Collection Spotlight: Butter Cooler

Inside a cabinet in the Gibson House dining room, a new (technically old) object sits upon one of the shelves. The object is an opulent silver butter cooler, acquired by the Gibson House in November 2024. The butter cooler was a gift to Mary Crowninshield Warren Hammond in 1867 from her father, Dr Jonathan Mason Warren. Mary was Rosamond Gibson’s older sister; she and her husband, Samuel Hammond, lived across the street from the Gibson House.

Butter cooler, Vincent Laforme, Boston, c.1850 
Collection of Gibson House Museum

This beautiful silver butter cooler, still in excellent condition, is stamped with "Lincoln & Foss," the symbol of the sellers Charles Foss and Albert Lincoln. While the actual manufacture date is unknown, this stamp reveals a potential timeline: “Lincoln & Foss” was renamed “Haddock, Lincoln & Foss” in 1859 after an independent silversmith in Boston named Henry Haddock joined the firm, suggesting that the cooler was made in the early 1800s. 

The maker of the dish was prominent Boston silversmith Vincent Laforme; the gothic “L” and eagle hallmarks stamped on the underside are his marks. Laforme was the son and brother of silversmiths. Born in Germany in 1823, he and his family moved to Boston in 1833 where his father trained him and his brothers in silversmithing. A decade later, Vincent set up his own shop at 5 Water Street where he worked with his brother Francis—their business name was Laforme and Brother. In 1854 the name was changed to F.J. Laforme & Co. after the brothers parted from the company, but three years later the business went out of operation. During Vincent’s time at the company, the Laformes would wholesale their products to larger companies including Lincoln & Foss. Vincent continued to work as a silversmith where he was cited as a good craftsman but a poor manager. 

Faking the Family Tree

Dining room at the Gibson House.

A family crest hangs over the dining room fireplace at the Gibson House. The vivid red and gold shield on a bright black background is eye-catching. Dinner guests would be unlikely to miss its not-so-subtle implications about the importance of the family lineage. In a scroll along the bottom, the motto reads “In the name of Gibson.” 

The tradition of coats of arms (of which the crest is the top part) dates to the medieval period in Europe, where knights would carry shields with specific designs. The design elements were intended to convey the achievements of the person who carried the coat of arms. Later, families would take a coat of arms as the family logo.  Typically, only noble families were permitted to do this and so the coat of arms came to be associated with the aristocracy. 

A Century of Easton Living

This blog post is part of an occasional series about Gibson family relatives. Family trees are rife with personalities: the mysterious aunt, the curmudgeonly great-uncle, the adventurous second cousin. Join us as we explore some of these colorful characters and learn more about the interconnected nature of Boston high society in the process.

On September 2, 2018, Elizabeth Motley Ames died at the age of 99. She had lived just shy of an entire century in Boston and Easton, Massachusetts.  A great-niece of Rosamond Warren Gibson’s, she was a passionate preservationist and a longtime supporter of community causes in Easton.

Eleanor Warren (left) and Rosamond Warren (right),
circa 1870.
Gibson House Museum (1992.406.1).

The Motley family lived nearby to the Gibsons in Back Bay. Sisters Rosamond and Eleanor Warren were quite close growing up, born only a year apart; they remained so after they were married. Family lore has it that when the Motley kids walked past 137 Beacon Street, on their way to or from the Public Garden, they’d better not be misbehaving or great-aunt Rosamond would be sure to tell grandmother Eleanor about it straight away. Boston’s Back Bay was a tight-knit community into the early twentieth century.

As a young woman, Elizabeth Motley married into a prominent Easton family. Oliver Ames (1779–1863) founded a shovel factory in Easton, Mass. which would go on to become a world-class operation, involved in many key construction events in American history. The Ames family also included several politicians over the years, most notably Oliver Ames (1831–1895) who served as governor of Massachusetts in the late nineteenth century.

Boston Interconnected: Then and Now

Boston is small for a “big city.” This was certainly true for the Gibson family’s upper- class social circles in the nineteenth century. They married into their friends’ families and were business partners with their neighbors. It’s true for me, too, when I discover that a new friend went to my university, or I unexpectedly attend the same event as a colleague. The more time one spends here, the easier it becomes to recognize the interconnectedness of people and places. It’s also true for the Gibson House Museum in its many connections to other historic organizations throughout the greater-Boston area.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit John Singer Sargent

Image courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 

This well-known Sargent painting hangs in the new American Wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). The four girls pictured are the daughters of Edward and Isa Boit, as the title informs. The room is in their Paris apartment, which they moved into after leaving 110 Beacon Street, Boston—just three houses down from the Gibson family. In addition to being neighbors, Charles and Rosamond Gibson were friends of the Boits and both were members of their wedding party. 

The Forgotten Midnight Rider

William Dawes

Paul Revere Statue, Boston

 

One of the many connections the Gibson family has to Boston history is its link to William Dawes (1745–1799), uncle to Catherine Hammond Gibson (1804–1888), builder of the Gibson house. William Dawes, the half-brother of Catherine’s mother, Sarah Dawes Hammond (1768–1859), was the Boston Patriot who rode alongside Paul Revere on his famous midnight ride of April 18, 1775. While Paul Revere has been commemorated in Longfellow's famous poem and by a bronze statue in front of Boston's Old North Church, William Dawes has not been so honored. In an attempt to remedy this, Helen F. Moore published a poem in 1896, one verse of which reads:

'T'is all very well for the children to hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere;
But why should my name be quite forgot,
Who rode as boldly and well, God wot?
Why should I ask? The reason is clear —
My name was Dawes and his Revere.

Dr. John Collins Warren and His Use of Ether as Anesthetic

Dr. John Collins Warren, circa 1850

When giving tours of the Gibson House, I always share details of Rosamond Warren Gibson’s (1846–1934) family background, noting that within her family were a number of prominent doctors. Among them were her own father, Jonathan Mason Warren; her great-granduncle, Major General Joseph Warren, who was killed in action at the Battle of Bunker Hill; and her paternal grandfather, John Collins Warren.

Dr. John Collins Warren is particularly noteworthy because he is credited with performing the earliest recorded operation using ether as a general anesthetic, in 1846. And, fortunately, he wrote an account of this experiment only a year after the procedure, which was published in 1848.

A Second Look at Annie Crowninshield Warren’s Reminiscences of My Life

Wreck of the U.S.M. steam ship "Arctic," James E. Butterworth, 1854

In a previous post I wrote about Rosamond Warren Gibson’s mother, Annie Crowninshield Warren (1815–1905), drawing upon Annie’s Reminiscences of My Life. For this post I want to return to Annie and her Reminiscences, and this time relate two incidents Annie describes that she seems to have taken some pride in. On both of these occasions, which took place little more than a year apart, Annie claimed that her stubbornness saved the lives of her family.

According to Annie, on the first occasion the family avoided being killed in a serious train accident and on the other, avoided drowning on a sinking ship.

A Brief Sketch of the Life of Annie Crowninshield Warren

Annie Crowninshield Warren, age 88

We have shared stories from Rosamond Warren Gibson’s Recollections of My Life for My Children, including an 1864 trip to New Orleans during the Civil War. But I was recently excited to learn that Rosamond’s mother, Annie Crowninshield Warren, wrote a similar work for her own children entitled Reminiscences of My Life.

Since I don’t have much of an opportunity to talk about Rosamond’s mother on tours at the Gibson House, I figured I would share a brief biographical sketch of Annie’s life on our blog, drawing upon her Reminiscences.

Taking the Prize: The Privateer Ship America

Before Rosamond Warren Gibson’s grandfather Benjamin Crowninshield (1772–1851) became Secretary of the United States Navy (1815–1818), he and his brother George, like himself a Salem, Mass. merchant, offered three vessels to the US government for service as privateers during the War of 1812. These were the ship John, the sloop Jefferson, and the ship America. The family’s foray into privateering had begun much earlier, however. The earliest reference to a Crowninshield privateer that I could find was another ship called America, which served in the Quasi War with France (1798–1800). Additionally, in the American Revolution, Salem, Mass., sent out 458 privateers, and it is possible Crowninshield vessels were among that number.

Of these, the America of the War of 1812 is the most famous.

In Recollections of My Life for My Children, Rosamond Gibson mentions the America. She relates a family story that during the War of 1812 the vessel captured an English merchant ship bound for India and seized the cargo aboard, which included goods owned by an English family. Found among these personal possessions was a miniature dining room table for a child’s dollhouse. Years later, a young Rosamond added this piece of toy furniture to her own dollhouse. (See “The Warren Dollhouse,” January 1, 2016.)

Benjamin Williams Crowninshield. Portrait by U.D. Tenney.

Having always had a fascination with ships and the history of wars, I wanted to research the America and its career as a privateer. I also wanted to try and corroborate Rosamond’s story about the English ship sailing for India before its interception by the America. While the evidence does not support the story that America captured a ship on its way to India, some of the prizes it took did find their way into the hands of various Crowninshield family members, meaning the young Rosamond may well have played with toys meant for English children some forty years earlier.

Built in 1803, the America originally went out to sea as a merchant ship and spanned a length of 114 feet, was 30 feet wide, and had two decks. But in 1812, when she was commissioned as a privateer, her dimensions were reduced to make her speedier and more maneuverable to better suit her new purpose. Now 108 feet long and with her upper deck removed, she averaged a top speed of 13 or 14 knots, which she could maintain for several hours at a time. With this new speed and agility, the America outpaced enemy ships with relative ease, avoiding capture on several occasions.

As a privateer, the America was authorized by the United States Navy to prey on English commercial vessels, taking them and their cargo as prizes. Operating mainly in the North Atlantic, the America captured forty-seven vessels, twenty-seven of which were sent back to the United States. These twenty-seven ships and their cargoes together were valued at $1.1 million. The other vessels were either recaptured by the British Royal Navy or destroyed at sea.

This kind of warfare proved vital to the American naval effort. When war broke out in 1812, the US Navy was grossly underprepared, with only about a dozen operational vessels. The Royal Navy, however, had about 110 warships, 4 fifty-gun ships, and 134 frigates. To compensate for this clear disadvantage, the United States put about 500 private ships into service as privateers.

Encounters between US privateers and British ships inevitably led to violent exchanges of cannon fire in naval battles. And the America found herself in such a situation on at least one occasion, when she engaged the Princess Elizabeth, a private armed ship, in an intense firefight that lasted a little over an hour. This ended in the British ship’s surrender with two fatalities. The Americans came out with no loss of life and minimal damage to their ship.

Unfortunately, the ending to America’s story is not so glorious. After the war, she spent the next fifteen years docked before being auctioned off in 1831, when she was destroyed and stripped for metal.

By Timothy Spezia, museum docent

Image Sources:

Ship America, 1806: from Old Time Ships of Salem, 33.

Benjamin W. Crowninshield portrait: Benjamin W. Crowninshield wikipedia entry. Naval History and Heritage Command identified the artist, U.D. Tenney, a portrait painter of the 19th century.

America in Chase of the Princess Elizabeth: from An Account of the Armed Ship "America" of Salem, 44. 

 

Sources:

Carl Benn, Essential Histories: The War of 1812 (New York: Osprey Publishing, Ltd, 2002).

Bowdoin Bradlee Crowninshield, An Account of the Private Armed Ship “America” of Salem (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1901), accessed via hathitrust.org, December 5, 2015.

Jonathan R. Dull, American Naval History, 1607–1865: Overcoming the Colonial Legacy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).

Essex Institute, Old Time Ships of Salem (Salem, Mass.: Essex Institute, 1917), 33–34, accessed via hathitrust.org, December 5, 2015.

Rosamond Warren Gibson, Recollections of My Life for My Children (privately printed, 1939).

Faye M. Kert, Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).

Edgar Stanton Maclay, A History of American Privateers (New York: Appleton Press, 1900).