Throughout the year, the Marblehead Museum hosts several historical walking tours to educate the community about the town’s rich history. The most recent, a woman’s history tour led by Jarrett Zeman, took place on Thursday night, July 18. A group of around 20 ventured from the edge of Washington Street into the Old and Historic District, as they learned about influential Marblehead women of the past.
From the 1860s to the 1920s, Marblehead took part in its fair share of reform movements. While the focus remained on women’s history, the tour incorporated many other topics as well, such as at its first stop at a former Underground Railroad location. The Dodge House, located just off Atlantic Street, is named for its former inhabitants Simeon and Betsy Dodge, a Marblehead couple who fed, clothed and housed escaped enslaved people along their journeys to freedom in either Canada or England.
The tour continued to Abbot Hall, where an important slice of suffragist history occurred back in 1915. With its rallies, speeches and feminist meetings, early 20th-century Marblehead was the home of the largest population of suffragists in Essex County. Influential women who came to speak at Abbot Hall included Rose Livingston, an activist who railed against prostitution and human trafficking; and Margaret Folly, a suffragist known as the “heckler in chief” for her tactic of dealing with anti-suffrage politicians.
Modern Marbleheaders might be more familiar with the youngest suffragette in the Marblehead Equal Suffrage League, a 19-year-old school teacher named Lizzy Coffin, for whom the Coffin School is named.
After Abbot Hall, the group traveled only a few steps before they arrived at their next stop. As it turns out, the home of Samuel and Emma Gregory is remarkable for more than just its resemblance to a miniature Jeremiah Lee Mansion. In the 1850s, the husband and wife were known for their intense spiritualism, and frequently hosted seances in their living room. The most famous outcome of one of these spiritual journeys was when one of the participants claimed to be possessed by the ghost of Benjamin Franklin.
Further stops included the location of an old shoemaking factory. Back in the height of Marblehead’s shoemaking empire, women factory workers made only $4 to the $8 that men made. After participating in a nationwide strike that lasted several weeks, these women workers marched all the way from Marblehead to Lynn to add their voices to a rally calling for better hours and pay. Sadly, women did not receive pay raises for their efforts, but their employers did agree to recognize women-led unions.
The brief overview of Marblehead’s history of working class women continued at Maddie’s Sail Loft, which was once a laundry where many Irish and Canadian immigrants worked to support their families.
Ironically, another stop on the tour revealed that at one point in time, Maddie’s wouldn’t have been nearly as popular in Marblehead. Thanks in part to the somewhat unorthodox methods of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, including staging anti-alcohol plays and chopping down apple trees to prevent the brewing of cider, Marblehead was considered a temperance town for much of the early 20th century.
Just as the sun was beginning to go down, the tour rounded out at an inconspicuous house on Washington Street. It was soon revealed that the building stands on the spot of a razed lyceum, a multipurpose structure once used as a mixture between a museum and a theater in many American towns. The lyceum held all sorts of events and activities, from political speeches to traveling performances to silent movie screenings.
A particular point of pride for Marblehead back in the silent era was a movie called “The Pride of the Clan,” for which an entire Scottish village was built on the beach near Castle Rock. Whereas nowadays we can sit on our couches and watch Adam Sandler movies for little glimpses of our town, movie fans of the 1910s had Mary Pickford on Marblehead Neck.
The Marblehead Museum includes many historical properties around town and hosts multiple tours throughout the year to further their mission of making Marblehead “a museum without walls.” Other tours to look out for include a Sports and Leisure walking tour and a Black History tour.
