The “Telegraph”
The packet Telegraph was constructed by Calvin Turner (circa 1776–1849) in Medford, Massachusetts in 1816. The Telegraph was a 391-ton merchant vessel owned by Boston merchants William and Nathan Appleton, who were cousins. This portrait of the Telegraph was likely commissioned by the Appleton cousins to commemorate its launch. The impressive qualities of the ship, which are echoed in the scale of presentation, are rendered in a “flat” painterly style complemented by undulating brushstrokes for waves which culminate in whitecaps.
At the outset of the nineteenth century, just north of Boston, the town of Medford, Massachusetts, established itself as a significant center of shipbuilding. The 1936 publication “Old Ships and Shipbuilding Days of Medford, 1630-1873” describes it as follows:
Mystic River was an ideal location for shipbuilding. Its serpentine windings from the ocean presented the greatest convenience for a large number of yards. Twice a day the tide surged in from the ocean, mingling its odor of brine with the pungent smell of molasses from the distilleries, and overflowed onto the whispering marshes, making at full tide enough depth of water to float an empty ship of twenty-five hundred tons.
The Mystic River had favorable tides, good depth, and its shore and bed were clear of obstructions. The Middlesex Canal allowed nearby timber to be brought in, the land was cheap, and labor was readily available. Thatcher Magoun (1775-1856), of Pembroke, Massachusetts, was the first to see opportunity in these qualities, building the first shipyard in Medford in 1802. When Calvin Turner, also of Pembroke, opened the town’s second shipyard in 1804, an industry truly began to take shape. Shipbuilders from Scituate, Marshfield, Pembroke, and Hanover flocked to Medford, where the conditions were more favorable for their occupation. Soon, there were ten active shipyards in Medford, all within a one-mile radius.
Calvin Turner (c. 1776-1849) was born to Calvin Turner, Sr., and Sarah Baker. In 1802, he married Rhoda Briggs in Pembroke, Massachusetts. Calvin and Rhoda had eleven children, all born in Medford. On November 11, 1825, their son George Turner (b. 1803) was washed from the deck of the ship Marcus and tragically lost at sea. The Turner papers are located at the Drew Archival Library, Duxbury, Massachusetts.
Turner built over twenty-five vessels in his Medford shipyard between 1804 and 1816, his first being the eponymous Medford (1804). Turner’s largest ship, the Mary and Frances, weighed an impressive 438 tons and was built in 1810 for the famous Boston merchant Nathanial Goddard (1767-1853).
The War of 1812 necessitated that many merchant vessels be converted into privateers, and many more new ships were built. Throughout the two-year conflict, Turner built four privateers, including the Avon in 1815, which was built in just twenty-six days.
The aftermath of the war saw great improvement in the design of cargo-carrying vessels, and because Medford was already well-established in shipbuilding, the town played a vital role in the development of the American merchant ship. Competing shipbuilders worked in close geographical proximity, allowing them to study each other’s designs, which contributed to the development of the “Medford Clipper” type by the year 1830. It was during this post-war period that the Telegraph was built for Boston merchants Nathan and William Appleton.
The Appletons were part of a group of Boston businessmen who led the commercial banking industry and managed numerous shipping companies and markets between Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. William Appleton (1786–1862) was a merchant and banker who owned at least thirty-eight ships during his career. He purchased his first ship in 1809, which made several profitable voyages. After the War of 1812, he set out to greatly expand his shipping business, beginning with the Telegraph.
The name Telegraph references the communicative nature of trade and commerce, which the Appletons were beginning to master. Surely, the ship portrait was a way to not only commemorate the ship’s launch but also the Appletons’ burgeoning success. Likely painted around 1816, the portrait cemented the Appletons as rising businessmen in the shipping industry. William Appleton went on to serve as a member of Congress and become president of the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Nathan Appleton (1779–1861) was among those foremost responsible for introducing the power loom and large-scale cotton manufacture to the United States, one of the many innovations that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution in this country. Nathan was an investor in the Boston Manufacturing Company, which established the world’s first integrated spinning and weaving factory in Waltham, Massachusetts, notably recruiting “Yankee farm girls” to work the machines. This model was copied in Lowell, where Nathan was one of the three founders, and he continued to parlay his financial success into mills in Lawrence and Manchester, New Hampshire. Nathan Appleton also served as a member of the Massachusetts high court and, like his cousin, was a member of Congress.
The Appleton name is cemented in Beacon Hill, where the prominent family resided for generations as members of the neighborhood’s “Brahmin” class. Nathan Appleton’s home at 39 Beacon Street was designed by architect Alexander Parris on land that had once been owned by John Singleton Copley. This residence is where his daughter Fanny married poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1843. As a wedding gift, Nathan Appleton purchased the couple the Cambridge mansion that had been George Washington’s headquarters during the Revolutionary War, now the Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. Nathan Appleton was the grandfather of William Sumner Appleton (1874-1947), who founded the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England).
This ship portrait of the Telegraph has the distinction of having been in the collection of our friend and New York City artist Barry Cohen (1935-1990), a “creator and collector of beauty” who developed one of the most choice collections of American folk art through trading with dealers to upgrade his collection. He was particularly drawn to works with strong graphic emphasis, such as this painting. Barry himself was an artist in the style of Joseph Cornell and Rauschenberg, creating assemblages out of old household items and ephemera; he was represented by Allan Stone Gallery. Barry earned his MFA from Yale University, where he went on to hold a teaching position. He lived and worked in Greenwich Village, where his one-bedroom apartment eventually—through trading one, two, or even more objects in his collection for a single superior object—housed one of the best and most refined collections of American Folk Art at the time (shown below). Burton M. Fendlemen described his collection as one of his assemblages in and of itself, “a total work of art.” The Telegraph portrait had pride of place above his mantel.
Barry Cohen died untimely at the age of fifty-five. Burton M. Fendlemen remembered his collecting as bringing together “all his experiences, his talents, and his intellect.” Throughout his life, his collecting influenced his art, and his art influenced his collecting.
When Barry Cohen died in 1990, we purchased his American folk art collection in partnership with American Hurrah Antiques, which we offered for sale in a series of four exhibitions alongside a corresponding catalog. Some of our all-time favorite pieces have a Barry Cohen Collection provenance, and like this ship painting, have found their way back to us again.