Joseph Neal House, Salem, Massachusetts

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The house at 358 Essex Street in Salem, probably around 1890-1910. Image courtesy of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Frank Cousins Glass Plate Negatives Collection.

The house in 2023:

The house in the center of these photos was built around 1729 as the home of Joseph Neal. Over the years it was expanded several times, and by the mid-19th century it was divided into two separate properties, with one family owning the western half of the left side, and another family owning the eastern half on the right. The early ownership history seems difficult to trace, but according to the book Architecture in Salem by Bryan F. Tolles Jr., the western half was owned by the Clark family during the 19th century, and the eastern half was owned by the Morgan family.

The first photo was taken sometime around the turn of the century. It was around this time that the Benson family acquired the entire building, and the 1911 city atlas lists the owner as Rebecca A. Benson. The house would remain in the Benson family for many years, and throughout this time the exterior has remained well preserved in its historic appearance.

Today, the house is still standing here on Essex Street, as are the homes on either side of it. The elm trees that once lined the street are long gone, but otherwise this scene is still very recognizable more than a century after the first photo was taken. These houses, along with the other historic homes on Essex Street and the adjacent streets, are now part of the Chestnut Street District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

Ropes Mansion, Salem, Massachusetts (2)

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The Ropes Mansion at 318 Essex Street in Salem, probably around 1895-1910. Image courtesy of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, Frank Cousins Glass Plate Negatives Collection.

The house in 2023:

As explained in more detail in a previous post, this house was built around the late 1720s as the home of Samuel Barnard. He was originally from Deerfield, Massachusetts, but he moved to Salem after the death of his first wife Mary and his son Samuel in 1720. In 1723 he remarried to Rachel Barnard, his cousin’s widow, and they lived in this house together until her death in 1743. Samuel later married his third wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1753, and then he subsequently married his fourth wife, Catherine, in 1756.

Samuel Barnard died in 1762, and he had no surviving heirs, so his nephew Joseph Barnard inherited this house. In 1768 he sold it to Nathaniel Ropes, a lawyer and judge who served on the Governor’s Council and on the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. In 1772, Ropes was appointed as a justice on the Superior Court of Judicature, the highest court in the colony. However, this was an inopportune time to be a justice on the royal court, especially for someone with Loyalist sentiments like Ropes. His house was supposedly attacked by an angry mob in March 1774, while Ropes was inside and gravely ill from smallpox. He died the following day, and the stress from the riot is said to have been a contributing factor in his death.

Many Loyalists lost their property in Massachusetts during the Revolution, but the Ropes family managed to retain ownership of this house, and it remained in the family for many years. By the late 19th century it was the home of Nathaniel Ropes V, the great grandson of Judge Ropes. He died in 1893, and ownership then passed to his three unmarried sisters: Sarah, Mary, and Eliza. They modernized the house with hat, electricity, and plumbing, and they also moved it further back from the street and added a large wing in the back.

The first photo was likely taken at some point during the sisters’ ownership, or soon after. The last living member of the family was Eliza Ropes, who died in 1907. With no children or close living relatives, she left the property to the Essex Institute, which subsequently preserved the house as a museum.

Today, the house is owned by the Essex Institute’s successor, the Peabody Essex Museum. It is one of a number of historic homes owned by the museum, and it stands as an important architectural landmark. However, it is a major tourist destination in modern Salem for different reasons. The 1993 film Hocus Pocus used the house as a filming location, and it was prominently featured as the home of one of the main characters, Allison Watts.

Ephraim Huit Gravestone, Windsor, Connecticut

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The gravestone of Ephraim Huit at Palisado Cemetery in Windsor, Connecticut, around 1900. Image from Connecticut Magazine, Volume VI.

The scene in 2023:

These two photos show the gravestone of the Reverend Ephraim Huit, who died in 1644. This is generally believed to be the oldest dated gravestone in New England, and it may also be the oldest in the United States. It is located in Palisado Cemetery, which was the colonial-era burying ground for Windsor, the first English settlement in Connecticut.

Ephraim Huit was born in England and was educated at Cambridge. He served as a clergyman in Warwickshire, but he found himself in conflict with the Anglican authorities, apparently because of his nonconformist Puritan views. This may have been what prompted him to emigrate to North America, and he eventually made his way to Windsor, where he was ordained as an assistant pastor of the church in 1639. However, he died only five years later in 1644, when he was about 50 years old.

Among those who had traveled to Windsor with Ephraim Huit were brothers Matthew and Edward Griswold. Both were evidently masons, because Edward is documented as having constructed “the Fort,” a fortified brick house in Springfield, while Matthew was, according to tradition, responsible for carving the gravestone of his in-laws, Henry and Elizabeth Wolcott, here at Palisado Cemetery. Gravestone scholars have likewise attributed several other gravestones to Matthew, including this one here for Ephraim Huit.

The term for this type of grave marker is a box tomb, and it consists of a large flat top that is supported by legs on the corners. In between the legs are four panels, one of which bears the inscription identifying it as the final resting place of Ephraim Huit. Although called a tomb, his body would not have actually been interred in the above-ground space inside it. Rather, his remains would have likely been directly beneath the box tomb.

It is carved of sandstone, which was likely quarried in Windsor. Sandstone was a common material for gravestones in the Connecticut River Valley during 17th and 18th centuries, but it varied in quality depending on its source. Many carvers worked in brown sandstone from the Middletown and Portland area, but this stone tends to be coarse-grained and porous, making the gravestones vulnerable to weathering. Windsor sandstone, on the other hand, tends to have more of an orange-brown color, and it is very fine grained. As a result, gravestones sourced from Windsor have generally survived in much better condition than their Middletown counterparts.

The inscription on the Ephraim Huit stone is carved fairly shallow, but the quality of the material has meant that it is still easily legible nearly four centuries later. Early New England gravestones often have concise inscriptions that give only basic information such as name, age, and date of death. However, this inscription is far more lengthy. It reads:

HEERE LYETH EPHRAIM HVIT SOMETIMES TEACHER
TO Ye CHVRCH OF WINDSOR WHO DYED
SEPTEMBER 4 1644
Who when hee Liued wee drew our vitall Breath
Who when hee Dyed his dying was our death
Who was ye stay of State ye Churches Staff
Alas the times forbides an Epitaph

This last line is particularly puzzling, since it is is an epitaph that says that the “times forbides an Epitaph.” This apparent contradiction is also made more unclear by uncertainty over the meaning of “times.” Did the carver mean it as in there wasn’t enough time to carve a proper epitaph? Or did “times” mean the social, religious, and/or political context of 17th century Connecticut? This latter interpretation seems plausible, since the Puritans generally took a dim view on any kind of elaborate funerary rituals. Could this have been a subversive critique of Puritan society, carved into, of all places, the gravestone of a Puritan pastor?

As for the identity of the carver, there are no surviving records that specifically identify him. It has generally been attributed to Matthew Griswold based on tradition and circumstantial evidence, and it is stylistically similar to several other mid-17th century gravestones that can be found in places such as Hartford, Springfield, and New London. However, it is possible that there may have been another hand involved in making this stone. Matthew’s nephew George Griswold—the son of Matthew’s brother Edward—was also a gravestone carver. His identity as a carver is more firmly established in historical records, and there are dozens of stones that he apparently carved, including many here at Palisado Cemetery.

The bulk of George Griswold’s work dates to the 1670s through 1690s, and his gravestones tended to be small, conventional markers, in contrast to the large box tomb of Ephraim Huit. However, those stones nonetheless show a high degree of skill, leading some scholars to infer that George likely learned from his uncle Matthew. If that was the cause, it seems plausible that he may have assisted in carving the Huit stone. Perhaps the strongest evidence in support of this theory is the lettering on the stone, particularly the letter “y.” On his later gravestones, George Gridswold used a distinctive “y,” with an elongated, curved “tail” that often swooped beneath the preceding letter. Here on this stone, almost every “y” has this feature, with the exception of the one in “LYETH,” which has a standard capital “Y.” This inconsistency might suggest that there may have been more than one carver at work on this stone.

As for the exact date when this stone was carved, it is hard to say. Backdating was a common practice for colonial-era gravestones, with many stones being carved years or even decades after the person’s death. If George Griswold did, in fact, carve some of the letters, then the stone was likely not carved immediately after Huit’s death, since George would have been just 11 years old at the time. But, since the style and lettering is consistent with other mid-17th century stones in the area, it was probably not backdated by much, and was likely carved around the 1650s.

Because backdating was so common during that time period, it is impossible to say with certainty which gravestone is the oldest in New England. There are a handful of others from the 1640s and 1650s, but the Huit stone has the earliest date of any of these. Because of this, and in the absence of any records firmly documenting when a particular stone was carved, the Huit stone seems to have the strongest claim to being the oldest gravestone in the region, and it may also be the oldest dated gravestone in the country. There is a knight’s tombstone in Jamestown, Virginia from 1627, but this stone does not appear to have any dates or other markings.

It would not be until the late 17th century that gravestones would become more common in New England. Early graves may have been marked by wooden markers, or by simple fieldstones, but the idea of permanent, carved monuments was not firmly established in the region until several decades after the Ephraim Huit stone was carved.

Here in Windsor, George Griswold became the first carver in Connecticut to produce gravestones on a large scale. Over the next century and a half, the high-quality sandstone here would continue to draw gravestone carvers to the town, and some of their works can be seen in the background of these two photos. Most visible among these are the three stones directly beyond the Huit stone in this scene. The shortest one, located furthest to the left, marks the grave of John Warham Strong, who died in 1752. His stone was carved by Joseph Johnson, one of the most talented of all the colonial-era carvers in Connecticut.

The two stones on the right, just beyond the Huit stone, were both carved by Ebenezer Drake, another prolific carver in the Windsor area. The stone further to the left marks the grave of Return Strong, who died in 1776, and the one on the right is for his wife Sarah, who died in 1801. The designs of these stones reflect the changes in gravestone carving traditions during those intervening years. When Return died, most gravestones were topped by a winged face that likely represented the soul ascending to heaven. However, by the turn of the 19th century these tastes had shifted to more neoclassical symbols such as willows and urns, as depicted on the top of Sarah’s gravestone.

When Sarah’s gravestone was installed here at the turn of the 19th century, the Ephraim Huit stone was already a relic of a much earlier era. It was also in poor condition, and by the early 19th century it had collapsed. The panel with the inscription was left lying flat and facing up so that it could be read, but the other large panel on the opposite side of the stone evidently disappeared. However, in 1842 it was restored, and a new panel was installed on the other side of the stone, bearing an inscription that commemorated another early Windsor pastor, the Reverend John Warham.

The first photo in this post was taken around 1900, and by this point the gravestone was widely recognized for its historical significance. An 1894 newspaper article described it as “the oldest original monument in the Connecticut valley,” and it also quoted the “quaint inscription” on the stone. In later years, this inscription would also catch the attention of other writers, and it was even featured in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! newspaper cartoon panel in 1958.

Today, nearly 380 years after the death of Ephraim Huit, his gravestone has remained in good condition. It has seen few noticeable changes since the first photo was taken, although the left side of it does appear to be more weathered and eroded than in 1900. Palisado Cemetery is still an active cemetery, with many modern burials, but the oldest stones are here in the southwestern part of the cemetery. The Huit stone is the oldest of these, but there are many other 17th and 18th century gravestones here in the cemetery, providing many opportunities to study the changing ways in which colonial New Englanders chose to memorialize the dead.

Oliver Ellsworth Homestead, Windsor, Connecticut (2)

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The Oliver Ellsworth Homestead at 778 Palisado Avenue in Windsor, around 1900. Image from Connecticut Magazine, Volume VI.

The house in 2023:

As explained in an earlier post, this house was the home of Oliver Ellsworth, a prominent Connecticut politician in the post-Revolution era. The main part of the house was built in 1781, but it was later expanded in 1788 with an addition on the right side, and later in the 19th century with the addition of the columns and porch on the right side. The house is located on the east side of Palisado Avenue in the northeastern part of modern-day Windsor, a few hundred yards to the west of the Connecticut River.

Oliver Ellsworth was born in Windsor in 1745, and he grew up in an earlier house on this site. As a young man he attended Yale and the College of New Jersey (modern-day Princeton), and after graduation he became a lawyer. In 1772 he married Abigail Wolcott, and they had nine children who were born between 1774 and 1791: Abigail, Oliver, Oliver, Martin, William, Frances, Delia, William, and Henry. Ellsworth inherited the family house in the early 1780s, and the original house was evidently demolished in order to build the current one in 1781, although it is possible that a portion of the old one was incorporated into the newer structure. He named the house Elmwood, and planted 13 elm trees in the front yard, representing the original 13 states.

In the meantime, Oliver Ellsworth became involved in politics during the American Revolution, including serving as a Connecticut delegate to the Continental Congress throughout most of the war. After the war he became a state judge, but in 1787 he was selected as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, which drafted the current United States Constitution. There, he worked with fellow Connecticut delegate Roger Sherman to create the Connecticut Compromise, establishing the current bicameral federal legislature with proportional representation in the House and equal representation for each state in the Senate.

Ellsworth had to leave the Philadelphia convention before the Constitution was finished, so he did not sign the final draft of it. However, once the Constitution was ratified, he played several important roles in the new government. He was one of Connecticut’s first two senators, serving from 1789 to 1796, and during this time perhaps his most significant contribution was writing the Judiciary Act of 1789. In the Constitution, the structure of the judicial branch was intentionally left vague, to allow Congress to establish courts as they saw fit. This act set the size of the Supreme Court, and it also established a system of lower federal courts and judicial districts.

The first Chief Justice of the United States was John Jay, who served from 1789 to 1795, when he resigned to become governor of New York. George Washington then nominated John Rutledge as the next Chief Justice, and Rutledge served for a few months as a recess appointment. However, the Senate ultimately rejected his appointment, so Washington instead nominated Ellsworth, who was unanimously approved by the Senate. He became Chief Justice on March 8, 1796, and he served in that role for the next four years. At the time, the Supreme Court was not generally seen as being anywhere near as important as the other two branches of the federal government, so there were no landmark cases during Ellsworth’s time, although he did institute the practice of justices issuing a single majority opinion, rather than each justice writing an individual opinion.

In 1799, while Ellsworth was still serving as Chief Justice, President John Adams sent him to France as an envoy, where he negotiated with Napoleon in order to prevent war between the two countries. However, the trip to Europe left Ellsworth in poor health, and he ultimately retired from the court in December 1800. This decision would prove to have far-reaching effects; it came in the closing months of Adams’s presidency, after he had already been defeated for re-election by Thomas Jefferson. However, Adams was still president until March 1801, and as such he nominated John Marshall as Ellsworth’s replacement. Confirmed by the Senate in 1801, Marshall would go on to serve as Chief Justice for the next 34 years, where he played a crucial role in establishing key precedents and upholding Federalist ideals, long after the Federalist party itself had faded into obscurity. Had Ellsworth not retired when he did, his successor would likely have been someone appointed by Thomas Jefferson, which would likely have radically altered the course of American history.

This house remained Oliver Ellsworth’s home throughout his political career, and during this time he entertained visitors such as George Washington and John Adams. Washington’s visit came on October 21, 1789, when he stopped here during his tour of the New England states. He spent an hour here on his way from Hartford to Springfield, writing in his diary:

By promise I was to have Breakfasted at Mr. Ellsworths at Windsor on my way to Springfield, but the Morning proving very wet and the rain not ceasing till past 10 Oclock I did not set out till half after that hour; I called however on Mr. Ellsworth and stay’d there near an hour.

A decade later, on October 3, 1799, John Adams became the second sitting president to visit this house. This occurred exactly a month before Ellsworth departed for France, so it seems likely that much of their visit involved conversation about diplomatic issues and the potential for war with France.

Following his return to America and his retirement from the Supreme Court, Ellsworth came back here to his home in Windsor, where he lived for the rest of his life, until his death in 1807 at the age of 62. The house would remain in his family for nearly a century after his death, and it was still owned by his descendants when the first photo was taken around 1900.

The first photo shows several exterior alterations that had occurred during the 19th century, including the columns and portico on the right side, along with exterior shutters on the windows. Overall, though, it still looked much the same as it did when Oliver Ellsworth lived here a century earlier. There were also many large elm trees in the front yard in the first photo, which were likely the same ones that Ellsworth had planted here.

In 1903, shortly after the first photo was taken, the Ellsworth family donated the house to the Connecticut chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. It was then preserved as a museum, and over the years it has seen few exterior changes, aside from removing the exterior shutters. The elm trees that Ellsworth had planted are now long gone, having probably fallen victim to Dutch Elm Disease in the early 20th century, but the house itself still stands as an important Connecticut landmark. It is still owned by the DAR, and it is open periodically for public tours.

Medlicott House, Longmeadow, Massachusetts (2)

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The house at 720 Longmeadow Street in Longmeadow, on November 4, 1916. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The scene in 2023:

As explained in more detail in the previous post, this house was evidently built sometime in the early 19th century. It was originally the home of Calvin and Experience Burt, but in 1851 it was purchased by William G. Medlicott, a woolen manufacturer who lived here until his death in 1883. During this time, he made substantial renovations to the house, including adding the porch and Mansard roof, both of which significantly altered the original Federal-stye architecture of the house.

His son, William B. Medlicott, subsequently owned the house and lived here until 1917. It was then demolished around 1921, and a around 1927 a new house was built further back on the lot. That new house is still standing, as seen in the distance on the right side of the first photo, but the only surviving remnant from the first photo is the Brewer- Young Mansion, which is visible on the left side of both photos.

 

Medlicott House, Longmeadow, Massachusetts

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The house at 720 Longmeadow Street in Longmeadow, on August 10, 1909. Image courtesy of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Paesiello Emerson Collection.

The scene in 2023:

The house in the first photo was built as the home of Calvin and Experience Burt, although the exact date of construction seems unclear. Some sources cite 1786, which would be about two years after their marriage. However, contemporary newspaper accounts indicate that the Longmeadow home of Calvin Burt was “entirely consumed” by an accidental fire in 1814. Assuming this is the same Calvin Burt, that would indicate that the house in the first photo was not the same one that was built in 1786, unless there was enough of the structure of the house that survived and enabled it to be restored.

However, despite this apparent discrepancy in construction dates, the house was definitely the home of the Burt family. Calvin was a merchant, and in 1805 he built a store just a little to the south of here, which still stands on Longmeadow Street. He and Experience had nine children, who were born between 1785 and 1801. The couple would live here for the rest of their lives, until Experience’s death in 1833 and Calvin’ s death in 1848.

The next owner of this house was William G. Medlicott, who purchased it in 1851. Originally from England, Medlicott was the son of a shipping merchant. He became a sailor, but made a rather inadvertent arrival in America as a young man when he was shipwrecked on Long Island. He subsequently shifted his efforts to industry, eventually becoming a woolen manufacturer in Enfield and Windsor Locks, Connecticut.

William Medlicott was about 35 years old when he purchased this house. He had married his first wife, Marianne Dean, in New York in 1842. However, she evidently died at some point afterwards, because in 1854 he married his second wife, Eliza. The 1855 state census shows William and Eliza living here with four children. The three oldest—Arthur, Mary, and Agnes—were presumably from his first marriage, but the youngest child—three-month-old Bertha—was from his second marriage.

It was during Medlicott’s ownership that he significantly altered the exterior of the appearance, in keeping with changing architectural tastes. This work occurred around the mid-1860s, and included the addition of a front porch, a Mansard roof, and a two-story bay window on the left side of the house. The result was an architectural hybrid that combined the original Federal-style house with newer Italianate and Second Empire features.

Aside from his industrial pursuits, Medlicott was also a rare book collector, specializing in Anglo Saxon and early English literature. He eventually amassed one of the world’s most extensive collections in these fields, with about 20,000 volumes in his library. He made the books available to researchers, many of whom traveled to his home here in Longmeadow to study these works. Medlicott experienced a financial setback in 1876, and he had to sell a large portion of his collection. However, he retained about 13,000 works, and he continued to live here until his death in 1883.

By the time the first photo was taken in 1909, the house was still owned by the Medlicott family. According to the 1910 census there were 12 people living here. These included the homeowner, William B. Medlicott, who was the son of William G. Medlicott. He lived here with his wife Grace and their six children: William, Grace, Arthur, Alexander, Robert, and Harriet. William’s older sisters Bertha and Mary also lived here, as did Irish-born servants Annie Flynn and Julia Devaney.

William B. Medlicott worked as an insurance agent, and in 1917 he moved to Cambridge to accept a position at a Boston-based firm. That same year, he sold his Longmeadow house to Stanford L. Haynes, who lived in a neighboring house directly to the north of here. He owned it until his death in 1921, and his heirs subsequently sold the former Medlicott house, which was then demolished.

A 1921 article in the Springfield Republican reported the concerns that many residents had about the demolition of this house, noting how “[t]his town is in danger of losing some of its identity by the removal of so many old landmarks. The tearing down of the Medlicott house is the cause of much regret, at least to older residents.” Despite this concern, though, the house was demolished, and it was later replaced by a new house that is set further back from the road. The new house was built around 1927, and it is partially visible beyond the trees on the left side of the scene.

Today, more than a century after the Republican suggested that the town might be losing some of its identity, many of the old homes are still standing here on Longmeadow Street. The town has grown significantly since the 1920s, and is now a busy suburb of Springfield, but Longmeadow Street has maintained much of its colonial-era identity, including a number of historic homes that still line the street. These houses are now protected as part of the Longmeadow Historic District, which restricts exterior changes to homes along the Longmeadow Green.