Big Sister

Sarah Paine Perkins, the second child of James Perkins Jr and Eliza Green Perkins was named after her grandmother Perkins, and was always very close to her. Sarah was born in 1818 and was brought up at Pine Bank where the family moved after the Pearl Street mansion was given to the Athenaeum, and her grandfather died. Her older brother James died in 1824 when she was six, and her father passed away in 1828 when she was ten, and then her mother married Bishop Doane and moved to New Jersey, so Sarah stayed on where she was most comfortable, at Pine Bank with her grandmother and her younger brothers Ned and Charlie and Hal.

When she turned twenty she married a young man ten years her senior with literary inclinations. Henry Russell Cleveland had graduated from Harvard in 1827, was known to have clear judgment, a lively fancy, and an almost instinctive elegance of taste, and particularly enjoyed the English poets and the great Latin writers.

Henry had always been of delicate health, and after college he had headed west on the new canal to Geneseo where he had helped start an academy for boys. In Geneseo he contracted a fever, perhaps malaria, and almost died. His father was Vice-Consul in Havana so he visited Cuba in 1830, hoping the travel would help his health. He then travelled on to Europe; to England in 1831, and then on to Paris where he became private secretary to the American minister Rives and also secretary to the American Polish Committee where he became acquainted with Lafayette. He continued on to Geneva, and then to Florence, Rome, and Naples. When he finally returned to America in 1833 he became a proctor at Harvard. He certainly had literary inclinations, but, thinking practically, he started an academy in Boston and resumed his teaching career, documenting his methods in his book “Remarks on the Classical Education of Boys” (1834).

Henry formed an informal social group (a "mutual admiration society" in the words of one critic) called the Five of Clubs, which included the law partners Charles Sumner and George Hillard, the classicist Cornelius Felton, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The five young men met together at Pine Bank on Saturday afternoons, and talked of society and experiences and books and travels. They reviewed each others works and helped launch each others careers.

When he married Sarah in 1838, Henry's life changed. The marriage settlement stipulated that of her inheritance from her father, $30,000 would be paid to Henry as his own property. Beyond that sum, the inheritance would be given over to a trust, with the income to benefit Sarah free from the control of any husband. Soon after the marriage, he suffered an attack by a kind of nervous fever, which hung about him for some weeks, and he stopped teaching. He soon realized that his retiring habits and the delicacy of his organization gave him a strong preference for that "Domestic life, in rural leisure passed," which the poet Cowper pronounced to be so favorable to virtue and happiness.

From this period on the course of his life became placid and uneventful as, with the exception of a winter spent in Boston, a few months in Cambridge, and occasional visits to his wife's mother in New Jersey, he resided at the beautiful estate of Pine Bank.

His occupations were almost exclusively literary, though no inconsiderable portion of his time was devoted to the duties of a wide and generous hospitality. His friends long associated his smile of welcome and the cordial pressure of his hand with the breezy lawns of Pine Bank, the beautiful belt of trees which skirts its borders, its winding walks, and gentle waves that die away on its pebbled shore.

Henry's brother Horace had just returned from the "dream-land" of the west, and moved into Pine Bank as well. Horace joined into the literary activities of the Five of Clubs, and eventually went on to become one of America's first landscape architects and an associate of Frederick Law Olmsted (who would eventually turn Pine Bank into part of Boston's "Emerald Necklace"). Ralph Waldo Emerson hired Horace Cleveland to design Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, and then Horace returned west, to his "dream-land", where with a nod to his friendship to Longfellow and the Song of Hiawatha, he developed the Minneapolis park system including Minnehaha Park.

When her grandmother died in 1841, and with her mother in New Jersey with her second family, Sarah had to take care of her brothers. Charles had been suspended from Harvard in 1841 for leaving at the end of the term without permission and without passing his exams, and Sarah had to write to Longfellow to intercede with President Josiah Quincy to have Charlie reinstated. Her youngest brother Hal was expelled from Harvard for good in October 1842. She tried to help him become a farmer, but Hal, like his father, couldn't escaped his alcohol addiction and died young at the age of 25. She even took care of her mother when Bishop Doane got into severe financial distress because of the mortgages he had signed (along with funds from Charlie and Ned) made to found schools in New Jersey.

Her husband Henry Cleveland was never well. In 1841 he traveled on horseback with Charlie west through Greenfield, Charlemont, North Adams, and Williamstown, to Troy, and then back to Boston, but he developed a cough which stayed with him and made the trip uncomfortable for all. The following year he tried going back to Cuba and the Caribbean, and sailed to Bonaire, using the trip for his literary pursuits:

"I have studied Sales's Spanish Grammar entirely through, with care and attention, performing all the exercises twice; I have translated four books of Telemaque from the French into Spanish, carefully correcting my work by a Spanish translation; I have studied critically, and reviewed with care, two plays of Calderon, occupying two hundred pages; and in the same careful manner have studied through, three or four times, a volume of poetry, by Espronceda, a modern Spanish poet, the volume containing about three hundred pages. I have read Alison's History of the French Revolution, four volumes of Addison's works, all Byron's dramatic works, Dana's " Two Years Before the Mast," McKenzie's " Paul Jones," and Commodore Perry; besides a whole rabble rout of novels, tales, poems, romances, reviews, magazines, and newspapers, too numerous to be catalogued."

In May he took a steamboat for St. Louis, but his cough got progressively worse, and when he arrived he was carried to a hotel. He was feverish and bleeding from his lungs. Sarah and Charles had been summoned, and arrived in early June just in time to be with him as the last rites were administered. He died June 12th, 1843. The last words he spoke, addressed to his wife, were, "Whatever happens, we must trust in God."

Sarah returned to Pine Bank. Charlie took off to join Ned in Europe. Pine Bank seemed awfully big. Five years later, when Ned got engaged to Mary Spring, Sarah decided to give him the house.

She lived with Charlie at Oakwood on the north shore of the pond until she built her own house, Nutwood, in 1867, next door on the corner of Chestnut and Perkins Streets.

Sarah stayed in touch with Longfellow, and gave a complete set of Shakespeare to her favorite nephew Teddy when he married Edith Wharton in 1885. Sarah Paine Perkins Cleveland died, fifty years after her huband, in 1893.

Both sides of Chestnut Street on the Boston side were Perkins land until the area on the Ward's Pond side was sold to the Jamaica Plain Aqueduct Company to become parkland in the 1890's. Oakwood and Nutwood stood until the early 1970's when they became part of the Cabot Estate Condominiums and were demolished.

Pine Bank

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow fondly remembered Ned Perkins' wedding to Mary Spring. In the evening of June 10th, 1846, all the society of Boston drove out to the Perkins family country house Pine Bank on Jamaica Pond, where the Perkins gave a superb Fête Champêtre:

The evening, the blue lake, the boat with its white sail; the music, the dance on the greensward; the broad spreading tent, like a morning glory inverted, the well dressed crowd, the gleam of lamps through the gathering twilight, the young bride led by the white haired Mr. Otis, and then the fireworks, and as they drove away, the broad moon rose over the trees. . .

Ned inherited his mother’s loveliness and amiable manner. He was both attractive and gracious, and won friends among all sorts of men. Enthusiastic, even ardent, but perfectly simple, eager to enjoy, and as eager that others should enjoy what he did, he was a delightful companion.

He was the grandson of one of the richest men in America and had no reason or need to take up an “occupation”. Ned, a lover of books like his grandfather James, was a benefactor of the Athenaeum, for which he helped purchase part of George Washington's personal library. Longfellow shared his bibliophilia and invited Ned to join the Saturday Club. Without children of his own, he became a faithful, active trustee of St. Paul's School in 1862, where he was remembered for his constant punning and devising the school’s emblem of a pelican piercing its breast to feed its young with its own blood. He was a trustee of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, and built an exquisite chapel in Northeast Harbor on his half-brother Bishop Doane’s property.

Those who knew him best thought the most of him. They appreciated his sweetness of disposition, his sense of honor, his purity, his desire to live uprightly and generously. Not blind to his defects, or dreaming that his nature had reached or closely approached maturity, his kindred and intimate friends thought him, and had every reason to think him, one of the most promising of young men.

After his marriage to Mary in 1848, Ned tore the original country house at Pine Bank down and built a year-round house. Pine Bank II was a substantial three-storied affair with mansard roof by a French architect, Jean Lemoulnier, which faced the Pond with a small terrace and balconied front entrance with fancy grillwork along the roofline.

Twenty years later, on the 10th of February, 1868 a housemaid kindled the fire in Mary's bedroom to be ready for her return from Boston. A chimney caught fire and burned furiously in the afternoon, but burned itself out.

When Mary and Edward returned early in the evening, they heard from the servants what had occurred, and carefully examined the rooms where the chimney passed and all seemed perfectly right, no smell or smoke or undue heat to be anywhere. The poor darlings being tired after a town day, took a little repose on the sofa, and Edward fell asleep. He was woken by a muffled explosion, and rushing to the window as he rushed upstairs, the glare of a large glow shone out from the burning roof and was reflected on the white lawn of snow.

The brick-work of the chimney must have cracked and opened during its burning, and burning embers must have dropped into the woodwork. Within 10 minutes all hope of saving the house had vanished. It was 7: 30 P. M. and the neighbors were all at their various homes and came so promptly, rich and poor, that all the furniture of second and lower stories, and all the books, pictures, the portraits of James and Sarah, bas-reliefs, even the chandeliers and several marble fire places were saved by their energy and kindness.

The night was very cold and very slippery. Later some rowdy men came and stole some things and many clothes, and as Pine Bank smoldered firemen emptied the superb wine cellar and consumed some excellent claret while tending the smoking ruins.

Ned started all over again on the still useable foundation. He had his cousin John Hubbard Sturgis design Pine Bank III, instructing him, "I want a house of moderate costs and dimensions". What he built was Gothic in red brick and imported English tan terracotta - a theme he had Sturgis repeat for the new Museum of Fine Arts built the following year at Copley Square (where the Copley Plaza Hotel now stands).

Frederick Law Olmstead had started work on Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system in 1878. Mary died at Pine Bank in 1882 at age 58. By then, commercial ice houses were taking over the pond, and a movement arose to protect the open space. In 1892, the City of Boston created Jamaica Park and tore down the houses on the pond. The only house left was Pine Bank, when it was decided to use it as a refectory for those visiting the park.

Ned removed the fireplace mantels and stained-glass windows, and went to live out his last years down the street with his niece Mrs. Cleveland in her house Nutwood, where, after three years of mental depression, he died in 1899.

“His wealth gave him the liberty to do as he pleased, but his nature drew him irresistibly to beauty and to service.”

Going into Business

Young James Perkins loved books, and would have benefited greatly from a Harvard education, but the circumstances of the time dictated that he become apprenticed as a teenager to W. & J. Shattuck, merchants in Boston. On reaching the age of twenty-one in 1782 James came into an inheritance from his grandfather Peck, and set out on his own for Cap François on the island of Saint Domingue (Haiti), the richest, most elegant city in the West Indies, which supplied half the sugar and much of the coffee used in Europe.

The Revolutionary War was still underway; the first ship James sailed on was captured by a British frigate and taken as a prize into New York Harbor. He made his way back to Boston and sailed again, this time on his Mother’s boat The Beaver, which successfully carried him to Cap François along with a cargo of cavalry horses for the island’s French army.

Cap François was a two week sail, but a world away, from Boston. With its lush tropical climate, and fueled by unrelenting exploitation of slave labor, Saint Domingue was the most profitable and most cosmopolitan of all New World colonies during the last half of the eighteenth century. Cap François was the "Paris of the Antilles", famous throughout the Caribbean for its women, particularly the mulatto courtesans whose skills were advertised around the world by the sailors who came to port. Soon after James arrived, the Revolutionary War finally came to a close, and a sense of euphoria lifted the spirits of young Americans everywhere. Anything was possible now, and especially so for young men in their twenties, especially young Bostonians with some capital.

Jim went to work trading for the firm of Wall and Tardy, until that firm dissolved in 1786. His brother Tom then joined forces with Jim and his friend Walter Burling,who had just fled New York after shooting a man who had impregnated his sister, and set up business as Perkins, Burling, and Perkins. They sold the usual commodities: Slaves -- “Your negroes were sold at Auction, our W.B. attended and trumped up Bob to 2300 and odd livres, the other went for 1600, he was lame.” Flour -- “Our J.P. will be in Boston last of September and will communicate to you the means of Introducing Flour to this Port and taking away Contraband Goods.” Wine -- “Excellent Sherry wine in quarter casks, Madeira wine.”

Young Jim certainly enjoyed the pleasures of the Caribbean, but when his brother Tom took over on the Cape in the spring of 1786, he returned to Boston to act the firm’s Boston Agent. He had business of his own at home as well. In January, he rode out to Worcester in a sled with his sister Mary, getting dumped once in the snow along the way, to be married to twenty-one year old Sarah Paine, daughter of Judge Timothy Paine, of Worcester.

The portrait of Sarah as a young woman by Stuart Newton shows her as round faced, wearing a headband, with a slightly distrusting smile. In the Gambardella portrait painted later in life which hangs in my front room she seems rather dower – she keeps her lips pursed, probably missing some teeth; the blue ribbons in her hair were only revealed when the Keck’s cleaned the painting back in the seventies. Nevertheless, she must have been game. She accompanied Jim back to Haiti even though passage was not always assured; the eldest son of Jim’s sister Elizabeth had just sailed for the island that winter, but the ship had never arrived.

At Cap François Jim, who had drilled his youthful platoon in front of the garrisoned Redcoats, and his younger brother Sam were Captain and Lieutenant of the American "Corps de Garde ". This quasi-military position was a social distinction, but also a practical move, as the colony’s wealth was derived from the forced labor of five-hundred-thousand African slaves. Without the strong arm of the French military, and the para-military “gardes”, the colony’s agricultural economy could never survive.

The young married couple travelled between Boston and Cap François. In 1791 they were on the island with their infant son James when they travelled by coach to visit several plantations on the fertile plain which spread inland from the Cape. When they arrived at the Rouvry plantation, The Marquis was in the mountains on business, and their hostess was visiting a neighboring plantation, but expected them for dinner. When Madame finally arrived she was in a state of great alarm. The whole country was in revolt; the slaves were burning and looting everything. At their plantation, evidently, the slaves did not yet know about the uprising, but it was clear there was no time to lose. A plan was made to leave at midnight. As they sat down to dinner set on a rich service of plate, the boisterous noises outside made it clear news had arrived of the day’s events. Dinner was soon over; little food had been eaten in the silent gloom.

Madame de Rouvry packed up her plate. It took some money to bribe the driver to harness his horses, but just before twelve the three carriages were brought to the door. The Marchioness, her beautiful sixteen year old daughter, and her instructress were in the first carriage, with the plate; Sarah and infant son James, with Madame de Rouvry and her child, were in the second carriage; Mr. Perkins, and a lady who had escaped another plantation, were in a phaeton; and Mr. Baury was on horseback. James and Baury were both armed and agreed to shoot the drivers if they hesitated, and mount the horses and drive the carriages themselves.

They reached a village where the houses were all lit up and the slaves howling and dancing. The carriages came to a stop, but Madame de Rouvry ordered her driver to proceed instantly, or she would have him punished in the severest manner. The man hesitated, but her voice and Baury’s sword prompted him to spur the horses, and they proceeded so quickly that the insurgents who were all in the houses dancing and beating drums never discovered them.
They arrived safely at Fort Dauphin about six o'clock in the morning where they secured a boat and sailed for the Cape. Sarah spread a mattress on the ballast stones of the vessel, and she and her young son lay down to rest during the passage.

After the island finally fell to the slave revolt in 1798, James and Sarah Perkins brought their faithful Negro slave, Moose, who had saved their lives, back with them when they returned to the United States. Moose received his freedom; but the only use he ever wished to make of it was “to spend it in loving service to his former master, and all who were connected with him. He was a great favorite with young and old; and no wonder, for, to the day of his death at an advanced age, their joys and sorrows were his own.”

Sarah was the “Glue” that held the Perkins clan together until her death in 1841. She outlived James by almost twenty years, living in Pine Bank, their country home on Jamaica Pond. She looked tough, but she took care of her friends and relatives. Her Trumbull cousins in Worcester were not as well off as the Perkins, but Sarah purchased a home for them, and made sure the deed was conveyed through the female line.