New Exhibit at PHS

If you are as interested in hair art as I am or just want to check out some beautiful Victorian art made by a prominent Brunswick family, be sure not to miss this exhibit at the Pejepscot Historical Society!

To Make A Hair Wreath

Once a Victorian woman had carefully--sometimes obsessively--collected the hair she needed to finish her hair wreath, what was her next step? Turning to the "how-to" books of the time, most of today's readers would have been frustrated by the lack of detail. 

Take, for example, the 1859 book Art Recreations: Being a Complete Guide. The authors, Levina B. Urbino & Professor Henry Day, present their instruction for creating the different flowers of a hair wreath in ridiculously vague terms. To make a daisy or aster, the hair wreath maker was told to "turn this looped wire round and round to present a flat surface; make firm by fine wire underneath." Other than that, they provide no specific instruction. Instead, they tell the reader that "It is well to have a pattern. If you can not see hair flowers, take natural ones, and by fastening strands of hair to a wire, and binding with floss, endeavor to imitate Nature". Basically, Urbino & Day pawn the reader off onto finding a hair wreath--or a person--from which they can copy. 

The title page of Urbino & Day's book Art Recreations. The book instructs the reader in a variety of fancy work skills, such as drawing, painting, papier mache, leather work and even taxidermy! The entire book is free to read & search on Google--just click here.

In fact, that's probably how most women learned how to make hair wreaths in the first place--not from magazines like Godey's Lady's Book or Harper's Magazine or books like Urbino & Day's --but other women. Like many other fancy work skills, like sewing, painting or embroidery, being able to create a hair wreath was a skill passed from woman to woman. Strangely, because the hair wreath craze really only lasted for 30 years (from 1850 to 1880), knowledge of creating hair wreaths did not cross many generations. Rather, women of the time probably learned how to make these unique creations from their contemporaries--friends, sisters, aunts, and cousins. Because hair wreaths became so unpopular so quickly, it is unlikely mothers were teaching the passé skill to their daughters after 1900. Indeed, the dearth of hair wreaths from post-1900 supports this idea. 

Hair wreath created by the women of Hope, Maine during the 1860s--now on display at the Hope Historical Society House. Image is from their website. 

Though we addressed some issues of collecting hair to create a hair wreath in the last post, there are a couple more things to note. Once hair was gathered--be it from a living person or a dead one--it could be saved for later by sealing it in paper with wax melted over a flame. Though accounts differ, this may be what poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's second wife, Frances Appleton, was doing when her dress caught fire in July 1861. Longfellow tried to put her out, but her burns were too severe and she died the next morning. Longfellow himself received burns on his face so serious that he could no longer shave, and thus grew the beard for which he is so recognizable today. 

Another neat tidbit about hair wreaths? Brown was the most popular hair color! As explained by Alexanna Speight in her 1871 book about hair work, The Lock of Hair:

 We certainly thought golden reigns supreme, but it would appear not to be so. Among the better classes of English people, however, brown is said to be the prevailing color; but then our population is made up of some many races that we have all sorts of hair.

Speight goes on to explain that it all has to do with being marriageable--red heads, blondes and those with light brown hair did not marry as often as those with dark brown or black hair did! Though her statistics are certainly questionably, there is certainly no shortage of brown hair in the hair wreaths we find today!

Sources: 

Bell, C. Jeanenne. Collector's Encyclopedia of Hairwork Jewelry: Indentification & Values. Paducah, Kentucky: Collector Books, 1998. 

Hope Historical Society website.  

McFarland, Philip. Hawthorne in Concord. New York: Grove Press, 2005.

Speight, Alexanna.  The Lock of Hair. 1871.

Urbino, L.B. & Henry Day. Art Recreations: Being A Complete Guide. Boston: S.W. Tilton & Co., 1859.

Mourning Art: Hair Work

Hair wreaths, the subject of one of the most popular posts on this blog, deserve more attention. In the next few posts, I'll be writing about hairwork & hair wreaths.

Like so many other quirks of Victorian society, we can credit the popularity of hair art (aka hairwork) during this time to Queen Victoria. Not only did the English queen help standardize many Victorian era mourning practices, she started a craze with hair tokens. When her husband, Prince Albert, died in 1861, Victoria spent the last 40 years of her life in deep mourning over the loss. To memorialize her beloved Albert, she carefully preserved locks of his hair and had the royal jeweler, Garrad, work the snippets into at least 8 different pieces of jewelry. She even reportedly required that her 8 year-old son wear "a Locket with beloved Papa's hair" around his neck. 

Brooch  of brown, basket-weave hair. From the Morning Glory Antiques & Jewelry website, which offers pieces like this for sale (this one is currently priced at $110).

But Victorians did not stop at jewelry. They found increasingly creative ways to turn hair into unexpected objects or to work precious locks into other forms of art. Between 1850 and 1916 strands of hair were woven, braided and shaped into baskets, tea pot sets, cups, mourning pictures of willow trees and urns, and even purses. Perhaps the most ridiculous item of all was the "full-length, life-size portrait of Queen Victorian, executed entirely in human hair" which "proved particularly popular" at the 1855 Paris Exposition. Alas, I have been unable to find a picture or drawing of this impressive sample of hairwork!

Hair flowers, created by wrapping hair around wire, were one form of hairwork--many flowers like these were required to create a hair wreath. On the paper below the flowers is written in pen: "Hair flowers. Probably made in 1845 or 1850." From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 1986.27.2.

Nowadays, any reasonable person may ask: "Why did Victorians make all these different art pieces out of hair?" First and foremost, hair is a physical piece of the deceased, something that does not age, change or disintegrate over time like the rest of the human body does. This makes it a wonderful memorial and perfect for all of the mourning rites and practices of the day. Additionally, Victorian women created many different kind of fancy work--embroidery, painting, needlepoint, sewing, shellwork, beading and wax modelling are all examples. Hair was a perfect material to add to a woman's repertoire, since it could be woven, painted, shaped, sewn and otherwise adapted into all kinds of art forms. 

This beautiful, undated snippet of dark brown hair has been braided into a small circle, perhaps for later use in a piece of hairwork but most likely to simply serve as a souvenir. From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 1971.19.21.

A Victorian woman who was working on a hair wreath, hair brooch or other piece of hairwork could spend years collecting enough samples to complete her desired project. Pieces like the one pictured above could be gathered from a person at any age--for example, one lock of hair in the Pejepscot's collection is attributed to a 3 year-old, while another snippet came from an 18 year-old woman and was passed down to her granddaughter in 1883. Some professional hairworkers recommended using only "live hair, that is, hair from the head of a living person" for such work--advice that at least one Mainer listened to. In 1862 J.P. Ireland wrote to his son, who was serving in the 22nd Maine Infantry during the Civil War, that "Your mother says when your hair is long enough, to send her a lock, that she can put into a hair wreath."

Yet most hair art served as mourning art, and for many reasons hair was taken from the recently deceased's body. After all, not only was the living person no longer in need of their long tresses, but large sections of hair could be taken without affecting the person's sense of vanity. What more appropriate way to memorialize the dead by taking one last piece to remember them by?

Sources:

Bell, C. Jeanenne. Collector’s Encyclopedia of Hairwork Jewelry: Identification & Values. Paducah, Kentucky: Collector Books, 1998.

Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.

Hunter, D. Lyn. “A Victorian Obsession With Death: Fetishistic Rituals Helped Survivors Cope With Loss of Loved Ones.” Berkeleyan.http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2000/04/05/death.html.

Lutz, Deborah. “The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture.” Victorian Literature and Culture 39 (2011): 127-142.

Ofek, Galia. Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature & Culture. Burlington, Vermont. Ashgate Publishing Co., 2009.

Smith, Ned. The 22nd Maine Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War: A History and Roster. Jefferson, North Carolina:McFarland & Company, Inc., 2010.

Urbino,L.B. & Henry Day. Art Recreations: Being a Complete Guide. Boston:S.W. Tilton & Co., 1859.

Capt. Abby & Capt. John Pennell

It is certainly a tough assignment to tackle a biography of 2 people who are so interesting that a Pulitzer-prize winning author has already beaten you to the task. But despite the full and justified treatment Abby Reed Pennell & John D. Pennell received at the hands of Robert P.T. Coffin in his book Captain Abby & Captain John, here we go anyway!

Abby (sometimes spelled "Abbie") J. Reed was born on August 22, 1835 on Orr's Island in Harpswell to Arthur Reed (1809-1879) and Elizabeth Jacobs Reed (1807-1899). Growing up in what is now the oldest house on the island and granddaughter to an Orr for whom her birthplace was named, Abby had quite a family history to live up to. Though her father's side of the family made careers as sea captains--a career Abby's brother Elias followed as well--she was probably not prepared for how her own life would be spent on the ocean.

Abby Reed Pennell's childhood home still stands today, a Colonial built in 1756 by Joseph Orr. In 1784 it was one of only 2 houses listed on the island, along with a number of "logg camps." Harriet Beecher Stowe mentioned this house with it's distinctive gambrel roof in her book The Pearl of Orr's Island. From the Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 1982.28.2.53.

Like his future wife, John D. Pennell was also born into a seafaring family. Pennells had been living and building ships in Pennellville, Brunswick for nearly 50 years when John was born there on April 14, 1828. One of 8 boys & 3 girls born to Jacob (1778-1841) and Deborah Dunning Pennell (1780-1861), John grew up in a Cape Cod-style house built in 1794. Though his father had died by the time he turned 13, John followed him into the shipbuilding business and helped manage the Pennell Brothers shipyard with his cadre of siblings. The shipyard, which reached its heyday from 1834-1874, was cited as "one of the largest of the century" (whether this refers to the acreage, number of ships launched, or some other measure is unclear!).

Interestingly, John's first trip to sea (at age 24) was not on a Pennell ship but another Brunswick family's, the Skolfields. After that, however, John stayed within the family, working in the yard to build the United States in 1855, of which he would become First Mate. He returned to Brunswick in 1857 and, on December 3 of that year, married Abby. As Coffin describes the young couple in his book, "They were both serious-minded, rather soberish & very sure all things were right in the sky, and would turn our for the best, on every part of the sea." (86)

Though there journeys together on the sea would not begin until after they had been married a year (John spent the year away from his new wife, sailing across the oceans), John's new position as captain of the William Woodside meant that Abby finally had a place on board. The couple set sail in 1859 and spent the next 19 years together on the sea. Though she kept herself busy with knitting, sewing, needlepoint, cooking, reading, learning navigation from her husband, embroidery and even shopping while they were in port, Abby suffered from seasickness and never fully adapted to the constant motion of the ship. But Abby was determined to be by her husband's side, later writing "I often think of my feelings when John went away, when we were first married, and left me at home. I said then, if he lived to get back again, he never would go without me again. And he never has so far. And I don't think he ever will." (183)

After the William Woodside, Abby & John moved to the Deborah Pennell (named for his mother) when John earned the captain's position on that ship in 1861. It was on this ship that the couple's first child, a son, was born on September 5, 1862. Sadly, the baby died just a few weeks later on September 22 after being "sick with convulsions" (208-209). Wishing to bury their baby in their plot in Pine Grove Cemetery back home in Brunswick, Abby & John took the unusual step of preserving their son's body in a barrel of rock salt, "salt pickle" and liquor, then lashing the barrel to the mainmast. A year after his death, the unnamed boy was sent back to Brunswick on another ship. When the body arrived in Brunswick, the barrel was opened--and despite all the efforts the couple had made to preserve the tiny corpse, it was in such poor condition that immediate burial was necessary.

The footstone of Abby & John's unnamed son, buried in Pine Grove after being crudely preserved in a barrel of brine for a year.

Despite their grief for their loss, Abby & John continued their travels, ultimately making it around Cape Horn (tip of South America) 7 times, the Cape of Good Hope (tip of Africa) 4 times and completely around the globe once. Along the way, the couple had 2 more sons-- Arthur Reed (1864-1903) & John "Freddie" Frederick (1870-1958)--both of whom would later graduate from Yale. John Frederick would later share his parent's diaries, letters and other papers with Robert P.T. Coffin, who used them as the source material for his book about Abby & John.

Abby & John's life voyage together ended on July 5, 1878 in Rio de Janeiro. John was captaining the Benjamin Sewall and had been feeling unwell for over a year since hitting his head during an earthquake while off the coast of South America. After experiencing severe headaches and fever, he died in a Rio hospital with Abby by his side. Learning from their earlier attempt with their first son, Abby had John's body professional embalmed and traveled back to Brunswick with it and her two boys. Once they were home, a service was held for John (with Alpheus Spring Packard providing the funeral sermon) and he was buried with his unnamed son in Pine Grove Cemetery.

Close-up of Pennell family monument, showing John's birth & death dates. This obelisk stone is located in the 8th row from the right, near the flag pole.

Abby lived a long life and watched as her 2 sons grew into successful careers (though she would lose another son, Arthur, in 1903). She died in Edgewater, New Jersey on February 23, 1909 and was brought back home to be buried with her husband & children in the granite-curbed family plot--the final resting place of a remarkable seafaring family.

The last ship the couple would sail together, the Benjamin Sewall, also met a tragic demise. To learn more about the ship's October 5, 1903 run ashore in Taiwan and the resulting international incident, follow this link.

The Benjamin Sewall under construction in the Pennell Brothers shipyard, circa 1874. Pejepscot Historical Society, acc# 1983.72.1.

Sources:
"Abbie J. Pennell." The Brunswick Record. 12 March 1909, page 4.
"Capt. John D. Pennell." Brunswick Telegraph. 2 August 1878, page 2.
"Capt. John D. Pennell." Brunswick Telegraph. 16 August 1878, page 2.
Coffin, Robert P.T. Captain Abby & Captain John, 1939. Pejepscot Historical Society, acc#1982.97.118.
Falconer, Deborah Pennell. Pennell Family Geneaological Trees. Pennell Vertical File, Pejepscot Historical Society.
"From the Falls to the Bay: A Tour of Historic Brunswick, Maine." 1980.
Historic Preservation Survey card for the Kitridge House. Pejepscot Historical Society.
"John D. Pennell." Brunswick Telegraph. 12 July 1878, page 3.
"Mrs. Abbie J. Pennell." The Brunswick Record. 26 February 1909, page 8.