The Forster Flag, 1775

The Forster Flag, 1775

Over the past few years I have blogged several posts about my cousin's long renovation project of the Israel Forster house.  You can read some of the posts at this link HERE.  A few months ago she told me that an interesting artifact from the house was up for auction.  It would be fun to bid on this object and return it to the Forster house, but unfortunately this was expected to sell for millions of dollars!

The Forster Flag was created in 1775.  It is red, with seven white stripes on one side, and six white stripes on the reverse.  This flag was carried by the men of Manchester, Massachusetts when they answered the Lexington alarm on 19 April 1775.  According to oral tradition, it was created from a flag from a British ship. The flag was flown by Captain Samuel Forster of Manchester, and preserved in his family for two centuries. For a long time it was kept at the Israel Forster house, built in 1804, in the center of Manchester.  In 1975 it was acquired by the Flag Heritage Foundation in Winchester, Massachusetts.

The Israel Forster House, Manchester, MA

The Doyle Auction House in New York City auctioned off the Forster Flag yesterday.  The proceeds from the auction were being donated to the Whitney Flag Research Center Collection in the Dolph Brisco Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.

And the big news?  Who won the auction and how much did they pay?

At this auction of priceless historical items, a Babylonian cuneiform clay cylinder was sold for a record setting $605,000.  Other items included a full multi volume set of Birds of America illustrated by John James Audobon and Reverend Cotton Mather's book Wonders of the Invisible World: Being an Account of the Tryals of Several Witches Lately Executed in New England  published one year after the Salem witch hysteria in 1693 (sold for $8,750).  These are very historic items at impressive sales prices.

I called the Doyle Auction house in New York City at 3 pm yesterday, well after the morning auction.  I was told that the flag remains UNSOLD.  I don't know if this means there were no bidders, or if a reserve price was set and never met.  According to an article at Fortune magazine's website, the University of Texas at Austin was holding out for a minimum reserve (see this link:  http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2014/04/03/texas-holdem-a-university-bets-big-on-a-high-profile-auction/ )

The story is apparently not finished!

US Flag stamps, 2000

The Forster Flag is in the top row, 

second from the right

Pre-auction press release by the Doyle auction house:
http://www.doylenewyork.com/content/more.asp?id=317 

A story about the flag from the Gloucester Times, 8 April 2014 (before the auction)
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x1445030495/Manchester-flag-could-fetch-3M

A story about the Forster Flag from the Brisco Center for American History
http://www.cah.utexas.edu/news/press_release.php?press=forster_flag

UPDATE  29 April 2014
http://www.jtfrancis.com/news5.html

-----------------------------------

The URL for this post is
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-forster-flag-1775.html

Copyright (c) 2014, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

Tombstone Tuesday - Benjamin Allen Monument

This monument was photographed at the Old Burial Ground in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. 

BENJAMIN L. ALLEN
died Sept. 24, 1865
Aged 63 yrs. 6 mos.
HANNAH LEE FORSTER
His wife
died March 11, 1900
aged 95 yrs
HANNAH LEE
daughter of
B.L. and H. L. Allen
died June 9, 1826
aged 11 mos.

Captain Benjamin Leach Allen
(1803 - 1865)

Allen Family Tree:

Generation 1: William Allen m. Alice Norman (my 9x great grandparents)

Generation 2: Samuel Allen m. Sarah Tuck (my 8x great grandparents)

Generation 3: Jonathan Allen m. Mary Pierce (my 7th great grand uncle and aunt)

Generation 4: Azariah Allen m. Lydia Hooper

Generation 5: Azariah Allen m. Sarah Leach

Generation 6:  John Allen m. Ruth Leach

Generation 7:  Benjamin Leach Allen m. Hannah Lee Forster, daughter of Israel Forster and Hannah Lee (my 4th cousin 5x removed)

A very interesting blog post at "American Miniature Portraits" of the painting of Benjamin Leach Allen, and a sampler by Hannah Lee Forster   http://american-miniatures2.blogspot.com/2007/11/hudson-william-portrait-of-benjamin.html

See my three blog posts about the 1804 Israel Forster House in Manchester:
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1804-house-and-some-family-connections.html
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-cellar-tombstone-tuesday.html
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/05/1804-house-update.html

--------------------
Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

A Furniture Label leads to some old Ancestors!

My grandfather's sister, Janet Wilkinson Blades (1898 - 1981) owned this pretty little sewing table at her home in Beverly, Massachusetts.  I blogged about this house at this link last year http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/01/house-built-in-1676-by-william-woodbury.html  where I told the tale of how Janet, in her declining years, gave away all her furniture and possession from this 1676 era home.  Several pieces of furniture were taken to her retirement apartment in Beverly, and after her death in 1981 these few pieces were divided up amongst family members.  I have a small bedroom rocking chair from Auntie Janet, and my mother has this little sewing table.

Last week Mom was cleaning drawers, and took one and turned it upside down to empty the contents onto the bed when she saw, for the first time, this label pasted onto the bottom.  Isn't it funny how something she owned for thirty years can yield up clues to it's past?

I'm proud to say that Mom, who is not the most computer literate person in the family, Googled the name of "C. Dodge" and the word "Manchester".  Her Google search led to finding the website for the Winterthur Museum which held the papers for the Cyrus Dodge Furniture Company.  The Winterthur Museum is in Delaware, but their online archive gave her many clues to the origins of this little sewing table.   Mom called me immediately with all her news.

Over the weekend we visited Mom and took these photos.  I also took some time to look at what Mom uncovered on Google.  Dodge is a name that comes up a lot in my family tree, since the original Dodge immigrant ancestors were brothers who immigrated to Beverly in the 1600's.  There are many, many Dodge marriages in our genealogy.  Cyrus Dodge (1814 - 1887) was a descendant of this same Dodge family.  

In reading the Wintherthur records, I saw that Cyrus Dodge was an apprentice to John Perry Allen.  This Allen furniture builder built a mill to saw veneers on the creek right across from where my aunt lives now in Manchester-by-the-Sea, and very close to where my cousins are rennovating the Forster Leach House.  In fact, John Perry Allen's son was named George Forster Allen!  Well, my Mom is an Allen with roots in Manchester, and with a little digging I found that John Perry Allen was a cousin!

                            William Allen (1602 - 1678)

                             m1st. Alice Norman

                                             |

                            Samuel Allen (1633 - abt 1700)

                            m. Sarah Tuck

                                             |

Joseph Allen ( 1672 - 1727)          Jonathan Allen (1684 - 1768)

m1st. Catherine Leach                   m. Mary Pierce

                |                                                |

William Allen (1711 - 1785)          Jacob Allen (1721 - 1805)

m. Mary Ingalls                              m. Mary Tarring

                |                                                |

Isaac Allen (b. 1740 - ?)                Nathan Allen (1768 - 1837)

m. Abigail Burnham                        m. Elizabeth Perry

                |                                                |

Joseph Allen (1776 - 1861)            John Perry Allen (1795 - 1875)

m. Judith Burnham                          m. Ruth Allen (2nd cousins)

                |                                     

Joseph Allen (1801 - 1894)

m. Orpha Andrews

                |

Joseph Gilman Allen (1830 - 1908)

m. Sarah Burnham Mears

                |

Joseph Elmer Allen (1870 - 1932)

m. Carrie Maude Batchelder

                |

Stanley Elmer Allen (1904 - 1982)

m. Gertrude Matilda Hitchings

                |

        My Mother

(born one town over in Ipswich, Massachusetts!)

Now I just have to send my photos to Winterthur Museum to see if they can help me to date the little sewing table.  The C. Dodge Furniture company was operated between 1841 and 1965, which is a very long time!  It would be nice to see if it dates from before Janet's wedding in 1927, for it possibly belonged to her mother, Isabella Lyons (Bill) Wilkinson (1863 - 1935), or her grandmother, Phebe Cross (Munroe) Wilkinson (1830 - 1895).   

------------------------------

For more information:

http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/HTML_Finding_Aids/COL0258.htm 

The C. Dodge Furniture Company Papers at the Winterthur Museum

Manchester, Massachusetts Vital Records

Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, by William Richard Cutter, 1908, Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, Maryland,  Volume I, pages 240 - 248 about the Allens of Manchester, Massachusetts (available on Google Book Search)

My ALLEN lineage:  https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2012/09/surname-saturday-allen-of-manchester.html   

-------------------

To cite/link to this blog post: Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "A Furniture Label leads to some old Ancestors!", Nutfield Genealogy, posted August 15, 2011, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/07/sewing-table-label-leads-to-some-old.html: accessed [access date]). 

Serendipity Stories #1 A Folk Painting

This past week, several interesting emails and comments have led me to make several interesting genealogical breakthroughs in my research.  Today I am focusing on the first story- # 1.) about a painting.  The rest of the week will include 2.)  a Civil War Veteran,  and  3.) a letter between a teenage girl and boy in the 1840s.

I previously blogged a few times about the 1804 House my cousin is rennovating in Manchester, Massachusetts.  First I wrote about some of our family's genealogical connections to the Israel Forster family, and then I wrote about a gravestone from the Forster family found in the basement! 

My cousins have done an admirable job researching the history of their historic house, and in hiring a design team that specializes in historical homes.  As part of their research they found that the man who built the home in 1804, Israel Forster, had a portrait that was currently up for sale at an exhorbitant price (especially for a family paying for a large rennovation project!).  We joked that perhaps we could talk the owners into letting us scan the painting so a facsimile could hang over the fireplace when the restoration was completed!

Lo and behold! Along came Bill Pease of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  You might have seen Bill's posts at GenForum, where he publishes notices of family portraits up for sale or auction, with some genealogy and art history information usually attached to a message that  usually reads something like this:

 “…this fine portrait should be made known to family and descendants… I am scanning it in case any of the descendants might like a copy, either by email or by postal mail. Someone in the families ought to have it--it is too good to be missed by the family. It may not have extensive genealogy value, but it certainly does have a whole lot of family and historic value.”  

His posts usually end with the line “If it were a portrait of a Mr. Pease, I'd certainly want someone to do the same for me.”

My cousin found Bill Pease's post dated February 2010 about the Israel Forster portrait “The Winter/Spring 2010 issue of ANTIQUES & FINE ART magazine on p. 75 pictures in an advertisement a fine 1797 portrait of Israel Forster (1779-1863) of Manchester, MA. The portrait is dated 1797.”  Bill likes readers to respond directly  to his email address rather than responding to his posts, which number in the hundreds.   Just check out his message posting history and you might find something related to your own genealogical research.

The gallery that sold the painting is in Newbury, Massachusetts and their website is www.americanfolkpaintings.com   Check out their inventory, and you might find a portrait of someone from your own family tree.

An advertisement for this painting reads:

"Portrait of Israel Forster attributed to Rufus Hathaway
Striking portrait of a young man, identified as Israel Forster and dated 1797 in an early note on the painting's stretcher when it was included in an exhibition of the artist's work in Duxbury, Massachusetts in 1987.

Hathaway is known primarily for a small group of portraits from the 1790's of citizens of Duxbury, the town in which he settled after a number of years of itinerant painting, married, and became a physician.  The oval within rectangular format is seen in a number of works representing young sitters from this period.

Forster, born in Manchester, Massachusetts in 1779, may have been a student at Phillips Academy in Andover when this work was painted.  He later returned to Manchester, and he was a Major in the War of 1812.  His House still stands on ----- Street, and his grave in the local cemetery marks his death at age 83 in 1863.

Illustrated in Rufus Hathaway: Artist and Physician, 1770-1822, pp. 68 and 69, by Lanci Valentine.  Exhibited March 18 - May 17, 1987 at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury.

Sight size 16 1/2 inches by 20 1/4 inches"
[I removed the address of the home for my cousin's privacy]

Thanks to Bill Pease, and other genealogists like him, people researching their family history, or their house history in this case, find treasures on the internet.  Just image your research without the thousands of people posting vintage photographs, family bible genealogies, transcribing local history, or helping the LDS church with transcribing thousands of scanned documents for their huge database.  Imagine genealogical research without websites like FindAGrave.com, or RAOGK.org (Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness), BillionGraves.com or GenForum.com.   Outside of the internet, thousands of volunteers man the corresondence to historical societies, local libraries and museum by answering genealogical queries for free or for less than the cost of a tank of gas or plane ticket to faraway places.  It's nice to be associated with a group of people who are so friendly and altruistic!

To find Bill's message posting history at GenForum.com click on this link:
http://genforum.genealogy.com/cgi-genforum/messagehistory.cgi?848059765 

PS  My daughter is working with some photo editing software to make a nice copy of the Israel Forster painting so that we can return him to his place over the mantel at the house in Manchester, Massachusetts.  I think it belongs there!

------------------
Three previous stories about the Forster Leach House

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1804-house-and-some-family-connections.html

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/05/1804-house-update.html

http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-cellar-tombstone-tuesday.html
-------------------
Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

The 1804 House Update

Back in March I posted a story about my cousin's rennovation of the Forster- Leach House, built in 1804 and inspired by Samuel McIntire's homes built in nearby Salem, Massachusetts  http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1804-house-and-some-family-connections.html     The project has been moving along, and we finally had a chance to tour the inside of the house.  The photo above is of the front parlor, and the mantelpiece is undergoing extensive stripping of 30 layers of paint which had obscured the beautiful, delicate carving.

The piece below is a carved panel that belongs over the door.

Below is an example of a McIntire designed room now on exhibit at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  It was originally part of the Oak Hill Mansion built in Peabody, Massachusetts, owned by Nathaniel West and Elizabeth Derby originally of Salem, Massachusetts.   You can see how the Forster-Leach house used the McIntire carvings as inspiration.  The new owners are trying to preserve as much of the original woodwork as possible in the house rennovations.

click to enlarge
and to read the detailed museum description

---------------------------
Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo

In the cellar? - Tombstone Tuesday

This gravestone was found in the basement of the 1804 house being rennovated by a cousin in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts (for the story on the rennovation project, please see the link http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/03/1804-house-and-some-family-connections.html ).  This stone was facedown for many years, and it surprised the new owners when it was uprighted and discovered to be a gravestone. It is thought this child was buried somewhere on the property in 1836. The stone will eventually be removed and placed in one of the town cemeteries.

ISREAL FORSTER

son of Dr. E. W. and Charlotte E.

LEACH

of Boston

died Aug. 3, 1836

AEt 4 ms, 7 ds

Charlotte Eliza Forster, born 19 January 1810 in Manchester, Massachusetts and died 31 March 1885 in Manchester, was the daughter of Captain Israel Forster and Hannah Story (Captain Forster built the house in 1804 for his first wife Hannah Lee) . Charlotte married Ezekiel W. Leach on 23 February 1835 in Manchester. Ezekiel was born 1 July 1809 in Manchester, and died 2 March 1842, the son of Thomas Leach and Hannah Norton. This child who died in 1836 was named for his grandfather, Captain Israel Forster.

Dr. Ezekiel Leach studied medicine at Amherst College and with Dr. George S. Shattuck of Boston, and recieved his medical degreee in 1835.  He belonged to the Baldwin Place Baptist Church in Boston, and lived there for several years before removing south for his health.  He died at sea on a voyage from Savannah to Havre, at age 33.  He left a collection of papers to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The Leach Family of Manchester is related to me since we are all descended of Lawrence Leach and his wife Elizabeth (my 10x Great Grandparents). He lived at Salem, Massachusetts, and one son came to Manchester and another to Bridgewater. He died sometime before 25 June 1662 when his will was probated.

Also, Captain Israel Forster had a child, Hannah Lee Forster, by his first wife, who married Benjamin Leach Allen on 24 August 1824 in Manchester, Massachusetts. He is a distant cousin, on my Mom's side of the family. Mom's maiden name was Allen, and all the Manchester Allen's are descended of William Allen, born about 1602, and an original proprietor of Manchester. William Allen and his wife Alice Norman are my 9x Great Grandparents.

UPDATE-
This Forster child had ANOTHER tombstone in the local cemetery. It was a double tombstone with another sibling. It is supposed that the parents removed the single stone and placed it in the home when the second tombstone was erected in the burial ground. Recycling?  Yankee Ingenuity?

---------------------------

To Cite/Link to this blog post:  Heather Wilkinson Rojo, "In the cellar? - Tombstone Tuesday", Nutfield Genealogy, posted May 24, 2021, ( https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2011/05/in-cellar-tombstone-tuesday.html: accessed [access date]). 

An 1804 House - and some family connections!

My cousins are rennovating an 1804 house in Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts. My cousin grew up in Manchester, and she has always dreamed of moving back to her hometown. Now she has a house in Manchester, and a large project ahead of her. The house had been attributed to Samuel McIntire* (see below) at the time of sale, so it will be carefully restored to preserve his architectural details and style. Please read the following blog about the 1804 House Project, by the design team restoring the house, at this link http://blog.wilsonkelseydesign.com/design-architecture/kitchens/our-1804-federal-home-an-interior-design-update/?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d754aa3027e57da%2C0

Althought this is a Wilkinson cousin (the paternal side of my family), Manchester is also the hometown of my Allen lineage (my Mom is an Allen). The house was built in 1804 as a wedding gift from Israel Forster to his wife Hannah Lee. They were married on 8 August 1802 in Manchester. Their daughter, Hannah Lee Forster (1805- 1911) married Benjamin Leach Allen (1803-1865). The first Allen in Manchester was William Allen (1602 - 1678) who was probably from Dorsetshire, England. He came to the New World in 1623 with the Dorchester Company to fish for salt cod, but he decided to stay and join Conant's settlement at Salem, and was granted land at Jeffrey's Creek, which became Manchester, Massachusetts.

My cousin's husband is a relative of Samuel McIntire, one of the earliest architects in the United States, and the best designer of Federal style homes in New England. He was hired by some of Salem's earliest millionaires, like Elias Hasket Derby. Some of his surviving homes are the Peirce-Nichols, the Peabody-Silsbee, and the Gardner-White-Pingree homes- all in Salem. Both my cousin's husband and Samuel McIntire are descendants of Phillip McIntire, born 6 August 1630 in Glencoe, Argyle, Scotland, and died in December 1719 in Reading, Massachusetts. Phillip was a Scots prisoner of War, placed on board the ship Unity and sold into servitude in 1650. You can read more about Scots prisoners here and here.Generation 1. Phillip McIntire married Mary Nichols
Generation 2. John McIntire (1679 - 1747) m. Elizabeth Daniels
Generation 3. John McIntire (1702 - 1768) m. Mehitable Whittemore
Generation 4. Joseph McIntire (1727 - 20 Jul 1776) m. Sarah Ruck
Generation 5. Samuel McIntire (1757 - 1811) m. Elizabeth Field

My cousin's link:
Generation 1. Phillip McIntire m. Mary Nichols
Generation 2. David McIntire m. Martha Graves
Generation 3. David McIntire, Jr. m. Eunice Hayward
Generation 4. Eunice McIntire m. Isaac Parker
Generation 5. Isaac Parker, Jr. m. Nancy Dowse
Generation 6. Isaac Parker, III m. Julia Hodgman
Generation 7. Fred H. Parker m. Alice Fanny Holden
Generation 8. Clyde Holden Parker m. Lucy Abbie Sanborn (his grandparents)

*UPDATE: according to my cousin "...we discovered that the house is not attributed to McIntire. Dean Lahikainen, curator at PEM, toured the house. The mantel, cornice, frieze and moldings are McIntire's though. The former owner advertised the house to be designed and built by McIntire but alas, he was wrong."

----------------------
Copyright 2011, Heather Wilkinson Rojo