From the old country to the new world, and from the mill towns of the northeast to the farmlands of the American south.
The following posting is a by-product of a project undertaken by the History Committee of the Smyrna Arts and Cultural Council in which more than 1400 historical photographs of Smyrna were gathered and topically categorized. This is the second of a series of Smyrna history photographic essays to appear on this blog, the first on …
Continue reading Smyrna Photographic Essay #2: Public Education
This article made its first appearance in the Boston Tab newspaper on February 9th 2001, and subsequently appeared in my collection of Boston history essays, Boston Miscellany: An Essential History of the Hub (History Press, 2008). I offer it again here, accompanied by many additional illustrations. WPM The Chestnut Hill Reservoir originally contained two basins---the …
Continue reading Nathaniel J. Bradlee: A Prolific 19th Century Boston Architect
The community of Smyrna originated in the late 1830s with the establishment of the Smyrna Campground by the Methodists of the area. The Campground served as a gathering point for religious services in a day when preachers rode circuit owing to their limited number and distances they were obliged to travel in this sparsely settled …
Continue reading Smyrna Photographic Essay #1: Religious History/ Churches
This article first appeared in the Allston-Brighton Tab on February 23, 1999 and several years later in my book Allston-Brighton in Transition: From Cattle Town to Streetcar Suburb (2007). I offer it again here, with slight modifications, and additional illustrations, as the first in a series of articles on aspects of American architectural history. WPM Prolific …
Continue reading Thomas W. Silloway: Allston-Brighton’s Master Builder
Tucked Away On Atlanta Road, Smyrna Memorial Cemetery Holds City Trailblazers An article by Haisten Willis Thousands of drivers pass downtown Smyrna along Atlanta Road every single day, many of them completely unaware they’re passing one of the city’s most important historic landmarks: the Smyrna Memorial Cemetery. “I had a conversation with a couple the …
[This article originally appeared in the Boston Tab newspaper in May 1999] Contemporary Boston is a city of many great museums. The history of museum keeping in Boston had its modest beginnings in 1791, with the arrival from Philadelphia of one Daniel Bowen, age thirty-one, a close friend of the patriot-painter Charles Willson Peale of …
Continue reading Daniel Bowen: Boston’s Pioneer Museum Keeper
This interesting and profusely illustrated book traces the history of the four Sandonatese families from which author James Gantilucci descends (the Gentillucis, Cuginis, Quintilianis, and Cedrones).
We next turn to John Trumbull, the third and last of our “Patriot Painters. Trumbull became America’s first great history painter.
Gilbert Stuart, Self Portrait In the case of Gilbert Stuart, the second of our painters, we are dealing with a more talented artist, one of the greatest portrait painters of all time, but a much less intellectually-engaged or public-spirited figure than Charles Willson Paine. Like Peale, Stuart grew up in relative poverty. His father, Gilbert …
Continue reading The Patriot Painters, Part 2: Gilbert Stuart, 1755-1828
The three artists of the Revolutionary Era and Early National Period’s that I call The Patriot Painters--- Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Trumbull, created works that became American icons.
Local Historian North & South 