It Happened Here -- The Man who Measured 

(and Saved !) the Mountains

It was the young surveyor's first report as Superintendent.  If the state legislators thought they would be getting just facts and figures and a corrected map or two, they were in for a surprise. They would get these, certainly, but they would also get an illustrated and poetically descriptive report of adventures and discoveries and both a reasoned and impassioned plea for the protection of the Adirondacks, as well.

"Far above the chilly waters of Lake Avalanche, at an elevation of 4,293 feet lies SUMMIT WATER, a minute tear of the clouds, as it were, a lovely pool, shivering in the breezes of the mountains and sending  its lipid surplus through Feldspar Brook, to the Opalescent river, the well spring of the Hudson."

The young surveyor, who carried the unwieldy name of Verplanck Colvin, on his first Adirondack survey had discovered the source of the mighty Hudson River and given it the name that would stick, Lake Tear of the Clouds.

Verplanck Colvin came from old money.  His grandfather, James,  had married Catherine Huyck Verplanck, heir to monies from the huge Dutch Coeymans Patent, and his naming was a testament to that union of those families. Financially secure, his family had educated him with tutors at home in Albany, then at Albany Academy, and then, when the family moved to Nassau, at Nassau Academy.

It was there in the Rensselaer County countryside that the young Verplanck developed his love of Nature and the outdoors, while the school fostered in him a love of science and a facility for mathematics. The Civil War came and his older brothers enlisted.  Regular letters home from them riveted Verplancks attention as he pored over maps his father had given him allowing him to follow every movement of his brother James through the south. Verplanck longed for a career in the military, but not because he was interested in war, but because of a fascination for maps and logistics. 

 At school. Verplanck made a life-long friend in Mills Blake.  Blake became his co-conspirator, his trusty lieutenant at school and when Verplanck began his survey work, Mills became his second in command.  At the end of his life Mills Blake was there as his caregiver.  As with any life-long close association between friends of the same sex, their were speculations about a homosexual relationship, but there is no proof of this, one way or another. 

At the late age of 43, Verplanck had earnestly pursued the courtship of a girl, Hattie Pruyn, age 22. Totally smitten, he made a nuisance of himself, virtually camping in the Pruyn's parlor trying to impress Hattie with tales of his adventures, trekking the Adirondak wilderness, slaying ferocious panthers, all the while Hattie's sister, Huybertie plotted practical jokes to pull on him.  More than once he would exit the Pruyn residence only to be doused with a bucket of cold water from the upstairs balcony, courtesy of Huybertie, or put on his hat to be showered with a hail of small
pebbles surreptitiously placed there by the younger sister.  Eventually Hattie Pruyn would be swept off her feet by a younger man, and announced her engagement to him. Verplanck was crushed.  He sent her a mourning card framed in black with the words "Oh Hattie," and threw himself back into his survey work.

It was generally expected that upon graduation Verplanck would join his father's law firm and begin his education to become a lawyer. He was given a job at Colvin and Bingham and secured a clerk position for Mills as well. The tenant-landlord property cases interested him the most because they provided him with an excuse to study old maps and and to get out of the office and go tromping up in the Helderberg Mountains looking for old boundary markers.  In his free time he read widely, broadening his knowledge of geology, geography, cartography and surveying,  using the resources available to him as a young professional. He became known at the State Library and the Albany Institute, whose weekly lectures he attended regularly. Alfred Street, the State Law Librarian, and a published author on the Adirondacks recommended books and sparked his enthusiasm for the Adirondacks.  Colvin began making frequent trips into the mountains north of Albany. On these trips he experienced, first hand, the inadequacy of the available maps of the Adirondacks. He also saw for the first time the devastation the lumber industry was wrecking on the mountains and their watershed. From the summit of Mount Seward he observed in horror wide swaths of clear cutting. He wrote a report of the climb and read it before the Albany Institute. Concerns about the timber industry had been growing. His paper was selected for publication in the Annual Report of the New York Museum of Natural History, and the Governor made mention of it in his State of the State Message.

 In 1869, he and Mills took a short trip into the Helderbergs to practice making observations, taking notes and making sketches . On his return he compiled his notes and made an illustrated report.  Harper's New Monthly Magazine, a national publication bought it for publication. The next year Colvin followed it up by a trip to the Rockies,  and another article "The Dome of the Continent" was also published by Harper's.  By this time he decided he would leave the law practice.  In 1872 Colvin was named to a state commission to look at forestry practices. In its report it warned against the wholesale destruction of New York forests and urged protection for certain counties but did not go so far as to support the creation of a separate park.  Colvin used his position to advocate for a comprehensive remapping of the Adirondacks.  That spring, an Adirondack Survey was commissioned with Colvin appointed to lead it.

The appointment launched Verplanck Colvin into a flurry of activity.  Equipment and supplies needed to be bought, men had to be hired and organized into working groups.  A perfectionist, and micro-manager of the first order he created a ninety two page book of procedures and regulations for his employees.

Colvin realized a major source of error in existing maps was due to their reliance on magnetic compass bearings. Seamed with large and small deposits of magnetic ore the Adirondacks could make a compass swing wildly, or more often, distort bearings by a few degrees, one way or another, depending on ones position relative to the deposits. The alternative to using compass bearings was to establish the location of landmarks by triangulation, a much more labor intensive procedure. Starting from a baseline, (Colvin selected two lighthouses on lake Champlain, whose distance apart he knew) the young surveyor measured the angles from the ends of his baseline to a landmark whose position he was trying to determine. Using trigonometry Colvin could determine the distances to the landmark, thus fixing its position.  From these lines other bases lines could be established and other landmarks fixed and so on and on.

 For his long distance surveys he was given a "grand theodolite" a kind of super transit that with its powerful telescope,  could view distant objectives and measure both horizontal and vertical angles.  Colvin created a special box for it which doubled as a levelable base.  Slung between two poles this 300 lb. monster instrument was carried by two or more workers from mountaintop to mountaintop for over a quarter of a century!

Over the kinds of distances Colvin was surveying it would be impossible to send a man out with a simple surveyor's pole.  Instead, the self taught surveyor constructed log tripods or quadripod  "signal" towers. Covering them with white canvass panels, or sheets of tin that reflect the sun, these providing him with a sighting point for his transits. Sometimes he would top them with of tin sheets "Stan-helios" that, rotating in the wind would act like a flashing beacon in the sun.

(To Be Continued--Next Week)

Marker of the Week -- "Repurposed" Ver.  2.0

We trust that this building didn't serve all these functions at the same time, though come to think of it, it sure might have been handy if folks got a little too rowdy at the dance hall.

         On Old Rte 146, corner Rte 9, Clifton Park

It Happened Here -- "A Noble Train of Artillery"

The new general wanted to attack. The Continental Congress had given George Washington command of the ad hoc militia army that had assembled around Boston in the spring and summer of 1775, following the battles of Lexington and Concord at the beginning of what would come to be known as the American Revolution. Washington had worked to replace the short term militia companies with longer term units. He had some success getting proper arms and ammunition to his forces. He had worked on their command structure and he had begun their training and had started to address their often lackadaisical approach to discipline. Now, looking across the largely undefended mud flats that separated the peninsular city of Boston from the American army on the mainland, he began to make plans for an attack, once those mud flats froze as winter set in. The general's subordinates were not so sure.

In May the New York forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point which once had been on the front lines during the last French and Indian War had fallen into the hands of the rebels. Defended by little more than a corporal's guard, these relics of another war had fallen without a fight, and within their walls were more than eighty cannon of all calibre, cannon balls, gunpowder and gun flints. One of the raid's proponents, Benedict Arnold had convinced his backers, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety, to support his plan based on the prospect of capturing these supplies. Now another young man approached Washington with a plan to bring them to Boston, to break the siege and force the British to abandon that city.

Henry Knox was a 25 year old bookseller who had run a shop in Boston. Fascinated with military subjects, he had pored over every military book that came into his book store and had in-depth conversations with the British officers that frequented his shop. He had also joined a Boston milita artillery company known as the Train, and co-founded a grenadier company, that developed from it. Henry had also become radicalized as he identified with the Boston people who suffered under the occupation of British troops, as his own business was driven to the brink of bankruptcy by the forced closing of the port of Boston, and the boycott of British goods that followed. After the fighting at Lexington and Concord he and his new wife Lucy had slipped out of Boston by boat in the dark of night and thrown his lot in with the rebels camped outside of Boston. When General Artemis Ward learned he had someone who had at least theoretical knowledge of artillery, in this thoroughly amateur army, he had placed Knox in charge of constructing gun positions for the few cannon the rebels possessed to protect their encampments outside of Boston. Washington had been impressed by these works. Now the officers who had grave doubts about committing their fledgling army to a serious battle in the narrow streets of Boston, conspired to get him in front of the new commanding general to hear his plan, of going north in the dead of winter to bring cannon back to Boston on sledges.

On November 16^th Knox presented his plan. Washington was impressed, issuing Knox orders to retrieve the guns, saying “No trouble or expense must be spared to obtain them” and giving him £1000 for expenses. The very next day Knox was on his way to NewYork City to draw supplies and a letter was on its way to General Phillip Schuyler ordering him to assist him.

By December 5^th Knox was at Ticonderoga, where probably most of the cannon and supplies from the two forts had been assembled by Schuyler. ¹ While the 20-30 year old wooden gun carriages were mostly rotted or unsound, most of the cannon and supplies were salvageable and Schuyler and Knox selected 43 heavy brass and iron cannon², 6 cohorns, 8 mortars and 2 howitzers³ For the first leg of the journey the cannon and supplies were loaded onto a gundalow,⁴ a large, rectangular, double ended barge-like boat, with a lateen triangular sail, that shuttled back and forth between the fort and the portage road connecting Lake Champlain to Lake George. Knox had contracted with local farmers to use their wagons and “cattle” (oxen) to convey his guns to the northern end of Lake George⁵.

At Lake George the guns were met by a large batteau, an even larger scow and a boat Knox described as a “pettianger”. Batteaux were flat bottomed double-ended boats that were the work-horses of the colonial military throughout the Colonial wars. Propelled mainly by oars or improvised sails, they could be quite large-upwards of 50 feet and more, and have crews of three to five. Scows were flat-bottomed, square ended barge-like boats, propelled by oars, or sweeps and with a following wind, an improvised square sail. They could be even larger, carrying tons of cargo and 80 or more men at a time. “Pettiangers” (pettiaugers) were flat bottomed work boats with one or two schooner rigged masts, often with egg shaped leeboards that could be lowered over the side to compensate for their lack of a keel. It was in this “pettinger” that Knox led the way to the head of the lake on December 6^th,  as the lake was beginning to ice over.

About halfway up the lake⁶ Knox put into shore to wait for the other boats to catch up. The batteau's crew arrived, reporting the scow had run aground on a “sunken rock” near Sabbath Day Point and the crew had broken their ropes trying to get it off. Hurrying ahead to Fort George he obtained fresh ropes, returned, and they were able to pull the scow free by nightfall. But that night, while its exhausted crew slept ashore, wind whipped wave caused the big boat to founder. Fortunately, its gunwales were still above water and the crew was able to save the scow after much bailing, the next morning. After two days the entire little flotilla was at Fort George, at the southern end of the lake.

Now the weather that had been cooperative by staying mild so they could sail up the lake, with a minimum of ice, became their adversary as they waited for snow. Knox, however, used his time well, and could write Washington on December 17^th, he had 42 “exceedingly strong sleds” built and had contracted for 80 yoke of oxen to drag them as far as Springfield Massachusetts. He hoped by New Years Day to “present your Excellency a noble train of artillery.” Then a gliche – the contractor for the oxen wanted more money. Schuyler and the contractor argued, could not come to an agreement and Schuyler dismissed him. Fortunately, Phillip Schuyler was a wealthy landowner, virtually a patroon, with tenants and many contacts, in and around Saratoga . Within a few days he had the local farmers coming to Knox's rescue with 124 teams of horses. On Christmas night Knox received the present he had been hoping for – over two feet of fresh snow! Once again the guns were on their way.

The next obstacle the “noble train” would face was the Hudson River, crossing it not once, but four times – at Glens Falls, at Half Moon, where the road detoured to the eastern side of the Hudson avoiding where the Mohawk meandered into the Hudson, back to the Albany side, then crossing again to follow the Albany/New York Post Road, south.  At all of these crossing the ice was dangerously thin, especially for the sledges loaded with the monstrous eleven foot, 5000 lb. cannons that fired a 24 lb. ball. After making the Glens Falls crossing safely, Knox tried to avoid one crossing by taking one group of guns over the Mohawk, at Crescent. Each sled inched over safely until the last. One big gun plunged through the ice and disappeared as the farmers frantically sought to save their draft animals. Not willing to risk more guns, Knox returned to his original route, crossing the Hudson at Lansingburg, then returning to the western side at Schuyler Flatts, north of Albany. While the crossing at Lansing's Ferry was without incident, the crossing to Schuyler Flatts almost saw another sled lost, but for the large crowd of spectators that fastened ropes on the cannon that had broken through and were able to manhandle it to shore. Knox praised the “good people of Albany”, naming the rescued cannon “the Albany”.

 








    
                 Crossing over again, the gun caravan picked up the Albany-New York Post Road and continued on through  the village of Rensselaer, to Valatie and Kinderhook, perhaps down to Claverack before heading into the Berkshires. (The exact route is sketchy from here because Knox's regular journal entries end at Albany, and except for a scattering of letters, and the memoir of a 12 year old boy who accompanied his father, written over half a century later, there are no original documents covering the rest of the journey. During the Bicentennial, historians looked at the evidence again and had several markers along the route moved.)

The Berkshires presented the next challenge. Few details are available although its known that during this section of the trip Knox climbed one of the mountains and expressed awe at their height and the distances that could be seen from its summit. The final descent caused the greatest concern. When the farmers from Saratoga, recruited at the last minute saw route they would have to take⁷, they rebelled, threatening to leave the their sledges in their tracks, and return to their homes and hearths. Knox talked with them for over three hours, cajoling them, pleading with them and appealing to their patriotism. Eventually they gave in, agreeing to take the cannon as far as Westfield, in the valley beyond the last of the Berkshires.

At Westfield Knox celebrated, loading one of the big “24 pounders” and firing off a salute before a crowd of amazed and delighted townspeople. With new crews hired, the rest of the journey passed without incident.

On January 24 Henry Knox rode into the army's  headquarters in Cambridge, to report the first cannon would soon be arriving.  During the next few weeks the towns around Boston were busy making preparations as calls went out to the other colonies, to bring all available supplies of gunpowder to  the army. Villages and woods echoed with the sounds of wood being cut,  wheelwrights fashioning heavy cannon wheels and carpenters making gun carriages. Also, more mysteriously perhaps, large quantities of brush and saplings were being cut and bundled and coopers were busy making barrels to be filled with rocks and earth.  On March 2nd the Army's batteries north and west of the city began firing into the city and the British returned fire. Two days later, after dark, General John Thomas climbed the previously unoccupied Dorchester Heights, overlooking the city  to construct breastworks and emplacements for the largest cannons brought from Ticonderoga. Two thousand men and three hundred and sixty ox carts worked through the night, as the sounds of their construction were covered by the din of the cannon exchanges going on west and north of the city. On the rock-hard frozen ground they staked down rows of the bundles of brush (fascines), filling the space between them with earth and stone that had been carted up the heights.  Strategic positions in the line were anchored with the barrels filled with rocks.  (In the event of an infantry assault these could be rolled down the steep hills into the lines of attacking infantry.) The next morning British General Howe awoke to find the muzzles of the guns of Ticonderoga looming over him. "My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months."
he was said to exclaim.
 

Thirteen days later, after weighing an assault on the heights, the General Howe and Admiral Graves began the  evacuation of the city. Eight thousand nine hundred soldiers and one thousand one hundred Loyalists sailed for Nova Scotia.⁸

1After the attack on Ticonderoga, the British garrison at Crown Point had attempted to hide some of the cannon by burying  

     them, but these were quickly retrieved. Evidence of some of the pits where they were buried is still visible at   

     Crown Point.

2Today, the location of two of these cannon are known. One was recovered from the Mohawk river in the early 20^th century and returned to Ft. Ticonderoga. Another sits at in back of the Hasbrouck House in New Windsor, N.Y., after being stored for many years at the Watervliet Arsenal.

3Mortars were short cannons mounted on field carriages used for throwing hollow gunpowder filled “bombs” over defenses into enemies trenches, as were the slightly longer and heavier howitzers. Cohorns (or coehorns) were small pot-like mortars typically mounted on a heavy plank that two men could carry, firing explosive bombs up and over nearby defensive structures.

4Gundalows were common work boats found along the coasts and rivers of the northern colonies. Portsmouth, N.H. has a working Gundalow used for school tours and living history projects.

5At this point, with little snow on the ground probably mostly wagons were used, making several trips, although some of the heavier cannon might have been skidded over the mud and frozen ground on sledges.

6“up the lake” is upstream, toward its source, ie. South

7Anyone who has taken the Massachusetts Turnpike from New York to Springfield has experienced the Montgomery – Westfield hill and can appreciate the terrifying prospect the farmers faced of having to take their 5000+ lb. sleds, without brakes down it!

8In a sad note, two of those loyalists leaving for Nova Scotia were Lucy Knox's parents, never to return.

 

(Postscript: I have had some reservations about including this story in my blog; the first reservation being, obviously, that the route of Knox's expedition is marked by only one NYSHM but is extensively marked by some 30 stone and bronze markers in New York and an additional 26 stone and bronze markers in Massachusetts, erected the same year as the first NYSHM'S. The second is that the available details of the story are sketchy but are well known and have been told and re-told. I decided to proceed because anyone who has any interest in NYSHM'S and goes looking for them in upstate New York will likely come upon one or more of these markers; and in itself, the “Knox Artillery History Trail” is important as one of the first historical trails projects of its kind, up there with Boston's “Freedom Trail”. Beyond that, of course, is that it is a great story, and great stories can always bear one more retelling :)

Marker of the Week

"Re-purposed."  A surprising number of old
buildings have gone through some pretty remarkable metamorphoses, though not many as major a transformation as this one. In future Markers of the Week we will look at some others.





        (Albany Ave., Valatie)

It Happened Here -- Grandma Moses, Her Life

 

Biographies of famous people often begin with a chapter on their childhood and lives leading up to the time they became famous. In the case of Anna Mary Robertson Moses this first chapter might be titled “the First 80 Years”

On Co. Rte 74A, outside of Greenwich

Anna Mary Robertson was born in 1860 into a family of ten children in Greenwich, New York. Not a wealthy family, the Robertsons struggled to keep their brood fed. At age twelve “Mary” became a “hired girl” and went to work cooking and house keeping and taking care of younger children at several farms around Eagle Bridge and Cambridge, receiving a sporadic basic education, in between domestic duties, in local one room schools. Anna Mary was courted by and married Thomas Salmon Moses a hired man, in 1887, and the couple left for North Carolina. Along the way they heard about the rich farmlands of the Shenandoah Valley and ended up settling near Staunton, Virginia, where they, in time, bought a farm. Life must not have been easy for Mary and her husband. Together they had ten children, but half of them were stillborn or died in infancy. And Thomas missed the northeast. In 1905 the family moved back and settled in Eagle Bridge, in the Hoosick River Valley, buying a dairy farm. At the children's urging, Mary named her farm, Mount Nebo after their first farm, named for the mountain where the biblical Moses looked down upon the promised land.

 

 

Black Angus cattle feed in front of barns at Grandma Moses' farm

Grandma Moses' Farm

 

 

If Eagle Bridge was a land of milk and honey, it was milk and honey that could only be purchased with a great deal of unremitting effort. Children and farm life kept Mary too busy to paint. Mary's mother had discouraged her artistic efforts as a child, encouraging her to make more practical uses of her time. 

  

                                                                  Will Moses, artist-great grandson of Anna Mary Robertson Moses 

    has his gallery in the barn at the right.

But her father painted and a few examples of his work have survived,  and Mary  continued to be attracted to painting. She created a landscape scene to decorate a fireplace board,  

a panel used to close off a fireplace in the summer months, in 1918, and she decorated a chair and an old tilt-top table, that would become her painting workspace. A cast off piece of threshing machine cover fabric drew her to try her hand at painting on canvass in 1927. When finally she did allow herself the luxury of artistic expression, after her children were grown, Mary began embroidering, creating scenes in worsted wool thread, in the early 1930's. Her paintings would continue to have an embroidered feel. But yarns faded and sagged in sunlight, and she became dissatisfied with needlework. Arthritis in her hands made embroidery difficult, as well.

By the late 1930's the Hoosick Valley grandmother was painting in oils and looking for venues to exhibit her work. She displayed some of her paintings at charity sales and local fairs. At the Cambridge (Washington County) fair she exhibited a few of them along with some jars of canned fruit and raspberry jam. She won prizes – for her canned fruit and raspberry jam! In 1937 Thomas' Pharmacy in Hoosick Falls invited her to to display her paintings in their window along with handicrafts other women in the community had made. For over a year a changing selection of her work was exhibited but remained unsold. Then, in the spring of 1938 Louis J. Caldor a civil engineer and amateur art collector on vacation with his wife happened upon the store window. At Caldor's request, the druggist assembled the whole lot of paintings, some twelve to fourteen pieces, painted on pressed board. Caldor bought them all. Obtaining her address, he visited her and encouraged her to keep painting, telling the astonished farmer's widow and grandmother of seventeen grandchildren, not to worry, that he would get her work shown in the art world of New York City. After about a month he sent her some regular artists supplies including canvass boards of various sizes and a selection of brushes including small ones so she wouldn't have to make her figures' eyes with the tip of a matchstick. 

For over a year Caldor worked his contacts until three of her paintings were selected for a Contemporary Museum of Modern Art's show, “Contemporary Unknown American Painters”. Though little immediately came of the exhibit, it was a beginning, and demonstrated the growing interest in “American Primitives,” or folk artists. A year later, Caldor met with Austrian emigre' Otto Kallir who, like Caldor was interested in finding authentic modern American art, not American imitations of European modernist trends. He organized for her a one woman show at his New York Galiere St. Etienne. He titled it simply, “What a Farm Wife Painted.” Though again, only a modest success – only three paintings were sold – it was reviewed in the New York papers, and Time Magazine, and it was well attended. Gimball's Department Store asked to repeat the exhibit for their “Thanksgiving Festival” promotion that fall, introducing 'Grandma Moses' to a wider audience. The Gimball's publicity department hyped the exhibit as “the biggest artistic rave since Currier and Ives” and they prevailed on her to open the exhibit addressing the public at the Gimball's auditorium. 'Grandma Moses' enchanted New Yorkers with her straight forward way of speaking and her down-home manner. Invitations to exhibit her work began to arrive, as did orders for her work.  In 1941 she won a “purchase prize” from the Syracuse Museum of Fine Art.

Louis Caldor liked to think of himself as the artist's agent, but the independent grandmother from Eagle Bridge was a difficult client. Though she was grateful to him, she produced the work and she was determined to sell it to whomever showed an interest in it, for the prices she set. “Paintings, she thought were not so different from butter and chickens. She set her price, sold them and was satisfied”.  Moses called the prices for her work at Otto Kallir's Gallery 'extortion prices' and when he sent her checks for her share of the sales she sometimes indignantly returned them. New Yorkers found that, once wartime gasoline rationing ended, Eagle Bridge made a nice excursion destination for a weekend trip. Local residents were usually willing to talk to outsiders about their local celebrity and give directions to her farm. There they would meet the artist, who was a delight to talk to, and either buy or order paintings from her . Song writer/impresario Cole Porter became a regular customer, ordering several paintings every year to give to friends around Christmas. By the mid 1940's two other dealer/exhibitors were vying for quantities of her works in addition to individuals seeking one or more pieces for themselves or friends.

Beginning in 1944 Otto Kallir staged a series of travelling exhibitions that introduced Grandma Moses work to smaller museums and local art associations across the county. In 1946 the Brundage greeting card company bought the rights to produce a Christmas collection of her winter landscapes, which were acquired by Hallmark Cards, the following year. These would be followed by licenses for drapery fabric, plates, and wall murals. But Moses drew the line at outright commercial-ization. (No farmer's wife would ever be seen in a kitchen in her paintings drinking Maxwell House Coffee, or would the Dutch Boy ever appear painting a fence or barn among the multitudes of busy rural folk.)

The Farmer's widow from Eagle Bridge, who had lived much of her life in the 19^th century, who painted scenes of traditional rural life, ironically, became the first American artist to gain national fame through the electronic media. In 1946 CBS radio put together a, then state-of-the-art, telephone link for a live radio broadcast interview with Grandma Moses from her farm in Eagle Bridge. It was followed in 1948 by a television segment featuring film clips and a live narration. In 1950 a TV documentary about her, narrated by Archibald MacLeish, was nominated for an Academy Award and two years, later actress Lilian Gish portrayed the artist in a dramatization of her autobiography, My Life's History. In a 1955 Edward R. Murrow TV interview some of her paintings were shown in what was one of the first applications of color television.

In 1949 Moses travelled to Washington to receive an award from President Truman. They hit it off immediately. He entertained her by playing the piano. “(He) is a country boy, like my own boys.” she said, and she suspected he liked cows. In 1956 Eisenhower's cabinet conspired with her to surprise the President with a Moses painting of his farm at Gettysburg, PA. Her 100^th birthday in 1960, became a national event, with her photograph featured on the cover of Life magazine. Eisenhower and vice-president Nixon paid tributes to her, as would President Kennedy, the following year. Governor Rockefeller proclaimed September 4^th, Grandma Moses Day.

What made the grandmother from Eagle Bridge, who liked to paint “pretty things”¹a nationally acclaimed – even internationally acclaimed artist?   Timing, undeniably played a significant role. In the later 1800's and early twentieth century a small number of “primitivists” made their niche in the contemporary art world. In France, Henri Rousseau was discovered and promoted by Pablo Picasso. In America, the tradition that carried forward from the itinerant limners of America's colonial past, was taken up by Edward Hicks and brought into the twentieth century by John Kane, Horace Pippin, Joseph Pickett and Morris Hirschfield. Anna Mary Moses was not enthralled to be known as a “primitivist” especially when some of her neighbors inquired if her family helped her read and respond to letters from her “fans,” but she endured the label with the same bemused patience that characterized much of her contact with the public and her response to “celebrity” status.

While collectors and critics in the American art world were searching for a truly American art that was not merely a reflection of the European modernists, the American public was looking for an art they could understand and identify with.

Contemporary abstract expressionism left most of them unimpressed and unengaged, but Moses work portrayed values of family and community which many Americans could embrace. And a Moses painting offered them a nostalgic look back into an idealized rural past that had changed more in the last four decades than it had in the previous two centuries. The Great Depression had brought foreclosure and abandonment of many family farms; the pressures of the marketplace forced consolidation and mechanization onto the survivors. Farming which had once been essentially a family and community enterprise, requiring many hands, now had many more solitary aspects. The farmer, behind the wheel of his tractor or combine, working alone, or essentially alone, with perhaps, one or two others in their machines became the reality of farming. But the farms of Grandma Moses paintings throb with community. The farmer plowing his field behind a team of horses, or scything his field of grain, works next to an orchard where children play, and another field where farm hands rake hay and load hay wagons, near farm houses where groups of women hang out wash and the hired man saws up firewood, while a wagon-load of neighbors come down the road for a visit. Of course, most realized this was an artistic fantasy that never existed, but in a century that had seen a great depression, two world wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation by mid century, it was a comforting fantasy that Americans were strongly attracted to.

Finally, there was Grandma Moses, herself. Through the media, America knew Grandma Moses as well as they knew her paintings. A woman who had lived through almost a century of hard work, frequent hardships, who had endured the deaths of many of her children, and her husband, as well, she remained defiantly positive, determined not to dwell on any sadness in her past. Americans liked that. Moses lived among the first generation of Americans who might look forward to a retirement and could contemplate artistic pursuits that had been deferred indefinitely or abandoned during their working lives. For these people she became a hero and a role model. And as she approached the end of her life she contemplated her passing with the same dogged optimism with which she lived her life, viewing with unquestioned faith her passing as an opportunity to be reunited with her family who had gone before her. And Americans liked that too.

 

 Family Monument of Anna Mary and Thomas Salmon Moses and one of their daughters

in Maple Grove Cemetery, Hoosic Falls

 

 

 

Marker of the Week

A reminder how quickly language changes. I have always seen entrenchments spelled with an "e", but "intrenchments" is a legitimate secondary spelling, according to Merriam-Webster, if not my spellcheck.  Cn U 4C the impac of txting!

It Happened Here -- In Precarious Positions, Part II

Unlike Charles Nalle, Solomon Northrup had never been a slave. He had been born in 1808, a few years after his father, Mintus Northrup had been freed in his owner's will, and had taken his master's

surname for his own¹.

Solomon had farmed with his father and on his own, and worked on maintenance crews on the Champlain Canal. He had cut timber and freighted rafts of logs down the canal from Lake Champlain to Troy. He was also a talented fiddle player and had begun to supplement his income by playing at dances and public events. His wife, Anne, who he married in 1829 had gained a reputation as a skilled cook. In 1834 Solomon moved his family to Saratoga Springs, where he and Anne could find regular employment at the United States Hotel, and other events and functions much of the year.

In March 1841 Anne left for Sandy Hill (Hudson Falls) for the spring Circuit Court session where she ran the kitchen at a local coffee house that catered to the lawyers, court officials, and litigants that packed the little town when court was in session. With his wife and oldest child out of town, and his younger children with an aunt, Solomon began looking for work until the visitor's season began in Saratoga. At the corner of Congress Street and Broadway a friend introduced him to two entertainers who said they were looking for a musician to accompany them in their performances to New York as they worked their way south to meet up with a circus in Washington City (DC). Offering him a handsome wage they persuaded him to continue with them to Washington, and seemed to show their concern for him when they encouraged him to stop at the New York Customs House to obtain court papers proving his status as a free man. In Washington they stayed close to him as they looked around the city. ²To celebrate their arrival in the city they bought drinks at a saloon. After a second drink Solomon became ill, and eventually blacked out.

Solomon awoke chained in a darkened cell. He would soon learn he was being held in Williams' Slave Pen, a private jail for slaves in transit, within sight of the U.S. Capitol. His money and his court papers were, of course, gone. A large man entered his cell, introducing himself as James Burch, his new owner who had bought him as a runaway slave from Georgia, and was about to transport him to New Orleans for sale. When Solomon declared he was a free man from New York, Burch cursed him, warning him to never repeat that “lie” and beat him severely again and again until he ceased his protests. Eventually he would be joined by a number of other slaves, a few, like himself, kidnapped and sold into slavery, to be transported in a ship's hold to New Orleans.

In New Orleans Solomon was purchased by William Ford, a baptist preacher who owned a plantation on Bayou Boeuf on the Red River in Louisiana. There he was treated reasonably well until financial problems forced his master to sell him and other slaves. Solomon was exchanged for back wages owed to a carpenter, John Tibeats who had built several buildings for Ford, with a mortgage for the balance of Solomon's price (some $400) to be paid back to Ford over time. Solomon had worked with the carpenter, and they did not get along. Surly, and prone to fits of temper, Tibeats mistreated his new slave, preparing, at one point to beat him, provoking the former freeman to rebel and beat the carpenter. Escaping, Tibeats returned armed and accompanied by friends, intending to lynch the black man. (As a master of a slave under Louisiana law he would have been within his rights to do so.) Only the intervention of Ford's overseeer prevented him, by reminding Tibeat he still owed Ford $400 for him. Later, he and Solomon fought again, with Tibeats attempting to kill him with an axe. Solomon escaped through the bayous back to Ford's plantation evading slave catchers and bloodhounds hired to bring him back dead or alive. Ford prevailed upon Tibeats to hire out his slave to prevent future trouble (and protect their investment.) The former free man found himself first leased out to clear land for a new plantation, then sold to Edwin Epps, a hard driving, cruel master with a reputation as a “nigger breaker.” For ten years he endured systematic daily and random whippings from Epps' lash as he worked the cotton fields and wood lots of Epps small plantation.

In June 1852 Epps contracted to have a new house built for himself. Solomon, known to have some carpenter skills was taken from the fields to help with the construction. One of the carpenters, named Bass, was a Canadian who had worked around much of the Country, before settling the last few years in the area of Bayou Rouge. Bass had a local reputation for enjoying a good debate, as well as believing in a number of liberal ideas that amused the local planters for their “patent absurdity”. One evening, Solomon overheard Bass arguing with Epps about the immorality of slavery and the inherent equality of Blacks and Whites. Solomon's heart lept with excitement, as here, finally, was someone who might be willing to get a letter mailed to his family in New York, and others who might help him.

Years before, he had attempted to get a letter out, only to be betrayed. With considerable trepidation he approached Bass, convincing him of his story by his knowledge of upstate New York, and Canadian geography, and by his abilities to read and write. Bass was reluctant to help, knowing that if found out, he would go to prison, if the local planters did not kill him first. But he decided to do the right thing. The letter was sent and Solomon waited. After ten weeks the slave from New York reluctantly concluded his letter had either been intercepted and destroyed or the persons it had been addressed to had either died or moved away.

But the letter had reached it destination, setting into motion a series of events and legal maneuvers.

In 1840, New York had enacted a admirable law to recover its Black residents who were kidnapped and sold into slavery. The Governor was charged upon hearing a petition from a kidnapped person's family or friends to investigate, and appoint a legal representative to go to the state where the person was being held. There, his agent could present evidence, bring lawsuit, etc., to gain the person's freedom, then find him and accompany him home. All of this was to be paid for out of the state treasury.

When the local officials in Saratoga received Solomon's letter they forwarded it to Anne, Solomon's wife who contacted lawyer Henry B. Northrup. Henry Northrup was a descendant of the farmer who had owned and freed Solomon's father , and he took a personal interest in the case. He helped Anne prepare a petition to Governor Hunt and presented it to the Governor. Hunt appointed Nortrup agent in the case, and Northrup, after the fall elections, and the conclusion of other legal business headed for Washington. There, he enlisted the support of several powerful persons, including a Cabinet Secretary, a Supreme Court Justice, and Pierre Soule, Senator from Louisiana. Soule though a staunch supporter of slavery, did not condone kidnapping or the animus it created between free states and slave states. They prepared letters of introduction to officials at Marksville Courthouse in Avoyelles Parish where Solomon was enslaved. Northrup met with Judge John P. Waddill. When the Judge saw Northrup's letters he was cooperative and hospitable, but confessed he knew of no slave in the parish that went by the name Solomon, or Solomon Northrup. He offered his brother and his carriage to drive the lawyer around the next day but doubted they would have success locating one slave among thousands and thousands in scores of widely scattered plantations.

Solomon Northrup's story may have ended here, unfinished and, of course, unwritten, for Solomon had omitted a crucial detail in his letter. When the slave trader, Burch discovered he may have obtained a kidnapped freeman, he began calling him by the name Platt, and for a dozen years he had been known only by that name.

Discouraged, Northrup accepted the Judge's invitation to dinner. After dinner, their conversation turned to politics, with the Judge confessing he was baffled by all the parties, groups and factions that operated on New York's political scene. The New York lawyer enumerated them for his host, including the “Barn-burners” or abolitionist faction. Perhaps teasingly, Northrup asked if there were any abolitionists down in these parts '”Never, but one,' answered Waddill, laughingly. 'We have one here in Marksville, an eccentric creature, who preaches abolitionism as vehemently as any fanatic at the North. He is a generous, inoffensive man, but always maintaining the wrong side of an argument. It affords us a deal of amusement. He is an excellent mechanic, and almost indispensable in this community. He is a carpenter. His name is Bass.'"

The next day Northrup rode out to meet with Bass. After some hesitation the carpenter confessed to having conspired to help write and deliver Solomon's letters, and he directed him to Epps' plantation. With that information, Northrup arranged with the judge and the sheriff to pick Solomon up, before Epps became aware and could hide him away. With their legal documents in order the Northrup and the sheriff descended on Epps' plantation, encountering Solomon with his fellow slaves in the fields picking cotton. The sheriff assaulted Solomon with a barrage of question which the former freeman answered quickly, while his fellow slaves stood around flabbergasted and open mouthed. Suddenly he recognized Henry Northrup and flew into his arms. 'I'm glad to see you.' Northrup responded and after a few minutes said 'Throw down that sack ... your cotton-picking days are over. Come with us to the man you live with.' With equal astonishment, and considerable hostility Solomon's enslaver received the news. A short hearing at the courthouse disabused the slaveowner from trying to regain his property, and soon Soloman Northrup and his rescuer were on their way north, to freedom.

Solomon and his family were reunited. He brought suit against James Burch for his part in enslaving him, but the federal court ruled he could not give evidence solely on the ground that he was a colored man, despite being a citizen of New York. By chance, a New York judge familiar with Solomon's case knew Merrill Brown and Abram Hamilton, his kidnappers and New York State's Attorneys were able to bring a case against them, but the case dragged on over the issue of whether the kidnap occurred in New York, or Washington, where he could not testify. When a new Attorney General came into office the case was dropped. The year following his release Solomon published a testimony. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York,Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, the year following the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin.   It created a sensation, selling 30,000 copies.

Solomon Northrup was Introduced to his Captors Here

1 In any event, New York had begun the gradual emancipation of its slaves, back to 1799, freeing in 1827 all male slaves when they reached their 28^th birthday,

2As a free man from upstate New York, Solomon had scarcely thought about the need to be able to prove himself a free man, or about the dangers of being kidnapped and sold into slavery.

(Northrup's narrative was electronically published in 1997 as part of the Documenting the American South Project published by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
 

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Marker of the Week

Rte 32, Onesquethaw/Feura Bush

I pass this little Dutch farmhouse every day on my way to work. It was only after

I took this picture, did I realize something was amiss. We all know of the sturdiness of the Dutch farmers who settled the Hudson Valley, (especially if you believe the likes of Washington Irving) but if you believe this sign, Tunis Cornelise Slingerland built this house 112 years after coming to New Netherlands !

 

 Next Week-- Grandma Moses and another Marker of the Week.