Weathervane Wednesday - the First Parish Meetinghouse, Derry, New Hampshire

Here is a special edition of "Weathervane Wednesday".  I had previously published a post on this weathervane back in 2011.  Now this meetinghouse is undergoing restoration, especially of the steeple this spring.  The top of the steeple was completely removed and rebuilt, and the weathervane has been in storage.  Now the weathervane is at the studio of the "Chester Gilder", Alexandra Hadik.

The First Parish weathervane, without the lightning rod

A 2011 photo of the First Parish Meetinghouse weathervane and steeple
before the present restoration project

This restoration project began several years ago with major structural improvements including raising the entire meetinghouse up and placing it on a new foundation.  This church was founded in 1719 by the Rev. James MacGregor of Aghadowey, Northern Ireland, who brought his flock of sixteen Scots Irish families with him from his Presbyterian church.  Over the years there have been several different buildings, and the parish has converted to the Congregational church.  You can follow the restoration project of this building at this link:

We had a nice visit with Alexandra Hadik, who is repairing and re-gilding the weathervane.  You can see that it is in decent shape, and has had many repairs over the years.  These repairs are not evident from street level, but very apparent up close.  She was very gracious in giving us a tour of her studio and an explanation of the work ahead of her on this weathervane project.

former fixes include welded and riveted plates, and a wire to hold up the arrow

This ball sits under the pivoting vane, and it has rotted considerably
There are no cardinal points (North, South, East, West) on this weathervane

There are no visible marks on this weathervane indicating the maker, dates, or origins of this weathervane.  Church records do not name the maker or the year it was installed, which is very typical.  Rarely are these weathervanes recorded, nor are the makers known except in very rare instances.  They are folk art usually produced by a local blacksmith, tinsmith or similar type of artisan.  It is difficult to tell if the weathervane dates from 1887, when the steeple was originally built and added to the building which dates from 1769.  In 1824 the meetinghouse was expanded by literally cutting the building in half and dragging it apart by teams of oxen to add 24 feet of space in the middle!

You can see where the gilding has worn off, revealing the metal below

The entire weathervane will be repaired, cleaned of the old gilding and re-gilded by Alexandra Hadik.  She studied frame making and conservation in Europe and worked with gilding in Baltimore for many years. Alexandra is a well known expert in this field, and has restored other weathervanes and artwork, both for interior and exterior decoration.  Her last weathervane project was the well known rooster weathervane over the First Church in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

The weathervane and steeple are scheduled to be replace over the tower of the First Parish Meetinghouse in May 2019.  It was exciting to see this weathervane up close, but it will be twice as exciting to see it up above the meetinghouse in East Derry soon!

A previous "Weathervane Wednesday" post on this weathervane:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/11/weathervane-wednesday-two-derry.html 

The website for Alexandra Hadik:
http://chestergilder.com/custom_fram.htm 

The First Parish Meetinghouse Rehabilitation Project:
https://www.nutfieldhistory.org/meetinghouse-rehab

First Parish Congregational Church:  http://fpc-ucc.org/ 


Click this link to see the entire Weathervane Wednesday series of over 400 weathervanes:
https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Weathervane%20Wednesday

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Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "Weathervane Wednesday - the First Parish Meetinghouse, Derry, New Hampshire", Nutfield Genealogy, posted March 27, 2019, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2019/03/weathervane-wednesday-first-parish.html: accessed [access date]).