Artwork from a young artist of 1867 has been donated to our archival collection by Patricia Frederick, curator of the Frederick Piano Collection of Ashburnham, MA. Her introductory email is excerpted below:
“Among the items from my late parents’ estate is a pencil portrait, a scan of which is attached herewith, labeled “Rebecca Haggerty, Lenox, 1867”. On the back of the picture is written, “Mrs. Marshall Butter – Rebecca Haggerty”…My father, Laning Humphrey, who was Public Relations agent for the Boston Symphony Orchestra for thirty-five years, occasionally found such items in material relating to the Berkshire Festival at Tanglewood.” Ms. Frederick offered to return it to the town and was curious to learn more about the sitter and/or the artist.
The pencil sketch depicts a young woman seated next to a work table, working on a skirt with perhaps a calico pattern. Light streams from a tall narrow window, with a deep, paneled window seat.
We were able to find a few details about Rebecca Haggerty. According to her marriage record as recorded by Lenox Town Clerk Edward McDonald, she was from New York of unknown parentage. Two years after her portrait was drawn, she married Marshall W. Butler (not Butter), son of Luther Butler, in 1869. The Butler farm was located on the hill approaching Bald Head, across the street from Tanglewood, the Tappan estate.
The marriage announcement in the Valley Gleaner reads “At North Stockbridge, Sept. 2d, at the residence of Mrs. Caroline Tappan, by Rev. Doct. Penniman, Marshall W. Butler of Lenox, and Rebecca Hagerty of the former place.
Rev. Jesse A. Penniman was rector of Trinity Church in Lenox in 1859; when he married Rebecca and Marshall, he was serving the Episcopal Church in Van Deusenville. A century later, Arlo Guthrie would write a song about about having a Thanksgiving Dinner there…
In 1882, Marshall Butler died of a tragic accident at the age of 36. He was gored to death by his own Ayrshire bull, which he was bringing to the Lee fair. Rebecca continued to keep house for his father, as Marshall’s mother was an invalid who died two years later.
According to a 2002 Berkshire Eagle article, six sketches by Ellen Tappan Dixey that Laning Humphrey had discovered in a storage chest in an attic at Symphony Hall were donated to the Lenox Historical Society by his daughter. Based on that artwork, we believe that the artist is Dixey, daughter of William Aspinwall Tappan and Caroline Sturgis Tappan.
Ellen would have been a teenager spending the summers at the cottage at the time of this 1867 sketch. Her sister, Mary Aspinwall Tappan, and her daughter, Rosamond Sturgis Dixey (Mrs. Gorham Brooks), would donate the 210 acre property to the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1936. The cottage currently houses the Tanglewood Visitors Center. Its deeply recessed window seats with tall, narrow windows in the upstairs offices are very similar to the one sketched in this drawing, so it is easy to visualize Rebecca sitting there.