USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 42
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There are three public golf courses in Essex County, the Lynn and the Salem municipal courses and the Lake View golf course in Wen- ham. Other golf clubs include the Essex County Club in Manchester; the Long Meadow, Dwyer, and Mt. Pleasant Golf clubs and the Vesper Country Club in Lowell; the Amesbury Country Club, the Andover Country Club, the Haverhill, Island and Kenoza Country clubs in Haverhill; the Bass Rock Golf Club, the Lynnfield Center and Sagamore Spring Golf clubs, and the Colonial Golf and Country Club in Lynnfield; the Merrimack Valley Country Club in Methuen ; the Ould Newbury Golf Club and the Oldtown Country Club in New- buryport; the North Shore and the Salem Golf and Tennis clubs and the Kernwood and Salem Country clubs in Salem; the United Shoe Machinery Athletic Association in Beverly; the North Andover Coun- try Club, the Rockport Country Club, the Myopia Hunt Club in South Hamilton; the New Ocean House Golf Club and the Tedesco Coun- try Club in Swampscott; the Wenham Golf Club and the Cape Ann golf course in Essex; and the Candlewood and Labor-in-Vain Country Clubs in Ipswich.
Of its tennis Essex County is justly proud. Sphairistike, the game from which law tennis developed, was first played in Nahant. The invitation matches at Essex County Club for men and women have an international reputation, the ladies' tournament having been won three times by Helen Wills. Other famous matches are the Essex County tennis tournament at the North Andover Country Club, which takes place over Labor Day weekend, the Eastern Point tournament, and the Nahant-North Shore doubles match at Myopia and Nahant. Most of the country clubs have tennis courts and put on their own tournaments. The North Shore championships are played in the Tedesco Country Club in Swampscott.
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The center of the sport of hunting in Essex County, and one of the most famous clubs in this country, is the Myopia Hunt Club, which introduced hunting and revived horse racing in Essex County. Founded in Winchester in 1879 by a group of myopic gentlemen, it was first called just the Myopia Club and dedicated to baseball, but the Myopia punch and the Myopia omelette soon became famous.
In 1881 hounds were brought from Montreal and hunted in Ips- wich part of that season. The next year the Myopia Fox Hounds were organized and hunted in Hamilton. From 1882 to 1891 the Myopia Club leased the Gibney Farm in Hamilton and hunted from there. Then, when the Myopia Hunt Club was organized, in 1891. it purchased the Gibney Farm. The following year it was incorporated
Myopia introduced polo to Essex County in 1888, and in 1895 its pink and canary colors carried off the honor of the National Polo Association championship. In 1896 it held its first horse show. Today it has two polo fields on which its members play polo all sum- mer long. Its Labor Day meets feature a horse show, races, steeple chases and point to point races.
Another of Myopia's achievements is that its pack of beagles is the oldest organized pack in the country. Founded by James W. Appleton, it has been kept continuously as a private pack since 1886. Beagling in Ipswich is a community affair, attended by young and old. Even back in the Winchester days Myopia had one of the first tennis courts in the country, and today it has eight, besides an eighteen-hole golf course.
There is, of course, a great deal of casual riding in the woods and bridle paths of Essex County. In September the Essex County Field Trial Club has a meet in Beverly and there is always a horse show at the Topsfield Fair. There are many associations of the sportsmen who profit by the open seasons in the game of Essex County. Among the gun clubs are the Amesbury Sportsmen's Club, the United Shoe Machinery Corporation Gun Club in Beverly, the Byfield Sportsman's Club, the Haverhill Sportsmen's Club, the Lawrence and the Lynn Fish and Game Protective Association, the Lowell Sportsmen's Club and, in the same city, the South End Trap Club, and the Essex County Sportsman's Club in Newburyport.
Among the rifle and pistol clubs are the Amesbury Rifle Club, the Beverly Rifle and Revolver Club, the Wyoma Rifle Club in Danvers,
Essex-66
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the Woodend Rifle Club in East Lynn, the Haverhill Progressive Gun Club and the Haverhill Rifle and Gun Club, the Wannalancet Rifle Club in Lowell, the Lynn Rifle and Revolver Club of the General Electric Company, the Bridgton Academy Rifle Club in Prides Cross- ing, the Salem Rod, Gun and Yacht Club, the Rifle Club of the Vet- erans of the Foreign Wars in Peabody, and rifle clubs of American Legion posts in Beverly, East Lynn, and Newburyport.
Skeet shooting is yet another sport which Essex County can claim to have originated, since it was invented in Ballardvale, which is part of Andover. There are skeet clubs in Andover and Gloucester, and skeet shooting goes on also at the Ipswich Fish and Game Associa- tion, and the Merrimac Valley Hunt Club in Lawrence, as well as in many of the other clubs already mentioned.
On the countless beaches of Essex County's coast from Nahant to Newburyport, there is incomparable swimming. Among the famous beaches are Lynn Long Beach, the Swampscott Beach, Phillips Beach in Swampscott, Devereux Beach in Marblehead, Salem Willows- which is also a pleasure park-Dane Street Beach in Beverly, West Beach in Beverly Farms, Singing Beach in Manchester, Little Good Harbour and Long beaches in Gloucester, Wingaersheek and Coffin's beaches in West Gloucester, Castle Neck Beach in Ipswich, Plum Island Beach, and, so near and so frequent a resort for the people of Newburyport and Haverhill as almost to belong to them, Salisbury Beach in New Hampshire. The salt water swimming pool in Salem is the largest on the Atlantic seaboard.
For those who prefer fresh water bathing there are the innumer- able small ponds and little rivers with which Essex County is dotted and crossed. Haverhill has its Lake Saltonstall, Wenham its Pleas- ant Pond, Topsfield its Hood's Pond, Essex its Chebacco Lake. And for canoeing and boating nothing could be pleasanter than the little Ipswich and Parker rivers, or the broad sweep of the Merrimac and the Danvers rivers.
Bowling flourishes in the Town Hall in Hamilton, and also in Gloucester, Salem Willows and Beverly. Haverhill boasts enthusias- tic bowmen, the Intervale archers. There is a great deal of commu- nity athletics throughout the county; for instance, the baseball between the Twilight League and the City Club of Beverly, which goes on throughout the summer, and the perennial battle between
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. Russia Cement Company and Gorton-Pew Company, which takes place in Gloucester, after a parade with a band.
For color, variety and imagination, the gardens of Essex County are unsurpassed. The Cape Ann Garden Club holds an annual show in Annisquam in August; some of the members of the Newburyport Garden Club have gardens over one hundred years old, with their own kind of summer house, found nowhere else; the Ipswich Garden Club, which frequently wins prizes in the Boston show, specializes in herbs, the ultimate depravity of the sophisticated gardener; Haver- hill's Garden Club is very enthusiastic; Greater Lynn has an annual show in May; and the gardens behind Salem's lovely houses are well worthy of them.
For bird-lovers, who grow annually in number, Essex County is Paradise. Lynn Woods, one of the largest natural parks within the limits of any city in the United States, is a magnificent bird reserva- tion. Wenham Marsh, described during the seventeenth century as a "great harbour for bears" is today a great harbor for birds. Any bird-lover who drifts down the Ipswich in a canoe to Wenham Marsh will be rewarded all the way by glimpses of rare birds as well as of his fellow-enthusiasts. The Plum Island "hundreds" and the wide sweep of Castle Neck and Wingaersheek beaches are always ready with ornithological surprises and thrills, especially when there is a storm to drive the sea-birds shoreward. And many birds are hiding in the unexpectedly deep woods of Essex and Manchester.
Essex County has originated still other sports. The Nahant sea- serpent, which periodically had the coast in terror, was certainly the ancestor of the Lock Ness monster. The game of Boston, once a great favorite, was invented by some French officers quartered in Beverly; and "slam" is held by some to be a corruption of Salem. And famous throughout the county are the political and social rallies, held by custom in Centennial Grove in Essex.
For those who enjoy cramming a whole summer's sports, recrea- tions, gayety and husbandry into four days, the Topsfield Fair pre- sents a glorious opportunity. Conducted every September by the Essex Agricultural Society, together with the Massachusetts Depart- ment of Agriculture, the fair has been held in its present grounds beside the Ipswich River since 1856. To advance its purpose of encouraging agriculture in Essex County it arranges competitive
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classes in all farm products, exhibits by agricultural institutions, demonstrations and lectures. It provides facilities for the parking of small babies, so that no harassed mother need stay home. There are horse, hog, sheep, goat, baby, poultry, rabbit, bee, ox, fruit, vegetable and flower shows, all with suitable judges and prizes. Besides these, there are horse races -- most of the entrants being owned by local sportsmen-wood chopping contests, wrestling bouts, motorcycle races, stunt flying and American Legion drum corps competitions.
Boy and Girl Scouts turn out in full panoply on the days set apart for them; and the Four H children have their own exhibits. Ladies contend for the honors in flower arrangement, hooking and braiding rugs, and other useful accomplishments.
In their less sternly agricultural moments, visitors can relax at the midway or on the Ferris wheel, and marvel at trapeze artists and elaborate fireworks displays. But perhaps the pleasantest thing about the fair is the genial good fellowship, the county feeling, that is shown by all the crowds around the white fair buildings. Essex County at its gayest and its most neighborly can be seen at the Tops- field Fair.
What is probably the most popular sport in Essex County, as in the rest of the United States, is motoring, for only thus can the variety of its charms be appreciated. In Lynn there is the sweep of Long Beach and the view from the red porphyry cliff called High Rock. The rolling green peninsula of Nahant has curious rock formations, luxurious summer homes, and magnificent ocean views from its Cliff Walk. Fronting directly on the ocean, Swampscott is a delightful summer resort. Marblehead is one of the quaintest towns in the United States, for it still preserves the appearance of an eighteenth century fishing village. Its narrow and winding streets, all on different levels, its higgledy-piggledy houses, its lovely flowers, all make it unique as it is charming.
Stately and gracious Salem similarly preserves the flavor of the great days when the East Indies were as familiar to her seamen as Salem Harbor, and Chestnut Street epitomizes Salem's glory.
Across the bridge from Salem is the little white city of Beverly, which includes the villages of Beverly Farms and Prides Crossing, perhaps the very center of the wealth of the North Shore. Visitors
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to Beverly in the spring, marveling at its flowering peach and apple trees, its lilac and anemones and spice bush and violets and colum- bines, and perhaps most characteristic of all, the "pale sky tints" of the innocence flower, will certainly recall Lucy Larcom's charming descriptions of her childhood in Beverly.
The small old white houses of Manchester form a contrast with the vast palaces built by summer visitors; the sands of Singing Beach really murmur, and the rocks are an incredibly deep red. Busy Mag- nolia manages to be mondaine in spite of its wild deep oak forests which harbor the southern magnolia, the grim fissure of Rafe's Chasm, and the fateful red reef of Norman's Woe.
Cape Ann is itself worth a whole summer of exploration. The incomparably beautiful harbor of Gloucester, the largest fishing port in the United States, is set off by its crooked streets. Beyond are the magnificent houses of Eastern Point, succeeded by the equal pomp of Bass Rock, against the dark rocks of which the spray dashes unceas- ingly. After the great sweep of Long Beach comes the quaint charm of Rockport and, in Pigeon and Folly Coves, immense ocean views on one side of the road and on the other, a little back, wild deserted quarries half filled with water. Lanesville has many rocky nooks and rickety and picturesque fish houses, and the pier of the Consolidated Lobster Company, to which lobsters are brought in lobster-colored hydroplanes, is a sight always fascinating. In Lanesville, too, are Representative Piatt Andrew's favorite Finnish baths. Annisquam, one of the loveliest small white villages of the coast, is particularly celebrated for its flowers, which have an unexampled brilliance of color. Perhaps the most interesting, and certainly the wildest and grimmest part of Cape Ann, is the bleak upland pasture of Dogtown Common. Windswept and desolate today, it was once the site of a busy village, of which only the cellar holes remain, marked still by the barberry bushes which once stood by the front doors. Here, too, is a great terminal moraine, the tremendous tumbled boulders of which testify to the power of the glacier which carried them with it.
Back on the mainland Essex has lovely old houses and the most ancient shipyards in America. One of the most rewarding towns in the county for the tourist as well as the historian is Ipswich. Its long placid green, planted with rosy tulips, is still bordered by old houses, one of which, the Whipple house, still has the medieval look of the
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very earliest houses; its dazzling beach, with its ever-changing dunes and, in season, the golden blossoms of poverty grass, is always sur- prisingly lovely. The Old Bay Road from Ipswich to Newburyport still has many of the charms it must have had when it was laid out. Lined with elms and apple trees, it has on the right hand salt marshes, glimpses of the sea and the long bar of Plum Island, where still bloom the beach plums which gave it its name, and on the left smiling green fields and trim houses. Rowley has a triangular green, bordered with elms, and a lovely old white church; and peaceful Newbury lies among many elms and chestnuts.
Newburyport retains the elegance of the days of Lord Timothy Dexter, when costly carriages crowded its wide and stately streets; yet the side streets, particularly those which run down to the neat little clapboarded houses of Joppa, the fishermen's quarter, have the nar- rowness and informality of the streets of Gloucester.
Beyond Newburyport, toward Amesbury, the country becomes once more rich and rolling, and Amesbury itself has lovely long river views from beneath its superb chestnuts. Through steadily rising ground, past large sandy hill shoulders, the road runs on to Merrimac.
Haverhill, one of the most beautifully situated of cities stands at the head of the tide of the Merrimac, and the parks round its three ponds, Lake Kenoza, Lake Saltonstall (affectionately called Plug Pond), and Round Pond make it very pleasant.
Methuen lies on several small hills, deep in superb trees. In the very center of the town are two great estates, bordered by endless walls of grey field stone, with here and there a round turret; there are many handsome public buildings and Searles Hall houses one of the very largest organs in the world.
Andover, with its charming campus, fertile meadows and old houses, is delightful. From Holt's Hill, the highest point in the county, there are wide views of the smoky valley of the Merrimac where lie Lawrence and Lowell. The red brown of many of North Andover's houses is echoed by the copper beeches which surround them; Lake Cochichawick, North Andover's reservoir, encircled by larches and other evergreens, is particularly lovely.
From North Andover to Boxford the country is very wild. Box- ford, situated among open fields, has a pleasant village green. Under
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the green avenues of Georgetown's chestnuts are many old and beau- tiful small houses.
Near Topsfield the Ipswich River winds through many a green field and under many an old bridge; and the brick houses of Tops- field's green have a charm all their own. Danvers, Wenham, and Hamilton are famous for their rich green meadows, their beautiful estates, and their ancient lovely houses.
Black road or white, turnpike or dusty country path, there is almost no road in Essex County that does not lead to surprising beauty.
Arts and Crafts
CHAPTER, XXVI
Arts and Crafts
By Bartlett Harding Hayes, Jr.
The following survey of arts and crafts of Essex County is based on a belief that the historian must correlate the complementing methods of the art-critic and archeologist. The latter constructs his idea of a past civilization upon the objects of his discoveries, the former builds his criticism on a determination as to whether or not a given object fits with the accepted taste of the day-usually the day of the critic. It is the aim of this chapter to discover ideas of Essex County people in terms of the arts and crafts which are evident and conversely to explain their arts and crafts in terms of known political and economic history. The ideas of the county are essentially the ideas of the region, but the arts to be discussed will be drawn from within the county boundaries; to this extent the history is local.
Arts and crafts, as used here, refer to two different qualities which are often found within the same object. Craft is the manual science or convention by which an object is produced, and the craftsman is a competent worker who may execute his own design (in which respect he is also an artist ) or who merely carries out the design of another, the artist. Art is the form which an object is given which is dic- tated by the thought of the craftsman, or artist, in accordance with his understanding of the requirements of the object and of its fitness to its surroundings, in accordance, also, with his taste or prejudice determined, in turn, by his own surroundings. Art is shaped by a civilization and shapes it as well.
The two qualities just mentioned vary with each period of history and with the race that nourishes them. Each particular of an animate
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civilization bears the imprint of mind whether it is a particular which appeals to visual and tactile sense alone, as drawing, painting, or sculpture, or a particular which, in addition to its sensory appeal has some utilitarian purpose as a glass vessel, a chair, a pewter spoon, or a bit of colored fabric. The common belief that the object of utility is æsthetically inferior to the "finer" art is hardly true.
It is hoped to explain the arts and crafts by describing the typical rather than the individual, except in the one or two cases where the individual is known to have influenced the general development. The mention of names is merely to confirm description. Names of many craftsmen can be dated and geographically located; oftentimes their activities overlap county boundaries, but little more is known of them. No attempt has been made to record them all here .. It is not possible to attribute to any single one of them much of the work that has sur- vived. The discovery of more names and doubtless of much more information would reward further research.
These men, craftsmen and artists, whose work has formed a part of the life of Essex County, the housewrights, the carvers, the makers of furniture and builders of ships, the ironsmiths, the silversmiths, engravers and painters, architects of churches and designers of monu- ments, have been influenced by the heritage of the early settlers of the Colony, who, with all the prohibitions and prejudices of their reli- gion, the tradition of image smashing during the time of Cromwell, could not help but bring with them an esthetic exuberance, the habit to make well and finish with a modest flourish of decoration. For the two centuries which preceded the industrial era their work was an integral part of domestic existence executed in the intervals when they were not occupied with the immediate necessities of the day, when they fished and farmed and lumbered, raised cattle for meat and leather, raised sheep for wool, raised children and established schools.
The settlers were principally occupied with living and with trying to make for themselves a life similar to that they had known in their own country, but which would be self-supporting and independent of it. Therefore, the art was concentrated around all household and domestic things and these were commonly manufactured by those who used them. In a description of the early household nearly all the arts of a century, roughly from 1630 to 1730, can be included.
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The first shelters which the settlers were able to build for them- selves were necessarily crude, for they made use of what materials came most readily to hand. Bent birch poles framed their dome- shaped structure, which was then covered with sticks, bark, grass, or thatch, and stuffed with clay. The chimney consisted for the most part of clay, plastered to a wooden frame; if it drew too well it might catch fire, otherwise it must have contributed strongly to the smoky, dank, dark interior. And yet such shelters were preferable to the caves or pine bough covers adopted by some, which allowed passage to the northeast wind still more freely.
There is no evidence that the familiar log cabin of later American history was ever built in the county at this time.1 The bark houses were replaced by dwellings similar to those left behind in Europe, but simpler, in keeping with the individual's demands and means. In the beginning the floor consisted of a foundation of rounded beach stones laid closely together, over which sand was laid to give an even sur- face. This then provided drainage and fair insulation from the frosty ground beneath. The wealthier houses had pine plank floor- ings which covered the boulders; rough timbers constituted the walls, and a thatch pitched roof topped the whole. Clay was stuffed between the boards, filling unavoidable chinks. Light was let through a few small windows, the casements of which were leaded and contained tiny bits of rounded or diamond-shaped glass, or, when this was unob- tainable, were covered with oiled paper. Such houses were dark on wintry days, a dim oil lamp or the more cheerful fire giving what light there was. Reconstructions of these houses are to be seen at the pioneers' village in Salem, which was created in 1930 as part of the Massachusetts tercentenary celebration.
Houses were not only small, at first, but usually consisted of one room, with a bedchamber above it. A contract exists, made by John Davys, joiner, to build in Ipswich a house for William Rix, a weaver,. in 1640; it was to be "16 foot long and 14 feet wide, w'th a chamber floare finish't summer and joysts, a cellar floare with joysts finish't, the roofe and walls clapboarded on the out syde, the chimney framed without daubing, to be done with hewan timber." The price was to be £21.2 This must have been a well built house; it was more expen-
I. H. C. Mercer : "Old-Time New England," Vol. XVIII, No. I.
2. T. F. Waters : "Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony."
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sive than many. John Woodman bought a house and an acre and a half of land for £13; he bought another for £7; the house of Thomas Firman, who was a leading citizen about 1635, was appraised in his inventory at £15; Robert Whitman bought a house and acre of land for £5, all of them in Ipswich.
A brick lining was inserted within the walls of the better built houses. This served to insulate the interior. It was reinforced by clapboards laid along the outside, which could be cheaply replaced when weathered, so protecting the expensive brick. Clapboards on some of the houses were laid in barrel stave lengths, for the stave was a useful article and the type of lumber readiest to hand. Inside, a pine sheathing covered the frame timbers, adding to the strength and warmth of the wall.
The outside appearance of these early colonial houses, with over- hanging second stories and steep gabled roofs, resembled, within the limitations of materials, the houses which the builders had left at home in England. If the early craftsman did not learn his trade there, he learned it as apprentice in this country to one who had. Often materials for building were imported; in 1629 the following articles were collected in England for exportation : "2 loads of chalk, 10 m. bricks, 5 chaldron of sea coal, 2 fagots of steele, I fodder of lead, nails & red lead, I tun of iron."3
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