A Basket of a Tale

By Alice Askins, Education Coordinator at Rose Hill Mansion

Margaret Johnston's basket

When people donate objects to the museum, we always ask if they know anything about the history of the items.  Sometimes there is a family story about who made or owned a piece, and we take those stories seriously.  Once in a while, though, when we look into the story, we find that there may have been some misunderstanding as the tale was passed down.  One example of this is a basket given to us by the Hutchins family. 

According to Agnes Swan Hutchins a tan grass basket with dark deer silhouettes was acquired by her grandmother Margaret Alexander Johnston on Anticosti Island in 1822.  Margaret was traveling with her young children Elizabeth and James, her sister-in-law Agnes Johnston, and a woman named Margaret McMath who may have been a cousin.  They were coming to join Margaret Johnston’s husband John Johnston, who had come the previous year and bought a farm on the east side of Seneca Lake.  Anticosti Island is at the outlet of the St. Lawrence River into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and it has caused over 400 shipwrecks.  

Anticosti Island is circled in green

In the spring of 1822 it caused a wreck for the Thompson’s Packet which was probably Margaret’s boat as she told the family that she had sailed on the brig Thompson.   Based on shipping records from Montreal, people boating in the gulf kept an eye peeled for trouble.  If a ship was aground, someone sailed up to Montreal and told the harbor master that there was a boat in trouble.  Ships were then sent to rescue the people and tow the boat into harbor.  The Thompson’s Packet was stuck at Anticosti for 16 days, and “received much damage, bout [sic] two leagues to the westward of Grand Bay.”  Meanwhile, John Johnston was frantic about his family.  When they did not show up in Geneva he tried to trace their journey backwards in hopes of locating them.  After a difficult journey on each side, the family was finally reunited in Montreal. 

Based on Agnes’s account native people were living on Anticosti in 1822, and her grandmother acquired a basket from them.  She believed that this was the basket in our collection. 

Last year I tried to learn more about Anticosti and its native inhabitants.  I discovered that although the Mi'kmaq and Innu people often hunted on Anticosti, neither of them had settlements there.  The shipwrecked passengers may have encountered native people, but I had to wonder how likely hunting parties would have been to have fancy baskets with them.

Innu baskets

When I began looking for of Mi’kmaq and Innu baskets online, I was a bit taken aback to find that Mi’kmaq baskets were usually ash splint, and unadorned, or birch bark with quill embroidery.  Innu baskets were apparently also of birch bark.  After contacting the First People’s Hall of the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the National Museum of the American Indian, I was referred to the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley California. 

Mi’kmaq basket

The Hearst Museum’s basket specialist, Natasha Johnson, agreed with the National Museum of the American Indian that our basket looks northwestern, and she asked for pictures of its interior. Below is her response -  

Based on the weaving on the interior (tribes to the west and south had plain interiors) I'm pretty positive this basket is Shasta, Wintu, Achumawi (Pit River) or Atsugewi (Hat Creek) that style is common to all four.  It’s not an area I know super well, but I'd estimate the basket to be any time from 1880-1950, possibly made for sale.   . . .  All Northern California tribes used Bear Grass (white) and maidenhair fern stem (black) in their overlay designs.  The under wefts are probably conifer root of some sort and the warps are often hazel or willow shoots.  The basket is twined, mostly plain twined, with three strand twining on the base, again for increased strength. . . . .

 She also sent a link to a picture of one of their baskets that looks very similar.  

Shasta basket from the collection of the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology

It’s hard to know, looking at the pictures, how our basket could be anything other than a Northern California specimen.  Though I was disappointed to find this out, I wonder if the Johnston/Swan/Hutchins families had more than one basket in their attic, and if the story became associated with the wrong one.   But it is still a beautiful piece, and it is better to know than not to know. 

Robert Swan Becomes a Farmer

By Anne Dealy, Director of Education and Public Information

Robert Swan was born in 1826, the fifth child of New York City merchant Benjamin Swan and his wife Mary. According to a family history written by Robert's youngest brother Fred, he attended a private school in New York City and went to work at about 15 as a clerk in the dry good business. He was promoted to be a salesman and spent several years working in business in the area that is today the Financial District. Due to poor health and under the advice of a doctor, he gave up the mercantile business to become a farmer. He spent two years living and learning with John Johnston, then a farmer well known for his innovative methods.

In 1848, he began his study of farming at the age of 22, writing of his first day at the Johnston farm:

On the 31st day of July 1848 I left home via Albany to go to Mr John Johnston's farm to learn farming of him at which place I arrived on the 2nd of August in the morning. I found Mr J at home and was much pleased with him and his family. In the course of the morning (Mr J's soninlaw) Mr Swabi & his wife came to pay a visit at the house after a little while Mr J. Mr Swabia and myself went over the farm and on this occasion Mr J showed me how to bind wheat.

His second day proved more challenging:

Aug 3rd Thursday. I arrose [sic] this morning at 5, dressed and went down to breakfast at six. After breakfast I went to help thrash [sic] wheat in the upper barn this day we did upward of Fifty Bushels, in an hour which Mr J. said “was great work"

On the 7th he was still threshing and "dirty as a sweep." The threshing continued until August 14th, when they started ploughing for the planting of the next year's crop of wheat.

For several men to thresh 50 bushels of wheat in an hour, they were likely using a horse-powered machine, like this one.

Robert's description of his days over the two years that he lived at Johnston's farm are typical of farming in this period and exhausting sounding to the modern reader. Long days of hard work dictated by the weather and the season, interspersed with time free to write letters, visit with neighbors, attend church and read the Bible, and discuss farming with Mr. Johnston and other farmers. Here is a partial list of the activities he engaged in during his two years at Johnston's farm: fed cattle, fixed fence, helped fill ditches, planted corn, altered lambs, hoed potatoes, shot crows, sheared sheep, helped raise shed, hoed corn, cleaned harness, cultivated fallows, cut clover hay, cleaned Timothy seed, cured clover seed, sowed seed, learned to treat foot-rotted sheep and blow fly, took in corn stalks, loaded and spread manure, threshed barley, hauled in buckwheat, drove steers. He also killed a skunk found in the family well, and on another occasion repeatedly had to chase a strange bull off the farm at three in the morning.

Fields east of Rose Hill, once part of the Swan's farm

Of course, as the son of a wealthy man who was learning from, not working for Mr. Johnston, Robert did not have to work in the same way that the paid farm laborers did. When he had problems with his foot he was laid up for a couple of days, and when his family came to town to visit he had the leisure to spend time with them. This would not be an option for a man who only got paid when he worked, as was the case with most farm laborers. Still, Robert was working hard and getting hands-on experience with one of the best farmers in the state.

Robert's decision to take up farming was apparently not unusual. At one point in his diary he writes: Nov 6th Monday. This morning I went over to Geneva to the post office where I found a letter from Father informing me of Mr Halsteds son Roberts intention of being a farmer.  Robert also mentions Herman Ten Eyck Foster several times in his Johnston period diary. Like Swan, Foster received several premium awards from the New York State Agricultural Society for his Seneca County farm. He too was born the son of a NYC merchant and learned farming from a Mr. Owen near Trumansburg. After establishing his farm, he married and had three children, one of whom, Pauline, married Henry A. DuPont, and was the mother of Henry F. DuPont, the founder of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware. The museum has Foster's diary for 1842-43. Based on this document, he spent his time at the Owens' much as Robert did at the Johnston's.

Robert Swan's professional choice agreed with him: Sunday August 13th How unlike the City where all is confusion is the country where every thing seems quiet thus quieting the heart of man. Based on his writings and the letters of his family members, the Swans were well-off, but not ostentatious or overly concerned with society and station. Robert's father Benjamin was very wealthy and prominent, but seems to have been mostly a self-made man (if you take his son Fred's description literally, and that may not be wise), whose primarily concerns were family and religious matters. He took a genuine interest in the farm and was a life member of the New York State Agricultural Society, watching Robert's progress in improving the farm every summer when he and his wife came for a month-long visit.

Next time we'll look more closely at how Robert Swan managed and farmed his own land at Rose Hill.

A Site Manager's Day

By Alice Askins, Site Manager of Rose Hill

Rose Hill Attic

I start the day by walking Rose Hill and Johnston House.  Usually I do this two or three times a week.  With a flashlight, I walk through each room, looking at the ceiling for water spots and around the floor for signs of mice.  So far anything suspicious has turned out to be beetle wings, which puzzles me – who’s eating the rest of the bugs?  I keep watching.  From attic to basement I check each room, even the closets.  In each area I listen for anything that sounds different – dripping water, scuffling, or unusually distinct sounds from outdoors that might mean a broken window.  I also sniff the air in case anything smells damp.  (Recently Johnston House smelled a little skunky, which led me to call in our animal control guy Aaron.)  Between the two houses, I go up and down 132 steps.  “It’s good for you,” I tell my left knee.  At Johnston House I usually check the tile museum to make sure all is well there.  This is fraught with suspense, since I never know if I will be able to get the door locked again.  The tile museum has 15 more steps.

Returning from Johnston House, I pull up my monthly report for the board, and send it to Sue (our office manager).  At this point my cat wants to walk on the keyboard.  I pat him, and he settles down.

Then I update my logs for Rose Hill and Johnston House – whenever something happens I have to record it in the logs.  In this case, I report about Aaron’s visit to Johnston House to look for places where animals are coming in.  Since there are several entrance points, he recommends that we not try to trap and exclude any critters until spring.  He is going to write up an estimate.  I email him Kerry’s request that he give us options – the cost of fixing the current mesh and gravel system around the porch, vs. the cost of a new subterranean fence; the cost of a one-way door vs. him trapping the critters and taking them away.

Aaron’s visit to the Rose Hill attic is also recorded.  He’s developing an estimate for sanitizing and deodorizing it.  My goals here are to eliminate odors that might attract more squirrels, and to safeguard human health by removing all the squirrel, raccoon, bat, and bird waste.  I email Kerry and John about moving, protecting, or discarding the items in the attic before Aaron and his helper come in their haz-mat suits.  John sends me a list of the collection materials in the attic; there are also things like old boards and heater covers lying around.  This will take planning.

Recently I started drafting a family tour for Rose Hill, so I look at it again.  I have help with this project - our docent Barb is advising me, and our education expert Anne has had some terrific suggestions.  We’re organizing the tour around a letter that Margaret Swan wrote to her husband Robert, when he was traveling in 1860.  Margaret talks about visitors, church activities, the children, the farm, her father and sister, the maids, one of the farm workers, etc.   It’s a way of getting into the life of the family and the times that is unique to Rose Hill.  Anne also suggested that having kids take on the roles of characters in our story is a good way to involve them in the tour.  So I am thinking about both those ideas and trying to figure out what we should talk about in which rooms, and what characters we might invite our young visitors to play.  I pick a section of the letter and use it to discuss several first-floor rooms.

A big truck pulls into the driveway, and I look out to see what’s up.  It is the fuel oil truck, filling up the tanks for Rose Hill.  It is always good to see them.

We are making a list of the bus tour companies that bring visitors to us – including the companies that used to bring tours, but haven’t for the last few years.  We want to address the decline in bus tour traffic at Rose Hill.  We have records from 2001 through 2006, and 2010 through 2012.   Today I discover some information about 2009, so I go through and find the companies not already on our list (there are six.)  I send an updated list to Anne.  So far, I haven’t found records from 2007 and 2008.  

I get an email from Kerry setting up a meeting about the Rose Hill attic and put it on the calendar.  I email Sue about payroll hours.

A bus tour company calls scheduling tours for June and August.  I send a confirming email and synch up my calendars.

MJ (our shop manager) sends some images she is considering for new postcards.  I email back about which ones I like and why.

I work on this blog post and I email Karen about the Dove family papers for another.

When I go to sleep later, I dream that suddenly it is light until 9:30 PM, so we can see to do things around the grounds in the evening.  I am surprised, but pleased.

Some of the 132 steps