Why should children be the only people to dress up on Halloween? The day dawned well in my weaving class, as Sandra came in her Re-enactor’s Revolutionary garb. I wonder if any costume tonight will be as lovingly made, authentic, and transforming?
Happy Halloween!
It’s the 1870s, and we’re on the coast of Connecticut. Mystic is a booming ship-building town. Sailors are wandering the streets, as are people ready to take their money.
I sat me down to listen to David Iler sing Four Bitters. Not sea chanties. Those were working songs with calls and responses, to help load and unload the ships. Just like on the plantations, sea chanties help with heavy lifting.
Four Bitters were sung on board. The fiddler would be at the forward-most bitter, a big tub for holding blubber. Yes, we’re talking whalers here. When not in use, which was much of the time, the four bitters made good perches for the singers and players.
David says not all the songs were rousing. Some were “pretty” like ballads, some sad, and some were warnings. Like “Get Up Jack, John Sit Down.” A ‘jolly rovin’ tar.’
See Jack would be trying to find his sea legs after 90 days sailing from Liverpool to San Francisco, with his $1 a day wages. He might have appeared drunk, as he got used to being on land again. With $90 in his pocket, and a meal priced at a nickel, Jack was plenty Jolly, and as a salior, was a Rover. Sailors were often covered with tar from their work. Jolly Rovin’ Tar.
The town was ready for the Jolly Roving Tars. Ready to take their money for drinks all around and for and by women.
Worse, a friendly face might drug the Tar with laudanum. Rob him? Sure. But Shanghai Brown would hire out the job of drugging the sailor, because the knocked-out boy would be ‘sold’ to packet ships that were short of crew, in return for the sailor’s first month’s wage.
The sailor would wake up out at sea, only to realize he was working the first month for no wage. Impressment was a common tactic for navies and merchant ships. Packets sailed on a schedule and had to have adequate crews. Shanghai’s were one risk of being on shore.
These Four Bitters could serve as warnings, but David explained from experience the mad rush to get on shore will wipe away all logic.
(David Iler on his handmade “Dulcitar”–combination dulcimer and cigar box. Sailors made use of everything.)
Sailors on the whaling ships fared no better. They divvied up 1/3 of the whale oil profits. Sounds like that could be okay. But they were charged for every meal, the tobacco they became addicted to, and the rum. They often ended up owing the ship money, which meant, yes, another term at sea.
So much for the romance of the sailing life.
Then of course, there were the storms and the shipwrecks near land. Sailors would practice the life-saving technique of using the life line.
I watched them practice at the Mystic Seaport Village Green, David participating, too.
They shoot a small rope from a canon that gets tied to the top of the mast rigging (or its stand in here). Then larger and heavier ropes follow the line to get tied on. These larger ropes can hold the weight of a sailor.
One by one, the sailors from the shipwreck climb into the Britches Buoy and slide down the life line to safety.
Winslow Homer. The Life LIne. 1884.
Imagine doing that in the middle of a dangerous storm. Winslow Homer shows us what that might have been like.
Amazing that these wooden figureheads could survive at all. Figureheads at the ship’s prow were meant to ward off evil spirits, and often represented the name of the boat, which is why many were carved as women. Some even have portrait-like qualities, like this one of Abigail. Abigail Chandler was this ship captain’s wife. Imagine her withstanding a storm.
The full-body figures like Abigail, the Seminole, and girl in white weighed so much as to be counterproductive, and figureheads were soon reduced in size and scale to the head and shoulders.
These figures are so stern looking and fierce, I’d want them protecting my ship!
The “White Girl” probably never sailed. Not only does she lack color, but that extended hand would be vulnerable at sea.
How did these figureheads survive the winds and the storms? I learned a secret about how they might have.
A quick visit to the ship’s carving shop and a look at the David Crockett figurehead told all.
The David Crockett sailed around Cape Good Horn several times, safely. No small feat. How did the figurehead survive to look so glorious today, complete with that extended rifle? It’s simple. The sailors took it down a couple of days out of harbor and put it up again before coming back to shore. Ah, very smart.
Of course, then the figurehead probably wasn’t protecting the ship, but that’s to consider another day.
The 1841 Charles W. Morgan was in service for 80 years, making 37 voyages. Look at how it dominates over the town. What fun to climb aboard!
I’ve long wanted to go to the exquisite Roseland Cottage, but it is a bit out of the way. In the “quiet corner” of Connecticut, and on a Labor Day Saturday, it took me 90 minutes to get to Woodstock and the house. Basically, nothing in Connecticut is further away.
It is clearly worth the trip though. What a beauty this house is, with its meticulous care inside and out and its picture-perfect gardens.
Yes, the house is Gothic Revival, not something you see everyday in historic New England. And like it’s not too distant neighbors in Newport, this house was built as a summer cottage for wealthy New Yorkers. So why doesn’t Roseland look like a Newport ‘cottage’?
Asymmetrical gardens
One guide today speculated that the association of the Gothic style with cathedrals and religious piety was the driving factor. Henry Bowen, whose wealth stemmed from silk textiles before turning to insurance, was a Temperance man. No drinking or smoking for him. He even had his seven sons sign a Pledge of Temperance before going off to college that they would not only refrain from drinking and smoking, but also avoid gambling, going to the theater and opera, and somewhat peculiarly, boating. Note, no mention of the fairer sex. The boys did sign, but were, to the man, known as notorious party-ers. A bit of rebellion anyone?
Gothic arches. You can just make out the lincrusta, a textured linoleum made of linseed oil and wood pulp, on the walls. That’s not wallpaper.
Anyhow, the pointed arches of the Gothic style, for the exterior styling and interior windows and doorways, even in the servant areas, suggest that Bowen wanted to remind all householders of aspirational Christian values to inspire each to live a better life. An intriguing thought.
The stained glass looks like it’s right out of 1960s Pop, but is original to the house’s 1846 origins.
Our guide said that Bowen was an abolitionist, and I asked whether he was bothered by working in textiles and doing business with the South that clearly relied on enslaved labor. She said he stated, “my goods are for sale, not my conscience.” Hmmm. I’m not sure that addresses the issue, if he profited off of the system.
Regardless, the Civil War and the resulting Reconstruction era meant that his Southern clients were unable to pay his bills. He had to close his business and shifted his energies to insurance, where he built a billion dollar business. I’m sure that was none too clean either.
But I’m not here to debate the morals of a pious, rich man. Instead I enjoy his house.
Apparently, it’s always been pink, as you see it, with perhaps a reference to rose color, the rose being his first wife’s favorite flower. She konked after giving him 10 kids, and he married again, leading to one more son. By this time, after the Civil War, he was uber-wealthy and attracted U.S. Presidents to visit his hometown of Woodstock and stay with him at the cottage.
Roseland was known for its July 4 celebrations. Each year, the party was so huge that it spilled out from the house and into the park Bowen built for his entertainments. Voluminous amounts of bunting decorated the grounds. Forget the barbecue. You received your pretty little printed brochure listing all the lectures taking place under the tent and when you could catch the day-time fireworks–a Japanese technology. You could enjoy a pink lemonade while strolling through what the New York Times called a “fairy garden,” if you were one of the lucky 1000 or so people who began coming, along with the sitting President. Of course, there were fireworks at night, too.
President Grant, during his 1870 visit also learned a new skill. Bowling. The house features a bowling alley completely made of wood. The ball and pins were made of wood, too. Grant had never bowled before, and on his first try, he got a strike. So delighted was he that he broke out a cigar. Bowen wasn’t having it and shooed the president outside to smoke.
Even the outbuildings (ice house and privies) had Gothic styling
Also outside was a new privy, erected for a presidential visit. Since you know I’m already familiar with Connecticut’s privies, I can knowledgeably comment that these were pretty high end. A wall separated the holes, and the president could close the door for some additional, ahem, privy. These niceties were not available in Roseland’s indoor privies.
Such were the details learned on the behind-the-scenes tour. We crawled around the cellar, shining our flashlights to see early construction (and a dead mouse) and marveled at the height of the attic rafters and their intricate carpentry. We slithered down creaky staircases, imagining servants carrying tea trays. We wondered how the very heavy furniture in the attic got there, other than on the backs of servants up narrow stairways. We saw how water for baths upstairs had to be pumped up three flights from the cellar cistern. Sheesh. Forget “Downton Abbey.” Servant’s lives were impossibly hard.
What they apparently did so well was make the life upstairs beautiful and seemingly effortless. Perhaps pride (and the privies) were enough reason to stay with the Bowens. One servant worked for the family for over 50 years! Imagine…
Under a huge, radiantly golden, full moon tonight, I went with the graveyard shift to tour the Mark Twain House with the specter focus. No pictures were allowed inside, but according to The Atlantic Paranormal Society or TAPS, photos don’t tend to survive an encounter.
With one exception. This upstairs window on the left equates to the Clemens’ daughters’ bathroom. One photo caught a girl looking out the window when no one was in the house.
Alas, my photo is quite ordinary.
As you can tell from this sunset photo, the house is very grand. Inside, it’s also very dark and was barely lit for our tour. Easy to imagine the spectral encounters reported by guides and visitors.
Here are a few. The three girls still sit on the center hall stairs, where apparently they hung out to eavesdrop on their parents’ entertainments in the dining room. Susie, who died in the house, floats from room to room in her white, Victorian dress. Then there’s the loud, unexplained bang in the library. The silver tray thrown at a security guard, clattering to the ground. And the playful taps on the shoulder and sensations of fingers running through your hair.
Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain
I was most intrigued by Sam Clemens’ belief system. He was born in 1835, the year of Haley’s Comet. Victorians believed that births during a natural phenomenon made the child more sensitive to psychic phenomenon. Clemens not only believed that “two freaks came in together” (he and the comet), but would also go out together. As indeed happened. He died in 1910, with the return of Haley.
One vivid experience confirmed his beliefs about himself. He dreamed of his brother’s death, including seeing his body in a morgue with a wreath of white roses on his chest and a red rose at center. The next day, Twain’s brother was killed in a freak accident, and the would-be author was brought to the morgue to see his brother. All the victims were laid out together. You can guess what he saw.
Clemens also believed he could smoke out fakers. He had an enormous print of his palm and hand made, which he then sent anonymously to psychics and mediums. He would judge from their return reading whether they were genuine. Famously, one he debunked had read the palm and declared that “the owner has no sense of humor.” Obviously, a fraud!
Part of the TAPS method, with their Ghost Hunters television program, is to use equipment to measure electromagnetic currents. Certain spots in the house were hot. The investigators also spent a night in the house, not to prove that there are spirits, but attempt to prove there are not. Debunking is their approach. They couldn’t at the Mark Twain House.
During Twain’s era, Spiritualism was a serious practice, and the Clemens’ and their neighbors, the Beecher Stowe’s, held seances. Clemens wanted to connect with his dead brother. Victorians believed that spirits lingered, likely a comforting thought with such high mortality rates among children, their mothers, and Civil War soldiers. Yes, shrewd fakers took advantage of a culture of grief. I certainly did my own investigation of Spirit Photography.
Daguerreotype of Rena, as a writer with her spirit guide
Who’s to say the Victorians were wrong? Certainly TAPS couldn’t. Check out their video.
Definitely keep an eye out for the new documentary “Rosenwald,” opening soon around the country. Another love project by Aviva Kempner, who made the documentary “Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg” and another on Hank Greenberg, this film on Julius Rosenwald is deeply touching and profoundly inspiring.
JR believed ‘give while you live’, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that by doing so, he changed the culture and future of the U.S. He promised his young wife that he would save $5000, spend $5000, and give $5000. That was just the beginning.
Son of an immigrant peddler, he manufactured men’s clothing in Chicago, making his first fortune in men’s suits. Richard Sears was intrigued, ran an ad for JR’s line, and was swamped by over 1000 orders. Rather than pay his bill, he made JR a partner. Rosenwald’s business acumen perfectly balanced Sears’ marketing brilliance.
Then the real philanthropy began. First, JR funded YMCAs for African Americans. Young men who moved for a job needed a place to live, and Jim Crow eliminated their options. In Chicago, JR put up 1/3 of the money ($25,000) to build a Y, as long as the black community raised the rest.
Twenty-seven Y’s popped up around the country following this model. Booker T. Washington then showed JR how critical education was to changing the life of American blacks. JR had no trouble associating the KKK with the pogroms in Russia. He was outspoken in criticism of white America, and then he acted. Build schools for black children.
Again using the 1/3-2/3 funding split, this time, 1/3 came from the states’ board of education. Separate but equal. Washington rejected JR’s offer of using Sears Prefab buildings for the schools. Pride would come with community sweat equity.
JR was touched by the photos of the schools and the students
Lots of fish fries and collections of pennies, combined with the states’ and JR’s funds, led to an astonishing 5357 new schools across the South. Reportedly, one in three African American children attended a Rosenwald School. Some were burned by whites, but were rebuilt, often more than once, until the dominant community accepted the schools, and its concomitant risk of shared power that education promises. The whole process was a study in community resilience.
Several commented on how nice their Rosenwald Schools were
You would be astounded by all the cultural icons that attended a Rosenwald School, not limited to Maya Angelou, John Lewis, and James Baldwin, to name a shortlist few.
JR also funded the Tuskegee Institute and its later Airmen, who returned from the war with confidence and a sense of self that led to the Civil Rights Movement. Rosenwald’s Fund kickstarted the emerging careers of young artists like Aaron Douglas and Augusta Savage, dancers such as Katherine Dunham, and writers including James Baldwin, Rita Dove, and Langston Hughes, along with singer phenom Marion Anderson.
Jacob Lawrence, Great Migration Series
Jacob Lawrence created his Great Migration series under a Rosenwald Fellowship. Gordon Parks got his start, before his FSA funding. And Woody Guthrie got a fellowship to travel through the South.
JR funded museums, housing communities, Jewish charities, and more, before passing away in 1931. The Fund depleted in 1948, after gifting over $70 million (consider the era!). Give while you live.
Influenced by his Rabbi, the powerful social activist Emil Hirsch, and the visionary Washington, JR personified tikkun olam–repairing the world with all his heart, proudly not becoming a man of his times.
Here’s a sneak peek of the film:
When you think about home renovation, kitchen and baths probably pop to mind. But my hunch is you’re not considering the privy.
Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum, from the rear
The Webb-Deane-Stevens Museum has you there. Executive Director Charles Lyle proudly took me on a privy tour of the meticulously-restored privies for the three houses. After all, they date back to the late 18th century and that makes them historically significant. Yes, they are listed on the National Register for Historic Places. Plus they’re interesting.
Juxtaposing the historic privy with the modern apartment building next door. Viva history!
Turns out, two of the privies were moved over time, to the Congregational Church and Old Academy building. A soil test helped bring the Deane House privy home, with its chemical match. All three are now behind their respective houses, although apparently on slightly different sites. No longer used for storage, the privies tell their own stories now.
I have to say that the most sophisticated of the three, a seven-seater, was practically as big as my New York apartment. Charles doesn’t think the family sat together, if you will, though they likely had assigned seats, ranging from papa- and mama-sized to child-sized
Rat-tail lock hanging loose here, and note the heart-shaped bolts above the door handle.
These are not your grannie’s privy. Truly fancy—hipped rooflines and cornices, paneled doors, and hardware. Note this wonderful rat-tail lock.
I know it’s hard to imagine that a privy might need a new roof. But the three dilapidated structures did. And the Webb House Privy now proudly sports its finial on top again, along with its new cedar shakes.
Does your privy have a paned window with a view? These do, and the original glass was salvaged for the restoration. Applying a plaster wall and ceiling now is almost a lost craftsman form. But these privies have a new hand-brushed, skim coat of plaster applied over the old.
Yellow pine salvaged from other historic properties, provided by Armster Reclaimed Lumber in Springfield, MA, allowed Charles and the contractor JHS Restoration to match the aged patina of the replaced floorboards to the original. You might also notice the stand for a candle, for those middle-of-the-night runs. These interiors are truly remarkable.
A privy at one end of the garden. Note the finial at the top of the roofline.
Painted colonial red, the privies are coated in the color that Charles thinks signaled the service aspects of home life. The back of these houses are painted red, too, while the fronts are the more fashionable yellow. The back of the house is where slaves and servants worked. Distinctions were made, and so it makes sense for the privies in the rear of the houses were painted that same red.
The base of a privy has been damaged, where a shovel repeatedly knocked the wood to remove the, ahem, fertilizer. Good for composting and for the garden. And the gardens are looking lovely this summer, thanks to the hardworking volunteers.
So on your next visit to Wethersfield, not only can you visit what’s up front and center, but also the necessities out back. There may even be an idea or two for your next bathroom renovation.
Another small space, the Normal Terris Theater of Goodspeed, currently has a big production. “My Paris” directed by Kathleen Marshall, of “Anything Goes” and many more Broadway hits, is a world-premiere musical about Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.
Clever staging put the actor playing Toulouse-Lautrec one step down from the others, to communicate the artist’s damaged legs and short stature. Plus, the costume designer lengthened his coat and the crotch of his pants, so that his legs looked shorter. Subtle, but noticeable.
Here red doesn’t get relegated to the back, but lives boldly as red wants to do. Fun to watch the paintings come to life, as you’ll see in this video.
The can-can, the red scarf. It says, vivre la vie, a Lautrec mantra. Well-paced, with a variety of nicely sung songs, I’m guessing this one is Broadway bound in no time. There the spaces will hardly be small and the whoops and twirls will no doubt be broad. Keep a look out.
As I’ve been thinking about growing old gracefully, examples pop up everywhere I look.
Today, I visited the historic house where Valerie is on the Board. The Ward-Heitman House is the oldest in West Haven, built around 1684. Unlike so many historic homes that find themselves in the way, this one has been allowed to age gracefully in place. It hasn’t been moved or changed since the early 20th Century.
1 of 5 still-working fireplaces
The house even survived the Revolutionary War when the British attacked West Haven, seemingly because the owners were Loyalists and Church of England. Ultimately, they were on the losing side, of course, My guide didn’t comment if that’s why there was a change of ownership.
Original front room, with a Colonial color scheme
Louisa and her brothers
The house was built as a stock 2-over-2, two rooms down, two rooms up, until later generations added on for their own purposes. Louisa Ward married a Heitmann, merging the two families in the house. While her seafaring brothers (and husband?) were at sea, she decided to build an addition, a proverbial one-room schoolhouse, called a “Dame’s School.” I don’t have a good explanation for the term, but we can speculate.
Teacher’s desk complete with a geography book, class bell, hickory switch, and apple
Every classroom had to have its George Washington picture
At the same time, out of one of the original downstairs rooms from the 2×2 days, the owners ran boutique businesses, first an antiques store, then a tea room. Not at all uncommon in the early 20th century and through the Depression.
The Ward-Heitmann House seems to have a lot of unanswered questions from its history, but A.R. Gurney wraps up all the questions in his play “Love and Money” quite neatly. In its current production at the Westport Country Playhouse, the program quotes Gurney, now 84 years old, as thinking this was his last play. But, he states, the old saying is that Jews say goodbye and then don’t leave, so he’s going to become Jewish and write a couple more. Power to him!
And this one has legs, moving after tonight’s performance to Signature Theatre Off Broadway, to open with the same cast and set at the end of the month. Signature is happy to call it their Wold Premier, even as it started here in Connecticut.
“Love and Money” addresses issues Gurney seems to have on him mind–principally, how to be a WASP, as he and his lead character self-define, in an ever-diversifying America. With his trademark, gentle humor and tight, fast-paced writing, he does it again. Gives us a smartly-conceived, easy-to-swallow take on a big question.
Cornelia, the character at the heart of this play, has certainly aged with verve, as you’ll see in this video, and the actor Maureen Anderman had a great moment of sharp ad lib.
At one point, the lights went completely off. The stage was utterly dark. Anderman said, “I guess we forgot to pay the light bill.” It was so in character that the audience laughed appreciatively and waited for the play to continue.
Until we learned it wouldn’t. Some quirk in the lighting board had to be reset, not a new problem at the theater apparently. The actors had left the stage, and we were entertained by the stage manager with a congenial to-and-fro with the audience, until the lights were back in order. Then the play picked up just as it left off, not a beat missed, all clearly pros.
Plot-wise, while I was thinking, “uh oh, here comes ‘Six Degrees of Separation’,” Gurney allows Cornelia to out-con the con and have great fun with everyone doing it. She sums up his apparent philosophy at the end. She ad libs again, this time in character, about their dinner party for the evening, with a diverse group of guests “who will all do the dishes.” The play ends as she declares it an opportunity for everyone to get along just fine.
And so she does, and the Ward-Heitmann House does, and we do, too. Get along just fine, as we age with grace.
Carolyn and I visited the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments and what a surprise this place is.
Yes, there’s your basic snake-headed, 1820s Russian bassoon and of course, the bell in the shape of a carp. You can see those, well, just about nowhere else in the world, I imagine.
This carp-shaped bell apparently has an “ugly” sound when rattled
Who wouldn’t be enchanted by this peacock instrument from South India? You play it by sitting on the floor by the peacock, resting the long tail of the instrument on your shoulder to accompany women’s dances.
You know I love a good connection to Connecticut history. Today, we learned about the old Connecticut woodworking tradition and its intersection with woodwinds. Yes, those Colonials and early Nationals loved their fifes, flutes, and clarinets.
Here’s your instruction manual, so you can learn to play
In the 1750s, a German wood turner immigrated to New York and worked in the instrument trade. By 1800, the first ad for instruments by a professional firm appeared in a Hartford newspaper. Clockmakers, written about in this blog post, also turned their hands to instrument construction. Hopkins spent ten years from 1828 to 1838 making woodwinds as well as clocks.
Curator Susan Thompson, herself an oboist, told us that woodwinds were played at home for pleasure, to accompany socials and dances, and in military bands. The violin was the most popular home instrument, but flutes were right up there.
Elephant calling bell
The bells collection was ear-opening for me. I hadn’t really thought about this, but surely, we all need a bell to call in our elephants.
And we have the 19th-century Queen Elizabeth I bell.
Queen Elizabeth 1 bell
The anonymous figure bells are just charming, too. Here’s an English, 19th century bell. Can’t you just hear the homemaker calling in the hoards for lunch?
And this lovely little Art Nouveau bell by H. Pernot, c1900. Sweet!
My favorite was the Devil’s Bell. I’m not sure if we’re ringing to summon or repel the Devil. Hmmm.
Now to the category of gorgeous.
What about this 1702 German-made guitar by Joachim Tielke, celebrating love?
a close look at the side, with its French sayings about love
And this dreamboat of a harp from around 1850.
We called him the dreaming Prince
16th century Italian lute
1785 Lute-Guitar by Jean Charles
We got a wonderful tour of the keyboard collection from mezzo-soprano Kelly Hill, doing a multi-year internship here.
She explained that keyboards make sound from either pipes or strings.
She then demonstrated how this Chamber Organ works. You either pump the pedal or have an able, likely child, assistant pull on a leather strap on the side to activate the bellows that project the notes. You can also change the tone of the sound by shifting from “diapaison” or organ sound to “flauta” or flute. Kelly wasn’t able to demonstrate that, but you can see how it works clearly below
Kelly pulls on the strap to depress the pedal, which operates the bellows
To change the tone
She then took us through the development of the stringed keyboards, from the relatively simple clavichord to the much more complex harpsichord.
The clavichord was home or rehearsal-type instrument, because its sound is muted. Kelly asked us to imagine Bach with his household full of children. He could play the clavichord without upsetting sleep patterns. And it was the flirtatious instrument, as the gentleman caller would have to sit quite close to the lady playing in order to hear properly.
Kelly pulled out pieces from this ornate and intricate harpsichord, with its double keyboards that generate more sound. We then examined these pieces, including a plucker made from a crow’s quill. See it here?
Plucked stringed instruments first gained popularity because of the love of French and Italian lute music. The development of the harpsichord then opened up concert-level performances.
By the way, the regular keys are black and the minor keys are in white on many of these early instruments. Why? Well, you start with your wood key, and yes, this could warp, which would mess with your playing. Then you covered it with either ebony or ivory. If ebony was less expensive, then you used it for the majority of the keys. Makes sense. Early on, the number of keys and the color of the keys were not standardized. What was important was the ’emotion’ of the sound.
When pianos came in, particularly in Vienna, you get early experiments with the upright piano. What about this gorgeous swan-headed pyramid?
There are many treasures in this collection, so you’ll have to visit in person or go to the informative website to learn more. I’ll leave you with my favorite — this 1591 Flemish, ‘mother-and-child’ Virginal.
The oldest instrument in the collection
The decoration is adorable. Kelly explained that for artists, decorating an instrument was not a top drawer commission, and the painters remained anonymous. So often the makers of the instrument would find buddies in the tavern to come work on the decoration in their spare time. Many hands might decorate one instrument. Still this one comes together and tells a fun musical story.
The satyr Pan challenges Apollo to a musical duel. Pan was known for his flute playing, but Apollo was the chief musician of the gods. This was some challenge. They needed a fair and wise judge and chose Tmolis, the god of mountains, since mountains were the ultimate of wisdom.
Well, birds sang when Pan played, but ladies swooned with Apollo. King Midas sides with Pan as the better performer. Not so wise, as Apollo gave him donkey ears, which you may be able to make out alongside his crown.
Who won the contest? That hardly matters. We all do when the music plays on!
On this crisp spring day, Wethersfield had its local Memorial Day parade, but what’s that? A fife-and-drum corps and Revolutionary War soldiers marching alongside the Cub Scouts and Rotary? Just who is Colonel John Chester that his name should appear on these drums?
These are big questions, and there are no easy answers. But I can assure you that today in Historic Wethersfield was almost completely about the Revolutionary War, marked through its annual Heritage Weekend.
You’ve seen it all before. You know, the troops line up opposite and shoot each other like ducks in a carnival game.
Women write in their diaries with lamp oil for ink.
Your pouch can get repaired by the leatherman, who adroitly works two needles at once.
The cannon is shot periodically with a woman to help load.
The apothecary will entice you with his curious tools.
And there are the horses from the Dragoons.
The day was perfect for spinning outside.
And refreshments over the open field fire.
All the stuff you encounter all the time.
Before heading off to do my duty at the Hurlbut-Dunham House though, I became entranced with the minuteae of the militia. That is, the clothes.
I admit I didn’t know the difference between the militia and the Continental Army. Now, shwew, I do.
A militia men saluting the soldiers on parade
Membership in the militia was mandatory for all men from age 16 to 60. Wow. This wasn’t a draft situation. You just did it. Or else. If your town or village was threatened, your militia did its duty. Read, Lexington and Concord.
If you really like taking on the enemy, then you made your job the Continental Army. Like our Army today, participation was a choice, and you got paid to fight. You marched and marched and marched to wherever the next skirmish or battle took place. You want to see the world, you join the army. Defending your home? That’s when you stay at home and do the militia.
Now everyone in that period was a farmer. If you were a lawyer, you were a farmer, too. So when called, you put on your very best coat to go fight with the militia. Why? We don’t know. But the consensus here was that if you were killed, then you looked good doing it.
A militia officer in his fine blue coat, gaiters, and gorgette
Most men wore shoes, then added matching-colored leather gaiters over their pants, so they looked like they were wearing boots. The officers wore boots. The gaiters helped when wading through mud, too.
Officers got the extras. Whether in the militia or in the army, officers wore a gorgette. This metal piece was a remnant from medieval fighting, when knights flung themselves at each other on horseback attacking with spears. The metal was placed at your throat to protect it from piercing. Yikes! So it’s a piece of armor. Here and then, it was honorary and a signifier of status.
Note the red sash and red ribbon on his hat
Officers also wore red, like the ribbon on this Adjutant’s hat. What’s an adjutant? A secretary. A great way to keep the older officers’ knowledge and experience in military combat.
And the sash. Oh my. The sash was red, not for visibility as I guessed, but in case the officer was wounded in battle. The sash was long enough that his attendants could open it up and carry him away from the action on the sash as a stretcher, and his blood wouldn’t show. We wouldn’t want to panic the soldiers.
Well, no, but surely, the soldiers could figure out what it meant when the red sash was unfurled, and their officer was carried off the field of battle.,
This officer is part of the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR). He’s been doing his genealogy and has traced it back to 600 C.E. I can go back about 125 years and am delighted to do that.
Anyway, the SAR in Connecticut existed a full year before there was a DAR–Daughters of the American Revolution. During that year, 88 women were members of the SAR. I like that idea much better than the segregated groups that have emerged and entrenched.
Now, there’s even a Children of the American Revolution. These children are also DAR or SAR, but as children learn the how to’s of their ancestors.
Ah, we’ve answered one big, burning question. Those children marching in today’s parade were CAR, building their skills, so some day, they can shoot muskets and cannons at each other. Long live the traditions!
Even the tradition of, yes, the red onion–developed here and traded out of Wethersfield’s working waterfront.
Imagine living in a one room house with several small children, over your general store in the basement. Oh, and it’s 1795. Yes, the Revolutionary War is over, and Connecticut is building its way to new prosperity.
You are certainly not poor. Your house has a fireplace and wide wood planked floors. You have a decent herb garden for medicinals and grow apples for cider, hang them to dry and have plenty left over for cold storage where they’ll last six months or more. Apples are an important part of your diet. But you can also afford to buy produce from neighbor-farmers. Life’s pretty nice. Just a bit crowded.
That’s where Thankful Arnold found herself early in her marriage, living right across the street from the busy Haddam courthouse and just a few steps from the Connecticut River, the source of economic vitality for the region.
Thankful had 12 children, with all seven sons making it to adulthood, a real rarity. Two daughters, Nancy and Sarah Elizabeth, did, too. She and her husband could afford to expand the house, and all was going well, until her husband died.
Even though he was a businessman, he didn’t leave a will. In Connecticut, an estate left intestate had major implications for the widow. Thankful was entitled to live by law in 1/3 of the house. She had to sell 2/3 to afford to stay there. Think about it. She had six small children and faced the prospect of living in 1/3 of her house while strangers moved into the rest. Best case, the children would be sent to live with other relatives. Many widows faced this fate.
Thankful Arnold as a widow
Fortunately for Thankful, her grown son Isaac bought the other 2/3, and the family home stayed intact. Thankful took in boarders to help pay the bills and was aided by her daughters who never married. Thankful lived to age 73, longer as a widow than wife, so the house was known as the Widow Arnold House and now as the Thankful Arnold House, on the historic trail of the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame.
A note on her name. Thankful was not a Quaker, as I guessed, but instead was a Congregationalist. A hot baby naming trend for your average Colonial was to name your child for a virtue. A man might happily be named Wealthy, Prosper, Consider, and certainly Freelove! But oh, to be a woman and be named Submit, Obedience, Relief, Mindwell, or Silence. I didn’t know these as names, maybe because these women fell into obscurity. Not hard to wonder why.
Mercy did not, famously as Mercy Otis Warren, Revolutionary War heroine, and Prudence of Prudence Crandall fame, written about in this blog, made her mark, too. Puritans indeed would name their daughters Patience, Increase, but Desire? How in the world did that young lady stand a chance of preserving her reputation?
Thankful’s daughters were good girls. Sarah Elizabeth acted as the family nursemaid, going to live with various relatives to care for the sick and elderly. Nancy helped in the boardinghouse and educated her nieces on how to run a household, through their ‘apprenticeship’ at the family home with its boarders. Miss Nancy lived in the house until age 84 in 1884. One of her niece’s Sabra came to live in the house as a widow until the 1920s. Her son Charlie Ingersoll lived here until 1962.
Charlie was a house painter, and he and his wife supplemented their income with a local hot spot–The Red House Tea Room. Being right across the street from the courthouse insured street and foot traffic, and New England roads were quickly becoming tourist havens for road trippers in newly affordable automobiles. Who doesn’t like a scenic drive with a refresh stop at a tea room? I covet that Cheese Dream, which LIsa, the Director, told me was likely an open-faced grilled cheese sandwich. I could dream of more…
The Old Red House Tea Room menu
When the house was vacated in 1962, the timing coincided with Haddam’s tercentenary. A cousin bought the house and donated it to the Historic Society. Not, unfortunately, until all the goods and furnishings were already sold. Happily, an inventory from 1823, conducted when Thankful became a widow, led to furnishing and interpreting it to her period.
Note the ‘tin kitchen’ rotisserie on the hearth
We can see the 1823 kitchen, with its hanging, drying herbs and cod. The original fireplace was revealed when a wall was opened up. The old bake oven is there, too. The hearth was used as a stove top. Pull coals out of the fire to the hearth, then place your spider (frying pan with legs) on top. No more leaning over dangerous open fires. This hearth also comes complete with a ‘reflected over’ or ‘tin kitchen’ which works like a rotisserie for your meat.
I climbed carefully up steep, narrow steps to the dark attic. Yes, there are two finished bedrooms each with a tiny fireplace off the central chimney, where boarders likely lived. But the children–they slept under the eaves, catch what space they could around the typical attic storage stuff. Pretty cold in the winter, too.
So Thankful had a lot to be grateful for, as all worked out for her family and her house in the long run. Me? I’m thankful for central heat and a gas stove cooktop!
In all the rush of the day, what a relief to finally make it to the Aromatherapy class at my Hamden library.
Aaaahhh.
The aroma could be drunk in all the way out the Friends Room down the stairs to the front door. Nice.
Kim Larkin started by walking us through how we might want to use essential oils (not fragrance oils) for their healing qualities. Here are 8 ways:
Smell – just take a good whiff
Diffuse – scent up your room
Local applications, for the particular healing properties
Hot compresses
Cold compresses
Massage enhancement
Tenting – that is, put a few drops in a bowl of hot water, drape a towel over your head as you lean over the bowl and get a homemade, delicious steam facial
Misting – spray your room, which I do all the time to my great pleasure with rose scent. Did you know it takes 60,000 petals to make one ounce of oil? No wonder it’s so expensive!
You know I can’t resist sharing a bit of history with you. The Ancient Egyptians used perfume as part of their embalming process. The word ‘perfume’ means ‘through smoke’, so we can get a sense of how the scents were disseminated. Frankincense and myrrh were known for their healing properties.
Another real discovery was fleurage–the process of steaming the plant to separate its oil for harvesting. This, plus trade routes, brought scents across cultures. In India, ayurvedic medicine, or life knowledge, used the oils. Ancient Romans, health conscious as they were, used oils for good hygiene. Persian doctors used Chinese oils to perfect their medicines. Later, monks used herbal remedies to cure leprosy and other diseases.
While eating a root may have been the ancient form of medicine, we had to cycle through noxious chemicals and pills and antibiotics, before returning to, simply, eating a root for good health.
The essential oil came back to us from Italian doctors and French chemists who worked in perfume factories in the early 1900s. When one severely burned his arm, he dunked it in a nearby vat. Turns out, the vat was filled with lavender oil. His arm didn’t blister, and the burn didn’t scar. He was convinced and started a crusade for oils that continued through World War II when medical supplies ran low and on to Dr. Bach.
Bach rejected traditional medicine in favor of botanicals that he equated with 38 states of mind. Use the botanical to heal an imbalance, with one or a blend of Dr. Bach’s flower essence remedies. For fun, you can complete the questionnaire and see what you think. I’ve enjoyed using these flower essences in the past and got inspired to look them up again.
You might also get a kick at looking at the healing properties of the oils.
We wrapped up the night by making three goodies to take home: a bath salt, a facial scrub, and a dream pillow.
Our bath salt mix is a spring detox – coming at just the right time. It’s made with Epson sale and sea salt, as well as the oils. I chose to blend citruses for invigoration and rosemary for clearing the head and as a memory aid.
Believe it or not, the facial scrub is made with granulated sugar (for exfoliating) and a couple of drops of oil, combined with a carrier, such as grapeseed, almond, or avocado oils. I used grapeseed, because I had it handy.
My dream pillow will go under my pillow tonight and has lots of rosemary, as well as jasmine–the King of Oils, which takes 8 million flowers to make just 2 ounces–for self-confidence and easing of the joints, plus lavender and chamomile for calming relaxation. It smells like a little bit of heaven.
These are all super simple. Give them a try and let me know what you think.
Long-time blog readers may remember the scary Halloween post from 2012 about Eliza Jumel and Aaron Burr (or brrr for all those shivers running up and down your spine!).
Eliza Jumel with the infamous pitchfork
Well, turns out one of my snaps is getting renewed life. Here’s the photo in question–of Eliza with the pitchfork she (may have) used to off her first husband, before marrying Burr. I ask you, would you marry someone who may have murdered her first spouse? Kind of like marrying Lizzie Borden…
Designer and artist Camilla Huey. had an exhibition at the Morris-Jumel Mansion entitled The Loves of Aaron Burr: Portraits in Corsetry & Binding. Great stuff!
Design & Photo: Camilla Huey
The exhibit steeped us in the politics of Federalist New York, while also making us voyeurs drinking in Camilla’s designs. She explains, “Historically, the Georgian woman was viewed as a body without a voice.” She uses corsets as a form for combining the women’s hand-transcribed letters, books, and other ephemera “to reanimate their voices” and symbolize “each woman’s ‘body work’ in sheer volume.”
Now, Camilla is making a documentary about the exhibition-making process and the history. She focuses on nine of the women Burr loved, mentored, or was mentored by, to include the dark side. Camilla writes me, “I am just thrilled with flawed characters!” Here’s the trailer:
So spread the word and look for the film. It will premiere The Morris-Jumel Mansion on May 14, 2015. You might just catch a glimpse of Eliza and the pitchfork, re-imagined as a historic photo in black-and-white or sepia tones.
A display of wood parts
For hundreds of years, clocks were made from wooden parts. Connecticut jumped into the clock-making world with an innovation by Eli Terry that kicked off the Industrial Revolution here. Yes, Terry made clocks out of wood parts, the traditional way. In 1802, he made 200 clocks. Slowly, by hand. Then he invented the mass-produced, interchangeable brass part.
Woo hoo! The cost of clocks plummet, and now every parlor can have one. Good thing, because everyone now had to be on time for that factory job. You had to ‘punch the clock’. Of course, you could take your chances, relying on the factory bell. But with New Haven and Bristol and Torrington and Waterbury and a number of smaller towns all churning out timepieces, why not have one of your own? Bristol alone had 275 clock-related businesses. Horology run amok!
You could get a New Haven Clock, the Wayland style on the left, say, for $25.50 in 1923, before it’s price zoomed to $32.10 in 1925. If you didn’t hurry though, you’d be out of luck. The Wayland was discontinued in 1930, making way for new styles.
As a woman, you might get a job with the clock world, too. Using a stencil to paint the clock face. And they are charming indeed! Every style you can think of and more you haven’t.
And I think there’s at least one of each style clock at the American Clock and Watch Museum in Bristol–with its 6000 timepieces. A wonder, when the hour strikes and so do all the clocks.
A Braille Clock, which I touched to feel the braille
You’ll get a history lesson there, too. Some clocks wouldn’t be so okay today.
I finally learned how a sailor’s clock works. The ship’s bell strikes one bell at 12:30, 4
:30, and 8:30, both a.m. and p.m. Then an additional bell is rung each half hour until 8 bells (the max) are rung at 4, 8, and 12, then the process repeats. I finally know what 8 bells means! My literary knowledge of Moby Dick feels one step closer to completion.
The little mouse was the first.
You probably know I’m a huge fan of wind-up toys. I had no idea that these toys were invented in Bristol and are based on a clock’s gears and key.
Glad there was time for some inventive fun.
All those clock companies. What happened to them? Many burned down. Shellac used in the factory, highly flammable. Others went bankrupt from poor management. But go to Bristol and visit this unassuming, big-ticking-heart of a museum to get a flavor for its heyday.
1845 Whistle Pipe Organ clock, that played one of seven tunes each day at noon
![Reginald Marsh, "Wooden Horses" [detail], 1936, tempera on board; 24 x 40 inches, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, The Dorothy Clark Archibald and Thomas L. Archibald Fund, The Krieble Family Fund for American Art, The American Paintings Purchase Fund, and The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, 2013.1.1. "Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008"](https://i0.wp.com/4eg99614zvx21of7ql3apu8c.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/coney-island_header-image_web.jpg?resize=584%2C195 "Reginald Marsh, \"Wooden Horses\" [detail], 1936, tempera on board; 24 x 40 inches, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2013.1.1")
With two exhibits and an entire museum, I’ve been thinking a lot about carousels. Yes, the Wadsworth Atheneum has its Coney Island exhibit mounted, the same one I worked on 15 months ago. And the Yale School of Art has the “Side Show
” exhibit, as a literal side show about the freaky side of the carnival. In the Reginald Marsh painting from the Wadsworth, the women seem be deadly serious about racing to the finish line, beating out the man in the red bowler. No simple up and down ride for them.
I learned at the New England Carousel Museum in Bristol, CT that carousels didn’t even go up and down until 1907. In fact, carousels started as a training tool for knights. Um, yes, medieval knights. They would practice spearing rings with lances.
Maybe you’ve ridden a carousel where you tried to snare a ring. In the Golden Age of carousels, that is the 19th century, that’s where we got the idea of “grabbing the brass ring.” A winner on the carousel, and in life, grabs the brass ring. But liability put a stop to that. Now we have to be content riding up and down. No killer scenes like Marsh gives us.
Who knew there are different styles of carousel horses? The first permanent park carousel was in Philadelphia, and the Phily style is oh so graceful. Moreso than the solid and chunky Country Fair style. And then there’s the Coney Island style, showy and pretty.
The menagerie animals are great fun. Hard to believe they fell out of favor for the more popular horse carousel. Who wouldn’t want to ride a rooster, a giraffe (who’s eyes follow you no matter where you move), a tiger, a hare, or a camel? If not a horse, then why not a zebra or a seahorse?
The horses are completely wonderful, too. I’ve never seen a three-dimensional carved flower on a carousel horse before. Tres elegant!
Or what about a bulldog or a leprachaun, hidden under the saddle?
The museum shows how the animals are constructed form wood and in pieces, even if they appear whole. Also the animals get smaller closer in to the center pole, an attempt aso the most elaborate carving is saved for the outside ring. Notice that when you next ride a carousel. Or maybe, you want to go to Bristol and ride one there!
This slide show will further introduce you to its glories…
The new HVAC system all lit up
The Shubert Theater in New Haven is 100 years old and is being celebrated in a bunch of ways–pivotally, with a facelift of the facility. New HVAC, a new black box theater, extension of the front to the curb, and restoring the historic marquee. Can hardly wait to see that!
Yale was not to be left out. Woolsey Hall was built in 1901 for the 200th anniversary of the university and was also home for the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. It houses the largest organ in the world and in the rotunda, a war memorial. And apparently, it has a ghost. Why not? What ghost wouldn’t want to live there?
Taft Hotel with its Tiffany glass dome
The show moves around, starting in the lobby, then moving to the Taft Hotel next door, with its speakeasy past. The actors stayed here, using the back passage to get to the Shubert, avoiding adoring crowds. The show’s final act takes place in the theater. I was seated for the final act right behind two of the actors. It was intermission. We chatted. I asked, “Are you going to sing?” The couple, portraying the show’s backers, were equivocal.
Two really sweet exhibits at Yale made me think about my family and family photos and family connections. No, these shows aren’t at the Beineke or the Art Gallery or the art school. One is at the Hillel and the other at a center for emeriti faculty.
My friend Julie grew up in a Yale family, her father a professor, her mother a Dean. Now retired, her father still teaches the odd course here and there and engages with the Koerner Center, named for Henry Koerner, the artist, who after fleeing Europe and famously illustrating the Nuremberg Trials, taught in the Yale art department.
Now, Alan Trachtenberg has an exhibit of his black-and-white portrait photographs at the Koerner. Each tells a story, not just of the sitter, but instead the relationship with the photographer, and in his absence, with us as viewers. These are not easy conversations. Who is the stern woman? (Turns out, it’s his wife!) The quizzical young man? How has the photographer interrupted the couple, and does that explain why they look at us the way they do?
The exhibit at the Slivka Center, No One Remembers Alone, is surprisingly touching, telling the story of a love affair and the family that surrounds it. It’s a Jewish story, of Abraham and Sophie, who are separated when she immigrates first, to Brooklyn.
They really fall in love through postcards–even the poor could afford the one penny stamp. A portrait photograph was cheap enough, too. Like a great love letter, these cards were saved over the decades. Found in a suitcase and translated from Yiddish, the cards are displayed chronologically at Hillel on a round wheel-like display, where the back is visible, as well as the front.
Chava in 1910
While I loved that story, there were also the stories of their siblings. Chava makes the trip to the U.S. in the place of Gitel, her sister, who fell in love with a young teacher Velvei Schapoachnik. So much for going to the U.S.
So Chava travels under Gitel’s name, and the ship’s manifest is on display. But then, in the U.S., she’s an illegal immigrant. She was terrified of being deported, until she was finally able to naturalize as a citizen about thirty years later, in 1940.
Then there’s her brother Abram. In 1899, when he was 13, he walked 3 kilometers to the farm school funded by the Jewish Colonization Association. He wasn’t admitted because he was considered too weak and malnourished for the accompanying farm labor. But this didn’t stop Abram. He went again the next day and was turned away again. He went every day for a month, until his tenacity got him a place in school.
Abram at school
Abram was the only member of his family to be educated, and his career came as a result, cultivating flowers and plants.
And so the love of learning moved through his world, as it does mine. And I’m grateful to my family, who made similar choices as this family of strangers, who really don’t seem strange at all.
The best experience I’ve had with chocolate took place at Colonial Williamsburg. I was attending a conference there in February (a Colonial brrrr) and signed up for a post-conference experience: making chocolate the Colonial way.
Ten of us met at a cooking cabin at 7 a.m., where the cows had already been milked, but the rest was up to us. We divided labor. Getting the dried beans into a huge fry pan to roast over the open fire (done by a staffer), cracking the beans (ah the aroma!), followed by hours and hours of grinding and pounding by us all. No matter the cold, we had the door open, letting in the biting wind we all welcomed with our sweaty labor.
Only at the very end, maybe the last hour, we added some spices–we chose cayenne and cinnamon–and milk. Sugar wasn’t readily available, but we were given a cone to scrape off for our mixture.
After twelve hours, yes really, we each got to taking home a sliver of this drinking chocolate. Even mixing it with warm milk, the concoction was pretty chalky.
From the primitive to the sublime, I happily braved the Connecticut cold to go to my public library for a presentation by the self-taught ‘Chocolate Lady‘ Maria Brandriff, another Hamden resident. She gave us an abbreviated history of chocolate, which 
comes from an Aztec word meaning “bitter water.” They apparently made their drink much like we did at Williamsburg, and it was a beverage for the Kings, believed to be an aphrodisiac.
Not until the mid-1800s was chocolate used to make candy. The discovery was conching–using huge mixing machines with slowly rotating blades to blend the heated chocolate and get rid of excess moisture. It takes an Industrial Revolution to give us the really good stuff.
But candidly, the packed house was there for the goods. And Maria didn’t disappoint. First she had us taste decent grocery/drugstore chocolate, after deriding most of the readily available stuff, including Hersey and other mass-manufactured packaged chocolate. Out of Lindt, Ghiradelli, and Trader Joe’s, I liked the latter’s 54% and 72% ‘Pound Plus’, made with chocolate from Belgium.
I couldn’t really tell all that much difference between the two levels of bitterness, which really references the amount of cacao to other ingredients, although generally, I like up to 80%. I not a fan of sugar. If you try the Trader Joe’s Pound Plus, let me know what you think. It’s quite reasonably priced.
Then Maria showed us how to make truffles. First you want to know that the word truffle really does reference the mushroom, because the best chocolates are irregular and gritty and earthy like the pig-discovered thing from the ground.
Anyway, you start with a ganache–an emulsion of heavy cream and chocolate, created by whisking. You can used canned coconut milk instead of the cream, if for some reason, you’re being health conscious with your truffles.
Now, ganache is pretty tricky. You need to temper your chocolate so that it will both have a snap when you bite into it and melt on your tongue. Are you getting in the mood yet?
The problem is your ganache can curdle, called “broken ganache” just like a hollandaise or mayonnaise. Maria says after many years of making the good stuff, it still happens to her. Yep. I’ve already written off trying this at home. Still it was great fun watching Maria make truffles right in front of us, dipping the formed chocolate in cocoa powder (we each got to sample one. Luscious.) 
If you get your ganache, you have to decide if you’re going to add flavor through addition or infusion. Our goodie bag (this was unexpected for a free public program) included Maria’s tea-infused truffle, with its marinated tea leaves creating a juice that was infused into the ganache. Adding coconut meat and lime juice to white chocolate made the piña colada truffle. I don’t like these kinds of coconut candies in general, but Maria’s was pretty tasty.
So what you need to know is that the health benefits of chocolate start at 70%, the dark, dark stuff. Different beans can make the chocolate taste totally different, even at the same percentage of cacao. Your beans might be citrusy or smokey or fruity, depending on where they come from. The best beans come from South and Central America, but most of what we get is from the Ivory Coast, where the beans are most prolific, cheapest, and least flavorful. The price you pay will vary by all these determinants.
But really. At this cold moment at the end of January, who cares? Go have a nice piece of chocolate and let it melt on your tongue. Life is good.
Here’s a Connecticut heroine no one has heard of–Prudence Crandall. Yes, she’s in the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame. Yes, she took an activist stance, before anyone would have done so, perhaps influencing social reform strategies through the next hundred years. But she is little remembered.
Until now, maybe. Connecticut State Senator Donald Williams has written a book on her legacy, with the law in particular. Let’s hope she gets some recognition.
Williams passionately and elegantly told Crandall’s story before a packed house at the New Haven Museum this MLK week, celebrating her as a beacon during the long struggle for equal justice in Connecticut and the United States. He has turned up a remarkable amount of information, in what he called his “eight year hobby,” which I know first hand isn’t easy to do. His particular interest is how her story influenced national law before the Civil War and since.
So what is her story?
Crandall came from a wealthy, Quaker family that moved from Rhode Island to Canterbury, Connecticut, where her father Pardon Crandall bought a farm house and taught school. He believed all his children, including his daughters, should have an education, unusual for his day. Quaker values of equality and opportunity for all shaped Prudence’s own, further inculcated as she attended a Friends boarding school in Providence. She went on to teach herself and to become involved in Quaker-supported causes like Temperance.
Her parents helped Crandall buy a house in Canterbury, which she opened as a school for the daughters of the burgeoning middle class. She had day students and boarders, too, and not as a finishing school, but also teaching math, science, English, history, and art. The Town Fathers were proud of her accomplishments and delighted by the local economic boom the school created.
Academy opened on the Canterbury Green in 1831
All was fine. Remarkable even. In the 1830s, single women were rare property owners, and married women could not. Here Crandall was, the Headmistress of her own school, successful enough to have servants and several teachers to help her. To give you a sense of the times, at the Temperance meetings she attended, only men were allowed to speak.
Mariah Davis was one of her servants, and her friend Sarah Harris and she liked to sit in the back of the classroom and take in the lessons. Harris then approached Crandall and asked to be a student. Harris was African American. She knew she was asking the headmistress for a lot, and Crandall didn’t respond right away.
In the intervening years, Crandall became a Baptist, which in New England were abolitionists. But despite her beliefs, Crandall also provided the financial support for her sister, and she had a mortgage to pay. But Harris won her over, after introducing her to the most famous abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, which even published articles by women! Abolitionists believed in the necessity of education to lift up black men and women. Harris herself wanted to become a teacher.
Sarah Harris, many years later
Some weeks later, in 1833, Crandall agreed that Harris become a student. The other students knew Sarah and her family, worshiped with them in the Congregational Church. They accepted her. But. Their parents did not. Crandall, her father, and her brother were threatened, and white parents tried to bully Harris out of the school.
Crandall had to face a new reality. If Harris stayed in the school, then all the white girls would withdraw, and the school would fail. Crandall would not capitulate. She had never met the publisher of The Liberator William Lloyd Garrison, in Boston, but she wrote him, and he agreed to meet her. She took a 9-hour stage coach ride up to Boston.
What did she do? After discussing her plan with Garrison, she kicked out all the white girls and turned her school into an academy for black girls and women. How did she make this happen? Garrison’s paper told her story, reaching out to advocates throughout New England and New York to find 20 to 25 families who could afford Crandall’s tuition.
For perspective, in New Haven, abolitionists had already attempted a college for black men, with a proposal shot down by the Connecticut legislature 800 to 4. Yikes. Garrison didn’t want a similar failure and suggested that Crandall meet with activists in person. She met with black ministers and families. She got their commitments.
In April 1833, the school reopened, and by summer, she was full-up, with black women learning all the arts and sciences. That’s when the trouble really started.
Threatened, state legislator persecuted and prosecuted Crandall. The “Black Law” passed through the House and Senate. It prohibited educating any African Americans from other states, and 85% of Crandall’s students came from outside Connecticut. As a woman, Crandall was unable to speak out in her defense, and the minister-allies were unsuccessful. The Governor signed the law which called for criminal penalties and excessive fines–for educating children.
After discussing the risks with other teachers and her family, Crandall committed an act of civil disobedience and kept school open. She and sister Elmira were arrested. Elmira was only 20 years old, so she was released. Crandall was taken to the Brooklyn CT jail.
The Town Fathers were not amused.
Arthur Tappan many years later, in 1870
And Prudence Crandall had made the national news. A wealthy advocate Arthur Tappan funded her attorney’s fees. Good thing, because three trials and a trip to the Connecticut Supreme Court were in store.
With her case, attorneys worked together in new collaborative ways. They made arguments about how the “Black Law” was unconstitutional.
David Daggett, one of the founders of Yale Law School, used political influence to become a judge. He was also a prominent racist. In a just-how-things-were way, when his conviction of Crandall was appealed to the state Supreme Court, guess who also was a Justice? Yep.
David Daggett, 1764-1851
Not wanting to embarrass their colleague, another Justice found a technicality to make the prosecution complaint incomplete. The case against Crandall would have to be dismissed.
Lest I forget, all the publicity attracted to Crandall the attentions of an evangelical minister, and after a whirlwind in the middle of controversy, they were married.
Crandall continued to operate her school until September 9, 1834. Then, with her full school of students all asleep, a group of men gathered at midnight armed with wooden clubs and iron bars, and at the signal of a whistle, smashed all the first floor windows. Remarkably, no one was hurt, but this was the deciding moment.
At that time, there had been race riots Boston and Philadelphia, churches were attacked and organs burned in bonfires, Garrison’s life was threatened–all acts likely by poor whites threatened by the potential of economic competition by freed (much less educated) blacks.
The next morning after the vandalism, Crandall gathered the teachers and agreed that the students needed to be protected. The school couldn’t guarantee their safety, so they decided to close and send the women home.
This was not the end of Crandall’s story. She separated from her husband and moved on her own to Illinois, where she opened another school, teaching all races of children out of her house. She supported abolition, temperance, and women’s suffrage. I asked the Senator if her act of civil disobedience and jail time served as models for these other movement’s strategies. He thought so.
In the last decade of her life, in the 1870s, Crandall moved to Kansas. Before the Civil War, Kansas was the site in vicious racial episodes, but now it was considered progressive. She lived the frontier life, eking out an existence in Elk Falls, now a ghost town. She only left to nurse her husband at the end of his life.
The Senator traveled to the town to see her gravestone. Her house had been destroyed by a tornado, but 87 year old Marjorie remembered where the house’s cellar hole was and helped him find it, still there in a stony field.
He reminded us that the struggle for racial justice was northern as well as southern and sadly, still continues today. The Crandall case was cited as case law in the awful Dred Scott decision in the 1850s and in the fight against Jim Crow, in Brown v the Board of Education, which also involved Crandall’s last home state of Kansas.
Information about Crandall’s students, both black and white has mostly been lost. After all, they were only women. Still, the Senator uncovered that some went on to other academies for further study, and some became activists. And so I say, let’s study and act for justice, in the name of our fore sisters of courage!
Now that I’m at Yale daily, it’s fun to explore. Today, I wandered over to Sterling Memorial Library, the main library on campus, to see its newly renovated nave. Nave. You know. That entry way in your home…or medieval cathedral.
When I last wrote about Sterling, the nave was under scaffolding. Originally constructed in 1930-1, it needed a serious overhaul for technology and systems and a plain ol’, good, general cleaning. After a year and twenty million dollars, this meticulous restoration and preservation of the original now reflects the needs of contemporary students.
Period touches remain. The card catalog. Today’s students don’t really know what that
is. But the catalog banks are in place (even as the cards have been archived) because of one tradition: opening the drawers to various degrees to spell out messages, like ‘Yale’. I can definitely picture that. Can’t you?
The ends of the card catalog also hide the environmental controls. So do the carved stone sculptures on the gallery level. LED lights, including uplighting that reveals the ceiling, are hidden all through the structure. Clever!
Every surface was gray from grime and cigarette smoke. The Indiana limestone was cleaned with a latex peel–apply and peel off the schmutz. The ceiling involved a 2-step process. First a magic eraser was used, literally erasing about half the dirt. Then a wash took off the rest.
Those are painted panels on wood, and they are loose, laid into the wooden lattice. Librarian Ken Crilly, our tour guide, said he lifted one by hand while standing on the top level of scaffolding, called the ‘dance floor.’ Being up there is not for the faint-of-heart. The scaffolding was “springy,” said Ken. Imagine, too, there’s an attic above that painted ceiling, now with a new catwalk.
The more than 3000 windows are a decorative treasure, considered the finest secular 
stained glass collection in the world. All the leaded glass was designed by G. Owen Bonawit, with each portraying what is going on in that room. Ken relays a great story. He works in Room 333, which was reserved for the Asian collections in the 1930s. Although unknown in the US, Ken jokes he is famous in Japan, from the streams of tourists come to photograph the geisha and samurai warriors shown in the windows.
In the nave, the windows teach local history, just as the windows in medieval cathedrals taught religious stories. New Haven and Yale history are memorialized. 
Depicted are the ministers bringing the books from Yale’s original location in Saybrook, CT to New Haven in 1701, while also including the residents sneaking away with the books that fell off the loaded ox carts. Then there’s the Colonial-dressed men eating at a table. Apparently, they represent the Yale undergraduates caught stealing chicken from Mrs. So-and-So.
Gloriously, the nave displays 1930s art faculty member Eugene Savage’s painting on canvas of Alma Mater, as if the Virgin Mary. Yale’s blue and white just happens to correspond to the traditional colors of the painted Mary, and its motto translates into “Light and Truth,” making for the perfect allegorical figures. There’s Painting in blue, too, palette in hand. Perhaps a self-portrait of the artist in medieval garb?
It’s all there, there in the nave, in seriousness and good fun. Just what college should be.
A nice place to read
Old State House, Hartford
P.T. Barnum was an elected Representative to the Connecticut state legislature, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the refined, Federal style Old State House has a Museum of Curiosities, inaugurated in 1797. Now, this exhibit certainly doesn’t attain the level of the bizarre that Barnum promoted. But how often do you get to see a two-headed calf?
In this, the first capitol building in Connecticut, where the no-doubt somber, initial trials of the Amistad’s rebellious captives took place, before moving to New Haven; where representatives from around New England gathered to decide whether to secede from the U.S. in 1814, in displeasure over the war with England; in this august hall with its Gilbert Stuart painting of George Washington…
…you can bet that people flocked instead to see giant tarantulas, an alligator, a whale bone, a shrunken hand, and yes, even a two-headed pig. How did this come to be?
First, Charles Willson Peale had already done something similar at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. The Peale Museum was the nation’s purported first museum. Here, at Connecticut’s State House, portrait painter Joseph Steward was given the right to have his painting studio in the building. There, he could capture the likenesses of the important political dignitaries working below.
He also had quite the collection of oddities and whatnots from his world-wide travels. And his museum was born. He advertised in the Connecticut Courant newspaper an inventory of just what you could see if you visited, and the exhibit remained in place until 1810.
One advertisement, click to enlarge and read
Why did such a popular exhibit close? Think about it. The two-headed pig wasn’t preserved, and it disintegrated. Ewww. Same with the other organic specimens. So it took restoration of the building in the 1990s for the museum to be recreated. The only original items are the portraits that Steward painted, including of the ubiquitous George Washington, as you can see in the photo above.
Now the challenge. How do you find a two-headed calf, or for that matter a two-headed pig? The curators checked auction lots. No luck. So a little known farm fact came to bear. Apparently, two-headed-farm-animal births are not all that rare, and in the midwest, a still born, two-headed calf became the museum’s highlight, this time appropriately preserved.
This isn’t fake. It’s not a Barnum & Bailey manipulated display. Stuff happens.
At least I spared you a picture of the two-headed pig fetus in a jar. Ewww.
If it all becomes just too much for you, you can always take a seat at one of the original Legislators’ desks, catch your breath, and reflect on just how good you’ve got it!
