Happy New Year!
e-Newsletter | January 6, 2023
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John Brewster, Jr. - Deaf Painter in the Port
by Bethany Groff Dorau
On Christmas Day, 1801, an advertisement appeared in the Newburyport Herald, advertising the services of John Brewster, “Portrait and Miniature Painter.” If the “Ladies and Gentlemen” of Newburyport wished to take advantage of his talents, they could find him at Mr. James Prince’s house, where “a specimen of his paintings may be seen.” Brewster assured Newburyport readers that “they will be pleased with the striking likenesses of his.” If his services were not called upon within ten days, he said, he was heading out of town...or not, as the same advertisement appeared a month later in the Herald.
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John Brewster did not inform the public in this notice that he was deaf and did not speak. In the letters column on December 25, however, an item appeared, addressed to the publishers. Purported to be a reprint from another newspaper, though likely placed by Brewster himself, the unsigned letter bemoaned his deafness while emphasizing his affability and the sharpness of his other gifts.
Misters Allen and Stickney,
The following acrostic, taken from a Connecticut paper, as it is considerably superior to most productions of the kind, may probably be thought worthy a place in your Gazette. Its subject is a gentleman of a respectable family in that state, and though deaf and dumb from infancy, has attained a degree of excellence as a portrait and miniature painter, which has been justly surprising to many. In his manners, there is something peculiarly interesting, and, strange as it may seem, he is one of the most entertaining of companions. He is now in this town, where he has already given some happy specimens of his professional talents.
J udicious nature! well didst thou restrain
O ne gift from him who thousand hearts had slain
H ow richly clothed his mind with every charm
N or spared thy beauties on his graceful form
B ut why is speech, thoughts’ channel, thus denied?
R efused the sense oracular beside
E ntire his soul death in its prison move
W ill sure at last a virtuous system prove
S ince he's forbidden terms to dress his mind
T o soothe his days be fortune ever kind
E lysian blessings may they constant flow
R epelling from his breast all human woe.
Thus wooed with sentimental verse, the public was invited to call at the home of James Prince, who was then living in arguably the grandest home in Newburyport. 94 State Street, now the home of the Newburyport Public Library, had been the home of the Tracy family, wealthy merchants whose fortunes had fallen during the Revolution. James Prince (1755-1830) was himself a merchant and banker and later Customs Collector, and he had purchased the house the previous year. His star was on the rise in Newburyport (he was the 12th richest person in town in 1800), and he was understandably eager to document his good fortune and attractive family.
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The Tracy mansion in which John Brewster painted James Prince and his family was built in 1771 by Patrick Tracy for his son Nathaniel.
Though little is known of the intricacies of his business arrangements as few documents survive, Brewster stayed with Prince for a matter of some months – the James Prince and William Henry Prince portrait below is dated a full month before Christmas, when he advertised for more work, and he still was advertising for customers on January 22, 1802.
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This portrait is one of the most recognizable works in the extensive fine art collection of the Museum of Old Newbury. The portrait of James Prince and his son William Henry Prince has pride of place over the mantle in the dining room, flanked by portraits of two other sons, James Jr. (1781-1802), and Benjamin (1782-1815). |
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This portrait of James Prince's daughter Sarah (1785-1867) is held by the Yale University Art Collection.
Born in 1766 in Connecticut, John Brewster, Jr. was from a well-connected family. His father was a doctor, and they lived comfortably. Brewster showed an an early aptitude for art, and studied with a local minister and itinerant painter, Rev. Joseph Steward. Brewster's style is unique, however, characterized by a sensitivity to the faces of his subjects that scholars have attributed to his reliance on visual cues and non-verbal communication in the absence of sound and speech.
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This portrait pair in the collection of the Museum of Old Newbury, was painted by Brewster mentor Joseph Steward.
The label reads, "Martha Strong/ Born March 1749/ Died August 12, 1827/ Taken in the year 1819/ by Mr. Steward of Hartford."
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"Ebenezer Mosely/ Born Feby. 7, 1740/ Died March 20, 1825/ Aged 85."Painted 1819 by Mr. Steward." |
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So, what is Brewster doing in Newburyport? It is possible that Brewster’s first Newburyport connection was tied to his mentor, Steward, who was married to Sarah Moseley. A branch of the Moseley family had recently moved from Connecticut to Newburyport, where they would remain for generations. Another clue lies with his brother, Royall Brewster, and Newburyport’s prolific Coffin family. |
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Dorcas Coffin, daughter of Paul Coffin of Newbury, and John Brewster's sister-in-law, may be a clue to Brewster's ties to Newbury.
A generation earlier, in 1737, Paul Coffin was born at the Tristram Coffin Jr. House on High Road in Newbury. After graduating from Harvard, he worked his way north as a schoolteacher, finally settling in Buxton, Maine as a minister. Paul’s daughter Dorcas Coffin, born in Buxton in 1771, married Royall Brewster, John’s brother, who had been brought to Maine to work as a doctor.
It seems that John Brewster spent much of the rest of his life living with Royall and Dorcas and taking occasional trips back home to Connecticut to visit family there, taking commissions along the way. Newburyport was on the way home in either direction, but it may have been the Coffin family connection that brought him here first.
Before the Prince portraits in November, 1801, Brewster was already in Newburyport painting Dorcas Coffin’s first cousin, David, and his wife Elizabeth (Stone) Coffin. Elizabeth’s portrait is dated June 10, 1801. His Coffin relations may have introduced him to the Prince family. Many of his commissions in Maine are tied to the Coffin family as well, including his portrait of Daniel Little, the minister in Wells, Maine, whose father was also born in Newbury. It is not known how many other commissions he took in Newburyport during that trip - at least two more are known to exist. Brewster portraits are still being discovered and many are unsigned and undated.
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Elizabeth Stone Coffin, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1801, oil on canvas. Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection, The Huntington |
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Major David Coffin, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1801, oil on canvas. Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection, The Huntington |
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The full extent of Brewster’s travels are unknown. He set up shop briefly in Poughkeepsie, NY in 1799, and was in Danbury, Connecticut earlier that same year trading clothes and dry goods for a portrait of the Mygatt family. Brewster was back in the Newburyport newspaper on November 17, 1809. He was staying “for a few weeks” at the home of the Gould family on Federal Street. He would “gratefully receive and punctually attend any orders from which they may please to honor him, and wait on them at their own lodgings if agreeable.” This time he would make house calls, and there was a price list – Portraits started at $15, miniatures at $10. |
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This miniature of Benjamin Gould Jr. was painted during Brewster's 1809 stay on Federal Street in Newburyport. Private collection.
Brewster stopped painting for a time in 1817, becoming the oldest student at the first American school for the deaf, the Connecticut Asylum in Hartford, where American Sign Language was being developed. He stayed there for three years before returning to Maine. One of his later portraits, of Newburyport's James Reed, was painted between 1830-1832. There is much still to be learned about John Brewster’s remarkable life.
Note: As we begin a years-long exploration of our extensive visual art collection, we hope to find more information about his connections to this community. Please let us know if you have anything that will add to our understanding of his life.
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"Bread and Roses": The Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912
Thursday, January 26, 7 p.m.
Museum of Old Newbury, 98 High St.
In January 1912, nine days after striking workers had shuttered the Merrimack River valley’s textile mills, Lawrence city police arrested seven strike leaders, including a Syrian-born tailor, whom they charged with conspiracy to dynamite the mills. Sam Marad stitches together a vivid tableau of that historic drama and its pivotal role in the famed nine-week “Bread and Roses” Strike. It’s a tale of turpitude with a surprising twist, a story that Sam has uncovered through his study of archival records, contemporaneous newspaper reports, and his family’s mementos of their Syrian ancestor, Farris Marad.
Sam Marad, a senior at The Governor’s Academy from Andover, is keen to learn about his family’s history. In his A.P. U.S. History class last year, Sam chose to investigate his great-grandfather’s central role in the 1912 “Bread and Roses” strike of mill workers in Lawrence, MA.
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This Old House Watch Party
Thursday, January 19, 4:30 p.m. (show airs at 5pm)
The Port Tavern, 84 State St., Newburyport
Join us for an informal gathering at the Port Tavern to watch Executive Director Bethany Groff Dorau appear on This Old House, speaking with host Kevin O'Connor and Newburyport homeowners Melissa and Palen as they renovate their North End home.
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Guest Blog
...by Sierra Gitlin, Administrative Assistant
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Spending your days sifting through old photographs and extensive genealogies, as we do at the Museum of Old Newbury, can make you question your bona fides as a Newburyporter. This small city, like many, I suspect, has a strong sense of the importance of its storied families. Familiar surnames repeat themselves on street signs, landmarks, memorials, buildings, and tombstones, and many descendants of the first European settlers who landed on the Parker River in 1635 still live here. How does someone like me then, who measures my time here in just a couple of interrupted decades, not in unbroken centuries or generations, come to call Newburyport home?
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Market Square circa 1979.
My earliest memories are of my own feet slapping along the bricks of Market Square, chasing pigeons on Inn Street to the sandy tot lot, breakfast at Fowle’s, preschool in the YMCA basement, and what seemed like hours sitting in Ferlita’s while my dad played (dominated, to hear him tell it) the Missile Command arcade game. My parents met at the Grog in 1974. Mom was a waitress and dad was in the band that was playing that night.
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The Grog - still in business today in 2023!
She had moved here shortly after graduating with a fine arts degree from Boston University, because Newburyport was, at that time, an affordable place to live with a thriving arts scene. Her apartment on Dalton St. was $90 a month. My dad quickly fell in love, with my mother and with this seaside town, and relocated from Vermont where he had been spending his early 20s skiing and playing in a rock and roll band. When I was born in 1978, we lived at 48 Milk Street.
The South End was a different place then - our house was broken into often, my mom once had to buy her stolen wedding ring back from a pawn shop downtown. Eventually we moved just over the border to Newton NH, where I did most of my schooling, my parents attracted to the quiet, privacy, and breathing-room of the country. But Newton had no grocery store, no bank, barely a gas station at that time, so we would come to Newburyport several times a week, and always on Saturday mornings, to shop, do errands, see friends, and have breakfast at Fowle’s. As soon as I got my driver’s license, I’d come hang out in Newburyport, back on Inn Street. I was too old and too cool to chase pigeons, never too old for a jaunt to Fowle’s for hot chocolate, and just old enough to be making calls from the wooden phone booth in the front corner. But I was always a bit of an outsider, since I didn’t live here anymore, or go to school here. I was from two places - these brick sidewalks, and the woods of NH.
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Looking up Inn Street from the fountain. Note the balloon seller.
Despite living elsewhere from the ages of 6 to 24, my early years in Newburyport, and my family’s weekly, almost ritualistic, return throughout my childhood and teen years made it feel like my true home. Once I grew up and got married, it was the only place I could imagine living and raising kids. Luckily my husband was amenable, and we were able to buy a house back in the South End, just steps from where I started my life. My kids were born at Anna Jaques Hospital, and I pushed them in strollers to the new playground on Inn St, where THEY took their turn chasing the pigeons. We had many breakfasts at Fowle’s when they were very young, just before it closed and changed, and changed again. I was able to walk them downtown to preschool at Newburyport Montessori, run by the same remarkable women who ran Spring Street School, where my mom had walked my brother and me 30 years earlier.
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A last photo of Fowle's before it closed in 2012.
I've now lived here as an adult longer than I lived in New Hampshire or anyplace else, and though my genealogy has no ties to any early settlers at all - my ancestors immigrated from Ukraine, Europe, and the UK around the turn of the 20th century - Newburyport is my home, and my children’s home. My life’s seemingly wandering path has actually led me in a circle. I can see my first house on Milk Street from my bedroom window here on Orange Street, where I’ve been lucky enough to call the purple, turreted Queen Anne Victorian “Moody House” my home for the past 16 years. I am rooted here not by birth, but by choice, by luck, sometimes I think even by destiny, given how close to my starting place I now live. Once you've spent time in Newburyport, it’s impossible not to feel a deep connection to this spectacular bit of coastline and riverbank and marsh and woods. Working at the Museum of Old Newbury, learning more than I knew there was to know about Newburyport and the families and individuals who built it, that connection has only grown. It sounds like a cliché, but home really is where the heart is, and whether your family has been here for three years, three decades, or three centuries, it’s easy to be madly in love with the beauty and history of this remarkable city.
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Something Is Always Cooking... |
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With colder weather here, a nice clam chowder can be very warming. This recipe comes from the brand-new Newbury Town Day Cookbook. We are selling it, bundled with Cushing House Cooks - only $25 for both cookbooks. Profits from the Newbury cookbook go to the Newbury Food Pantry. Buy your cookbook bundle today in our online store!
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Click the image to do the puzzle |
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Benjamin Prince (1772-1815), painted by John Brewster, Jr. (1766-1854). Benjamin Prince was the second eldest son of James Prince. He attended Dartmouth College (1807), studied law, and lived in Eastport, Maine before heading out to Ohio. |
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Museum of Old Newbury
98 High Street
Newburyport, MA 01950
978-462-2681
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