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    Marion in the Golden Age
    Marion in the Golden Age
    Marion in the Golden Age
    Ebook185 pages1 hour

    Marion in the Golden Age

    By Judith Westlund Rosbe

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    In The Late Nineteenth Century, America s new railroads flooded Marion with extravagant cargo: the rich and famous. For the likes of Mark Twain, Henry James and President Grover Cleveland, whose home here was known as the
    summer White House, Marion became a treasured sanctuary from city life. Teeming with prosperity and the blossoming arts, this hamlet offered a setting so breathtaking that it inspired some of the world s foremost creative minds.
    Encouraged by The Century Magazine editor Richard Watson Gilder, prominent artists, architects, writers and celebrities flocked to Marion. Also frequented by Academy Award winning actress Ethel Barrymore, it was here that Charles
    Dana Gibson sketched his iconic Gibson Girl. Whether following First Lady Frances Cleveland s trendsetting fashion or the well-publicized wedding of Cecil Clark and Richard Harding Davis, the eyes of America were firmly planted on Marion s sparkling shores and glittering guests.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateMay 1, 2009
    ISBN9781625842794
    Marion in the Golden Age
    Author

    Judith Westlund Rosbe

    Judith Westlund Rosbe, a resident of Marion for almost three decades, is an avid historian and author of Marion and Maritime Marion. She is an active member of the Marion Historical Society, where she served as president for nine years, and is the club historian of the Beverly Yacht Club.

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      Book preview

      Marion in the Golden Age - Judith Westlund Rosbe

      them.

      INTRODUCTION

      The town of Marion is located on the southeast coast of Massachusetts. It covers an area of approximately fourteen square miles with twenty-five miles of coastline. It is located sixty miles south of Boston and twenty miles southwest of Plymouth, where the Pilgrims first settled in America. Marion has always been a small town and its current full-time population is only 5,291, which increases in the summertime when the summer folk come. With its sheltered harbor, private beaches, sparkling outer bay and predictable southwest afternoon sea breezes, Marion remains today a unique and attractive community on the New England coast. This book outlines the town’s growth after the Civil War from a sleepy seaside village to a summer gathering place of artists, writers, actors, musicians and other intellectual leaders and celebrities at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Sailing and fishing were major attractions as well as the town’s quaintness, its pine woods and the embracing quality of its sea air.

      In addition, railroads helped to connect Marion with Boston and Fall River. New Yorkers would take the overnight Fall River Line steamboat from New York City to Fall River, Massachusetts. Then they would board a train at Fall River in the morning that went through New Bedford and on to Tremont Station in Wareham, Massachusetts. From Wareham, the train crew spun the steam locomotive around on a wooden turntable and headed it toward Marion, Mattapoisett, Fairhaven and New Bedford. The Boston train also traveled south to Tremont Station in Wareham and then on to Marion.

      Marion was originally inhabited by the Sippican Native Americans, a community of the Wampanoag tribe. In 1678, Pilgrim families from Plymouth Plantation settled in present-day Marion to graze their cattle. They found the harbor rich in clams and oysters and named the area Rochester-Towne after the English town of Rochester, which was also rich with oysters. In 1852, Marion broke away from Rochester-Towne and chose the name of Marion after the much-admired Revolutionary War hero from South Carolina, Francis Marion, whose guerrilla warfare tactics were greatly admired by local sea captains.

      The community’s economy centered on shipbuilding, whaling, fishing and salt making, but after the Civil War, Marion fell on hard times. If it were not for Rear Admiral Andrew A. Harwood, who decided to retire in the quaint seaside town, Marion might not have experienced the golden age that occurred from 1871 to 1911. Rear Admiral Harwood’s daughter, Bessy, invited her childhood friend, famous New York City editor Richard Watson Gilder, to visit Marion for relaxation and freedom from the stresses of his busy life as the prominent editor of The Century Magazine. He loved his time in Marion and not only purchased a summer home and a studio for his wife in Marion but also invited his well-connected and artistic friends to visit.

      This book recounts that special time in Marion—its golden age—when artists, writers, politicians, actors and actresses, musicians and others came to Marion to enjoy the benefits of sailing, swimming, tennis, fishing, afternoon sea breezes on a porch, bicycle riding and just strolling leisurely down the lanes. That bygone era helped to make Marion what it is today—a small seaside town where many people still come together in the summertime to enjoy family and friends and to take delight in the natural beauty that abounds.

      CHAPTER 1

      THE GOLDEN AGE BEGINS

      Marion’s golden age begins with Rear Admiral Andrew Harwood, who came to Marion in 1871. Rear Admiral Harwood was born in 1802 and grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Son of John Edmund Harwood and Elizabeth Franklin Bache, he was a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin. At the age of sixteen, he joined the navy as a midshipman and spent his entire career in the navy ultimately achieving the rank of rear admiral before retiring in 1871. Because he wanted to live by the ocean in his retirement, he chose Marion, Massachusetts, and brought his family to vacation at the Bay View House hotel in Marion in 1871. Several Episcopalians also staying in the hotel invited Rear Admiral Harwood to conduct Sunday church services in the parlor of the hotel, because he had been accustomed to conducting onboard church services in the navy.

      The following summer, in 1872, Rear Admiral Harwood purchased from the Sherman family a permanent home in Marion across the street from the Bay View House hotel. (The Harwood home is presently owned by the Beverly Yacht Club for its clubhouse.) Rear Admiral Harwood continued conducting Episcopalian services in his home until 1874, when he purchased the Sippican Seminary school building at public auction for $700 and converted it to a church. The Sippican Seminary building was located at the corner of Front and South Streets and is the present home of Saint Gabriel’s Episcopal Church chapel today.

      The church was named Saint Gabriel’s Episcopal Church because of a promise Rear Admiral Harwood once made while battling a storm at sea. He called upon the archangel Gabriel for deliverance from the fierce storm and vowed to build a church in his name if he survived the storm. Rear Admiral Harwood died in Marion on August 28, 1884, at the age of eighty-two.

      Rear Admiral Harwood had a daughter, Elizabeth Franklin Harwood, who was called Bessy. Bessy was once engaged to marry a young man who went off to fight in the Civil War. He died in the war and Miss Bessy remained single for the rest of her life.

      Rear Admiral Andrew H. Harwood, circa 1863. He retired to Marion in 1871 and began church services for Episcopalians in the summers. Courtesy of St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church in Marion.

      Engraved portrait of Rear Admiral Andrew H. Harwood after the Civil War. Courtesy of the Sippican Historical Society.

      Engraving of the Bay View House, which was built in 1794 by the Hiller family on the corner of South Street and Harbor Lane (now called Water Street). In 1882, the Sippican Hotel was added to the Harbor Lane side and the Sippican Hotel Casino for dances and tennis was added across the street on the harbor. Courtesy of the Sippican Historical Society.

      Rear Admiral Harwood’s home to the left on Harbor Lane across from the Bay View House. Courtesy of the Sippican Historical Society.

      The Sippican Seminary building located on the corner of Front and South Streets. The building was purchased at public auction for $700 by Rear Admiral Harwood and donated by him to begin St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church. Courtesy of the Sippican Historical Society.

      Bessy was a talented actress and writer. Her grandfather was a well-known English actor who had married a granddaughter of Benjamin Franklin and it is said that she inherited his acting genes. Bessy had a voice like a bell and was noted for her sense of humor and, in particular, for producing Mrs. Jarley’s Wax-Works, a humorous skit about various characters in a waxworks show. The skit is based on one described in Charles Dickens’s novel The Old Curiosity Shop, in which Nell and her grandfather become employed by Mrs. Jarley to assist in her entertainment show. Mrs. Jarley introduces an assortment of various characters, one by one, and has an assistant wind up each character, who then moves about in a humorous way until wound down. A piano plays a lively air while each figure moves and the noise of winding is made with a watchman’s rattle. Mrs. Jarley’s introduction of each character is also very humorous. Waxworks shows continued in America during the second half of the nineteenth century and were put on mainly to raise money for charitable purposes.

      Bessy was described as having a genius for friendships, and one of her childhood friends became the noted editor of The Century Magazine, Richard Watson Gilder. Since New York City was hot and almost unbearable in the summertime in the era before air conditioning, Bessy invited Richard Watson Gilder and his family to come to Marion in the summer to enjoy its cool afternoon breezes. She wrote that Marion’s slow-paced life would offer them rest and relaxation. In the 1870s and 1880s, men wore suits, ties, high-collared shirts and hats and women wore long dresses at all times. Marion was free of traffic and noise and the predictable afternoon sea breezes were appealing to everyone.

      Bessy Harwood, who was called Aunt Bessy by the Gilder children, holds Rosamond Gilder while George Gilder stands next to her. Courtesy of the Sippican Historical Society.

      Bessy, although she did not have children of her own, was very close to the Gilder children, who called her Aunt Bessy. Richard Watson Gilder often played Captain Kidd in Bessy’s Mrs. Jarley’s Wax-Works. According to Gilder’s daughter, he would fall on his face at the appointed moment with such completeness and effect that one wondered how any wax-work figure, to say nothing of any human being, could survive the shock. Bessy also directed other plays, and in 1887, she directed Alice in Wonderland at the Old Stone Studio (purchased by Gilder

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