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Six More Artist Homes In New England

The creative spirit that moves people to sculpt and paint also tends to inspire an interesting artist home. Lucrative commissions in the days before the income tax meant some artists could live in country estates befitting a Gilded Age gentleman.

New England has quite a few artist homes now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

We bring you six artist homes, one in each New England state. They all open to the public, at least seasonally.

Weir Farm

J Alden Weir studio. You can also visit the artist home on the Wilton farm.

Weir Farm, the home of J. Alden Weir, was a magnet for American artists such as John Twachtman, John Singer Sargent and Albert Pinkham Ryder. It probably helped that the farm was only 20 miles from the Cos Cob art colony in Greenwich.

There are two stories about how J. Alden Weir ended up owning the Weir Farm in Wilton, Conn. One is that Weir had a Manet painting that a collector wanted so badly he offered Weir $10 and his farm for it. According to the other, his wife’s family owned the farm.

As an art student in Paris, J. Alden Weir hated the new school of painting known as French Impressionism, until he didn’t. Eventually he became one of the most beloved American impressionist.

He was born in 1852, the 14^th of 16 children, the son of Robert Walker Weir, who taught drawing at the Military Academy at West Point.

Weir befriended many other painters, eventually co-founding The Ten, a group of artists unhappy with the conservative U.S. art establishment.

Nocturne: Queensboro Bridge by J. Alden Weir. Courtesy Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Weir’s paintings are on display in major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Phillips Collection, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Wadsworth Athenaeum. The 60-acre grounds of Weir Farm National Historic Site open every day of the year to visitors. The farm also has an ongoing artist-in-residence program. Look for Weir Farm on the back of quarters issued in 2020.

Weir Farm National Historic Site, 735 Nod Hill Rd, Wilton, Conn.

Winslow Homer Studio

Where Winslow Homer painted and lived.

Winslow Homer, one of the greatest U.S. artists of the 19^th century, left the bright lights of New York City for Prout’s Neck, Maine. Then in his mid-40s, he moved partly to be near his family, partly to work in solitude and partly to paint the sea.

His family owned an estate on Prout’s Neck, and Homer moved into the carriage house. He painted the sea in Maine, traveling to the Caribbean during the winter and sometimes to the Adirondacks.

Though he also painted in oil, Winslow Homer knew he’d done something transcendent with his watercolors.

‘You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors,” Homer once said. He hung some of his exquisite watercolors on the walls of the rental cottages. Now they’re in museums or private collections.

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Salt Kettle, Bermuda, by Winslow Homer. Courtesy National Gallery of Art.

Maine architect John Calvin Stevens transformed the carriage house into a studio and designed the Winslow Homer house. He took as payment a painting, Afternoon Fog. The Portland Museum of Art bought the studio in 2006, restored it and now offers tours in the summer months.

Winslow Homer Studio, 5 Winslow Homer Rd., Scarborough, Maine

Chesterwood

The house that Daniel Chester French built in Stockbridge, Mass.

Daniel Chester French, like his contemporary Augustus Saint-Gaudens, was no starving artist. He won lucrative commissions, including one for the Lincoln Memorial, and could afford a summer artist home — an estate, really, called Chesterwood.

He bought the Stockbridge, Mass., farm in 1896, and had a studio built on the property. Then in 1901, he rebuilt the farmhouse. For the rest of his life he divided his time between New York and Stockbridge, but used his Chesterwood estate as his primary workspace.

Born in Exeter, N.H., his family moved to Concord, Mass., when he was xxx. His father befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson and Louisa May Alcott. Young Daniel took art lessons from Louisa May Alcott’s little sister, May. She encouraged him to study art.

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The Lincoln Memorial, courtesy National Park Service.

He launched his career by winning the commission to design the Minute Man statue in Concord.

Other works include The John Harvard Monument, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Mass. Commodore George H. Perkins monument at the New Hampshire State House

The statue of General Joseph Hooker in front of the Massachusetts Statehouse.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation now runs the home as a museum and sculpture garden.

Chesterwood opens weekends in May.

Chesterwood, 4 Williamsville Rd, Stockbridge, Mass.

Saint-Gaudens National Park

Augustus Saint-Gaudens home in Cornish, N.H.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the center of the Cornish colony, which included about 100 artists, writers and politicians from about 1895 to the end of World War I. It stretched from Windsor, Vt., to Plainfield, N.H. President Woodrow Wilson rented a summer White House there, among such artistic luminaries as Ethel Barrymore, Frederic Remington, Daniel Chester French, Isadora Duncan, Maxwell Perkins and Maxfield Parrish.

Saint-Gaudens, born in Ireland, emigrated with his family to New York City in 1848 as a baby. Apprenticed as a cameo cutter, he eventually won lucrative commissions for public statues. Some of his most famous work includes an equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman in Central Park, a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Chicago’s Lincoln Park and the gold double eagle $20 coin.

The Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, on Boston Common.

His masterpiece, the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial, took him 14 years to create. The bronze bas relief commemorates the African-American 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment and its leader, Robert Gould Shaw, who died in battle. Since 1897 years it has stood across from the Massachusetts Statehouse on Boston Common.

Today Saint-Gaudens artist home, studio and gardens belongs to the National Park Service as the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Park. The park service has some of his sculpture on display, as well as reproductions of some of his masterpiece.

Saint-Gaudens National Park, 139 Saint Gaudens Rd., Cornish, N.H.

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, an artist home and snuff mill.

The Gilbert Stuart birthplace is unusual for an artist home, mostly because it’s also a snuff mill.

Gilbert Stuart’s father, Gilbert Stewart, was a Scottish immigrant who worked in the first snuff mill in America. His mother, Elizabeth Anthony Stewart, belonged to a prominent Middletown, R.I., family that owned large tracts of land. The house-and mill had stood in Saunderstown, R.I., for five years when Stuart was born in 1755. Stuart only lived there for six years because his family moved to Newport.

Gilbert Stuart showed early promise and studied painting in England, where he made a name for himself at 26 with his painting The Skater. His work commanded high prices in England, but he spent money carelessly and almost ended up in debtor’s prison.

The Athenaeum, by Gilbert Stuart

His most famous work, the portrait of George Washington, has appeared on the U.S. dollar for more than a century. He painted many famous people of the day, including John and Abigail Adams.

He died in 1828, leaving his wife and daughters so poor they couldn’t afford a gravesite. They buried him in an unmarked grave in the Old South Burying Ground.

Gilbert Stuart Birthplace, 815 Gilbert Stuart Rd, Saunderstown, R.I.

Rokeby

An artist home for several painters, Rachael Robinson Elmer and her parents.

Rokeby, the artist home we chose in Vermont, was also a prominent stop on the underground railroad.

Rachael Robinson Elmer was born at Rokeby in Ferrisburgh, Vt., the granddaughter of Quaker abolitionists, on July 28, 1878.

Her father, Rowland Robinson, was an author and illustrator, and her mother, Anna Stevens Robinson, was a painter. They encouraged her interest in art, and let teenaged Rachael study art in New York City for three summers. She fell in love with New York City as a young girl and moved there after graduating from Goddard College. Rachael continued to take art classes, and Childe Hassam taught her to paint scenes of city life.

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Trinity Church and Wall Street by Rachael Robinson Elmer.

Rachael succeeded as a commercial artist and married an older man named Robert Elmer. She painted 12 “Art Lover’s New York” postcards showing famous scenes around the city and published them in 1914. They sold like wildfire, and other artists began producing impressionistic postcards. She was said to have changed postcards forever.

She died in 1919 in the flu pandemic of 1918 at the age of 40.

Today Rokeby is a historic farm property and museum that includes a 1780s farmstead, eight agricultural outbuildings with permanent exhibits, and hiking trails that cover more than 50 acres

Rokeby, 4334 U.S. Route 7 in Ferrisburgh, Vt.

End Notes

If you enjoyed this story, you may also want to read about an artist home you can sleep in n each New England state here.

Artist Home images: Weir Farm studio By Noroton – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4960283; Winslow Homer studio By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28919316; Chesterwood by I, Daderot, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2414120; Augustus Saint-Gaudens artist home, By Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35171636; Robert Gould Shaw Memorial By Carptrash at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27154774; Gilbert Stuart birthplace By Gibbystuart – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40114851; Rokeby By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11310696.

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Six Historic Buildings With a Clerestory

The clerestory window makes a lot of sense in New England because of the short, short days during the long, long winter. The clerestory brings in much (and much-appreciated) light.

Technically, a clerestory is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level to bring in fresh air as well as light. Sometimes people confuse them with widows walks, at least from outside.

One can find a clerestory window in all kinds of buildings. Here are six historic buildings with a clerestory.

General Henry Knox Museum, Thomaston, Maine

The Henry Knox house in Thomaston, Maine, has a clerestory.

The General Henry Knox Museum is a replica of the mansion the revolutionary leader built in 1794 — but a good replica. By 1871, his house had gotten run down and the Thomaston Railroad backers wanted it for a right of way. So it fell to the wrecking ball.

After the turn of the 20th century, community members raised money to rebuild the house on a different site but according to the original designs. Those designs include a large clerestory that fills the house with light down to the first floor.

30 High Street, Thomaston

West End Library, Farmington, Conn.

This mini-version of the Boston Public Library has something the BPL doesn’t: clerestory windows.

The National Park Service calls the old West End Library in the village of Unionville in Farmington, Conn., ‘an unusually intact example’ of the nearly 2,000 libraries Andrew Carnegie gave away. Today it looks much as it did when built in 1917: Even the toilet room in the basement is original.

Back around the turn of the century, cities and towns rarely supported public libraries with tax dollars (few, by the way, still do). Local library organizations had a hard time finding a place to store their books. So Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, gave away all of his fortune, mostly to libraries. He singlehandedly doubled the number of public libraries in the United States, giving away 1,689. Of those, 95 were in New England. All but three are still standing, including the West End Library in Farmington.

A nationally renowned architect, Edward Lippincott Tilton, designed the old West End Library, finished in 1917. Like many Carnegie libraries, the West End Library is a miniature version of a famous large library: in this case, the Boston Public Library. But unlike the Boston Public Library the West End Library has clerestory windows directly above the main arched windows in the front and back.

The building operated as library until 1968, when it became a senior center. Then in 1984 the town leased it to the nonprofit Unionville Museum.

The National Park Service called the library ‘a testament to small-town civic achievement.’ It has significance not just as a historic building but as a contributor to the character of the surrounding village of Unionville, a historic district since 1978.

15 School St, Unionville, Conn.

Tate House, Portland, Maine

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This house has a gambrel clerestory, once popular in New England. Now only two remain.

Capt. George Tate served as Maine’s last mast agent, overseeing the cutting and shipping of white pine trees to England for the Royal Navy’s masts. Tate may have thought the plum job set him up for life, but things began to go south for him.

Tate, born in 1700, moved with his family to the colonies around 1750s. He built himself a fine house in 1755 in what is now the Stroudwater Historic District, a section of Portland cut off from the rest of the city and containing many 18^th and 19^th-century homes.

The king’s first mast agent in Maine, Col. Thomas Westbrook, settled Stroudwater. He built some of the roads, a dam, a bridge, and sawmills and gristmills — in short, an early industrial village that thrived on the processing of white pine trees.

Tate brought paneling and wainscoating from England; the unpainted clapboard exterior disguises the lavish interior. The Tate House has a clerestory gambrel roof, once a common form of colonial architecture. Only one other survives in New England, in the Burnham Tavern in Machias, Maine.

But then in 1770 his wife Mary died at age 60. According to an entry on the findagrave website,

Mary Tate was killed by a booby trap set by her son William to catch thieves. William was convicted of her murder but was later pardoned by George III.

Then, of course, revolution broke out, in part due to resentment of the king appropriating the colonies’ white pine trees.

George Tate lived to be 94, dying in 1794. The house opens to the public in the warmer months.

1270 Westbrook Street, Stroudwater neighborhood, Portland, Maine.

Shaker Barn, Hancock, Mass.

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The clerestory in this barn let in light for milking cows and fresh air for preventing hay from combusting.

Shakers established Hancock Shaker Village in 1791, the third of 19 started between 1783 and 1836 Closed in 1960.

Built in 1820, the barn at the Hancock Shaker Village was probably the first round barn in the United States.

A model of efficiency and clever design, the barn has three levels, each with a specific use. The Shakers designed the big fieldstone barn for 52 cows, but it can hold 70. Once constructed, it attracted visitors, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, who raced each other on foot inside the building.

After a fire, the Shakers replaced the conical roof with a clerestory that let in light and fresh air, which prevented the spontaneous combustion of wet hay.

A ramp takes wagons filled with hay to the third level; because the barn is round, the wagons never have to back up, they simple circumnavigate the barn and exit through the same door they entered.

From the third level, Shakers could pitch hay to the cows on the second level, where they were milked.

The cows’ heads fit into stanchions so they could feed while they were milked. At the cows’ rear ends, the Shakers built trap doors so they could easily shovel manure into the first level. They let it accumulate until they spread it on fields for fertilizer.

34 Lebanon Mountain Rd., Hancock, Mass.

Samuel Tenney House, Exeter, N.H.

The clerestory in this Georgian house came from an English pattern book.

The Samuel Tenney house at one time or another involved five well-known New Hampshire figures: Dr. Samuel Tenney, who tended wounded soldiers at the Battle of Bunker Hill; his wife Tabitha, the first best-selling author in America; Tristan Shaw, U.S. congressman; Ebenezer Clifford, inventive master carpenter; and Bradbury Johnson, builder-architect.

Samuel Tenney built the house around 1800 where the courthouse now stands. Born in 1748, he served as a surgeon to the army to the end of the American Revolution. George Washington appointed him acting surgeon general at Valley Forge. After the war he had a long and distinguished career as a judge, U.S. congressman, author and scientist.

Tabitha Tenney was the best-selling novelist in the country for the first half of the 19^th century. Her novel, Female Quixotism, poked fun at the illusions of romance. Published in 1799, the book was still in print when Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Ebenezer Clifford and Bradbury Johnson together built several landmark buildings in Exeter, including the First Parish Church, the second Phillips Exeter Academy building and the Atknson Academy building. The two men creatively adapted designs from English pattern books as the gabled clerestory in the Tenney house shows. Clifford, by the way, built and designed a diving bell that he used in the Exeter River.

Finally, U.S. Rep. Tristran Shaw lived in the Tenney house in the early 19^th century. The house was moved to its current location on High Street to make way for the courthouse.

65 High St., Exeter, N.H.

Upper Rockville Mill, Hopkinton, R.I.

The clerestory in this Rhode Island textile mill let more workers work longer.

The Upper Rockville Mill, built in 1844, typifies the granite mill buildings that dotted Hopkinton, R.I., in the 19^th century. What’s different about the Upper Rockville Mill: It used water power well into the 20^th century, and didn’t stop making textiles until the late 1980s or early 1990s.

The Rockville Manufacturing Company built the big granite mill on a hill in 1844, and ever since it has served as the town’s most prominent architectural feature. Like many Rhode Island cotton mills, it had clerestory windows that allowed more natural light and usable work space in the mill’s attic.

Two years later the Seventh Day Baptists built a church, and from then on village life revolved around the mill and the church. Seventh Day Baptists owned the mill, and everyone who worked there belonged to the church. As many as half the workforce were women and children.

The mill made cotton yarn, cloth, fishing line, twine and cord. Since it relied on water power, it could never expand too much, but it could survive for more than a century.

Today the National Register of Historic Places lists the Upper Rockville for two reasons: It demonstrates the rise of the textile industry in New England, and how that industry created many mill villages in rural towns. In 1850, Hopkinton alone had more than a dozen mill villages.

332 Canonchet Rd., Hopkinton, R.I.

Christ Episcopal Church, Montpelier, Vt.

Christ Episcopal Church features a large round clerestory window ‘to the glory of Almighty God.’

The neo-Gothic Christ Episcopal Church reflects Montpelier’s growth and prosperity after the Civil War. The parish in 1868 replaced an old frame church built 30 years earlier with a substantial stone building. It had both a 100-foot tower and spire and a stained-glass clerestory window, a key feature in Gothic churches.

The building, though, suffered repeated damage. In 1903, a fire ruined the roof and the interior. Then in 1927 the flood that devastated Vermont also devastated the church, undermining its structural integrity. Though the parish repaired the church, it had to remove the spire in 1963. Then in 2015, a crane collapsed and crashed through the roof. Once again, the church required repair.

Today Christ Episcopal Church stands as one of five historic churches built in Montpelier between 1865 and 1873. All survive and belong to the Montpelier Historic District.

64 State St., Montpelier, Vt.

Images: West End Library By Doug Kerr from Albany, NY, United States – Unionville, Connecticut Uploaded by Magicpiano, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29970923; Round barn at Hancock Shaker Village: By Bestbudbrian – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51387903; Samuel Tenney House, By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25270039; Christ Episcopal Church By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18509487; Tate House By User:Magicpiano – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28918831.; Upper Rockville Mill By Tmac02892 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6897440. This story was updated in 2022.

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The Antis: Women Who Fought Against the Vote

In the late 19^th century, women known as antis began to organize against women who wanted the right to vote.

A cartoon making the antis argument. Courtesy Library of Congress.

The antis viewed suffragists as angry killjoys who wanted to intrude on politics, the proper realm of men. They argued women didn’t need the vote because men could conduct government for both sexes. Further, they contended, the vote alone assssscouldn’t fix any injustice women suffered.

Maine native Kate Douglas Wiggin, who wrote Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, supported the antis. She told a group of women in 1912 she would have ‘woman strong enough to keep just a trifle in the background, for the limelight never makes anything grow.’

As extraordinary as it seems today, the antis got plenty of support from women.

Who Were The Antis?

Suffragists started their first national organization in 1869. It would take the antis another 42 years to form theirs. They called themselves the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, or NAOWS. They passed out pamphlets that preached, ‘you do not need a ballot to clean out your sink.’ One pamphlet included household hints such as cleaning ink spots with sour milk — along with advice to ‘not waste time, energy and money’ on voting.

Other anti-suffrage propaganda pictured men caring for babies and doing household chores while women went off to vote.

The antis had many reasons for opposing the vote. Some with wealth and social prestige feared the vote would dislodge them from their comfortable positions.

Others viewed the suffragists as dangerous radicals associated with birth control, free love and the labor movement.

Some women became antis because they feared electoral politics would erode their ability to do good works. The Progressive Era, for example, got its name from women who tried to solve social problems in clubs, hospitals and settlement houses. They supported prison reform, shorter work days, an end to child labor and improved sanitation and diet.

The antis national organization. Courtesy Library of Congress.

Josephine Jewell Dodge

Josephine Jewell Dodge had wealth and prestige, but she also spent several decades promoting day care centers for working mothers. Dodge was born in 1855 in Hartford to Marshall Jewell, a prominent Connecticut politician who headed the Republican National Committee. She married Arthur Murray Dodge, son of wealthy Congressman William E. Dodge, in 1875.

After rising to prominence for her activism, Josephine Jewell Dodge turned her attention to fighting woman’s suffrage. In 1911, members of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage elected her their first president.

As an anti, she faced accusations that she was a political cats’ paw. The suffragists, who mostly supported temperance, claimed she carried water for the liquor interests.

The suffragists, of course, met the same kind of allegation. The antis charged the suffragists fronted for corrupt male organizations like Tammany Hall.

Both sides used ridicule as a weapon. And as head of NAOWS, Josephine Jewell Dodge confronted the same kind of ridicule the suffragists endured.

Ladies Riot

In 1915, a newspaper reported the antis and the suffragists nearly rioted at a meeting before the National Democratic Committee in Washington, D.C. Josephine Jewell Dodge gave a speech that affronted the suffragists.

“Charges of bribery hurled against Mrs. Dodge met with tears, then a haughty rejoinder — altogether like a men’s political affair except for the smoke,” reported the Washington Herald.

A ‘Western woman’ shook a handful of suffrage leaflets ‘under the nose of the very dignified anti,’ reported the Herald. She shouted that Josephine Jewell Dodge received $75 for delivering her speech.

“Mrs. Dodge flushed angrily and tears filled her eyes,” reported the Herald. “Then she replied in her haughtiest manner:

“As a woman of independent means I not only have never received a cent for my services, but I have financed the work of many others.”

State Chapters of Antis

The antis, just as the suffragists had, began their organizing in Massachusetts, though much later than the suffragists.

An anti-suffrage cartoon showing how the vote would backfire. Courtesy Library of Congress.

In 1895, the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women was founded by such Brahmins as Mrs. J. Eliot Cabot, Cornelia Baylis Lowell and Kate Gannett Wells. They attracted nearly 37,000 members by 1915 and had a headquarters on Boylston Street in Boston.

By 1910, the antis spread to other states, including Connecticut.

Mrs. Grace G. Markham, founded the Connecticut Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage. It had branches in 161 cities and towns.

Mrs. Markham warned the ‘suffs’ had joined the Reds and wanted to incite class and race hatred.

The fight over woman’s suffrage divided many Connecticut communities, including a prominent artist colony.

In 1914, about 50 suffragists organized the Equal Franchise League in Old Lyme.

Two years earlier, 16 ladies, including art colony founder Florence Griswold, formed Old Lyme’s group of antis. Within a year the antis filled Town Hall for a speaker who denounced the suffragists. Alice Hill Chittendon explained ‘some of the undesirable results of equal suffrage already discovered.’

In January 1919, Mrs. Hermon Hubbard wrote a blistering letter to the New London Day, excoriating the newspaper for supporting the suffrage movement. She called it ‘the most radical and socialistic movement of the day.’ Six months later, she wrote a follow-up letter arguing women should stay home minding their children, ‘not running in the streets.’

New Hampshire Antis

A typical antis argument against the vote.

How did antis respond in 1920 when Tennessee approved the 19^th Amendment, reaching the threshold required to give women the vote?

Some antis refused to vote. But the diary of an Exeter, N.H., teenager shows a typical progression from anti to voter.

New Hampshire antis organized a state chapter of NAOWS, and Exeter formed its own chapter. Effie Tufts, an ardent anti, took her 16-year-old daughter Helen to hear two antis speak at Town Hall in 1913.

Helen reported in her diary that the meeting was ‘very good,’ and she had decided, “I’m an anti.”

In 1919, Helen’s father, state Sen. James Tufts, voted against the 19^th Amendment .

“Father fought it, spoke etc, but N.H. passed the suffrage amendment 18 to 10,” wrote Helen Tufts. “Worse Luck!”

She changed her tune in 1920, when at 23 she could vote for the first time.

“Mrs. Illsley came at — and took Mother and me down to VOTE!!! My first X ever put on a ballot was for Father for State Senator.”

With thanks to the Exeter Historical Society and the Florence Griswold Museum. This story about the antis was updated in 2022.

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Abraham Lincoln in New England – Five Fast Facts

Before he moved into the White House, Abraham Lincoln came to New England twice. Newspapers reported extensively on Abraham Lincoln in New England both in September 1848 and in February 1860, though he had far more fame on his second visit.

Abraham Lincoln

Here are five facts about Abraham Lincoln in New England.

Cooper-Union Fallout

The day after his famed Cooper-Union speech in New York on Feb. 27, 1860, Lincoln stopped in Providence.

At Cooper-Union, Lincoln had carefully articulated his view on why the federal government should stop the spread of slavery into the western states. Further, he riled his opponents. He declared, “[No] part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories.”

He left the city in a frenzy as newspapers fell over themselves to praise him or attack him. The next day, Feb. 28, 1860, he gave an impromptu speech at Railroad Hall in the Providence train station.

Fifteen hundred cheering supporters attended. He used the critical newspaper coverage both for humor and to reiterate his arguments.

Lincoln on the day of his Cooper-Union speech. Photo by Matthew Brady.

Son Failing College Exams

One of the reasons, and perhaps the main reason, Lincoln traveled to New Hampshire in February 1860 was to visit his son Robert.

Robert was then studying at Phillips Exeter Academy to pass his entrance exams for Harvard College. But he’d failed them previously. Lincoln came to encourage his son as he crammed for his exams.

However, Lincoln’s Cooper-Union speech had been so widely covered people clamored to hear him. He spoke 11 times on the trip, many of them at unscheduled train stops.

Robert Todd Lincoln, ca. 1860.

Lincoln Had a Common Touch

Though an able debater and lawyer, Lincoln had the politician’s gift for relating to working men.

During his trip to New England in February of 1860, Lincoln stopped in Manchester, N.H. Amoskeag Mill manager Ezekiel Straw gave Abraham Lincoln a tour of the mill. He introduced the candidate to the workers.

One of the mill workers hesitated to shake his hand, saying it was dirty from his work. “Young man,” said Lincoln, “the hand of honest toil is never too grimy for Abe Lincoln to grasp.”

Ezekiel Straw

Toured Massachusetts as a Minor Congressman

Abraham Lincoln first visited Massachusetts in 1848 on a tour of the state to promote Whig candidates. The visit lasted from Sept. 12-21, 1848.

The Free Soil party — a single-issue party formed to oppose the expansion of slavery in the western states — was making inroads against the Whigs in the contest with the Democrats that year. Lincoln took to the road to promote Zachary Taylor, the eventual winner.

Thirteen years after giving a speech at Worcester, a visitor to Washington from Massachusetts asked Lincoln if he remembered the trip. Characteristically, Lincoln used the moment to spread some flattery.

He said he recalled that “with hayseed in my hair I went to Massachusetts, the most cultured state in the Union, to take a few lessons in deportment. That was a grand dinner — a superb dinner; by far the finest I ever saw in my life.”

Lincoln in 1845

Skipped Massachusetts in 1860

On his 1860 trip to New England, Lincoln did not speak in Massachusetts. He stopped only in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.

But the Bay State tempted him. Lincoln received an invitation to visit Springfield in the summer of 1860, but his advisers talked him out of it. At that time it was considered unseemly for presidential candidates to campaign on their own behalf.

Lincoln’s Democratic opponent, Stephen Douglas, fearing a Lincoln victory, had taken to the campaign trail in a move regarded as desperate and un-presidential.

Republican National Secretary George Fogg wrote to Lincoln: “You could not go to Springfield without your journey being in some measure a political ovation. As such, it would relieve Douglas of the charge of being the only stump candidate for the Presidency. It would also be construed by the Democratic papers into evidence of Republican alarm. In this view, it might ‘hurt.’ Everything east I believe is well. The election is ours now. The triumph is ours.”

And he was right, Lincoln went on to win the presidency, though with only 39 percent of the popular vote.

Thanks to Abraham Lincoln’s Classroom. This story about Abraham Lincoln in New England was updated in 2022.

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8 Things You Didn’t Know About New England Olympians

Ever since a Bostonian won the first event in the first modern Olympics, New England has sent more than its share of Olympians to compete for athletic glory.

New England Olympians have done especially well in the winter Olympics, winning a share of gold medals disproportionate to their states’ populations.

James Connolly, the first-ever U.S. Olympian to win a medal.

Tiny Vermont can claim four Winter Olympics gold medals. New Hampshire has six, Connecticut has five and Massachusetts has 16 – third most in the country, despite ranking 14^th in population. Even Rhode Island can boast a Winter Olympics gold. The only New England state without a gold medal in the Winter Olympics is Maine.

Here, then, are eight facts about New England Olympians you may not know.

New England Olympians

The town of Norwich, Vt., with 3,000 residents, produced 11 Olympians and accounted for three Olympic medals. Nine of its Olympians competed in the winter Olympics, including ski jumpers Mike Holland and Jeff Hastings and skiers Hannah Kearney, Betsy Snite and Tim Tetreault.
Penny Pitou is a well-known name in New Hampshire for her eponymous travel agency, but she is also the first American skier to win a medal in the Olympic downhill She won silver medalsin both the downhill and giant slalom events at the 1960 Olympics. Pitou grew up in Center Harbor, N.H., but moved to Laconia with her family at 15. As a freshman at Laconia High in 1953, she hid her hair under her hat and competed on the boys’ ski team.
Nine of the 14 Americans who competed in the first modern Olympics in history came from the Boston Athletic Association or the Suffolk Athletic Club of South Boston. James B. Connolly, born in South Boston to poor Irish immigrants, won the first event– the triple jump — in the 1896 Olympics in Athens. He took home a silver medal (gold medals weren’t issued then) and an olive laurel wreath. He almost didn’t make it because a thief stole his wallet on the way to the games.
Many people know four players from the ‘Miracle on Ice’ hockey team of 1980 all attended Boston University and all came from Massachusetts. They included team captain Mike Eruzione, starters Dave Silk and Jim Craigand Jack O’Callahan. But few people remember the five Massachusetts players from the 1924 U.S. hockey team, which won the silver medal: Irving Small, Willard Rice, Justin McCarthy, John Lyons and John Langley.
New Haven native Dr. Benjamin Spock won a gold medal for rowing in the 1924 Olympics as a member of the Yale University rowing team. Later, as America’s most famous baby doctor, he warned against putting young children into ‘excessive competition.’
The Boston Skating Club has produced more national championsthan any skating club in the country, including Olympics medal winners Dick Button, Nancy Kerrigan and Tenley Albright.
Dorothy Hamill was Paraguay’s sweetheart, too.
Two-time Olympic skier Tom Corcoran was born in Japan and spent his childhood in Quebec, but he spent most of the rest of his time in New Hampshire. He attended the Emerson School, Philips Exeter Academy and Dartmouth College. In 1965 he founded the Waterville Company and began developing the Waterville Valley Ski Resort, which he ran until 1990.
Figure skater Dorothy Hamill grew up in Greenwich, Conn., She made her mark in the 1976 Winter Olympics when she took a gold medal in the ladies’ singles competition – and started a fashion trend with her sassy bobbed hair and large glasses. The media dubbed her ‘America’s sweetheart.’ She also invented a skating move known as the ‘Hamill Camel. She later married, and divorced, Dean Paul Martin, the son of entertainer Dean Martin.

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Six Places New England Films Were Shot

New England films number in the hundreds since the turn of the last century, partly because the region provides such rich material for stories and characters set against quaint fishing villages, Gilded Age resorts and prep school campuses.

Familiar themes appear again and again in those settings. The theme of the salty sea captain fighting a sea monster inspired films from Moby Dick through Jaws. Family secrets inspired Eugene O’Neill’s fictional Ah Wilderness in 1906 as well as Peyton Place.

Local characters populate many New England films: the rustic Yankee in The Trouble With Harry, the stalwart fisherman in Jaws and the outsider struggling to assimilatein A Separate Peace.

Here, then, are six New England films, each shot on location in at least one of the New England States. If you know of other New England films worth mentioning, please share in the comments section.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds was based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Paul Zindel about an eccentric, unhappy middle-aged widow, Beatrice Hunsdorfer, and her teen-aged daughters, Ruth, an epileptic doomed to repeat her mother’s mistakes and Matilda, who is quiet, ambitious and intelligent.

Joanne Woodward played the lead, her husband Paul Newman directed and their daughter Nell Potts (who later ran Newman’s Organics) played Matilda. Roberta Wallach, Eli Wallach’s daughter, played Ruth.

Though the story took place on Staten Island, the film was shot in Bridgeport, Conn., because it was only 17 minutes from Paul Newman’s home in Westport, Conn. The set was constructed inside an abandoned Hungarian church, and scenes were shot at Warren Harding High School.

Warren Harding High School

Joanne Woodward immersed herself in the role, and later admitted to taking her angry, humorless persona home with her. One night Paul Newman arrived at a friend’s house carrying his clothes in a shopping bag. “I’d like to occupy your spare room,” he said. “If I spend another night in bed with Beatrice Hunsdorfer, one of us will not be on the set tomorrow.”

Peyton Place

Camden, Maine

Peyton Place was based on New Hampshire writer Grace Metalious’ best selling novel of the same name. It told the story of sordid secrets – adultery, sexual abuse, murder and hypocrisy – hidden behind New England’s closed doors.

Producers looked long and hard for a New England location. Vermont and New Hampshire rejected them because of the racy content. So they turned to the Maine towns of Skowhegan, Waterville and Wiscasset. Ultimately they chose Camden, where the public library wouldn’t put Peyton Place on its shelves.

Scene from Peyton Place

The 1957 film, which starred Lana Turner, was shot mostly in Camden, Maine, with some exteriors filmed in Belfast and Rockland (also Lake Placid, N.Y.). About 500 local people appeared in the film as extras, though some ended up on the cutting room floor.

The film premiered in Camden two days before everyone else saw it. Peyton Place didn’t do well at the box office for the first four months. Then, Lana Turner’s daughter killed her mother’s mobster lover, Johnny Stompanato. It became the second-highest grossing film of 1958.

Peyton Place received nine Oscar nominations, including four for supporting performances.

Back then Camden was mostly a working-class town that attracted some well-to-do tourists. Today it’s a wealthy tourist town, though it still looks much the way it did when the film was shot.

Jaws

Menemsha

The 1975 horror film, Jaws was a classic summer blockbuster and a watershed in the American movie industry. It featured a simple premise — the hunt for a man-eating shark that terrorized beachgoers.

The most successful of New England films – and in box office history at the time — it set a precedent as an action and adventure films released during the summer in thousands of theaters and advertised heavily.

Jaws was filmed in Massachusetts, mostly in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard, as well as in Falmouth. The film features the American Legion Memorial Bridge between Oak Bluffs and Edgartown. Now it’s referred to as the “Jaws bridge.” (Click here for a map of the Martha’s Vineyard filming locations.)

Jaws won many awards, including three Academy Awards, despite an inauspicious start. “”We started the film without a script, without a cast and without a shark,” said Richard Dreyfuss, one of the film’s stars.

In 2001, Congress voted to include Jaws in the National Film Archive as “culturally significant.” The author, Peter Benchley, later felt guilty about unfairly maligning the Great White Shark, a creature generally uninterested in eating human beings.

A Separate Peace

Phillps Exeter

Producers didn’t have to look too hard to find a setting for the movie A Separate Peace, based on the novel by the same name written by John Knowles. Knowles based his bittersweet coming-of-age story on his time at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H. So in 1972 when the filmmakers were adapting the story to the screen and needed a locale for “Devon Academy,” they brought the story back to Exeter.

Sharp-eyed viewers will also notice Newfields, N.H., and Salisbury Beach, Mass. in some of the backgrounds.

The film, about the rivalry between two school chums during the World War II era, received mixed reviews. But fans in New England enjoyed seeing the familiar locations highlighted. Phillips Exeter still maintains a photo essay that shows where scenes from the film were shot.

Jazz on a Summer’s Day

Anita O’Day at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958

One of the great concert documentaries, Jazz on a Summer’s Day captures many of America’s greatest jazz musicians performing at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. Filmed in Freebody Park, where the festival took place, it includes shots of the audience, the city and the America’s Cup race, then in progress.

The film was shot by fashion photographer Bert Stern and won praise for its lush, color-drenched luminosity and breezy feel. Headliner Louis Armstrong sings Rocking Chair with Jack Teagarden, Dinah Washington swings to All of Me, Ray Charles belts out I Got A Woman and Chuck Berry does the duck walk to Sweet Little Sixteen.

The star of the film, though, is Anita O’Day, who sings Sweet Georgia Brown and Tea for Two in white gloves and enormous feathered hat. (Watch her here.)

Trouble With Harry

Craftsbury Common

Just about all of Alfred Hitchcock’s films are classics, and The Trouble With Harry is no exception.

The trouble with Harry in the film is that he was dead. Hitchcock’ filmed his 1955 dark comedy starring John Forsythe and Shirley MacLaine filmed in the Vermont towns of Morrisville, Barre and Craftsbury Commons.

The crew arrived in Craftsbury on September 27, 1954 to film outdoor shots of fall foliage. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any, so they glued leaves on trees.

The Trouble With Harry was nominated for three awards, including BAFTA, Directors’ Guild and Satellite for “Outstanding Classic DVD” in 2005.

Images: Camden, Maine, made by Robert Swanson. Original uploader was Ryssby at en.wikipedia – Transfered from en.wikipedia Transfer was stated to be made by User:Blast., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3185574. Menemsha By User:Elkman – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Menemsha.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1350749. This story was updated in 2022.

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