Woodcut of the Week: Whale

Parson Fisher labored for several years carving the woodblocks for his 1833 book, Scripture Animals, the culmination of a life long fascination with the depiction of flora and fauna.

Jonathan Fisher's Melons

In his journals, Jonathan Fisher often mentions the seasonal pleasure of eating melons he grew on his farm.

A few years ago, we heard that the late Lawris Closson, a farmer in North Blue Hill, was still growing melons from seed that descended from Fisher's, given to Lawris' father by Fisher's son Willard.  Although Closson had died a couple of years before, with fingers crossed we asked his family if they had any seed.  One day, months later, his grandson, Lawris Perkins, showed up with seed, which he believed had been harvested four years before.  When the next summer came, we crossed our fingers, and planted some of the precious seed.  Ellen Best, hearing of this project, offered to also try, in a heated seed starter that she had.  Melons love hot weather, and grow luxuriantly in heat.   As it happens, last summer was the coldest and wettest in our area in recent memory.  Nevertheless, Ellen Best persevered, and planted the five seedlings that had germinated from her ration of 20 seeds.  Cold and miserable they sat, in the summer that wasn't warm, in the garden that had come to resemble a pond.  In the late summer, one day, she saw:  One of the seedlings had overcome adversity, and borne a tiny fruit.  This infant melon was nurtured and coddled, nursed through cold nights, covered before frost.  Finally the day came:  The melon was harvested. 

 

Tiny it was, never going to win a blue ribbon at the fair, but it was a melon, it was one of Fisher's prized melons, it has provided us with fresh seed, the Fisher House crew look forward better weather next summer, and to growing a patch of Parson Fisher's melons again on the farm where he grew them 200 years ago.

Update: Photos added to '6th Dining Room Chair' post

We have added two photos to our post about the Jonathan Fisher chairs.  Click here to see them.

The Fisher House Christmas Wish List: 365 days a year

We accomplish much at the Fisher House on a shoestring budget, with the help of grants and dedicated volunteers.  We do, however, still have a few dream projects and and some basic needs, so we publish this list in the hope that Santa might see it.

1. Capital gifts for our endowment fund, to secure a safe future and adequate funding for the Fisher House.  Current endowment sits at $240,000, providing only $10,000 of our annual operating budget.  The remainder must be raised by annual appeal, grants, and volunteer labor.
   
2. Painting and Object conservation.  The work of keeping the 2,000 + irreplaceable paintings, furniture, objects, books, and papers in our collection in good condition is ongoing and conservation to museum standards is expensive.  Current priorities include one of the three Jonathan Fisher self-portraits, and the pair of 18th century satin slippers worn by Fisher's mother, Katherine Avery, at her wedding to Jonathan Fisher, Sr., and the stunning Fisher card table, recently donated in memory of Lucy and William Wardwell.  Estimated costs per painting $3,000-$7,000
   
3. A new handicap access ramp and entrance steps.  The existing ramp is aging, crudely constructed, does not meet ADA standards, and is visually and physically intrusive.  As the main visitor access to the house and museum, it should be replaced.  Estimated cost:  $4,500. 
   
4. Microscopic paint analysis:  The board of the Fisher house is committed to making a long range work and furnishing plan that will return the house ever closer to its appearance during the Fisher family's occupancy before the house's bicentennial in 2014.  A critical part of this process is to have all surfaces, interior and exterior, analyzed for the composition of original paints to determine colors.  This is now the standard for historic preservation, and has produced stunning and sometimes surprising results in many sites.  With this in hand, future restorations and repairs to return the house to the appearance of old can be made with the help of modern science.  Estimated cost for entire house, interior and exterior, is approximately $8,000.  Per room, or exterior, approximately $1, 600 ea.
5. Parlor Rug.  In the collection of the Fisher House is a fragment of so-called 'striped', or 'Venetian'  carpeting woven for the house by Fisher's mother.  As part of our ongoing interpretation of the house, we would like to reproduce this carpet for use in the parlor, where Fisher inventory records indicate it was likeliest originally placed.  The rug would be reproduced by a local weaver.  The estimated cost is $3,900.
   
6. A new computer for the archives room.  The dedicated computer in the archives room, used for cataloging records, image storage, and word processing, is ten years old, and wheezes away with 2 gigabytes of hard drive.  A new computer would be more flexible, and would support updated cataloging software.  Estimated Cost:  $600-$700
7. Updated cataloging software.  The current software lacks a photo record component.  For obvious reasons, it is desirable to add image capability to our catalog files.  The software used by the Fisher House is PastPerfect, the standard for museums.  The addition of an image component is $390
8. Grounds clearance.  The long neglected grounds were found to be overgrown with an invasive species, Chinese bittersweet.  Uncontrolled, this vine completely takes over all other vegetation, and kills trees. Additionally, many trees have required removal.  We have accomplished 3/4 of this project, returning the property to mowed open fields, and exposing the remains of Fisher built stone walls in the process. The back 1/4 of the property remains almost impenetrable, and must be cleared.  Estimated cost:  $4,500.
9. Archival supplies.  An ongoing need is safe, archival standard storage materials for our collections.  A typical year's supply runs about $350.
10. Adopt an Apple Tree.  Thanks to a generous gift, the fields for the Fisher orchard have been cleared, enabling us to replant trees to a plan for his orchard drawn by Fisher in 1820.  This is one of the most interesting projects of its kind currently undertaken in Maine.  A tree may adopted for $275, covering the cost of tree and first two years of maintenance.
11. Grounds maintenance.  One year of bare bones mowing, routine trimming, and snowplowing is about $1, 850.
12. Stone walls.  The property and field are framed by stone walls, laid by Parson Fisher,  that define the farmyard, vegetable garden site, and orchard boundary.  Some are in fair condition, others completely tumbled.  Cost to repair or rebuild 200 feet of wall, $5,000
13. Front fence.  Fisher built a picket fence, mentioning the work in his diary, along the street front of the house.  Removing junk tree growth from this area has revealed his iron stakes, and gate stops for this fence, indicating the spacing of spans.  This fence would do much to giving the house and orchard the appearance of Fisher's time.  Estimated cost: $3,500
14. Exhibits:  We wish to produce a better permanent exhibit about Fisher & his immediate family, with a narrative storyboard and quality object display.  Estimated cost:  $1,200
    

Woodcut of the Week: Fisher's profile

Parson Fisher labored for several years carving the woodblocks for his 1833 book, Scripture Animals, the culmination of a life long fascination with the depiction of flora and fauna.  This is the title page illustration, in which Parson Fisher, in an unexpected bit of whimsey, has embedded his own profile in the leaves of the trees.

Larissa Vigue Picard, the Community Partnership Coordinator of the Maine Community Heritage Project, has kindly allowed us to republish her blog post about her first visit to Blue Hill after announcement of the grant.  It offers some wonderful insight about Jonathan Fisher, and conveys the exciting effect of the MCHP.

The Long View of Blue Hill
In “A Morning View of Blue Hill Village,” painted in 1824 by the town’s first minister and Renaissance man Jonathan Fisher, there is barely any water visible–just a tiny patch of the bay on the left-hand side.

 The primary focus of the image–which can be viewed on Maine Memory Network (item #19161)–is the hill. The viewer hovers above it, looking south-east down into the valley of the village and then back up the other side where Fisher’s house crests in the distance. While there are three people and a horse standing atop the hill, most of the activity of the painting is clustered in the middle, in the valley. Tiny yellow and white houses trace a rough line up the hill. Here and there, stands of trees punctuate the view.
It is a bucolic, pastoral scene going on two centuries old of a small Maine town that still regularly evokes those adjectives. Of course the ocean is right there, but it’s only an inlet. The town is tucked back away from the open sea. And the coziness of the Main Street–the way you dip into it and back out again–feels as warm and inviting a pocket.
Into such a setting many fascinating people have settled, not the least of which is Fisher himself. I learned just how fascinating he was on Wednesday, the day of the Blue Hill team’s second MCHP meeting. Prior to the meeting, team member Caroline Werth, who volunteers her time at the Fisher House Museum, offered to give me a tour of the building. (Brad Emerson, also on the team, as well as three other volunteers, offered their expertise as well.) In addition to roaming around the charming nooks and crannies of an early 19th-century house, I witnessed endless examples of Fisher’s creativity and skill.
Drawing and painting landscapes and portraits (three of himself at various ages–note the increasing wrinkles) were the tip of the iceberg. Harvard educated, Fisher also carved finely detailed woodblocks of animals to make prints, kept lovingly illustrated journals full of life details and observations of the natural world, made furniture of stunning precision and beauty, built clocks and surveying tools and his own camera obscura, tended a thriving orchard, bound his own books, made buttons and hats, and, not least, read and wrote extensively. Many of his poems, essays, and sermons survive, in addition to the journals. As the town’s first man of the cloth, he even helped found Bangor Theological Seminary.

Part of the Blue Hill Team.  Left to right, Caroline G. Werth, Jonathan Fisher House Trustee, Fred Cole, principal of Blue Hill Consolidated School, Tom Bjorkman, President of Blue HillHistorical Society, Della Martin, teacher at Blue Hill Consolidated, Rich Boulet, Director of Blue Hill Public Library
In the midst of all this, Fisher fathered nine children. That big fact reminds us that beneath the surface of every rich and compelling story, there is a back story aching to be told. Or, in this case, literally an aching back. Who was the wife who took care of the children and house so that her husband could achieve his potential? What were her interests, dreams, and ideas about the world? While not much information survives about Mrs. Fisher–especially not in the writings of Fisher himself–you can bet he was able to do what he did because she was working just as hard at at least as much.
In certain ways, this story of a Renaissance man and how he was able to do what he did in this tiny town represents the larger story of Blue Hill. Today, Blue Hill is known worldwide for its transplanted big city artists and renowned musical assets like Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival and the Bagaduce Music Lending Library. But it is also a place that grew on the backs of fisherman, shipbuilders, workers in the tourism industry, and others whose families have lived in the area for generations, long before the rusticators came north. These diverse groups still co-exist in Blue Hill and the town would not be what it is without any one of them.
And so, that’s the vantage point from where the Blue Hill team members stand–up there on the hill looking at the town as it winds its way through history. “Who are we–we who call ourselves residents of Blue Hill?” and “How did we come to where we are today?” are two of their guiding questions. They are eager to unearth the answers–not only for themselves, but for the students at four area schools that will participate in the project.
Together, they are likely to offer up a virtual landscape just as rich and colorful as Reverand Fisher’s painted version–but one that, perhaps, reveals as much behind-the-scenes as it does on the surface.

The Maine Community Heritage Project: Promoting Community Through the Exploration of Local History

Thanks to the instigation of Tom Bjorkman of the Blue Hill Historical Society, three local organizations---The Blue Hill Historical Society, the Blue Hill Public Library, and The Jonathan Fisher Memorial, as partners, with local schools---have received a Maine Community Heritage Grant, one of five awarded in Maine this year.

Funded by a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and in partnership with the Maine State Library, MCHP fosters collaborations between historical societies, public libraries, and schools. Community teams digitize local historical collections and exhibit them with supporting text on custom-designed local history websites housed on Funded by a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and in partnership with the Maine State Library, MCHP fosters collaborations between historical societies, public libraries, and schools. Community teams digitize local historical collections and exhibit them with supporting text on custom-designed local history websites housed on Maine Memory Network

It is an exciting collaboration, and it is gratifying to see the students enthusiastic and imaginative participation.

For more information about the Maine Community Heritage Project, click here

For posts about the Blue Hill Team on the MCHP weblog, click here and here