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Moffatt-Ladd House: Colonial Portsmouth Mansion, Plus A Famous Tree

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Portsmouth, N.H., has a long history of shipbuilding, still evident in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard across the Piscataqua River. But many of the city’s shipbuilders also bought and sold kidnapped Africans as slaves. You will learn about that historic inequality during a visit to the Moffatt-Ladd House, where a founding father slept in a feather bed and his enslaved servant slept on a mat on the floor.

During the 18th century, all of the people who lived in the Moffatt-Ladd House were associated with slavery, one way or another.

Aerial view of Portsmouth. The Moffatt-Ladd House is circled. Across the river from it is the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

John Moffatt outfitted a ship that brought 56 captured men, women and children from Guinea. Samuel Moffatt co-owned a slave trading vessel lost at sea in 1766-67. Moffatt’s nephew, William Whipple, co-owned a slave ship, the Black Pearl, that may have brought Prince, his brother and 184 others to the auction block in North America.

Moffatt-Ladd House History

John Moffatt was a wealthy New Hampshire shipbuilder who hired 12 men to build a grand house in 1760. It took them three years to finish. At three stories, it was the tallest building in Portsmouth. Moffatt then gave the house to his son Samuel as a wedding present the next year. Samuel had less luck in business than his father and fled to the West Indies to avoid debtor’s prison. His father moved back.

William Whipple married Samuel’s sister (and his own cousin) Katharine in 1771. He brought Prince with him when he moved into the Moffatt-Ladd House that year.

In 1775, New Hampshire sent Royal Gov. John Wentworth packing. The colony organized a provincial congress. Whipple won election as Portsmouth’s representative to the provincial congress, then to the Continental Congress. Prince accompanied him to sessions in Philadelphia and was with him when he signed the Declaration of Independence.

A depiction of the Second Continental Congress voting on the Declaration of Independence

Revolution

In 1777, William went to war with a commission as a captain. Prince went with him as his servant. Early in the war, the British had offered freedom to any enslaved men who fought with them. The Continental Army responded by enlisting Black soldiers. Prince got a promotion – to military aide and soldier in the New Hampshire militia. William also got a promotion to brigadier general.

Legend has William ordered to Vermont, and Prince saying to him, “”You are going to fight for your Liberty, but I have none to fight for.” Whatever the case, William did end Prince’s servitude in 1781, as the war wound down.

But before then, Prince and William fought at Saratoga and at the Battle of Rhode Island. Another legend has Prince Whipple accompanying George Washington during his famous crossing of the Delaware. It probably never happened. However, in the 1851 painting by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, some identify the black oarsman as Prince Whipple.

codfish-glovers-regiment

Crossing the Delaware. A Black man rows in the bow of the boat in front of Washington.

Return to Portsmouth

Before he won his freedom, Prince and 19 other enslaved men signed a petition for freedom and submitted it to the New Hampshire Legislature in 1779. Prince, who was literate, may have written the petition, which took some language from the Declaration of Independence.

The bondsmen emphatically rejected any idea that they are inferior to white people. And they ended with a prayer, “that the name of SLAVE may no more be heard in a land gloriously contending for the sweets of freedom.”

They submitted the petition for freedom to the Legislature in Exeter on Nov. 12, 1779.

It was read in the House of Representatives on April 25, 1780, and ordered published in the New Hampshire Gazette. The newspaper printed it with a disclaimer that it was intended “for the amusement “ of its readers.

The House tabled it.

A Family Affair

For his service in the war, Prince received a small plot of land in Portsmouth. He married a woman named Dinah, freed from slavery on her 21st birthday. Prince, Dinah and Prince’s brother Cuffee built a house. Dinah taught children in the building, calling it the Ladies Charitable African School.

William Whipple became an associate justice of the Superior Court of New Hampshire. He fell off his horse while riding the circuit in 1785, and he died of a heart ailment shortly thereafter. Prince outlived him by 11 years, an esteemed member of his community.

Moffatt-Ladd House today

Katharine Whipple, now widowed, held on to the house and ran the family business. Her granddaughter, Maria Ladd, inherited the house. Maria then bequeathed it to her four surviving children. The two women got their shares outright, but Maria gave their brothers the house in trust for their children.

One of the brothers, Alexander H. Ladd, bought out his siblings, modernized the house and created a Colonial Revival garden on the grounds. Eventually, the Ladd descendants leased and then sold the Moffatt-Ladd House to The National Society of the Colonial Dames of America. The public can now take a guided tour from June to mid-October.

Freedom

Six of the Black men who signed the New Hampshire petition (including Prince Whipple) did gain their freedom after the Revolution. Others had to wait a lot longer. In 2013, the New Hampshire Legislature passed a bill to posthumously free the remaining slaves. Gov. Maggie Hassan signed it into law. King Nero Brewster won his freedom, on Friday, June 7, 2013.

Portsmouth Today

Time started to pass Portsmouth by when Thomas Jefferson declared his embargo. That stifled the shipbuilding industry, and Portsmouth no longer thrived. The happy outcome of Jefferson’s handiwork was the preservation of dozens of gorgeous Federal style homes and commercial buildings, since restored to their former glory.

The Portsmouth Athenaeum in Market Square.

Portsmouth has an abundance of historic house museums, many operating independently of each other. Strawbery Banke Museum, though, consolidates about two dozen buildings — including a tavern, a general store and a wigwam — into a single museum-going experience.  Click here for a guide to the city’s historic attractions.

Portsmouth also recognizes its Black history in its Black Heritage Trail. Click here for more information.

Or you can just walk around downtown Portsmouth, declared a National Historic District in 2017.

Five Things You’ll Remember About the Moffatt-Ladd House

Chestnut Tree

After William Whipple signed the Declaration of Independence, he and Prince Whipple returned to Portsmouth. They – well, probably, Prince or another enslaved servant — planted the seeds of the tree next to the house. Other signers of the Declaration also planted trees to commemorate the momentous occasion.

In the Moffatt-Ladd House garden, three probably grew to maturity, and one survives to this day.

That’s the tree to the left of the house.

Staircase

The broad and sweeping staircase is a work of art. Ebenezer Deering carved its elaborate modillions, rosettes, stair brackets and capitals. Each stair tread has three balusters, and each has a different kind of turning. The scenic wallpaper, probably added around 1820, adds to the majestic effect.

The staircase rises from a grand hallway, which takes up one-fourth of the first floor. The Moffats probably entertained guests in the impressive entrance. They may have used it as a ballroom.

William Whipple’s sword

There nothing like a Revolutionary War artifact to get the history buff’s juices flowing. The sword used by William Whipple during the battles of Saratoga and Rhode Island doesn’t disappoint.

William Whipple

Original Furnishings

John Moffatt did not scrimp on furniture, as some of the surviving pieces make clear. They include beautifully carved furniture from Portsmouth craftsmen and parlor chairs covered with fabric from England. The house also features fine China from England, fine glassware and carpeting, and baskets and woodenware made by local Native Americans. The surprisingly bold wallpaper will be hard to forget.

Some pieces, though, represent the period and didn’t belong to the Moffatt family.

Garden

Alexander Hamilton Ladd designed the terraced Colonial Revival garden. With waterfront views, it’s a delightful spot for eating lunch or even for getting married. (The house can be rented out for weddings.)

If you visit…

Guided tours of the house are available June through mid-October, Monday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays 1-5 p.m. Tours last 45-60 minutes.

The garden opens for self-guided tours around lunchtime during the workweek. Admission is by donation. It’s a beautiful spot to spend some time or even enjoy a bagged lunch on your lunch hour.

Parking can be tough in Portsmouth, but there’s a multi-story garage nearby on Hanover Street. It costs only $2 per hour.

The Moffatt-Ladd House has a quaint little gift shop that sells heirloom plants from the garden and seeds from William Whipple’s horse chestnut tree.

Click here for the Moffatt-Ladd House website.

Images: Aerial view of Portsmouth: Highsmith, Carol M, photographer. Aerial view of a portion of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Maine, across the Piscataqua River, is to the left. United States Portsmouth New Hampshire, 2017. -10-18. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017884988/. Moffatt-Ladd House (featured image) By InAweofGod'sCreation – Blue -ti -ful Moffat-Ladd House, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70507899.

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A Brief History of Handwriting

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The long and storied art of handwriting began in the Papal treasury, migrated through Europe to the American colonies, flourished in New England penmanship schools and then died in the internet age.

Handwriting once meant something. For one thing, it meant you could read and write. Back in the day, not everyone who could read knew how to write.

Your style of handwriting also showed who you were. Businesspeople used one style of handwriting, a simple, legible hand. Leisured gentlemen used another with lots of flourishes. Ladies had their own delicate alphabet.

Handwriting, though, didn’t just evolve as a generally accepted thing. Over the centuries, a handful of individuals, fanatic about penmanship, set handwriting standards for most of the rest of us. They decided what a capital X should look like, at what degree letters should be angled, the loopiness of lower-case letters.

Then, of course, the keyboard and the screen made handwriting disappear. But devotees of pen and ink should take heart. Handwriting may be coming back.

An essential skill

For centuries, legible handwriting was an essential skill for businesspeople and government officials. Laws, deeds, proclamations, contracts and military orders all had to be recorded somehow. But without a standard, different penmanship styles were like different languages.

Writing masters in the papal treasurer’s office first developed an italic cursive script that morphed into the handwriting taught to American schoolchildren in the 20th century. After the sack of Rome in 1527, the pope’s writing masters moved to Southern France. But without the Roman Catholic Church enforcing handwriting discipline, they began to come up with new styles of writing alphabets.

The Italic cursive evolved into italic circumflessa, which further evolved into a French style called rhonde.

French government officials complained they couldn’t read documents because they were written in different hands. The Controller-General of Finances then decided all legal documents had to be written in one of three handwriting styles: the coulee, the rhonde and the speed hand.

The French rhonde migrated to England, where it developed into the English round hand.

A Handwriting Giant

George Bickham, a giant in the pantheon of penmen, was a key figure in the development of handwriting. A calligrapher and an engraver, in 1733 he collected samples of penmanship from 24 writing teachers in London. He engraved them and published them in a book, The Universal Penman.

The book had 19 complete alphabets, such as Gothic, which was falling out of fashion except for legal documents. Bickham’s book – still available, on Amazon — popularized the new English round hand. It looks like a typeface known as Copperplate.

Bickham had an alphabet for everyone, or at least anyone who needed to write. There were alphabets for English gentlemen, alphabets for merchants, alphabets for women and girls.

Handwriting Schools

Like many other things, the English round hand crossed the Atlantic to the colonies. Writing masters taught the English round in writing schools, or they traveled the countryside like peddlers looking for pupils.

Boston had three writing schools by the time of the American Revolution. They taught more boys than the better-known Latin School. The curriculum was narrow: boys were taught math and penmanship so they could produce dignified-and readable documents. If you wanted to be a merchant, bookkeeper, legal clerk or engrosser, you needed to have decent handwriting.

It wasn’t easy. You had to know how to make a quill from a goose feather, mix ink, rule lines on paper or parchment and write without spotting or smudging the writing surface. You had to know how to sit or stand, what angle to position the paper and how to hold the pen.

John Tileston taught at Boston’s public writing school in the North End for 65 years. He had an injured hand and probably inspired the fictional character Johnny Tremain. Tileston was also a good friend of John Adams, who needed legible handwriting for legal complaints, letters to Abigail and founding documents of the United States of America.

Declaration of Independence

It was Adams’ friend Thomas Jefferson, of course, who drafted the Declaration. He had a neat round plain hand, but he didn’t actually write the document. A Pennsylvania brewer, Timothy Matlack, known for his excellent handwriting, was tasked with the project.

Timothy Matlack

Matlack didn’t sign the Declaration, even though he wrote it. He wasn’t a delegate. But he did fight in the American Revolution, leading Pennsylvania’s 5th Rifle Battalion across the Delaware with George Washington.

Spencerian Handwriting

Handwriting changed along with writing instruments and the reason for writing. English round hand, for example, came about partly because people started using more flexible nibs. The Spencerian script spread as people began using steel pens.  Telegraph operators adopted the Spencerian script because they needed a faster, simpler handwriting than the English round hand in order to transcribe Morse code.

From the 1860s into the early 1900s, Spencerian handwriting dominated the written word in America.  Platt Rogers Spencer invented it in 1840 by simplifying the English round hand. His capital letters didn’t require the pen to be lifted from the paper so much, and lower-case letters were more angular.

He opened a school in Jericho, N.Y., to teach his system of handwriting and record-keeping. His students went on to found the chain of Bryant & Stratton business schools, which spread Spencerian handwriting in factories, mills and warehouses throughout America. He also taught Penmanship at the Enterprise Institute in Hiram, Ohio, under President James A. Garfield, who later became U.S. president. Garfield wrote the introduction to his book, the Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship. He called Spencerian script “the pride of our country and the model of our schools.”

Spencer came up with a ladies’ hand, too.

After the Civil War, it became the American standard writing style for business correspondence and for government clerks. Henry Ford learned the Spencerian style of handwriting; you can see it in the Ford Motor Company logo. Coca Cola’s bookkeeper also used the Spencerian script to design the company’s trademark.

Palmer Method of Handwriting

Good handwriting could get you a good job. G.A. Gaskell taught Spencerian handwriting at a Bryant & Stratton business school in Concord, N.H. He ran a newspaper ad for the school saying hundreds of his students, “who by means of their elegant penmanship secured through his instruction, now occupy important and lucrative positions.”

Austin Palmer worked as a janitor to pay his tuition at Gaskell’s school. Sure enough, he got a job as a bookkeeper and clerk in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Palmer watched his colleagues toil away at their writing all day. Spencerian handwriting had too many curls and flourishes, he thought. It also required too many lifted-arm movements. It was too tiring and too slow, and at the end of the day it gave a clerk a sore arm.

Palmer penmanship

He decided to turn handwriting into “rapid, plain, unshaded, coarse-pen, muscular movement writing,” as he put it.

Muscle Memory

He came up with the idea of muscular movement. Palmer insisted writers use their forearm and hand to move the pen rather than fingers. He believed in muscle memory—if muscles moved in the same pattern over and over, those movements would be imprinted on the brain and become habit.

Palmer quit his job and taught penmanship, while starting the first handwriting magazine, The Western Penman.

He subjected his penmanship students to tedious drills in which they had to quickly repeat the same spiral and wave marks hundreds of times. Palmer also viewed left-handedness as deviant and made all students write with their right hand.

Catholic schools adopted his method first, liking its emphasis on discipline and hard work. Then Palmer demonstrated the Palmer method at the St. Louis Exposition, where it impressed a New York City school superintendent. Soon half the students in New York City were learning the Palmer method. When Palmer died in 1927,  75 percent of the schools in America taught the his method.

After Palmer

Twentieth-century child psychologists figured out that small children, especially boys, did not have the fine motor skills to master cursive writing. By the 1950s, the Palmer method began to fall to the Zaner-Bloser method, which taught children to print their letters before learning cursive.

Then after 1976, schools adopted the D’Nealian method. Educators thought it made it easier for children to transition from print to cursive.

When the internet came along, educators pretty much abandoned teaching penmanship altogether. In 2010, cursive was removed from the federal Common Core Standards for K-12 education. The group that created the standard decided the need to learn to keyboard became more important.

Then parents began noticing their children couldn’t sign their own name when they applied for passports or endorsed checks. The pendulum began to swing back. In 2023,  Connecticut changed course and restored the requirement that schools teach cursive writing.

Thanks to Handwriting in America by Donna R. Braden at the Henry Ford blog.

Images: Timothy Matlack by By Charles Willson Peale – Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, online database, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4023540.

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The Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion, Benning Wentworth’s Oddity in Wood

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Benning Wentworth did things his own way and he did them in a large way. His house, the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion, is an eccentric collection of angles, gables and ells–what you might expect from someone who annexed Vermont and married his maid at a dinner party.

Side view of the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion

King George II appointed Wentworth royal governor of the Province of New Hampshire in 1741, and he kept the job for 26 years. During that time he conducted official business from the Portsmouth mansion, which included a special room for Governor’s Council meetings. At the close of those meetings, Wentworth invited his councilors to drink to the king’s health. By the end of the evening, those who weren’t sleeping under the table could sleep in one of the mansion’s 52 rooms.

Wentworth wasn’t above using his office to finance his aristocratic lifestyle. And he liked to reward his friends, punish his enemies and marry whomever he pleased.

Benning Wentworth

He had the Wentworth family’s penchant for nepotism. His father, John, had served as lieutenant governor of New Hampshire before him, when it still belonged to Massachusetts. His nephew, John II, served as governor after him.

Gov. Benning Wentworth

Though no colonial governor served longer than Benning Wentworth, he did not win the esteem of New Hampshire Assemblymen. They tried to kick him out of office several times. His offenses included putting too many relatives in political jobs, abusing his office as surveyor of the king’s woods and getting rich by charging fees in exchange for land grants and pocketing some for himself. All true.

As governor, he did have the right to reserve pine trees for himself (the rest went to the British Royal Navy). He could also grant people tracts of undeveloped land.

On Jan. 3, 1749, he issued the first of 135 land grants west of the Connecticut River. He called it Bennington. Unfortunately for the settlers on the land, New York also issued land grants for the same territory. Decades later, the settlers themselves resolved the land dispute, though not without bloodshed. They declared Vermont an independent republic.

Personal Life

Wentworth men were said to have peculiar tastes in women. Benning once fell for a lower-class Portsmouth woman, who spurned him for a shipwright. He was said to have had the man impressed into the service of the British Navy for seven years.

Then, as a widowed 64-year-old he stunned his dinner guests by calling his pretty 23-year-old maid to the table. He then ordered the minister he’d invited to marry them right then and there. And so the portly, gout-beset Wentworth tied the knot with his servant right there in the midst of the high society of the colony.

Martha Wentworth Wentworth’s second husband, Michael, bought the harpsichord before he ran through all the Wentworth money.

The wedding was one of the most storied events in New Hampshire history. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow turned it into a poem called Lady Wentworth.

One reason Benning Wentworth married the much younger Martha was that he wanted an heir. Martha failed to produce one by the time he died 10 years later. She inherited his estate, and married another Wentworth, Michael, though no relation to Benning. They went through Benning’s fortune in high style, once hosting George Washington at the house during his tour of the Eastern Seaboard.

Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion

The Wentworth’s kept the house until 1816. Then in 1883, artist J. Templeman Coolidge bought the property as a summer home. He restored the house, and made some additions to it.

Coolidge liked to live large, too. Guests to the home included John Singer Sargent, historian Francis Parkman and Isabella Stewart Gardner, Boston’s extravagant art collector.

In 1954, Coolidge’s widow donated the building to the State of New Hampshire.

You have to know where to look to find the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion. Unlike most historic trophy houses, it’s in a secluded part of the city, down a winding lane lined with stone walls. A handful of houses have been built on the original estate, but trees and shrubbery screen them from the mansion.

The 40-room house (it once had 52 rooms) sits on a rolling lawn that slopes down to the river. The lilac bushes that surround the building were planted by Benning Wentworth. They’re said to be offshoots of the first lilacs brought to America.

Benning Wentworth began living in the house after the king appointed him governor. When he moved in, framers had already joined together a hodge-podge of separate structures. Wentworth in 1750 added another section befitting a royal governor. He hired a carpenter to live in the house while he worked; the carpenter stayed five years.

He added a formal dining room, a Council Chamber wing, a parlor, a billiard room (but no billiard table)  and card rooms. Inside, the size and finish of the rooms clearly identify their purpose, which mitigates house’s chaotic structure. It has a formal entertaining area, family rooms and work rooms for servants.

Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion Oddities

The Wentworth-Coolidge mansion has several unusual features for a colonial dwelling. One of those, a stewing kitchen, probably resulted from Wentworth’s French chef. A tavern keeper named John King, he visited Wentworth three times a week to shave him, dress his hair and cook special meals. King disappeared after he shot a deputy sheriff.

The house once had a flat deck with a roof made of pine tar and gravel, highly unusual for the era. Wentworth could sunbathe on the roof to relieve his gout symptoms, while enjoying the view of the Piscataqua River and his formal gardens.

Also unusual: three small gable-roofed additions, called outshots, that look like afterthoughts. They probably served as vestibules.

The house has a huge cellar extending under most of the house, said to contain stalls for 30 horses. Not likely, according to conservator James Garvin.

The Governor’s Council still meets at the mansion occasionally – in summertime, it isn’t heated. There aren’t many furnishings in the house, though.

Around the Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion

History lovers can’t help but love Portsmouth, an eminently walkable small city full of beautifully restored Federal-style buildings.  George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette visited Portsmouth, John Paul Jones lived there and Daniel Webster practiced law on Market Square.

Jefferson Street in Portsmouth’s Strawbery Banke Museum.

The city has retained its historic character thanks to preservation that began in the 1960s with the efforts of librarian Dorothy Vaughan.

The Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion is just one of a dozen or so historic houses open to the public. Downtown alone has 35 previous listings on the National Register and five National Historic Landmarks. Portsmouth also has the Strawbery Banke outdoor museum, featuring more than 37 restored buildings built between the 17th and 19th centuries in the Colonial, Georgian, and Federal style architectures.

Retail and restaurants are alive and well in Portsmouth, so even non-history lovers will find much to enjoy and experience in the 400-year-old city on the seacoast.

Five Things You’ll Remember

The Anchor

Before he won his appointment as royal governor, Wentworth engaged in merchant shipping, mostly to Spain. But he didn’t put the enormous anchor in the front yard. The best guess is that Coolidge bought it at salvage and moved it there as a giant lawn ornament. It supposedly came from the ship of the line Ohio. For mariners, the anchor served as an aid to navigation, letting them know they’re entering New Hampshire’s only seaport.

The Fireplace in the Governor’s Council Chamber

The chimneypiece supposedly took a ship’s carpenter 13 months to finish. It’s been called the most elaborate carved mantelshelf in the American colonies. It has marble facing, female relief figures, floral swags, scroll bracket and medallions of shell and Tudor rose.

The Wallpaper

Only the most aristocratic houses had wallpaper back in colonial times, so of course Benning Wentworth had to decorate his walls with it. The bright red wallpaper in the parlor reflects his outsize personality. Or perhaps his need for attention.

The Spy Closet

The Governor’s office and a clerk’s room adjoins the parlor. The clerk’s room has a closet with a little window.  Supposedly, Wentworth spied through the window to see who sat in the waiting room. Garvin, however, debunks that legend. “In reality, this is one of several small windows that convey a bit of light into otherwise dark areas within the core of the dwelling—an important aid at a time when the only available artificial light would have been a candle, wax taper, or burning splint,” he wrote. Besides, Wentworth was too fat to fit into the room.

The Wentworth-Coolidge Mansion Grounds

Wentworth’s formal gardens have given way to grass, but visitors can still enjoy the lovely setting. The river flows by the front of the house, past the wooded shore opposite. In the distance, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard’s cranes and towers poke into the sky. A hiking trail leads around the property.

The mansion is open daily to the public from Memorial Day through October. The grounds are open year-round.


Images: Governor’s Council Chamber By Markjsammons – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81958393. Family parlor with harpsichord By Markjsammons – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81958400. Side view of the mansion By Markjsammons – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81958412.

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Prince Edward Takes a Royal Trip Through New England in 1794

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New England in the 1790s is perhaps the last place you’d expect to find a member of the British royal family. The Revolutionary War had ended less than 10 years earlier, and the relationship between the United States and Great Britain remained volatile, especially along the Canadian border. Nevertheless, deep in the winter of 1794, Prince Edward — George III’s fourth son and future father of Queen Victoria — passed through here. He stayed for about a month.

Prince Edward in 1782, by Thomas Gainsborough

What possessed a British royal to visit the birthplace of the American Revolution, his father’s former territory and supposed hotbed of anti-monarchical sentiment?

In 1791, 23-year-old Edward was effectively living in exile in Canada with his French mistress, Julie de Saint-Laurent. In the years leading to his North American banishment, Edward had caused great anxiety for his father, King George. Not only had he incurred enormous debts in London and Gibraltar, he’d also developed a reputation for drunkenness. That was partly due to the influence of his elder brothers.

Julie de Montgenêt de St. Laurent

Prince Edward, Exiled in Canada

To protect Edward from his brothers’ corrupting influence, the King resolved to send him to Quebec City as commander of the Royal Fusiliers. Edward at first enjoyed his time in Canada. (He lived with Julie at 6 Rue Saint-Louis in a building now occupied by the French Consulate. But he soon tired of the location’s quiet nature. Feeling marooned at the Empire’s western edge, he concluded that Quebec must be the “most dreary and gloomy spot on the face of the earth.”

During a short leave from Canada, Edward visited New England. The trip was in no way intended to be an official “royal tour” of the United States. His father had tasked him with going to the West Indies to fight the French. Edward therefore had to travel to Boston, the nearest major port, to board HMS Roebuck in February 1794. The King chose Boston as Edward’s point of departure for a reason. He wanted to keep him away from the more cosmopolitan New York. The city was then home to many noble refugees fleeing the guillotine in France.

Bidding his mistress a sad adieu in Quebec City, Edward prepared for a long sleigh ride through the frozen wilderness of Lake Champlain and Northern New England. Madame de Saint-Laurent would soon leave for Halifax.  There she’d board a ship headed first for New York and then England. Before their parting, the prince was particularly solicitous toward her. He tucked furs snugly around her and placed a large dog at her frozen toes.

Lake Champlain, Vermont

The first-ever visit by a British royal to New England hardly got off to a fortuitous start. The prince’s horse-drawn sleigh left Quebec on Jan. 22, 1794, and made its way across frozen Lake Champlain. But then the carriage bearing Prince Edward’s possessions, including his wardrobe, linens and other cargo, sank unceremoniously through the ice. Edward was devastated, not least because the cost of a new wardrobe would be yet another blow to his debt-encumbered finances.

A 1792 drawing of the type of sleigh Prince Edward may have used to travel through the frozen New England landscape.

Traveling on to Grand Isle in the middle of Lake Champlain, Edward stopped for a night in the snow-covered town of South Hero. Until recently it had been nothing but uninhabited woodlands. There he stayed in a tavern, the Two Heroes Inn, owned by Revolutionary War veteran Ebenezer Allen, the region’s first settler. The site of the ancient tavern, with its historical marker, can be visited today at the corner of South Street and U.S. Route Two on Grand Isle.

Burlington Welcomes Prince Edward

Burlington, Vermont, has the strange distinction of being the first New England city to welcome a member of the British royal family. Vermont itself had only been a member of the Union for three years when Prince Edward arrived in 1794. Burlington then was still a small settlement of about 330 citizens. The town had been organized only 10 years before. In 1794, only seven houses comprised its central district. The Burlington community was forced to host the royal party—consisting of two bodyguards, two royal aides, a cook, and the prince—in the only building large enough to contain it. That was early settler Phineas Loomis’s two-and-a-half-story oak-framed house, which stood at the corner of Pearl and Williams Street (where the Loomis Van Patten House stands today).

The prince received a warm welcome from Burlington’s most upstanding citizens, including justice of the peace Elnathan Keyes and other men. They wrote to Edward promising to treat him with the “respectful attention tied to your rank.” The prince accordingly granted them an audience.

Montpelier, Williamstown, and Brookfield, Vermont

Departing Burlington after a stay of two or three days, the royal party continued its journey through the forests of Vermont. A dirt-and-gravel road took them to the state’s capital city, Montpelier. That night, Colonel Davis, the city’s founder, welcomed Edward into his home beside the North Branch of the Winooski River and Rialto Bridge. According to one colorful account, the prince had brought a band of 15 or 20 armed guards. They included “tasters” who tested his food for poison. It’s said Colonel Davis laughed at Edward’s precautions, reassuring him that Vermont was far safer than London. That caused the prince to send the armed retinue back to Canada.

Later that evening, the prince stopped for dinner in Williamstown at the home of Judge Elijah Paine. Before the building of the Paine Turnpike, Paine’s home doubled as a tavern. He offered shelter to many travelers who followed the trail between Montreal and Boston. That night, Edward became, according to one historian, “chatty and jocose.” Unable to suppress his supercilious nature, he asked the judge’s wife if she’d ever read anything besides scripture or the psalms. Americans, he thought, were too rustic and uncultured to read much else. In response, the woman mentioned her familiarity with Peter Pindar’s satires (which were highly critical of the King and Queen). That quickly put the prince in his place.

The Davis House where Prince Edward stayed in Montpelier.

Oh, Never Mind

Mrs. Paine’s quick-witted response was by no means the only correction Prince Edward received on his arduous journey. North of Brookfield, Edward stopped in the home of shoemaker Abner Pride for refreshments. He experienced a rather embarrassing encounter with one of his father’s former subjects. Perhaps forgetting that displays of royal entitlement were hardly likely to be well-received among the citizens of a new republic, Prince Edward, in high spirits, grabbed the shoemaker’s wife Abigail. He then kissed her forcefully on the lips. When Mrs. Abner expressed her indignation, the prince said, “Oh never mind, now you can tell your friends you’ve had the honor of being kissed by an English prince.”

The shoemaker responded by throwing the prince out of doors with a firm kick to the seat of his breeches. “Oh never mind, sir, now you can go home and tell your friends you’ve had the honor of being kicked out of doors by an American cobbler,” the man exclaimed.

Groton, Massachusetts

According to a story passed down through several generations of inhabitants of Groton, Mass., Prince Edward stopped in the town on his way toward Boston. A snowstorm detained him for several nights. The elderly Converse Richardson, close to death at the time, had his wife receive the royal party in his tavern at the corner of Elm and Pleasant streets.

Groton lore connects the young prince with an unnamed local maiden, with whom he was said to have had a brief romance while the snowstorm raged through the town. According to a local historian, the girl had a son (possibly the product of that fateful affair?) who lived in Groton for many years.

Boston

Finally reaching Boston on February 6, Prince Edward stayed with the British consul Thomas McDonogh. Frustratingly, for the prince, he learned he would have to wait until February 16 to depart for the West Indies due to the HMS Roebuck running late. During this time, he attended the wedding of Nancy Geyer and Rufus Amory, son of the Loyalist merchant John Amory.

He next appeared at a ball at the Boston Concert Hall, where he danced exclusively with Mrs. Russell (wife of a wealthy Boston merchant). She unfortunately fainted during the last of their four “country dances.” According to Abigail Adams, the prince decided not to visit Massachusetts’ lieutenant-governor Samuel Adams and sent his aides instead. This created “some difficulty,” according to Henry Jackson. He did, however, dine with the widow of Founding Father John Hancock, who called him very charming. Edward then visited Cambridge to see Harvard College. He attended a social event in the home of Revolutionary War veteran Andrew Craigie. The latter, which served as George Washington’s headquarters during the war, can be visited today at 105 Brattle Street.

The Longfellow-Craigie House, which Prince Edward visited while in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1794.

Prince Edward Pleases

Perhaps the most charming anecdote about Prince Edward’s time in Boston concerned a dinner in the home of the British consul. Edward told a story about an encounter he’d had with an elderly gentleman on his way from Northern New England. The man had said to him, “I hear you are King George’s son.” To which Edward replied, “They tell me so.” The American responded, “And, pray, how do you like this country?” “Very well,” said the prince. “And how do you think your father liked to lose it?” said the man. The prince, not missing a beat, replied, “Why, not half so well as I should like to live in it,” which pleased the man greatly.

Another gathering at the consul’s table saw Edward saluting the widow of a British officer. He thereby displeased the other women present, who’d received only a bow.

When the time came for Edward to depart, he took a special interest in the city’s French refugees. He offered them transport to the West Indies if they’d take it. Abigail Adams described his visit as “short” and said it was “best it should be so.” The city that gave birth to the American Revolution could only tolerate Edward’s royal presence for so long.

Andrew Warburton grew up in Bristol, England, and has lived in New England since 2009. His book, Fairies of New England: The Little People of the Hills and Forests, is forthcoming from the History Press (2024).

Images: Davis House, Photo by Magicpiano. Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0 license. 

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Thomas Plant Bets Big and Winds Up in a Castle in the Clouds

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Thomas Plant's LUCKNOW, now known as Castle in the Clouds

Thomas Plant did everything larger than life when it came to baseball, his shoe manufacturing empire and his castle.

Little evidence remains of his triumphs on the baseball diamond and in the shoe factory, but there is a castle in New Hampshire that became a lasting testament to his monumental life.

Born on October 5, 1859, in Bath, Maine to French Canadian parents, Plant had no formal education beyond eighth grade, but he did have a head for business and exceptional athletic ability. He was a tough, gifted baseball catcher in an age where the position was played without benefit of a mask or (often) even a glove. He played in an era where there was no formal, single major league. Teams were sponsored locally and played for a company, town or other affiliation.

Though the era of the superstar athlete was more than 100 years in the future, Plant nevertheless used his baseball skills to catapult himself to success. After working harvesting ice and at other trades, Plant settled on a vocation: the shoe industry. His biographers note his baseball ability may well explain his move to Lynn, Massachusetts, the shoe-making capital of the world, as companies sometimes recruited employee-athletes to bolster their sports teams.

In 1886, Plant became one of ten investors who pitched in $100 each to form the Lynn Union Cooperative Shoe Company. Tradition states that he raised his stake by betting on a baseball team that he managed. Over time, he would venture out on his own to start the Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company. The company history has its highs and lows. Over the years, workers suffered serious injuries that resulted in contentious lawsuits and at one point labor relations were so strained that the union workforce waged a boycott of the company until conditions and wages were improved.

Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company

Thomas G. Plant Shoe Company

At the same time, the company also was known for its innovations and progressive labor practices. At its Jamaica Plain facility (built in part to escape the powerful unions of Lynn), Plant implemented color-coded uniforms for his workers to aid in efficiency and built ramps so that employees who had to move about the factory could use roller-skates to be more productive. The plant also paid higher wages than others and provided gymnasium facilities and a library to facilitate worker self-improvement. At its peak, the facility was the largest shoe factory in the world with more than 4,000 employees. (It was destroyed by fire in 1976.)

Thomas Plant’s Personal History

Plant’s personal legacy was as complex as his professional one. In 1895, Plant married Caroline Griggs in one of Chicago’s best-attended society weddings of the season. Griggs was of Connecticut descent, and her father was a wealthy, self-made man like Plant. By this point, Plant’s shoe company was generating more than $1 million in annual sales. He had lived frugally, occupying a room in his brother’s home rather than building or buying his own. Plant had aspirations of joining Yankee society and his marriage to Griggs helped his cause when the couple relocated to Boston.

But the marriage was ill-fated. It officially landed on the rocks when Catherine learned that Thomas had a paramour ensconced in a luxurious apartment, possibly a woman he’d met from his factory. Caroline served Tom with notice of divorce proceedings and moved to Cohasset in 1910. For the next two years, the marriage made wonderful newspaper headlines, but it resisted repair. It ended finally when one morning Catherine came down for breakfast in Cohasset to find a check for $1 million in her napkin ring – the final divorce settlement (at least that’s the story that is told).

Thomas Plant Takes on the Trusts

While his marriage was unraveling, Plant’s business was also experiencing headwinds. The United Shoe Machinery Company was formed when six machine-makers joined together and created a virtual monopoly on shoe-making equipment. They convinced the government to place a tariff on foreign equipment while they began putting the shoe industry in a stranglehold. They wouldn’t sell their equipment. Rather, companies had to lease it and pay royalties on shoes produced on the machinery. And if a company used any other manufacturing equipment in a plant with United’s machinery, it was a violation of the lease and United could, and did, repossess its machines.

Thomas Plant was unhappy with United’s business model. He first tried to negotiate with the company, suggesting reduced royalties for companies that produced large quantities of shoes. United declined. So he next set about patenting his own equipment and working with other companies until he could assemble a complete manufacturing line using non-United machines. This touched off a lengthy period of litigation between United and Plant. As his marriage was disintegrating, Plant began negotiations to sell his company to United to end the dispute. Over a period of many months, the two sides negotiated a price and he sold.

Some said Plant intended to sell his equipment and factory to United all along. Others said he was beaten by the monopolistic United and the sale was a defeat. During the negotiations, Plant confided to one friend that he was tired of business, and all he wanted to do was find a place to retire to in peace.

Out with Caroline, In with Olive

The sale complete, Thomas Plant took a vacation in France. He met Olive Cornelia Dewey, who was 24 years younger than he. This put paid to Plant’s marriage as the divorce proceedings resumed and quickly settled once he returned. Plant next married Olive Dewey, and the two began the hunt for Plant’s dream retirement home. His niece had filled his head with stories about the natural beauty of the Ossipee Mountains in New Hampshire and he dispatched his brother and his secretary to begin buying up land.

While other wealthy industrialists chose Bar Harbor or Newport for their summer retreats, the Plants chose a beautiful mountain top in New Hampshire.

The acquisition of the 6,300-acre property did not go without a hitch, as some landowners did not wish to sell. In some cases, Plant paid exorbitant prices for parcels. In others, he resorted to bullying to get people to move. When he finally assembled all the acreage he wanted, work began in earnest on Ossipee Mountain Park.

Thomas Plant Builds His Castle

Architects were hired and fired, as were craftsmen and others. More than 1,000 workers set to work on the project. Work stopped in one early stage when a builder hired on more than 100 Italian craftsmen from Italy only to be told by Plant to fire them. The result was the workers took their foreman captive and only released him when Plant coughed up the pay he owed.

Bit by grinding bit, Plant’s army carved the road to the cliff on which the castle is built. Stables, outbuildings, and other facilities were constructed and pink granite was mined and incorporated into the building.
The 16-room, 10,000-square-foot mansion was completed in 1914, and they called it LUCKNOW, perhaps a reference to a Scottish Castle or perhaps a simple pun because people who went there were in luck.

As everything involving Plant, the house was complicated and unique. It featured a blend of architectural styles, including Arts and Crafts, Mission, and Colonial Revival, reflecting Tom and Olive’s eclectic tastes. Plant himself suggested there were Norwegian, Swiss and Japanese influences in its makeup.

Likewise, the furnishings reflected the couple’s tastes and interests. Tiffany glass skylights and furniture by Irving and Casson represented the current styles they favored. Timber and building materials from locales around the world were incorporated into the construction. Modern indoor plumbing, needle showers, up-to-date kitchen and modern phone system highlighted Thomas Plant’s love of technology.

A suit of armor sized for the diminutive Plant was displayed, as were Tom’s trophies for his horses and an art collection, including several pieces depicting Napoleon. Thomas stood somewhere between 5-feet and 5-feet, 4-inches, depending on what source you believe, and he had a fascination with Napoleon.

Though no longer part of the property, Thomas Plant also established the Bald Peak Colony Club to have a golf course where he could play with friends.

Thomas Plant Strikes Out

An advertisement offering Thomas Plant's LUCKNOW for sale.

An advertisement offering Thomas Plant’s LUCKNOW for sale.

Through most of the 1920s, Olive and Thomas Plant entertained guests at LUCKNOW, encouraging them to swim in Lake Winnipesaukee, ride horseback on the 30 miles of trails, enjoy a round of golf or just take in the scenic views.

Unfortunately, Plant’s success in the shoe industry did not translate to success in investing. He was patently bad at that, investing in sugar and Russian bonds, among other failures, and over the years his bank accounts dwindled.

He tried to sell LUCKNOW in the 1920s. His ad for the estate noted that the property was not for someone looking for a bargain and only men of “wealth and high standing and repute” should inquire.

“LUCKNOW is a country home for a man of big thoughts and ideas who can enjoy big things in a big way; a man who wants to make it possible for his family to spend long, happy summers and autumns in the open, close to nature, where they can enjoy within the limits of their own property every conceivable healthful outdoor sport.” He was unsuccessful in finding such a man.

Plant ended his life deep in debt. His former business associate held a mortgage on the LUCKNOW property and held off foreclosing, letting the Plants stay at LUCKNOW until Thomas Plant died in 1941. Upon his death, his friends had to take up a collection to pay funeral expenses, and the estate was sold at auction to settle his debts.

After Plant died, the property passed through a number of hands until it opened to the public as the Castle in the Clouds.

If you visit Castle in the Clouds.

Today the grounds are open for tours and hiking and riding seasonally, and the property includes a restaurant. It is a favorite destination for leaf-peeping. The property is located in Moultonborough, N.H. and offers a number of tours and special events each season. It is owned by the non-profit Castle Preservation Society.

This article draws on many sources of information, including the wonderfully researched Tom Plant: The Making of a Franco-Amer. Entrepreneur, 1859-1941 by Barry H. Rodrigue and Thomas G. Plant Shoe Factory Fire by Walter H. Marx.

Photos: LUCKNOW by Fletcher – Own work CC BY-SA 4.0,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_in_the_Clouds#/media/File:Castle_in_the_Clouds.jpg

 

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Orson Fowler, the Phrenologist Who Started the Craze for Octagon Houses

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Between 1850 and 1857, people built hundreds of octagon houses, first in the Northeast and then in the Upper Midwest. The craze began with a phrenologist named Orson Fowler, who combined political activism with lifestyle advice and the study of the cranium.

Albert S. Potter house in Richmond, R.I.

Fowler practiced phrenology, a pseudoscience popular in the first half of the 19th century. He believed you could tell a person’s character and intelligence from the shape and size of his cranium. He wrote and lectured widely on the topic, as well as on temperance, health, education and women’s suffrage.

An intellectual jack of all trades, Fowler also had opinions on architecture. He viewed it as another problem for which he had the perfect solution: the octagon house.

Orson Fowler

He was born in Cohocton, N.Y., in 1809, graduating from Amherst College in 1834. Then he and his brother opened a phrenology practice. He met clients in his offices in New York and Boston. There he would feel their skulls and tell them about themselves. Clients included John Brown the abolitionist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and President James Garfield. He told Mark Twain he had an underdeveloped sense of humor without realizing who he was.

But he did tell John Brown he was too blunt and free-spoken, according to Fowler’s biographer, Madeleine B. Stern.

Fowler, his brother Lorenzo and Lorenzo’s wife, Lydia Folger Fowler, lectured often on phrenology, popularizing the pseudo-science in the United States. Before the Civil War, phrenology was used to justify slavery because it taught the inferiority of black people based on the shape of their heads.

Orson Fowler, however, opposed slavery. A vegetarian, he crusaded for animal rights, and he proselytized against child labor. He formed a partnership with the publishing house Fowler & Wells, which published Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Then he turned his attention to octagon houses.

Octagon Houses

Fowler was so busy practicing phrenology, he wrote, that he couldn’t find a comfortable home until he was past 40. But he spent 10 years cogitating on the best mode of building the home of his future years. And then in 1848 he wrote a book about his dream home, the octagon house.

The Edward Brackett house in Winchester, Mass.

The octagon house was “”a new mode of inclosing public edifices and private residences, far better, in every way, and several hundred percent cheaper, than any other,” he wrote.  It would bring “comfortable dwellings within the reach of the poorer classes.” Plus, he argued, the spherical in general was more beautiful than the angular.

Some of the practical advantages of the octagon house included a more even distribution of heat. And it needed only one roof, unlike a rectangle with wings or additions.

Fewer corners would save time doing household chores. And octagon houses offered more windows and more floor space. Triangular closets were the answer to storage questions.

clerestory-round-stone-barn-hancockclerestory-round-stone-barn-hancock

Fowler would have liked this round barn in Hancock Shaker Village.

Fowler also believed octagon houses promoted an “interchange of friendly and benevolent feeling.” That was true especially for octagonal schools and churches. And as for barns  — wedge-shaped stalls were ideal for horses, narrower in the rear than in the front. The open central space allowed a big storage area for hay and farm equipment.

Progress

Fowler was alert to the progressive thinking of the day, wrote Walter Creese in his article, Fowler and the Domestic Octagon. 

All around him he saw new ideas, new inventions, new ways of thinking. But not in architecture.

The Capt. Josiah Chase House in East Limington, Maine.

“Why so little progress in architecture, when there is so much in all other matters? Why continue to build in the same SQUARE form of all past ages?” Fowler asked.

The Octagon House: A Home For All, or A New, Cheap, Convenient, and Superior Mode of Building sold so many copies it went through seven printings.  More importantly, wrote Creese, in contemporary carpenters’ and builders’ books, “their authors paid him the supreme compliment of quotation and illustration, and often included polygonal schemes of their own.”

The Gravel Wall

After Fowler published his first edition of The Octagon House, he discovered something even better: An octagon house with a gravel wall. “Gravel” combined lime, stone and sand for a strong, cheap, vermin-proof outer wall.

The Rodney Baxter House in Barnstable. Mass., is exactly what Orson Fowler had in mind. Note the concrete walls.

 

He got the idea from a Mr. Goodrich in Milton, Wisc. Goodrich told him his gravel walls were so strong he’d let Fowler take a sledgehammer to his parlor walls. Goodrich would charge six cents a blow, because that’s how much (or how little)  it would cost to repair it.

Gravel walls had the added advantage of eliminating expensive framing and allowing the use of cheaper grades of wood.

In his second edition, The Octagon House and the Gravel Wall, Fowler railed against wood. He called it “objectionable.” He reasoned,

500 years in the future, when human population has increased as fastas it has for 100 years past, “her entire surface will be densely populated. But to raise wood enough to erect and repair all the human habitations then needed, will require immense tracts of land, which otherwise could be appropriated to raising food.

Fowler’s Folly

He got the idea for octagon houses when he decided to build a home on land he owned in Fishkill, N.Y. He wrote his book on the subject while his house was still in the planning stages. Fowler had so much self-confidence that his inexperience as a builder didn’t deter him.

It took him five years to build a 60-room behemoth with four stories and a cupola. Nothing he’d ever done afforded him such lively delight, he wrote. His love for his new home sometimes interfered with his sleep.

Fowler’s Folly

He didn’t love it that much, though. When he suffered financially from the Panic of 1857, he rented the house to a New Yorker who rented it to boarders. The next year many of the tenants suffered typhoid, which may have been caused by cesspool seepage through the gravel walls.

Fowler sold the house in 1859 and eventually moved to Manchester, Mass. He built a house there with an octagonal dining room. In 1897, Fishkill officials condemned Fowler’s house as a public health hazard and had it blown up.

Octagonal Houses in New England

It’s hard to say how many Fowler-inspired octagon houses still exist, wrote Rebecca Lewin McCarley. Some 560 historic examples have been identified, mostly in the Northeast and the upper Midwest. Some, however, have been demolished.

New England has 14 listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Maine has four on the National Register, 12 in total. Rhode Island has at least four, New Hampshire at least one and Massachusetts 21. Portland, Conn., has two octagon houses, side by side.

The first octagon house in Portland.

The heyday of the octagon house ended with the Panic of 1857. Subsequent generations viewed them as anomalies and failures, wrote Creese.

The second octagon house in Portland.

“It was primarily an experiment pieced together by an amateur, the result of an uninhibited individualism…furthermore the restless search for new architectural forms,” he concluded.

With thanks to Walter Creese. “Fowler and the Domestic Octagon.” The Art Bulletin 28, no. 2 (1946): 89–102. https://doi.org/10.2307/3047058. Also to Dwight Young, “Orson Squire Fowler: To Form a More Perfect Human.” The Wilson Quarterly (1976-) 14, no. 2 (1990): 120–27. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40258064. This story was updated in 2024.

Danbury Octagon House By Daniel Case – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11113222. Rodney J. Baxter House By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52928905. Edward Brackett House By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11661817.  First Portland octagon house PortlandBy Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/all-towns-and-cities/portland_ct/portland15.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29546198;Second Portland octagon house By Jerry Dougherty – http://public.fotki.com/GCDOUGHERTY/all-towns-and-cities/portland_ct/portland16.html, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29546156. Octagon House Josiah Chase By Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121455124. Potter Octagon House By Jennifer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=121453730.

 

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