Web and Book design, |
Click Here to return to |
|
|
Web and Book design, |
Click Here to return to |
|
OF the quaint
ancestral homes still standing in the old Granite State, none is more
picturesque or more interesting from the historical view-point than the Stark
house in the little town of Dunbarton, a place about five miles' drive out from
Concord, over one of those charming country roads, which properly make New
Hampshire the summer and autumn Mecca of those who have been "long in populous
city pent." Rather oddly, this house has, for all its great wealth of historical
interest, been little known to the general public. The Starks are a
conservative, as well as an old family, and they have never seen fit to make of
their home a public show-house. Yet those who are privileged to visit Dunbarton
and its chief boast, this famous house, always remember the experience as a
particularly interesting one. Seldom, indeed, can one find in these days a house
like this, which, for more than one hundred years; has been occupied by the
family for whom it was built, and through all the changes and chances of
temporal affairs has preserved the characteristics of revolutionary times.
Originally Dunbarton
was Starkstown. An ancestor of this family, Archibald Stark, was one of the
original proprietors, owning many hundred acres, not a few of which are still in
the Starks' possession. Just when and by whom the place received the name of the
old Scottish town and royal castle on the Clyde, no historian seems able to
state with definiteness, but that the present Dunbarton represents only a small
part of the original triangular township, all are agreed. Of the big landowner,
Archibald Stark, the General John Stark of our Revolution was a son.
Another of the
original proprietors of Dunbarton was a certain Captain Caleb Page, whose name
still clings to a rural neighbourhood of the township, a crossroads section
pointed out to visitors as Page's Corner. And it was to Elizabeth Page, the
bright and capable daughter of his father's old friend and neighbour, that the
doughty John Stark was married in August, 1758, while at
home on a furlough.
The son of this marriage was called Caleb, after his maternal grandfather,
and he it was who built the imposing old mansion of our story.
Caleb Stark was a very remarkable man. Born at Dunbarton, December 3, 1759, he was present while only a lad at the battle of Bunker Hill, standing side by side with some of the veteran rangers of the French war, near the rail fence, which extended from the redoubt to the beach of the Mystic River. In order to be at this scene of conflict, the boy had left home secretly some days before, mounted on his own horse, and armed only with a musket. After a long, hard journey, he managed to reach the Royall house in Medford, which was his father's headquarters at the time, the very night before the great battle. And the general, though annoyed at his son's manner of coming, recognised that the lad had done only what a Stark must do at such a time, and permitted him to take part in the next day's fight.
After that, there
followed for Caleb a time of great social opportunity, which transformed the
clever, but unpolished.
New Hampshire boy
into as fine a young gentleman as was to be found in the whole country. The
Royall house, it will be remembered, was presided over in the troublous war
times by the beautiful ladies of the family, than whom no more cultured and
distinguished women were anywhere to be met. And these, though Tory to the
backbone, were disposed to be very kind and gracious to the brave boy whom the
accident of war had made their guest.
So it came about
that even before he reached manhood's estate, Caleb Stark had acquired the grace
and polish of Europe. Nor was the lad merely a carpet knight. So ably did he
serve his father that he was made the elder soldier's aid-de-camp, when the
father was made a brigadier-general, and by the time the war closed, was himself
Major Stark, though scarcely twenty-four years old.
Soon after peace was
declared, the young major came into his Dunbarton patrimony, and in 1784, in a
very pleasant spot in the midst of his estate, and facing the, broad highway
leading from Dunbarton to Weare, he began to build his now famous house. It was
finished the next year, and in 1787, the young man, having been elected town
treasurer of Dunbarton, resolved to settle down in his new home, and brought
there as his wife, Miss Sarah McKinstrey, a daughter of Doctor William
McKinstrey, formerly of Taunton, Massachusetts, a beautiful and cultivated girl,
just twenty years old.
It is interesting in
this connection to note that all the women of the Stark family have been
beauties, and that they have, too, been sweet and charming in disposition, as
well as in face. The old mansion on the weare road has been the home during its
one hundred and ten years of life of several women who would have adorned, both
by reason of their personal and intellectual charms, any position in our land.
This being true, it is not odd that the country folk speak of the Stark family
with deepest reverence.
Beside building the
family homestead, Caleb Stark did two other things which serve to make him
distinguished even in a family where all were great. He entertained Lafayette,
and he accumulated the family fortune. Both these things were accomplished at
Pembroke, where the major early established some successful cotton mills. The
date of his entertainment of Lafayette was, of course, 1825, the year when the
marquis, after laying the corner-stone of our monument on Bunker Hill, made his
triumphal tour through New Hampshire.
The bed upon which
the great Frenchman slept during his visit to the Starks is still carefully
preserved, and those guests who have had the privilege of being entertained by
the present owners of the house can bear testimony to the fact that the couch is
an extremely comfortable one. The room in which this bed is the most prominent
article of furniture bears the name of the Lafayette room, and is in every
particular furnished after the manner of a sleeping apartment of one hundred
years ago. The curtains of the high bedstead, the quaint toilet-table, the
bedside table with its brass candlestick, and the pictures and the ornaments are
all in harmony. Nowhere has a discordant modern note been struck. The same thing
is true of all the other apartments in the house. The Starks have one, and all
displayed great taste and decided skill in preserving the long-ago tone that
makes the place what it is. The second Caleb, who inherited the estate in 1838,
when his father, the brilliant major, died, was a Harvard graduate, and writer
of repute, being the author of a valuable memoir of his father and grandfather.
He collected, even more than they had done, family relics of interest. When he
died in 1865, his two sisters, Harriett and Charlotte, succeeded him in the
possession of the estate.
Only comparatively
recently has this latter sister died, and the place come into the hands of its
present owner, Mr. Charles F. Morris Stark, an heir who has the traditions of
the Morris family to add to those of the Starks, being on his mother's side a
lineal descendant of Robert Morris, the great
financier of the Revolution. The present Mrs. Stark is the representative of
still another noted New Hampshire family, being the granddaughter of General
John McNeil, a famous soldier of the Granite State.
Few, indeed, are the homes in America which contain so much which, while of
intimate interest to the family, is as well of wide historical importance.
Though a home, the house has the value of a museum. The portrait of Major Stark,
which hangs in the parlour at the right of the square entrance-hall, was painted
by Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the discoverer of the electric
telegraph, a man who wished to come down to posterity as an artist, but is now
remembered by us only as an inventor.
This picture is an admirable presentation
of its
original. The gallant major looks down upon us with a person rather
above the medium in height, of a slight but muscular frame, with the short
waistcoat, the high collar, and the close, narrow shoulders of the gentleman's
costume of 1830. The carriage of the head is noble, and the strong features, the
deep-set, keen, blue eyes, and the prominent forehead, speak of courage,
intelligence, and cool self-possession.
Beside this noteworthy portrait hangs a beautiful picture of the first mistress
of this house, the Mrs. Stark who, as a girl, was Miss Sarah McKinstrey. Her
portrait shows her to have been a fine example of the blonde type of beauty. The
splendid coils of her hair are very lustrous, and the dark hazel eyes look out
from the frame with the charm and dignity of a St. Cecilia. Her costume, too, is
singularly appropriate and becoming, azure silk with great puffs of
lace around the white arms and queenly throat. The waist, girdled under the
armpits, and the long-wristed mits stamp the date 1815-21.
The portrait of General Stark, which was painted by Miss Hannah Crowninshield,
is said not to look so much like the doughty soldier as does the Morse picture
of his son, but
Gilbert
Stuart's Miss Charlotte Stark, recently deceased, shows the last daughter of the
family to have fairly sustained in her youth the reputation for beauty which
goes with the Stark women.
Beside the portraits, there are in the house many other choice and valuable
antiques. Among these the woman visitor notices with particular interest the fan
that was once the property of Lady Pepperell,
who
was a daughter, it will be remembered, of the Royall family, who were
so kind to Major Caleb Stark in his youth.
And to the man who loves historical things, the cane presented to General Stark
when he was a major, for valiant conduct in defence of Fort William Henry, will
be of especial interest. This cane is made from the bone of a whale and is
headed with ivory. On the mantelpiece stands another very interesting souvenir,
a bronze statuette of Napoleon I., which Lafayette brought with him from France
and presented to Major Stark.
Apropos of this there is an amusing story. The major was a great admirer of the
distinguished Bonaparte, and made a collection of Napoleonic busts and pictures,
all of which, together with the numerous other effects of the Stark place, had
to be appraised at his death. As it happened, the appraiser was a countryman of
limited
intelligence, and, when he was told to put down "twelve Bonapartes," recorded
"twelve pony carts," and it was thus that the item appeared on the legal paper.
The house itself is
a not unworthy imitation of an English manor-house, with its aspect of old-time
grandeur and picturesque repose. It is of wood, two and a half stories high,
with twelve dormer windows, a gambrel roof, and a large two-story L. In front
there are two rows of tall and stately elms, and the trim little garden is
enclosed by a painted iron fence. On either side of the spacious hall, which
extends through the middle of the house, are to be found handsome trophies of
the chase, collected by the present master of. the place, who is a keen
sportsman.
A gorgeous carpet,
which dates back fifty years, having been laid in the days of the beautiful
Sarah, supplies the one bit of colour in the
parlour; while in the dining-room the rich silver and handsome mahogany testify
to the old-time glories of the place. Of manuscripts which are simply priceless,
the house contains not a few; one, over the quaint wine-cooler in the
dining-room, acknowledging, in George Washington's own hand, courtesies extended
to him and to his lady by a member of the Morris family, being especially
interesting. Up-stairs, in the sunlit hall, among other treasures, more elegant
but not more interesting, hangs a sunbonnet once worn by Molly Stark herself.
Not far off down the country road is perhaps the most beautiful and attractive
spot in the whole town, the old family burying-ground of the Starks, in which
are interred all the deceased members of this remarkable family, from the
Revolutionary Major Caleb and his wife down. Here, with grim, towering Kearsarge
standing ever like a sentinel, rests under the yew-trees the dust of this great
family's honoured dead.
Click the book image to
continue to the next chapter
