Miss Wiggin's Attic

The following are excerpts from a poem by a Grace Stone Field, the pen name of Mrs. Charles I. Page. It was printed along with the Historical Society’s annual report from August 9, 1912. The recording secretary of the time, Elizabeth C. Barney Buel, believed this tribute to Harriet Beecher Stowe to be Grace Stone Field’s “masterpiece”…”very beautiful–a true artistic gem.”

In the first few stanzas Field tackles Stowe’s impact on the fight against slavery, but also pays tribute to her writings on New England and its “quaint or queer” citizens in a later stanza (Poganuc People, anyone?).

Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Tribute

Shall we twine a greener tendril in the laurel crown she wears?
Shall we add a fresher flower to the garland that she bears?
Shall we say, of one long silent, that she speaks again today?
Shall we prate of her and praise her in some trite, perfunctory way?

Nay, she heeds nor praise nor blaming, dwelling with the immortals now;
We can add no glint of glory to the nimbus round her brow–
But her own achievements land her, speaking with a certain voice
Through the lips of dusky thousands who but name her to rejoice.

Let us rather say God put her in the time and place he planned,
Set a task that men might shrink from her slender woman’s hand;
Made her mighty among women, made her strong to dare and do–
Closed her fingers round her weapon, small and trenchant, too;

And with sympathy diviner than the sympathy of men
She made plain the bondsman’s sorrows with her tiny, potent pen;
Stirred the feeble, laggard impulse, set the northern heart on fire!
Woke the wavering, sluggard conscience to a splendid brave desire.

…

Thus she wrote, yet lighter fancies wove and wrought within her brain
And she sketched our fair New England, lovely valley, pleasant plain;
Wrote of tender hearts that fluttered under manners more austere
Of the Puritan descendants, stern and solemn, quaint or queer.

The Litchfield Historical Society’s Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library is elated to announce the recent acquisition of a significant collection of business records created by Elijah Boardman (1760-1823).

Thanks to the generosity of Elijah and Mary Anna Boardman’s descendants, Joan Boardman Wright McDaniel and her daughter Caroline Boardman McDaniel Lamphier, scholars will be able to pore over this iconic entrepreneur’s ledgers, blotters, and day books. Boardman’s newspaper advertisements reveal that he went to great lengths to bring a variety of foreign goods to this rural market. His ledgers document his intricate pattern of trade in which he shipped local agricultural goods, received in trade or purchased, which he shipped to New York and sold at a premium. He brought back rum, molasses, and a large variety of textiles.

The family retained the papers for generations, first in the Boardman house in New Milford, and, for a number of years, had them on loan to Yale University. Recently, Mrs. Lamphier and Mrs. McDaniel made the decision to donate the 97 volume collection to a historical society. Derin Bray, an art and antiques consultant who did extensive research for To Please Any Taste: Litchfield County Furniture and Furniture Makers, 1780-1830, published in 2008 by the Litchfield Historical Society, contacted the family upon learning about their collection. His familiarity with Litchfield County and early republic history enabled him to recognize the significance of the collection and suggest to the owner that the family donate the papers to the Society whose professionally trained staff and regular hours would enable scholars to have regular access to the collection.

These volumes document a business with close ties to Litchfield and to the Society’s existing collections. Prior to embarking on a mercantile venture with his brother Daniel, Boardman served in the American Revolution and trained as a clerk in New Haven. He commenced business as a merchant in New Milford in 1781. The Society holds Boardman & Seymour records, 1794­-1811, a collection of orders, invoices, receipts, and correspondence documenting a partnership between Boardman and Moses Seymour Jr. of Litchfield.

In 1795, Boardman became a member of the Connecticut Land Co., one of the purchasers of the Connecticut Western Reserve. The Notes and Proceedings of the Connecticut Land Company, 1795-1809; the Judson Canfield papers 1760-1856; and the Samuel Flewwelling Papers, 1799-1868 are among the Society’s extensive documentation of the settlement of Ohio by Connecticut natives, many of whom migrated from Litchfield County.

Two of the Boardman’s sons, William Whiting Boardman and George Sherman Boardman, attended the Litchfield Law School. Two of their daughters, Caroline Boardman Schreoder and Mary Anna Boardman, attended the Litchfield Female Academy. Schroeder’s schoolgirl diary is in the Society’s Litchfield Female Academy collection.

Boardman became prominent in politics after 1800. He was repeatedly elected to the Connecticut General Assembly and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1821. For this election, Boardman, a democrat, joined Oliver Wolcott (1760-1833) on the Toleration Party ticket. Boardman died on a visit to Ohio in 1823.

Scholars and history buffs alike know well the Ralph Earl painting of Boardman that hangs in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The collection at the Wadsworth Athenaeum boasts the Earl landscape of the Boardman house in New Milford, CT. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA holds the Earl painting of Boardman’s wife, Mary Anna Whiting Boardman, and their son William Whiting Boardman. This collection provides exciting new documentation of significant American works of art.

The collections of the Litchfield Historical Society have long been lauded by enthusiasts of the Early Federal period of American history for their richness in documenting the social and political history of that era. This collection can only serve to enrich existing holdings and expand knowledge about early American commerce, early Connecticut, the Western Reserve, and a host of other topics. The Society will begin processing the collection immediately and hopes to make it available to scholars as soon as possible. It will certainly prove an invaluable resource to all manner of historians and decorative arts scholars, not to mention the added value it will provide the Society’s exhibitions, publications, Web site, and programs.

Betsey Huntington Wolcott

There are some fantastic love letters in the Society’s collection. Here are two excerpts to inspire you from Frederick Wolcott to his beloved Betsey Huntington on June 27, 1800.

If I were to write to you as often as I think of you, the perusal of my letter would afford you a constant employment.  If, however I could flatter myself that you would read them with as much pleasure as I write them, I am sure you would not be unwilling pretty frequently to hear from me.  My mind dwells with great pleasure on our acquaintance & friendship.  I love, without reserve, to write to you & to disclose my feelings; to tell you I am your friend, & that I will always remain so… I shall leave home the next monday on a journey of business, & shall be absent a fortnight or three weeks.  Betsey, how many times do you believe I shall think of you before I return?  May I not with more propriety say how much of my time shall I not think of you? Full transcript

He later wrote of their upcoming wedding:

I will only add that I have never thought Weddings were proper occasions for much parade.  In the one in which I expect to be interested I am willing however that the good Girl whom I love, and in whose judgment I have confidence, should be the sole directress of the ceremonies…. I am entirely happy in the choice I have made and, in my most sober hours, my judgment and feelings wholly approve of my determination (provided you will still yield your assent) to form with you a connection on which in an eminent degree will depend the colourings of my condition and prospects thro life. Full transcript

Their life together was cut short when Betsey died in 1812, shortly after the birth of their sixth child, Laura. Frederick went on to marry again,  but no letters of this kind to his second wife are known.

Maria Tallmadge Cushman

Love isn’t always a bed of roses. Upon breaking her engagement with Virgil Maxcy, young Maria Tallmadge received a letter from Tapping Reeve.

By this you will perceive that I am not unacquainted with events that have given you much uneasiness the occasion of my writing this is that I know on such occasion in such cases the mind is returning to the event and inquiring whether it can be justified my dear child your conscience if rightly informed must acquit you in of any guilt in dismissing Mr Maxcy for I have no doubt that you struggled with your reluctant affections to make them yield. This you found impossible ^ the consequence must have been if you had preserver^ed until you had given your hand you would have done it without giving your heart this would have ^ been a step that could not have been retraced and most probably would have been a source of grief not only to you & would have been injustice to him you must with an aching heart have lived a life of deception and after all your attempts to conceal from him the real feelings of your heart would have been made in vain…your knowledge of his strong attachment to you and your tenderness for him of nature and wish to render him happy might lead you into an error but never stained you with any fault of heart…

She presumably found love after all as she went on to marry John Paine Cushman. Poor Mr. Maxcy’s life did not end so well. He died during an explosion on the ship “Princeton” in 1844.

Click here to find a transcription of the entire letter to download.

As some of you know, we have spent several years working to create modern catalog records for our monograph collection. The pertinent information for each volume is scanned or photographed (this includes the title page, publication information, whether it contains illustrations, an index, a table of contents, and the number of pages to name a few things) and submitted to Backstage Library Works in Utah. Catalogers create or copy catalog records and send them back to us in spreadsheet form for corrections. We recently submitted corrections for the books formerly categorized as “school books” and the catalogers will soon add the records to reQuest, the statewide library catalog. You can search for books in our collection here: http://www.iconn.org/default.asp?lid=lfhs&mode=g.

In celebration of the completion of another portion of the project, a small display of school books and picture books is on exhibit in the Ching Reading Room of the Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library.  The items on display all have a local connection. If you are in the area, stop by to see it. If you aren’t, you can enjoy the following highlights. The titles in bold are on exhibit.

Finding that existing history texts were too dense and too expensive for young students, Litchfield resident Sarah Pierce compiled Sketches of Universal History, Compiled From Several Authors for the Use of Schools which was printed in 1811. This copy belonged to Female Academy Student Nancy Barclay Crawford, a student at Miss Pierce’s school in 1823. The notice of copyright (below)  for the volume appeared in the Connecticut Journal (New Haven) on October 31, 1811. Note that it was filed by the printer rather than Sarah Pierce.

Dwight C. Kilbourn (1837–1914) donated this copy of Benjamin Dudley Emerson’s Second Class Reader. This edition was printed in 1844 and may have been used by Kilbourn during his school days. He would go on to become a lawyer who attained the rank of Lieutenant in the Second Connecticut Heavy Artillery during the Civil War. He also authored The Bench and Bar of Litchfield County, 1709–1909.

Noah Webster spent time in Litchfield as a young man. He studied law with Jedediah Strong prior to working as a teacher and later compiling a dictionary. Webster’s publications also included this Elementary Spelling Book and The History of the United States (also given by D.C. Kilbourn).

McGuffey Readers were commonly used for educational purposes from its first printing in 1836 into the early twentieth century. The volume on display was donated by local resident Frank M. Coe. In addition to being used locally, the readers have another tie to Litchfield. William Homes McGuffey was from the Ohio Western Reserve where he was active in a movement to support free common schools supported by tax money. He joined Calvin Stowe and his wife, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in supporting the cause.

Rose Dale is one of a set of three volumes owned by John Williams Quincy (1866–1950). Quincy was a descendant of Deming family and spent a considerable amount of time in Litchfield with his family. In the late 1800s, an as-yet-to-be-determined condition required John Williams Jr. to spend the rest of his life under private institutional care.

Anne Lyon Haight (1895–1977) contributed an essay to the Children’s Book Show 1945–1950 publication. She married Sherman Post Haight in 1914. She was a writer and a lecturer who was active in various book clubs and museums in New York. Her family lived in Litchfield part-time.

Nils Hogner, author of Farm for Rent (see illustration above), was born in Massachusetts to Swedish immigrant parents.  He attended Rhodes Academy, Copenhagen, Denmark, Royal Academy of Arts, Stockholm, Sweden, Boston School of Painting, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He married Dorothy Childs, an author, in 1932. They purchased Hemlock Hill Herb Farm in Litchfield and remained part-time residents throughout their lives. Dorothy Childs Hogner’s book The Wild Little Honker is also on display. She wrote many books illustrated by her husband Nils.

Dorothy Childs Hogner wrote of her Litchfield Home in the introduction for the second edition of The Junior Book of Authors, 1951.

We enjoy the city and like living here in winter, but, perhaps even more, we enjoy our camp in Connecticut, where we go in summer.

In winter we drive up there quite often to feed the birds. We have about eleven acres of woodland, in a remote spot, and when the snows are heavy we have to walk through drifts to get there. The birds are always glad to see us, the chickadees, the nuthatches, the juncos, and even the wild shy grouse, which will come out and eat corn when we are there, if we sit very quietly inside, looking out of the window.

Of course, these birds, and all the wild animals which live there, the chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and others, make wonderful characters for our books. We have put up a salt lick too, so the deer come near our back porch, and sometimes we catch a glimpse of a fox, or of the handsome shy lynx cat which lives in the near-by forest.

There is only one animal we do not find amusing. That is the woodchuck. We liked him at first, but he is such a glutton. He enjoys filling himself on greens we plant in our garden, and we are both very fond of gardening. So we and the woodchucks do not get on!

Ben Hawthorne, author of Bessie Bossie, shown above, was born Benton Deming, son of William Champion Deming and Imogene Hawthorne Deming. He was the great-grandson of Nathaniel Hawthorne and of Julius Deming. He was a radio disk jockey and served in WWII. The following was written about his show:

Early morning programs, musical clocks are one of the most successful types of jockeying. Programs like Ben Hawthorne’s WTIC (Hartford, Conn.) session with Bessie the Cow, sold millions of dollars of merchandise for G. Fox department store down through the years, before the army got Hawthorne. Bessie the Cow was only a sound effect yet a book was written about Bessie that did a sock job through New England, the area served by WTIC.

Billboard 1944 Music Yearbook, page 64

 

Litchfield Garden Club Collection, Slide #70

We’ve done a lot of work to prepare finding aids for the many collections of papers in the Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library. We’re still working on those, but have also begun to find ways to provide improved access to our remarkable photograph collections. As part of a Garden Clubs of America project, The Litchfield Garden Club created glass lantern slides to document gardens of members in the 1920s and 30s. This is the only one that depicts a winter scene.

Lura Ambler Liggett by A. Sheldon Pennoyer

The Towne House (also known as Westover) on South Street was built in 1915 by Henry R. Towne and his wife, Cora Tallmadge Towne. He was the founder and president of the Yale and Towne Manufacturing Company, a very successful lock manufacturing business in Stamford. His wife was a great-granddaughter of Benjamin Tallmadge. It was later owned by Admiral Hussey and his wife, the garden club member responsible for the slide. Alexander and Lura Ambler Liggett purchased the house from the Husseys. The Liggetts later built what is now the Lourdes Shrine, where Mrs. Liggett is depicted in the portrait above.

Portrait Miniature of Noah Webster by William Verstille (1757-1803) Date: February 12, 1788 Held at: Litchfield Historical Society, Size: 1 7/8" length x 1 1/2" width

Noah Webster is the subject of a lecture to be given tomorrow night at 7pm at the Oliver Wolcott Library jointly sponsored by the Litchfield Historical Society and the library. Webster is thought to have studied law in Litchfield with Jedediah Strong. You may recognize Strong’s name from an earlier post on intemperance. Though there is no evidence to suggest that Webster attended Tapping Reeve’s school, it is a common enough question that we included his biography in the Ledger.

Tomorrow’s lecture by author Joshua Kendall will focus on his new book, The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession & the Creation of an American Culture. During the course of his research, Kendall contacted the Society to learn what primary sources we have that might illuminate Webster’s life or career. Like many young men and women who studied here, we have only small traces of his life in our collection. They are, however significant ones. Webster wrote a letter to prominent local physician, Dr. Daniel Sheldon, to request a letter of introduction to Sheldon’s son who was serving as Jefferson’s minister to Paris. Webster intended on traveling there for the purpose of completing and publishing his dictionary. Sheldon replied and included the requested letter, wishing Webster luck on his venture.  Another letter to printers in Albany discusses rights for printing Webster’s spelling book. The portrait miniature shown above is the only known image of Noah Webster.

This is a great Archives Month example of how our collections are used. Be sure to check our finding aids and publications catalog for details of our Webster holdings. You can register for the program here.

I am working on creating a presentation for Friday’s Archives Month Lunch and Learn and I realized that I haven’t shared anything about this company, or how we came to be interested in it here on the blog. Documenting Lilac Hedges has been the work of a number of individuals. It all started with an idea for a fundraiser that has yet to come to fruition. Even if it never does, the resources and information we came out of the process with will be more than worth the effort. I don’t want to give away the whole story, but I do want to pique your interest. The fundraising idea was to create beautiful books that told the story of a particular house. Only two copies would be printed, one for our library and one to be sold to the homeowner. So we started to make a short list of houses that we might have enough information and images to create this type of book for. One was on Fern Avenue in Litchfield. The history of the various properties that had been parceled together and taken apart again was fascinating- it includes everything from Echo Farm, the first dairy to commercially bottle milk for distribution in New York city, to the Chase family who eventually created Topsmead. In the early 20th century, the Hinchman family purchased the house and barn on the property and Ralph Hinchman created a studio in that barn. His company would go on to produce greeting cards that were shown and distributed across the country, and include the artistic involvement of a number of influential artists, illustrators and producers. Before starting the company, Hinchman attended Bard and enlisted in the army where he served as a WWII fighter pilot.  Upon his return, he attended Cooper Union in New York.

Ralph Hinchman’s remarkable story could not be told without the assistance of his sister, Elsa Hinchman Clark, who donated much of the material now in our collection; his friend and colleague Jac Venza who shared several of his time to tell us about the company and Ralph’s experiences; Henry D. Bowman, an artist who worked for the company who recently also sent a number of examples of his work; and a number of other local residents who are contacting us to share their stories or artifacts from time spent working with the company. We also extend thanks to intern Benjamin Bradley who devoted the better part of two summers researching, compiling, creating an exhibit, and authoring a finding aid. I have yet to locate the business records, whether they still exist is a mystery. Ralph’s business partner, Francis McIlhenny,  bought out the company and moved it to California. Questions like how many employees Lilac Hedges had at its peak, or what their annual revenue was, have not been answered. We hope to encourage others to share what they know about this uniquely Litchfield venture.

This advertisement appeared in the CJR House Tour bulletin in 1958.

We’re here to celebrate archives month with a few features on the holdings of the Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library. PBS is airing a new documentary on Prohibition. One of the first images you’ll see is from our collection, as shown above, of the first page of the first of Lyman Beecher’s Six Sermons on Intemperance. Beecher gets a lot of credit for starting the movement but his sermons, delivered in Litchfield in 1826, came some 37 years after the first Temperance Association was formed in Litchfield. Jedediah Strong, a local attorney who once showed great promise, became notorious for intemperance. Strong’s situation is supposed to have been the driving factor behind the organization of the first temperance society.  The organizers, including such notables as  Ephraim Kirby, Julius Deming, Benjamin Tallmadge, Uriah Tracy, Moses Seymour, Tapping Reeve, and John Allen, signed a temperance pledge that year.  Strong also signed, but his resolve lasted less than a year. In 1790 he became embroiled in a scandalous divorce case in which he was accused of drunkenly beating his wife (the daughter of Connecticut’s Secretary of State). It is interesting to note that Allen, a congressman who was instrumental in the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, also violated his pledge and lost his wealth and business. Though Beecher left Litchfield the year he delivered his sermons, the temperance spirit remained. Other evidence of activity in this area can be found by searching our online finding aids, including the record book of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union from 1878.

Scaffolding goes up

If you have walked or driven past the Litchfield History Museum in the past month you may have wondered about the scaffolding and construction equipment surrounding the building.

We are getting a new roof!

Roof and Gutters

But it is not any run of the mill roof. After 108 years of service the standing seam copper roof and  elaborate copper gutters and leaders have become severely deteriorated and are being replaced.

Deteriorated mortar joints

The roof is not our only issue.  Many of the bricks and mortar joints in exterior walls have deteriorated and made it possible for water to infiltrate into the building  causing  damage to paint and plaster in the museum.  The construction project began with masons replacing bricks and fixing mortar on all sides of the museum

After several years of planning and preparation,  funded by grants from the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, we developed a comprehensive plan to address all the buildings needs, both interior and exterior.  The first phase of the project will fix all of the exterior issues – from the roof and gutters to window and door repair.  Thanks to generous grants from the Seherr-Thoss Foundation and the 1772 Foundation we have received funding for  this work and the building will be water tight by winter.

We will keep you updated on  the progress as the work as we go forward. We have already uncovered some fascinating
new information the building. Check back next week for an update.