In continuing a trend of answering questions about the construction of our historic houses (see this previous post on paint colors), I figured I’d give a little information on a question that our staff is regularly asked. While one of the most asked questions is always “Where is there a restroom?”, this blog post will discuss the second most asked question: “Are the floors original?”
 
The original floors of the homes would have been constructed of pine or oak boards (depending on which was readily available) and would have had wide dimensions due to New England trees being larger than they are today. As some might be aware, there were restrictions set forth by the British government on what type of trees and what size could be used for private use. These White Pine Acts allowed the British government to restrict which felled trees could be used for private building.
 

• The first of these acts was put in place in 1691 and stated that “all Trees of the Diameter of Twenty Four Inches and upwards… Twelve Inches from the ground growing upon any soyle of Tract of Land within Our said Province or Territory not heretofore granted to any private persons…” Meaning that trees growing on land already privately owned were available for legitimate private use.
• The next Act passed in 1722 served to restrict the original restrictions a little more by prohibiting “the felling, without license from the Crown, of ‘any white pine trees, not growing within any township’ in New England, Nova Scotia, New York and New Jersey.” Meaning that trees, whatever their diameter, growing on land within the boundaries of any established town were available for legitimate private use. The penalty for cutting any white pines beyond town boundaries could range from £5 to £50 per tree.
• The White Pines Act of 1729 further prohibited the unlicensed cutting of white pines by restricting the cutting of white pines to only land that had been “granted to some private person or persons” prior to October 7, 1690.

 
So, know that we know a little bit about the materials and how the floors would have been constructed originally, it’s time to figure out if the floors today are still original.
 
Unfortunately, due to the moving of Hancock-Clarke House and the millions of visitors that have come to the house since it opened for tours in 1898, the floorboards have been replaced at different points during the house’s history. While disappointing to know that most of the floorboards are not original, a good portion of the surviving woodwork (paneling, summer beam, joist beams) in the house is original to the eighteenth-century construction of the house.
 
The second house that Lexington Historical Society opened for tours was Munroe Tavern, originally constructed in 1735. As is the case with the Hancock-Clarke House, most of the floors have seen heavy use by the visiting public and have been replaced over the years. What is interesting is that in 1939 when the floors were replaced during a massive restoration effort, the replacement boards and some of the exterior doors were supplied from an older building in town.
 
Unlike at Hancock-Clarke House and Munroe Tavern, we have evidence that some portions of the floors at Buckman Tavern still have original fabric. At Buckman, as you ascend higher in the house, the older the floors become. Due to high levels of visitation over the 100 plus years the house has been open to the public, the floorboards in the first story of the house have been replaced. These floorboards were replaced during the 1920s when the first story was restored. To keep with what the tradition of what the original floors would have looked like, the boards were cut in wide patterns and attached with custom made rose-head nails.
 
The floorboards on the second story, mainly the boards in the ballroom of the tavern (the current exhibit space), date to the 18th century, although no exact year has been determined. The attic of Buckman Tavern is where a good portion of the original flooring is located. Most of the floorboards in the attic have been dated to before 1775, with the boards in the southeast and northeast attic chambers dated to before 1755!
 
If you have a question about the architecture or construction of the houses, please feel free to leave them below in the comment section and I will answer them if I can.

-Chris Kauffman, Education and Interpretation Manager

We here in Massachusetts are often given a bleak history when learning about the origins of the Christmas holiday as we know it. Early settlers were overwhelmingly Puritans and, we are told, banned it outright. It wasn’t until the days of Charles Dickens and Prince Albert’s Christmas tree that the old English traditions began to come over to America. As with most of these stories, the truth is somewhat muddier and varied from place to place.
 
While it is true that the early Massachusetts Bay colony frowned on the excesses of English Christmas, it was only banned for just over 20 years in the mid-17th century. Even so, there were plenty of dissenters who stayed under the radar and likely celebrated anyway. Those people who belongs to other sects, or who were Jewish, tended to eventually settle in Rhode Island where co-mingling of religions was better tolerated. Back up in Massachusetts, in the 18th century, most everyone viewed Christmas as a minor religious holiday, if they celebrated it at all. There were a number of squabbles over the years between ministers, weighing the merits of celebrating a religious event with a man-made date, so your congregation could very well influence your holiday spirit. Among the most damning evidence against celebrating Christmas on December 25th, according to Reverend John Barnard of Marblehead: not only did God not bother to put a date in the Bible for us to celebrate, but as we all know, Jesus couldn’t have been born in December, as it would have been too cold outside for the shepherds to be watching their flocks by night.
 
Regardless of which church you went to, however, there would have been hints of Christmas in the air, as newspapers often printed stories from other colonies where the holiday was celebrated more often, and adapted the festive spirit to pursue their own interests (some things never change). In the New York newspapers, you might see advertisements for “Christmas Pieces”, essentially early blank Christmas cards, printed with festive borders, which boys would fill in for their parents. In New England, you were more likely to see the occasional bit of religious poetry, but Isaiah Thomas, printer of the Massachusetts Spy newspaper, thought he could do better.
 
Thomas’s end-of-year message for 1771, written from the point of view of your humble local paperboy, hits all the right notes, starting with a Christmas wish, veering into political territory, and ending with a good, old-fashioned call for money:
 
The Carrier of
The Massachusetts Spy
Wishes all his kind Customers
A Merry Christmas
And
A Happy New Year
And presents the following, viz.
 
Hail happy day, important year!
Be more propitious than the last;
In thee let mighty truth appear,
And every tool and tyrant blast.
 
From this unbought, unfetter’d PRESS,
Which laws and constitutions show;
That it the happy land may bless,
With lessons which they ought to know.
 
Nor shall the frowns of low’ring skies,
Nor party rage of selfish men,
Forbid the boy who brings your SPYS,
To serve and pleasure you again.
 
But Sirs, since your indulgent hands
Are yearly wont my heart to chear,
Some pence will rivet your commands
And fix my wishes for the year.
 
Boston, January 1, 1772

-Sarah McDonough, Program Manager

It was just a country tavern, part bar, part restaurant, part general store, smelling of wood and tobacco, supplying the same farmers year in and year out with the comforts and necessities of existence and giving them common ground to share the passage of their small-town lives.

However, Buckman Tavern in Lexington Center was also at the heart of history, a key staging ground at the birth of America. In the years after adoption of the Constitution, the customers who frequented Buckman and the town's other taverns were some of the men who'd seen the very first action of any United States soldiers, and who'd done their town immortal service by making it the first to fight for freedom. 

Those same customers populate the pages of a ledger book kept by the tavern owner Rufus Merriam, who ran Buckman from 1794 to 1815. His colonial script - though of course by 1794, Massachusetts was no longer a colony - documents the daily needs and wants of his neighbors. And those neighbors seemed to want a lot of rum! But spirits were only a portion of what Merriam sold.

This handsome ledger, an invaluable artifact of the nation's earliest days and the lives of its most famous residents, was in danger of falling apart beyond the point of usefulness. Recently, it's been brought back to supple life by a benefactor who's devoted decades to halting the disappearance of our history.

Susan Bennett learned that Conservation Evening 2018, a fundraiser to save and restore four precious ledgers from Buckman and Munroe Tavern, had gotten most of the way, but not all the way, to raising sufficient money to restore all four. Bennett knows something about fundraising, and restoration. She's the quiet powerhouse who oversaw the renovations of Munroe and Buckman Taverns and Hancock-Clarke House, and the erasure of debt on the Lexington Depot during twelve impactful years as the Society's executive director.

Her love for Lexington and its history is obviously undiminished - and so is her awareness that it takes more than affection to preserve the past. That's why she stepped forward to help make up the difference between what was needed and what Conservation Evening raised. The deaccession and sale of an Edward Curtis print unrelated to Lexington got the ledger restoration project all the way across the finish line.   

Earlier this month, Bennett got to see first handhand what her generosity had wrought, and what she'd bequeathed to future generations. She came to the new Archives and Research Center (ARC) at Munroe Tavern to meet Society archives manager Elizabeth Mubarek, who was carrying the newly-restored ledger in its custom-fitted box, and looked, in the sparkling sunshine of a New England morning, not unlike an Archives Elf hurrying a holiday present to an expectant recipient. "One less box to move," said a grinning Mubarek, who has worked to pack and prepare hundreds as the ARC is filled with four centuries of records and ephemera.

Bennett gave the ledger the once-over of a seasoned museum professional and pronounced herself pleased. "People in Lexington don't realize how incredible our collections are. And it's really important to spread the word about how incredible they are," she said. And touring the new state-of-the-art shelving and cabinetry, she said to Mubarek: "It's nice to see the Society so committed to the best level of care for its collections. You guys have taken it forward beautifully."

A report on the book's condition from the Northeast Document Conservation Center in Andover, which did the restoration work, describes the damage and then the steps that were taken to undo it.  Even couched as it is in conservation-ese ("The full-leather tight-back binding was very worn, abraded, and torn"), it still reads like a short story with a happy ending ("Tears were mended with Japanese kozo paper.")

Mubarek puts it a bit more tellingly: "Parts of the cover were coming off in flakes, and it was moldy." But now, the pages turn easily and read clearly. The cover feels delicious, like deerskin - not that the staff is planning on allowing much touching.

Whichever description you go by, it's clear what Bennett's generosity has enabled: the freezing of time by NEDCC, or even the undoing of time - rolling back the damage of centuries. And she's done it in the name of a dear friend and fellow historian, Mary Keenan.  Keenan's a stalwart of the Society who keeps the minutes of Board meetings and has pitched in at every turn over the years.

Her motivation, however, goes much deeper than public-spiritedness. She is a trained and experienced historian who taught at Lexington High School for many years, and the author of "In Haste, Julia." Published in 2011, "In Haste, Julia" is likely to see a new wave of interest this year. It tells the story of Julia Robbins Barrett, born in East Lexington and destined to travel New England pushing the causes of abolition and women's rights, including the right to vote. She, and Keenan, are sure to get their due again as the Society celebrates the centennial of women's suffrage in 2020.

As she stood with Bennett amidst the gleaming wood and metal shelving of the new ARC, Keenan grinned the grin of a teenager and recalled getting the call from Bennett that she'd be donating her $5,000 in Keenan's name. "I was flabbergasted," Keenan said. "Oh, how do I express it? I was just delighted." 

Perhaps the greatest protection the project has afforded the ledgers, and the greatest benefit to researchers interested in what they can reveal, is that digitization of every page was part of the work. That means the book itself can rest securely in its specially-made box, in a locked cabinet at the Society's vastly-improved archives, while historians can peruse its details to their heart's content.

Keenan said the preservation and digitization will enable researchers to trace "the web of connections" among the Lexingtonians who commenced the Revolution War. "You can see exactly when the Revolution was occuring because of the changes in what people were buying," she said.  

And, in typical Society fashion, Bennett and Keenan already seem to have turned their attention to the next job that needs doing. The Society needs funds to preserve other priceless items, just as the ledgers were put to rights. One suspects it won't be long before the two history lovers will be beating the bushes, looking for modern Lexingtonians to add their names to another ledger, this one electronic, recording the donations of those willing to answer the call of historical preservation.

-Guest Contributor Craig Sandler, Managing Partner, State House News Service

This past month I portrayed Elijah Sanderson in Lexington Historical Society's annual "Ghosts and Graves" experience. I played my character in the warm Tap Room at Buckman Tavern (where in fact Elijah was that night), but in between performances I got to wondering. Thinking about those dark and chilly hours on April 19, 1775 - with people coming and going from the tavern bearing a variety of information - were the local militia drinking alcohol that night and morning? I had thought about it before - all we veteran tour guides have - but this time I really was trying more than ever before to understand their position.

The answer for many amateur tour guides with a peripheral knowledge of the events in Lexington is a smiling "yes" - they will tell their visitors with a wink and a nudge that the militia had been imbibing "liquid courage" which advanced their next act of taking a stand on the town green that day. This version of events is not confined to colorful retelling but indeed has been enshrined in some popular histories.

Several years ago, a local historian who had just published a successful account of the opening events of the war came to Lexington to deliver a lecture and to field questions. Many of the modern Lexington Minutemen were in attendance, and they took issue with this writer’s assertion that the Lexington militia were “possibly in an alcohol induced haze” on the morning of April 19, 1775. Since the 1775 company were gathered in a tavern, the whole scenario seems to make sense, given (in large part, I suspect) the modern idea of what a "tavern" is. But for the Minuteman company of today, it was grossly egregious to besmirch their honorable reputation by the author’s going so far as to suggest that some were drunk.

In eighteenth century Massachusetts a tavern was a necessary and reputable establishment for sustaining traveling merchants on their way to and from Boston. In many places, including Lexington, a settlement's main tavern provided a warm setting for official town business on days when the unheated church building would not do. It was a decent and convenient place for men and women alike to socialize between church services. In short, Lexington's Buckman Tavern was hardly a place known for revelry and heavy drinking.

For the eighteenth-century Yankee farmers of Lexington, alcohol was probably a daily part of life. It was less potent than today’s equivalents since less sugar was available for fermentation. It contained sediments which we would find unpalatable today but were an added source of nutrition for the colonists. They would have taken beer and alcoholic cider from an early age. Clean water was available in a place like Lexington, but it does not seem to have been the beverage of choice for the Revolutionary war-era colonists. Alcohol was not at all disapproved of, but drunkenness, like any disorderly behavior, most certainly was.

All this notwithstanding, the night of April 18, 1775 was a frightening one for all concerned. The tavern became a hive of activity, with people of all ages - but mostly men - filling the rooms and sharing news. Would the British arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams as they passed through the town? Would they ransack or burn the inhabitants' houses?

It cannot be said for certain what (if indeed John Buckman made his supply available that night at all) any of the militia who would face the redcoats on Lexington green that morning drank just beforehand. Yet we historians deal in evidence where we can, and there is no evidence that alcohol was a factor in the decisions made that fateful morning. The very fact that there is no evidence of this carries special force. Of the myriad sources we have describing the events of that day, not one - British or American - notes that the opposing gunmen seemed in any way impaired. And each side certainly had every reason to characterize the other as disorderly.

There is more to debunking this myth than mere splitting of hairs. It belies the very real fact that the participants in the battle of Lexington understood all too well what was at stake and what they were about. They were in no mood for merrymaking. And when they did what they ultimately decided to do, it was entirely of their own, coherent volition.

​-James Miele, Buckman Tavern Shop Manager

When our staff was first tasked with writing this blog, one of the ideas was to provide our membership and social media followers with a behind-the-scenes view of what happens on a day-to-day basis at Lexington Historical Society. Up until this point, most of my posts have dealt with ways that the Society has been improving the interpretation of our historic sites and the many exciting youth programs we’ve been developing. Today, I’m going to veer from those topics and provide a quick glimpse into an aspect of my position that always provides some excitement and learning opportunities, historic house maintenance.

Like in any home, the maintenance of our three historic properties is a never-ending job and I would like to personally thank Lester Savage, our Buildings Committee Chair, for all his help and advice as different issues pop up during the season and off-season. One of the more recent issues I’ve dealt with was a small infestation of yellow jackets at Munroe Tavern. Over the past few weeks, our guides and visitors have been reporting seeing yellow jackets flying around the Washington Room. I personally think they were just trying to view the chair that George Washington sat on while he dined at Munroe Tavern in 1789, but in more likelihood, they were looking for the warmth of the sun that is present in that room during the daylight hours. While walking around the exterior perimeter of the building, I noticed a few yellow jackets flying in and out of a crack in the corner to the eaves of Munroe Tavern. Assuming the space they were flying in and out of led to the attic, I made the ascent to the top region of the Tavern and discovered that the yellow jackets weren’t just flying into the Tavern for a quick visit. On the contrary, they had taken up a residence in the attic.

In 2013, Lexington Historical Society received a donation from the Whitman family of an Eames molded plywood lounge chair. Simple in design, yet an icon of modern style, the chair is known as an LCW (Low Chair Wood).

It came from the estate of Elizabeth and Robert Whitman. Elizabeth earned her BFA in Interior Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1949. Whitman worked as an interior designer for both The Architects Collaborative and Design Research, two widely known modern design firms. Her husband Robert received a doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in structural engineering in 1951 and taught in MIT’s Department of Civil Engineering from 1957-1993.

Given the Whitmans’ experience with design and engineering, it is no surprise that they owned such an iconic chair, created by such an iconic couple. Charles and Ray Eames were arguably two of the most prolific and talented designers of the 20th century.

Before teaming up with her husband Charles, Ray Eames worked with Charles and Eero Saarinen in preparing molded plywood furniture designs for the Museum of Modern Art’s Organic Furniture Competition.

Charles and Ray Eames married in 1941 and moved to California. During the Second World War, the couple was commissioned by the United States Navy to produce molded plywood splints, stretchers, and experimental glider shells.

After the war, Charles and Ray continued to apply their creativity with wood to furniture design. This led to the creation of the molded plywood lounge chair, their first mass produced product, in 1946. If you look at the side of our chair, you can see the layers of wood veneer bonded together. 

​Other forms of the Eames chair became popular, especially their later work with Herman Miller, but the LCW style is the first of its kind in their opus and very recognizable, despite only being produced from 1946-47. We were pleased to receive a fine example of such an iconic object and to feature the chair in our mid-century modern Lextopia exhibit in 2015.

Just as the Historical Society’s 18th century objects help illuminate the story of the 18th century houses for which we care, mid-century modern objects help us tell the story of MCM art and architecture and the “second revolution” of Lexington.

If you are interested in what that might look like, join us for a mid-century modern cocktail party on November 2!

-Stacey Fraser, Collections and Outreach Manager

Sources:
https://www.eamesoffice.com/eames-office/charles-and-ray/
https://eamesfoundation.org/
https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/eames/furniture.html
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/eame/hd_eame.htm

It’s the end of September, and I have been thinking about Halloween for a while now. There’s something about the changing leaves and shortening days that make this time of year perfect for this holiday. And, having grown up going to high school within the bounds of a 17th century village named Salem, I got my fair share of Halloween history as a child.

The Salem witch hysteria never made it all the way down to Lexington, although there were a handful of people in Woburn and Billerica who were thrown in jail. I often wonder what the citizens of Lexington (then called Cambridge Farms) thought about what was happening.  At the time, we were in the process of building our first meeting house and newly appointed minister Benjamin Estabrook may have felt that he was in over his head.

But that doesn’t mean that people in Lexington didn’t believe in witches or the supernatural, and it took a long time for some of these beliefs, and the traditions associated with them, to die out. One of the most popular items on the tour of the Hancock-Clarke House are a series of shoes, neatly laid behind the plaster wall of the minister’s study. There is an astonishing variety in the little collection: shoes for men and women, adults and children, leather and wool. All well-worn, and very deliberately placed there, hidden away during the house’s construction.

These are called “concealments”, and are thought to be a good luck charm, a way to ward off any evil spirits that might be inhabiting your new home. Sometimes they are accompanied by “witch bottles” full of other magic charms to ward off specific evildoers. The Northampton Museum in England has compiled an index of nearly 2,000 concealments (including ours), which is set to be made digitally accessible next year.

These shoes would have been placed in the wall during the construction of the Hancock-Clarke House in 1737, 45 years after the infamous witch trials. Not so long a time, actually! It is easy for us to think of our Age of Enlightenment patriots having any connection with the superstitions of the past, but they were only a generation or two removed from that fading world (Ben Franklin’s aunt Bethshua famously took off her shoe and threw it at Martha Corey’s head during her trial). Superstitions and folk magic tend to linger for centuries.

By the mid-18th century, however, most on both sides of the Atlantic were trying to distance themselves from the beliefs of their ancestors by putting a stop to any further superstitious persecution. This news article from 1751 is a good example, reporting on the “barbarity” that ensued in England when John and Ruth Osborne, “inoffensive people near 70 years of age” were accused of witchcraft and tortured by their neighbors, leaving Ruth dead.

An addendum to the article proudly revealed that of the entirety of the mob, 29 members were subsequently being tried for murder. One of the men was eventually executed.

- Sarah McDonough, Programs Manager

Lexington Historical Society is much more than a room with piles of old documents and artifacts; it is a vibrant organization, active all year round, with an engaged staff and volunteer base. To give you an idea of just how active Lexington Historical Society is, here are some fun facts!

Each year:
• 20,000 people walk through the doors of our museums
• LHS presents an average of 50 public programs
• An average of 2,500 students participate in education programs at our museums 
• We receive about 100 research inquiries

So how do we fund our extensive operations? 
Many people think that we receive funding from the town or National Park Service. The truth is, though, we are a private non-profit organization. While we sometimes receive grants from a local or state government entity, we do not receive regular funding from any one source.

Each year, we rely on income from the sale of our museum tickets, membership dues, our two appeal campaigns in the fall and spring, and various fundraisers throughout the year such as our golf tournament and Relinquished Treasures sale. 

A New Initiative
We recently began planning for an additional fundraiser in the fall, with the goal of it being our major fundraiser of the year. The theme for this year’s fundraiser is “Mid-Century Marvels: Bauhaus and Beyond.” Our aim is that, through sponsorships, ticket sales, and advertisement space in the events’ program books, the Mid-Century Marvels fundraiser will help us close out 2019 with a bang, poised for growth and success in 2020. 
This series of events is scheduled to coincide with the centennial anniversary of the Staatliches Bauhaus, a design school that began in 1919 in Germany that influenced art and architecture all over the world. Lexington is home to hundreds of mid-century modern homes, so the Bauhaus anniversary has strong ties to Lexington’s history. 

Mid-Century Marvels Events
The first event takes place this Thursday, September 12 at the Gropius House in Lincoln. The evening begins with wine and hors d’oeuvres on the patio behind the house, and ends with a special tour by Gropius House staff with interesting collections pieces on display. The space is very limited, and there are only a few tickets remaining! For tickets, please call our office at (781) 862-1703. 

After the Gropius House tour there will be a tour of the Gamota’s house (now sold out) showing mid-century modern art, a Cronin Lecture by Sasaki Associates discussing the life and work of the late Lexington resident Hideo Sasaki, and a cocktail party in a mid-century modern home in Shaker Glen. For information on the Sasaki lecture and the cocktail party, please visit www.lexingtonhistory.org/events.

Support from Individuals and Businesses
The individuals and businesses who sponsor these events know the value of Lexington Historical Society and want to support our important work. Many of our supporters return year after year and we also hope to engage new individuals and businesses each year to enhance our ties with the community and allow us to do more for Lexington and for our visitors from around the world.

I would like to thank the following individuals and businesses who are sponsoring Mid-Century Marvels: Bauhaus and Beyond:

• Christina Gamota
• George Gamota
• Hisel Flynn Architects
• Janovitz & Tse
• Lester E. Savage Real Estate
• Kane Investments
• Reside, Inc.
• Sasaki
• Seasons Four

Join us!
The Mid-Century Marvels: Bauhaus and Beyond events are crucial to Lexington Historical Society’s end-of-year fundraising goals. Without fundraising, our organization would not be able to care for our collections, welcome thousands of students, or open our museums’ doors to thousands of visitors. Please consider supporting us through our Mid-Century Marvels Initiative by joining us at an event or making a donation at www.lexingtonhistory.org/financial-donations. Thank you for your support!

-Erica McAvoy, Executive Director