March 4, 2022
Museum Musings
...a guest blog by Susan C. S. Edwards
Patrons of Culture
The year I graduated from college I spent most of the summer reading Remembrance of Things Past. I had no idea what the fall might bring. With a newly minted degree in English, everyone told me I should teach. After a brief stint as a substitute teacher in a junior high school, I realized teaching was not for me. I spent the remainder of the fall at my Smith Corona manual typewriter composing dozens of letters to directors of historic house museums. Being employed at a historic house was the only thing for which I had a passion. Read more here.
March 4, 2022
“In Praise of Aunts (and Uncles)'"
...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
For me, history means context. Context is comforting. It means that whatever ridiculous thing is happening to me, chances are it has happened to many other people before me, and most of them seem to have survived, so maybe it won’t be so bad, right? This did not work so well as I faced down the gauntlet of childbirth – twice. I knew too much. Rather than sailing into the joyous occasion with optimism, I spent too much time remembering what a frightening affair impending birth was to most women throughout history. Until quite recently, Newbury’s glowing mothers-to-be spent a good deal of time in prayer, getting their affairs in order, as the happy day approached (some still do).
Read more here.
February 4, 2022
“A Certain Amount of Unpleasantness"
...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
This is how these things happen. I was looking up a whaling ship, I swear. And there, in the June 22, 1827 Newburyport Herald death notices, wedged in between several more pedestrian demises, was this chestnut. Samuel Hills, Esq. age 61. Mr. H died a victim to the hot crop system of practice. He was unwell, but able at 10 a.m. to walk into the field and give some directions. Soon after, the process so often detailed, commenced of steaming, with the repeated use of lobelia (Indian tobacco), Cayenne, etc., and before 2 p.m. he was a corpse.
Read more here.
January 21, 2022
A Legacy of Kindness: Dick Johnson (1926-2022)
...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
Two weeks ago, I took a picture of myself holding a letter “D.” It was a group effort, spelling out “Happy New Year, Dick,” a token of our affection for Byfield’s Dick Johnson, who died on January 14. Many, many of you will grieve his loss. Today, I am crushed by the weight of it, even though I am a bit player in his extraordinary life. I have never met anyone who knew Dick who did not immediately tell me a story about him, even if it was just a story he had told them about someone else. Everything he said was memorable.
Read more here.
January 7, 2022
Reminiscences of Two Nonagenarians...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
I tore my house apart yesterday looking for a book written by my grandmother’s sister Louise, since it is the only place I know that verifies a story I heard about a Noyes uncle being struck by lightning (he wasn’t). Silas Noyes’ hay wagon was hit by lightning and caught on fire, frightening the horses, who bolted and threw him off the wagon, killing him.
Read more here.
December 31, 2021
The Perfect (Gin and) Tonic for 2022...a recipe and blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
I am a high school drop-out. Around about 1990, convinced that I had nothing left to learn in high school, and possessed of an insatiable urge to hang out with my friends and haunt the smoky doorways of clubs like The Channel and Man Ray, I gave the remainder of my secondary education a hard pass. It didn’t last. Three years and a whole lot of waitressing later, I arrived at UMass Amherst clutching my GED and fell completely in love with history.
Read more here.
December 3, 2021
Betty, Shelley & Veggie Chili: A Love Story...a recipe and a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
My name is Bethany, but you can call me Stephanie (everyone else does).
I have also been called Brenda, Beth (which I can’t stand) and even, believe it or not, Bertha Croft, by former Amesbury mayor Nick Costello, who was announcing me at a public event. We had a good laugh about it afterward.
But only one person on earth has ever called me Betty.
Read more here.
November 5, 2021
Not Aunt Emily’s Cake...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
The original title of this post was “Aunt Emily’s Applesauce Raisin Cake.” Aunt Emily is my great-aunt, Emily Noyes Poore, my maternal grandmother’s sister, the last of the increasingly impoverished but proud Poores to live on Poore’s Lane since her great-grandfather Ebenezer Poore built the house that is perched atop the hill in 1817. “Poore by name, poor by nature” is our motto.
Read more here.
October 29, 2021
The (Boston Post) Cane Mutiny...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
When I was a teenager at the Poore House, I became a bit obsessed with a studio-tinted photograph in a large oval frame at the top of the old staircase.
Isabella (Belle) Greenleaf Ordway was the only child of Thomas Ordway and Martha Poore, born seven years into their marriage. She was a lovely child and considered a very beautiful young woman, and there are more photographs of her in the family record than almost any other member from that period. We have a daguerreotype of her as a child, another as a teenager, one as a young wife (this colorized photo was the portrait I loved) and another taken shortly before her death, at age 36, of septicemia, just three weeks after the birth of her only child, Thomas.
My mother remembers Tom, who died in 1966 and was strangely swarthy. “Just very tanned,” she said, but I’ll leave that door ajar.
Read more here.
October 22, 2021
The Haunted Door...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
Texts with my teenage daughter:
Meg: MOM, what was THAT?
Me: It was Alma. She is doomed to live in that dumpster of a room of yours for all eternity.
Meg: Nah, according to Grammy, she is “safely resting in Jesus’ arms.”
Me: Be vigilant! She’s under the bed! I love you.
Meg: Alma loves you too.
Me: Alma loves fire extinguishers. Too soon?
Meg: By several generations.
Read more here.
October 8, 2021
Once More and Then...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
My dead friends really do follow me around this town. Last night I ran into one of them on State Street, and we had a drink together.
My momentary companion was Offin Boardman, a well-dressed, stout gentleman of 54, dead since 1811.
Read on here.
September 24, 2021
The Haunted Cabinet of Caroline Cushing...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
Every profession has it – the question or comment that is repeated so often as to become a punch line.
To artists: “Will you design my tattoo?”
To bartenders: “Make me something YOU like.”
To brewers: “My party/event/club will be excellent exposure for your product!”
And to museum people: “Is this place haunted?”
Read on here.
September 17, 2021
A Roll In the Hay…a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau.
"The gas stations of their time were the Haymarkets, where fuel for the literal horsepower of city residents was brought in from the surrounding countryside. Hay is embedded in language, culture, ritual, art. We “roll in the hay.” We “make hay while the sun shines.” We “hit the hay,” “cut a swath,” find needles in haystacks"...
Read on here.
September 10, 2021
That Feeling When…Your Dead Husband Hides the Toilet in the Woodpile...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
My marriage is basically one long sea shanty – some drinking, lots of laughs, a few dirty jokes. Comfortable, stable, call and response. He says, “where are my keys?” I say, “t’wer in that crack.” I say, “how was your day?” He says, “I’m all bloody but my eyes.” Added to any list of ways that things have gone wrong? “Also, I swore.”
Read on here.
September 3, 2021
Driving Miss Paisley...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
When I was a teenager living in West Newbury, I was the proud owner of the world’s most beautiful, most unreliable car. She was a 1975 Mercedes 300D sedan, tan, leather, matching tan hubcaps – the works.
The OM617 inline-5 diesel sputtered to life about thirty percent of the time. The rust holes on the wheel wells, in the floor, under the gas tank, were a swirl of Bondo, primer, and mis-matched yellow paint. My friend Shelley, always one to see beauty in decay, turned these textured blobs into paisley swirls. We named the beastly beauty Miss Paisley. Read on here.
August 27, 2021
How to Sleep Like a Puritan...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
I have fond memories of the one time in my life when I slept exactly the way my body dictated, unfettered from the demands of the clock. It was *ahem* nearly thirty years ago and I was in college, living at UMass Amherst. One semester, all my first classes were at 1 p.m., and I slept from 1 a.m. to 10 a.m., unbroken, every single night. And when I woke up, I lay in bed for half an hour and had myself a think. There was no cell phone to beep and honk and chime at me. Read on here.
August 20, 2021
Confessions of an Inbred Townie...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
I have a mouth on me, as you may have noticed. It was a constant source of amazement to my bemused and very proper relatives that I ever managed to get a graduate degree or hold down a real job. And then there are the tattoos. Heavens. Read on here.
August 13, 2021
The Power of Mentorship...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
I met Susan Edwards, retired executive director of this venerable museum, many years ago when I interviewed for a job with the Trustees of Reservations. I remember almost nothing about that interview except that Susan called me afterwards, not to offer me the job, but to tell me, gently and with great kindness, that I was not ready.
She was right, of course, and shortly after that interview, and having taken her advice, I returned to Historic New England where I remained for twenty more years. Read on here.
August 6, 2021
The Holy Fingerbone of Old Newbury...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
This is how rumors get started.
The scene: Screen porch, summer night, (mostly) empty bottle of pink wine. Four women around a metal table, one holding forth.
That would be me, of course, gesticulating wildly, trying to explain to my friends why I love the Museum of Old Newbury like I do. “We have hard tack from the Civil War!” I said. “Hair! Death masks! Fingerbones!”
Read on here.
July 30, 2021
Profane and Foolish Singing, Probably Being Drunk...a blog by Bethany Groff Dorau
A tall man with a long salt and pepper beard takes a slug of ale, throws back his head, and belts out one low note, holding it until the other two dozen people around the table find the same note. Once the magical musical consensus is reached, the original singer stomps his boot, and begins to sing
“Oh, the smartest clipper you can find…”
