places: paintings and photographs

A Visit to Gettysburg

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Provoked by the foregoing research, I went to Gettysburg to look for the place, the actual place, where Colonel Mudge was killed: Spangler’s Spring, located near the foot of Culp’s Hill, at the tip of the Union “fish hook. ”

Google Map (GPS coordinates: 39.813324° N, 77.215871° W):

 

If you are reading this at Gettysburg, and currently searching a paper map, it is stop number 13 on the auto tour.]

 

Coming out of the woods on to a straight part of the road, with a large meadow on the right and a smaller one farther down on the left, your eye moves up across a long hill to a wall of woods. Just off to the left, and easy to miss, is a smallish rectangular stone monument fitted with a bronze plaque. It rests on a large slab of granite that was probably dumped as glacial till.

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This is the memorial to the 2nd Mass. Volunteers, and, dedicated in 1879 by the survivors, it was the first such memorial to be placed on the battlefield at Gettysburg. The two faces of the plaque appear as follows:

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“From the hill behind this monument on the morning of July Third 1863 the Second Massachusetts Infantry made an assault upon the Confederate troops in the works at the base of Culp’s Hill opposite. The regiment carried to the charge 22 officers and 294 enlisted men. It lost 4 officers and 41 enlisted  men killed and mortally wounded and 6  officers and 84 enlisted men wounded. To perpetuate the honored memories of  that hour the survivors of the Regiment  have raised this stone. 1879.”

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“Lieut. Col. Charles R. Mudge                    Captain Thomas B. Robeson
Captain Thomas B. Fox                         Lieut. Henry V.D. Stone
—-
Color bearers – Leavitt C. Durgin, Rupert J. Sadler, Stephen Cody
First Sergeant Alonzo J. Babcock, Sergeant William H. Blunt.
–Corporals–
Charles Burdett, Theodore S. Butters, Jeremiah S. Hall, Patrick Heoy, Ruel Whittier, Gordon S. Wilson.
–Privates–
Samuel T. Alton  James T. Edmunds  Charles Kiernan
George M. Baily  William H. Ela  William Marshall
Henry C. Ball  John E. Farrington  Frederick Maynard
Wallace Bascom  Silas P. Foster  Andrew Nelson
John Briggs, Jr.  Willard Foster  Rufus A. Parker
David B. Brown  Joseph Furber  Philo H. Peck
William T. Bullard  Fritz Goetz  Sidney S. Prouty
James A. Chase  Daniel A. Hatch  Richard Seavers
Peter Conlan  John J. Jewett  Charles Trayner
John Derr  John Joy  David L. Wade”

Above: the front and back of the monument to the 2nd. Mass Volunteers, and their respective inscriptions.

Just in front of the stone, you see a gray, withered tree stump, maybe a foot-and-a-half across and coated in dust from the road. It stands up from the base of the huge boulder, almost pointing towards the hill. Its brush with the saw occurred long ago, but somehow it has held on.
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The William Hickling Prescott House

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William Hickling and Susannah (Amory) Prescott’s house survives, and is owned by The Colonial Dames of America in The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and can be visited.

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from the Colonial Dames’ website:

Location:

55 Beacon Street ~ Boston, MA 02108

Telephone:

617-742-3190

2016 Open Dates:

Saturdays in April;
Wednesdays and Saturdays in May, June, July, August and September;
Saturdays in October

Tours run from 12-4 p.m.

 

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The Timothy Paine House in Worcester, MA

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You can visit the house owned by William Paine, and his father Timothy (after whom it is named). It is maintained by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and is open to the public…

 

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Website:

http://www.timothypainehousemuseum.org

Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Timothy-Paine-House/112361542109909

or contact them at…

The Timothy Paine House Museum

140 Lincoln Street

Worcester, MA 01605

Tel: 508-797-3530

Google Maps:

 

 

Holy Cross has a nice write-up on the house and its history:

 

Colonial Society and its Legacy: William Paine’s House

“The Oaks”, one of the oldest surviving homes in Worcester is rich in both history, art, and culture. The building was begun in 1774 by Judge Timothy Paine (1730-1793), a member of the Colonial political elite. Judge Paine’s leanings were decidedly Tory as were those of his son William Paine (1750-1833) both Harvard graduates. With the advance of the American Revolution, Judge Paine deferred completing the residence, resigning his public roles to lead a quiet life in Worcester in his old house on Lincoln Street . It has long been suggested that Colonial troops occupied the house at some time in its unfinished state. William Paine who trained as a physician in Salem had married the social prominent Lois Orne of Salem in 1773, among whose wedding gifts was a lavish tea service by Paul Revere, the silversmith’s largest single commission. William left the country in 1774 after signing the infamous “Worcester Protest” (along with fifty other Worcester residents) arguing for the justice of British rule and continued his medical career in England and Scotland . He eventually served as surgeon general to the British army in North America . After the revolution he and Lois removed to Nova Scotia , moving back to Salem in 1787 when the ban against loyalists was lifted. They eventually returned to Worcester to settle into The Oaks after the Judge died in 1793.

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Bunker Hill: Maps, Art, Illustrations, Flags

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In the course of gathering material about Prescott and Bunker Hill, I’ve assembled a largish number of period artworks, illustrations, flags, photographs of statues, etc. Too many to place among the articles as tasteful visuals. So, I put them in two locations.

  1. You can see a few of them, as part of a montage, below.
  2. Or, you can check them all out as an album on the Facebook counterpart of this page,  here.

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The Lawrence Homestead at Groton

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In his book, Historical Sketches of Some Members of the Lawrence Family, Boston, 1888,  Robert Means Lawrence describes the location of the three Lawrence homesteads that were home to our family from the 17th century through to the mid-20th century. Keep in mind his references to “current” landmarks are well over a hundred years old, but I have added some notes from Uncle Johnny, John Endicott Lawrence Sr., to make locations a little more researchable.

The first homestead:

The original Homestead at Groton, built by John Lawrence when he came up from Watertown, stood “southwest of Gibbet Hill, a short distance east of the First Parish Meeting House, and near where Love Lane joins the present road to Lowell. This farm has been for many years the property and residence of Joseph F. Hall.” [And, according to John Endicott Lawrence, Sr., was more recently owned by Marion Daniels. —LSL] See Historical Sketches, p.9.

The second homestead:

John’s second son Nathaniel started out married life living in Sudbury with his wife, then moved back to Groton where he lived with his father for about twenty years, before moving in 1683 into his own Homestead, “on the ‘Mill Highway,’ so called, now the road to Ayer, about three-quarters of a mile south of the center of town and near the Indian Hills…. This estate is now the residence of William Peabody.” [According to John Endicott Lawrence, Sr., this land recently belonged to Mrs. Orick Bales. —LSL] In 1694, after a long series of Indian wars, with promise of more to come, Nathaniel moved his family out to Concord, and from there to Charlestown. The farm passed through several hands, until it was purchased again by Amos Lawrence in 1748. Amos’ children, including Samuel were born here, and when Amos died it went to his oldest son, Amos Jr. See Historical Sketches, pp.11-15, 93-94.

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British Origins of the Lawrences of Groton and Boston: Saying Goodbye to a Much Loved Myth

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Prior to the 1630’s, we really know next to nothing about the Lawrence family’s actual origins in Great Britain.

The above statement is the bedrock truth on which I’m going to build the family history that follows. It’s a confession of ignorance. It’s not dramatic in any way and, for those who might care about such things – I am not one – it offers nothing in the way of prestige or bragging rights. But…it is good scholarship, and, having written it, I will sleep quite soundly at night.

For the last 150 years or so, there has been a fictitious tale circulating that our family’s first discernible ancestor was a humble Englishman, Robert Lawrence, who, in 1191 AD, as a reward for his services at the siege of Acre, was knighted by Richard the Lionheart (aka Richard I, aka Richard of Anjou). According to this story, Sir Robert Lawrence, after receiving his knighthood, returned home from war, and went on to become the progenitor of the Lawrences of Ashton Hall, and subsequently, the Lawrences of Wisset and Rumburgh, and, by the mid-17th century, the Lawrences of Watertown and Groton, Massachusetts.

The genealogical detective work that exposed this story as being at best unreliable and at worst a complete fabrication was performed in the early 1930s by the distinguished researcher G. Andrews Moriarty. Moriarty summarized his findings in an article appearing in The American Genealogist, titled “Pre-American Ancestries: V. The Lawrence Family of Groton and Boston, Massachusetts” [TAG 10 (Oct 1933): pp. 78 – 83)].

Unfortunately, despite Moriarty’s compelling and definitive debunking of the myth, the tale of Sir Robert Lawrence and the lineage that supposedly derives from him has been difficult to dispel.

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