“Growing Up in the Gore Family” in Waltham, 19 Jan.

On Sunday, 19 January, I’ll speak at Gore Place in Waltham on “Growing Up in the Gore Family: Class and Conflict in Revolutionary Boston.”

That estate was built by Christopher and Rebecca-Payne Gore in the early republic after they returned from a diplomatic mission. Christopher had made his fortune as an early corporate lawyer, setting up some of the region’s first large industrial companies.

Among those companies was a glass factory co-owned by Christopher’s older brother Samuel and their twice-over brother-in-law Jonathan Hunewell. That factory supplied the glass for the mansion’s first windows.

But I’m going to talk about the American Revolution before America’s Industrial Revolution. As the event description says:

Christopher Gore grew up in a family on the verge of entering Boston’s genteel class. The Gores were active in the Revolutionary resistance—organizing protests at Liberty Tree, hosting spinning bees for Daughters of Liberty, and even being hurt in a riot before the Boston Massacre. But as that conflict heated up, Christopher’s father chose to side with the royal government and left America in 1776. This talk explores the difficult choices that one family worked through.

If that sounds staid, rest assured there’s bloodshed, bigamy, effigies, and weapons theft along the way.

This event is scheduled to start at 3:00 P.M. After we’re done with questions, attendees will have a chance to walk through the mansion. The cost is $10, free to Gore Place members and through Card to Culture. Reserve tickets through this link.

Arbogast on “Two Domestics” in Waltham, 12 Sept.

On Tuesday, 12 September, Camille Arbogast will speak at the Lyman Estate in Waltham on “A Tale of Two Domestics: Adventures in Archival Archaeology.” This event is co-hosted by Historic New England, owner of the estate, and the Waltham Historical Society.

The talk description says:

In 1772, Ruth Hunt, a thirteen-year-old from Concord, Massachusetts, was formally indentured to the family of the local minister. A generation later, Mary Tuesley, recently arrived from England, was hired by the wealthy Gore family. Both of these women worked in domestic service, but how they came to do so and what they expected from their service was very different. By uncovering and piecing together the original source material that exists for these women, we get a richer portrait of working class women’s lives in pre- and post-Revolutionary Massachusetts.

This talk is about the two women, the similarities and differences in their situations, as well as context about indentured servitude and domestic work in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It is also a bit of a detective story, describing the documents Arbogast used, how she found them, and what we might infer from them.

Arbogast has worked for Historic New England, the Trustees of Reservations, Gore Place, and the Historic Newton. She is currently researching the Codman family of Lincoln and colonial-era indentured servants.

The event will start at 7:00 P.M. at 185 Lyman Street in Waltham. Admission costs $10, $5 for members of Historic New England and the Waltham Historical Society. Call 617-994-5912 or go to this site to register.

(The picture above shows the original façade of the Lyman Estate, designed in the 1790s by Samuel McIntire.)

Gore Place’s Open Carriage House, 14 June

On Sunday, 14 June, Gore Place in Waltham is inviting the public to view its newly renovated (and recently relocated) carriage house.

This structure dates to 1793, thus making it even older than the brick mansion that defines the Gore Place estate.

Christopher and Rebecca Gore bought that property starting in 1789, then tore down the existing house and had their first mansion and outbuildings erected in 1793. After their wooden house burned while they were in Europe in 1799, they replaced it with the grander, more modern brick mansion in 1806.

The carriage house strikes me as particularly symbolic given Christopher Gore’s rise to wealth. His father, John Gore, was a decorative painter in pre-Revolutionary Boston. The Gore shop specialized in heraldic devices, so the elder Gore and his apprentices and at least one son, Samuel, no doubt painted coats of arms on richer men’s carriages. In particular, the Gores were close to Adino Paddock, a coachmaker with a large workshop opposite the Granary Burying-Ground, and Paddock’s customers included John Hancock.

After a Harvard education, training in the law, and lucrative investments in Continental bonds and many of Massachusetts’s earliest corporations, Christopher Gore could afford a grand carriage himself. His equipage even became a campaign issue when he ran for governor in the first decade of the nineteenth century.

In a 1790 letter to Samuel Adams, John Adams used the Gores as one of four examples of Boston families that had risen from the ranks of mechanics into genteel status as a “natural aristocracy.” Rebecca Gore’s family, the Paynes, was another.

The Gore Place open house, or open carriage house, is scheduled to take place from 3:00 to 5:00 P.M. It is free, and light refreshments will be served. To know about how many people to expect, the site asks visitors to reserve a space through goreplace@goreplace.org.

Dining at Gore Place, 29 Oct.

Gore Place in Waltham was commissioned by Christopher Gore, Boston’s leading corporate attorney when corporations were just getting started, and his wife Rebecca. He served one term as governor and late in life became debilitated with arthritis, no longer able to work or easily travel to their home in Boston.

In 1825, the couple hired Robert Roberts (1780-1860) as a butler. Two years later, Christopher Gore died, and Roberts (perhaps needing new income) published The House Servant’s Directory, full of instructions on the tasks necessary for running a major house. That book can thus be our guide to how the Gores lived.

On Thursday, 29 October, at 6:30 P.M., Gore Place is hosting a lecture on food, which no doubt draws on Roberts’s book. The announcement of the talk says:

Noted foodways scholar Sandy Oliver offers a fun and informative talk on dining manners in the time of the Gores. Sandy began working in food history in 1971 when she founded the fireplace cooking program at Mystic Seaport Museum. She continues researching historic foodways and speaks before professional and public audiences at museums, historical and culinary organizations.

Sandy teaches historic recipe research and responds to media requests on historic food. When asked, she provides training programs in historic cooking for museum interpreters. She is the author of Saltwater Foodways and Food in Colonial and Federal America. She co-authored Giving Thanks: Thanksgiving History and Recipes with Kathleen Curtin of Plimoth Plantation.

A talk like this is bound to be appetizing, and Gore Place promises “period food and libations” at a reception afterwards. Tickets cost $18, or $15 for Gore Place members. For reservations, call 781-894-2798.