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.

A New Wilton Carpet for the Gibsons

In about 1890, Rosamond Gibson redecorated the front hall of her home at 137 Beacon Street. Her mother-in-law, with whom she had shared the house for nearly seventeen years, had recently passed away. And in the thirty years since the house was built, styles had changed. Rosamond selected an embossed, gold-leaf wallpaper, called “Japanese Leather.” She also chose a luxe red-on-red patterned Wilton carpet.

Wilton red-on-red pattern

The carpet was manufactured by the Bigelow Carpet Company in Clinton, Mass. Bigelow was a prominent name in carpets; the company’s founder, Erastus Bigelow, developed the first power loom in America. His inventiveness ultimately revolutionized the carpet industry, making quality carpets cheaper and quicker to produce. By the late nineteenth century, Bigelow carpets were a household name. Bigelow’s classic advertising campaign encouraged people to consider purchasing a carpet for their home and business, “A Title on the Door Rates a Bigelow on the Floor.”

The Wilton style of carpet that Rosamond selected was top of the line. Traditional Wilton-weave carpets have a thick, cut pile that resembles velvet. They were the most expensive to produce and served as a status marker in many wealthy homes.

Rosamond’s carpet held up well, but after almost 130 years of use, it became worn and faded. In 2016, the Museum’s Board of Directors, with the help of several generous donors, undertook a project to reproduce a new carpet for the Gibson House.

Rooms With a View: Seeing Victorian-Era Boston through Queer Eyes

The Red Study

This blog post is a preview of an article that originally appeared in the Boston Pride Guide 2018.
Be sure to follow the link at the end of the preview to read the rest of the article. 

As you wind your way up the staircase of the Gibson House Museum, you leave behind the public spaces of this elegant Back Bay townhouse and enter the family’s private quarters. The third floor was formerly the master bedroom suite—two separate bedrooms linked by a shared bathroom, as was common in wealthy 19^th-century homes—of Charles Hammond Gibson, Sr. and Rosamond Warren Gibson, from their marriage in 1871 until Charles’s death in 1916.

What used to be Charles Gibson, Sr.’s bedroom is now the Red Study. It’s an apt name. The carpet is crimson; the walls and drapes a rust-red. The room is packed tightly with furniture: armchairs—also red—by the small fireplace, a desk, and several tables. Even a sofa is tucked in. In the years following Charles, Sr.’s death, this room became the domain of Charles Hammond Gibson, Jr. Known by his family as “Charlie,” he was the second of Charles and Rosamond’s three children, born in 1874. We can learn much about Charlie simply by looking at the objects that fill this brooding, close space: his books on the desk, with several ashtrays nearby; his portable projector on the center table; framed letters from American and British notables, thanking him for his thoughtful words; a memento from the Revolutionary War. Charlie’s story is both at the heart of the museum—he was, after all, the museum’s first curator—and shrouded in some mystery, as his status as a lifelong bachelor provoked some rumor and conjecture over the years.

-Meghan Gelardi Holmes, Curator

To read the rest of this article, visit: Boston Pride Guide 2018. 

From Leisure to Danger: A Gibson Family Vacation on the Verge of War

This blog post is part of an occasional series about the Gibson House Museum Archives; a repository of personal documents and photographs from the extended Gibson family. The archives are accessible by appointment; contact curator@thegibsonhouse.org to make arrangements.

The Gibsons were not just devoted Bostonians, but avid world travelers as well. Multiple photo albums received as part of a recent donation to the museum by Gibson family descendant Rosamond Warren Allen document Mary Ethel and Rosamond Gibson’s travels throughout Europe in the early twentieth century. With the birth of their sons—Henry Freeman Allen and Warren Winslow, respectively—their travel bug only spread. The photo albums that all of these members of the Gibson family created allow us to not only look back at their distinctly personal moments, but also discern their opinions on and relationship to the world outside of Boston.

Aunt Mary’s Worth Dress

 Velvet gown with daytime bodice, Charles Frederick Worth (1825-1895), Gibson House Museum (1997.111).

There is a gem in the collection of nineteenth-century dress at the Gibson House Museum. It is a sumptuous purple velvet gown, richly colored and trimmed in velvet ribbon and silk fringe. A drape sweeps off the waist and gathers at the back in a dramatic bustle. The dress has two separate bodices: one for day wear (long-sleeved with a high collar) and one for evening wear, with a low, square neckline. The skirt is stiff from a horsehair lining, and metal stays are sewn directly into the bodice fabric.

Likely made in the early 1870s, the dress is a pitch-perfect example of Victorian fashion from that decade. The tightly corseted waist and prominent bustle create a much-desired silhouette, one that shows off a more “natural” form in comparison to the large hooped skirts of the 1860s. In dress, as in most other things, the Victorians preferred a high level of specificity, and the two bodices signify the expectation of different attire for day and evening.

Charlie Gibson, Lodger

This blog post is part of an occasional series about the Gibson House Museum Archives, a repository of personal documents and photographs from the Gibson family. The archives are accessible by appointment; contact curator@thegibsonhouse.org to make arrangements.

In  1940, Margaret MacDonald came to work as a cook at 137 Beacon Street. Charlie Gibson, Jr. had been living at the house, largely alone, for the previous six years and from a statement Ms. MacDonald signed, it sounds like things were not going all that well.

Ms. Mary MacDonald’s signed statement, April 18, 1940. This was likely written by Charlie and signed by Ms. MacDonald in response to a dispute with a previous employee at 137 Beacon Street.

“I arrived at 137 Beacon Street, on April 9, 1940, to work as cook and house-maid, and found the condition of the kitchen dirty and uncleanly, dishes shelves and utensils not properly cleaned or kept. They showed signs of gross neglect by the cook who had last been in charge of them.”