The Legacy of Sarah Moore Field

Sarah Moore Field (foreground) with her family on the steps of their North Andover, Massachusetts, home in 1899. Her older sister, Anna, is standing and her parents, Bert and Julia, are in the center. Courtesy of North Andover Historical Society.

by SUSAN J. MONTGOMERY As a graduate student in 1992, Susan J. Montgomery was hired as a consultant to evaluate Field-Hodges House as it was left by Sarah Moore Field. She has since worked at a number of history and art museums and published widely in the field of American Arts and Crafts-era ceramics. Her book, Wisteria House: Life in a New England Home, 1839-2000, was published in February by Rowman & Littlefield.

1988) hoped that after her death, the beloved home she had lived in for all of her 103 years in North Andover, Massachusetts, would become a house museum. That, however, is not exactly what happened. Instead, a more creative solution was found that balanced her intentions with the economic challenges of opening and sustaining a historic property for the public.

Field was born at Field-Hodges House at 266 Main St., when her grandfather owned it. Jeremiah Smith Field (1817-1889) purchased the property in 1874 as a retirement

sanctuary from a busy career as a merchant in nearby Lawrence. When he and his wife, Sarah, moved in, they brought with them midnineteenth-century furnishings acquired during twenty years of marriage, including Windsor chairs; mahogany Empire tables; painted cottage bedroom sets; and pewter, glass, and ceramic tableware. Their son, Herbert (1857-1939), known as Bert, married Julia McDuffie (1851-1923) in December 1878 and brought her home to live with his parents. Over time the couple purchased furnishings to suit their taste. Thus a five-piece parlor suite, an Eastlake-style sideboard, and an oak extension table were superimposed over the older layer of decor. Children’s furniture and toys were acquired as needed after their children, Anna (1879-1929) and Sarah, were born.

Field studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and later earned certification as a physical therapist, but she never chose to pursue a career. Summoned home to care for her ailing mother, she kept the household as it was, comfortable and familiar. Field’s sense of duty to her family was an essential element of her character. For most of the 1920s and 1930s, she was the primary caregiver for her parents as well as a widowed aunt who lived nearby, nursing all three through prolonged terminal illnesses. Anna, who married in 1905 and had two daughters, lived most of her life in New Jersey.

As the unmarried daughter, Field’s devotion was probably taken for granted, but it often came at considerable cost to her personal life and health. When her father died in 1939, she found herself living alone for the first time; she was fifty-four, wealthy, and free to do whatever she pleased. She could have traveled or modernized her 100-year-old house. Instead, Field continued to live modestly in the only home she had ever known, maintaining what she firmly believed was her family’s legacy.

The great size of the house— nine rooms plus a full attic—easily

Wisteria in full bloom on the veranda of Field-Hodges House in a photograph taken between 1900 and 1919. This image, used for the cover of Susan Montgomery’s book Wisteria House: Life in a New England Home, 1839-2000, is a positive color glass plate made by the G. Cramer Dry Plate Company of St. Louis, Missouri.

Left Top One of the two attic rooms of Field-Hodges House that were collaged with old wallpaper after the Fields family moved in. The large diamond pattern, designed to be combined with the floral elements as borders and friezes, dates from 1840-1860. Both rooms are protected by a Historic New England preservation easement. Left Bottom Sarah Moore Field purchased this Chambers Fireless Cooking Gas Range in December 1928. It was donated to Historic New England in 1998 along with the stainless steeltopped kitchen table and chairs. Photograph © 1992 Randy Sims. Above Field’s father bought this Morris chair, shown in the library of the house in 1992, for his wife in April 1885. Photograph © 1992 Randy Sims.

allowed for the accumulation of a vast collection of belongings. Items that were worn out or no longer needed, pictures and accessories that went out of fashion, clothing and toys that were outgrown—were simply moved to the attic. Many more remained in active service until Field’s estate was settled in 1998. An 1885 English dinnerware service for twelve remained on the top shelves of the pantry. Other furnishings were renewed as necessary. The parlor suite that Bert bought in 1877, for example, was reupholstered in 1902 and again in 1938. It then anchored one end of the formal parlor for another fifty years.

Over the years Field added her own belongings to the mix. She kept her Abbot Academy textbooks from the turn of the century in her back parlor. Paintings done during her art student days were hung on the walls. A Colonial Revival mahogany bookcase and desk she purchased in 1909 remained in the double parlor for the rest of her long life. When making new purchases, Field did so with an eye toward longevity. Her Chambers kitchen stove was innovative in 1928 when she bought it and was still used every day into the 1980s.

Field left many small things as she had found them for decades, time capsules for future historians. In 1992, Bert Field’s 1930s cigars and calendars were still in his desk drawers. A bathroom cabinet was filled with long outof-date prescriptions and patent medicines, including laudanum. More deliberately than simply keeping things, Field began to catalogue family relics in the attic in 1940. Among these were a brown

A teenaged Sarah Moore Field sat for this studio photograph in 1901. On the right, she tends to her her garden at Field-Hodges House in June 1972.

plush coat and a mohair cape that belonged to her mother sixty-five years earlier.

Field photographed the interior of the house twice. In 1910, when she was an avid photographer in her mid-twenties, the exercise might have been for her own pleasure. The second set of photographs, taken around 1940, was surely an effort to document the changes made over the intervening years. The same items of furniture appear in both sets, providing insight into the continuity that permeated her life.

Field’s choices of what to retain were linked to her memories. As an elderly woman, she often told visitors that a Morris chair in her library was purchased by her father shortly after she was born as a gift for her mother. Held together by an electrical cord around its legs, the dilapidated chair was clearly a cherished heirloom, an emotional tether to her family, whether or not the story about its acquisition was true. But after her death, a receipt for a Morris chair dated April 1885, three months after Field’s birth, was found in her father’s records.

Field did pursue personal interests. Like her parents and grandparents, she maintained the formal gardens laid out by the wife of George Hodges, who built the house in 1839. Among many other plantings, Elizabeth Hodges planted the wisteria vine that blooms on the veranda to this day and gives the home its nickname, Wisteria House. Field was an active member of the North Andover Garden Club for more than sixty years. In 1936, an item in a local newspaper noted that her famous blooming wisteria was “as much a part of spring in North Andover as the first robin.”

Field’s interest in history was closely linked to a sense of duty to her family. After her father died, she investigated her family tree, annotating and correcting her copy of the 1901 Field Genealogy and halfheartedly pursuing membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution. For twenty years she also cared for the Field homestead in Peterborough, New Hampshire, Twin Rock Farm, which her greatgrandfather purchased in 1804. Bert Field inherited the house, barn, equipment, and livestock, plus 150 acres of land in 1913, with the request that it be kept in the family. As a child Sarah had fallen in love with it. She called her reluctance to leave the relaxation and peace she found there the “Peterborough disease.”

By the late 1960s it was clear that neither of her nieces could accept responsibility for Twin Rock Farm, so Field gave it to Francis H. Carr, a distant cousin who had lived in Peterborough all his life; Carr had young children who might be instilled with the importance of family roots. In a personal note to Carr she wrote, “You are now the proud owner. Although my heart is a little sad, I feel confident that my choice of you was the right one. Let our ancestors rest in peace.”

After settling the future of Twin Rock Farm, she grew more concerned about Field-Hodges House. An astute financial manager, Field was well aware of her property’s market value, but

preserving it was her priority. She had had several offers to buy it over the years. “Of course,” she wrote in February 1970, “my answer to everyone is—I was born here, love the place, its many demands keep me from being too lonesome without a family and I hope to die here. . . . The garden too is one of its attractions to my way of life. There isn’t a spot inside the buildings or on the grounds that I haven’t worked over to make it what it is.”

Field’s longtime effort to preserve Wisteria House was entirely personal. She wanted her nieces, Barbara and Polly, to inherit it, so that they would know who they were and where they came from. But Barbara suffered from poor physical and mental health all of her adult life and Polly developed severe rheumatoid arthritis and retired early to Arizona. Neither was able to return to North Andover permanently.

The first indication that she was interested in establishing FieldHodges House as a historic site was in 1978. She and her trusted adviser, Rev. Herbert I. Schumm, pastor of Trinitarian Congregational Church, met with representatives of the North Andover Historical Society (NAHS). They discussed a tentative budget for maintaining the house, based on an endowment of $300,000, considered adequate to produce an income of $24,000 annually, but nothing was formalized at that time. A year later, Polly died unexpectedly.

Field revised her will several times over the next ten years. The 1983 version explicitly stated her wishes: “It is my intention that the house, with the accompanying shed and barn, shall be maintained in a good state of repair at all times, and that they, together with the formal garden, the landscaping, and the surrounding fences, shall be preserved so far as is practical, in the order in which I have kept them. It is my desire that said property, by reason of its ownership and management by the North Andover Historical Society, shall serve to promote the community’s awareness of its historical heritage, and that, to this end, the property will be made available for viewing by the public as frequently and to the extent which may be possible and practical.”

Her fourth (and final) will was written in 1986, after Barbara died. Field bequeathed her home to Trinitarian Congregational Church. She directed the church to contract with NAHS or another experienced agency to preserve and maintain the house and to establish “such historical restrictions on the property as shall insure that the architectural integrity of the house and the general historical significance of the property will be

The front parlor of Field-Hodges House c. 1940, from a set of documentary photographs taken by Sarah Moore Field. The “Turkish” sofa and the chair to the right are part of a suite purchased in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1877. Reupholstered twice, they were still in the parlor in 1992.

carefully preserved.”

Unfortunately, the endowment stipulation was not revisited. After Field’s death in 1988, a property management expert determined that the $300,000 endowment was woefully inadequate to generate the needed income. Both Trinitarian Congregational Church and NAHS reluctantly declined to assume responsibility for Field-Hodges House; taking it on would have invited financial disaster. Physical maintenance aside, as a museum Field-Hodges House probably would not generate enough visitation to survive. Although the collection was extraordinary in its size and scope, it was not high style. There were no war heroes, no politicians, no great artists or writers in the family. They were simply typical of the upper middle class.

A more creative alternative to a conventional house museum was required to ensure that the Field family would not be forgotten. Schumm and an advisory team of curators and historians, including Historic New England’s Richard Nylander, devised an innovative plan. First, the family’s belongings were catalogued and several regional museums and agencies were invited to choose pieces that best served their missions. The estate donated Field’s family archives, furnishings, and personal belongings to Historic New England,

NAHS, North Andover Public Library, the American

Textile History Museum, Phillips Academy, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Strawbery Banke Museum, Lawrence History Center, the Peabody Essex Museum, Emerson College, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Monadnock Center for History and Culture in Peterborough, New Hampshire, to ensure their accessibility to scholars and the public as examples of nineteenth- and twentieth-century material culture. The remainder of the collection was sold at a public auction to benefit Trinitarian Congregational Church.

In 2000, Historic New England placed an easement (legally binding preservation restrictions) on certain architectural and interior elements in perpetuity, and the house was sold to private owners. Finally, Wisteria House: Life in a New England Home, 1839-2000 was written as a permanent record of the families that lived there.

Although Sarah Moore Field’s dream that her historic home be shared with the public as a house museum could not be realized, her intent to preserve her family’s legacy was met.

Field photographed the pantry in March 1910. Her mother’s English dinnerware set for twelve took up the top three shelves. Above A glass jar of Maxwell House coffee, 1946-1949, is one of many twentieth-century objects Historic New England acquired in 1998.