Description:
In 1918, Montague, Massachusetts, resident, Frank Cross, made this model of the Ensign John Sheldon (1658-ca. 1733) house, built facing the Deerfield town common in 1699, as a special commission from Mrs. Matilda Strange Hyde of Deerfield, proprietor of The Olde Deerfield Doll House. The Ens. John Sheldon house, later known as "the Old Indian House" survived the fire that leveled most of the town during the 1704 raid on Deerfield, and stood behind the meeting house until it was torn down in 1848. Fragments of it were saved, including the front door, a bracket and fragments of the decorative gable-end boards attched to the frame at the roofline. This model is one of three known examples made by Cross—the others are in the collection of Memorial Hall, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association and the Newark Museum. The 1916 “Franklin County Suburban Directory,” listed Cross as a “mechanic” and an undated directory of Montague handcrafts, printed by Carl Rollins, described him as a maker of hand looms, many of which were “in use for both cloth & rug weaving, together with other machines of his manufacture used in hand weaving.” Correspondence on file at the Newark Museum, between Mrs. Hyde and John Cotton Dana, donor of the Newark Museum model, dated 1917 and 1918 indicates that Mrs. Hyde commissioned the models partly to aid in the rehabilitation of the elderly Mr. Cross, who had gone deaf and blind in one eye. In one of the letters, she indicates that Cross died on August 7, 1918, the victim of a freight train accident. The model shows the house with off-center chimney; wood-shingle roof; overhung front supported with 4 shaped brackets; nailed-board front door modeled with the hatchet hole chopped in the original during the 1704 raid on Deerfield; the scalloped barge-boards on the gable ends, and single-story “salt-box” rear. As there is no access to the interior of this model, the model was not intended to serve as a doll house. A postcard, ca. 1930, depicting the Memorial Hall model in this object’s curatorial file bears the inscription “Model of the Olde Indian House designed by Matilda S. Hyde, executed by Frank Cross. For ten years on view at the Olde Deerfield Doll House, now a part of the Colonial exhibition at Deerfield Memorial Hall, Deerfield, Mass.” See also postcard 2002.28.16, "Old Indian Doll House" for same.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2000.14 |
