USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > The story of Essex County, Volume II > Part 45
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Jacob Sanderson died in 1810. Troubles and lawsuits followed. Elijah formed a new partnership with Caleb Burbank, a painter; Ben- jamin Swan, cabinetmaker; and the owners of the schooner "Molly." Elijah Sanderson and Nehemiah Adams contributed to a cargo sent to Rio de Janeiro, which remained unsold for a long time, until more lawsuits forced a sale at great discount. However, Elijah continued to export in small quantity; the latest known invoice is dated 1819.
There were various other partnerships and projects similar to, but independent of, the Sandersons. Edmund Johnson made furni- ture and exported it. He died, returning from the South, in 181I.
The specialization of the cabinetmaker and the organization of these furniture "trusts" was not typical of the ordinary craftsman. It is interesting, perhaps, to notice to what extent the products of the county were shaped by the hands of men ready to turn from one trade to another. In the Salem "Gazette" of July 3, 1781, appears an advertisement addressed to "Gentlemen and Ladies," accompanied
32. M. M. Swan: "Samuel McIntire and the Sandersons."
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by a woodcut, possibly executed by the hand of the advertiser (a similar advertisement in a Boston paper of May 3, 1788, is illustrated with a different cut, but apparently by the same hand) :
"Isaac Greenwood, jun., takes this opportunity to inform you, that at his Shop opposite the Town-House, in Salem, Gentlemen may be supplied with neat walking Sticks, and Ladies with Umbrellas, neater and cheaper than those imported : He makes and mends Umbrella Sticks in the best Manner.
"He earnestly wishes, for his Profit and their Good, that they would apply to him for Teeth-Brushes, and Teeth- Powder, which when used will recommend itself.
"Said Greenwood performs all kinds of turned Work, in Silver, such as Tankards, Cans, &c. also in Brass, Iron, Ivory, Turtle-Shell, Bone, Horn, and Wood of any sort or bigness. Repairs Violins; makes Flutes, Fifes, Hoboys, Clarinets, Chaise-Whips, Tea-Boards, Bottle-Stands, Tamboy Frames, Back-Gammon Boxes Men and Dies, Chess men, Billiard- Balls, Maces, Lemon Squeezers, Serenges, Hydrometers, Shav- ing Boxes and Brushes, Buckle-Brushes, Ink-Stands, Paper- Folders, Bannisters for Stair-Cases, &c, &c, &c."33
Such versatility does not generally result in the artistic excellence which careful attention to problems of a single art may inspire, but it does indicate an active personality, a ready hand, and a rich imagina- tion that could compass the wide variety of problems put to it. Here was excellent soil prepared for the seed of art.
Further samples of this are discovered in the East India Marine Museum in Salem, which was first opened in 1799, with the purpose of housing "natural and artificial curiosities, particularly such as are to be found beyond the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn." Its present purpose is to form a memorial of the commercial marine period, and it is also interesting from an artistic point of view because it contains not only original work of Essex County artists in portraits and ship paintings, but also curiosities and treasures from all parts of the world where ships in the foreign trade happened to touch. Many of these objects were much admired by the people of the seaport
33. Quoted by H. M. Brooks : "Quaint & Curious Advertisements."
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towns and could not help but influence their ideas of beauty and their creative efforts. The paintings of Salem ships brought home from European and Chinese ports, with their delicate and exact technique, served as a model for local ship painting and engraving. Canton china and English ware were so much used in the houses of the wealthy captains and merchants that the local furniture and interiors were made so as to set them off well. Intricate bits of carving, like the Flemish boxwood bead containing Heaven and Hell, presented to the museum by General Elias Hasket Derby, show how the patrons of artists like McIntire admired artistic work of a highly skilled nature. The ship carpenters' and shipbuilders' tools, the little objects made by seamen in their spare time, small lifelike wooden birds, an elaborate ladle, and a chain carved from a single bit of wood, scrim- shaw work (cutting, carving and engraving on whales' teeth and walrus tusks) are reminders of the ready and neat hand, which was trained in the shipyards, and the artistic imagination which was stimu- lated by anything new and strange. Both this manual skill and this enthusiastic imagination were an important part of life in the sea- coast towns of the county in the days of maritime prosperity.
Figureheads done in Essex County, some of which must have been beautiful in their sweep of movement and broad treatment, are con- spicuous by their absence in this museum, except for a small allegorical female figurehead, oddly Gothic in effect, said to have been carved by Samuel McIntire. So far as is known there are no large figureheads done in Salem in existence; the fate of most of them was to founder with the vessels they adorned. The ship "Merrimack," of twenty guns, built in Newburyport during the French and English War of 1798, for a figurehead had "an eagle perched upon a globe supported by a figure on one side representing Commerce and on the other side representing Justice."34 Five years later she was wrecked on Cape Cod. Joseph True, a carver in Salem, working from about 1816 to 1860, was known as a carver of architectural detail and also as a ship's carver; he executed figureheads, but none are now in existence. The head and hands of a Chinese mandarin figure, dressed in an origi- nal costume, owned by the East India Marine Museum, were carved by him in 1838. The effigy of Yamqua, a Canton merchant, evidently on very friendly terms with the Salem merchants whose correspondent
34. Newburyport "Herald," October 12, 1798.
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he was, like other Oriental merchants whose portraits hang in the museum, has the head and hands carved by Samuel McIntire. These lifelike effigies were evidently long popular in Salem as a form of sculpture. "Prior to 1725, Lemmon Beadle had made the representa- tion of a watchman, with his equipments, and stationed upon our watch-house."35 This evidently was the same Lemmon Beadle who has already been mentioned as a joiner.
In Newburyport much carving of a similar nature was also done. There is record of a Joseph Wilson, a ship carver, who in 1800 carved an eagle for the altar of St. Paul's Church, for which he was paid $25 ; he also carved a mitre, probably placed above the belfry as an emblem of office of the first Bishop of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and a small "eggle," for which he received $9. He also is said to have carved two "open mouthed lions" and a number of images, some of them supposed to represent Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Bonaparte, and Franklin, apparently rather inaccurately portrayed, since their identities appear to have been interchangeable; all these were raised on pillars around the house of "Lord" Timothy Dexter, whose own image formed part of this galaxy; he was a leather dresser from Malden and in 1798 purchased a house in New- buryport, where he seems to have caused much excitement and some scandal because of his eccentricities. The images have been described as "gaudily painted and having little merit as works of art and less as likenesses."36 Ignorant of such discouraging criticism, the Wilson family continued to work in Newburyport as carvers, later in the nineteenth century.
Very often, in the county, carpentry and carving were practiced as a sort of family occupation, fathers, sons and brothers working together and handing down their ability and craftsmanship to their descendants.
In Salem the famous McIntire family are a striking example. Samuel McIntire, already mentioned as a carver, is now held to be the finest artist that Essex County has produced, and in his lifetime he was well known and esteemed as a sculptor, an architect, and a carver of interior ornaments and furniture. His father, Joseph, was a housewright and Samuel received his training in his father's shop
35. Felt's "Annals of Salem."
36. J. J. Currier : "Ould Newbury."
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and in the shipyards. In the course of his life and work he was often assisted by his two brothers, Joseph, born 1748, and Angier, born 1759, also woodcarvers. His son, Samuel Field McIntire, born 1780, carved "ships heads, Festoons for Sterns, Tablets and Blocking for Chimney pieces, Brackets, Draperies, Pottres for Friezes, Eagles from 5 inches to 2 feet 6, a variety of Figures, Butter and Cake Stamps, Furniture, Carving and Bellows Tops."37 And he continued his father's business. Felt, in his "Annals of Salem," speaks of Sam- uel McIntire's nephew, the son of his brother, Joseph, in 1849, as having "exhibited a similar genius," by which he meant genius as a sculptor.
Of McIntire's sculptures, as distinct from his decorative pieces, few are now known to exist. In portraiture his best known works are the profile bas-relief of Washington, full of character, which is now in The Essex Institute, and the portrait of Governor Winthrop, made for the Rev. William Bentley, in 1798. Mr. Bentley wrote in his diary when the bust was finished and brought to him: "I cannot say that he has expressed anything which agrees with the Governor," but in later years he seems to have changed his mind, for in his eulogy of McIn- tire at the time of his death, he says : "In sculpture he had no rival in New England and I possess some specimens which I should not scruple to compare with any I ever saw."
McIntire carved the figure of a Reaper on the summer house of Elias Hasket Derby's Peabody farm; it has now been moved to the William Crowninshield Endicott gardens in Danvers. Like his son, he also had a flock of eagles always on hand; one of them was placed on the City Hall in 1802, another more conventionalized grasped the shield of the Stars and Stripes, an olive branch, and thunderbolts in a bas-relief over the Old Custom House door in 1805; the eagle on the barn of the Pierce-Nichols house is more lifelike and sympathetic, perhaps because it did not have to sustain the dignity of topping a public building.
Though McIntire never went to Europe, as Bulfinch did, nor even far from Salem, where all of his work was done as an architect, he was not narrow or provincial in his inspiration. Classic art he knew well from the books which were his education; "he made an assiduous study of the great classical masters with whose work, notwithstanding
37. H. W. Belknap: "Artists and Craftsmen of Essex County."
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their rarity in this country, Mr. McIntire had a very intimate acquaint- ance."38 In the advertisement of his possessions, which were offered for sale after his death, are listed, Encyclopedia, complete; Paladia Architecture, best kind; one large Book Antique Statues, excellent; Langley's architecture.
Perhaps he also made use of the pattern books for architecture which were current at the time; in Connecticut a mantelpiece has been found so much like a mantelpiece known to be by McIntire as to sug- gest the use of a manual used by both carvers in this case.39
In Newburyport, the church of the First Religious Society, built in 1801, with Timothy Palmer the recorded architect, is almost a duplicate of McIntire's Old South Church on Chestnut Street in Salem, built in 1804, now burned down, but formerly much admired for its graceful spire. Whether McIntire copied the Newburyport church, or whether he really designed it according to an unconfirmed tradition, or whether McIntire and Timothy Palmer made use of the same design from a manual, it is not possible to tell; very little is known of Timothy Palmer; another Palmer, Andrews Palmer, of Newburyport, also built, in 1814, a very beautiful church in Wayland, Massachusetts.
Of the very early type of meetinghouse which preceded the church there are no examples left standing in Essex County at the present day, nor is much known from which the appearance of them could be completely reconstructed. However, from old contracts, with their measurements, even though they may not be of meetinghouses built in the county, it appears that the first meetinghouses that were not tem- porary makeshifts, were square wooden buildings, covered with shingles or clapboards, whose pitched or hip roof was sometimes thatched; a tower or "turret" with its bell, might be in the center of the roof. In the floor plan of the meetinghouse there was no chancel, the pulpit and the main entrance were opposite each other, and when the meetinghouse was not strictly square, as often the case, they faced each other across the width of the building. "The Puritan meeting- house was a house for worship and a place for public meeting, in oppo- sition to the church idea and plan."38 (The church plan always had the chancel and pulpit at the end of the structure across the length of
38. C. A. Place: "From Meeting House to Church in New England," "Old-Time New England," Vol. XIII.
39. W. Nutting: "Furniture Treasury."
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the church from the main entrance. ) The interior finish of the meet- inghouse was extremely plain, daubed with clay or sometimes plas- tered; in the very early days this was a luxury, as has been said; the small windows like the windows of the houses at the time had dia- mond-shaped, leaded glass panes.
In 1653 the meetinghouse in Ipswich had diamond panel windows, with a turret set on a hip roof; an engraving of the meetinghouse of Salem Village (now Danvers) shows a hip roofed square building, with gables on three sides, and a spire in the center. In 1752 a town meeting was called in Topsfield "to see if the town . will cut off the lucombs (of the meetinghouse built in 1703) and make the roof foursquare.""0 "Lucombs" were dormer windows.
As the strict Puritan traditions relaxed with the coming of pros- perity in the eighteenth century, the interior of the meetinghouse was better designed and better finished, with panelling and carved and turned detail in the pulpit and gallery. Gradually a return was made to the English church plan; the use of the hip roof declined and the pitched roof regained favor. The floor plan was altered through additions to the length of the building, and the pulpit was moved in relation to it. The tower and spire were placed at one end by commu- nities rich enough to afford it; otherwise the structure was built with- out a tower. In general the builder was forced to seek inspiration from the church against which the Puritan had revolted in order that worship might be conducted in surroundings fitting with the new standards of beauty. The influence of Wren began to be felt in the designs of spires and pulpits for which there could be no guide in the new country. This influence was first seen in the Boston churches, particularly the Old South Church, and was adapted to churches in other towns; the spire of the Second Church in Salem, built in 1718, has the same graceful arched openings in the belfry as the spire of the Old South in Boston. In 1711, at Newbury, Queen's Chapel, a wooden structure, was built on the church plan, thirty by forty feet, with a tower belfry and bell.
Still the meetinghouse plan was not abandoned all at once. The church of St. Michael in Marblehead is an instance. Built in 1714, it was forty-eight feet square, had the hip roof with three gables and dormer windows and a tower on the fourth side on the roof, rather than on the ground according to the English plan. However, if the
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designer refused to follow English traditions, all the materials of the church were imported from England. Changes which were to bring this meetinghouse in line with the church plan already in use when St. Michael's was first built, were not completely carried out until 1832.40
By the end of the eighteenth century the New England builders were freed of any Puritan restraint except that of good taste; the influence of Wren grew, partly through Bulfinch, whose many beauti- ful churches inspired much architecture at the time; some of Bul- finch's designs were reproduced in a book by Asher Benjamin, first published in Greenfield in 1797; this book had a wide circulation, and one church, at least, in Essex County was built after a design taken from it-the church at Manchester, built in 1809, by Colonel Jacob Smith. Colonel Smith is also recorded as the designer of the church at Gloucester, built in 1806, which may also have been copied from an architect's manual.
Meantime, McIntire, who only built two churches in Salem, designed public buildings of which Bentley says "the present Court House, the North and South Meeting house and indeed all the improvements of Salem for thirty years past have been under his eye." Few artists have, like McIntire, the beauty of a whole city as a monument of their skill.
The courthouse, torn down in 1839 to make way for the railway, was built in 1785, designed by McIntire and executed by Bancroft, another Salem architect, much esteemed at the time. It was greatly admired, not only for its architecture, but for its spaciousness and convenience and also for the "beautiful prospect of a fine river, extensive well cultivated fields and groves; in addition to which the passing and repassing of vessels continually, in the river, makes a pleasing variety,"41 all this seen through a Venetian window "highly finished in the Ionick order" in the second story court hall behind the judge's seat. The building was of brick, with two stories, hip roofed, with a wide porch supported by four columns, over which was a balus- traded balcony. Standing on the balcony, in 1789, Washington was presented to the people of Salem; on that occasion McIntire is said to have made a sketch of Washington, which became the basis for his profile bas-relief already mentioned.
40. C. A. Place: "From Meeting House to Church." (See page 1080.)
41. Quoted by F. Cousins and P. M. Riley: "The Woodcarver of Salem."
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Earlier than the courthouse was the assembly house, built in 1782. It was originally the assembly house of the Federal party in Salem, and was one of the foremost social centers of the town. Both Wash- ington and Lafayette were entertained in it. It is a wooden house of two stories, with a flat boarded facade, Ionic pilasters supporting the pediment, and a porch with rather heavy, handsome carved ornament.
Another building for assemblies was Hamilton Hall, built in 1808. This is a brick building; its chief exterior ornaments, now that the entrance porch has been remodeled, are the Palladian win- dows on the side, each surmounted with a rectangular insert display- ing characteristic sculptures by McIntire, an eagle in the center one and festooned draperies in the others. The interior has a very beau- tiful ballroom with a vaulted and groined ceiling and a music balcony ; pilasters support a heavy cornice and divide the wall into panels. The Palladian windows again and the simple mantelpieces show the grace- ful and dignified treatment of interiors of McIntire's later manner as compared with the Georgian style of the earlier assembly hall.
McIntire is perhaps best known for his private houses, their porches and interiors especially. The type of house which was being built in Salem and Essex County in McIntire's time had evolved from the pitched roof, gabled house, to the gambrel or mansard roof type, which dropped the overhanging upper story and the lattice-like win- dows. One of the first examples of this to be built in Salem was the house of Benjamin Pickman erected for him under the supervision of an English carpenter, in 1748. Then came the two or three-story square wooden house with a four-sided or flat roof, often with a fenced terrace or "Captain's Walk" on it, especially in the seaside towns, so that a view of the ships in the harbor could be obtained. With the simple and boxlike appearance of the whole house, much more attention had to be paid to the spacing of windows and doors and to their decoration than in the early houses of more picturesque outline. The position of the four chimneys which were now placed usually at the four corners of the house, gave greater space and importance to the hall and entrance, and the stairway had to be designed with relation to the plan of the whole.
The Lee mansion, in Marblehead, was one of the first to be designed on this spacious scale, in 1768. Essex County architects and craftsmen could not claim the credit for its magnificence, for all the
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materials are said to have been imported from England, and it was probably designed by English architects.
Houses of the same period as the great town houses of Salem and Newburyport, but further inland in Essex County, where wealth did not flow in with shipping and trade to the same extent, are no less well designed and pleasing.
Two examples, good in themselves and attractive because they fit so well with their surroundings, are the Clark house in Amesbury and the Phelps house in Andover.
The Clark house, built in 1803, is an instance of how the local tradition of building lingers on in the smaller townships. It retains the large fireplaces and ovens of the early type, and has the solid shut- ters that slide out from the wall to keep out the cold night air.
The maple furniture which has always been in the house is in keep- ing with it and has the same rustic sturdy feeling. The front windows look out on a broad bend of the Merrimac River, where ships passed up and down when the house was first built.
The Phelps house, more imposing than the other, once belonged to the theological seminary at Andover, to whom it was given by a local benefactor, with the understanding that the Philadelphia profes- sor who was to occupy it, should be allowed to build it to suit himself. Before the house was finished, it was a source of grave scandal to the authorities and the entire little community, for the Philadelphia pro- fessor, who was accustomed to do things well, had woodcarvers from Salem to finish his rooms for him, each one with a different moulding. He ordered expensive wall-papers, and altogether the elegance of the interior and exterior was felt to be unsuited to a seminary professor. Actually the Phelps house, while the extravagant professor saw to it that it was built in the height of good taste and recent fashion, owes its charm to the simple and delicate proportions of the two stories, and its situation, modestly sheltered by the elms of Andover Hill.
The citizens of Salem had no qualms about extravagance or dis- play in their houses. When their trading ventures were successful they ordered for themselves the best houses that money could buy, with the finest carvings and mouldings on the white pine woodwork that set off so well their mahogany furniture and painted wall-papers.
Among the houses by McIntire which are still standing in Salem are the Peabody Silsbee house, built in 1797; the Tucker Rice house,
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built in 1800, which has a graceful rounded porch ; the house which is now owned by the Woman's Friend Society, remarkable for the pair of spiral staircases of bold construction, and which has a beautiful tulip and pineapple motive carved on the mantel in the parlor; the Cook Oliver house, interesting because it accidentally contains some of the best and richest carving done by McIntire, not originally intended for that house, but taken out of the house which he built for Elias Hasket Derby, the richest merchant of Salem and even of the United States. Derby died soon after the completion of the house, and as no purchaser could be found who would keep up such an expen- sive establishment, it was eventually torn down, in 1815. Meanwhile much of the wood finish was removed and built into the Cook Oliver house, and the gateposts, very elaborately carved with urns and gar- lands, were also transferred to the Cook-Oliver house. McIntire seems to have found as much satisfaction in devising his fence posts as he did in the carving of eagles; or perhaps high demand for fence posts and eagles stimulated his production of them. In 1802 the Salem common was graded and planted with trees and named Wash- ington Square; and in 1805 Washington Square was embellished with wooden gateways on the east and west sides, designed by McIntire and embellished with his carvings. The portrait bas-relief of Wash- ington already mentioned was carved for the western gateway.
The Pierce-Johonnot-Nichols house, now the property of The Essex Institute, was built by McIntire in the years from 1782 to 1800. It has great charm, for its barn and garden have been preserved, with the sloping of the latter towards what was once a river, its diagonally laid steps and wooden arches and the paved courtyard between the house and barn. In front is the usual picket fence with the carved gate posts, and the simple lines of the house itself are relieved by fluted pilasters at the corners, and by the balustrade of the low hip roof.
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