Thank you for a joyful end to 2024!

Images by Bob Watts, text by Bethany Groff Dorau

Well, friends, as we prepare to close for the holiday break, I wanted to share a few of Bob Watts' wonderful images of Holidays at the Cushing House event on December 7 and 8 and the Members Holiday Party on the night of December 8.

The image above is my daughter, Meg, singing at the party with the jazz band Busy Signal. Meg was born here in Newburyport and has lived on Prospect Street since she was three years old. Thanks to our members and donors, past and present, the history of Meg's community is preserved and protected here at the Museum of Old Newbury.



This museum is for Meg, and for you, and for everyone. Thank you, members, volunteers, staff, neighbors, family and friends for helping us open our doors a little wider this past year. We loved spending 2024 with you.

A day in the life of Margaret Cushing's parlor - ready for a day of visitors in the morning, waiting for the fun to begin in the evening, and filled with friends at the Members Holiday Party as organizer Lois Valeo tries to make her escape and co-President Sally Chandler welcomes guests.

The Dining Room sparkles day and night.

The China Trade Room in the morning and High Street hall in the evening.

William Pitt (the Younger) and his friend Landlocked Lady, originally carved by Joseph Wilson (1779-1857), and painted by Alan Bull, are on their way to donate to the Annual Fund.

We join them in wishing you the happiest holidays, and look forward to seeing you here in 2025!

"I Lit the Lamps Again."

by Bethany Groff Dorau

Photo courtesy of Sheila Spalding, one of our intrepid cemetery walkers.

If you are looking for a heartwarming, uplifting holiday tale in this, the last newsletter of 2024, you may want to look elsewhere, dear reader. Despite the deeply felt joy and gratitude that I spoke to above, for many of us this is a complicated time of year. It is a time to celebrate our friends and family, but also to remember those we have lost. The darkest day of the year is upon us, after all.

Two years ago, Ghlee Woodworth and I began leading Winter Solstice Cemetery Walks through Oak Hill. I will admit that it can be a bit jarring to go from sparkling lights and Yankee Swaps, from piles of cookies and gluttonous holiday levity back into the cold darkness to visit the dead.

But I also crave it - the gentleness of it, the humanity of it, the tramp of boots and quiet conversation as we go from one stone to the next. It is humbling and beautiful and real. These walks fill up quickly, so I know I am not alone.

We are not doleful as we tromp about. I look forward to visiting people I have come to know through the historical record, and I love sharing their stories. Sometimes there is an element of humor - we pay special attention to people named Ebenezer on this walk, just because...

Each year, we add new stones to the walk. Last night, we visited Captain James G. Cook and talked about his short life and tragic death as the snow fell around us. We will visit him again tonight.

In my memory, the story of Captain Cook and the doomed crew of the brig Pocahontas is joined by that of the poet Celia Thaxter. It was through Thaxter's recollections that I first encountered the Pocahontas, and I am reminded of her as I tend the relics of that terrible night here at the Cushing House.

Top: Headstone of James G Cook at Oak Hill Cemetery.

Bottom: Celia Thaxter in her garden on Appledore, Isles of Shoals, 1889.

In the May 1870 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Celia Thaxter recalled a night that would remain with her for the rest of her life. Over a century later, when I was thirteen years old, I would read a dusty copy of Thaxter's "Among the Isles of Shoals" at my grandmother's house in West Newbury, never imagining how much the brig Pocahontas, and the Cushing family who owned her, would come to mean to me.

Thaxter was not quite five years old in the early morning of December 23, 1839. Her father was the keeper of the Isles of Shoals Light on White Island. It had been a brutal month, with storms ravaging the New England coastline.

Thirty-one years later, she recalled how she was startled by the "heavy booming of guns," and went out with her father into the storm. They listened to the signal guns of the Pocahontas, growing nearer to the island as the vessel was "driven to its sure destruction toward the coast".

And then, "through a sudden break in the mist and spray", they saw her "heavily rolling hull", guns booming, scudding downwind. It was as if "the wind had torn the vapor apart on purpose to show us this piteous sight." Thaxter tried to turn away, but her father held her steady, the lighthouse keeper and his daughter bearing witness to the looming disaster. "What a day of pain it was," she recalled. "How dreadful the sound of those signal guns, and how much more dreadful the certainty, when they ceased, that it was all over."

Clement Drew's painting of the Burma in distress off Plum Island, December 1837. Exactly two years before the wreck of the Pocahontas, the Burma was saved off Plum Island by pilot Jacob Knapp Lunt, who managed to row out to the ship and free her from the same place where the Pocahontas split apart.

The Pocahontas was owned by John Newmarch Cushing, the founder of the Newburyport Cushing family in whose grand High Street house I sit as I write this. His wharf was at the bottom of the street. He hired young Captain James G. Cook in 1836, who sailed her to London, Havana, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg and beyond. The Pocahontas and her captain pop up in the newspaper again and again in those three years, leaving Russia with a cargo of iron, being sighted off the coast of Wales, even losing a lawsuit for the "ill-treatment of Joseph Drown, a boy of 11 or 12 years". Then, on August 23, 1839, she was spotted "off-Falmouth, Pocahontas, Amsterdam for Cadiz".

Pocahontas loaded up in Cadiz (there is no definitive record of her cargo), and sailed for home in September with a crew of twelve or thirteen men. On her way out of port, she was struck by a Spanish ship and forced to return to Cadiz for repairs. This delay pushed the Pocahontas into a journey later in the season than planned. She finally set out for home in late October.

Typed description from the back of the piece: "Watercolour sketch drawn by Capt. John Simpson, soon after the wreck. A composite picture showing the wreck of the Brig "POCAHONTAS", wrecked off Plum Island, 23 December, 1839. The vessel is pictured as she lay stranded on the "South Breaker", off Plum Island, and her remains as cast ashore on the island a few days after." From the collections of the Museum of Old Newbury.

On the morning of December 23, 1839, amid a howling storm, the wreck of the Pocahontas was spotted from the Plum Island Hotel. The newspaper reported that when the wreck was seen, there were three men still visible - two clinging to the bowsprit and one lashed to the taffrail, the bell clanging wildly.

The storm was too heavy for anyone in Newburyport to see the distress signal from Plum Island, so a runner was sent to get help. As soon as they got the news, the townspeople braved the gale and rushed to Plum Island, but it was too late. Despite their best efforts, the crowd watched the last man slip from the bowsprit and disappear.

The newspaper reported that Pocahontas was dragging her anchor, and that Captain Cook had likely tried and failed to ride out the storm at the mouth of the river.

Over the next few days, trunks, papers, clothing, and eventually the bodies of Captain Cook, his first mate, and seven unidentified mariners washed up on Plum Island. The Newburyport Bethel Society, a charitable organization that assisted the families of local mariners, paid for the gravestone of the seven unidentified bodies who were buried in Old Hill Burying Ground. First mate Albert Cook (not a close relation of the captain), was buried in Highland Cemetery.



Oak Hill Cemetery did not exist at the time of the wreck of the Pocahontas, so Captain James G Cook was buried elsewhere. His body was later moved to Oak Hill to the plot of the Blumpy family. Cook had been married to Betsy Blumpy for just over a year when he died.

The next day, Christmas Eve, 1839, the storm subsided, and the townspeople began to comb the beach looking for mementos from the Pocahontas. Her owners, the Cushings, claimed her bell (above, in our collection) and sternboard. Others picked up other artifacts; a belaying pin, a curtain, a tablecloth, and these eventually made their way back to the Cushing House and into our collection.

Some unscrupulous locals made off with articles, including clothing, belonging to the crew, which caused understandable outrage from the community and warranted a mention in the legal notice of Captain Cook's estate.

Two years before Celia Thaxter recalled the sound of the Pocahontas passing the Isles of Shoals, she published the poem The Wreck of the Pocahontas in the Atlantic Monthly. It opens with the famous line, I lit the lamps in the lighthouse tower...and takes the reader from the first smattering of rain through the storm, the wreck, and then, at the close of the poem, a search for meaning in the tragedy.

Just as the Pocahontas made a lifelong impression on Celia Thaxter, this poem has remained with me for decades. Thaxter reminds us to accept life's beauty and sorrow, and to carry on, despite tragedy and pain. It's a very New England sentiment, I think, but one that offers a path forward in the face of loss.

Twenty-four people turned out tonight in the cold and the snow to honor and remember our fellow townsfolk. They read the names of sea captains, teachers, doctors, scientists, writers, adventurers and homebodies, young and old. And when the path was rough, they shone their flashlights and offered mittened hands for each other.

Sighing, I climbed the light-house stair,

Half forgetting my grief and pain;

And while the day died, sweet and fair,

I lit the lamps again.

Read Celia Thaxter's The Wreck of the Pocahontas in full here (page 265).

Keep lighting the lamps for yourselves and for each other, my friends. We will see you next year.

Donate to the 2024 Annual Fund Today!

Something Is Always Cooking...

We have a debate in my house about cookie bars. I prefer the blonde variety while my husband James will only allow chewy chocolate brownies onto his plate. And so, these, my favorite of my mother's cookies, are for me. They are easy and quick to make, and can be infinitely varied with coconut, butterscotch or white chocolate chips, and more. My one edit? Always use butter. :-)

The origin of the name of these cookie bars is hotly debated, but many food historians identify their popularity in Congregational church (Congo for short) community cookbooks as the reason for their name.

I was intending to retype this recipe card, but am including it as my mom wrote it out for me to share with you all. She has such beautiful, neat handwriting. Enjoy!

Puzzle Me This...

Click the image to do the puzzle

Alan Bull painted this sunny summer view of the Tappan arch that welcomes visitors to the Oak Hill Cemetery. It reads "Until Day Break and Shadows Flee Away", and hangs in our parlor in West Newbury.