By, For, and Of the People: Folk Art and Americana in the DAR Museum

Sally Cook is a painter and poet and both seem melded into this 1969 painting, "Waiting for the Woodcock." This pastoral scene evokes memory and the passing of time, but it is also a tribute to the artist’s mother. Two houses are focal points for the child in the lower left who represents the artist. She stands below the house built by her great grandfather, his brother, and her father in 1907. In the upper right Sally Cook painted her grandfather’s summer house purchased in 1911 and later owned by her parents. In her remembrance of woodcocks in this idyllic setting, she included one in her landscape.

Whether the owner, Blanche Ransom Coleman Parker, made this quilt is unclear. What is clear is the dynamic impact of the quilt’s composition: bold color, and the sense of birds in flight. Blanche Parker was a skilled seamstress and devoted educator first in Carroll County, Tennessee and then in Missouri. In 1938 she came back to Carroll County as a Jeanes Supervisor, an African-American teacher chosen by individual southern county school superintendents for teaching and leadership skills. After her death in 1981, this quilt was found among her possessions.

Crow schoolgirls in Lodge Grass, Montana made this buckskin and cotton doll for their teacher, Miss Augusta Curtis, in the early 1900's. The doll is displayed with a knitted Uncle Sam doll from about 1890 and a toy trolley from 1898.

This late-18th-century sampler by Massachusetts schoolgirl Nancy Tucker has been one of the most researched and published in the DAR Museum collection, with its intriguing inscription, "This Work In Hand my Friend May have / When I am Dead And in My Grave." Despite much effort, we have learned only what Nancy’s stitches reveal.

Fraktur is a type of German calligraphy that was used to present family records of birth, marriage, and death. Hearts provide the dominant theme of this baptismal prayer for Michael Mertz, the son of Sebastian and Magdalena Mertz, born October 1, 1775, probably in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Joseph Lochbaum, who created this fraktur, is often called “The Nine Hearts Artist” because of his frequent use of this lovely decorative motif.

In 1953, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, known as Grandma Moses, presented this painting to the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution after joining the DAR the previous year. She was ninety-three when she painted the "Battle of Bennington" as she imagined the battle scene. In 1954, she wrote to the New York State Conference, DAR, "Add to that, the fact that Archibald Robertson, my great grandfather, on whose line I joined, was a soldier at the Battle of Bennington..." Grandma Moses was an extraordinary woman who overcame many hardships to begin her career at age seventy-seven.

An unknown schoolgirl probably painted this somewhat defiant allegorical "America," between 1801 and 1840. The painting is based on an English print, "America," published in London in 1801, as is a silk-embroidered version also in the DAR Museum collection.

In the twenty-first century, we marvel at these intricate hand-cut pictures, called papyrotamia, but in 19th-century America, many had mastered this skill. The bald eagle with widespread wings has long been one of the most revered patriotic images. Here with the nation’s flag in the background, the eagle grasps a snake in his beak. The letters across the lower border spell "VICTORY."

The Parsons brothers, John, Stephen, and Nathaniel, were born in Miami, Missouri. Three days after the birth of Stephen in 1849, their mother died. For a more stable life, the boys were sent to live with their aunt and uncle on a farm in Paris, Maine. Their Aunt Apphia Parsons arranged for this portrait to be painted by the young artist, John S. Hillman (1828-1854).

Dovetailed construction and the hammered surface of burnished copper define this graceful Philadelphia teakettle, made in about 1800.

This trivet was made in the 19th century, possibly in Pennsylvania. The heart shape was a popular design in nineteenth-century domestic ironware.

Mount Walla was a house built about 1780 by John Scott who owned Scott’s Landing Ferry on the James River. Various owners including Peter Field Jefferson, great nephew of Thomas Jefferson, followed. In 1966, Mildred Conrey Brown, an Illinois widow with almost fifty years experience as a collector and antiques dealer, purchased the property and furnished her home with her diverse collection. She became a member of the Albemarle Chapter, DAR and a dear friend of many members. At her death in 1984 she left her home and its contents as a bequest to the chapter. At the Albemarle Chapter’s invitation, the DAR Museum staff chose 304 objects from Mount Walla’s contents for the museum collection, including this painted side chair, made in about 1850 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Standing upright on a copper sphere, the rooster with its three-dimensional lead body and cut sheet iron tail feathers seems almost ready to strut and crow. The wooden base was probably added in the 20th century. Donation information and research with a Watertown, Massachusetts historian reveals the weathervane was mounted atop St. John’s Methodist Church in Watertown during the mid-nineteenth century.

Folk artist Ruth Henshaw Bascom kept a diary throughout her life, recording her travels, her subjects, and often the details of her work. Because of these accounts, we know she drew Joseph Knowlton’s portrait on March 4, 1830 and finished the portrait of his sister, Frances Knowlton Chickering, between March 4 and March 8, 1830, both in Phillipston, Massachusetts. The portraits descended in the Chickering family until purchased by the DAR Museum.