Enlisted as a Man

“She was everywhere received as a blithe, handsome, agreeable young gentleman.” –Herman Mann, The Female Review: or,
Memoirs of an American Young Lady. 1792

Deborah Sampson is famous for enlisting in the continental army during the American Revolutionary War. This is her wedding gown.

Sampson avoided discovery for eighteen months, until she contracted yellow fever and received an honorable discharge in 1783.

Luminary

Sarah Wyman Whitman (1842-1904) was a bright light of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth century Boston arts set. Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, growing up in Baltimore, Sarah de Prix Wyman married woolen goods merchant Henry Whitman. At the age of twenty-six, she embarked on a career as a professional artist. As a member of the National Academy of Design (1877) and the Society of American Artists (1880), Sarah Wyman Whitman established a reputation as a serious artist and was considered one of the best painters in Boston.

A founder of the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, Whitman turned her artistic attention to designing book covers, including those of close friend author Sarah Orne Jewett, and to stained glass. While she is best known for her book cover designs, with which she enjoyed great commercial success, she was also a successful stained-glass artist. Her windows can be seen at Trinity Church in Boston, Harvard’s Memorial Hall, and the Boston Athenaeum, among others.

Whitman's glass designs were less pictorial and more architectural than previous stained-glass windows and made use of clear glass to connect with the world outside. Whitman made this fire screen as a gift for the wedding of Richard Norton, son of her friend and fellow founder of the Society of Arts and Crafts, Boston, Charles Eliot Norton.

Breaking Free

Iconic Maine author Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) is best known for two of her major works, The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) and “A White Heron,” (1886).

In her day, Jewett was an internationally celebrated author. She wrote over three hundred works, including fiction, essays, and poetry.

By the late twentieth century, Jewett’s fame had declined. Much of the reason for her diminished light is the literary criticism, white-male-centered, that dominated the mid-twentieth century. Dismissed as quaint and regional, Jewett’s contribution to literature was overlooked. Recently, scholars have rediscovered her work and there is renewed interest in the deft depictions of women, the subtleties of relationships, and the feminist undertones in her work, notably her 1884 novel, A Country Doctor.

Central themes of Jewett’s work reflect her own life: often, protagonists seek to free of literal or figurative barriers, as Jewett carved out a life of literal and artistic freedom in her life, exchanging a traditional wife role for that of writer; themes of nature play strongly in transcendentalist motifs referencing Jewett’s strong connection to the natural world;  themes of community reference the importance of Jewett’s friendships, particularly female friendships in her life and as the inner circle of the private world she shared with partner and the love of her life, Annie Fields.

Sense of place—Maine in particular-- is prominent in the work of Sarah Orne Jewett, whose home in South Berwick, Maine, now a Historic New England site, was a beloved constant in her life and she once wrote that she was “made of Berwick dust.”

The Country of the Pointed Firs cover, as all Jewett’s books except the first edition of her first novel, was designed by close friend Sarah Wyman Whitman, a celebrated artist at the forefront of the Arts and Crafts Movement in New England. In this work, considered her masterpiece, Jewett writes of an independent writer protagonist who, having transcended a quest for freedom, is drawn into the world of a small Maine village—a community anchored by strong women and flavored with the stories of its people.

Into the Daybreak

Born enslaved to George and Martha Washington at Mt. Vernon around 1773, Ona Judge spent her early life on a plantation in forced servitude as Martha Washington’s personal slave. Staines accompanied the Washington family when they traveled to New York and Philadelphia.  On these trips, the Washingtons carefully controlled the amount of time Judge spent in Pennsylvania to skirt a law that automatically emancipated any enslaved person who stayed in the state for six months or longer.

On May 21, 1796, at the age of twenty-two, Judge slipped out of the family’s Philadelphia residence. She had learned Martha Washington was going to give her as a gift to her eldest granddaughter, who was known to be abusive. Judge escaped with the help of members of Philadelphia’s free Black community, with whom she had built relationships during earlier visits, and hid on a boat destined for Portsmouth.

Infuriated by her escape and worried it would inspire others whom he had enslaved to do the same, George Washington went to great lengths to try to capture Judge and bring her back to Virginia. He failed every time. Ona Judge spent the rest of her life as a free woman in New Hampshire, where she married and had three children.

Commissioned by Historic New England, Maine-based artist Maya Michaud created the portrait of Judge, drawing inspiration from Historic New England’s eighteenth-century costume collection and historical descriptions of Judge.

The portrait will be on view through the 2025 season at Historic New England’s Langdon House [Portsmouth, NH], where visitors can learn more about Ona Judge Staines, and the Langdon family connection to her story.

Portrait study at Historic New England Center for Preservation and Collections [the Haverhill Center].

Girl Entrepreneurs

Bold Fascination

A groundbreaking textile and rug designer of the twentieth century, Marion Dorn (Kauffer) (1896-1964) also worked in graphic design and illustration, and designed wallpapers, like this mid-century trompe l’oeil paper Dorn designed for manufacturer Katzenbach and Warren.

A California native, Dorn spent nearly two decades (1923-1940) working in England with her partner Edward McKnight Kauffer before returning to New York with the onset of World War II.

Celebrated for her use of bold geometrics and nature-inspired motifs, Dorn also explored thematic use of tradition and art history. Here, Dorn incorporates the work of famous artists including a head of young woman by Albrecht Durer, a group of young men by Ghirlandaio, a perspective by Jacopo Bellini, the Leda with Swan by Filipo Lippi, and the Horse and Rider by Leonardo da Vinci.

This wallpaper sample is a Gift of the Slater Memorial Museum in Norwich, Connecticut.

Touch of the Poet

Poet, writer, and artist Celia Thaxter (1835-1894) achieved widespread popularity in her work during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Nicknamed the Island Poet and by close friends, Sandpiper, Celia Thaxter grew up a lighthouse keeper’s daughter on Appledore Island, off the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire. Her work reflects a deep connection to nature, particularly birds and wildlife, and flowers. Her flower gardens on Appledore were legendary and became the source of her most enduring work, An Island Garden.

Unlike her more fortunate contemporaries, Thaxter wrote “in between,” as many women writers and artists have for centuries, caring for an invalid husband, one troubled child and two others, a mother who was ill, and on top of it all, running a hotel on Appledore Island to pay the bills.

Thaxter held salons at the Appledore Hotel, attracting luminaries of literature, art, and music, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier, Sarah Orne Jewett, Annie Fields, and Childe Hassam.

Although in her day better known for her writing, Thaxter also designed greeting cards and decorated ceramics. This vase, thought to have been a gift to her friend, author Sarah Orne Jewett, shows one of Thaxter's favorite subjects, the olive branch. The Greek inscription is from Sophocles, and describes olive trees, watched by the eye of olive-guarding Jove and by gray-eyed Athena.