Episode 03: The Sound of Silence

In this episode, Caitlin and Francesgrace examine about the lives, deaths, graves, and legacies of Isabella Stewart Gardener, the philanthropist, and Mary Ann Lippitt, the oralism advocate.

LINK TO SHOW NOTES

Season 1. Episode 3. The Sound of Silence

Caitlin: Here we are for episode three, it's me. I'm Caitlin and you are who? 

Frances: Francesgrace. 

Caitlin: And we are here talking to you today about those who have died and how we're helping their stories live on. I'm super excited about today, Frances. Do you know why? 

Frances: Uh, I'm also super excited, but why are you excited?

Caitlin: Because I think this is the first time that I'm starting the podcast, not talking about someone that I didn't like or don't like.

Frances: Fair.

Caitlin: So it's like…this is a new optimistic side of me. Hello world! We've arrived here. 

Frances: I like it.

Caitlin: Yeah. It's not going to stick around for long. Let's be honest. All right. So. The person that I picked today is actually a new one for me. So we're going to consider this one to be…a New England grave. I tried to think of like a New England pun.

No, it's just not going to work. I tried. Someone out there, send me something. But this one's so fun for me because I didn't know who this person was. I had never heard of them. And… Basically the pandemic hits and there was this documentary released on Netflix called This Is A Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist.

Frances: Yes!

Caitlin: I don't know if you remember this, Frances, but this is the art documentary that had me texting you at nearly midnight one night and was like: so is there a mob? 

Frances: Oh, I definitely remember that because I was like: I'm a little confused, but yes, there is. 

Caitlin: You were just kind of like LOL and then spent, I don't know, like 20 minutes explaining to me that the mob is a thing and it was just like, oh my sweet Southern heart. Anyway. So as you all have probably guessed, we are going to be talking about Isabella Stewart, Gardner whose museum was the subject of this documentary. I also want to say that I had been saying her name incorrectly for about a year. So I would like to give a shout out to every single person who let me say that incorrectly without correcting me. Thanks. 

Frances: What were you saying? 

Caitlin: I completely had her confused with like three different people. I think I called her Asa Gardner one day. And it was actually my good friend, Katie, who was like, who is that? And I was like the, the documentary lady. And she was like, oh, oh, sweet summer child type of… so anyway, I knew nothing about this woman.

Okay. I have to admit, I don't want to spoil it. I'm going to get right into it. I'm a fan. I might be obsessed with this woman. Let's talk about it. 

Frances: Absolutely. 

Caitlin: So she's originally born in New York city. Of course, birth date of 1840. Her family was again, of course, very affluent. And while she did go to school in the United States states, she has spent time in Paris and of course traveling abroad. 

Frances: As you do. 

Caitlin: As we all want to do. It actually like made me think a lot of The Gilded Age. Cause I've been forcing myself to watch that. 

So she meets her husband while she abroad, which is perfect. 

Frances: Right? 

Caitlin: Best love story. His name is Jack Gardner full name. John Lowell Gardner Jack is a nickname.

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: So they get married a few days before she turned 20. And her wedding gift from her father was that he gave her and Jack a home in Boston's back bay, which was where he was from…  Jack was from not her. Best wedding gift. 

Frances: Yeah.

Caitlin: Just…just, you know, oh man. Anyway, the year now is 1860, so she's grown up. She's traveled. She's had a very good education and she's married now. Now, we do have to get dark before we get a little better. Sorry, everyone. 1863, they have their first baby. His name was John Lowell Gardner the third. And they called him Jackie. Aww. Un-oh. 

Yeah. Sorry. He catches pneumonia and he dies before he turns two. 

Frances: Oh.

Caitlin: She gets pregnant again, but she does have a miscarriage and her health takes a steep, steep decline, which the past three people I've talked about now on this podcast have all had a steep decline in health, by the way.

Frances: Yeah. I'm sensing a pattern. 

Caitlin: Yeah. What? So I have to admit that I am not entirely sure what poor health is at this point. There are some people have indicated that she had to be taken aboard the ship to Europe, which was supposed to be her cure or her treatment was going abroad. But they were saying that they had, she had to be taken up on a stretcher.

Frances: Oh. 

Caitlin: Yeah. Like she couldn't even walk on the boat. 

Frances: That's really poor health. 

Caitlin: Yeah. Which puts the puzzle here. I mean, I get about to go off on a tangent. I'm sorry, but it's 1867. They spend a year abroad and suddenly she's just like better. 

Frances: Did they see an experimental doctor or go to…?

Caitlin: They just traveled. 

Frances: Oh. Okay. 

Caitlin: So makes me believe it may be was, you know, 

Frances: Grief? 

Caitlin: More mental health, but you know, she did have miscarriages.

She obviously could not maybe get on the boat. I mean, that's, it's speculation, but anyway, something happened and she got better while she's traveling. She's writing these super, super elaborate journals. She's keeping scrapbooks. 

Frances: Oh, nice. 

Caitlin: Yeah. Everything about this is so cool. She really like finds herself on these trips.

And another thing that I absolutely love about it is that she's with her husband, right? So they're growing through this together. They’re like having these amazing adventures and dreams together, they come back to Boston and this is when you see her start to thrive. This is where she becomes this sort of socialite.

But I want to say this is that, you know, when I had first heard about Isabella Stewart Gardner, I had heard of her as a socialite. And she was so inspiring and she would bring so many people into conversations and she seemed to be kind of this light that a lot of people were just drawn to…So don't discount her for that, because she's brilliant. 

Let's talk about this: 1878. So we have jumped some time, now. She goes to a reading that's hosted by Charles Elliot Norton, who is the first professor of art history at Harvard. 

Frances: Is that like the Norton collection? 

Caitlin: Oh, oh yeah, probably we should. We're going to fact check that one, everyone. 

[It is not. The Norton Anthologies were done by Willian Warder Norton and his wife Mary, of W.W. Norton & Co publishing house.]

So they become friends, Isabella and Charles, and she joins the Dante Society. 

Frances: Oh, nice. 

Caitlin: Yeah. And she begins to collect rare manuscripts and books, including Dante's Inferno. 

Frances: Nice. 

Caitlin: And so she's spending her time in Boston society, talking about books and falling in love with art and living the life. So she continues to travel.

I mean, obviously I haven't read her journals yet. I'm planning on it because of how much I love this woman, but it's like every single time she finds a new art piece or she finds an artist or she finds a writer, she kind of draws them into this beautiful life that she's envisioning. They… she and her husband, they meet famous artists, writers, and they're known for their social connections and they spend a lot.

And I mean, a lot of time in Venice - this is important. I will say, I don't mean to totally gloss over this, but her dad died. Sad, but it's of old age, and he leaves her over a million dollar inheritance. 

Frances: Wow. 

Caitlin: So… I just going to go ahead and say, cause I am one for calling out privilege when you have privilege. She probably could not be Isabella Stewart Gardner, if she didn't have that money. Or… at least the… she wouldn't have the museum. So let's keep talking about that. She and Jack kind of have this shared vision, this shared goal, this shared want to start their own art museum. And so they start buying pieces. As they're traveling, they buy a lot of impressive pieces.

Most of them were stolen. We'll get to that in a second, but they have a very impressive art collection. And then Jack dies of a stroke. 

Frances: Oh… 

Caitlin: It's completely sudden it's 1898. And she realizes ostensibly that like he's gone and they can't have this dream together. So she's still going to follow through on it.

Frances: Good. I mean, obviously it happened, but also yay. 

Caitlin: Yeah, no, I like…you know, we rallied, you know? 

Frances: Yeah. 

So she builds her new home…home museum. Home museum? Now let's combine those two: homeseum. There we go. 

Frances: I like it. 

Caitlin: And it's based on the architecture that they've seen in Venice. 

Frances: Oh! Oh, yeah. That explains lot.

Caitlin: It's supposed to be like a Venetian. 

Frances: Mhmm.

Caitlin: So she populates it with the collection that she and her husband have curated and been meticulous about and love. And it opens to the public in 1903. 

Frances: Wow. That's way earlier than I thought it was. 

Caitlin: Yeah, no, it's, it's been around for a long time. 

Frances: Yikes! 

Caitlin: Look at the opening. The Boston symphony…like some of the main orchestra chairs came in and played.
Frances: Nice. 

Caitlin: She is alive for almost another two decades. 

Frances: Oh, wow. 

Caitlin: Yeah, no, she has a very long, amazing life where she continues to just be herself. That's one of my favorite things about her and that's kind of what made me fall in love with her is that she's herself and she's unapologetically herself.

She loves art. She loves books. She loves travel. She loves adventure. She loves being this person and she continues to do so. She does have a stroke in 1919. Remember that is what killed her husband. And she has a series of them until she dies in 1924.

Frances: Oh.

Caitlin: She is age 84. So that's a really long life. I want to share a couple of quotes that I have found about her.

So this one is according to the Boston Women's Heritage Trail: “Her motto through life, which appears above the central portrait of the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum was: c’est mon plaisir. It is my pleasure.” And it really just seemed like everyone loved her too. So here here's another one of my favorites that I found about her.

A Boston reporter said this of her and it is quoted on the museum's website. So there's my source. “Mrs. Jack Gardner is one of the seven wonders of Boston.”

Frances: Hah!

Caitlin: “There is nobody like her in any city in this country. She is a millionaire Bohemian. She is the leader of the smart set, but she often leaves where none dare follow. She imitates nobody. Everything she does is novel and original.”

Frances: Nice.

Caitlin: I love this woman. I also want to say in her lifetime, she was painted multiple times by very famous artists, such as Anders Zorn and John Singer Sargent. 

Frances: Oh, I love him. 

Caitlin: His… his portrait, especially of hers. Breathtaking. There are there, I think there's one or two, but there's, there's one in particular that just like mouth to the floor.

Frances: Is that up at the Gardener? 

Caitlin: I'm not sure I'm going to… I'm actually going next weekend. So I'm gonna…I'm going to take all the pictures and share them with all of you. 

Frances: Yes. 

Caitlin: The thing I want everyone to know about Isabella is that she opens this museum and she does something kind of bad-ass. She leaves all of her money to keep the museum running with…with…with! a rule.

Nothing can be changed in the museum. Nothing can be added. Nothing could be taken away. They do have exhibitions, right. But they're not permanent collections. 

Frances: I love that.

Caitlin: And so she’s…she's basically managed to keep this running with the money that she left. Again. She had no children. I will say that her husband's brother had died very young and she actually took in his three sons with her husband, Jack, and helped raise them.

Frances: Aww.

Caitlin: But so this museum has existed for well over a century and she became wildly popular in 1990 and kind of reentered the spotlight when multiple paintings were stolen from the museum in a really weird and shady way. 

Frances: This is one of my favorite stories of all time, because I love! love! art heists. 

Caitlin: I don't really understand what happened. Like I watched the documentary. Basically these guys walk in, dressed as cops and the security guards like: Yeah. That checks…that tracks out and then they're like, huh? We're going to gag you and then they steal some paintings. Like, did I get that pretty much? Right. 

Frances: Pretty much. Yeah. 

Caitlin: Yeah. And the thing is, you know, that security guard has been interviewed a bunch of times. People believe he did it. Please go watch that documentary. It's really, really interesting. I could probably give you my theories, but just to sum it up and I know that you disagree with me on this, Frances, but I think that one of the mob families, I don't know anything about the mob, please. I’m sorry. Stole the paintings and then they were somehow destroyed, but you actually think that they're just like in someone's basement.

Frances: So I went to an event at the bookstore in Providence, one of the bookstores, and the speaker was the head security guard at the Gardener in the early 2000s. He had been hired specifically to find the paintings and he wrote a book called…The yard of a heist or something like that. I can't remember. I’ll…It will be in the show notes, but he believes that he knows exactly they know exactly who stole the paintings. I don't believe it's common knowledge, but the police know who it is supposedly and…or allegedly. And he believes that they are rolled up in a tube sitting under somebody's bed or in the back of a closet somewhere because they know who did it. And they think he thinks that because the police found out, they could never retrieve or sell the paintings.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: So they just stash them somewhere and then they died. 

Caitlin: Yeah. I mean, they're all dead now. 

Frances: Yeah. So the, yeah, he thinks they're like sitting under somebody's bed or in a closet somewhere. And sometime in like 20, 30, 40, 50 years, someone will find them and be like, oh crap. 

Caitlin: I truly hope that that happens. I really, truly do. 

Frances: Me too.

Caitlin: I do want to go back to Isabella and her museum. You know, this…this Netflix documentary is really interesting. It's wonderful. It doesn't say much about her. So I will say the museum in Boston serves as not only her art museum, but also does give more information about her life as well. Operates year round.

And going back to that heist, this is one of my favorite little facts in keeping with this endowment, the painting frames…Of the paintings that were stolen are still up and they are empty. 

Frances: That is my favorite. 

Caitlin: Because I mean.. that she… They couldn't change anything. They didn't have the paintings, but they didn't technically change anything.

You know, they just walked off. I mean, they'd really walked off now for, for her burial. And this… this is another thing that actually warms my heart. She is buried in the Gardner family plot. And she is interred between her husband and her son in Mount Auburn cemetery, which is just outside of Boston. 

Frances: Oh, that's really sweet in a really sad kind of way.

Caitlin: Yeah. But I mean, at the same time, you know, she lives this fantastical life. And I think one of the things that kind of makes me love her is that she does it all while being able to kind of return home. 

Frances: Yea…

Caitlin: There's always a sense of home with her. But anyway, this is going to be my hyperfixation for the next, I don't know, six to 10 months.

Frances: Absolutely.

Caitlin: Gonna probably bring this up way too much, but she's truly amazing. I am going to her museum for the first time next weekend, and I will share pictures on our social media, but I’m… I'm truly excited to know more about this woman. She seems stunning. I think that's the best way to describe her.

Frances: The museum is absolutely gorgeous. I've been one time.

Caitlin: It’s a Venetian palace. 

Frances: Oh yeah. And the minute you said that, I was like, oooh, that explains literally everything. You walk inside and you're like: how is this a museum? 

Caitlin: I'm really looking forward to that. 

Frances: Gorgeous. 

Caitlin: Okay. So there's, there's mine for you, which I feel like it was almost a little unfair because you know… you're the New Englander. And so I feel like you would have known more about her. 

She is…she's like my enigma now. 

Frances: I actually didn't know that much about her. I just knew about the paintings…because art heists.

Caitlin: I would love to know her opinion on it, you know? 

Frances: I think she’d probably think it was hilarious?

Caitlin: Yeah. Right. I get that impression as well, like irritated beyond belief.

Frances: Oh yeah. 

Caitlin: But also kind of: Well, good for them. Give me my painting things back. 

Frances: Grudgingly impressed, but annoyed. 

Caitlin: Right? Absolutely. But that’s… that's me. W are we talking about? Who did you decide to look into this week? 

Frances: So in the vein of wealthy socialite women from New England, I actually looked into a woman named Mary Ann Lippitt. So… 

Caitlin: Wait, like Lippitt? Like Rhode Island Lippitt? 

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: Oh, I know nothing about them, but I like their house. It's very pretty.

Frances: Lippitt. It's very pretty and incredibly impressive and historically significant. 

Caitlin: Okay. I can't wait and tell me all about it. 

Frances: So I will preface this by saying sadly it's winter in New England, which means most of the museum houses and the small museums are closed.

The Gardener's open, but the Lippitt House is closed until May I believe or April. So I didn't get a chance to go see Lippitt House and I didn't get a chance to read her papers, but that is 100% on my list of things to do in the spring. I did manage to find out quite a bit about her.

So Mary Ann Balch Lippitt was born October 7th, 1823. Her dad was a doctor from Massachusetts. He served in the revolution. 

Caitlin: Oh, okay. 

Frances: Her mom was a woman named Marianne Bailey. I don't know all that much about her mother, but I do know that she had six brothers and six sisters and two brothers. 

Caitlin: Damn like… wait, did they all survive to adulthood?

Frances: No. 

Caitlin: Okay. I'm sorry. I'll just let you be depressing. 

Frances: Yeah. There's a lot of… there's a lot of that. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: …about to happen. Her story is fantastic and awesome, but also very tragic. Several of her sisters didn't make it to adulthood. I'm not sure how many did, I didn't check that particular fact, but I do know she had six sisters and two brothers.

She most likely grew up in Providence during a time of incredible flux and change, just globally speaking. So she's one in 23, which means she grew up in the time that produced the Communist Manifesto. 

Caitlin:  Great. 

Frances: Lots of bloody frontier wars, lots of inventions actually. I think the Telegraph was invented during her early childhood.

Caitlin: Ooo.

Frances: So lots of change happening. 

Caitlin: Isn't it…it's kind of bad as we start talking about how, like there's massive change globally and I'm just like, oh man, where the exhausted as I am? 

Frances: I'm guessing the rest of her family was, but she sounds like the kind of lady who nothing exhausted her. She was just: I will do everything all of the time.

Caitlin: So just a human energy drink. Got it. 

Frances: 100%. She was human Red Bull. 

Caitlin: Cool. 

Frances: She was well-educated as a young woman and in 1845, she marries a man named Henry Lippitt. Henry was born in 1818. He had served as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Dorr War. 

Caitlin: The door war? 

Frances: Yeah. You're not from New England. So… 

Caitlin: D-O-O-R, like not three times?

Frances: D-O-R-R. It was a family name in Rhode Island. 

Caitlin: Okay. Why did they have this war? Sorry, I'm just going to spend a whole podcast, like getting educated here. 

Frances: That's okay. So the Dorr War was actually… it's sometimes called the Dorr Rebellion. It was really cool actually. And I think they should probably teach it in high school or elementary school, but they.

It was a rebellion for civil rights. 

Caitlin: Oh cool. 

Frances: In Rhode Island, there was at this point…so Dorr War’s, I think 1842…the early 1840s. So at that point, there was a property requirement for male suffrage. So you had to be white. You had to be landed, I believe. And you had to have an income of more than $35 a year, which excluded 65% of the state, roughly. 

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: 65% of white men in the state. And they weren't quite pleased about this. When it had been put in place in the early 16…in the 1630s, it was fine because almost all of the people moving in were landed. They, came in as farmers, but by the 1840s, that was not true. They rebelled against the state government. They demanded the right to vote and it lasted for a few years until the legislature just went: okay, fine! And gave it to them. 

Caitlin: Another very Rhode Island story. 

Frances: So…they like worked out a deal and gave… I believe it was universal white male suffrage at this point. 

Caitlin: Yay. Go white men. 

Frances: It was a step forward, but so sufferage will come back in this story later. So he'd served in the Dorr War. He was Lieutenant Colonel, which means he was probably looked impressive in his uniform. I'm guessing. 

Caitlin: Gotcha. 

Frances: She is 22. He's 27. When they, when they get married, we know that during her marriage, she actually owned property independent of her husband. 

Caitlin: That's awesome.

Frances: Incredibly unusual. Yeah. According to Lippitt House museum website, she owned some rental properties in Providence. I'm not sure how many, but that's kind of cool. 

Caitlin: So anyone in Providence could be staying in one of her houses?

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: That's really cool. 

Frances: A hundred percent. So she owns some rental properties. She’s a business woman, as well as being a wife. As was common in the period, she ran the household. So over the course of their marriage, they had anywhere between two and six in house servants. T hey had domestic staff usually comprised of a footman who acted more like a Butler, a cook, several maids, potentially a gardener, potentially a stable hand. Most of them were Irish, which we know from the census data.

Caitlin: That's pretty cool. 

Frances: And at one point she also employed a nurse. I don't know if that's a wet nurse or just a regular nurse, but there was a nurse living in the house with them at one point. She…we know that she played Whist, which is, I believe a precursor of Bridge. We also know that she bowled, she was a bowler.

Caitlin: Oh wow. 

Frances: And she played piano. She was extremely social. She hosted parties, suppers and all sorts of whist games and things, all sorts of things that at the house that they live in. Whatever house… they lived in three separate houses over the course of their marriage. 

Caitlin: Okay. Wow.

Frances: They built two of them. So they're living somewhere in Providence.

I'm not sure where. And then in, I believe it was the 1856. They moved to a property on Hope Street that they had built and tragedy strikes. 1848, the same year that Mark's publishes the manifesto. She has a baby named Henry. 

Caitlin: I thought you're going to say Karl.

Frances: That would be hilarious. In 1846. She has a second son, Charles.

Then at 1850, she has a baby named Joseph in 1852, a daughter named Jeanie 1853, a son named George and 1854, a son named Frederick. Wow. So at this point she has 1, 2, 3…like six kids right now. 

Caitlin: It's a lot. 

Frances: So they move…So they move from wherever they're living to this house on Hope Street, all the children, the two parents and all of the domestics move in, all this servants, move into this house immediately. There is an outbreak of Scarlet fever in the household. Henry…George, and Frederick all die. 

Caitlin: Wow. 

Frances: Yep. So she loses three boys. Joseph had died as an infant. I'm not sure what gear he died, but he was, I believe already deceased when they moved into the house or soon after, but he didn't die in the Scarlet Fever outbreak.

It killed three boys. Her daughter, her one daughter at the time? Jeanie is deaf. She loses her hearing from Scarlet Fever. 

Caitlin: Oh my God. 

Frances: So she is left with one. Boy, who never caught Scarlet fever and a deaf daughter. She's also pregnant. 

Caitlin: Oh no! 

Frances: She doesn't lose the baby. She gives birth to a healthy boy named that she names Henry Frederick for the two deceased children.

As an aside, Henry Frederick ends up quite well. He ends up a US Senator. 

Caitlin: Wow. Okay.

Frances: And the father of General Assemblyman Frederick Lippitt, who was minority leader for quite, quite some time, who was a philanthropist. He lived until…I want to say into his eighties. He only died in 2005.

Caitlin: Was it… Did her husband die of Scarlet Fever?

Frances: Her husband did not. 

Caitlin:  Okay. I mean, there's that I guess. 

Frances: Right? Husband's fine. Two kids, two kids still alive. One of them death and then she gives birth. So that's, that's that? So the deaf daughter: her name is Jeanie Lippitt. 

Caitlin: Mhm.

Frances: At this point, there was no deaf school for the deaf in Rhode Island. Deaf children were not educated unless you were from a wealthy family and you could afford to send your children to a boarding school out of state, most likely Connecticut or New York 

Caitlin: Of course.

Frances: And they were teaching sign language. So they were teaching what becomes ASL, not speech. 

Caitlin: Oh, really? 

Frances: There was no one teaching speech to deaf children in the United States at this time it was happening in Germany, but not here. Mary Ann Lippitt was having absolutely none of any of this. She was determined that her daughter would not be isolated from society.

She would not have to flounder through life, not being able to understand the people around her who might not understand sign language. So she was determined that her daughter should speak and should be able to read lips. She hears a rumor that there's a man in Boston, teaching deaf children to speak.

She goes to Boston. It's a lie. The guy has no idea what she's talking to. So, uh, she decides that if no one else is going to do it, then she will.

Caitlin: Right on. 

Frances: She starts teaching Jeannie to read lips with the help of the household staff. Jeannie later in life told a story where every morning the cook would come in to review the meal or like orders for the day.

And her mother would ask the cook to point to objects as she said them. So that Jeannie would be able to see how other people form words. 

Caitlin: Well, that's really cool. 

Frances: So she teaches… She starts teaching Jeannie how to read lips. She is accomplished enough at lip reading and speaking that by 12, she starts to attend Mrs. Shaw's School in Providence with hearing children. 

Caitlin: Wow. Okay. 

Frances: At this point, Mary then starts tutoring a couple of other girls. A girl named Fanny Cushing and a girl named Mabel Hubbard, who you might have heard her name before? 

Caitlin: I have not. 

Frances: That's okay. Uh, she gets married and has a quite famous last name.

Caitlin: What's her last name? 

Frances: That, that becomes important in a minute. 

Caitlin: Well, now I'm really curious. 

Frances: It's great. Yes. So, and she also teaches a young deaf boy as well, but I don't know what his name was. 

Caitlin: How old was Jeanie when she becomes deaf 

Frances: 4. 

Caitlin: Oh, okay. So, wow. Okay. 

Frances: So she had vague memories of speech, but pretty much lost it almost entirely as soon as… very soon after going deaf, because she was so young.

Caitlin: Yeah. 

Frances: So between 4 and 12, she is accomplished enough at speech and liberating to attend a school with hearing children. She attends the school. One of her teachers happens to be a woman named Ms. Mary C. Wheeler who founds the Wheeler School. 

Caitlin: Oh Yeah! I know Wheeler School.

Frances: Yeah, they were arrivals when I was in high school. So we swam again. 

Caitlin: I want to make a joke about your high school, but I'll save that for another time. 

Frances: That's fine. Feel free. But so she would soon found the Wheeler School. Also during this time, while she's tutoring, these children, a woman named Harriet Rogers comes down to witness how it's going and try to see what Mary is doing to teach these children to speak and to lip read, which is important because Harriet Rogers will then found the Clarke School for the Deaf, which becomes the Clarke School for Hearing and Speech, I think later, which was the first school in the United States to teach deaf children to speak and read lips. 

Caitlin: Wow. 

Frances: And it is directly because of her encounter with Mary and that this happened.

The man who funds the school is a man named John Hubbard who happens to be Mabel's dad. 

Caitlin: Yeah.

Frances: That's happening during this period, Massachusetts was also incredibly interested in how this system was…how the system she created was working, but she refused to allow Jeanie to go up and speak to them because she said that her, her daughter was basically not an animal to like perform before a crowd.

Caitlin: Good! Good for her. 

Frances: So she was having none of that. It's now 1857. So in this time, so 1857 was a year that her husband buys a large plot of land in Providence. That's where Lippitt House is. 

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. 

Frances: Across the street from the house they were living in before. 

Caitlin: Okay. So I'm guessing that house doesn't exist.

Frances: You know what, I'm not sure what's across the street from a Lippitt House. I didn't actually look.

Caitlin: Brown University?

Frances: I think it might be a Brown University building now. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: They have at least two Lippitt Houses Brown owns cause Frederick Lippitt went to Brown. 

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: So he donated the house that he was living in when he passed away to Brown.

So they…I think they have one or two buildings from this family. 

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: It’s a whole thing. So he buys this large plot of land but has not done anything with it. In ’58, Mary has another child. The daughter's name is Mary Balch. She goes by May and in 1860, she has a son named Robert Lincoln who goes by Linc. In 1861, she has a daughter named Abby Frances. 

Fun Fact: Abby Frances will become the grandmother of Senator…I think he was the Senator John Chafee. 

Caitlin: Oh, yeah, yeah. 

Frances: And a great grandmother to Governor Linc Chafee, who was the uncle of a girl I went to school with.

Caitlin: I've spoken to Lincoln Chafee. 

Frances: Yep. 

Caitlin: Just gonna say that.

Frances: I knew his niece. We went to school together for like eight years. 

Caitlin: So I've got the Chafees and the Lippits, like this is… this is History in Rhode Island. Wow. 

Frances: Right? These are…these are some big Rhode Island names happening here as well. 

Caitlin: So who have we gotten to the famous lady now? 

Frances: Not yet 

Caitlin: Eight kids. It's like, she's like, actually…what is the mother, who like all the…her children come out of her skirt. That was a weird tangent. Sorry everyone. 

Frances: That… So actually she ends up…so one more kid. In 1863, she has a son named Alfred who dies within a few months. That makes…

Caitlin: Right.

Frances: Eleven children. 

Caitlin: Gotta end that with a punch.

Frances: Right? That makes 11 children six lived to adulthood. 

Caitlin: I mean, that seems like good odds?

Frances: More than half 

Caitlin: 50%? 

Frances: Yeah. And I looked up the child mortality rate at this point was…It was like 35% of children died, but… 

Caitlin: I just looked up Scarlet Fever. And it's just like…now it's basically nothing. You take antibiotics and you're fine. 

Frances: My mom had Scarlet Fever as an infant. They call it Scarlettina, because she was so young, but yeah, it was a whole thing. 

Caitlin: All right. 

Frances: She's fine, but…mm. So 11 kids, they called her mom or mama and then Janie would occasionally call her…I can't pronounce it. The French word for mother ‘mamon’ I guess. Also during this period, her husband is…ends up serving as the Commissioner for Enrollment and Drafting for the Civil War, for the Providence area, possibly all of the state. I'm not sure.

So we’re…

Caitlin: What year is it?

Frances: It is 1863-ish now. 

Caitlin: So it's just so weird to think of like the trajectory that we're going through and like when Lovecraft just pops up. 

Frances: Oh yeah. Lovecraft pops up. The two women are now fully like adults together. Isabella Stewart Gardner and Mary Ann Lippitt. 

Caitlin: Mhm. Mhm.

Frances: Yeah. It's wild. So he's doing that. The Civil War would also drastically impact their financial situation.

Caitlin: Yeah, of course. 

Frances: As they are textile manufacturers. Henry Lippitt was in cotton manufacturing. He made cloth. He owned six mills by the end of his life. I'm not sure how many he owns at this point, but Civil War’s not great for business on top of being not great for like being alive.

Caitlin: Hah. Laughs and paranoia at this moment.

Frances: Yeah. 1863. Some fun stuff happens. It's very…I found this very confusing. So her husband buys the property across the street from where they're living from a woman named Sally Thompson. They start…they built a house. They basically built a house over there. It takes them for two to three years to complete this house.

It is a three-story Italianate Palace of a house. 

Caitlin: Awesome. 

Frances: It is Lippitt House Museum. It was donated by the family in the eighties, which is particularly cool because I guess it was not renovated almost at all. They didn't really touch it from what it was in when they built it in 1865 or 67 or whenever it was finished. So, really cool. You should, if you're in Rhode Island, go check it out. 

The family finally moves in to the house. Roundabout this time, Mary decides that Jeannie is not speaking quite as well as Mary wants her to be. 

Caitlin: Are you thinking like a, like mother-dearest type of way or is it just like, okay. 

Frances: No, no, no. Mary… Jeannie described it as she was speaking from the top of her head. I don't know what, 

Caitlin: Sorry, what the hell does that mean? 

Frances: I don't know, but she was speaking from the top of their head and her mom wanted to speak from like the bottom of her stomach. At this point, Mary finds out about a gentleman, a young man in Boston who is teaching, who is doing basically speech lessons based on voice physiology, which is like how the  throat forms words, and he agrees to tutor her.

And he also ends up tutoring her friend Mabel, who her mother had also been teaching. Jeannie likes him. And she does really well on his tutelage. She's with him for a few months. She says that every day he brings, a wooden box to their sessions, roughly the size of a carpenter's book. 

Caitlin: Okay. Is that where like he keeps the parts and things of his victims…

Frances: It's important.

Caitlin: Okay.

Frances: She doesn't know what's in it, but so he's coming. 

Caitlin: It’s weed!

Frances: Haha…He’s coming to her sessions with his box every day and a few months into their sessions, he tells her that unfortunately, he's going to have to call off the lessons because he really needs to devote time to the invention that he's working on. 

Caitlin: Is it just boxes? He's just turned to invent boxes? 

Frances: Mary's like a hard pass. You're going to keep doing it. And so he's like, okay. And does. Eventually, he does have quite a  success with this invention of his: the telephone, because it was Alexander Graham Bell who eventually married Mabel Hubbard who became Mabel Bell.

Caitlin: That's amazing. 

Frances: Apparently at one point Alexander, his nickname was Alec, I guess, decided that he was going to look into possibly creating a box with a picture in it so that people could communicate over image instead of just audially so that his wife and her friend Jeannie could communicate with each other. So he basically invented the concept of zoom in like 1880-something. 

Caitlin: I feel like. I feel like he’s owed something, but also he'd been to the telephone so like, yeah, you're good, man. 

Frances: He's good. I will say that he never actually did anything with the video box thing, but he did posit it as a theory at the time.

Caitlin: What if, what if we just completely disqualified or. And we've just released that Alexander Graham Bell is not a Grave Escape because he's alive and he's actually in Zoom. He's also, I guess like a vampire or a werewolf or like…Take your pick, I guess, but he's immortal. 

Frances: Perfect. I love it.

Caitlin: All he did was give us zoom. All right. That's it. We solved everything. Thanks everyone. 

Frances: I like it. Perfect. 

Caitlin: So they keep their lessons up. 

Frances: So keep the lessons up. Eventually she does graduate from there, his tutelage. She ends up being an excellent public speaker. She also enjoys the theater. So her lip reading was good enough that she could go to the theater and follow the production.

Caitlin: Perfect. That's cool.

Frances: She also learns French so she can do… she can lip read in English and French. 

Caitlin: You and I can't even say French for mama. I feel really dumb right now. 

Frances: Apparently they go to Europe later. I actually got to read her travel diaries, but she…they go to Europe later and Jeannie does all of the shopping because she speaks perfect French. Which I think is kind of great, but 

Caitlin: Oh my God. I bought two tickets when I like coming back from Pere Lachaise when I went again, graveyards. No one spoke English and again, four years of French, not good. And I remember going to the conductor and being like: two tickets, please and pointing somewhere on a map. And I thought I was the shit. 

Frances: Hahah

Caitlin: The fact that this, this has happened has just made me realize that, uh, I'm sorry, world.

Frances: Yeah. Jeannie is…Jeannie is a really cool, I mean, she kind of deserves her own story. 

Caitlin: Anyway. I know we have to go back, go back to her mom. Let's go talk about her mom who has these weird, weird phrases. 

Frances: All right. So now it's 1875. We went through the… we went through the ’60, she's teaching her daughter how to speak, all this stuff.

It's now 1875. Her husband gets elected governor. 

Caitlin: Oh, wow. Okay. 

Frances: He serves two terms and then loses his reelection. However, he lobbies for the state to start a school for the deaf. 

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: During his tenure, he talks to the leg—He talks to the General Assembly. And tries to convince them to start this school.

In the meantime, Mary is like, I'm not waiting on the government and starts her own. 

Caitlin: Bad-ass. 

Frances: It is 1876 and she starts the…What becomes the Rhode Island School for the Deaf. It is still in existence in Providence. 

Caitlin: What? I didn't realize that. 

Frances: Oh yeah, it's really cool. Actually, they just built a new campus a few years ago, so it's a brand new facility.

Caitlin: It's actually on my bucket list to learn ASL. I think it's fascinating. 

Frances: Oh, wild. She was not a fan, but the school does teach, I think both now. 

Caitlin: Really? I feel like do more in… Okay. You know what? I can't have more hyper fixations. It can't be Isabella Stewart Gardner and ASL and all this stuff. Oh God. I got to make it shortlist.

Frances: Reign it in a little. Yeah. Fair. 

Caitlin: That is so cool though. She's so cool.

Frances: She's so cool. Okay. So she opens the school. The first principal is a man named Joseph Warren Homer. And the school opens with five students. The following year, her husband succeeds at convincing the General Assembly to start a school for the deaf and instead of starting a new one, they just take hers and she's like, excellent. Do the thing. This is what I wanted to begin with. 

Caitlin: And then they live happily ever after and are also immortal like Alexander Graham Bell. Right? 

Frances: God, I wish. Jeanie actually is essentially immortal. She lived to be, I believe in her nineties.

Caitlin: Okay. 

Frances: She actually sat on the board of the school for several decades. 

Caitlin: Good. 

Frances: Which was pretty cool. Are you familiar with Horace Mann? 

Caitlin: Yes. 

Frances: She knew him too. Mary Ann Lippitt knew him personally. 

Caitlin: You and I have been to his grave, right? Or are we walked by? 

Frances: Maybe I think so. I think we did. Yeah. Yes, we definitely did. I remember. Yes.

Caitlin: Cause I remember us being like, oh cool. I know him. And then we were like, we should talk about him sometime. And then we got distracted as usual and didn't but yeah. 

Frances: Yes. So she knew him personally. She also knew Dr. Samuel Howe, who was another early proponent of deaf education—oralist of education in the United States.

The thing that irritates me the most is that she often gets completely overlooked in the history of the Oralist Movement. Most people are like, oh, Horace Mann was doing a thing. And this guy at the Clarke School. it's like, no, it was two women. Stop.

Caitlin: It's great. Cause you know, men do need more things to take credit for. They have done nothing ever. 

Frances: Right? Ugh. So fun little side fact, the whole family, not just Jeannie, the whole family was thoroughly interested in theater and it is quite possible, And I found one source that references that her father actually potentially hosted John Wilkes Booth. 

Caitlin: Ooph. 

Frances: Before he assassinated Lincoln, when he was just… 

Caitlin: Well, I’d hope it was before.

Frances: He was just a famous actor and Lippitts would invite famous actors to the house to have supper sometimes. They were fans of theater. And so, yeah, potentially. 

Caitlin: Nope. 

Frances: I won't say that definitively though. So I couldn't actually get in to see the records if it was who was there. She kept detailed records. 

Fun, little weird thing in 1879, her husband quit claims the deed to the…to their property with the entire contents of the house to a man named Arthur Simmons.

I'm not sure who this man is. And then the same day, Arthur Simmons quit claims the deed back to Mary. So from 1879 until her death, Mary owned the house. 

Caitlin: Wow. That's weird. 

Frances: The only reason I can think of to do this… so a quit claim basically says like you are only conveying your ownership and you're not like guaranteeing the deed.

So the only reason I can think of is that there was some debt maybe that had been accrued and the debtors were like come calling. And so he quit claimed it to her so that he would…they wouldn't lose the house. I'm not sure. 

Caitlin: That's weird. 

Frances: Yeah. I thought that was very strange, but so she owned the house from ’79 to the end of her life, which was shortly, but in ’82, she takes her…several of her children to Europe for this big, long trip in which Jeannie does all the shopping.

When they're in Paris, they go to to London, they go to Paris, they go to Genoa. They go to Venice. Maybe they saw Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice. 

Caitlin: Wouldn't be surprised. 

Frances: She definitely visited several friends and people that she was acquainted with from Boston and Providence while she was there. 

Caitlin: All right.

Frances: That would be cool. They returned in November of that year. I found almost nothing for the final…for the end of that decade. And then in August, August 31st, 1889. While on a trip to Boston, Mary Ann Balch Lippitt dies. She is five weeks shy of her 66th birthday. 

Caitlin: Oh, young. 

Frances: The official death records said that she died of uterine cancer.

Caitlin: Oh God damn.

Frances: Yup. At the time of her death, all three of her daughters were unmarried. Although they were all, they all got married and within three years of their mother's death, 

Caitlin: No, they probably had to. 

Frances: Maybe not though, because she deeded them the house. 

Caitlin: Oh, okay. 

Frances: So in her will, she gave the house to her three children, her three daughters, not her three sons. Her three daughters. And she gave her husband life tendency. So he was… they couldn't kick him out. They couldn't sell the house. In the meantime, he was allowed to live there until he died, which was, I believe in 1780…1791…1891! 

Caitlin: Wow. So she died before her husband too. 

Frances: Her…the girls…actually two, Jeanie and Abby, the youngest gave their portion of the deed to Mary, who was the oldest daughter who actually built… she subdivided the property and built a house next door to it, which is another Lippitt house on that corner.

Their uncle also lived diagonally across. One of Harry's brothers. 

Caitlin: That's like a Southern thing from where I am. Everyone just kind of lives in the same block like that. You just do that. 

Frances: Yeah. 

Caitlin: Honestly, it’s horrible. I couldn't do it. I also…just like…no. 

Frances: Yeah. Apparently the Lippitts were on board because there were like four lifted houses on that corner.

Caitlin: It was too much.

Frances: But yeah, she leaves the legacy that is the Rhode Island School for the Deaf and basically the entire oralist movement or a significant portion of the oralist move. In deaf education. Rock on. 

Caitlin: Where is she buried? 

Frances: She is buried at Swan Point Cemetery with the rest of the Lippitts and everyone else.

Caitlin: Ladies and gentlemen, please remember our first episode where we talked about Swan Point, not in depth, but a lot. That is where Lovecraft is buried. 

Frances: And like half of famous people that are in Rhode Island, I feel like. 

Caitlin: So going there again. Cause I have to see her grave. I cannot wait. So for those of you not in this part of the country, the best way to describe the weather has been erratic.

So some days we have had 60 degree weather and other days about two feet of snow. So it's been impossible to figure out when to go to the cemetery, but I'm excited to go. 

Frances: Oh yeah. Yeah. I was fully prepared to go last Friday to take pictures except we had snow. 

Caitlin: Yeah. I had an allergic reaction to the sun last week. That's why I couldn't go. 

Frances: Oh, no. 

Caitlin: Yeah. I can't wait to tell everyone about that, but I cannot wait to see…I mean, I feel bad because I've been to Swan Point. I live near Swan Point, and now I'm realizing that I've missed out on this history and you know, it's weird. Cause like we're talking about this oralist and like here we are trying to create this weird sort of oral image, multimedia storytelling thing, and it's just, that's cool.

I also find it so interesting. So many people in Providence knew so many people in Boston. 

Frances: Yes.

Caitlin: And I just, my mind goes wild with this imagination of like, did they know each other? 

Frances: Oh, I am fully imagining that like at some persons like salon and Paris or whatever, Isabella Stewart Gardner and Mary Ann Lippitt had some sort of conversation with each other potentially about suffrage. I know Mary's children were against it. 

Caitlin: Oh, cool. 

Frances: The girls…like her eldest daughter lobbied against it. But I feel like that would have been a great conversation for them. 

Caitlin: I would…Yes. Well, awesome. I'm all for badass women in history and we've gotten to talk about a lot of men so far on the show, sans Sissieretta Jones who… obsessed, but you know, I'm glad we've taken this episode to really just talk about some of these women who kind of actually inspired this podcast because we realized how many women's voices were…I don't want to say silenced, but like…

Frances: Spoken over. 

Caitlin: Spoken over and then silenced when they're dead. It's done because then no one can stand up and say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. She did this cause now, there’s no, one there to say it for them. So this is where we are. But with that, thank you everyone for joining us yet again on Grave Escape.

We will see you soon. I do want to just add one more fun fact to put out into the ether that we are actually recording this on Frances's birthday. Happy birthday Frances. It cannot be when you all listen to it, but send her good vibes. 

Frances: Thanks!

Caitlin: But with that, see you in the cemetery.

OUTRO MUSIC

Caitlin: Grave Escapes is hosted, written and produced by Caitlin Howle and Francesgrace Ferland and is produced and edited by Jesse D. Crichton. The music is melancholy after sound by Kai Engel. Follow us on social media to see images of today's graves and more about us. Our social handle is Grave Escapes. For a transcript, show notes, and land acknowledgement, visit us online at www.graveescapes.com We'll see you in the cemetery.

Frances: We’d like to acknowledge that Isabella Stewart Gardner is buried on the traditional lands of the Massachusett and Pawtucket peoples and that Mary Ann Lippitt is buried on the traditional lands of the Wampanoag, Pokanoket, and Narragansett peoples, which is also where we recorded this podcast. Here in the Northeast and all across the country, native peoples are still here and thriving. For more information about indigenous history, we’ve added a link in the show notes to An Indigenous People’s History of the United States as a place to begin. For ways to support native leaders and communities, we’ve added links to both the North American Indian Center of Boston and Native Land Conservancy.