I spend a lot of time in Newport’s fine art and cultural institutions: attending events, admiring the portraits and fine artwork on the walls, and feeling very fortunate to be a part of this historic, yet ever-evolving City-by-the-Sea.
As I have been enjoying history lectures, book talks, Juneteenth events, museum openings, and exhibit previews this summer, I have been thinking about the voices behind the picture frames, or rather, if the subjects could talk 250 or 150 years later. Pulling a few tell-tale portraits and historic figures from some of Aquidneck Island’s world-renowned historical houses and museums, I’ve taken the liberty (author’s view only) to imagine what some of these subjects – whether they be people, buildings or objects– might be quietly observing about the year 2026 from their wall perches.
Emma Lazarus (1849 – 1887)
Most Americans are well-versed in Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus,” which is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, and begins “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” But many of us likely didn’t know that Emma was from a wealthy New York City-based Jewish family that summered in Newport every year. Her father, Moses, was a successful sugar merchant. The Lazarus children had the benefit of private tutors and a top-notch education. Around the time she wrote her most famous poem to raise money for Lady Liberty’s pedestal in 1883, Lazarus formed the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of Eastern European Jews. During a period of heightened antisemitism, she began to publicly identify her work as emanating from the pen and experiences of a Jewish poet.
Tucked inside a glass case at the Preservation Society’s “Revolution Reimagined: Evolving Voices from Newport’s Past” exhibit, now on display at Rosecliff, visitors will find a poem Lazarus wrote in the guest register at the Touro Synagogue in the late 19th century. Her entry into the register reminds people of all faiths of the “Jews’ central place in American history and the resilience of the Jewish faith through millennia of persecution and displacement.”
In fact, Lazarus’ ancestors had led the Synagogue and helped to frame the newly-formed nation’s commitment to religious freedom following the American Revolution. It was Lazarus’ great-great-uncle Moses Seixas, then warden of Hebrew Congregation of Newport, who wrote President George Washington a letter in 1790, stating “Sir, Permit the children of the stock of Abraham to approach you with the most cordial affection and esteem for your person and merits – and to join with our fellow citizens in welcoming you to NewPort.” Washington’s eloquent response to Seixas’ letter is widely revered to be a foundational document assuring religious freedom. WUN followers can read a transcript of both letters here.
One must wonder what Emma Lazarus would be thinking as she peers out of her glass case while so many people of different faiths are peering back at her to learn more about her poetry and social reform work. Perhaps an updated inscription on Lady Liberty would say, “Welcome the weary. Protect the vulnerable. Honor those who hold different beliefs. Defend the Constitution. Uphold the foundational ideals that have long protected America against tyranny.” On second thought, I think Emma’s original poem of hope, respect and inclusion can still stand strong and tall today with more voices repeating, honoring, and acting on these seminal, powerful words.
Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse (1754 – 1846)
One of the portraits that always makes me ponder about colonial life when I’m working at the Redwood Library and Athenaeum is the small Gilbert Stuart portrait of a youthful Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse that can be found in the Harrison Room. Waterhouse was born in Newport and was inspired to pursue a medical career after reading medical volumes and books about natural history at the Redwood Library as a boy. At the age of 16, he apprenticed under Dr. John Halliburton in Newport, and just before the Revolutionary War began, his mother arranged for him to study with a relative in London, and then he pursued schooling in Edinburgh and Leiden. He received his medical degree in 1780. While at Leiden University, his roommate was future U.S. president John Adams.
[Interestingly, Abigail Adams was one of the first women to make the single-handed decision to inoculate her children against smallpox, in Boston in July 1776, while her husband John was distracted in Philadelphia helping to draft the Declaration of Independence. More than two decades later, Waterhouse wrote his former roommate, then-President, to ask for more support with using cowpox (vaccine) to prevent the spread of smallpox. When Adams didn’t respond, Waterhouse found support and advocacy from newly-elected President Thomas Jefferson in a letter penned to Waterhouse on Christmas Day, 1800.]
Following university graduation in 1780 and back in New England, Waterhouse held faculty posts at Harvard Medical School and Rhode Island College (now Brown University) but later left the political discord of these institutions – he was known to be a combative figure – to pursue his own research into experimenting with the cowpox vaccine, which brought back from England to prevent the deadly smallpox disease that was ravaging the young nation. So confident was he in the experiment, in 1800 he famously inoculated his 5-year-old son, Daniel, who mercifully survived. In 1802 in Boston, Waterhouse experimented on a controlled group of boys that were inoculated with the virus; and two who were not, with all subjects being exposed to infected patients. Overwhelmingly, the vaccinated boys proved to be immune to the disease, and the unvaccinated boys sadly succumbed to the disease. The first vaccine mandate occurred in Massachusetts in 1809 thanks, in large part, to Dr. Waterhouse’s efforts.
What might Dr. Waterhouse think of today’s controversies and debates over vaccinations?
Because he spent decades debating with skeptics and witnessing first-hand what deathly harm the disease could render on families and entire communities, Dr. Waterhouse would likely not welcome nay-sayers today. However, he would likely recognize that public fear is neither a revolutionary phenomenon nor a modern-day one, but rather it’s simply a part of the natural order of things. Being a man of science, he would likely lean into the fact that evidence matters and aim to educate today’s critics through empirical reasoning. One non-debatable fact is that smallpox was eradicated worldwide exactly 200 years after Waterhouse first tested the vaccine on his son Daniel, which would seem to be real-world validation for his life’s work, even if it took two centuries.
If Dr. Waterhouse’s portrait was speaking from behind the frame on the Redwood Library walls today, he might say, “I have seen a disease that scarred faces, blinded children, and emptied households. When a remedy proved itself capable of preventing such suffering, I believed it was the physician’s duty to share it and the citizen’s duty to consider the evidence. Debate is healthy; ignorance is not. Let observation, reason, and compassion guide our judgment.” While an imaginary quote, this thinking is consistent with Dr. Waterhouse’s life’s work and writings.
Julia Ward Howe’s Eyes Have Seen a Lot
The Portsmouth Historical Society has many portraits and artifacts honoring the life of both ordinary and celebrated Portsmouth residents, including the famous literary author and poet, Julia Ward Howe. Howe lived in Portsmouth for more than 50 years, mostly at her country home “Oak Glen.” She was married to Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, a Brown University and Harvard Medical School graduate who was 20 years her senior. As a physician and an advocate for the blind, he founded and was the first director of the Perkins Institution (now the Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, MA). Despite his outward progressiveness, Dr. Howe held conservative views about marriage and family and the role of women in the home.
While Samuel and Julia had an often-stormy marriage due to her unrelenting desire to pursue a literary career while simultaneously being a wife and mother, they were both ardent abolitionists, and on this they could agree.
Julia is best known for writing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” poem in 1861, at the dawn of the Civil War. She was inspired to write this poem after feeling appalled by the violent original words in the marching song “John Brown’s Body,” which she heard Union soldiers singing. Her gentler version begins “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” and speaks to the hope she had for America to forge a lasting peace between Union and Confederate soldiers based on mutual respect of the human condition and our shared love of country. She became a women’s suffragist and a pacifist, and she often gave sermons at the Christian Union Church, which is where the Portsmouth Historical Society Museum is housed today. The Museum has many of her artifacts on display, included her writing desk and well-worn, genteel lace cap.
The Occupants of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House, now home to the Edward W. Kane and Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History
If walls could talk, the Wanton-Layman-Hazard House would be on the excessive end of the spectrum. This house, believed to be built in 1697, is the oldest surviving house in Newport. It has witnessed generations of the original Newport settlers laying their claim to a fresh water spring (now Spring Street), the rise of the colonial government, the pre-Revolutionary War conflict, the British occupation (1776), Rochambeau’s French troops arriving in Newport (1780), the brutality of the American Revolution, Quakerism, the New England slave trade – in which Rhode Island played a prominent role, the Abolitionist Movement, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, the Industrial Revolution, and then, of course, all the turmoil and progress of the 20th century and the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, 26 years into the 21st century, a long-awaited recognition occurred last month: the historic 17th century building was christened via a ribbon cutting and memorable, powerful speeches as the Edward W. Kane and Martha J. Wallace Center for Black History.
The house was originally built for Stephen Mumford, a Seventh Day Baptist missionary from London. The Mumfords eventually sold to the Wards (Richard Ward would become a governor of the colony in 1741), and then the house was owned and occupied by a tailor, Samuel Maryatt, and then purchased by a tanner named William Earl, all in short succession. A Tory Loyalist, Martin Howard, was the next owner of the house in 1757. It was Howard’s second wife (Ann Conklin)’s ownership of enslaved people, inherited from her first marriage, that may be our first records of the enslaved people that lived in the house. According to records held in the archives of Newport Historical Society, Conklin came to the Howard marriage with three enslaved people “A Negro man called Casan,” “A Negro Boy called Bristow,” and “A Negro Girl called Jenny.” Howard publicly supported the King’s right to tax the colonists which led to an angry mob erecting gallows, parading effigies and ultimately assaulting the Loyalists, including Howard. Howard fled Newport on a British ship and never returned. It is unknown what happened to Casan, Bristow and Jenny after Ann Conklin Howard’s death in 1764.
Enter the Wantons. In October of 1765, it was reported that the prosperous merchant John G. Wanton lived in the house. Despite Wanton being a Quaker (known as pacifists), records indicate that several enslaved people lived in the house at this time. The only recorded name is of an enslaved African named Cardardo who likely slept in the attic. During a 2005 excavation, a spiritual bundle, also known as a nkisi, was found under the floorboards in the attic. The bundle contains everyday items, like buttons, cloth and shells, that were transported from the African continent which held spiritual value for those who were captured from West Africa against their will. Today this found bundle is the real and metaphorical inspiration for the newly-published Newport Historical Society book, Echoes from the Attic: Stories of Slavery and Freedom-Making in Newport, RI.
Wanton’s daughter “Polly” married officer Daniel Lyman in 1782 and the couple was deeded the house, hence the second eponymous name. One of Polly and Daniel’s daughters, Harriet, married Benjamin Hazard, a lawyer and Revolutionary War veteran in 1805 and the newlyweds were deeded the house, giving the historic house its third name. Daniel and Polly eventually moved to the Providence area to invest in the cotton manufacturing boom, and Daniel ultimately became a Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court from 1812-1816.
A descendant of the Lyman family, Maud Lyman Stevens, began a campaign in 1915 to save the house, and eventually in 1927, with extended family consent, it was sold to the Newport Historical Society. During the 20th century it was intermittently opened to the public and mainly used periodically as a living history. Thanks to the vision of the current Board of Directors and leadership team of the Newport Historical Society, plus generous donors, the newly opened Center for Black History in Newport intends to continue to unearth new artifacts and research on the free and enslaved people that may have lived and worked there and share their stories.
Upon pressure from the Society of Friends, John G. Wanton manumitted Cardardo Wanton in 1775. You can view the letter of manumission here. According to NHS records, Cardardo enlisted as a private in the Massachusetts militia regiment in Taunton and eventually in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment. Several of these enlisted Black men, some formerly enslaved by the Wanton family, were singled out for a secret mission, to attack British forces on Aquidneck Island, under Major General Joseph Spencer. The mission was aborted due to terrible weather and poor leadership. Records show Cardardo Wanton was discharged in October 1777. It is unknown what his post-Revolutionary service occupation was.
If Cardardo – or the other enslaved occupants of the Wanton-Lyman-Hazard House – were to speak to us today, I would imagine they would be humbly pleased that their small acts of defiance and spiritual symbolism from their homeland were discovered more than 300 years after their lifetime, hidden in the floorboards. In finding these artifacts and giving names to the people who lived during that complicated time, we are all reminded that the meaning behind the words about holding these truths “to be “self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” is once again being forged and fine-tuned in our collective consciousness.
Author’s note: I’d like to acknowledge the researchers, historians, and websites of the featured historical non-profit organizations that are spotlighted here, plus some additional resources I found, for helping me to construct this article. These opinions and “voices” from the past are my own.
Michele Gallagher is an advocate of local businesses, community leaders, and non-profits and is the founder of City-by-the-Sea Communications.
