce, family, upbringing, and experience. The last remaining evidence of this is two streets signs in a city that seems a world away. 

A quick visit to Huso Street, at the end of the St. Charles Avenue line.

This was my feeling when I stood looking down Huso Street, noting how it ends at the levee and what a perfect spot it would have been to load and unload ships. The area must have been teeming with seafaring folk, mariners and merchants from all over the world. When I came back home, I did a cursory look through the shipping news in the Newburyport papers. It was astonishing and, given what I know about the misery occasioned by the production of cotton, a bit sickening how often Newburyport ships went in and out of New Orleans. Whoever saved Huso from being kidnapped, it is not a stretch to imagine that it could have been a random, but regular occurrence for him to bump into someone from home. In the Newburyport Herald in 1824, the year Charles Huso took up residence in New Orleans, there were dozens of ships coming and going from New Orleans. The city is mentioned almost daily in surviving copies of the newspaper. We were bound up intimately with the ugly commerce of that beautiful place. 

“Arrived, schooner Falcon, Captain Morrison, 20 days from New Orleans, and 16 from the Balize (the outermost point on the mississippi Delta);” Newburyport Herald, April 20, 1824. Digital Archives of the Newburyport Public Library.

I will always be filled with joy when I visit New Orleans, but over the years, I have come to better understand how much suffering is also present in that place. New Orleans is steeped in misery, from slavery to Hurricane Katrina to rampant gun violence and mass incarceration and poverty and racism and the list goes on and on. It is difficult to reconcile this reality – that a place that is so dark can spend its life in constant celebration. I mentioned this to a friend who lives in NOLA. She shrugged. “Life is hard,” she said. “Might as well keep dancing.”  

Mourning the Myth

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

I am an accidental liar (I have confessed this already here).

So are you, probably.

But since I am in a position where I am listened to, generally (unless you are my 19-year-old daughter), and presumed to be telling the truth, this is a painful admission. The revelation of my most recent lie particularly rankled because I should have known better. 

Here’s the scene. Ghlee Woodworth, a ray of hyper-energized sunshine in our lives, dashes into the museum office, covers a mind-blowing array of topics (ground-penetrating radar, a neighbor’s puppy, owls) in exactly three minutes, and then puts down the bowl of a clay pipe on my desk and explodes back out the door. She jogs on the beach. That must be her secret, I think. I struggle to keep up. 

The clay pipe bowl was found by a maintenance worker in Highland Cemetery, likely pushed up and out by the deep freeze. It had legible marking that identified it as a Glasgow pipe from the 19th century, made at the factory of William White. You can see the "W.WH..." in the photo.  

Clay pipes were widely smoked, particularly by working people (yes, men and women), before the mass production of cigarettes in the 20th century. Everything I’ve said so far is true, but here comes the lie. “Pipe stem fragments were the cigarettes butts of their time, as people sharing a pipe would snap off the end and toss it before passing it to the next person.”

This 17th century woman has the decency to keep her germ-riddled pipe to herself.  “A Woman Seated Smoking a Pipe” by Gabriel Metsu, 1629-1667, Manchester City Galleries.

I have no idea where I heard this, but I announced this “fact” with great confidence before crinkling up my forehead and thinking about it. One of the lasting images I remember from my Little House on the Prairie books is how often everyone shared a water dipper in school, at home, on the train with strangers. Why on earth would people think to snap off the end of a pipe? There was no germ theory of disease. I felt an all-too familiar sinking feeling. 

In my feeble effort to verify this “fact”, I stumbled upon a book that is at this very moment insulting and infuriating me. It is called Death by Petticoat: American History Myths Debunked, by Mary Miley Theobald, published under the auspices of Colonial Williamsburg. Let me just say, if I ever run into Mary Miley Theobald in a dark alley, there may be a certain amount of unpleasantness

To set the stage, Ms. Theobald lays blame at the feet of my fellow museum professionals. “It is hard to visit a museum today without encountering these myths.” Surely not at OUR museum!

Not so fast. Here, in order, are myths I believed to be true until I was today years old:

Myth #5: men posed with one hand inside their vest to save money since portrait artists gave a discount if they didn't have to go to the extra work of painting hands.

Makes sense, right? Until you look at all the bajillionaires with their hands in their vests.   

Myth #29: Women used arsenic to lighten their complexion.

Close – it was poisonous lead.

Myth #31: Cooks used spices to disguise the flavor of rotting food.

Well, maybe sometimes, but in general, the people who could afford spices could also afford non-rotting food.

Myth #45: The position of a horse’s leg on an equestrian statue tells how the rider died.

I guess not. You have a 1 out of 3 chance of getting this right when viewing a statue, but there is no consistent evidence of this as an intentional practice.

There were plenty more of the 63 myths contained in this volume that I believed at some point in my career, like the one about how beds were shorter because people slept propped up on pillows. I was disabused of this while working for Historic New England, when Abbot Lowell Cummings, former president of (then) SPNEA, handed me a tape measure and told me to measure a bed at the Coffin House. It was about as long as my bed at home, just appeared shorter because of pillowy coverlets and tall posts. Abbot carried a tape measure for just such an occasion. Most beds were made to fit the needs of the family, he said, and would be longer or shorter as needed, but adult beds are almost always over 6’ long.

As I write this, I remember how it felt to have Abbot, a venerated expert in early New England everything, correct my information in front of a group of people. Honestly, it felt – just fine, and I am a sensitive sort. Abbot had a wonderful way of making people feel like he was so excited to share some new bit of information with them – like it was the most natural thing in the world to believe something that is demonstrably untrue until someone shines a bit more light. For Abbot, knowledge was a gift, not a weapon. 

Abbot Lowell Cummings in the pulpit of another of my favorite places, Rocky Hill Meeting House. Courtesy of Historic New England.

These myths have a purpose, of course. They make sense and are often based on reasonable observations. They seem to offer a bit of code to unlock the secret messages of the past. And they are good stories, often far more interesting than admitting that something is unknown, or qualifying a statement until it becomes an exercise in pedanticism.

Aside from the shade Ms. Theobald cast on museums, I found myself loving this book. I would be happy to lend you a copy. Most of the “myths” she lists are neither wrong nor right. They are just not applicable to large groups of people. Some people probably did sleep propped up on pillows. Some people died young. Some people were shorter “back then”. Mary Miley Theobald did the hard work of saying “well, sometimes, by some people”, which, in my experience is much harder to do than dispensing generalizations. 

But the acknowledgement of the complexity of human experience over time will save the world, I think. Many terrible things have been done by people who believed in eternal, unchangeable “facts” applied to large groups of other people. It is much more difficult to allow for nuance, to acknowledge what an impact race, class, gender, personality, experience, etc. has (and had) on how people live.

Also, in case you were wondering, Venetian blinds were not invented in Venice.

You’re welcome.

Hidden in Plain Sight

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

I did not set out to study women’s history. I did not set out to study history at all. I was an English major, hoping to make it as a writer of…well, that part wasn’t so clear. It wasn’t until that fateful GenEd class at UMass Amherst with Dr. Vincent Ilardi, the Renaissance Optics specialist (his groundbreaking book, Renaissance Vision from Spectacles to Telescopes was surprisingly readable), that I fell deep and hard for history.

Much to Dr. Ilardi’s sorrow, however, his passion for Italian eyewear eluded me. I found myself drawn, as many of us are, to areas of study that connect to our lives. History of the Reformation? Yes, please. I was raised in a Calvinist Protestant world. Crime and Punishment in Victorian England? I read Dickens voraciously. Come on in. I broadened my horizons, took courses with Dr. Yvonne Haddad in Islamic and Middle Eastern history. I went to Imperial Russia, joined the World War, and spent one breathless semester helping Stephen B Oates unpack every prevailing theory about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Oh, those were heady times.

I was not initially drawn to women's history, despite its obvious connection to my experience. It was regularly offered at UMass in the early 1990’s. There was an entire Women’s Studies department. Though a strong-willed young woman myself, committed to being the captain of my own ship, I had bought into the pernicious idea that history was a set, established set of facts, albeit facts that could be relayed in a dynamic way, and if those facts were relayed by men, to men, and from an overwhelmingly male perspective, that must be just because that was the way it happened. Women were not on battlefields (they were). They were not political leaders, or inventors, or great philosophers (again, they were) …you get the point. The saddest element of this early part of my history education is that I did not even notice that, by and large, the lives of women were not represented in my history books and classes, and if they were, they were in the sidebar, or the exception that proved the rule.

Then, one blessed day, I met Dr. Joyce Avrech Berkman. I think her Intro to Women’s History course met a requirement for the major. Joyce (I can get away with this familiarity today because we are old friends) had long, gray hair in a loose braid over her shoulder. She laughed a lot, easily, but the coursework was challenging, and her standards were high. She was a veteran activist by the time we met and had been one of the chief advocates for the founding of the Women’s Studies program at UMass in 1974.

Dr. Joyce Berkman enjoying a Fowle’s lunch on a visit to Newburyport in 2021.

I think it was her description of British voting-rights activist Emily Wilding Davison throwing herself under the galloping hooves of the King’s horse in 1913, the force-feeding of Quaker suffragist Alice Paul, the desperation and courage of the women on hunger strikes and in picket lines. It was the fact that a married woman could be thrown out of her own house by her husband, denied contact with her children, even deprived of her clothing because nothing she had was hers – because she did not exist as a legal person. It was the vitriol heaped on women who spoke out. Our own Newburyport Daily News had this to say in 1915 about the idea that a woman could exist (and vote) as an individual.

“If she votes differently (from her husband), then the family ceases to come in contact with the state as a unit, and we have the individual and not the family as the unit of society, which is one of the cardinal principles of feminism. And so, I contend that the only consistent suffragist is the socialist and the feminist, because they believe the result of women suffrage will be to destroy the family…”

In the rare air of Amherst, I followed the well-trod path from surprise, to outrage, to sorrow, to awareness. And when I got to awareness, I began to see women everywhere in the historical record, where before they – we – had been invisible to me. They did not only appear as passive victims or warriors against male oppression, either. They often made themselves known in subtle ways, their lives revealed in whispers, easily drowned out by the shouting biographies of powerful men. Sometimes they had been shouting too, but nobody had been writing it down. 

When I left academia and the sheltering wing of Joyce Berkman and others like her, I found myself drawn to historic house museums in part because it is so much easier to talk about women in the spaces where most people expect to find them. And still, I remember giving a tour of Coffin House soon after graduate school and realizing afterward that I had told the group that Joshua Coffin was the last resident owner of the house – which was true, but allowed for the erasure of his cousin Lucy, who outlived him by thirty years in the house, but was never its legal owner. In that case, one word changed – last owner became last resident - and a woman’s life was brought back into focus. From that day on, the tours ended not with Joshua’s portrait in the hall, though we spent significant time discussing his remarkable life, but with a tiny, framed picture of Lucy Coffin seated in a straight-back chair in front of what was, in all but name, her house.

I remember once asking a professor why there were no books by or about women in his entire graduate level course on 18th and early 19th century France. SHOW ME THE SOURCES, he shouted. SHOW ME THE SCHOLARSHIP. IT DOESN’T EXIST! We might find it laughable – I hope we would find it laughable today to imagine that there were no women in the French Revolution, no records of their experience, and no women who could write competently about it.

It has come to feel natural for me to meet women in every stage of life, in public and private spaces, even when they were not included in the narratives of the past. Take a well-known male figure in Newburyport history – Tristram Dalton, widely celebrated for his role as Massachusetts’ first Senator (along with Caleb Cushing). His correspondence is voluminous, his portrait easily recognizable to many in this town. His life spanned the early decades of this country, and he experienced many of the same vicissitudes of fate as his peers, ultimately losing his fortune in real estate speculation.

Now let’s try that again. Ruth Hooper Dalton’s life spanned the early decades of this country, and, along with her husband, Tristram Dalton, she experienced many of the same vicissitudes of fate as their peers, ultimately losing their fortune in real estate speculation. Ruth Dalton, of whom no portrait has been found, worked the levers of her own circles of influence and favor, courting the help of Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, and more to ensure that her family did not wind up in abject poverty. Of course, she was also pregnant, nursing, or recently bereaved of a child for most of her adult life. And she managed a busy household that included extended family members, servants, and for a time, enslaved men and women. Her voice is quieter than her husband’s, and the women that worked for her even quieter than hers, but they are there, and they deserve the attention of historians.

Ruth Hooper Dalton spent more time in the Dalton House than did her husband, and certainly more than George Washington or any of the “distinguished men” who visited them both. She is not, however, on the sign.

So now imagine my horror when I recall myself saying to a student who was interested in researching the Black experience in Newburyport, “well, there’s really not much in the way of sources.” Recent research, like Kristen Fehlhaber’s insightful, detailed research into the life of Caroline Cottrell, disputes this idea that this history can’t be done – that there are no sources. I say what Joyce Berkman said to me when frustrated with a research subject that was proving elusive. “Just keep looking”. Those willing to do the hard work of combing through records, reading “against the grain”, often find details of rich and complex lives, hidden in plain sight. Just keep looking.

Neither Underground nor a Railroad

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

This is unfair. Why? I’m going to talk about the subject of an event that is already sold out, with a substantial waitlist, and if I play my cards right, you’ll want to attend even more desperately. Never fear, dear reader. We are concocting a plan to make sure everyone can experience the wonderful Professor Tim Walker and the book that he edited with nine other authors, Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad.

But since this is my blog, I’m going to tell you about how this book changed MY life and encourage you to read it and think about those moments in your own life when some new information transformed your perception of the world. 

Illustrations like this 1893 painting, entitled The Underground Railroad by Charles I. Webber, helped to establish the image of the overland flight to freedom in the American consciousness. Courtesy of Cincinnati Art Museum.

When I was a girl living without a television in the wilderness of northern British Columbia, my reading material consisted of four general subjects: Horses and the Pioneer Girls who loved them, Christian missionaries and the Very Bad Time they generally seemed to be having, post WWI high British fantasy, à la Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and lastly, a potpourri of history books so old that they escaped the censorious gaze of my parents.

An aside: My mother popped over a few days ago and laughed when I read her the above paragraph. “I poured over the Mennonite book catalog,” she said. We were not Mennonites, but close enough that she felt confident in the appropriateness of their mail-order selections. 

Though Mennonite mail-order catalogues no longer arrive at my door, this slim volume made the trip down from Canada and is still on my bookshelf.

I will credit, not so much the Mennonite texts, but the crusty library rejects with my current profession, as among them I found masterpieces on subjects from early New England to Ancient India, and several biographical volumes written by or about the trials endured by enslaved people fleeing to freedom. Of these last works, I recall a well-thumbed volume of Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman, and the U.G.R.R embossed on the green cover of William Still’s The Underground Railroad: A Record, both over a century old by the time they made their way to me. Of course, I did not then grasp the full horror of what these books described, but I read these volumes voraciously, imagining the hounds baying in the woods behind me, following the gleam of a hopeful star. 

William Still’s The Underground Railroad: A Record was published in 1872 and recorded both overland flight and maritime paths to freedom. This volume is from the Smithsonian.

If you had sat me down just five months ago and asked me to describe the Underground Railroad, I would have told you about enslaved people in the Deep South finding ways to escape overland to freedom in Canada with the help of a network of allies. And if you pressed me to explain why Newbury(port) could have been involved with the Underground Railroad, I may have theorized that people were being brought up via New York state maybe? Connecticut? in wagons through Massachusetts to Maine into Canada? This is not without precedent, as I recall my great-aunt Mary Poore telling me about how Richard Plummer would pick people up in his wagon at the Parker River and hide them amongst sacks of grain, en route to Amesbury and, I assumed, another series of wagon rides to Quebec. I also may have (and this is embarrassing), equated the tunnels that run under Newburyport with some form of escape network. The Underground Railroad is, after all, underground, right?

It's not underground. The tunnels under Newburyport were for drainage, storage, and… I’m sure there were plenty of merchants who were not above avoiding customs agents. But…I am going to plant a deeply unpopular flag here and say that the wealthy merchants who owned the big houses in Newburyport were not designing their houses around an intricate network of tunnels for escapees.

It’s not a railroad either, of course, though some, like Frederick Douglass, hopped a train for part of their journey to freedom.

It's boats. It’s ships and dockworkers and ports and cargo and cash and sailors and the sea. You know - all the things we were and are in Newburyport.

“Light dawns on Marblehead,” as my uncle used to say. “Duh,” as my kids still say. But it took a day with Timothy Walker in New Bedford for this all to sink in.

In late September, the New Bedford Whaling Museum hosted a conference around the topic of the Maritime Underground Railroad. I signed up, still not quite getting it.

My childhood Underground Railroad volume spells it out (though I missed it then). “some (were) guided by the North Star alone, penniless, braving the perils of land and sea…occasionally fugitives came in boxes and chests, and not infrequently some were secreted in steamers and vessels, and in some instances journeyed hundreds of miles in skiffs…” 

I was not alone in my limited understanding of how people escaped to freedom. In his presentation at the conference, Dr. Walker noted that the Underground Railroad was primarily conceptualized as a “terrestrial event”, and indeed, the primarily overland routes that enslaved people took to find freedom in the north were the focus of scholarship over the last 120 years. Many of us have seen the famous National Geographic visual indicating the most common routes of the Underground Railroad, and to be fair, it does represent some traffic along the Atlantic coast. But most traffic seems to be coming from Alabama and Mississippi and moving through the Midwest to Canada. But – if a voyage from a Southern port could be made up the Atlantic maritime superhighway in a few days, why are we stuck on this idea of people running through the woods and into wagons, jolting for weeks down country roads and hiding under false floors and under trapdoors?

My friend Kate Clifford Larson said it best in a review of Professor Walker’s book for the journal Civil War Book Review. “Travel by water during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries was the equivalent of quick motor vehicle traffic along today’s superhighways and local road systems. People and commodities were transported most efficiently by small watercraft, larger bay and ocean-going sailing vessels, and steamships rather than overland via terribly limited, unstable, and rutted roads.”

Another perspective shift – most freedom seekers came not from the Deep South, but from within a few miles from a border with a free state. Harriett Tubman was from Maryland, as was Frederick Douglass, whose journey to freedom took less than 24 hours. “It was very, very difficult to escape long distances overland through the hostile territory which was the slaveholding South prior to the Civil War.” According to Dr. Walker, these escapes “almost never happened.”

This thing that I, a well-educated, generally thoughtful human, had assumed was the typical flight to freedom for enslaved people in the 19th century ALMOST NEVER HAPPENED.

There are a variety of reasons for why the narrative of escape has become identified with overland networks – too many, and too interesting to do them justice here. I encourage you to read the book. But let me just say that as the day progressed, the picture I had formed since those days reading musty narratives in Canada was filled in with communities of Black mariners, networks of vessels that could be found with the help of a friendly dockhand, abolitionists who arranged voyages north, and clever captains who waited to report “stowaways” long enough to allow successful escapes. 

This notice in Newburyport’s Essex Journal and Merrimack Packet, published the day after the Declaration of Independence, offers a reward for an enslaved man named Robin and specifically warns that “all masters of vessels & others are hereby forbid harboring or carrying off said Negro, they would avoid the penalty of the law.”

This, for me, is the beauty of history as a practice. New sources arise and light shines onto the past in new ways. I am proud to do this work, and grateful to those who continuously open my eyes and change my perspective. I am now scouring early newspapers and other sources anew, looking for clues that could lead to a new understanding of how Newburyport helped or hindered freedom seekers. I encourage you all to join me as we explore history as an ever-evolving, multi-faceted experience, subject to the limitations of language, fettered by the perspectives of its interpreters, and awaiting the discoveries of the future, devastating and delicious in their turn. 

(Note: after this blog was published, we were generously offered a larger venue for the upcoming Professor Tim Walker talk - seats still available here at as of 2/18/23)

Aunt Mary in the MACRIS

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

When I was a young teenager living in the Poore House with seven other people (and only one bathroom), I often escaped to another Poore house right down the street. In the 1980’s, there were family homes up and down and just off Garden Street in West Newbury. My grandmother’s brother Ray Poore and his wife Jeanette lived at 48 Garden St, just around the corner from my grandmother’s other brother Howard and his wife Mary. Howard and Mary’s daughter Sue and her husband Gordon lived further down Middle Street, and, of course, my grandmother, Charlotte and her sister Emily Poore lived on Poore’s Lane, where I live today, also off Garden Street. Of the six Poore siblings, four lived within half a mile of each other.

My great-aunt Mary (Anderson) Poore, grandmother Charlotte (Poore) Muzrall, great-grandfather Philip Poore, great-aunt Louise (Poore) Muzrall, great-aunt Emily Poore, and great-uncle Howard Poore in 1955. All but Louise lived on the same street.

I remember Uncle Ray as square-jawed and handsome, not especially friendly to children, but a jokester with his siblings. He owned a large field adjacent to the house where we lived with Aunt Emily and my grandmother, and was a frequent visitor. He stomped into the kitchen smelling of wood smoke and burlap and had my taciturn grandmother laughing about something in short order. I’m not sure he ever spoke directly to me. His wife, my great-aunt Jeanette, was a dragon as well, or so I believed when I was a teenager. Her primary form of communication seemed to be a bit of a growl in my direction, so I steered clear.

Aunt Mary and Uncle Howard with their last dog, Elmer.

But Uncle Howard and Aunt Mary Poore…to me, they were all things wise and wonderful. When I escaped the madding crowd on Poore’s Lane, I often found myself at their house, or, more particularly, in their barn. Aunt Mary had long, snow-white hair, tied back and loose in puffs around her weathered face. She was kind, but in an active, even boisterous sort of way, ready with encouragement or an instruction. Uncle Howard was gentle and quieter. The pair of them offered me sanctuary during some terrible times as I tried to adjust to life in the United States after a childhood spent in the Canadian wilderness, but Aunt Mary and I understood something fundamental about each other. Some girls need a horse, and if one cannot be offered, a barn will do. 

Aunt Mary in the 1920's on her horse, Billy.

The barn at 406 Middle Street was an ancient timber-frame beauty. I believe there was still an elderly cow in it when we first arrived from Canada, but my memory on this is fuzzy. Even in the absence of animals, however, it was the perfect comfort to a lost farm girl. The smells were right – the hay still in the loft, the feed sacks stuffed with bailing twine. Dusty harnesses festooned the walls. An old wagon sat in the corner. The hay hook dangled like a funhouse toy from its track along the roofline. I went into the dark and cool of that barn in the summer, sat on an old bale in a whitewashed stall and read books about tough girls who proved everyone wrong, and it made me feel better. And Aunt Mary, trailed by one of a series of yellow and white dogs named Honey, would lure me out with cookies and lemonade and we would shell peas or dead head the flowers in her garden while we talked. She was a devoted nature lover and rehabbed wild birds. I helped her care for crows, cardinals, and a red-tailed hawk. She sent me home with an injured blue jay once– laughing about how much noise we both made.

I wonder what she made of me. One day I told her how much I loved coming to the barn and she invited me to take anything from there that made me happy. I took part of an old harness that reminded me of the draft horses I had left in Canada. It became a sort of talisman, reminding me of another time. As the years passed, it reminded me of Aunt Mary. 

The blue jay just before its release in 1987

The barn is gone now. After Aunt Mary died in 1988, followed by Uncle Howard in 1996, the barn became a liability, a barrier to the sale of the property, and it was taken down in 2003. The house was sold. Mary’s daughter Sue and her husband also died, and their house was sold, and most recently, in 2018, tough old Aunt Jeanette died. Her house and barn were sold, razed, and four huge houses popped up in their place, seemingly overnight, their gleaming facades turned boldly to the street. No more hayfield. No more old trees. I’m still not quite over it. 

I will admit here that I do not think of Aunt Mary as often as I should. Since the collapse of the Artichoke bridge on Middle Street, closing the section between Garden and Hale Streets, I do not ever drive past her house, once a spur to memory. But last week, as I looked up some information about a West Newbury house in MACRIS, there she was.

Let me back up. MACRIS is short for Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System. This database links to the Massachusetts Historical Commission database of historic properties – a goldmine for researchers. Better still, the inventory sheets for individual properties, some filled out fifty years ago, are included with the listing. Aunt Mary, clipboard and inventory form in hand, roamed all over West Newbury in the 70’s and early 80’s recording the built environment. I looked up the house and barn at 409 Middle Street. She had filled out the form for her own house in March, 1973, though she filled out the owner as Howard S. Poore. Some of the other bolder women listed houses under the names of the husbands AND wives – even if only the husband was on the deed – a feminist revolution indeed! Though she did not take ownership of her house, Mary Anderson Poore did sign the sheet with her own name, while many of the other women in town signed their names as “Mrs. John Smith”, etc. So, still her own woman. She first takes issue with the name of her street and lists all possibilities. The street is Middle Road or Middle Street, or Plummer Spring Road, or The South Way, or City Lane. Is it open to the public? Rather cheekily, she answers, “Not really.” To know her is to understand that if you asked, she would show you around the place. Scrupulously honest, she admits that her dating of the house as 1750 is based on an old deed and “some conjecture”, and she lists the condition of the house as “fair”, while most of her peers who inventoried their own homes tended to be a good bit more generous in their assessment. 

The MACRIS form filled out in 1973 by Aunt Mary

Still, the entire form is filled with her singular personality, and with such fondness for her farm that it makes my heart ache. She notes the “secret room on the 1st floor”, the scuttle near the ridgepole of the roof. She measures the center chimney at 9x12 feet in the cellar, on 2 arches. She lists her “Christian door with 2 small lights in it,” accompanied by a pencil sketch, and the “simple, plain, upright boards” of the exterior. The barn and garage are “old”, while the “henpen, outhouse, cornhouse, baler shed, tool shed and manure shed” are newer. The landscape features are “old farm fields, pastures, orchard, white picket fence behind two large horse chestnut trees.”

There is much I could add here, like how the crocuses and daffodils and irises spilled down the hill by the front door, how the watery light came through the wavy glass of the front room windows, and how she opened every trunk in the attic for me. The MACRIS database is not where I expected a visit from Aunt Mary, but I am so grateful to be reminded of her. This morning there were a dozen blue jays, two cardinals, and a crow outside my window. “Birds can live for a very long time,” she said to me thirty-six years ago, when the blue jay she had trusted to me was recovered and released. “Don’t be surprised when they come back.”

The blue jay just before its release in 1987.

This Old House Visits Our Old House

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Kevin O’Connor of This Old House at the Museum of Old Newbury

On February 1, 2022, the producer and director of This Old House called the Museum to ask me some questions that had arisen as the team prepared for work and filming at 44 Oakland Street. That phone call led to a Zoom meeting, then another. The house was a mystery, and the team was curious about what we could find out about the people who lived there. The researchers at the Museum got to work sleuthing out the story behind the house. What we uncovered was a rich and unexpected history of a little-documented life.

Meet Hannah Twomey. I wish I could show you a picture. What I can show you is the first time her name appears on a Newburyport census, in 1880. She is 20 years old, a servant in the household of Caroline Johnson on Federal Street. From the 1900 census we learn that she arrived from Ireland as a 15-year-old. 

Hannah Twomey (also spelled Toomey in several sources) spent most of her life living in the homes of her employers, but on August 7, 1889, just shy of her thirtieth birthday, she bought a piece of land from John Casey on Oakland Street. Sources are somewhat hazy about when the house was built, but we know that a house is there by 1892, with directories listing Byron S. Hatch, silversmith, as a tenant at 44 Oakland Street from 1892-1898, joined by his brother George H. Hatch, clerk, in 1898.

Over the next four decades, the house is home to a variety of family configurations and professions, most connected to the industries that had steadily moved west from downtown and were now stretched along the Merrimack River along the bottom of Oakland Street. From 1902-1925, Fred H. Stover, iron moulder, was listed, joined by Ernest Stover, shoe-cutter from 1904-1925 and Bertha T. Stover, stenographer, in 1912. Another moulder, Thomas Bruce, was in residence from 1927-1935, and from 1937-1939, C. Henry Kelleher, chauffer, lived there with his family. We can assume that other tenants came and went, and that the house was sometimes divided between multiple families, as the designation “rear” is sometimes used.

The 1912 directory lists Hannah Twomey at 20 Fruit Street while across town...

four members of the Stover family are living at Hannah's house at 44 Oakland St.

What we know, is that Hannah Twomey did NOT live at 44 Oakland Street during her lifetime. As we followed her through the directories and other records, we found her living and working as a servant at prestigious addresses on Federal, High, and Fruit Streets, as a cook at the “Old Ladies Home”. When not living in service, she helped her sister Nora’s family with their grocery business, and lived with them on Carter Street.

Hannah Twomey was a challenge to research. Her name was common in both Ireland and Newburyport and she lived where she worked rather than in the house she owned. We looked for a record of her death, but came up empty. Intrepid researcher, assistant director Kristen Fehlhaber, was on the case, and after an exhaustive search, she found the estate of Johanna Twomey being settled in 1937. Board member Jane Wild helped to understand the probate records, which split her estate between two siblings in Ireland and two in Newburyport. Searching Newburyport deaths year by year, we eventually found a Johanna Twomey dying in 1934; a quick walk to Newburyport City Hall and$25 gave us her death certificate. She died on April 5, 1934 at her sister's house after a ten day illness.

Hannah Twomey’s July, 1937 probate notice offered the biggest clue, listing her as both Hannah and Johanna

the Probate led to finding her 1934 death certificate, obtained from city hall

In 1939, five years after her death, 44 Oakland Street was sold to Lawrence & Mary Twomey by Hannah Twomey’s siblings. While it is natural to assume that these families were related, no evidence has been found, and the house was sold at roughly market rate. Lawrence “Larry” Twomey worked at Leary’s Package Store and had owned the Park Lunch restaurant on the corner of Kent and Merrimac Street since 1933 or 1934.

This Old House came to the museum to film in mid-March. I was NOT a natural. I could not remember what I had just said when asked to do a take a second time. My neck and my ears went bright red, and I repeatedly referred to host Kevin O'Connor as Kevin Connell. Despite all this, the entire experience was wonderful. Apparently I was not the first nervous civilian to flub her lines on the show, and everyone was extremely patient, including the homeowner, Melissa, who was a seasoned cast member by this point.

This Old House Cameraman Steve D'Onofrio and I ham it up at the wrap party with my husband James Dorau.

It helped a great deal that the head cameraman and I have mutual friends and that I worked with one of the producers years ago at Historic New England. And, of course, Kim Turner, Newburyport’s Manager of Special Projects at City Hall, and a longtime friend, was on two seasons of the show as a landscape designer. It also helps that the dining room of the Cushing House, whatever nonsense is occurring within it, is stunning from every angle.

This Old House host Kevin O’Conner holds the elusive death certificate of Hannah Twomey while I chat with homeowner Melissa during filming.

This Old House came back a month later to film again, and it was a joyous reunion. I think I finally got the hang of it, though much of that visit wound up on the cutting room floor.

Host Kevin, producer and director Adam, and yours truly on the boardwalk on a cold, damp day in April.

In addition to the national visibility that our appearance on the show affords the Museum of Old Newbury, it was personally deeply gratifying for me. My dad and I watched This Old House together for years, back in the days when you had to block off the time and rush to the tv to see Norm and Bob. Upon hearing this at the wrap party in August, Charlie Silva of Silva Brothers' Construction ran out to his car and gave me a shirt for my dad, which he wears, along with his Silva Bros. hat, while he reads This Old House magazine. And Kevin, who sat through multiple retakes and had to shake my clammy hand over and over again, turned out to be just as funny, happy, and kind as he seems on television.

My dad is sporting his new favorite shirt, courtesy of Charlie Silva.

The most gratifying part of the experience for me, however, was talking about (Jo)Hannah Twomey. In a city long associated with Federal Houses, old English families, and the sea, this plucky woman worked hard to make a life for herself here, invested in real estate at just the right time, and helped to support her family in life and in death, even as she disappeared down the back stairs and into the kitchens of the grand houses of Newburyport’s elite. I will never forget her, and it was my great honor to bring her alive, in a small way, to a national audience. I am eternally grateful to This Old House for the opportunity to do her this service.  

Last night, the Port Tavern was filled with fans of Newburyport history for a live viewing of This Old House.