I I I I I I I I I I I I • I I I --.,.. -~ ' - .. ~ '. ' I Historic Furnishings Report/HFC SAUGUS IRONWORKS I NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE I SAUGUS, MASSACHUSETTS I SAIR 8 I I I I I HISTORIC FURNISHINGS REPORT SAUGUS IRON WORKS NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE I Saugus, Massachusetts I I I I­ Prepared under contract I by Robert F. Trent I I I I 1982 I Harpers Ferry Center National Park Service I U.S. Department of Interior I I APPROVED BY MEMORANDUM FROM REGION I DATE: .AUG 18 19B.Z I I I TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE /1 I A HISTORY OF OCCUPANCY FROM 1681 TO 1720, WITH GENEALOGICAL BACKGROUND OF THE APPLETON FAMILY OF IPSWICH /6 I Samuel Appleton: An East Anglican Oligarch /6 I Samuel Appleton: A Brief Biography /15 James Taylor /24 I The Functions of the Rooms /29 EVIDENCE OF HISTORIC FURNISHINGS, BASED ON PROBATE INVENTORIES OF THE I EXTENDED FAMILY OF SAMUEL APPLETON, JR. /38 I Introduction /38 Evolutionary Trends in Eastern Massachusetts Room Nomenclature I and Furnishings, 1630-1700; Five Frames of Reference /39 Number of Rooms Employed /41 Nomenclature of Rooms /43 Location of Beds Identifying Functions of Rooms /47 I Style of Major Case Pieces /51 Styles of Beds, Seating Furniture, and Tables /55 I Summary /61 Minor Decorative Forms Used in Major Rooms of Ipswich and Boston Houses /64 I Cabinets /64 Glass Cases /64 Case of Bottles /65 I Clocks /65 Dressing Boxes, Dressings Stands, and Stands /65 I Pictures /66 I I I I I I Lookings Glasses /66 Musical Instruments /66 Hearth Equipment /67 I William Whittingham and William Paine as Mediators of French Taste /68 I Recommendations /74 I RECOMMENDED FURNISHINGS /76 Introduction /76 I The Parlor Chamber /78 Major Components /80 I Minor Components /94 The Parlor /98 Major Components /99 I Minor Components /106 The Study /111 I Major Components /112 Minor Components /115 I The Architecture and Wallace Nutting Rooms /117 Ha 11 /117 Hall Chamber /122 I Entrance to the Iron Works Farmhouse /126 Floor Plans, Elevations, and Furniture Specifications /127 I Special Installation, Maintenance, and Protection Recommendations (David Kayser) /139 I BIBLIOGRAPHY /151 I APPENDIX 1: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DANIEL DENISON; THE WILL OF DANIEL DENISON /156 I I I i i I I - --------------- I I APPENDIX II: FOOTNOTE TO 1882 EDITION OF SAMUEL SEWALL•S DIARY, GIVING BIOGRAPHY OF JAMES TAYLOR: PROBATE INVENTORY OF I JAMES TAYLOR, 1716 /166 I APPENDIX III: SUMMARY OF DENDROCHRONOLOGICAL RESEARCH ON SEVEN­ TEENTH-CENTURY MASSACHUSETTS HOUSES CONDUCTED BY FRANK I DEMERS AND ABBOTT LOWELL CUMMINGS, 1966-1982 /173 APPENDIX IV: GENEALOGICAL CHARTS /178 1. Dudley-Winthrop-Reade /179 I 2. Appleton-Glover-Winthrop /180 3. Samuel Symonds /181 4. Rogers-Denison /182 I 5. Samuel Appleton /183 6. John Appleton /184 7. Samuel Appleton /185 I 8. Samuel Appleton, Jr. /186 APPENDIX V: ROOM NOMENCLATURE OF SOME BOSTON COUNTY INVENTORIES I 1652-1696 (All inventories are from the Suffolk County Probate Records and are located by volume and first I page.) /187 APPENDIX VI: ROOM NOMENCLATURE OF SOME ESSEX COUNTY INVENTORIES 1655-1738 (All inventories are from the Essex County I Probate Records and are located by docket number or by I volume number and first page.) /193 APPENDIX VII: FURNITURE OWNED IN IPSWICH BETWEEN 1640 AND 1710, WITH I SOME EXAMPLES OWNED BY THE APPLETONS /197 APPENDIX VIII: THE APPLIED STYLE IN THE LONDON MANNER AS PRACTICED IN BOSTON AND THE APPEARANCE OF CHESTS OF DRAWERS MADE IN I BOSTON 1635-1700 /212 I I I I i i i I I I APPENDIX IX: CONSERVATIVE CASE PIECES, SEATING FURNITURE, AND TABLE USED IN NEW ENGLAND /221 I APPENDIX X: PRINT SOURCES AND FURNITURE DOCUMENTING THE FRENCH COURT TASTE AND ITS ADOPTION IN BOSTON BY NEW ENGLAND I MERCHANTS 1630-1700 /236 APPENDIX XI: MISCELLANEOUS SMALL FURNITURE FORMS /266 I APPENDIX XII: SOURCES AND CONTACTS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE FURNISHINGS I REPORT /281 I APPENDIX XIII: THE ARCHITECTURE AND WALLACE NUTTING ROOMS: EXHIBIT MATERIAL /285 I I I I I I I I I I iv I I I I I PREFACE The formulation of a Furnishings Report for the Iron Works Farmhouse I is confused by a number of historical factors, not all of which can satisfactorily be resolved. A review of some of these factors will I explain the content and structure of this analysis of historic occu­ pancy. I First, since the 1950s the house has been interpreted as the 11 Iron Master•su or 11 Iron Works Agent•su house. The interpretation has em­ I ployed furnishings obtained or loaned from various sources, and most of the objects do not date from 1643 to 1675 (the period during which I the Iron Works was in operation). Their form and arrangement do not reflect period practice. I Second, Abbott Lowell Cummings• research on the property and his exam­ inations of the building itself strongly suggest that the house might I have been built in 1681 or 1682 by Samuel Appleton, Jr.1 There is I 1. Abbott Lowell Cummings, 11 The Ironworks Farm in Saugus, Essex County, Massachusetts 11 (Denver: National Park Service, 1977), pp. 371-373. The acrimony generated by Dr. Cummings• assertion that the I Iron Works Farmhouse was built by Samuel Appleton, Jr., in 1681 or 1682 was intense, and the controversy was prolonged by the claims of Stephen Carlson, a volunteer at the Iron Works Site, that the house I dated from 1646-1653 and was to be identified with the Leader-Gifford house listed in the 1653 inventory of the Iron Works holdings. The evidence is equivocal, and dendrochronological study of the building has not been fully explored. The writer made every effort to review I the materials and secured the manuscripts written by Frank Demers on dendrochrono 1ogy of seventeenth -century Massachusetts bui 1dings. The writer has also secured permission from Demers to photocopy his manu­ I scripts and the computer readouts of the cores taken from the building in 1975. The writer has surrmari zed Demers • research in a memo given to Jim Gott at the Iron Works Site office. Because the writer was in I a position to secure evidence previously unavailable, the Park Service is now in a position to recognize the reduced feasibility of ever se­ curely dating the structure, while the data for further exploration of I dendrochronological research is now in Park Service records. I I I I no absolute proof for CuiTITlings' claim, and dendrochronological re­ search on the building has not been completed as yet (see Appendix I III). In any case, the possibility that the house might postdate the Iron Works is present. I Third, the periods of occupancy by Samuel Appleton, Jr. (1681-1688) I and James Taylor (1688-1716) lack a clear focus for interpretation. Both Appleton and Taylor represent intrusions into the Saugus area. Appleton was a third-generation member of the intermarried Appleton, I Rogers, and Denison families of Ipswich, many of whom were also inter­ married with important magisterial, clerical, and mercantile figures I in Northern Essex County and in Boston. Taylor was a relative new­ comer, a part of the royal governor's circle with few if any ties to I the local elite. No documentation for the furnishings of the house during Appleton's occupancy exists, and his probate inventory made I after his death in Ipswich in 1725 does not survive, if it was ever made. The inventory of Taylor's furnishings made after his death in 1716 indicates that the furniture was in the William and Mary style, I and his biography suggests that he brought most of the furnishings to Saugus from Boston after his retirement in 1714. In other words, the I inventory does not reflect the probable appearance of the house be­ tween 1688 and 1714. I Fourth, the house as it now stands reflects a heavy restoration under­ I taken by Wallace Nutting between 1915 and 1917. His impact on the building is not acceptable by today's standards of historic preserva­ tion or knowledge of period architectural practice. At the same time, I Nutting and his colleagues William Sumner Appleton and Henry Dean to­ day are recognized as pioneers of historic preservation, and it can be I I I 2 I I I I stated categorically that Nutting•s work is no longer something to be I covered up in interpreting the building, as it has been in the past. Reconciling his contribution with the need to interpret the house as a I seventeenth-century structure therefore presents some problems. I A Furnishing Report which takes into account all these factors cannot be based on the standard Park Service interpretive approach, which stresses comprehensive documentation of the site as the staqe for a I specific historical event or for the life of a historic personality. What is needed is a more abstract approach that wi 11 deal with the I more significant aspects of the building without making necessary sub­ stantial alterations (although the building itself is badly in need of I structural repairs). After consultations with Jim Gott, Superinten­ dent of the Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site; Edward Kallop, I Regional Curator of the North Atlantic Region of the Nati9nal Park Service; and Dwight Pitcaithly, Historian of the North. Atlantic Re­ gion, the writer has formulated such an approach, the outlines of I which will be stated here. I The Report will use five of the rooms in the house. Three of the rooms--the parlor, parlor chamber, and porch chamber--will be furnish­ I ed in a mixture of period and reproduction objects.