USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Concord > Handbook, Concord Antiquarian society, Concord, Massachusetts > Part 2
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Particularly interesting are the many crude contrivances for lighting, and other articles of household equipment made of pine. Probably no early furnishings speak more truly of the lives of the men and women who settled New England than these simple household things, made oftentimes by the country householder himself to meet the needs of a family far from town supplies, and showing in many cases an ingenuity and cleverness of invention for which the Yankee became justly famous. Supplementing them in quiet homeliness are the country slat-back and bannister-back chairs, and the little looking-glasses framed in pine, their crestings cut to the silhouettes of the more pretentious glasses brought from England. Such things continued to be made and used in country districts long after their prototypes in the towns and cities had been abandoned for more fashionable furnishings. Their actual dates need not be confusing if the sources of their inspiration are borne in mind.
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THE CRANE ROOM
Room 3 THE CRANE ROOM Early Eighteenth Century
The Architecture
This room, the second of our Concord series, is a country kitchen of the type which might have been found in one of the simpler farmhouses in or about Concord during the early years of the eighteenth century. Architecturally it retains much of the feeling of the earlier period. The woodwork remains largely structural. But in the two broad panels over the fireplace we find a first suggestion of an effort towards formal dec- orative treatment. The arrangement of the sheathing, vertically on the fireplace side, and horizontally on the (originally) outer walls, follows a plan frequently met with in New England. The woodwork is from an old house in Dunbarton, New Hampshire, but has been somewhat re- built to fit this room. The exhibition window has of course no architec- tural relation to the room.
The fireplace, built on the shallower, more efficient lines developed early in the century, still dominates the room. The side ovens, of so- called "Revolutionary brick," are later additions, dating probably from the last quarter of the century.
The Furnishings
An iron crane now takes the place of the hazardous lug-pole of earlier days, and on the hearth are grouped the numerous wrought-iron and copper cooking utensils demanded by the more elaborate cooking of this period. Delicately wrought handles, pierced rings and holders, graceful "tip kettles," trivets, grids, and toasters, all bear witness to the skill and artistry of our early craftsmen, and, be it said, to the long-suffering of our grandmothers. A "wafering" or "mothering" iron, translated from ecclesiastical to domestic use, will be identified as the forebear of our waffle iron. A "flip iron" or loggerhead recalls the time when long win- ter evenings spent round the fire were cheered by frequent draughts of "spirit," brewed to a strength to fortify against the cold.
The importance of rum as a factor in the home as well as in the eco-
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nomic life of New England throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, is further witnessed by the numerous barrel-shaped containers in the collection. No farm cart started for the fields in those days without the day's portion of rum slung in a "rundlet" about the neck of the driver; and no visitor, man or woman, was allowed to leave the house unrefreshed. It was said that in Concord a respected citizen could drink five glasses of rum before breakfast in haying time, and never feel it. Several of our "rundlets" bear the names of well-known early Concord farms.
The furniture in this room combines typical provincial pieces of the early eighteenth century with Windsor chairs and other country fur- nishings of the period represented by the side ovens in the fireplace.
A panelled chest on the far wall has the single drawer and applied mouldings of the early years of the century. It bears the date 1735, and the initials of the owner, Daniel Billings, whose forebear, Nathaniel Billings, was in Concord before 1640.
Above this piece hangs a crayon portrait of Urania, wife of Lieu- tenant Jonas Barrett, nephew of Colonel James Barrett of Revolutionary fame. A large powderhorn near the window belonged to Colonel Wil- liam Barrett, another of this well-known Concord family, and is said to have been with him at Crown Point in 1759.
A late form of chest, showing the importance already attached to the chest-of-drawers at this time, stands against the opposite wall. Instead of a single drawer beneath the chest, there are now two, and the front of the chest proper is divided into three simulated drawers graduated in size. This is a more attractive arrangement than is found in most pieces of this type, where the false drawers are usually only two. The wide single-arch mouldings, ball feet, and drop handles are characteristic of the first quarter of the century.
In the odd-looking armchair by the window, we have what was ob- viously a country carpenter's interpretation of the wing chair of the period. No doubt in its original state the feet were simple extensions of the legs, and the whole piece would have seemed less awkward than at present. It belonged to the family of Dr. Philip Reed, first physician in Concord, who came to Concord about 1670, and died in 1696.
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THE PAUL REVERE LANTERN
The covering of the chair is a fragment of one of the Indian painted and resist-dyed panels, so popular during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Defoe, writing in 1708, tells how "curtains, cush- ions, chairs, and at last beds themselves were nothing but these callicoes and Indian stuffs." A modern reproduction of a similar Indian stuff hangs at the windows, beneath which a wide shelf serves for the exhi- bition of various household and lighting accessories of the period.
THE LANTERN CASE
Just outside Room 4 is a case in which are exhibited a few important relics of the events which took place in Concord on the 18th and 19th of April, 1775.
At the top of the case hangs one of the two lanterns which swung from the tower of the Old North Meetinghouse on the night of the ride of Paul Revere. It was bought in 1782 by Captain Daniel Brown of Con- cord from the sexton of Christ Church in Boston, who gave him its his- tory at that time. From Captain Brown's grandson it came into the pos- session of Mr. Davis in 1853. In view of the fact that the piece was bought for its historic significance only seven years after the occurrence of the events with which it is associated, there seems to be no reason to doubt the legend concerning it. Certainly, with its well-made frame and clear glass sides, it is a more likely signal than any of the so-called Paul Revere lanterns which were for years associated with the patriot's name.
Below the lantern hangs the broadsword of Colonel James Barrett, officer in command of the American forces at Concord Bridge. It was presented to the Society by his great-great-grandson, Edwin S. Barrett. To the left is a British musket, the first trophy taken in battle in the Revolution. It was picked up on the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, by Abijah Pierce of Lincoln, Colonel of the Minute Men at Concord, who had come into the town unarmed, and who, when the British had been repulsed at Concord Bridge, armed himself with the gun of one of the two British soldiers who fell in that engagement. In the officially printed account of the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration at Concord
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in 1850, Amos Baker of Lincoln, the last survivor of the men who had stood at the North Bridge, is quoted thus: "I understood that Colonel Abijah Pierce got the gun of one of the British soldiers who was killed at the Bridge, and armed himself with it. There were two British soldiers killed at the Bridge."
The case also contains the powderhorn worn by Abner Hosmer, one of the two Minute Men who fell at the Bridge. The cutlass belonged to Samuel Lee, a grenadier of the Tenth British Regiment, who was made prisoner at Concord on the day of the fight. Lee never returned to Eng- land, but married and remained here. He died in 1790.
Room 4 THE RELIC ROOM First Quarter of the Eighteenth Century
The Architecture
In the first quarter of the eighteenth century American interiors be- gan to show the influence of the architectural study of the Renaissance, chiefly as interpreted in England; and emphasis was transferred from purely functional considerations to those of the academic composition of space. Gradually the merely structural use of woodwork gave way to arrangements of stile and rail panels set with bevelled edges, fluted pilasters, mouldings, and other elements drawn from classic sources and introduced solely for decorative effect, and there evolved such rooms as this, in which the sheathing of the earlier period has shrunk to a simple base or dado on three sides of the room, above which the walls are plas- tered. The fireplace, no longer built for cooking alone, is surrounded by a heavy bolection moulding, and about it the walls and doors are pan- elled. The irregular size and arrangement of the panels, unconscious survival of an earlier tradition, remained characteristic of American building throughout the first half of the century.
The panelling, doors, and dado of this room were taken from a house in Salem, and built in here much as they had been in the original room. The doorway to the right of the fireplace opened originally into a closet.
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THE RELIC ROOM
The exhibition window is of course new. The color of the paint is a re- production of the old paint on our third floor stairway.
The Furnishings
The furnishings include for the most part provincial pieces in several styles, and various literary and other relics having to do with the past history of Concord. Several good Windsor chairs and a Windsor table are shown. Near the cupboard is a maple roundabout chair once owned by Reuben Brown, who came to Concord from Sudbury about 1760, and bought the house later occupied by this Society. He was Lieutenant of one of the military companies in the Revolution, and was sent to Lexington on a scouting expedition on the morning of April 19, 1775, arriving just as the British fired on the militia at Lexington Green. His contemporary and fellow patriot was Deacon John White, Concord storekeeper and worthy, whose portrait, cut from a "shade" and pasted against a sky-blue ground, hangs against the far door in this room. The good man's spectacles, represented here by a strip of silver paper, and his grocer's scales and yardstick are also in the house.
The outstanding piece in the room is the writing-arm Windsor chair, once the study chair of the Reverend Ezra Ripley, minister of the church in Concord following the Reverend William Emerson, and his successor in the Old Manse. The chair was also used by Hawthorne and Emerson during the time that each occupied the Manse, and on its arm Emerson wrote his first book, Nature.
Hawthorne's paper-weight and inkstand, used by him at the Custom- house in Salem, are among the relics of literary and historic interest shown in the exhibition window. The mirror hung above them was broken by a British officer in the house of Captain David Brown of Concord on the morning of April 19, 1775.
On the near-by wall is an excellent facsimile set of the four famous engravings of Lexington and Concord executed by Amos Doolittle from drawings made by Ralph Earl on the ground soon after the events of April 19, 1775. The subjects are "The Battle of Lexington," "A View of the Town of Concord," "The Engagement at the North Bridge at Concord," and "A View of the South Part of Lexington." The facsimiles
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were re-engraved by Sidney Smith and published in an edition of sev- enty-five copies by Charles Goodspeed of Boston in 1903, and are now themselves rare in full sets.
An interesting contemporary water color picturing the encampment of British troops on Boston Common in 1768 hangs over the fireplace. It was painted by Christian Remick, contemporary and friend of Paul Revere, whose name appears on at least one Revere engraving as the artist who did the coloring. An elaborate cartouche in the upper corner of the picture dedicates it to John Hancock, whose house may be seen on the hill in the background near the "Beacon."
On the hearth is a compact little gridiron which any camper of today might envy. It was part of the camp outfit of a Revolutionary officer. Here too are the pattens worn by Mrs. Hawthorne to protect her feet from mud and wet in a day when pavements were few and far between.
The corner cupboard opposite was inherited from Timothy Wesson (1731-1784) of Concord, and is filled now with early pewter from the Society's collection. A plate and mug said to have been part of the first Communion service of the church in Concord are on the second shelf.
Room 5 THE GREEN ROOM c. 1710-1740
The Architecture
In this room, with its carefully set panels and fluted pilasters, we have a more sophisticated, though still uncertain and provincial interpretation of the artistic impulse of the Renaissance. The panelling still shows the irregular arrangement characteristic of the early part of the century, but is composed and dignified by the pilasters, in which a crude application of the classic orders is embodied. The fireplace, while set with a quaint disregard of classic formula, shows a fresh effort at decorative treatment in the use of a band of painted cement about the opening. This presages the appearance of the more elaborate Dutch-tiled frame shown in a later room.
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THE GREEN ROOM
The fireplace side of the room came from an old house in Burlington, Massachusetts, and was installed here without change. Its lovely color is a reproduction of the first color found beneath a number of later coats of paint. The closet to the right of the fireplace may have been a pow- dering closet, its double door designed so that a gentleman might lean over the lower half and dust his wig without scattering powder over the room.
The Furnishings
The furniture illustrates the gradual transition which took place dur- ing the first quarter of the eighteenth century from the rectangular con- struction of the Stuart and William and Mary periods to the curvilinear forms of the Queen Anne and Chippendale periods. Such transitions are found to be more gradual, and in the same degree more interesting, in country than in city neighborhoods. An increasing refinement in scale and execution as the century advances will also be noted. Comparison of the delicate turnings of the large gate-leg table in the center of the room with those of the smaller table of earlier date will be interesting. The latter belonged to Timothy Wheeler, who came to Concord in 1639 and died in 1687. The former is from the family of Simon Willard.
The bannister-back chairs proclaim at once their relation to the carved and caned chairs in Room I, the split balusters of their backs being but colonial substitutes for the caning which was both more perishable and more difficult of achievement. No direct prototype of these chairs is found in English furniture. The four with carved crestings came from the Billings family, mentioned under Room 3, who were among the earliest settlers of the town.
Several provincial interpretations of the type are also shown, in which the cresting is simply cut to a silhouette instead of carved. The armchair by the fireplace belonged to Dr. John Cumming, a Colonel in the French war and in the Revolution, and a physician of whom it is said that he never accepted a fee for a service done to the sick on Sundays. The chair still retains much of its original dignity and impressiveness in spite of the fact that its feet and arms have been cut.
The evolution of these early pieces, based on traditions of old Eng-
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lish joinery, to the structural curves of the Queen Anne period is ef- fected by a series of interesting transitions best evidenced by the chairs. We have seen how the high-backed chair of the Stuarts persisted into the reign of William and Mary in a modified form in which the carved stretcher was replaced by a Portuguese bulb, and the feet were ball or Spanish. Soon the carved cresting also disappears, and the turned side supports of the back give way to a moulded frame entirely surrounding it. The back is "spooned," and often now upholstered, as in the leather chair by the entrance to this room. Such chairs represent the full devel- opment of the period.
A transition style in which the upholstered back has disappeared in favor of the curved vase splat of the Queen Anne period is represented by a set of chairs in the entrance hall, once the property of Mary Pres- cott, who married John Miles in 1702. A few chairs of this type are known in which the transition is carried one step further by means of a cabriole leg beneath a short turned member; but in country districts such as ours the cabriole leg was never popular, and the turned base persisted to some extent throughout the eighteenth century, as shown in this collection.
While the cabriole leg was slow to be adopted generally here, a few examples in this house date from very early in the century. A high chest between the windows in this room has the walnut veneering, herring- bone inlay, and small stamped brasses of the William and Mary period. It belonged to the family of Sarah Eliot Gerrish of Gerrish Island in Maine, and is loaned by Miss Sarah Goodwin of Concord. A beautiful Charles II day bed from the same source is in Room I.
A cabriole-leg dressing table across the room shows a rare but typi- cally American combination of woods, indicating a date very early in the century. The front and top are of mahogany, the earliest to appear in the collection; the sides and legs are maple, and the carcase American rived oak. On this fine little piece is displayed a velvet trinket box, rose- lined and silver-studded, about which hangs the glamour of a tradition that it belonged to Queen Elizabeth at the time when, as Princess Eliza- beth, she was imprisoned by Queen Mary. The box descended to the Society through Sally Prescott of Concord, great-great-granddaughter
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of Sir Francis Willoughby of Charlestown, with the legend that it had been given by the Queen to his ancestress, Margaret Willoughby, who was her maid of honor. For many years it was known in the Prescott family as "Queen Elizabeth's red velvet trunk."
Above this royal heirloom hangs a looking-glass having the wide quarter-round moulding and fretted cresting popular in this country from the late seventeenth century through the first quarter of the eight- eenth. It came from the Potter family, whose forebear, Luke Potter, was one of the first settlers of the town and deacon of the church. This is the earliest of a fine series of looking-glasses in the collection.
The overwhelming importance of the church in the life of the town at this time is indicated by the engravings of well-known English di- vines on the walls, three of which are the work of the London engraver, Robert White (1645-1704), and belonged to the Reverend John Whit- ing, fourth minister of the church in Concord. The fourth has been at- tributed to Peter Pelham, dean of American engravers, who worked in Boston between 1726 and 1751.
The crewel-work window curtains were embroidered for this house by women of the Society, just as the women of a Concord family of the period represented might have embroidered similar curtains for them- selves. A number of early eighteenth-century advertisements contain such references as "curtains ready stamped for working," or "a good assortment of worsted crewels, well shaded." Our curtains are worked on hand-woven bolton cloth in a Tree of Life design copied from an original embroidery now in a museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. A fragment of an Indian cotton Palampore or "chints," hung on the wall near by, serves as a reminder of the origin of such designs in early Eng- lish embroideries.
Although "Carpets for Rooms" were advertised early in the eight- eenth century, they cannot have become general in provincial districts until well after 1760. "Persia" and "Turkey" carpets, mentioned al- most from the beginning in early inventories, were undoubtedly used at first as chest and table covers. Later "Carpets for Bed-sides" and "can- vasses to lay under a table" (1729) were referred to. While no effort has been made to carpet this house adequately, the use of small Oriental
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rugs for floors throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has been indicated.
In the shallow cupboard to the left of the fireplace is exhibited early silver loaned from time to time by Concord families. Among the pieces on permanent loan are examples of the work of John Burt and Paul Revere of Boston, Edmund Milne of Philadelphia, and other well- known American silversmiths. A few fine pieces of English or European workmanship are included for their long association with Concord names.
The "powdering closet" is now used for the display of "Delph Wares" and the "East India Chiney Wares" so frequently mentioned in old New England inventories.
Tin enamelled wares from Delft in Holland are known to have been imported into this country almost from the beginning. But few of these first pieces have survived. Most of the "delft" of early tradition now extant in New England is of English origin, and dates well into the eighteenth century. The Concord collection consists almost entirely of examples from the "West country" delft works of Liverpool and Bristol, whose products were of easy access to our shipping and were very generally in use here throughout the colonial period. Indeed, it was not until after the resumption of trade with England at the close of the Revolution that English delft was finally superseded by the won- derful new creamwares which Wedgwood and his contemporaries had meanwhile been developing in Staffordshire. Although a few pieces are of earlier date, most of the delft in the Green Room cupboard belongs to the 1740-1760 period, when the trade into the Port of Boston seems to have been at its height. One interesting group can be identified as the work of Joseph Flower of Redcliffe, Bristol, whose factory operated between the years 1745 and 1785.
Like delft, porcelain from China and the Orient was highly prized in this country almost from earliest times. First brought into Holland by the Dutch East India Company, and exported thence to America, the delicate translucent wares which Europeans bought so eagerly, and European potters tried in vain to imitate, became known here as "Chiney
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Ware" or "India China," and were treasured in American cupboards throughout the colonial period. Although finally the term "India China" came to be used almost interchangeably with "Canton" to apply to porcelain brought directly from China in the nineteenth century, an arbitrary distinction has been made in labelling this collection, whereby the former term is confined to export porcelains brought here before the beginning of our direct trade with China in 1784-1785.
First and finest of these were the porcelains of the famous K'iang Hsi period (1662-1722), of which there is no example in the Concord col- lection. The porcelain from the succeeding periods shown in the pow- dering closet is of sufficiently similar inspiration to be congruous in a room of earlier date. But most of it belongs well within the reign of Ch'ien Lung (1760-1790), and speaks rather of the time when Chinese importations of all kinds shared with Chippendale the honors of our drawing-rooms. A characteristic group, decorated in a bold design of peonies and crabs in red, blue, and gold, is part of a set originally owned by Hugh Cargill, who came to Concord in 1774 and died in 1799. It is said that an identical set was ordered for the Reverend Ezra Ripley sometime after he went to live at the Manse in 1778.
In the passage leading to the Queen Anne Room is exhibited Chinese blue and white porcelain of the nineteenth century known as "Nanking" or "Canton." Such wares were made for the common export trade in hun- dreds of small Chinese potteries, and sent overland to Canton, whence they were shipped to this country directly in great quantities throughout the first half of the century. Owing to a wide variation in the quality of workmanship and design, no classification of the commoner kinds can be attempted. But collectors are accustomed to distinguish in a general way between the finer wares made presumably in the imperial factories at Ching-tê-chên, and usually termed "Nanking," and those com- ing from the smaller factories in and about Canton. In all wares the paste is relatively coarse and often roughly potted. Decoration is point- ed in designs showing various interpretations of the familiar Chinese river-island scene, or in a conventionalized design, combining Chinese and European motives, known as the "Fitzhugh" pattern. Similar com-
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