e-Newsletter | July 8, 2022
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A Jewel in Newburyport's Crown: Bartlet Mall
by Susan C.S. Edwards
Bartlet Mall has long been a significant jewel in Newburyport's crown. The large green common at the top of the town served as a grazing place and watering hole for sheep in the 1630s when European settlers first arrived in Newbury. The pond at the bottom of the kettle hole was named Frog Pond by these settlers.
Commerce began to play a part in the eighteenth century with the erection of a windmill in 1703 on the southeasterly end of the land. By the mid century, John Crocker received permission to operate a rope walk along the mall. A long building housing machinery to wind rope from hemp, it stretched along High Street. In the 1770s, the green was leveled and used as a training ground for colonial militia, After the rope walk was torn down, Nathaniel Tracy was responsible for planting shade trees along the site in 1779, and by 1796 a schoolhouse had been built at the south end.
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Detail from a plan by Joseph Chaplin, 1800. Museum of Old Newbury collections
The land underwent a significant alteration in 1800 when Edmund Bartlet gave $1,400 to fill in an "unsightly gully" and subsequently created a promenade where Crocker's ropewalk had been. For his efforts and generosity, the park was named Bartlet Mall. Four years after Bartlet made his gift, the townspeople authorized building a new courthouse, and a stately structure designed by Boston architect Charles Bulfinch was completed in 1805.
Today, however, we are focusing on the conversion of the Mall to a park and pleasure ground and the individuals who were responsible for this transformation of the landscape. Fast forward to 1887 when the Mall Improvement Association was founded.
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Charles Eliot (1859-1897) Photo courtesy of The Trustees of Reservations
One of the first acts of the Association was to seek advice from landscape architect Charles Eliot. Eliot, born in 1859, came from a patrician Boston family and his great-grandmother was Catharine Atkins of Newburyport. After graduation from Harvard, Eliot apprenticed to Frederick Law Olmsted, and in 1885, at Olmsted's suggestion, he traveled and studied in Europe before returning to Boston in 1886 and establishing his own practice at 9 Park Street. Eliot's association with the Mall Improvement Association and the Bartlet Mall was among his first commissions as a sole practitioner.
In October of 1887 he begins a letter to the Association as follows:
Gentlemen:
You are determined that your ancient Common shall be made more useful and attractive than it ever has yet been as a promenade for the grown folks of your City and as a playground for the children of the schools. At the request of Mr. Currier I submit a suggestive or preliminary plan for the improvement of the Common -- the plan being directed towards fulfilling the two ends just mentioned -- without proposing any such radical changes of surface or outline as would involve large expense. Let me describe my plan part by part.
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Charles Eliot's 1887 Plan for the Old Common, Newburyport. The letters on the plan correspond to those areas described in Charles Eliot's letter to the Mall Improvement Association. Museum of Old Newbury collections
In an eight page letter in his rolling script (now in the collections of the Museum of Old Newbury) Eliot goes on to describe his recommendations for the scope of work. His general scheme was to provide adequate "broadwalks" along High Street with strips of grass and rows of trees that would be trimmed high to provide a pleasant vista, and a less wide broadwalk on Pond Street. He advises broadening the gravel beach by filling part of the lowest shores and providing an adequate number of flights of steps down the steep banks, and two sloping approaches to the beach, one a footpath, the other a driveway. Repair and protections of the grass banks was an important concern as well as planting out the rear wall of the Courthouse with large shrubs and climbers. Eliot describes the rear wall as "a very ugly thing from many points of view." The changes involved a good deal of gravel cutting and filling, and re-grading of considerable areas, some with loam and some with gravel. The plan was accepted and slightly modified in 1888. By 1890 much of the work had been completed, and the Mall Improvement Association was dissolved during the summer. By fall a City Improvement Society had been organized.
This was the end of Eliot's direct association with the Bartlet Mall. By 1893, he had become a full partner with the Olmsted Brothers, forming the firm of Olmsted, Olmsted and Eliot, in which he had a brilliant but short career in landscape architecture and town planning. By 1897, at the age of 37, he died of spinal meningitis.
Eliot's legacy, however, has lived on. In 1914 Boston landscape architect Arthur Shurtleff was called in to advise on Mall improvements. In January of that year he sent the first of several letters regarding proposed improvements to the Mall:
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Arthur Shurtleff's Plan of the Old Common, Newburyport, 1914. Museum of Old Newbury collections
I send you under separate cover ... a print of a plan for the Newburyport Common, which I have incorporated from the original plan for this ground by the late Charles Eliot... . I have tried faithfully to follow Mr. Eliot's original lead and have departed from it only where modern conditions seem to require changes. In some parts of the Common Mr. Eliot's plan has not been carried out, notably at the broad walk.
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Shurtleff goes on, in much the same way as Eliot, to recommend planting out the basement of the Courthouse, and, At each end of the Court House in the space between the walls and the steps plant Japanese Barberry to prevent children from running along these slopes and wearing away the ground. ... Japanese Barberry is inexpensive, will endure moderate hardship and its thorns will remind children of the neighborhood of the unwisdom of further destruction of these stair margins.
He advises that additional stairways, as proposed in Eliot's plan, be rebuilt, that concrete seats should replace failing wooden ones, and that a drinking fountain be installed. He closes by saying,
I am taking the liberty of sending a copy of this report and plan to President Eliot, as he will be glad no doubt to learn that the plan which was prepared by his son so many years ago is still good and has proven by a lapse of time to be well conceived.
In making modifications in it, I feel a great hesitancy, as I told you, as Mr. Eliot was a prophetic planner.
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Hand-tinted photograph of the Bartlet Mall. Photo by Bob Watts, Museum of Old Newbury collections
Again, in 1935 Arthur Shurcliff (as he was then known) was involved briefly in the specifications of flights of stairs at the Mall but by then he was immersed in the restoration and recreation of the gardens, landscape, and town planning of Colonial Williamsburg, a decades long project.
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It is heartening that the present day Parks Commission is leading the way to carry on the vision of these eminent practitioners of landscape planning that nourishes us all and brings a refreshed glory to our city.
Editor's note: Any inconsistencies in grammar and spelling are from original documents.
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This Sunday, July 10, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. Historic New England presents: A Story of Slavery and Resistance in Newbury, Dole-Little House, 289 High Road, Newbury, Mass.
In late May of 1690, an enslaved man called James escaped from the household of Richard Dole in pursuit of his freedom. James was one of eight people enslaved by Dole on this site, prior to the construction of the current Dole-Little House. His capture resulted in the unraveling of a conspiracy that if successful would have been the largest organized revolt in New England. We can learn much about the lives of enslaved people in Newbury in the seventeenth century by exploring historical records about this case and by looking at the landscape. Dr. Tricia Peone, research scholar for our Recovering New England’s Voices project, presents this talk and landscape tour.
This talk is exclusively outdoors and includes some walking. Meet at the Lower Green near the First Settlers monument and walk to Dole-Little House. HNE Members $15; Nonmember $25. Tickets from HNE available here.
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Join Ghlee Woodworth, noted author, historian, and 12th generation Newburyport native for one of her highly informative and entertaining walking tours. Proceeds from these tours benefit the museum and her wonderfully illustrated books can be purchased exclusively in our online store.
July 17, 10am - Tiptoe Through the Tombstones: Old Hill Burying Ground. Meet at Greenleaf St. entrance. Wander through Newburyport’s historic 1730 Old Hill Burying Ground. Meet Revolutionary War heroes, captains and merchants of Old Newbury, and even a “cool, cool cat” in a stroll around this hilly graveyard. From some of the most ornate early tombstone decoration in New England to the mausoleums of Newburyport’s leading families, Old Hill Burying Ground looks down on the city from its perch above Bartlet Mall. $15 adults, $10 Museum of Old Newbury members. Tickets.
July 31, 10am - Walking Tour – Vanished Churches and Public Buildings of the South End Meet at 98 High Street. Join Ghlee for a Sunday morning stroll through the neighborhoods around the Cushing House and Museum of Old Newbury. This tour will focus on the commercial, civic, and religious buildings that are no longer standing, or have been converted to residential use. $15 adults, $10 Museum of Old Newbury members. Tickets.
August 21, 10am - Tiptoe Through the Tombstones: Oak Hill Cemetery Starts at 4 Brown St. Prior to 1842, Oak Hill Cemetery was known as Old Maid’s Hall and consisted of about fifty burial sites in a small area. In January of 1842, Reverend Thomas B. Fox, pastor of the First Religious Society of Newburyport, and other leading citizens formed a board of trustees to oversee the design and management of a rural garden cemetery, which was to be one of the first in the United States. The new cemetery was consecrated in July 1842. Join Ghlee for a stroll through Oak Hill, final resting place of shipwrecked sailors, sea captains, and merchants, architects and photographers, writers and poets, silversmiths and newspaper editors, and adventurers who travelled to the Klondike gold rush. $15 adults, $10 Museum of Old Newbury members. Tickets.
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Woman on the MOON
...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
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This morning, a package arrived at the Museum of Old Newbury.
It was not a ball.
This, you see, is a joke in my house. Whenever a package arrives that is flat or rectangular, or clearly a jewelry box, my dad earnestly declares, “I think it’s a ball”. It was a busy morning at the Museum of Old Newbury, and our newest intern, Lilly, had been stuck with a series of rather dull tasks. To make it up to her, Lilly was given the pleasure of opening this package. She undertook the challenge with characteristic efficiency. She worked quietly, an occasional small "hmm" to remind us that she was still working on it. She removed tape, bubble wrap, and a moving blanket. When she was done, she stood up without saying a word and looked at me, wide-eyed, holding a large framed sampler, stitched in 1811, by a girl named Eunice G. Sawyer.
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Eunice G. Sawyer sampler, 1811. Photograph by Bob Watts.
I have a complicated relationship with samplers. I grew up in a bit of a crafty household, and we were all expected to learn how to sew and crochet and knit. My talents lie in other areas, and I hated sitting still. I was, I suppose, what once was called a tomboy. I thought draft horses and battle plans and books about locomotives and drilling rigs and aircraft carriers were amazing and that was enough to set me outside the ribboned (and later, lip-glossed) throng of girlhood.
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The author, age 10. While my sister was learning to embroider, I much preferred the company of draft horses and goats.
And so, samplers to me smack of a certain kind of oppression. What if, like me, the girl in question wanted nothing more than to be driving a wagon or threshing grain or climbing a tree? What pleasure would there have been in painstakingly stitching a row of letters to be hung in the parlor and framed - an advertisement that this girl would be a patient, cultured, literate wife?
Of course, what I overlook is that nobody is exactly like me. This is the beauty of humanity, and, for historians, the sorrow. How can we know, unless she tells us, how Eunice Greenleaf Sawyer, age nine, felt about hours of stitching on her sampler? She may have loved the feel of the silk thread slipping through her fingers - the colors, now faded, that she wove into her masterpiece. She (though she is my fourth cousin), is, and will remain, a mystery to me, until such time as we find that cache of letters where she expounds upon her ecstasy (or agony) at the prospect of working the needle.
The story of this sampler, and the girl who worked it, will be told as we uncover it. With a certain amount of envy, I have handed over the lion’s share of the research on this piece to our very capable, very thorough Williams College intern, Annabelle, who dived right in. If Eunice Greenleaf Sawyer is to be found, Annabelle will find her.
I am not a sampler expert. I have already confessed my instinctive aversion to girlhood arts as a broad category. But any one sampler is a document, and though patterns and schools governed certain elements of sampler creation, there were always choices made in the selection of subject and text. Eunice, who turned nine years old in 1811, chose a rather somber poem about grief, depression, and comfort, and the last line reveals that the poem is an admonition to herself. In particular, it is a wish to be a balm to the wounds of others. A noble sentiment, and one that seems appropriate to the recently bereaved.
In 1811, Eunice Greenleaf Sawyer’s father had been dead for two years, and a brother had died the year before she was born. There was not, as far as can be easily ascertained from the record, a close recent bereavement, though death was closer at hand in the early 19th century than it is today. I wondered if this was a mourning piece.
The voice in my head, the same one that repeats “It’s a BALL!” in my dad’s voice, also repeats “The simplest answer is often the right one,” in my great-aunt Emily’s voice. Oh, how I miss her.
In 1811, when these threads were worked, joyfully or otherwise, Newbury had a new (as of 1808) meetinghouse in the Belleville neighborhood, officially the fourth parish of Newbury, stretching from the northwest side of Oakland Street to the Artichoke River. Though we do not know (yet) exactly where she lived, Eunice Sawyer had relatives all over Belleville.
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The Belleville section of Newbury, c.1851 – North Street is now Oakland Street.
The poem that she carefully stitched was pulled from a didactic text, an English book of romantic sensibilities authored by a Miss Charlotte Palmer and published in 1780. It’s title? Female Stability; or the history of Miss Belville. Coincidence? Perhaps, but Aunt Emily would have told you that there is no such thing.
Although I am not drawn to samplers, I do love a darkly romantic poem, rendered extra gloomy by rows of “x”s. But the element of the piece that caught my eye, and stole my heart, is a piece of paper affixed to the lower left corner. It says, “Mother has promised to give this sampler to me. If she ever gave it to anyone. It was worked by her sister Eunice in 1811”. It is signed “Elisabeth R. Titcomb”.
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The historian in me loves this note because, in a world where there were multiple Eunice G. Sawyers alive in 1811, we can determine conclusively that this was our Belleville gal. But it’s more than that. It captures a chain of memory, a sister’s affection, and a little possessiveness from a third born child who wanted to make sure her siblings knew that this piece was claimed.
Eunice died just after her 20th birthday, of tuberculosis. She was staying in Boston with an uncle who had taken on a paternal role after her father’s death, and she is buried there. Her sister Hannah, the “mother” in the note, lived for another fifty years. Elisabeth R. Titcomb, her niece, died in Chicago in 1917, and somehow this treasure wound up in a thrift shop back in New England. According to the letter from the donor, it was purchased around fifty years ago and made its way to Nevada, to be packaged back up and sent to us.
The owner of this sampler, perhaps aided by the note identifying it as a precious family piece, knew that it needed to be with people who know her family. We know the Sawyers and the Emerys and the Greenleafs. We can connect Eunice to her neighbors. We know that she was named after her aunt, and that her brother died in France, and that her grandmother left Eunice some shares in the Newburyport Turnpike. And so, while we will likely never know how she felt about her needlework, this gift is a gateway into her too-short life, her sister’s love, and the ceaseless pull toward home.
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Something is Always Cooking at the Museum |
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Swedish Visiting Cake
Summer is not a fun time to have the oven on in New England. This quick "visiting cake" is something that can be made in 30 minutes. The story goes that its name comes from the fact that you can put it together when you see visitors walking up to your house for an afternoon "fika" - coffee & cake. It's a dense, moist cake with no leavening other than the eggs - we here at the museum think it's delicious! It's perfect when you have a handful of fresh berries that aren't enough for a pie. Also a great recipe for children to bake.
6 tablespoons butter, melted
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (omit if using salted butter)
1 teaspoon almond or vanilla extract (or combination of both)
1 cup all purpose flour
about 1 cup fresh berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries)
Preheat oven to 400F. Grease and flour a 9 inch round pan. Melt the butter and let cool slightly. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, salt and extract(s) until frothy. Pour in butter and whisk until well blended. Whisk in flour and mix until the batter is smooth and creamy.
Pour the batter into the baking pan and scatter the berries on top. You don't need to press them in - their weight will make them sink a bit during baking.
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Bethany & Annabelle try out Kristen's cake.
Bake for 20-30 minutes until golden brown on top. The cake is done when a toothpick or knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven; serve warm or cool, directly from the pan or turned out. Eat by itself or with freshly whipped cream. Some like a dusting of cinnamon sugar on top. Adapted by Kristen Fehlhaber from "Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break" by Anna Brones and Johanna Kindvall.
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Click on image above to play the puzzle |
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This colorized photograph portrays Bartlet Mall and the Frog Pond as a delightful pleasure ground and park through which to stroll on a relaxing summer day. From a souvenir booklet in the Museum of Old Newbury collections.
Click the image above to play the puzzle.
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