Recovering the Past for an Exciting Future

With the close of the first year of Recovering New England’s Voices, a multiyear initiative to challenge the standard accounts of the past and promote healing, community, collaboration, and inspiration at our historic sites, we reflect back on the challenges and triumphs of this year.

When we first conceived of Recovering New England’s Voices, we had no idea what we would find: What information and resources are out there that we do not know about? What stories and voices have been hidden, erased, and suppressed due to years of systemic oppression and genocide?

In order to answer these questions, we hired four historians who specialize in this type of research. They scoured archives, libraries, and collections to help recover the voices and stories of enslaved people, LGBTQ+ people, Indigenous people, workers and laborers, differently abled individuals, women, and many more. The scholars’ findings are astounding in breadth, depth, and number. We now have hundreds of primary sources that will help us tell accurate and authentic stories at all of our sites—stories that were previously hidden or only partially known. One of the biggest successes of the scholars’ work was recovering the identities of almost thirty people who were enslaved at the properties we now own—people we previously did not know about because of erasure and oppression.

What we set out to do was ambitious to say the least—to try to find as many hidden and erased stories of marginalized people in

New England archives, libraries, and collections as we could in one year. This work is crucial to our goal of creating space that will amplify marginalized voices and represent all perspectives of this storied region. We knew that it must be done and that putting the right people on this job would yield success; it did so beyond our expectations. What follows are their accounts of the past year, their findings, and their ruminations, each in their own voice.

Now that this foundation is set, we eagerly start the next phase of the Recovering New England’s Voices initiative. We will expand these findings, using them as catalysts for transformative conversations and environments for socially driven structural change.

—Alissa Butler Study Center Manager

Taking More Than One Route to the Past

by HANNAH FRANCIS Research Scholar, Recovering New England’s Voices

Recovering New England’s Voices is a reminder that the past can be studied using a variety of techniques. As a historian, I usually rely upon archives and secondary sources such as scholarly books and articles to learn about the past. However, both archival records and secondary sources are limited to the information they contain. By incorporating oral history and archaeology with traditional historical research processes, I have bypassed some of the constraints. With these methods, I have learned about African American, labor, immigration, and Indigenous history at the Historic New England properties I researched.

My work focused on southern New England; it encompasses Arnold House, Casey Farm, ClemenceIrons House, Merwin House, Roseland Cottage, Watson Farm, and Winslow Crocker House. In researching Roseland Cottage in Woodstock, Connecticut, and Casey Farm in Saunderstown, Rhode Island, I branched out into other disciplines. For Roseland Cottage, I conducted an oral history interview with the descendant of a former employee. With Casey Farm, I reviewed recovered cultural resources and archaeological reports. These other methods have augmented my primary research in repositories and digital databases.

Henry Chandler Bowen and Lucy Maria Bowen constructed Roseland Cottage for their young family in 1846 as a summertime retreat. Although Roseland Cottage was a vacation home for the Bowens, the granddaughters of the Bowens, Sylvia and Constance Holt, lived there full time. In the 1930s, the Holt sisters resided at Roseland Cottage with at least four employees. The picture on page 9 shows the sisters standing between a car and the house with their uncle, Franklin Davis Bowen; the Roseland staff stands on the passenger side of the vehicle. Historic New England’s website previously only named Sylvia, Constance, and Franklin in the photograph; however, the names of the employees—Robert the chauffeur, Elmer the gardener, Katy the maid, and the cook Frank—were unknown until recently. During an oral history interview I conducted with Frank’s youngest child, I learned the workers’ names.

In my conversation with Frank’s daughter—his full name was Francesco Pagano—I learned more about him as well the Holts. Frank came to America in the 1920s from Vieste, Italy, a southeastern town near the coast. He had training as a cobbler and planned to work as a shoemaker in America. Unfortunately, he was unable to find a job crafting shoes. So, at the suggestion of an acquaintance from Italy who had immigrated earlier, he decided to become a cook. After shifting careers, Frank found employment with the Holts in Woodstock. This job enabled him to marry his fiancée, Teresa, and bring her to America. During the 1930s the Paganos lived at Roseland Cottage with their eldest daughter during her first years.

The relationship between the Holts and the Paganos was long-lasting. Even after the Paganos moved away from Roseland Cottage, Constance would visit them at their home in Newport, Rhode Island. During her visits, Frank would cook her favorite meal of breaded veal cutlets and macaroni and cheese. In the 1950s, the Paganos returned to Roseland Cottage to visit Constance. Without this oral history, the stories of Francesco Pagano, his family, and his Roseland Cottage co-workers may never have been discovered.

Casey Farm is well documented in Historic New England’s Library and Archives and other repositories in the region. Although the Casey family is easy to trace, other people associated with Casey Farm are more difficult to research. For example, Silas Casey enslaved three people: Walter, Ezekiel, and Moses. His ownership of these men in the late eighteenth century is recorded, details about their lives remain elusive. I have been attempting to discover more information about Walter, Ezekiel, and Moses as well as other lesser-known people connected to the Caseys and the farm.

Through Historic New England’s records and publications, I learned that there had been another house on the farm in the nineteenth century. That former building had been the residence of two tenant farmers, Henry Niles and Henry Carr. An article written by Jennifer Pustz, the organization’s former museum historian, in the summer 2014 issue of Historic New England, details the relationship of these men with Silas Casey. Niles occupied the tenant house from 1802 to 1803, while Carr lived at Casey Farm from 1804 to 1814. In his account books, Silas mentioned these men by name and ethnicity; he sometimes referred to Niles as Native American and at other times African American and Carr was always identified as African American. I was able to find both men listed in federal census records, so unlike Walter, Moses, and Ezekiel, they are easier to trace, especially Carr.

A visit to the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission informed me that there had been archaeological research into the tenant farmer dwelling at Casey Farm. In the 1990s, archaeologist Ann-Eliza Lewis excavated the former site. Lewis recovered tools and faunal remains, which offer clues about Carr’s life. She found sewing utensils, physical evidence possibly related to Carr’s wife. In the nineteenth century, labor tended to be gendered, so a woman would have been responsible for sewing.

Archival silences around women, such as Carr’s unnamed wife, are not uncommon. In the past, women lacked agency so male relatives, especially husbands, acted on their behalf. In records, many married women’s identities were subsumed by their husbands’ names; when mentioned they were often referred to as the “wife of” or “Mrs.” followed by their husband’s name. Carr’s tenancy agreement provides an example of how a woman’s name might become lost in the historical record. Since the contract was between Silas Casey and Henry Carr, Casey had no reason to list Carr’s wife unless she affected Carr’s work. Therefore, Casey only mentioned Carr’s wife—without naming her—when Carr requested time off around the time of a pregnancy. Combining information from Historic New England, online digital research, and archaeological excavations enables us to convey more of Carr’s story. He was not solely an African American tenant farmer at Casey Farm, but he was also a husband who provided for his family by farming while his wife