Category Archives: History

The Shelburne Museum

 

 

Shelburne Museum

S.S. Ticonderoga steamship

The Shelburne Museum

Located in Vermont’s scenic Lake Champlain Valley, The Shelburne Museum offers one of the finest, most diverse, and unconventional museums of art and Americana. Over 150,000 works are exhibited in a remarkable setting of 39 exhibition buildings, 25 of which are historic and were relocated to the Museum grounds.

Impressionist paintings, folk art, quilts and textiles, decorative arts, furniture, American paintings, and a dazzling array of 17th-to 20th-century artifacts are on view. The Shelburne Museum is home to the finest museum collections of 19th-century American folk art, quilts, 19th- and 20th-century decoys, and carriages.

Electra Havemeyer Webb

 

The Shelburne Museum

Electra Havemeyer Webb

Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960), whio founded Shelburne Museum in 1947, was a pioneering collector of American folk art. Her parents, H.O. and Louisine Havemeyer, were important collectors of European and Asian art, and she, in turn, exercised an independent eye and passion for art, artifacts, and architecture – particularly that which was distinctly American.

Mrs. Webb exercised creativity when she began collecting 18th and 19th-century buildings from around New England and New York, which were used to display the Museum’s holdings. This required moving 20 historic structures to Shelburne, Vermont. These include houses, barns, a meeting house, a one-room schoolhouse, a lighthouse, a jail, a general store, a covered bridge, and later the 220-foot steamboat Ticonderoga.

She sought to create “an educational project, varied and alive.” A visitors experience at the Shelburne Museum is unique: remarkable collections exhibited in a village-like setting of historic New England architecture, accented by a landscape that includes a circular formal garden, herb and heirloom vegetable gardens, and perennial gardens.

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“A Collection of Collections”

 

Shelburne Museum

Colchester Reef Lighthouse

The closing of one of the Webb’s homes unintentionally gave birth to the museum. The question of what would become of her collections of cigar store Indians, hunting decoys, and weather vanes had to be settled. Webb’s museum quickly became a haven for the handmade objects of another era. A two hundred year old tavern houses one of the finest collections of weathervanes, trade signs, and primitive portraits on the continent. A rambling old farmhouse is filled with mochaware, pewter, and staffordshire. The finest collection of carriages and sleighs in North America rests in a unique horseshoe barn. Period homes, filled with outstanding collections of early American furniture and accessories, dot the grounds.

Rather than confine her eclectic collections to a single modern gallery, Webb chose to create an institution that would showcase her “collection of collections” in fine examples of early American homes and public buildings. The entire museum reflects Electra Webb’s passion for American art and design, she treasured a stunning variety of objects.

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The Shelburne Museum’s collections, educational programs, special events, workshops, activities, demonstrations and special exhibitions offer new perspectives on four centuries of art and culture, providing a museum experience unlike any other.

SHELBURNE MUSEUM
6000 Shelburne Road, PO Box 10
Shelburne, VT 05482
802-985-3346

http://shelburnemuseum.org

Related Articles About The Shelburne Museum:

Steamboats on Lake Champlain

Lake Champlain Steamboats

Steamboats on Lake Champlain

Steamships on Lake Champlain

Steamboats on Lake Champlain In 1809, about two hundred years after Samuel de Champlain first saw the lake that would later bear his name, the steamboat Vermont was launched. The Vermont was a new kind of vessel – not powered by paddles, oars, wind, or horses. It was the power of steam that moved this large ship around the lake. The Vermont was the first steamboat to begin commercial service on any lake in the world, and with its launching it changed the course of lake travel and began what would be almost 150 years of steamboats on Lake Champlain.

Although waterways were also used by sailing sloops, barges, and ferries, steamships proved to be the quickest mode of water transportation. With the linking of Lake Champlain to the Hudson River via the Champlain Canal in 1823 water traffic coming and going from Vermont and the Adirondack Coast increased dramatically. Steamships became bigger and more luxurious, though not always more comfortable. In addition in the early days of railroads in the North Country, steamboats were an essential link in connecting rail lines on both sides of Lake Champlain.

In 1825 the one-way fare between Burlington and Port Kent on the steamer General Greene was $2.00 for a “four wheel pleasure carriage on springs, drawn by two horses, including the driver.” An ox, horse, or person traveling alone paid only 50 cents. A ferry ride between the same two cities today costs $17.50 for a person with a car and $4.95 if a person is traveling alone (Lake Champlain Transportation Company).

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The Rise and Fall of Steam Transportation

During the early and mid-19th century, Lake Champlain became increasingly important, linking major urban centers to the north and south by using the lake as a thoroughfare. Steam powered boats provided faster and cheaper transport on the lake. In the 1790s, Samuel Morey, a Vermont inventor created a prototype steam engine for boats. There were also many other people, including Robert Fulton,  working on this technology at the time. After interuption by the Civil War steamboating thrived again, but by the 1870s railroads had become more efficient modes of transport and gradually caused the retirement of almost all the steamboats on Lake Champlain.

Steamboats on Lake Champlain

Champlain II – aground near Westport, NY

Steamboat travel was not without its share of accidents. On September 5, 1918, in the middle of the night, a fire broke out in the pantry of the Phoenix. All but six people aboard escaped. The burning ship sank off the Colchester Reef. The Phoenix was not the only boat to run into problems. In July of 1875 passengers on the steamer Champlain were suddenly awakened. Pilot Eldredge was at the ship’s wheel when the steamer traveling fast, ran right into high rocky land near Westport, New York. When second pilot Rockwell rushed on deck to see what had happened. Eldredge calmly asked him, “Can you account for my being on the mountain?” Rockwell answered, “Yes, Mr. Eldredge, you were asleep.” Some say that Eldredge had been taking morphine to relieve the pain caused by gout, and that this contributed to the accident.

Despite occasional mishaps resulting from unattended candles left burning in the ships’ pantries or sleeping pilots, people continued to use the steamboats on Lake Champlain in great numbers until they were replaced by railroads and automobiles.

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How do steamboats work?

Steam is water that has been vaporized. Water is heated until the liquid becomes an invisible, odorless gas. It looks whitish and cloudy because there are tiny droplets of liquid water mixed in with the vaporized water, or steam. When water becomes steam it increases in volume 1,600 times. The pressure generated by this enormous increase in volume can be harnessed to operate mechanical devices.

Steamboats on Lake Champlain

Image courtesy of Steamboats.com

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Power Plant

The heart of the steamboat is the steam engine. Many different designs and variations of steam engines were developed and tried during the era of steam ships, but the basic steam engine invented by James Watt was the most important design.

First, water is fed to a coal or wood-fired boiler, which heats it up until it produces steam. The steam is then fed into a piston cylinder; the pressure generated pushes the piston up to the top of its stroke. At the top, a valve is opened in the side of the cylinder  venting out the steam. The valve drops down, and the whole cycle starts again.

Paddle Wheel

Steamboats on Lake Champlain could be driven by screws like most modern ships, and some were. The typical image of a steamship, however, is of the  paddle-wheeler. These ships came in two varieties: the stern-wheeler – with a single wheel at the stern of the boat, and the side-wheeler, with a wheel at either side. These wheels were large and fitted with paddle blades along the outside. Motive power to the boat was produced by pushing these blades through the water. Side-wheelers could also use their paddles to turn by powering one wheel and stopping or reversing the other.

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The Ticonderoga

In 1906, the side-wheeler Ticonderoga was completed in the shipyards at Shelburne Harbor on Lake Champlain by the Champlain Transportation Company, the oldest steam company in the world. The “Ti”, as it was called, was the last steamship built for Lake Champlain travel. At 200-feet long the Ticonderoga was grand. It had a large dining room, carpeted halls filled with plush chairs, a barber shop, purser’s office, and a promenade deck. The Ti held 1,200 people and cruised at 17 miles per hour. For 47 years, this steel hulled side-wheeler cruised the length and breadth of Lake Champlain carrying passengers, freight and even the automobiles. First in service on the lake as a commercial ferry, she was later used as a tourist vessel until 1955, when the Shelburne Museum began the huge job of moving the steamer to its new home. The Ti was the last of the steamboats on Lake Champlain.

By 1950, the aging steamboat was no longer a paying proposition and seemed destined to be broken up for its value as scrap metal. If it had not been for the vigorous action of a citizens’ committee, led by Ralph Nading Hill of Burlington, the Ti would, today, be just a memory. Under the auspices of the Burlington Junior Chamber of Commerce and later, the Shelburne Museum, the Ti remained afloat four more years as a tourist vessel. But the problems of maintaining the old boat through autumn hurricanes and winter snow and ice, of cleaning, repairing and licensing the ancient boilers, and of finding trained crewmen, proved a losing battle. The decision to move the Ti to the Shelburne Museum’s grounds seemed the best way to avert disaster and to preserve the boat for future generations.

Steamboats on Lake Champlain

It took 65 days to move the Ti the two miles from Shelburne Bay to the museum. A large work crew hauled the boat from the bay onto a carriage fitted with railway wheels. Then the Ti traveled overland on railroad tracks. You can visit the newly restored Ticonderoga today to get an idea of what lake travel was like in the early 1900s. Call the Shelburne Museum for information regarding hours and admission fees: (802) 985-3346.

 

Battle of Plattsburgh relic still stored in Whitehall shed

This article by Chris Carola on the first U.S. Navy ship named the Ticonderoga first appeared on the Press-Republican

Battle of Plattsburgh relic still stored in Whitehall shed

ALBANY — The upstate New York village that bills itself as the birthplace of the U.S. Navy hasn’t done much to preserve one of the service’s oldest warship relics: the hull of a schooner that was the first in a long line of American vessels to carry the name Ticonderoga.

The wooden remains of the War of 1812 ship are displayed in a long, open-sided shed on the grounds of the Skenesborough Museum in Whitehall. They’ve been stored there since being raised from the southern end of Lake Champlain by a local historical group more than 50 years ago. Now, with the approach of 200th anniversary of the battle at which the first Ticonderoga gained its fame, a maritime historian is hoping something can be done to stem the deterioration of a rare naval artifact.

“It was recovered for all the right reasons but before we knew all the implications of a shipwreck and bringing it up into an air environment,” said Arthur Cohn, senior adviser and special projects developer at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vt.

Cohn has suggested to museum officials that the hull needs be stored in an enclosed, climate-controlled building with interpretive displays telling the vessel’s story. But the museum’s director said such a project would be cost-prohibitive for her organization and for Whitehall.

“That would take more money than anyone in the Village of Whitehall could put together,” Carol Greenough said.

In 1776, during the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold oversaw the building of a small fleet of vessels in what is now Whitehall. That October, he led this ragtag flotilla north to Valcour Island off Plattsburgh, where the outgunned Americans were defeated but forced the British to put off their invasion of New York until the following year. Roadside signs in Whitehall tout the village’s claim as the birthplace of the U.S. Navy, a distinction that’s been claimed by several New England communities.

SANK INTO BAY

The Ticonderoga started out as a merchant steamer before the U.S. Navy bought it while it was still under construction. The Navy completed it as a schooner, armed it with more than a dozen heavy cannon and launched the vessel as the Ticonderoga in May 1814.

Four months later, on Sept. 11, the Ticonderoga was part of the American fleet that defeated the British at the Battle of Plattsburgh on the lake’s northern end. The U.S. victory stopped the Redcoats from advancing farther into New York and ended their efforts to invade from the north.

Afterward, the ship and several others were sent south to Whitehall, where they were anchored in a southern extremity of Lake Champlain known as East Bay. The Navy removed the Ticonderoga’s rigging and fittings, and a decade later it was deemed unworthy of repair and sold. The ship eventually sank into the bay, its upper structure disappearing after years of exposure to wind, waves and ice.

Four other Navy warships have carried the name Ticonderoga, including a World War II aircraft carrier that saw action in the Pacific.

New York has no plans to preserve the Ticonderoga, but local entities could apply for matching funding for such a project, according to Mark Peckham of the State Parks Department.

The locations of several British and American shipwrecks from the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 have been found in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain, but the Ticonderoga remains one of a handful of warships from those conflicts that’s easily accessible to the public, Peckham said.

“This has survived better than most,” he said.

People In the History of Lake Champlain

People Who Shaped the History of Lake Champlain

people in the history of Lake Champlain

Samuel de Champlain

The history of Lake Champlain is rich and varied due to its key location. From pre-colonial civilizations, through the military history of the French and Indian, Revolutionary War and The War of 1812 and through the commercial and recreational eras, Lake Champlain has been appreciated, used and fought over by many different people for many different reasons. A better understanding of where we came from will help us to create a better future for ourselves and Lake Champlain.

The history of the Lake Champlain region is full of explorers, adventurers, military heroes and traitors, inventors, farmers, artists and political leaders. Here we look at some of the people who shaped the Lake Champlain Basin.

 

 

Jim Millard’s America’s Historic Lakes– The Lake Champlain and Lake George Historical Site is a wonderful resource about Lake Champlain’s history, as well as that of the Lake George and the Richelieu River regions.