Visiting the Prescott House Museum in Boston

Today is Museum Day Live, sponsored in part by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.  I had perused the list of participating museums and picked out a couple in Boston which I had never heard of, then settled on the William Hickling Prescott House Museum on Beacon Hill.  Around noon my niece met me at 55 Beacon Street, overlooking the Boston Common, and we were ushered inside.  We became a group of about 25 — quite a motley crew — for the first tour (I believe they planned to offer four hour-long tours today).

This Beacon Hill house has been home to three families: in 1808, it was built by James Smith Colburn, a wealthy Boston merchant, who also built an identical house next door (these are considered twin houses).  The second owner, American historian William Prescott, lived in the house from 1845-1859 and customized it to his taste.  After his death, his widow lived here for the next ten years until she sold it to her nephew, Franklin Gordon Dexter.  The Dexters also made extensive renovations to the house, and it remained a family home until 1939.  For the next five years, the property languished until the National Society of the Colonial Dames purchased it in 1944.  In 1964, after extensive restoration, the house was designated a National Historic Landmark and was opened to the public.

Our tour began on the first floor, in the oval room which was the original dining room.  The room’s bow-front windows are original, and are one of the distinguishing marks of the Federal style, popularized by the American architect Asher Benjamin, who designed the house.  At the risk of over-simplifying, the dates for the Federal period are 1780-1820; based on classical forms, the style is simple and symmetrical.  Federal architecture was a sign of urban prosperity, reflecting the growing wealth of the new nation.

This oval room includes period furniture, but the pieces are not original, which is not surprising, given that for generations, this was a home, not a museum, and the families who lived here renovated and decorated with abandon.  At the back of the room, three dresses from the extensive NSCDA costume collection are on display.  Again, they did not belong to the women who lived here but are representative clothing worn during the time periods of the three wives (following the periodization of British history, probably Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian).

Next we trooped through the foyer.  The foyer, the docent told us, is the entrance to the house and therefore the place where you’d “put your best foot forward.”  The original foyer was plain, but was renovated over the years to become more ornate.  It now has a marble floor and a beautiful, wide staircase, which was installed so that a daughter could make a splash when she entered the house on her wedding day.  The overhead lamp in the foyer is original and would have burned whale oil when it was first installed (it is now electric).

On the third floor, we viewed the master bedroom.  Unlike our bedrooms today, this room was used extensively by the family.  They often ate their evening meals in the room (lunch was the main meal of the day, not dinner) and entertained close friends here. The plank floor, shutters, and fireplace mantel in the room are original, but the furniture is not.

The second owner, William Prescott, was born into an old Boston family (ever hear of the Battle of Bunker Hill? Prescott’s grandfather, also William Prescott, commanded troops there).  Our William Prescott entered Harvard at age 14, which was not unusual back in the day.  Though parts of this story may be apocryphal, it’s rather well-established that during a food fight in the dining commons, Prescott was hit in the eye with a roll.  He lost sight in that eye, and then started losing sight in other eye; today he would be considered legally blind.  However, he did graduate from Harvard, and shortly thereafter, during a period of recuperation, he embarked on the European Grand Tour.  A few years later, he decided to devote himself to literature and history, rather than law.  He became fascinated with Spain and soon published a study of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.  He continued his historical work with studies of Latin America; his two most well-known works are History of the Conquest of Mexico, published in 1843, and History of the Conquest of Peru, published in 1847.

As a scholar and writer, Prescott made extension additions to the house, adding both a study to the third floor and a library to the second.  In one sense, the study was customized to accommodate his failing eyesight, in that it has large windows at the back to let in the light.  At his writing desk, he used a noctograph, a device that holds paper in place and allows for legible writing in the dark. Prescott also made extensive use of secretarial help to prepare his manuscripts for publication; adjacent to his study was a small study for his assistant.

When the property passed to the Dexter family ten years after William Prescott died, another round of renovations was in order, as the new owners were young and wealthy.  Mr Dexter converted the second-floor library into a formal dining room.  The windows are an outstanding feature, as are the mirrors — not looking glasses, they were designed to reflect light and brighten the room.  Above one of the dining room doors hangs a plaque commemorating the joining of the Prescott-Linzee swords.  Therein lies a sweet story: one sword was carried by the American Colonel Prescott at the Battle of Bunker Hill; the other was carried by his opponent, the English Royal Navy Captain John Linzee.  William Hickling, grandson of that American colonel, married Susan Amory, niece of John Inman Linzee, Captain Linzee’s son.  William Thackeray, he of Vanity Fair fame, noticed the swords when he was a guest at the Prescott’s home and mentioned them in his novel The Virginians.  The swords themselves are now owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The last room we visited was the parlor, which has one flat window and two bow windows.  The mantel in this room is original but most of the furniture are period pieces.  In addition to the spinet which would be found in most drawing rooms, the Prescott family owned a Babcock box piano, which is a fascinating musical instrument (Alpheus Babcock of Boston was one of the great innovators in the modern history of the piano).  Prescott descendants donated the instrument to the Society so that it could be displayed here.  While we looked around the room, the docent had us try to imagine what it would have been like to live in the house two hundred years ago.  The view from the parlor windows onto the Common would have been much the same, but most of the tall buildings surrounding the house now would not have been built yet.  In fact, in 1808, most of the Back Bay was mudflats and salt marshes which would be under water at high tide, and one would have been able to look out from this house, situated on what was the Shawmut Peninsula, onto the Charles River.

Hiking the Bob Marshall Trail in Petersham

At 9 this morning I joined a group of East Quabbin Land Trust friends and supporters in the parking lot of the Harvard Forest’s Fisher Museum.  We planned to hike!  And so we did.  We started out as a group of 17, plus a dog, and enjoyed a warm sunny late summer day outdoors in the semi-wilderness.  EQLT Executive Director Cynthia Henshaw welcomed the group and introduced Bob Clark, who was to be our leader on the hike.  Mr Clark, a member of the Petersham Conservation Commission for decades, told us a bit about Marshall.

Bob Marshall, as many people might know, was one of the founders of the Wilderness Society, an organization which has championed preserving wild places since 1935.  Marshall, a forester, writer, and activist, earned a master’s degree in forestry from Harvard in 1925; he did his fieldwork in the Harvard Forest, near the area we visited today.  Following these studies and then a three-year stint in the Forest Service, Marshall began a doctoral program in plant physiology at the Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his doctorate in 1930.

The land where we hiked was not always preserved.  Conservation of the 80-acre Gould Woodlot was facilitated by EQLT, who first purchased the land, then sold the Conservation Restriction to the Town of Petersham and the fee interest to the Harvard Forest.  The Saint Mary Monastery and Saint Scholastica Priory communities worked with EQLT and the Town of Petersham to permanently protect 155 acres; the agreement was completed in 2010.

Like our hike leader, Ernie Gould served on the Petersham Conservation Commission (and also chaired the group); as an Assistant Director of Harvard Forest, he created a model forest on the land he and his wife owned.  That didn’t last: when the land was sold to Jack Edwards, the new owner harvested the trees with the intention of creating a subdivision.  Fortunately, these plans didn’t go through; with “Self-Help” funds (MGL Chap 132A, Sect 11) from the Commonwealth, the Gould Woodlot was conserved and added as contiguous acreage to the adjoining Harvard Forest.

Poor timber harvest practices resulted in an unhealthy forest with spindly trees crowded together.

We saw some interesting sights along the trail.

I think these are older trees.

After the Hurricane of 1938, a tree branch became the tree’s main trunk.

The beechdrop (Epifagus virginiana) is a saprophyte, a parasitic plant which grows on the roots of American beech.

We know that Native Americans were stewards of this land prior to the colonial presence.  For example, there is a deed from the Nipmucs dated 1735, selling land to colonists.  We don’t know exactly what parcel of land the deed refers to; from the description we surmise that it was land between the current Quabbin Reservoir and Athol.  While colonial stone walls are recognized as such, Native American stone structures are not as well documented.  This stone structure suggests a Native American presence in this spot.

These stones appear to have been deliberately placed here, possibly by Native Americans.

Colonists were particularly interested in what we now call “wet meadows” — mainly because they could grow hay in these areas.  Without being able to feed their animals, particularly oxen, the colonists would not have been able to create homesteads in the wilderness.

From the beginning, the colonists were focused on what the New World could produce.  Even the English colonists who settled Plymouth could not have made the voyage without the support of commercial interests.  The Plymouth colony was granted a charter in return for exports to England.  Unfortunately, even as early as 1620, there weren’t enough beavers left for them to trap for their pelts (which were made into hats); it took the Plymouth colonists years to pay off their debt.

I myself have never seen one, but moose are fairly frequently sighted in this area.  On our hike this morning, we definitely saw moose scat.  And we saw this!

We believe this is a moose skull; other parts of the skeleton were scattered nearby.

Trail-making here has been an arduous task; for example, the bridge over Nelson Brook was brought in via the “stump dump” (a cleared area for dumping waste from forestry operations).  The Bob Marshall Trail is still a work in progress.

For long stretches, we followed these tags tied to the trees.

Our destination was the Tom Swamp, a northern bog natural community, with its scattered larch and spruces.

North of the red pine grove in the distance is what seems to be a trail, but it’s the path of a buried utility line.

In 1996, biologists first documented the presence in the Swamp of the threatened species Bog Elfin (Callophrys lanoraieensis).  The Marsh Hawk (Circus hudsonius) possibly nested here in the 40s, but this species no longer breeds in Massachusetts.

What a special place this is!  Thanks to EQLT and the many communities who worked to preserve its wilderness qualities.