By
Taryn Plumb |
GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
SEPTEMBER
28, 2014
For
more than a century it sat relatively untouched, shuttered up and
vine-covered, on an 18-acre Hingham farmstead passed down through
generations.
Finally,
one day, a rusted lock was removed, the vines cut back, and the door
of the wooden shed groaned open to reveal a preserved world.
Cluttered inside, through the dusky light of its windows and beyond
the dust and spider webs, were all manner of tools, raw materials,
patterns, account books, and toys and boxes in various states of
completion.
It
was a rare and extraordinary find: one of Hingham’s last
woodcrafting shops, and one of the oldest toy-making workshops in
America, sitting unassumingly on a pasture on the Hersey estate.
“It
was very much a time capsule,” said historian Derin Bray, author of
“Bucket Town: Woodenware and Wooden Toys of Hingham, Massachusetts,
1636-1945.”
Now,
many of the long-hidden artifacts found within – along with
numerous other antique woodcrafts spanning various eras – are on
view for the first time in “Bucket Town: Four Centuries of
Toymaking and Coopering in Hingham,” an exhibit at Old Sturbridge
Village meant to honor the town’s illustrious and prolific
woodworking past and its wide-ranging impact. Curated by Bray and
Christie Jackson, the show will be on display through Jan. 18.
“Hingham
was the woodenware capital of Colonial America,” said Bray, who is
based out of Portsmouth, N.H. “These craftsmen were so prolific,
their items ended up all over the country.”
Located
in the living history museum’s visitors center, the exhibit
includes more than 180 items from the Hersey family as well as
private collectors and historical societies and museums.
“The
idea was to focus on individual makers and folks who became so
prominent in the field,” said collections manager Rebecca Beall.
That
includes the town’s first cooper, Thomas Lincoln, who settled in
1635, as well as other respected craftsmen such as William Luce,
Loring Cushing, and Augustus Hudson.
The
Hersey family, who first settled in town in the 1730s, was among the
most influential of Hingham coopers, a term dating to the 14th
century and referring to the craft of making, repairing, furnishing,
or fixing. Patriarch Reuben Hersey and his sons and grandsons were
joined by hundreds of other artisans, establishing Hingham as the
woodenware hub of early America, and earning it the distinction of
“Bucket Town” – after one of its most prolific exports.
“Their
specialty was wooden buckets,” said Bray. “They produced
tremendous quantities of them, tens of thousands.”
Generally
speaking, the focus was on lightweight containers – pails for milk
and water, tubs for curing meat or laundering – as Bray explained,
“any kind of wooden container that you could conceive of,” that
were then shipped to Boston, down the Eastern seaboard, and as far
away as Canada, Hawaii, California, and even the West Indies.
Hingham’s
coopers also played a pivotal part in the Revolutionary War,
producing in 20 days 5,000 canteens, drinking vessels that remained a
staple of the US Army for years.
The
industry flourished so much, that, in 1687, the town paid its tax
bill to the general court in Boston with surplus milk pails,
according to the exhibit. Similarly, according to a newspaper account
from 1818, 500 men, or 38 percent of the total male population, were
engaged in woodworking. (Hingham’s population in 1820 was 2,857,
according to the 1893 book “History of the Town of Hingham,
Massachusetts” — compared with 22,157 in 2010.)
The
introduction of steamship service between Boston and Hingham in 1819,
as well as the arrival of mechanized tools in the 1830s, further
fueled the industry.
But
out of everyday items soon came toys: With steamship service
proliferating by the late 18th century, coopers began making
miniature versions of their goods to sell to tourists.
With
that market taking off, William Tower opened one of the country’s
first toy factories in Hingham.
The
practical wares and their more whimsical counterparts are juxtaposed
side by side in the exhibit.
Buckets
range from the size of nickels to full-sized basins water-stained and
nicked by time, and vary from well-known “Hingham blue” to red,
green, and yellow, some covered with clasps, buttons, and equipped
with twine handles, others decorated ever so delicately with tiny
flowers or eagles.
Interspersed
with them are tiny yellow rockers and chairs no taller than 6 inches;
mini desks complete with drawers and knobs the size of pinheads;
high-back chairs about a foot high with intricately woven fiber
seats; a tiny grandfather clock stuck at 3 o’clock for eternity;
and teeny wash stands, towel racks, wash buckets with washboards, and
butter churners.
It’s
about “being inspired by the craftsmanship,” said Beall,
marveling that “when you’re working in miniature, there’s a lot
less room for error.”
In
a nod to the Herseys, the exhibit replicates the experience of those
who first peered into the recently rediscovered workshop by placing
many of the tiniest items behind windowpanes.
According
to Bray, the property has been passed down through six generations,
and the family began cleaning it up in 2007. The workshop, which has
been dated to 1835, had been overgrown for years, and, once they got
inside, the process took a great deal of “pulling out and cleaning
out 150 years worth of accumulation.”
That
included account books with impeccable handwriting, all manner of
tools, stamps, clamps, molds, as well as personal items such as
tobacco, tea tins, liquor bottles, and a photograph of Abraham
Lincoln and his family (the Herseys were related to the Lincolns by
marriage).
The
family eventually hired Bray to research their history, a project he
worked on full time for a little more than three years, he said,
studying tax, property, and court records, probate inventories,
visiting historical societies, public libraries, museums, and
speaking with private collectors.
Eventually,
they approached Old Sturbridge Village – as opposed to the much
closer Plimoth Plantation – because its focus on the late 18th to
mid-19th centuries fit with the most prolific period of coopering and
toy-making in Hingham.
“The
topic is right in their wheelhouse,” said Bray.
But
why did Hingham come to such prominence in the woodenware industry?
Bray
noted the proximity to Boston, as well as water access and abundant
cedar in swampy lands around the town.
But
ultimately, it came down to hard work and Yankee perseverance.
“Really
entrepreneurial, skilled craftsmen developed this network early on,”
he said, “and it just grew.”
Bray
says buckets haven’t been made in town for more than 100 years, and
the toy-making industry petered out by World War II. Today, Lindsay
Malone, great-great-granddaughter of Reuben Hersey, makes bucket
jewelry (in the shapes of the coopering buckets) that are sold at
Whitney Gordon Jewelers in Hingham. The ornamental mementos of the
town’s glorious past may be viewed at the website
www.buckettown.com.
SEPTEMBER
28, 2014
►From
the 1650s to
the 1890s,
Hingham woodenware crafters produced thousands of items, earning
their home the nickname “Bucket Town.”
►In 1818,
roughly 500 men, or 38 percent of Hingham’s total male population,
were involved in coopering.
►The
Herseys were among the largest and most influential families,
settling in town in the 1730s.
►During
its heyday, tens of thousands of wooden buckets were shipped from
Hingham to Boston, and then as far away as Canada, Hawaii, and the
West Indies.
►During
the Revolutionary War, Hingham crafters manufactured 5,000 canteens
by hand in just 20 days.
►Hingham’s
population:
1765:
2,467
1820:
2,857
1830:
3,387
1850:
3,980
2010:
22,157
SOURCES:
Derin Bray; Christie Jackson; “History of the Town of Hingham,
Massachusetts.”
For
more details on the exhibit, visit
www.osv.org/buckettown.
For
details on purchasing Bray’s book,
visit shop.osv.org/a543/bucket-town.html.
Photo slideshow by Michele McDonald.
Original
story link.
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