Historic New England Fall 2019

historic NEw england FALL 2019

FIGHTING FOR FULL RIGHTS Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin A MODERN LENS ON GROPIUS HOUSE Robert Damora’s Mid-Century Photo Shoot ANNUAL REPORT Fiscal Year 2019

FALL 2019 • Vol. 20 • No. 2

historic NEw england From the Chair

People ask: Why does Historic New England preserve, interpret, and share buildings, landscapes, artifacts, and archival materials of New England history? The answer: Because it matters. What came before shapes where we are now, and knowing about the past helps us understand the present. Plus, it’s interesting! The articles in this issue are great examples.

With the approach of the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote, we offer a look at the suffrage movement with a focus on the struggle waged by African American women from New England for gender and racial equality and enfranchisement. Another article is by the son of Robert Damora, the photographer who in the fall of 1947 did a live-in photo shoot at the Gropius family’s home in Lincoln, Massachusetts—one of the most important Modern buildings in America and, arguably, in the world. It has been a great year with Historic New England’s participation in the global centennial celebration of Walter Gropius’s founding of the Bauhaus design school. Damora’s son tells us about his father’s approach to depicting the spirit of the home and its creator and shares images from his picture archive.

Our cover story delves into possible explanations for markings carved into particular areas of colonial-era buildings. We look at the mystery of daisy wheels, doodles, and other designs that some early inhabitants of the region may have used as protective wards against bad luck or malevolent forces. Other articles discuss Historic New England’s efforts to present the broad historical and geographical diversity of our region and how recently installed displays at Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, work to bring that to life for our audiences.

Finally, this issue contains our Fiscal Year 2019 Annual Report. (Spoiler alert: We are doing well, but always need your support.) We are happy to share our successes of the year, and sincerely thank our members and donors for their abundant support.

David A. Martland Chair, Board of Trustees

CONTENTS 01

Stories, Not Stuff

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Merchant Aesthete

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Magic Markings

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Moving Stories

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Through a Modern Lens

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Media Intervention

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Abolition, Suffrage, and the Activism of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

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Walking in the Footsteps of the Past

Collecting a diverse New England

Searching for meaning in symbols found in early colonial buildings Gropius and his photographer

Diplomat made it his mission to procure fine art for America

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Annual Report

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Marketplace Signs

Fiscal Year 2019

The cultural importance of home movies

How to preserve recorded memories

HISTORIC NEW ENGLAND magazine is a benefit of membership. To become a member, visit HistoricNewEngland.org or call 617-994-5910. Comments? Email Info@HistoricNewEngland.org.

Historic New England is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Executive Editor: Diane Viera Editor: Dorothy A. Clark Editorial Review Team: Nancy Carlisle, Senior Curator of Collections; Lorna Condon, Senior Curator of Library and Archives; Sally Zimmerman, Senior Preservation Services Manager Design: Three Bean Press COVER Daisy wheel markings found in colonial-era buildings, clockwise from top left: a wall at Wilbor House (1690) in Little Compton, Rhode Island (courtesy of Little Compton Historical Society); fireplace wall at the Luther Sampson joiner shop (c. 1785), Duxbury, Massachusetts; a farmhouse (and former schoolhouse) in coastal Maine; a barn door (c. 1820) at Sharadin Farmstead, now the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, in Kutztown, Pennsylvania; a wall at Historic New England’s Jackson House (c. 1664) in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; a window trim at the WitmerRoth Home, built c. 1844 in Grabill, Indiana, now located in Sauder Village living history museum in Archbold, Ohio.

Historic New England 141 Cambridge Street Boston MA 02114-2702 617-227-3956

© 2019 Historic New England. Except where noted, all historic photographs and ephemera are from Historic New England’s Library and Archives.

Food service workers posed in front of a car of the Boston and Albany Railroad in Milford, Massachusetts, c. 1910.

STORIES, NOT STUFF

Collecting a Diverse New England

by SARA R. DEAN The recipient of three academic awards, Sara R. Dean holds a master’s in public history from Northeastern University and a bachelor’s in history and social sciences from Eastern Connecticut State University. Besides her work at Historic New England, she has conducted research on African American history for Old South Meeting House and the Bostonian Society. Sara is currently working as department coordinator for Academic Affairs at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

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an objects speak for themselves? If so, what do they tell us about the past and what do they leave unsaid?

I found myself asking those questions in the summer of 2018 when, as Historic New England’s community engagement intern, I conducted research with the organization’s archival materials and collections objects. Historic New England seeks to build relationships with local communities and invites them into the work of the organization through partnerships and collaborations. I discovered that this work is closely tied to Historic New England’s collecting practices and to its mission to engage diverse audiences.

Diversity has always been a fact of life in New England, and today New Englanders from diverse backgrounds are eager to learn about this history. During my time working with the archival material and objects in the collection, I found that some objects offered tantalizing glimpses into their subjects’ lives while others produced HistoricNewEngland.org

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more questions than answers.

I wondered how Historic New England was addressing this challenge in order to present a clearer picture of a diverse New England.

Traditionally, narratives about New England’s history have privileged certain groups—usually wealthy, white, and male—and excluded others. This poses a problem for organizations with older collections, a concern that Historic New England has discussed on its blog (historicnewengland. org/archival-collection-revealsafrican-american-stories). Historic New England possesses a large 2

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collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century material featuring African Americans. Much of this material was acquired as long as a century ago when few collectors were interested in preserving African Americans' stories. As a result, many of the people in these materials are unidentified, and we know little about them. I encountered this problem while flipping through the pages of the Boston African Americana Project binder in Historic New England’s Library and Archives, located at Otis House in Boston. Although the project (a collaboration with the Boston

Athenaeum, the Bostonian Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society) contains a multitude of photographs of African Americans in the Greater Boston area, little information is recorded besides the place and date the photographs were taken. Occasionally, the occupation of a photographed person is listed. Many of the images show African Americans engaged in service or domestic work, which sends a message about the biases that photographers and collectors may have had. These old collections teach us that objects have their limitations, and that we should take care to preserve the stories behind them rather than simply accumulate “stuff.” They also remind us that while people from diverse backgrounds have always been present in New England, they have not always been able to share their stories.

For instance, the c. 1910 photograph (page 1) of the Boston and Albany Railroad food service workers raises a number of questions. It shows five African American men and a white man lined up in front of a rail car in Milford, Massachusetts. Who are these men? How did they come to work on the railroad and what were their career prospects? How did they maintain ties to their families and communities while traveling? We may not be able to answer these questions, but this kind of information is vital to our understanding of everyday life and experience in New England.

At Historic New England, these outdated professional practices have given way to a philosophy that values inclusion and diversity and holds the people and stories behind the objects to be just

page 2 Alyssa “Sina” Chhim, a vendor at Haymarket in Boston, came to the United States from Cambodia when she was two years old. She is featured in Haymarket, the Soul of the City, one of the projects in Historic New England’s Everyone’s History documentary film series. right Fermin De la Cruz Santana, shown with his grandchildren, shared his story in another Everyone’s History project called We Are Haverhill: Changing Faces of Haverhill’s Neighborhoods. He is originally from the Dominican Republic.

as important as the objects themselves. In 2010, Historic New England launched an oral history series now known as Everyone’s History, which it produces in collaboration with community partners. The documentaries and other projects in the series contribute photographs, audio recordings, and video footage to Historic New England’s archives, but the organization’s priority is to collect and share stories.

For example, in 2013, Historic New England, the Haymarket Pushcart Association in Boston, and photographer Justin H. Goodstein developed the Haymarket Project. That endeavor yielded a YouTube documentary, an exhibition, a walking tour, and a book in the Images of America Series titled Haymarket. Over the course of four seasons, vendors at the historic open-air market tell stories about their work and lives in Boston. For many of them, ethnic diversity at Haymarket is a major talking point. Today, Haymarket is a place where people from East and South Asia, Africa, Central America, the Middle East, and elsewhere can meet and interact with one another.

Historic New England produced another project in 2018 called We Are Haverhill: Changing Faces of Haverhill’s Neighborhoods. It

pairs oral history interviews of ten Haverhill, Massachusetts, residents with photographs by Markham Starr. Interviewees reflect on their heritage and upbringing, as well as on the city’s changing demographics. In the twentieth century, Haverhill was home primarily to Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrant families. Today, a prominent Latinx population from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico lives in the city as well. Goodstein’s and Starr’s photographs are beautiful and evocative, but it is through the oral histories that we can hear people’s voices, literally and figuratively.

Many of the interviewees see themselves as part of a diversifying and changing New England. The Everyone's History projects help to support this powerful insight.

Community-focused initiatives like Everyone’s History allow Historic New England to address the subject of diversity on more authentic and collaborative terms.

As we have learned from past collecting practices, objects can

only tell us so much on their own. If they are not collected responsibly, they may not reflect the stories of the people they are supposed to represent. Collecting stories with the same care as objects allows us to more faithfully portray the diversity of life and experience that exists in New England. Work remains to be done with earlier acquisitions and Historic New England is continuing to investigate these. For example, staff members have compiled a resource on African American history with records from historical newspapers, slave trade voyages, Historic New England properties, and more. And although the blog post on African American collections acknowledges the challenges involved in this work, it also shows the progress that staff members are making.

Projects like these allow us to improve upon past efforts while working toward a more productive future. What can Historic New England uncover about the region’s diverse past through its work with diverse communities today?

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by MICHAEL J. EMMONS JR. A doctoral candidate in preservation studies, Michael J. Emmons Jr. is an architectural historian at the Center for Historic Architecture and Design (CHAD) at the University of Delaware. He is the founder of the Early American Graffiti Project.

A daisy wheel on a barn door at the Sharadin Farmstead in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, which is now home to the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University.

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Could symbols found in early New England houses have protective meaning?

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hen you climb the steep stairs to the second level of Historic New England’s Jackson House and enter the shadowy rear sleeping chamber, you might notice (once your eyes adjust to the dim light) on one of the plank wallboards a neatly inscribed symbol formed of overlapping circles with a flower or star in the middle.

One might assume this sketch is just an odd, one-of-a-kind doodle. Yet the presence of such a symbol at this c. 1664 house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is far from unique.

In fact, even among Historic New England’s thirty-seven properties, at least two others feature similar markings, both in Massachusetts: Gedney House in Salem and the Spencer-Peirce-Little farmhouse in Newbury.

Similar markings seem to be just about everywhere once you start looking for them, at least in eighteenth- and early-nineteenthcentury buildings. During fieldwork for my dissertation (which examines all sorts of early American graffiti) over the past seven years, I have encountered dozens of sites featuring these symbols. They are found on walls, doors, fireplace lintels, stairs, attic beams, and even floorboards, and they probably exist in hundreds of early American houses. Apparently created (most of the time) with compasses or carpenters’ dividers, the symbols typically consist of an inscribed outer circle enclosing six pointed “petals” that stretch from the circle's center to its perimeter, thus resembling a flower. This leads many people to call the symbols

“daisy wheels” or six-petaled rosettes, though others have labeled them “hexafoils” or six-lobed stars.

Whatever you call them, they seem charged with meaning, and cloaked in mystery.

Explanations for daisy wheels found in historic houses vary almost as widely as the symbols themselves. Many suggest they are “witch marks”—left not by witches but by people trying to keep them at bay. Others argue that they are carpenters’ sketches, used for laying out the dimensions of buildings during construction. Some people dismiss both theories, claiming that the symbols are nothing more than children’s doodles.

So, what are we to make of these enigmatic markings? Even after years of first-hand observation and historical research, I remain unconvinced that any single explanation provides the answer.

Instead, I see merit—as well as problems—with all of the various explanations and I urge careful consideration of each individual marking based on its unique location and context, the material evidence in the building, and the history of the people who occupied it.

The most common explanation for these symbols is that they are “witch marks” or “hex signs,” protective inscriptions to guard one’s house, and family, against misfortune (and perhaps actual witches). Though somewhat strange to modern sensibilities, the idea of using symbols for protection from supernatural forces held currency in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury New England. Persecutions

for witchcraft were widespread throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and belief in witches and witchcraft reached a fever pitch in New England with the 1690s hysteria and the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Though such fears were dissipating even at the time of those trials, anxieties about malevolent forces, mysterious illnesses, and supernatural afflictions (even fires and lightning strikes were suspect) persisted into the eighteenth century and beyond. In an era when distinctions were blurry between the visible and invisible, the natural and spiritual, and even good and evil, it is not surprising that people sometimes sought to protect themselves through Detail of an image from a c. 1594 leaflet titled Trier Hexentanzplatz (Witches’ Dance Floor), published after the largest witch trials in German history. Note the fireplace mantel with crossed-out markings, which are possibly apotropaic, and the victorious witches at the top of the chimney and flying into the fireplace.

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clockwise, top left This assemblage of daisy wheels features one made on a door at Joseph Churchill House (c. 1662) in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The second example is inscribed in plaster on an upstairs wall at Pettengill Farm (c. 1800) in Freeport, Maine. The last carving is at Historic New England’s Gedney House (1665) in Salem, Massachusetts.

rituals that might be considered superstitious today—reaching beyond traditional prayer and other mainstream religious practices to engage in folk traditions and rites that lent a sense of extra security.

Since houses served as a physical barrier between the public and private spheres, as well as between controlled and uncontrolled spaces, walls were an obvious location for attempted spiritual fortification. Openings of houses were believed to be especially vulnerable entry points; perhaps this is why daisy wheels are often clustered around fireplaces, windows, and doors. Yet, in 1597, King James VI of Scotland (who would become King James I of England) published a book titled Daemonologie—less well known than the Bible he 6

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sponsored—in which he shared a widespread belief that evil spirits would “come and pierce through whatsoever house or church, though all ordinary passages be closed, by whatsoever open[ing] the air may enter in at.” In other words, “ordinary passages” were susceptible, but so were even narrower spaces under doors, cracks between floorboards, and small holes in attics. With such potential threats looming, if one could hedge one’s bets by scratching a symbol on a fireplace lintel or on a floorboard in a child’s room, why not give it a try?

At many sites in England and the United States, daisy wheels have been found in suggestive locations, and sometimes alongside other markings believed to be protective, including fylfots, the evil eye, Marian marks, and intentional candle burn marks. In addition to markings, the related phenomenon of stashing ritual deposits inside walls or under thresholds—including worn shoes, animal skulls, or iron implements—

has been identified after discoveries at many historic houses in New England and elsewhere. Some sites, including a c. 1755 house in the western Massachusetts town of Williamsburg, contain both daisy wheels and ritual deposit items. Collectively, these practices—and the objects enlisted to keep away evil or bad luck—are called “apotropaic,” from a Greek word meaning “to turn away.” Some of these practices (including daisy wheel inscriptions) seem to have lasted well into the nineteenth century—and even to the present, if we consider that people still attempt to protect doorways by hanging horseshoes above them, chalking them with inscriptions during Epiphany, or attaching mezuzahs on doorposts.

Still, there are reasons to remain cautious about interpreting all daisy wheels as apotropaic markings, especially the impulse to proclaim them all “witch marks.” It is frustrating—and perhaps revealing— that no written records have ever been discovered that confirm the use of these symbols for spiritual protection (there are first-hand accounts, however, about people protecting New England houses with horseshoes above doors or fresh bay leaves placed around walls).

The presence of daisy wheels on fireplace lintels and around windows and doors might be explained by the fact that before electrification, it was difficult to see inside dimly lit houses—open doors, windows, and burning fireplaces might provide the best light to carve by. Still, many daisy wheels are not near openings that might be perceived as vulnerable and are often in attics, on floorboards, on exposed beams tucked away in corners, and in the middle of walls.

Further, daisy wheels are sometimes found on buildings constructed in the

Using an antique pair of carpenter’s dividers (a form of a compass), the author creates a daisy wheel on a sheet of plywood.

mid-1800s and later, when witchcraft beliefs had largely faded from popular consciousness. In these later periods, if daisy wheels were charged with any meaning it was probably as just a good-luck charm or house blessing.

If so, the symbol’s persistence as an attractive charm might also help explain its frequent appearance as decoration on many objects, from gravestones to Pennsylvania German barns to furniture to woodworking tools.

The second most common theory about daisy wheels is that they are the work of carpenters who used these complex geometric symbols for measuring and designing during the construction process. This explanation is appealing for several reasons. For one, the architecture of even common buildings incorporates geometric shapes and proportions, and it was essential for master builders to have a command of basic geometry (and the ability to calculate), since they often doubled as the architect/designer of vernacular structures. Some researchers have transposed daisy wheels onto scaled-down, measured drawings of buildings and found intriguing correlations with some of the building’s framing members and other architectural elements.

Builders did sometimes use building parts to sketch makeshift architectural plans or to make calculations. Scratched or chalked drawings laying out windows, stair balusters, and framing plans have been found in many buildings during restoration work, hidden on the backs of wallboards or on the bottoms of stair treads. It is also worth noting that, of all early Americans, builders were the most likely to carry the tools necessary to create circular designs—

like carpenters’ dividers, race knives, or compasses. Lastly, builders also had access to all the building parts where these symbols would eventually be discovered including, for example, elevated posts or beams in attics, which would be difficult for anyone to reach after construction (attics and floorboards also frequently contain carpenters’ marks and lumber tally marks, composed of Roman numerals and slashes that are sometimes mistaken for apotropaic markings).

There are, however, many problems with attributing daisy wheels to housewrights.

Architecture books from the eighteenth century contain much discussion of geometry and design, and even illustrations with many geometric shapes. However, I am not aware of a single book from that century that portrays a daisy wheel or explains how to use one in construction. Structures designed using geometric principles inherently contain universal proportions and measurements; they might correspond, even accidentally, to various points on a daisy wheel, even if one was not used in the design process.

Many daisy wheels were clearly executed long after a building was constructed. They are sometimes scratched into multiple layers of paint, suggesting that decades had passed after construction before the daisy wheel was made. They are also frequently carved on highly visible, finished surfaces that a carpenter would not have marred with a scratched-in symbol. In addition, many daisy wheels are poorly

executed—drawn with incorrect proportions, with an unsteady hand, or with a tool that was not ideal for the creation of a crisp symbol.

If we assume that most carpenters would have had good tools for such a purpose and the dexterity that came along with being a craftsman, as well as the (supposed) need to create an accurate, proportional daisy wheel on which to base a design, how can we explain sloppy, crude, or unfinished daisy wheels?

The answer, probably, is that many daisy wheels are simply doodles, made by young adults or even children. Too often we forget the playfulness of historical actors—that they, too, got bored and liked to create beautiful things. These mesmerizing sketches from centuries ago might be the equivalent of the popular Spirograph drawing toy in the twentieth century.

This would also help explain the wide variation of compass-drawn circular symbols, which sometimes transcended the simple daisy wheel to form elaborate, interlocked designs HistoricNewEngland.org

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A door in the c. 1686 Old Ordinary, in Hingham, Massachusetts, (a close-up of the panel is on the right) features an array of compassdrawn circular symbols including concentric circles, conjoined circles, and four-petal daisy wheels, as well as zig-zags or lightning symbols, and a possible Marian mark scratched on the opposite side. Marian marks often consist of the letters M and double V, and have been associated with the Virgin Mary.

that involved dozens of circles and arcs. Sometimes a single house will feature a dozen different types of circular designs ranging from concentric circles to daisy wheels to clusters of plain circles to wreaths or chains created with a compass, or similar caterpillar-like images. These smatterings of circular designs are sometimes found alongside other sorts of playful graffiti, including carvings of people, buildings, or animals.

Yet, it would be a mistake to dismiss daisy wheels as meaningless doodles, even in the cases when they are most likely doodles. It is my belief that these markings are significant for a variety of reasons, and they add a valuable layer of meaning to many historic sites. They remind us of the real connections people had with the places they occupied, and like other historical graffiti, 8

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they help historians reanimate these structures with the otherwise undocumented actions and worldviews of the people who once built, lived in, or visited them. Beyond just daisy wheels, the frequent circles and circle-based drawings discovered at so many historic houses almost certainly possess a significance beyond mere coincidence.

Whatever their meaning—whether they were intended to ward off misfortune, help construct a building, or provide amusement—these markings are cultural artifacts that deserve additional study and preservation. In the meantime, they will continue to offer allure and mystery at historic sites throughout New England.

Michael Emmons studies all types of historical graffiti and welcomes hearing from readers about their discoveries. Contact him at mjej@udel.edu.

THROUGH A MODERN LENS GROPIUS AND HIS PHOTOGRAPHER

by MATTHEW DAMORA As a child, Matthew Damora frequently assisted his father, Robert, on photographic assignments on location and in the darkroom. Since the death of the elder Damora in 2009, Matt has been restoring his father’s photographs and making them available for publication and exhibition.

It feels like an error in destiny that I never met Walter Gropius. When he died in 1969, I was thirteen years old. While my childhood memories are not as comprehensive or as vivid as those many claim to enjoy, I think I would recall an encounter with Gropius. Where the likeness of a deity might hang, a portrait of Gropius was prominently displayed in my parents’ home. In third grade, a teacher asked my sister the identity of her religion (a politically correct question then). My sister proclaimed, “Architecture.” In our secular home, Gropius was God. All photographs by Robert Damora © Damora Archive, all rights reserved.

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n 1947 my father, architectural photographer Robert Damora, wanted to meet Walter Gropius.

The house that Gropius built in Lincoln, Massachusetts, in 1937 was designed to be as much a statement on residential design as to be a residence for the Gropius family.

A decade later Dad felt the house had yet to be photographed and published in a manner allowing the public to fully appreciate its beauty and livability. Dad contacted Gropius to offer to photograph the house. Gropius accepted. The shoot took a month. Dad moved into the house and lived with the Gropiuses as their guest during late September and early October 1947.

Robert Damora was born in 1912 in New York City into a family steeped in the arts and sciences.

His father was an architect, engineer, and inventor: an Italian aristocrat who immigrated to the United States to escape the social confines of his homeland.

Grandfather married a beautiful young fellow Italian immigrant from the peasant classes. Grandfather’s family in Italy disowned him for his rebellion. He died in the influenza pandemic of 1918, leaving his young wife alone with two small children.

Dad had ingrained artistic talent. He worked from childhood to help support his family; employed in a hardware store he was swiftly tasked with designing the window displays. Seeking more satisfying employment as a teenager, he apprenticed with John Adams Davis, an esteemed photographer in New York City. Dad submitted an essay on the comparative architectural qualities of the Chrysler Building and the newly built Empire State Building to clinch the job. Dad left Davis to become a cameraman for photographically illustrated fiction novellas—essentially cinematographic undertakings executed in stills. He had a fierce independent streak, however, and opened his own studio in 1935 at the age of twenty-three.

Initially, Dad’s studio shot product stills, portraits,

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and fashion. He did a particularly brisk business in promotional shots of the interiors of restaurants and retail stores. This work led him to analyze the manner in which architectural interiors were generally depicted in photography at the time, which he felt was too flat.

He began exploring compositional techniques to bring the illusion of the third dimension into the depiction of three-dimensional spaces in a two-dimensional medium.

He later dubbed this “volumetric photography.”

Dad was always drawn to architecture, perhaps because it was the primary vocation of the father he barely got to know. In 1932 he attended the seminal Modern Architecture: International Exhibition at the recently founded Museum of Modern Art in New York City, the traveling show MoMA organized to introduce the work of such European architects as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and indeed, Walter Gropius and

the ideas of the Bauhaus to the American public. Dad later said that seeing this exhibition “hit me like a ton of bricks!” He soon enrolled in architecture classes at New York University, the first school in the United States to explore modern architecture.

In the five years before the United States entered World War II, he became a leading photographer of architecture in the

northeast, contributing to the era’s foremost architectural periodicals like Architectural Forum, as well as popular shelter magazines such as House & Garden. He devoted this platform to advocating for Modern architecture and continued to develop both compositional approaches and technical photographic advancements to enable the public to fully experience spaces to which they

lacked access. For example, his placement of elements (maybe a piece of furniture, a sculpture, a plant, or a pool of light) that become visual reference marks for spatial depth in a composition is a signature innovation. Dad developed methods of lighting to balance the subdued illumination of the interior scene with the brilliant daylight of the exterior landscape visible through the walls of glass

page 10 An evening shot of the Gropius residence entrance: “If it (the home) is well designed, it is probably living in sympathetic harmony with its surroundings,” Robert Damora said in Commercial Camera Magazine (vol. 4, no. 4, 1952). “The photographic interpretation should demonstrate this fact.” below Dad wrote the following about a shot of a living room built with expansive walls of glass, but I think his thoughts are applicable to this shot of the Gropiuses’ screen porch as well. The use of shadows articulates the path of natural light into the space and joins the table settings in establishing a mood for the time of day. “In good architecture, there is a cause for every effect,” he said in the same issue of Commercial Camera. “For example, the large glass surfaces shown… are there to let light in and, if you will, sight out. The light and the view are the causes; the windows, the result. To do justice to this design the photographer had to show both.”

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Ise Gropius relaxes on the second-floor deck. Dad sought to make buildings alive for the viewers of his photographs. He never forgot that buildings are for humans to inhabit: his photographs not only reflect that but also rejoice in it. He would observe the exterior of a house (and interiors for rooms which become sunlit) for days to see how the sunlight at different times of day would present the house, then wait for the exact moment when house, sun, and clouds fell into harmony.

that were incorporated into many Modern designs. The very narrow latitude in the light sensitivity of photographic film and limited postproduction editing capabilities in the predigital era made this a challenge. Many of the significant architectural photographers working at the height of the midcentury modern period gave Dad credit as the primary innovator who deeply influenced all of their work.

Dad spent the war years in service directly attached to the Navy’s Special Devices Division of the Bureau of Aeronautics under 12

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Admiral Luis de Flores, developing methods of photographic reconnaissance, while also working with famed photographer Edward Steichen, commander of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, on public exhibitions of naval technological advancements.

Dad retreated to the Vermont woods to paint after the war, but soon needed to resume making a living. Entering 1947 he was looking for assignments that would garner widespread notice to help his photographic studio resume the prominence it enjoyed prior

to the war. There was also his lifelong desire to pursue becoming an architect himself, which felt more urgent in the wake of the war. He regarded Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, to be the philosophical leader of the Modern movement, from which the architecture Dad was most passionate about stemmed.

Offering to photograph the Gropiuses' house free of charge seemed a good way to initiate a relationship with him. The offer was unusual: Dad always had a client (typically a magazine) before

undertaking a shoot. This is the only portfolio he shot Asked fifty years later about his approach to on spec in his career. photographing the central stairway, Dad responded: Given Dad’s painstaking approach to photography, “The process of my photography of great each shot at the Gropius house may have taken a day architecture always consists of (1) the need to do justice or more. The Gropiuses helped in staging the house. to the subject at hand, and (2) the equal compulsion to They all got to know each other quite well. Ise, Walter’s reflect the attitudes and objectives of the architect or wife, traded a recipe for triple-boiled German coffee designer involved. for that of Dad’s mother’s southern Italian spaghetti.

“For me, photographing the Gropius house was Dad asked Walter and Ise to appear in some shots. like stepping into my subconscious where the familiar The Gropiuses’ daughter, Ati, and her fiancé, Charles artifacts and images of my well-worn books on Forberg, visited during the shoot and were swiftly Gropius—his early architecture and industrial design, drafted to model in the view of the stairwell. Walter sat the Bauhaus, Harvard—leaped off the pages into for a lengthy portrait session. intense reality. These images became a definite part of My mother, Sirkka, at the time an editor of the photograph; it was impossible to concentrate on architecture at House & Garden and courting Dad (she the stairway alone. later became an architect and Dad’s professional, as “The result, of course, became the duality of two well as a personal, partner) accepted an invitation to forces, past and present, working together to articulate tour the house and meet Gropius. Sitting in the garden the total design.” on a beautiful afternoon with Walter and Dad talking The first U.S. publication of the photographs was in about birds, local nature preserves, and discussing the House & Garden magazine for the January 1949 issue. photography, Mom recalls that Walter spied a squirrel (Gropius had placed them in a couple of European invading his bird feeder. Walter pulled a small rifle publications prior to that.) Katherine Morrow Ford from under his chair. Dad, displaying his urban-born, (a well-known author on Modern architecture) was nature-lover’s sensibilities, said, “Oh, don’t do that!” Walter shot Dad a withering glance and proceeded to summarily dispatch the interloper. A squirrel may be just a rat sporting a pretty tail to a former World War I cavalry officer, but Dad had trouble reconciling Walter’s reflexive action with his preconceived notion of the man he revered.

I have heard that Ise was reputed to be the better shot.

On receiving prints of the finished photographs a couple of weeks after Dad’s departure, Walter wrote to him, “We all were absolutely delighted about your really superb photos” and “It is a beautiful set with extraordinary understanding of space. The great patience you have had in preparing them has indeed been worthwhile.” Ise wrote, “It was a happy time with you and I cherish that photo of myself on the roof deck. It just shows all the happiness I always “First of all, a home is a place where people live, so that some place in the picture there must be evidence of people,” Robert Damora said in Commercial feel in Lincoln.” Walter ordered numerous Camera Magazine (vol. 4, no. 4, 1952). Beyond witnessing signs of daily life, sets of prints over the succeeding twenty the viewer is often drawn to imagine inhabiting a particular spot within the space depicted as in the chair behind the typewriter here: “a place for a person years. The portfolio of eighteen released even though it is not filled,” the photographer added. Walter and Ise Gropius photographs became Gropius’s official shared this home office. presentation of the house.

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In this shot, Dad used models—the Gropiuses’ daughter, Ati, and her soonto-be first husband Charles Forberg—to articulate the path of movement through a space. He partially obscures the models in adjacent rooms to enhance that expression without blocking your view of the architecture or distracting focus from it. The slight tilt of the camera is an almost film noir technique Dad would occasionally employ to give the illusion of looking up at or into a building.

the architectural editor of House & Garden at the time. Dad had worked with her before and Mom was Ford's associate editor and “Girl Friday.” Gropius and Marcel Breuer had designed a house for Ford and her husband, James, built in 1939 around the corner from the Gropius house. There was no definitive arrangement for an article prior to the shoot, but considering that everyone knew each other, it is possible the idea was kicked around. Everyone did collaborate on the final article, titled “Ten years’ experience with our house.” Walter and Ise wrote the text. Prior to the prominence of television, popular magazines 14

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like House & Garden enjoyed huge audiences. The article was very widely and positively received, bringing great attention to the house and to Dad’s photography.

Dad’s photographic practice did experience the rejuvenation he was seeking and he covered many noteworthy projects of the immediate postwar Modern period by such notables as Mies van der Rohe, Marcel Breuer, Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson, Ulrich Franzen, John Johansen, Paul Rudolph, Vincent Kling, Hugh Stubbins, I. M. Pei, Henry Cobb, and Florence Knoll. By 1951 he had also enrolled in the Yale School of Architecture to finish his architectural degree.

In the 1960s his recognition as a photographer faded as he shifted his focus to his own designs for which he received awards, including an American Institute of Architects (AIA) Award of Merit, the House of the Year from Architectural Record magazine, and Guggenheim, National Endowment for the Arts, and AIA fellowships. The AIA also recognized him with the 1965 Gold Medal for Architectural Photography.

Dad and Walter stayed in touch until the end of Walter’s life. Despite the difference in their ages (three decades), as well as in their social and professional statures, I think it is still fair to say they formed a friendship.

Dad photographed projects for Gropius’s firm, The Architects Collaborative. Walter became a mentor as Dad launched his own architectural practice.

Prefabricated construction methods were a subject of great interest to them both; Dad became an innovator in this approach.

Walter gave advice and provided recommendations. “Mr. Damora is an accomplished architect whose professional work I consider of the highest quality,” Walter said. “I consider him the best photographer of architecture in this country.”

Visit gropius.house/topics/ the-lincoln-house/ to view more historical photographs of Gropius House.

Abolition, Suffrage, and the Activism of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin

by KABRIA BAUMGARTNER The author of In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America (New York University Press, 2019), Kabria Baumgartner is an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of New Hampshire, Durham.

Editor’s Note: In 1919 Congress passed the Nineteenth Amendment granting American women the right to vote. All but seven states in the South ratified the amendment the following year. This article launches Historic New England magazine’s recognition of this revolutionary milestone in U.S. history. Women had waged a difficult, near-century-long struggle to win enfranchisement. This struggle for civil rights and equality posed peculiar challenges for African American women, who were distinctly burdened by the intersectionality of gender and race.

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n 1860, eighteen-year-old Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin was one of 126 abolitionists to sign a Massachusetts state petition against the federal Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which required citizens to help slave owners recover self-emancipated, or so-called fugitive, slaves. Like many antislavery petitions, this one designated “legal voters,” or men, to sign in the left column while “other adults,” or women, signed in the right. Despite this gendered division, women petitioners like Ruffin exercised their right to protest unjust laws and assert their political will, however limited.

Over the next few decades, Ruffin’s activism deepened, working as journalist and editor, participating in charitable work on behalf of children and African Americans, and mobilizing public support for a grand political goal: women’s suffrage.

Many African American women activists championed suffrage for a host of reasons: to advance the race; to gain power and influence; to win “respect and protection,” as educator Nannie Helen Burroughs argued in a 1915 issue of The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Other arguments included HistoricNewEngland.org

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From the New York Public Library

bolstering social, economic, and educational policies; and asserting equality and civic independence.

Charlotte Rollin of South Carolina, who with her four sisters was among the most influential black women activists during Reconstruction, may have summed it up best when she addressed a women’s suffrage meeting in Columbia, South Carolina, in 1871.

“We ask for suffrage not as a favor, nor as a privilege, but as a right based on the ground that we are human beings and as such, entitled to all human rights,” she told her audience.

For many suffragists, this struggle for human rights was a continuation of earlier activist campaigns such as the abolition movement, the fight for equal education rights, and the women’s rights movement.

African American women were forerunners in the fight for women’s rights. Some seventeen years before the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, Maria W. Stewart, an African American 16

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page 15 The tablet commemorating Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin is at the Massachusetts State House. It is one of six pieces installed as part of the State House Women’s Leadership Project to honor selected women who made major contributions that benefited American society. above Ruffin established the Woman’s Era Club of Boston during the nationwide black women’s club movement of the late nineteenth century. Serving as club president, she founded The Woman’s Era newspaper, a nationally distributed monthly that advocated for African American women’s education, employment, and suffrage. The newspaper also focused on quality-of-life issues and advocated involvement in anti-lynching efforts.

Ruffin and her daughter, Florida Ridley, served as editors. (Newspaper Collection, Boston Public Library.)

teacher and likely the first Americanborn woman to speak publicly about political issues to an audience of black and white men and women, published a pamphlet encouraging African American women to persevere in the face of adversity and “sue for [their] rights and privileges.” In 1858, an interracial coalition of 277 women and men from Nantucket petitioned the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for women’s suffrage. (They signed their names in a single column rather than follow the gender-based convention mentioned earlier.) Among the African American women signers were fifty-eight-year-old Charlotte D. Morris, an abolitionist; Elizabeth R. Nahar, a forty-year-old seamstress; and Eunice F. Ross, a thirty-five-yearold activist who had led the fight for equal education rights on Nantucket in the 1840s. Whether through print culture or collective political participation, African American women fought for political inclusion

well before the outbreak of the Civil War. As the nation passed from a state of war to a state of reconstruction, the debate over black suffrage resurfaced. The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1870 gave male citizens the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” White suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton could abide neither this exclusion nor the fact that African American men had won the right to vote before white women. The women’s suffrage movement splintered, with two separate organizations forming: Anthony and Stanton established the National Woman Suffrage Association, which opposed the Fifteenth Amendment, and suffragists who backed the amendment joined the American Woman Suffrage Association, led by white abolitionist Lucy Stone.

Keenly aware of the complex

interplay between race and gender, African American women suffragists carefully crafted their remarks in response to the ratification. While famed orator and women's rights activist Sojourner Truth believed that enfranchising African American men placed African American women in a servile position, she reframed the debate to highlight the necessity of black women’s suffrage. So did Mary Ann Shadd Cary. An educator, journalist, and lawyer, Cary backed the Fifteenth Amendment, all the while criticizing it for its failure to enshrine women’s suffrage. She even cited the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments in her own suffrage petition to the District of Columbia in the 1870s. The Fifteenth Amendment certainly provoked dissension, but for some African American women suffragists, it was a milestone in the broader struggle for universal suffrage, that is, voting rights for all citizens regardless of race or gender.

Full enfranchisement at the state and national levels remained elusive in the 1870s. In Massachusetts, for instance, women gained the right to vote in school board elections in 1879. Other states, including New Hampshire, adopted school suffrage laws, too. Why were women allowed to elect education officials but denied full voting rights? Perhaps state legislators conceded school suffrage as a convenient measure amid the rising tide of women’s activism. Whatever the case, in 1880, Boston women suffragists, including Lucy Stone and Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, organized the Massachusetts School Suffrage Association with the aim to increase female voter registration and support strong school committee candidates.

In 1896, the Silver Democrats— proponents of an economic policy

“A silent but active revolution is in progress among the colored women in the United States.”

—Suffragist and schoolteacher Elizabeth Carter at the first National Conference of Colored Women, July 1895, Boston. that called for using silver as a monetary standard in addition to gold— put Ruffin at the top of the ticket for the Boston School Committee. The nomination showed that discriminatory attitudes had changed somewhat since 1851, when Ruffin and her siblings were expelled from the city’s schools because of their race. Ruffin attended the integrated public schools in Salem, Massachusetts, before completing her education in Boston, which banned public school segregation in 1855 following a petition campaign. Given her sinuous path to schooling, Ruffin valued her right to vote in school board elections. She argued that women were a powerful voting bloc, wielding influence in educational affairs from city to city.

African American women suffragists continued to mobilize in the late nineteenth century, establishing civic organizations, creating newspapers and magazines, and speaking out in public protest, all the while asserting their role as civic actors. Ruffin was an exemplar.

In 1892 she founded the Woman’s Era Club, which was devoted to the intellectual and moral improvement of African American women. Over 100 women joined the club, including Maria Baldwin, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, schoolteacher and principal; Ruffin’s daughter, Florida Ruffin Ridley; and even a few white women. Indeed, Ruffin’s platform was rooted in a principle of racial inclusion, which was why she

was surprised when the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, a nationwide coalition of thousands of white women’s groups, denied her admission at its convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1900 because she was affiliated with an African American women’s club. The controversy this sparked was reported widely in the press and became known as the “Ruffin incident.”

The “Ruffin incident” did not dampen the work of the Woman’s Era Club, which contributed to the growing African American clubwomen’s movement. In one of her last lectures prior to her death, Lucy Stone urged members to “help make the world better,” which became the club’s motto. Women’s suffrage typified that motto. In an article published in the Boston Globe on March 4, 1894, Ruffin took up the following question: “Are New England laws unjust to women?” Her response was a resounding “Yes.” She added, “It would seem that there are a few rights given to men yet denied to women, but none, however, that the use of the ballot could not, either directly or indirectly, affect.” Ruffin’s remark had less to do with the notion that women’s suffrage was a panacea and more to do with the belief that unjust laws that affected women, or anybody, could be undone by exercising one’s vote.

Ruffin extended her influence further when she created The Woman’s Era newspaper, her club’s official organ. As the first newspaper with HistoricNewEngland.org

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Ruffin issued a “Call to Confer” exhorting black women around the country to participate in a national convention, which was held in July 1895 at Berkeley Hall in Boston. The primary aim of the three-day conference was to establish a national organization for black women, which they named the National Federation of Afro-American Women.

After merging with other African American women’s groups around the country, the organization became known as the National Association of Colored Women.

It incorporated in 1904 as the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, using as its motto, “Lifting As We Climb.”

Today, chapters are active in forty-nine states and the District of Columbia. The program of the first convention (left) featured photographs of the officers.

Pictured clockwise from the top left are Ruffin, the convention president; Hannah Smith, recording secretary; Eliza Gardner, chaplain; and Florida Ridley (Ruffin’s daughter), corresponding secretary.

a nationwide readership edited by African American women for African American women, it reported on pressing issues like lynching, and it featured poetry, short stories, and reports on women’s political activity in states such as Colorado and Illinois. Ruffin also used the pages of her newspaper to dismiss antisuffragists who maintained that a “woman will lose her womanliness” if granted full enfranchisement. She proudly endorsed the image of the new woman who could vote and whose vote mattered.

The idea to organize a national convention for African American clubwomen came to fruition in July 1895, thanks to the formidable work of Ruffin. At Berkeley Hall in Boston’s Back Bay, representatives of fifty-three clubs from nine states gathered, including notable educators Anna Julia Cooper and Mary Church Terrell as well as anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells Barnett. A historic event, this convention sparked the establishment of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. “A silent but active revolution,” 18

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declared African American suffragist and New Bedford, Massachusetts, schoolteacher Elizabeth Carter, “is in progress among the colored women in the United States.”

The Crisis, which was edited by the African American intellectual and writer W. E. B. Du Bois, devoted part of its August 1915 issue to the women’s suffrage movement.

Twenty-six preeminent writers and activists, including Ruffin and Maria Baldwin, expressed their views. Ruffin sought to allay the doubts of some anti-suffragist African American men by arguing that fighting for gender equality bolstered racial equality. Baldwin predicted that full enfranchisement would empower teachers and benefit education.

The women’s suffrage movement continued to achieve victories as a dozen states granted women voting rights by 1917.

Two years later, Massachusetts ratified the Nineteenth Amendment and by 1920, thirty-five other states did, too, giving American women the right to vote. Ruffin's efforts were not forgotten among African

American women, who organized literary clubs bearing her name and even taught “Ruffin Study” classes on parliamentary procedure.

In March 1924, Ruffin passed away at the age of eighty-one. Although women’s suffrage had been enacted by then, continued activism remained vital as African American men and women faced intimidation, threats, and violence, not to mention unjust laws like the poll tax that proscribed their ability to exercise voting rights, particularly in the South.

A commemorative bust of Ruffin now adorns the wall outside Doric Hall in the Massachusetts State House. As lawmakers, residents, and tourists walk past, they read Ruffin’s wise words: “If laws are unjust, they must be continually broken until they are killed or altered.” In the face of unjust laws such as the Fugitive Slave Law or the denial of women’s suffrage, the vote—fought for and then proudly wielded by women like Ruffin—was a righteous weapon of both defense and justice, the history and value of which must be remembered today.

Merchant

AESTHETE

U.S. diplomat made it his mission to procure fine art for America

by HEIDI PRIBELL An interior designer, Heidi Pribell rescued a marble mantelpiece designed by Thomas Appleton from obscurity. It will be installed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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homas Jefferson commissioned him to obtain Italian marble for use in the construction of buildings at the University of Virginia. Architect Benjamin Latrobe had him purchase the same type of stone for use in the construction of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. He designed elaborate mantelpieces and hired noted Italian carvers to execute them. Such was the business of Thomas Appleton, trading in works of decorative and fine art, which he conducted while serving as a U.S. diplomat in Italy. Until his death in 1840 at age seventy-seven, Appleton was a principal supplier of Italian marble statuary to the United States. Today, however, his efforts are scarcely known.

With his passion for classical antiquity, Appleton was intent on creating a cultural legacy for the United States, one that honored the past while looking forward as the new nation came into its own in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Appleton’s heritage, upbringing, and experience shaped his vision for a national culture.

Thomas Appleton was born in Boston in 1763 (he and Historic New England founder William Sumner Appleton were descendants of English immigrant Samuel Appleton of Ipswich, Massachusetts), the year that the French and Indian War ended. He was part of a generation of Americans nurtured during the Early Republic era, a period of rapid transition from colony to independent nation that saw the institution of the democratic ideals codified in the Constitution. Thomas’s childhood played out alongside the fervor for independence that was growing in the colonies. His father, Nathaniel Jr., was a

Heidi Pribell with the c. 1805 mantelpiece designed

by Thomas Appleton (shown in inset). Carved from Carrara marble quarried in Italy, the mantelpiece is flanked by two caryatids (support columns sculpted in female form) that bear a lintel with a projecting central tablet featuring classical goddesses. (Appleton etching from the Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.)

leading patriot who in 1768 joined the Sons of Liberty, the clandestine organization formed to oppose British rule.

When war broke out on April 19, 1775, Thomas had just turned twelve. Once the Continental Army expelled the British from Boston, the Appleton family resumed living in the city. On July 18 of the following year, thirteen-year-old Thomas no doubt would have been present for the public reading of the Declaration of Independence from the balcony of the Old State House.

In 1781, Appleton graduated from Harvard College; among his classmates was Charles Bulfinch, America’s first native-born architect. In 1786, at age twentythree, Appleton set sail for Europe, carrying a letter of introduction from Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin to Jefferson, then the U.S. ambassador to France.

He set foot in Paris and was soon a member of Jefferson’s inner circle, along with financier James Swan of Boston and John Paradise, an Anglo-Greek who was Jefferson’s language tutor and the first naturalized U.S. citizen. A lifelong friendship ensued, which Appleton and Jefferson maintained through transactions and correspondence.

Appleton had Jefferson’s support when, in 1797, General George Washington confirmed him as the first HistoricNewEngland.org

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U.S. consul at the Italian port city of Livorno, on Tuscany’s west coast.

Appleton, however, was disappointed by the assignment, having spent years lobbying for a position in France.

The Livorno post paid a pittance, so Appleton had to figure out how to become financially self-reliant in an unfamiliar place. He chose to make his living as an exporter, specializing in works of art, marble statuary, and various ornamental items of classical style. With grit and ambition, Appleton capitalized on his position in Livorno by hiring sculptors from Tuscany, purchasing marble used since ancient times from the nearby quarries of Carrara, and by utilizing the port of Livorno for shipping his merchandise.

Appleton’s account book, now in the Boston Public Library’s Archival Collections, details his business dealings with clients in locations ranging from Massachusetts to North Carolina. The account book also provides documentation that Appleton acted as Jefferson's agent throughout his lifetime. Jefferson trusted Appleton’s judgment in obtaining architectural components designed for ornamental use at Monticello and the University of Virginia’s Rotunda building in Charlottesville. (Jefferson based his design of the building on the Pantheon, an ancient Roman temple.)

Appleton looked to classical antiquity as the source from which to build America's cultural heritage.

While President Jefferson participated in the planning of the Capitol, he called on Appleton in 1805 to select and coordinate transportation of Italian sculptors, and the Carrara marble needed for construction.

Unfortunately, much of Appleton’s contribution to the project was lost when British forces burned 20

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Washington on August 24, 1814, in the Battle of Bladensburg during the War of 1812.

Appleton profited from his acquisition in 1808 of the original plaster bust of George Washington by Giuseppe Ceracchi, an Italian sculptor who worked in the neoclassical style.

Ceracchi made the bust in 1791, when Washington begrudgingly agreed to sit for the work while in Philadelphia.

The sculptor’s likeness of the first president was unparalleled. Appleton was responsible for commissioning more than a dozen busts based on Ceracchi’s sculpture, some of them plain, some depicted in heroic garb— that today are held in prominent collections, including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, the New York Public Library, and the White House.

Appleton’s most notable accomplishment may be his 1816 collaboration with Antonio Canova, another Italian neoclassical sculptor.

Appleton commissioned a colossal statue of Washington on behalf of the state of North Carolina.

He conceived its seated format and was responsible for designing the bas-relief narratives describing events in the first president’s life that surround the statue’s pedestal base. Canova completed the sculpture in 1820; it was installed in the rotunda of the North Carolina State House on December 24, 1821. Fire once again diminished Appleton’s legacy when the statue was lost in a blaze that destroyed the building on June 21, 1831.

With his larger-scale works destroyed, and knowledge of his smaller procurements obscured, Appleton stands very much as a lost historical figure. His expatriate status most likely

contributed to his absence from history: Appleton never returned to the United States and died while still serving as consul in Livorno, a post he had held for more than four decades. However, vestiges of his work exist and are a testament to his vision of an American aesthetic, most notably, the mantelpieces he designed. Two centuries later, one of these mantelpieces was discovered in a Beacon Hill basement. The mythological figures and Hellenic expression of the mantelpiece suggest a narrative that commemorates the nation’s founding, symbolizes liberty, and hails the democratic future of the United States.

In 1910 the Italian government sent this plaster replica of Antonio Canova’s colossal statue of George Washington to replace the marble sculpture destroyed in an 1831 fire at the State Capitol in Raleigh, North Carolina. Thomas Appleton negotiated the commission for the original statue, a neoclassical rendering of the first U.S. president wearing ancient Roman military armor. The replica is now in the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

Stories The Cultural Importance of Home Movies

Frames from a home movie in Historic New England’s Phillips Family Film Collection. The films, along with a variety of family papers, came to the organization when it acquired the 1821 Phillips House in Salem, Massachusetts, in 2006. The movies were made from 1925 to the 1940s by James Duncan Phillips (1876-1954) and Stephen Phillips (1907-1971).

by KAREN F. GRACY Associate professor, School of Information, Kent State University

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IRTHDAYS, WEDDINGS, GRADUATIONS, holidays, and vacations. Mobile phones are now the device of choice to record our memories of these events, but for much of the twentieth century many American families relied on

predigital technologies like snapshot photography and home movies to capture such milestones for personal reminiscences and posterity. While home movies are often stereotyped as being primarily family records with little artistic or historical value, this genre has been HistoricNewEngland.org

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This home movie was shot looking across Gordon Pond to Mount Moosilauke in the White Mountains, near the town of Benton in Grafton County, New Hampshire. page 23 Stephen Phillips removes his hat and flings it aside.

rediscovered and reevaluated in recent years. Where home movies were once dismissed as mundane, boring, or uninteresting for those outside of a person’s circle of family and friends, historians and cultural scholars now recognize these films as vital records, important cultural artifacts, and even influential artistic expressions.

The origins of the home movie can be traced to its precursor, photography. The hobby of snapshot photography was sparked in 1888, when the Eastman Kodak Company introduced the Kodak No. 1 camera, affectionately called the “Brownie,” to the American market. These cameras came preloaded with film, and when the film was exposed photographers could return the camera to Kodak to process it and reload the device with new, unexposed film. Over the next five decades the company sold millions of Brownie cameras.

Advertisements for the Brownie Kodak touted, “You press the button, we do the rest.” The device’s ease of use was undoubtedly key to its popularity, as was its affordability—costing approximately $30 in today’s currency.

Several decades later, Kodak 22

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would attempt to replicate the success of the Brownie by introducing its first consumergrade motion-picture cameras and film stocks. Several innovations engineered by Kodak resulted in a product suitable for amateur users. The company reduced film width from the 35mm professional gauge first used to 16mm in 1923 and later to 8mm in 1932. These smaller gauges were manufactured using the nonflammable substance cellulose acetate, instead of the cellulose nitrate used for 35mm.

Amateur users needed a safe alternative to nitrate, as it was far too risky for home use due to its combustibility. Acetate melted upon exposure to high heat instead of igniting, making it much safer for home users who might shoot, project, and store film in less than ideal conditions.

People of means were the earliest adopters of these new amateur gauges, particularly 16mm.

A complete camera setup, including camera, projector, tripod, screen, and splicer, sold for $335 in 1923, which would be equivalent to just over $5,000 today, making 16mm moviemaking an expensive hobby. It was not until the introduction of the

more budget-friendly 8mm gauge in the early 1930s that amateur moviemaking became as ubiquitous as snapshot photography. In comparison, in 1932 the first 8mm camera cost $29.50 ($550 in today’s currency, a bit more than the current average cost of a mobile phone and one-third the cost of the least expensive 16mm camera of the time, which was $75).

As amateur filmmaking grew in popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, so did filmmakers’ interest in improving their techniques and storytelling ability. In 1940 Kodak published a handbook to help budding auteurs “improve the interest and quality of their films,” called How to Make Good Movies.

This publication played double duty showcasing Kodak products and instructing filmmakers in the basics of camera operation, film stock selection, editing, and creation of lively narratives.

Amateur cineastes who were serious in the pursuit of their filmmaking hobby began to form social groups to study the art of cinema, support each other’s efforts, and exhibit their work.

These groups were often called ciné-clubs or film societies.

Through these organizations, filmmakers began to explore and innovate the genre of home movies specifically and amateur filmmaking in general.

As the genre matured, filmmakers pushed the boundaries of typical subject matter and style. Amateur films could take on the characteristics of a variety of film genres and forms. A nonfiction amateur film might be straightforward footage (known as actuality film) of a current event or a more complex, documentary account with a point of view and a particular aesthetic. A fiction film might create a complex narrative that played with the conventions of time and space established in professional filmmaking.

Experimental artists might push the limits of movie-making technology, such as exploring the mechanics of the camera and lenses, the effects of varying light exposure on film stock, or the various possibilities for editing shots and scenes.

The rich traditions and unknown gems of amateur filmmaking have been rediscovered and celebrated in recent years through scholarly and public recognition.

The National Film Registry (NFR) of the Library of Congress has

acknowledged eight home movies since its inception in 1988. The NFR’s choices showcase the incredible variety and diversity of the genre, often providing a window into American society that mainstream Hollywood films rarely show. NFR-recognized films thus far include a travelogue featuring a vacation to Disneyland in 1955, the year it opened (Disneyland Dream); actuality footage of the 1940 collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State; amateur films depicting the daily lives of Mexican Americans in Corpus Christi, Texas; home movies of the Nicholas Brothers dance duo; and what may be the most famous amateur film of all time, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as captured in November 1963 by Abraham Zapruder.

Interested readers can find descriptions of all home movies and amateur films named to the National Film Registry by finding its Wikipedia entry (search on the page for “home film”).

The Center for Home Movies is another essential resource for exploring the cultural significance of home movies and amateur film.

It is an international organization whose mission is “to transform

the way people think about home movies by providing the means to discover, celebrate, and preserve them as cultural heritage.” Local libraries, archives, and museums across the country and around the world are invited to host open screenings of home movies and home videos under the banner of the Center’s annual Home Movie Day. This event provides people with an opportunity to view their family’s home movies and home videos, even if they no longer own projectors or players for these formats. Trained archivists will inspect and clean your films or videos, repair them if needed, and safely play them for you during the event. They can also provide advice about transferring your treasures to a more accessible digital format.

Visit centerforhomemovies.org to find out more about Home Movie Day. Historic New England’s digitized 8mm home movies include some of Walter Gropius and his family.

To see the celebration of the architect’s last birthday—May 18, 1969—as well as the family’s 1963 and 1964 Christmas gatherings, visit gropius.house/location/homemovies/.

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Home Movie Media Intervention Similar scenes captured in home movies across decades and formats. From left, composer/pianist Leopold Godowsky, 1938, 16mm film (courtesy of the Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Home Movie Collection); the author, c. 1986, 8mm analog videotape; and Ziva Raftery, the author’s niece, 2019, HD (high definition) digital video shot with cell phone.

How to keep recorded memories from degrading

by BECCA BENDER Film archivist and curator of recorded media at the Rhode Island Historical Society

W

hen most people think of home movies, they picture a small film reel, probably 8mm or Super8, the content in all likelihood silent, the scenes short depictions of special occasions, the images in black and white or perhaps in brilliant Kodachrome color of the mid-twentieth century. These are the films we typically consider when we concern ourselves with preserving family home movies. But in reality, these types of home movies haven’t been widely created for forty years. So, what are we doing to preserve the videotapes and born-digital files that contain the home movies of the past few generations? And when we find those old film reels, which could now easily be over seventy-five years old, what do we do with them?

The good news about the film reels is that as long as they have been kept in a relatively cool and dry environment (please remove them from your hot attic or damp basement immediately!) they’re probably in decent shape. If you hold these filmstrips up to the light, there are images that you can readily see—celluloid film being the only moving-image format that generously allows its viewer to perceive it without a machine. To fully and easily access and share these home movies, use the services of a film scanning lab, which will convert the photographic images into digital ones. There are various technical

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Historic New England Fall 2019

specifications to consider depending on how you plan to use the home movies, but ideally, the films should be scanned at a minimum of high-definition resolution (1920 x 1080) and the files should be delivered in a format that has not been overly compressed. Be sure that the lab returns the original films to you, and continue to store them in a cool, dry place. Just because you now have digital files does not mean that you have “preserved” the films.

Given how moving-image technology evolves, it is quite possible that a future transferring process could yield better results—think of the 1990s, when standard practice for making home movies accessible for families would have been to transfer 8mm films to analog videotape, most likely consumer-grade VHS (video home system), a far inferior visual format.

On the topic of videotape, the current buzz phrase and consuming fear in the audiovisual archiving community is the “magnetic media crisis.” Unlike with film, which at its core only requires light to make it legible, all of the home movies shot on videotape from the 1980s through the early 2000s require equipment for viewing. There is nothing to “see” on those tapes without the intervention of a playback deck that reads the images and sounds captured in the magnetic particles and sends them to some sort of monitor. My own childhood was occasionally recorded on Video8, a cassette format that came out in the

The Rhode Island Historical Society Film Collection consists of more than nine million feet of moving-image film from early Rhode Island film studios, local news stations, and home movies.

Some home movies were shot with 8mm film (left) and some were made using 16mm film (below).

1980s and served as an alternative to the small-sized VHS tapes (VHS-C) that fit into cassette adapters for playback in standard VHS VCRs (video cassette recorders). Neither of these analog cassette formats—or any magnetic media, including open reel audio and digital videotape—has the capacity for long-term archival storage (e.g., more than thirty years). Magnetic tape is highly prone to deterioration, causing signal loss, and the required playback equipment is more or less obsolete; even the ubiquitous VHS VCR hasn’t been manufactured since 2016. If you still have a VCR lying around and try to play your VHS home movies, don’t be surprised if they look staticky and repeatedly “drop out.” The best thing to do is to send your tapes to a transfer lab as soon as possible to get the media into a digital format.

Given that digitization is the recommended solution for accessing home movies originally shot on film or videotape, and that it’s the primary manner by which we all capture home movies today, it is particularly distressing that in many ways digital is the most at-risk moving image format of all. Consider the following: Had you already downloaded the videos from your 2011 phone before you dropped it in a lake? (I had not.) If you did download them, are the files on a computer that you still own? Or are they on a DVD that simply says “pics,” and perhaps no longer loads? Does your computer still have a DVD drive? Or are the files on a hard drive with a cable that doesn't plug into your current computer? Has that eightyear-old hard drive failed? Are the digital files encoded in a video format that your current computer can play? Are there so many files on your current phone that you can’t bear to organize them? Are any of those files named in a way that tells your future self what the content is (i.e., not IMG_2864.mov)? What about your descendants?

Compared to the handwriting on the Kodak film box that says: “Paul & Carl birthday 1951,” is there any way for someone who finds this digital video fifty years from now

to know what they’re looking at? Can they trust the date stamp embedded in the digital file—is it really the date the video was shot or is it the date someone moved the file using a program that doesn’t retain original metadata? You get the idea.

Without going into a full-scale personal digital archiving lecture (the Library of Congress and others have good online resources), here are some key takeaways: v Curate your digital files shortly after creation; if you shoot five videos of the same thing, keep one. v Rename the files as though you were writing a caption on an old photograph “2019_ZivaPianoRecital.mov.” v Organize your files into digital folders using a system that will be meaningful in the future. v Keep at least two copies of your files, ideally in two different geographic places. v Check your hard drives periodically to make sure they still mount and check your video files to see that they still play; expect to replace your hard drives every five or so years.

Home movies can hold rich cultural value beyond the family in which they were created, particularly if they depict communities that are typically underrepresented by the mainstream creators of media. National collections such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture are gathering home movies to tell stories from a community-based perspective.

HistoricNewEngland.org

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by JANE HENNEDY Site Manager, Southern Rhode Island

Walking in the Footsteps

T

OF THE PAST

here is a chorus of voices telling a broader story of Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. This amplified chronicle documents Native American habitation of the area; the enslaved people, hired hands, and tenant farmers who worked the land and made it what we benefit from today; as well as the eight generations of the family that owned Casey Farm, for which it is named.

Historic New England partnered with Tomaquag Museum, located in Exeter, Rhode Island, to expand the

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Historic New England Fall 2019

history we share at Casey Farm. Tomaquag Museum, founded in 1958, is dedicated to sharing Indigenous culture, arts, and history. The museum played a vital role in broadening the story we tell and making it a contemporary narrative with a permanent display titled Walk in Their Footsteps.

Inside the c. 1750 Casey farmhouse is a gallery-style museum room featuring portraits and photographs to tell the stories of the family that owned the property from 1702 to 1955. The Caseys are notable for their accomplishments in business, the military, and

Tomaquag Museum played a vital role in broadening the story we tell and making it a contemporary narrative. architectural design. Each generation was determined to keep the family’s three hundred acres of land intact with all of the farm’s buildings; later family members had the foresight to pass on the property as a working farm to Historic New England, in 1955. But what about the other people who were at least as essential to the life of the farm? Witnessing today’s hard-working farm crew and listening to their perceptions made it clear that Historic New England should talk more about whose footsteps we follow.

Prior research and a very few artifacts on display had allowed us to talk about the thousands of years that Indigenous peoples inhabited the land, and those who subsequently occupied it, but it was not a balanced presentation. The horse and oxen shoes, pipe stems, tableware, a marble, rosin for a fiddle—all of these speak about everyday life on Casey Farm in the past, but the story was incomplete. Farm managers Lindie Markovich and Emily Cotter were already invested in bringing forward stories of the people who worked the land. For example, they invited Tomaquag Museum Director Lorén Spears to talk to the Young Farmers Network of Southeastern New England at Casey Farm in the spring of 2018 about cultivation of the land from a Native perspective.

Historic New England Curator Laura Johnson suggested strengthening our relationship with Tomaquag Museum. After a few collaborative sessions, we settled on some key ideas. We started with some

artifacts discovered by chance in the barnyard, the fields, and the walls of the house and combined them with contemporary Native American works. Objects would be grouped by their uses, no matter the time period or who made them, and made more relevant for today’s audiences by commissioning contemporary, handcrafted items based on traditional skills from the Tomaquag Museum’s network of Native artists.

The soles of 200-year-old footwear placed inside the walls of the farmhouse to serve as talismans (most likely by tenant farmers) are juxtaposed with new deerskin moccasins made by Silvermoon LaRose for her daughter to dance in. Tools for making and eating food—a two-tined fork with a horn handle, nineteenthcentury ceramic shards, and Woodland Period (roughly 1000 BCE to 1000 CE) stone-cutting tools—are shown in the same case with Spears’s contemporary vision of a splint gathering basket with flowing designs. Several more work items and playthings made across centuries and cultural backgrounds are now on display in the Casey Farm museum room in two cases for all visitors to see. We will periodically install new craft items in the display cases.

Casey Farm has much to offer visitors at its spectacular seaside landscape. Our hope is that when visitors leave the museum room they will look upon the beauty of the farm with a greater appreciation of all the people who made the place possible.

page 26 Visitors view a display case at Casey Farm that includes clay pipe stems from 1750-1850, c. 1820 shoe soles and upper remnants, a c. 1900 fragment of a writing slate, and items from 2018 by Indigenous makers such as a doll fashioned from a corn husk and yarn, a ring toss game made from wood and twine, and a bracelet designed using quahog shell and elastic. left These contemporary moccasins made for a young girl are also a part of the permanent display that Historic New England and the Tomaquag Museum installed at Casey Farm.

HistoricNewEngland.org

27

ANNUAL REPORT

Fiscal Year 2019 (April 1, 2018-March 31, 2019)

28

WELCOME

In a year of new ventures—and a few adventures—Historic New England expanded its engagement with audiences in some exciting ways. We implemented a new membership structure that provides for more levels of support for the mission and work of Historic New England. In the spirit of the community cooperation that got barns built in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, we came together at Raise the Roof last October, a party to support roof repair projects at ten historic sites in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. This successful event at the Lyman Estate in Waltham, Massachusetts, was our special take on the country fair concept. Generous donors, some of whom signed roof shingles that were installed during the summer at Boardman House in Saugus, Massachusetts, helped the event surpass its fundraising goal.

Our Compass Rose Steampunk Festival introduced Historic New England to the pop culture movement of steampunk, a subgenre of science fiction/fantasy with a Victorian-era backdrop featuring contemporary and futuristic touches. Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut, provided the perfect setting for the gathering, which attracted a large young audience. The festival is on track to be an annual staple of the events Historic New England offers to the public, much like Feast for the Farms at Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island. In summer 2018 we held our fifth celebration of that farm-to-table evening of dining, which also benefits Watson Farm in nearby Jamestown.

Our organization continues to garner awards and other honors. At its fortieth annual preservation awards ceremony, the Massachusetts Historical Commission presented Historic New England an award for education and outreach, rehabilitation, and restoration work at the Eustis Estate in Milton. For our commitment to preservation, the Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Advocates gave Historic New England a preservation award for restoration of the c. 1664 Jackson House. FoMA, the Friends of Modern Architecture/Lincoln (Massachusetts), gave the organization its annual award for excellence in preservation of Modern architecture and praised Historic New England’s stewardship of Gropius House. That recognition came during the centennial of the Bauhaus, the design school Walter Gropius founded in his native Germany.

We are engaged in stewardship and preservation efforts that uphold our institutional mandate of setting the standard for care and use of historic resources. With increasing global concerns about climate change, Historic New England joined with Middlebury College in Vermont to launch a two-year internship project to study our approaches to climate change resiliency and preparedness. One of the goals of this internship is to develop strategies to address projected climate threats. In another new endeavor, we offered a professional development fellowship in architectural conservation and preservation carpentry with partial funding by the Americana Foundation. The program trains a new generation in traditional building practices, helping to ensure that knowledgeable and skilled practitioners will be available to care for historic resources in the future.

Historic New England shares tremendous benefits with organizations by forming partnerships to offer a variety of public programs, events, and services. Hosting community-generated exhibitions are among these efforts. Historic New England was pleased to collaborate with the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire to exhibit works by artist Richard Haynes of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. As artist-in-residence at Langdon House during the summer of 2018, Haynes created a portrait of historical figure Cyrus Bruce. The painting is now in Historic New England’s collection.

In a special act of sharing with the community, we collaborated with Hope’s Harvest RI, a startup that conducts gleaning operations. Gleaning, a historical practice, is the collection of unharvested or unmarketable produce that would otherwise go to waste. Instead, the food is salvaged for those in need. Volunteers with Hope’s Harvest RI worked at Casey Farm to gather produce from the spent fields for distribution through local food hub Farm Fresh RI. We are delighted to share some of the successes of the past year with you. Thanks to your generous and continued support, we are assured that our future will be filled with history.

C arl R. Nold David A. Martland President and CEO Chair, Board of Trustees

above Carl R. Nold and David A. Martland. cover A box of donor-signed shingles used in the roof repair project at Boardman House in Saugus, Massachusetts.

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Leadership Fiscal Year 2019 BOARD OF TRUSTEES David A. Martland

Joan M. Berndt

Chair

Clerk

David L. Feigenbaum

Randy J. Parker

Vice Chair

Treasurer

Sylvia Q. Simmons

Carl R. Nold

Vice Chair

President and CEO

Jacob D. Albert Richard C. Albright, Jr. Jeffrey P. Beale George F. Fiske, Jr. James F. Hunnewell, Jr. Christopher Karpinsky Sidney Kenyon Gregory D. Lombardi

Sandra Ourusoff Massey Elizabeth H. Owens Julie A. Porter Kristin L. Servison Angie Simonds Nancy B. Tooke Stephen H. White

Julianne Mehegan Maureen I. Meister Pauline C. Metcalf Thomas S. Michie Keith N. Morgan Henry Moss Cammie Henderson Murphy Stephen E. Murphy Ann Nevius Richard H. Oedel Janet Offensend Mary C. O'Neil Elizabeth Seward Padjen Samuel D. Perry Patrick Pinnell Gail Ravgiala Courtney Richardson Marita Rivero Timothy Rohan Carolyn Parsons Roy Virginia Rundell Gretchen G. Schuler

Joseph Peter Spang III Andrew Spindler-Roesle Dennis E. Stark Charles M. Sullivan John W. Tyler William B. Tyler Theodore W. Vasiliou Gerald W. R. Ward David Watters Roger S. Webb* Richard F. Wien Susie Wilkening Robert W. Wilkins Richard H. Willis Robert O. Wilson Gary Wolf Ellen M. Wyman Charles A. Ziering, Jr.

TRUSTEES EMERITI

Former trustees recognized for outstanding service Edward Lee Cave Martha D. Hamilton William C. S. Hicks

Elizabeth B. Johnson Janina A. Longtine Robert I. Owens

BOARD OF OVERSEERS Sandra Ourusoff Massey Chair

F. Warren McFarlan Vice Chair

Deborah L. Allinson Nancy J. Barnard Jeffrey L. Bernier Ronald P. Bourgeault Jon-Paul Couture Jeremiah E. de Rham Edward C. Fleck William F. Gemmill Leslie W. Hammond

Stephen W. Harby Eric P. Hayes William C. S. Hicks James Horan Katherine Williams Kane Lydia F. Kimball Elizabeth Leatherman A. Richard Moore, Jr. Paul Moran Stephen Mormoris John Peixinho Susan Rogers Susan P. Sloan Anne S. Upton William P. Veillette

COUNCIL Joan M. Berndt Co-chair

Robert P. Emlen Co-chair Lynne Z. Bassett Russell Bastedo Ralph C. Bloom Randolph D. Brock Michael R. Carter David W. Chase Richard W. Cheek Martha Fuller Clark Karen Clarke Barbara A. Cleary Gregory L. Colling Trudy Coxe Elizabeth Hope Cushing Elizabeth K. Deane Jared I. Edwards Eugene Gaddis

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Marcy Gefter Lucretia Hoover Giese* Debra W. Glabeau Judy L. Hayward Eric Hertfelder Bruce A. Irving Edward C. Johnson 3d Elizabeth B. Johnson Mark R. Kiefer Anne F. Kilguss Matthew Kirchman Nancy Lamb Paula Laverty Arleyn A. Levee Anita C. Lincoln John B. Little Peter S. Lynch Peter E. Madsen Elizabeth Hart Malloy Johanna McBrien Paul F. McDonough William L. McQueen

* Deceased

Donors April 1, 2018 – March 31, 2019 We are honored to share the names on the following pages recognizing those who, through their generous and thoughtful gifts, have strengthened Historic New England this past fiscal year. To each of them, we extend our most sincere appreciation. We also thank those who supported us at every level, including our 8,715 members.

$1,000,000 and above Mary L. McKenny Fund of the Toledo Community Foundation

$100,000 - $999,999 Anonymous Ms. Jerrilee Cain Mr. David T. Edsall The Nancy Foss Heath and Richard B. Heath Educational, Cultural and Environmental Foundation

$50,000–$99,999 Anonymous Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund Institute of Museum and Library Services Teresa and David Martland Mass Cultural Council Massachusetts Historical Commission Mr. and Mrs. John B. McDowell New Hampshire Land and Community Heritage Investment Program Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison

$25,000–$49,999 Anonymous Ms. Deborah L. Allinson The Americana Foundation Terry Bremer and Linda Hewitt The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine George B. Henderson Foundation Mr. and Mrs. James F. Hunnewell, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey R.T. Kenyon Mr. and Mrs. Kevin Lagassé Gregory D. Lombardi Estate of Ms. Marjorie D. Moerschner National Historical Publications and Records Commission Mr. and Mrs. Edward P. Owens Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. Owens Arthur D. Clarke and Susan Sloan Mr. and Mrs. Michael K. Tooke Winfield Foundation

$10,000–$24,999 Anonymous (2) The 1772 Foundation Inc. Mr. Jacob D. Albert Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Albright, Jr. Mr. Mark Canfield Allen Mr. Jeffrey P. Beale Dr. and Mrs. Ernst R. Berndt Mr. David L. Feigenbaum and Ms. Maureen Meister Mr. George F. Fiske, Jr. Dr. Thomas A. J. Frank and Ms. Alexandra Hastings Ms. Diane Gipson Mr. John F. Haley and

Mrs. Anne R. Haley Barbara and Amos Hostetter Institution for Savings Charitable Foundation Dr. Janina A. Longtine Shirley M. Marston Massachusetts Historical Society Mr. and Mrs. M. Holt Massey The Mildred H. McEvoy Foundation Mr. Arthur McKenny Middlesex Savings Charitable Foundation Ms. Heidi O'Neill Caren and Randy Parker Robert A. Pemberton and Barbara R. Jordan Mr. and Mrs. Samuel D. Perry Ms. Julie A. Porter Mr. James V. Righter Dr. Margaret Ruttenberg and Mr. John Ruttenberg Saquish Foundation Mr. Robert L. Simonds and Ms. Angie Simonds Mr. Joseph Peter Spang III Estate of Joseph Twichell Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan M. Uhrig United States Department of Agriculture Stephen H. and Virginia S. White Mr. Richard H. Willis Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Ziering, Jr.

$5,000–$9,999 Anonymous (3) Mr. and Mrs. Alan Bembenek Mr. and Mrs. Edward P. Bousa Mr. and Mrs. Theodore E. Charles Clara B. Winthrop Charitable Trust Mr. Jon-Paul Couture The Croll Foundation Estate of Abbott Lowell Cummings Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah E. de Rham The Fabulous Find Dr. and Mrs. Oscar Fitzgerald Charles and Julia Ganson, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Martin D. Hale Eric and Dorothy Hayes Ms. Louise S. Huntington and Ms. Katherine H. Gray Ms. Elizabeth L. Johnson Holly and Bruce Johnstone Mr. Christopher Karpinsky Mr. Peter S. Lynch Karen and Warren McFarlan McLaughlin & Moran Inc. Paul and Jean Moran Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Oedel Mrs. James Pearson

Mr. and Mrs. Anthony D. Pell Mr. and Mrs. George Putnam Sam L. Cohen Foundation Mr. Donald L. Saunders and Ms. Liv Ullmann Saunders Mr. Robert Bayard Severy Dr. Sylvia Q. Simmons Mr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle and Mr. Hiram Butler

$2,500–$4,999 Mr. and Mrs. Frederick D. Ballou Mr. and Mrs. John D. Barnard Mr. Jeffrey L. Bernier Mr. Ronald P. Bourgeault and Mr. James Horan Ms. Désirée Caldwell and Mr. William F. Armitage, Jr. Ms. E. Greer Candler Mr. Michael R. Carter Mr. and Mrs. David M. Chamberlain Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Cheek Martha Fuller Clark and Geoffrey E. Clark Ms. Karen Clarke Mr. John D. Corey and Mr. Miguel Rosales Mr. Michael Coyle Elizabeth and Nicholas Deane Ms. Janet Dinan and Mr. Peter Dinan Alan S. Emmet Mrs. Rebecca Martin Evarts and Mr. James Evarts Dr. Christopher D. M. Fletcher Mr. Stephen L. Fletcher Mr. William F. Gemmill and Ms. Sally Gemmill Mr. Dan Kendall Gordon and Ms. Maureen Gordon Mr. Thomas B. Gould Elkanah B. Atkinson Community and Education Fund of the Greater Worcester Community Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Garth H. Greimann Ms. Martha D. Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Ward Hamilton Mrs. Leslie W. Hammond and Mr. James R. Hammond III Mr. Stephen W. Harby Mr. and Mrs. Tim Holiner Mr. and Mrs. Edward M. Howland The Roy A. Hunt Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Stephen B. Jeffries Mr. Stephen Kaloyanides, Jr. Katherine Williams Kane Mr. Jonathan M. Keyes Ms. Anne F. Kilguss Lydia F. Kimball Mr. Warren C. Lane, Jr.

Mr. Clifford Lasser and Ms. Elizabeth Adams Dr. Frederic F. Little and Dr. Claudia L. Ordonez Mr. and Mrs. James M. Lober Ms. Nancy Lukitsh Maine Historic Preservation Commission Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati William L. McQueen and Carla O. A. Bosch Mr. Thomas S. Michie Mr. A. Richard Moore, Jr. Mr. Stephen Mormoris and Mr. Robert Cornell Northeast Investment Management Inc. Mr. and Mrs. David Offensend Mr. Samuel Plimpton and Ms. Wendy Shattuck Prince Charitable Trust Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy P. Richardson Mr. and Mrs. Mark V. Rickabaugh Mrs. Louise C. Riemer Mr. and Mrs. T. Williams Roberts Malcolm P. and Susan A. Rogers Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Rounds Ms. Lois C. Russell Mr. Andrew F. Saxe and Mr. Dean Vollick Mr. Christopher Settle Mr. Charles M. Sullivan and Ms. Susan E. Maycock Mr. Robert Svikhart Mr. and Mrs. William N. Thorndike, Jr. Dr. Edward G. Tiedemann, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. John Upton Mr. and Mrs. William P. Veillette Mr. Robert W. Wilkins, Jr. Christopher and Sarah Wolf Mr. Alan Wong and Ms. Wendy Wong Stephen G. Woodsum and Anne R. Lovett Mr. and Mrs. John A. Yozell

$1,000 - $2,499 Beacon Hill Garden Club Dr. and Mrs. Riener Beeuwkes III Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation Mr. and Mrs. Harrison M. Bilodeau Mr. Ralph C. Bloom Mr. John Bradfield and Mr. Dennis Senovich Brookes & Hill Custom Builders Mr. and Mrs. Richard I. Burnham Mr. and Mrs. Thomas P. Catalano Mr. John D. Childs John and Jayma Coghlin Dr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Coghlin 31

Mrs. I. W. Colburn Ms. Lorna Condon Mary and James Nicoll Cooper Ms. Frederica Matera Cushman Ms. Mary E. Darmstaetter Dave Hackett, Lila Delman Real Estate East Cambridge Savings Bank Elsie A. Brown Fund Inc. Mr. and Mrs. Frederic A. Eustis II Mr. Edward C. Fleck and Ms. Eileen M. McCormack Mrs. Pamela W. Fox Mr. and Mrs. Peter L. Goedecke Mr. and Mrs. William H. Greer, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Haavik Mr. Dave Hackett Mr. and Mrs. Donald E. Hare Tina and Bill Harsch Ipswich Ale Brewery Mrs. Isobel Kahn Kennebunk Savings Ms. Jennifer Kent Mr. Mark R. Kiefer Mr. David S. Kirk Mr. and Mrs. Keith L. Knowlton Mr. and Mrs. A. R. Lamb III Mr. William R. Leitch Mr. David W. Lewis, Jr. Mr. James E. Long Mr. Jonathan B. Loring Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Lubin Mr. and Mrs. Carmine A. Martignetti Mr. and Ms. Kenneth R. Martin Mr. and Mrs. Frank Mauran IV Julianne and David Mehegan Mr. and Mrs. Neal P. Miller Mrs. Martha O. Milot Dr. Alice D. Murphy Mr. and Mrs. Donald A. Ocker Mr. and Mrs. Michael E. O'Donnell Mrs. Carolyn M. Osteen and Dr. Robert Osteen Ms. Elizabeth Seward Padjen, FAIA and Mr. Thaddeus Gillespie Mr. Stephen P. Parson Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence T. Perera Putnam Bank Mr. John S. Reidy John and Dorothy Remondi Rhode Island Council for the Humanities Mr. Laurent Rotival and Ms Amy Rotival Bill and Kathleen Rousseau Elisa Sleeper Sawall and William Sawall The Sharpe Family Foundation/ Julie and Henry D. Sharpe III Ms. Julie A. Solz Spencer, Sullivan & Vogt Ms. Lynne M. Spencer and Mr. Jeff Musman Mr. Campbell Steward Mr. Thomas A. Stone and Ms. Valerie M. Warrior Mr. and Mrs. Matthew Torrey 32

Mr. and Mrs. Gary M. Viera Mr. and Mrs. John C. Warren Mr. and Mrs. John H. Whiton

$500 - $999 Ames True Value Hardware and Supply Archambault Insurance Associates Sally and R. Lisle Baker Hometown Bank Mr. Russell Bastedo Mr. Ryan Bisson Mr. and Mrs. Taylor S. Bodman Ms. Carol W. Bowen Mr. David J. Breazzano Mr. and Mrs. Max J. Brenninkmeyer Ms. Susan D. Byrne Ms. Nadine Cancell and Mr. Craig Curry Capstone Communities Mr. and Mrs. Gib Carey Mrs. Charles B. Carpenter Mr. and Mrs. David Chase Christensen-Dunn Early Foundations Fund Ms. Abby Coffin and Mr. Peter Coffin Mr. Gregory L. Colling Mr. Billy Cotton Mr. and Mrs. John D. M. Davies Ms. Carissa Demore Alan and Lauren Dews Mr. Robert Diserens and Ms. Karla Diserens Mr. and Mrs. Ralph H. Doering, Jr. Mr. David T. Donovan Mr. Jeffrey Epstein Mr. and Mrs. Robin H. Etheridge Ms. Nicole Faulkner Roseann Ferrini Mr. and Ms. John L. Flannery Mr. Jameson French and Ms. Priscilla French Mr. and Mrs. James L. Garvin Ms. Diane Gilbert Mr. Peter A. Gittleman Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Godley Mr. Peter J. Gordon and Ms. Karen Hayes Ms. Wendy Gus Mr. Benjamin K. Haavik Mr. Joseph P. Hadley Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Hahn Ms. Meredith Hall Mrs. Cyrus I. Harvey Mr. and Mrs. Peter C. Hayden Mr. Philip A. Hayden Ms. D Lesley Hill and Mr. Alan Stone Mr. Roland Hoch and Mrs. Sarah Garland-Hoch Mrs. Judy Hood James and Lucy Hutchinson Mr. and Mrs. Wade Judge Ms. Eleanor C. Kenyon Ms. Susan S. Kinsey Ms. Patricia Montaperto and Mr. Michael Kiskiel

Mr. Christopher Laconi Mr. and Mrs. David S. Lee Mr. and Mrs. Newton H. Levee Mr. and Mrs. George Lewis Mr. and Mrs. Bernie Maceroni Maine Humanities Council Mr. and Mrs. James E. Marble, Jr. Mr. Frank Mauran Ms. Laurie L. Musgrove Ms. Susan Nick Mr. and Mrs. Rick Novak Mr. Charles H. Page Ms. Karla Ariel Pearlstein Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Phillips Rita and Norton Reamer Robert B. Rettig Ms. Kelly Reynolds Mr. and Ms. Aaron Rhodes Ms. Katharine Richardson Ms. Ailene M. Robinson and Mr. Thomas E. Lewis Ms. Sherry Roe-Gould and Dr. Robert Gould Mr. Lucas Rogers and Mr. Mathieu Gagne Mr. Michael Steigman and Ms. Genevieve Boland Mrs. Virginia E. Sweatt Mr. and Mrs. John A. Vassallo Mrs. Jeptha H. Wade Mr. and Mrs. Bradford B. Wakeman Mr. Paul Whalen Mr. Ian Whitmore Mr. Kemble Widmer II and Ms. Elisabeth Garrett Widmer Ms. Mary Wilkinson Mr. and Mrs. Bert Williams Ms. Sarah Wragge Mr. Clifton D. Zwirner

Matching Gift Companies Amazon Smile Foundation Anchor Capital Advisors Inc. Benevity Causecast Dell Inc. GE Foundation Houghton Mifflin Company

IBM Corporation Liberty Mutual Foundation Ocean Spray Cranberries Inc. Qualcomm Foundation Texas Instruments Foundation UnumProvident Corporation YourCause

Gifts in Kind A Yard and a Half Landscaping Cooperative Mr. Jacob D. Albert Nancy J. Barnard Beauport Hotel Beautiful Day Mrs. Ginny Belanger Capers Catering The Becky Chace Band California Paints Chessawanock Island Oysters Christie's Cj Cogswell Michael J. Cooney, Nixon Peabody LLP Early American Life Fruit Center Marketplace Mr. Stephen L. Fletcher Garden Gate Florist Robert M. Hale, Goodwin Procter LLP Kris Greco Pottery Mr. and Mrs. Ward Hamilton Mr. Ed Hopkins Mr. and Mrs. Edward A. Hopkins Ms. Christina Huetter-Knightly The Inn at Woodstock Hill Ipswich Ale Brewery Jasper & Prudence Jeffrey P. Johnson, WilmerHale LLP Peggy Konitzky The LagassĂŠ Group LLC Lazy K Ranch Mr. Donald W. Linebaugh Mr. Alan E. Lipkind Gregory Lombardi Design Mack's Catering Market Pantry McLaughlin & Moran Inc.

Newport Craft Brewing & Distilling Co. David A. Martland, Nixon Peabody LLP Ocean State Oyster Festival Olde Mohawk Historic Preservation Parterre Garden Services Peak Event Services Ms. Michelle Peele and Mr. Edward Peele Pemberton Farms Plug-In Cape Ann Tours Rhode Island Rental The Savory Grape Shacksbury Cider Skinner Inc. Ms. Sharon A. Spickler and Mr. Mark Gearreald Sweet Evalina's Taylor Brooke Winery Tendercrop Farm Mr. John L. Thorndike Urban Tree Service Valley View Farm White Farms Homemade Ice Cream Willywaw Wilson Farms Inc. Yoreganics

In memory of Abbott Lowell Cummings Mr. Robert Bayard Severy

In honor of Helen A. Reid Ms. Anne L. Bradner

In memory of Harvey Kahn Mrs. Isobel Kahn Mr. and Ms. Kenneth R. Martin

In honor of Gwendolyn Smith Mr. and Mrs. Frank Mauran IV

Gifts in Memory of

In honor of Joyce E. Jenks Alan and Lauren Dews

In memory of Mr. Mark E. Anderson Ms. Cynthia M. Garrey and Mr. Raymond A. Neshko, Sr. In memory of Faye Rogers Baron Ms. Donna H. Lascell Mr. John R. Mileski and Ms. Leslie J. Mileski Mr. Martin L. Sornborger and Ms. Charlotte B. Sornborger In memory of June C. Couture Anonymous Mr. Curt E. Nitzsche and Ms. Sally C. Nitzsche Mr. George A. Ripsom and Mrs. Elizabeth M. Ripsom Mr. Harry M. Simmons and Ms. Marilyn P. Simmons

In memory of Charles M. Werly Saquish Foundation

Gifts in Honor of In honor of Joan Berndt, Edward Bousa, Maureen Bousa, Bill Hicks, Carl R. Nold, Roger Servison, and Susan Sloan Holly and Bruce Johnstone In honor of Peter A. Gittleman Ms. Julia Gittleman and Mr. Tom Mendelsohn In honor of Philip A. Hayden Mr. and Mrs. Peter C. Hayden In honor of Martha Heath Mr. Richard Heath In honor of Richard Heath Mrs. Martha Heath

In honor of Sidney Kenyon Mr. Samuel Plimpton and Ms. Wendy Shattuck Ms. Ailene M. Robinson and Mr. Thomas E. Lewis In honor of the John Lougee Family of Exeter, New Hampshire Ellen C.L. Simmons In honor of William Moonan Ms. Janet Moonan In honor of Matthew Nixon Vaughn Nixon In honor of Stephen Parson Mrs. Lee S. Brown

In honor of the Stoddard Family Ms. Lydia Thomas

Appleton Circle Thank you to these passionate and generous supporters who share a love of New England history, architecture, art, and antiques and enjoy meeting and connecting with other Appleton Circle members who share similar interests.

Anonymous (3) Mr. Jacob D. Albert Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Albright, Jr. Mr. Mark Canfield Allen Ms. Deborah L. Allinson Mr. and Mrs. Frederick D. Ballou Mr. and Mrs. John D. Barnard Mr. Jeffrey P. Beale Mr. and Mrs. Alan Bembenek Dr. and Mrs. Ernst R. Berndt Mr. Jeffrey L. Bernier Mr. Ronald P. Bourgeault and Mr. James Horan Mr. and Mrs. Edward P. Bousa Ms. Désirée Caldwell and Mr. William F. Armitage, Jr. Ms. E. Greer Candler Mr. Harold J. Carroll Mr. Michael R. Carter Edward Lee Cave Mr. and Mrs. David M. Chamberlain Mr. and Mrs. Theodore E. Charles Arthur D. Clarke and Susan Sloan Ms. Karen Clarke Mr. John D. Corey and Mr. Miguel Rosales Mr. Jon-Paul Couture Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah E. de Rham Elizabeth and Nicholas Deane Ms. Janet Dinan and Mr. Peter Dinan Mrs. Rebecca Martin Evarts and Mr. James Evarts Mr. David L. Feigenbaum and Ms. Maureen Meister Mr. George F. Fiske, Jr. Mr. Edward C. Fleck and Ms. Eileen M. McCormack Dr. Christopher D. M. Fletcher Mr. Stephen L. Fletcher Dr. Thomas A. J. Frank and Ms. Alexandra Hastings Charles and Julia Ganson, Jr. Mr. William F. Gemmill and Ms. Sally Gemmill Ms. Diane Gipson Mr. Dan Kendall Gordon and Ms. Maureen Gordon Mr. and Mrs. Martin D. Hale

Mr. John F. Haley and Mrs. Anne R. Haley Ms. Martha D. Hamilton Mr. and Mrs. Ward Hamilton Mrs. Leslie W. Hammond and Mr. James R. Hammond III Mr. Stephen W. Harby Eric and Dorothy Hayes Lucile and Bill Hicks Mr. and Mrs. Tim Holiner Mr. and Mrs. Edward M. Howland Mr. and Mrs. James F. Hunnewell, Jr. Ms. Elizabeth L. Johnson Holly and Bruce Johnstone Mr. Joseph S. Junkin Mr. Stephen Kaloyanides, Jr. Katherine Williams Kane Mr. Christopher Karpinsky Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey R.T. Kenyon Mr. Jonathan M. Keyes Ms. Anne F. Kilguss Lydia F. Kimball Mr. and Mrs. Gordon F. Kingsley Mr. Clifford Lasser and Ms. Elizabeth Adams Mr. and Mrs. William Leatherman Mr. David W. Lewis, Jr. Dr. Frederic F. Little and Dr. Claudia L. Ordonez Mr. and Mrs. James M. Lober Gregory D. Lombardi Dr. Janina A. Longtine Ms. Nancy Lukitsh Teresa and David Martland Mr. and Mrs. M. Holt Massey Miss Pauline C. Metcalf Mr. and Mrs. John B. McDowell Karen and Warren McFarlan Mr. Thomas S. Michie Mr. A. Richard Moore, Jr. Paul and Jean Moran Mr. Stephen Mormoris and Mr. Robert Cornell Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Mr. and Mrs. David Offensend Mr. and Mrs. Edward P. Owens Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. Owens Caren and Randy Parker Mr. John Peixinho Mr. and Mrs. Anthony D. Pell Robert A. Pemberton and Barbara R. Jordan Mr. and Mrs. Samuel D. Perry Ms. Julie A. Porter Ms. Heidi Pribell Mr. and Mrs. George Putnam Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy P. Richardson Mr. and Mrs. Mark V. Rickabaugh Mr. and Mrs. T. Williams Roberts Malcolm P. and Susan A. Rogers Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Rounds Ms. Lois C. Russell Dr. Margaret Ruttenberg and Mr. John Ruttenberg 33

Mr. David Krashes and Mrs. Barbara P. Krashes Ms. Caroline Krause Mr. Jonathan B. Loring Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Nylander Mr. Peter Reifsnyder Mrs. Helen H. Tjader

Donors to the Library and Archives

Mr. Andrew F. Saxe and Mr. Dean Vollick Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison Dr. Sylvia Q. Simmons Mr. Robert L. Simonds and Ms. Angie Simonds Mr. Joseph Peter Spang III Mr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle and Mr. Hiram Butler Mr. Charles M. Sullivan and Ms. Susan E. Maycock Mr. and Mrs. William N. Thorndike, Jr. Dr. Edward G. Tiedemann, Jr. Mr. and Mrs. Michael K. Tooke Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan M. Uhrig Mr. and Mrs. John Upton Mr. Theodore W. Vasiliou Stephen H. and Virginia S. White Mr. Robert W. Wilkins, Jr. Mr. Richard H. Willis Mr. Alan Wong and Ms. Wendy Wong

Stephen G. Woodsum and Anne R. Lovett Ms. Candace J. Young and Mr. Glenn Batchelder Mr. and Mrs. John A. Yozell Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Ziering, Jr.

Donors to the Collections Ms. Helen Arden Alexander Mr. Ralph C. Bloom Ms. Anne Booth and Mr. Robert Hauser Ms. Anne Bowdoin Ms. Sarah Carter Ms. Karina H. Corrigan Mrs. Marjorie A. Falvey Mr. Channing Ferrer Mr. and Mrs. Miller Graf Mr. Richard Haynes, Jr. House of the Seven Gables Ms. Diana Korzenik

Mr. Ralph C. Bloom Ms. Anne Booth and Mr. Robert Hauser Boston Preservation Alliance Mr. John Carpenter Mr. Edward Lee Cave Ceramic Study Club of Boston Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Cheek Mr. Tom Clasby Ms. Lorna Condon Mr. Robert B. DeMaine Mr. Stephen K. Desroches Mr. and Mrs. Paul R. Dwiggins Mr. Robert P. Emlen Ms. Pat Evans Mr. Stephen L. Fletcher Mr. Mark Fried Ms. Lucretia Hoover Giese* Mr. Willie Granston Mr. Henry B. Hoover, Jr. Ms. Diana Korzenik Ms. Adele Larson Mrs. Arleyn Levee Miss Selina F. Little Maine Historical Society Mr. Richard M. Marion

Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation Mr. Arthur McKenny Mr. William L. McQueen Mr. Jean Paul Michaud Mr. Peter J. Michaud Miss Margot Miller Mr. Christopher Monkhouse Ms. Susan Montgomery Mr. Carl R. Nold Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Nylander Mr. and Mrs. Robert I. Owens Mrs. Lynne Paschetag Mr. and Mrs. Samuel D. Perry Ms. Deborah S. Reed Ms. Mary Reed Ms. Victoria Reed Mr. Daniel D. Reiff Ms. Donna E. Russo Mr. Daniel S. Santos Mr. Robert Bayard Severy Mrs. Lisa Sleeper Sewall Mr. Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr. Mr. Joseph Peter Spang III Mr. Andrew Spindler-Roesle Mr. Peter Sugar Ms. Pamela Toulopoulos Mr. Kenneth C. Turino Mrs. Diane L. Viera Mrs. Nina Heald Webber Mr. Thomas E. Weesner Ms. Bonnie Widdoes Mr. Gary Wolf

Otis Society The Otis Society honors individuals who have provided for Historic New England through their wills, life income arrangements, and other long-term provisions.

Named for Harrison Gray Otis, the prominent lawyer and politician whose 1796 home has been a Historic New England museum since 1916, this important group reflects the extraordinary impact of planned giving on the future of Historic New England.

Anonymous (7) Diana Abrashkin Dr. Robert H. Ackerman* Mr. Peter W. Ambler and Ms. Lindsay M. Miller Mrs. Oliver F. Ames Dr. Barbara A. Beall Mr. Ralph C. Bloom Mrs. Natalea G. Brown Ms. Jerrilee Cain J. Scott and Verlie McKay Chaloud Thomas C. Casey* Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Cheek Ms. Margaret L. Clarke Susan W. Crum Mr.* and Mrs.* Edward A. Currie Stuart A. Drake Mr. and Mrs. Jack Dutzy Mr. David T. Edsall Mr. Nicholas C. Edsall Dr. Donald Ehresmann Alan S. Emmet 34

Mrs. Marjorie A. Falvey Roseann Ferrini Mr. William B. Finch and Ms. Carol Rose Dr. and Mrs. Oscar Fitzgerald Mr. William F. Gemmill and Ms. Sally Gemmill Ms. Lucretia Hoover Giese* Ms. Janet Green Annabella Gualdoni and Vito Cavallo Mr. Jeffrey M. Hall Mr. Philip A. Hayden Mr. Henry B. Hoover, Jr. Mr. Ralph Johnston Mr. Christopher Keppelman Mrs. Mary S. Kingsbery Catherine Coolidge Lastavica Ms. Ginny Leslie Mrs. Shirley M. Marston Mr. John Matzke Mr. Paul F. McDonough, Jr. and Ms. Carla A. Blakley Karen and Warren McFarlan

William L. McQueen and Carla O. A. Bosch Ms. Marjorie D. Moerschner* Mr. Alan Murray Ms. Beverly P. Mutrie Mr. John A. Neale and Dr. Stephen L. Boswell Mr. Carl R. Nold and Ms. Vicky L. Kruckeberg Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Nylander Nancy Osgood Mr. Stephen P. Parson Mr. and Mrs. Anthony D. Pell Mr. Brian R. Pfeiffer Ms. Deborah S. Reed Robert B. Rettig Mr. James V. Righter Mr. David N. Rooney Mr. and Mrs. Roger T. Servison Mr. Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr. Mr. Alan P. Slack Susan P. Sloan

Mrs. Frederick A. Stahl Dennis E. Stark and Robert F. Amarantes Mr. J. Reed Stewart Thomas A. Stone and Valerie M. Warrior Ms. Denise C. Sullivan Ms. Bette Task E. Clothier Tepper Bryant F. Tolles, Jr. Nancy Briggs Tooke Mr. George E. Triantaris and Mr. Steve Nigzus Mrs. Anne M. Twichell Mr. Kemble Widmer II and Ms. Elisabeth Garrett Widmer Mrs. Priscilla Hutt Williams Mr. Roger D. Willmott Ms. Susan F. Witzell * Deceased

“

In a year of new ventures—and a few adventures —Historic New England expanded its engagement with audiences in some exciting ways.

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Financials Operating Financial Statement a APRIL 1, 2018 - MARCH 31, 2019

REVENUE FY2019 Investment Return Designated for Operations b Revenue from Operations Contributed Income Contributed Income for Property & Long-term Investments TOTAL REVENUE

FY2018

% increase % of (decrease) TOTAL

$ $ $

6,339,000 2,555,000 2,776,000

$ 6,138,000 $ 2,437,000 $ 3,735,000

3% 5% (26%)

50% 20% 22%

$

945,000

$ 6,176,000

(85%)

8%

$ 12,615,000

$ 18,486,000

(32%)

100%

FY2018

% increase (decrease)

% of TOTAL

7% 9% 3% 7% 6% (14%) 14% 15% 3%

34% 18% 13% 11% 9% 6% 4% 3% 2%

6%

100%

EXPENSES FY2019 Museum Operations Preservation Maintenance Collections & Exhibitions Education & Public Programming Administration Fundraising Revenue Generating Projects Preservation Easement Program Marketing

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

4,473,000 2,396,000 1,658,000 1,424,000 1,186,000 780,000 567,000 397,000 247,000

TOTAL EXPENSES c

$ 13,128,000

Net Income (Loss) from Operations d $ (513,000) Endowment Assets e $ 127,379,000 Gain (Loss) on Investments $ (2,771,000)

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

4,182,000 2,202,000 1,607,000 1,337,000 1,118,000 910,000 497,000 345,000 240,000

$ 12,438,000 $ 6,048,000 $ 134,251,000 $ 14,932,000

a T his financial statement represents the general operating activities for Historic New England only. Other non-operating activity, including realized and unrealized gains on restricted assets, can be found within the audited financial statements. b “ Investment Return Designated for Operations” represents endowment funds approved by the Board of Trustees to support annual operations, and income from trusts. The annual draw is based on appropriating 5% (the board may approve more or less each year) of the preceding twenty-quarter fair market value of the investments as of December 31. c In FY2019, total expenses were spent as follows: program expenses = 83%, administration and marketing = 11%, and fundraising = 6%. d “ Net income from Operations” above includes contributions for property acquisitions and long-term investment of $0.9 million in FY 2019 and $6 million in FY 2018. e “Endowment Assets” excludes beneficial interest in perpetual trusts which equaled $9.8 million for FY 2019 and $10.1 million for FY 2018.

36

“

Thanks to your generous and continued support, we are assured that our future will be filled with history.

"

37

Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Boston, Massachusetts Permit No. 58621 141 Cambridge Street Boston, Mass. 02114-2702

c Marketplace SIGNS

by WILLIAM L. MCQUEEN An architect, William L. McQueen is a professor emeritus at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and a member of the Historic New England Council. He recently donated his collection of artifacts from Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace to our organization.

F

rederick A. Stahl and Roger S. Webb assembled a team of architects in June 1969 to prepare documents for the restoration of the North and South Market buildings, and later the Faneuil Hall (Quincy) Market building in Boston. The first task was to survey the conditions of the buildings; every floor and every corner of each market building was documented.

Many unique artifacts that had been left behind over the course of the more than 140-year-life of the markets were discovered. A number of these were found under the eaves. Team members saved many artifacts and displayed them in their second-floor field office in the Quincy Market building beneath the plastered rotunda dome.

Much of the preparation of the contract documentation was completed in fall 1970 and the team disbanded.

Some of the artifacts moved on with the team members as reminders of their efforts to preserve and restore a significant part of Boston’s architectural heritage.

Some of the most colorful and graphic artifacts were the signs identifying the individual purveyors who occupied the buildings. Though found in the eaves of

d

South Market, these signs were once prominently displayed at Quincy Market. One—a two-sided sign—hung from the exterior canopy structure perpendicular to the facade.

The other sign was made so that it tucked under a firstfloor windowsill above the steps of a cellar store.

These signs, artfully displayed in several homes from Beacon Hill to Bristol and Newport, Rhode Island, have been returned to Massachusetts to be added to Historic New England’s collection of Faneuil Hall Markets documentation and artifacts.

Waters and Litchfield Co. specialized in “fabricated cuts” and marketed itself as “hotel purveyors.” Today the company would be called a meat supplier or butcher. Lowell Bros. and Bailey Co. was a wholesale produce dealer.

The award-winning Historic New England magazine is a benefit of membership. To join, please visit HistoricNewEngland.org.

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