Marblehead Museum hosts women’s history tour

Throughout the year, the Marblehead Museum hosts several historical walking tours to educate the community about the town’s rich history. The most recent, a women’s history tour led by Jarrett Zeman, took place on Thursday evening, July 18. A group of about 20 ventured from the edge of Washington Street into the Old and Historic District, learning about influential Marblehead women from the past.

From the 1860s through the 1920s, Marblehead participated in its fair share of reform movements. While the focus remained on women’s history, the tour also covered many other topics, including the first stop at a former Underground Railroad site. The Dodge House, located just off Atlantic Street, is named for its former residents Simeon and Betsy Dodge, a Marblehead couple who fed, clothed, and housed escaped slaves as they journeyed to freedom in Canada or England.

The tour continued to Abbot Hall, where a significant part of suffragette history took place in 1915. With its rallies, speeches and feminist gatherings, Marblehead was home to the largest population of suffragettes in Essex County in the early 20th century. Influential women who spoke at Abbot Hall included Rose Livingston, an activist who spoke out against prostitution and human trafficking; and Margaret Folly, a suffragette known as the “heckler in chief” for her tactics in dealing with anti-suffragette politicians.

Modern Marbleheaders may be more familiar with the youngest suffragette in the Marblehead Equal Suffrage League, a 19-year-old schoolteacher named Lizzy Coffin, for whom the Coffin School is named.

After Abbot Hall, the group walked only a few steps before arriving at their next stop. It turns out that Samuel and Emma Gregory’s home is notable for more than just its resemblance to a miniature Jeremiah Lee Mansion. In the 1850s, the couple were known for their intense spirituality, regularly hosting séances in their living room. The most famous outcome of one of these spiritual journeys was when one of the participants claimed to be possessed by the spirit of Benjamin Franklin.

Other stops included the site of an old shoe repair shop. In the heyday of Marblehead’s shoemaking empire, female factory workers earned just $4, compared to the $8 men earned. After participating in a nationwide strike that lasted several weeks, these female workers marched all the way from Marblehead to Lynn to make their voices heard at a demonstration calling for better hours and wages. Unfortunately, the women did not receive a raise for their efforts, but their employers did agree to recognize women-led unions.

The brief overview of the history of working-class women in Marblehead continued at Maddie’s Sail Loft, once a laundry where many Irish and Canadian immigrants worked to support their families.

Ironically, another stop on the tour revealed that Maddie’s might not have been nearly as popular in Marblehead at one point. Thanks in part to the somewhat unorthodox methods of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, which included staging anti-alcohol plays and chopping down apple trees to prevent cider brewing, Marblehead was considered a temperance town for much of the early 20th century.

Just as the sun was beginning to set, the tour ended at an unremarkable house on Washington Street. It quickly became apparent that the building stood on the site of a demolished lyceum, a multi-purpose building that was once used in many American cities as a mix of museum and theater. The lyceum hosted all sorts of events and activities, from political speeches to traveling performances to silent film screenings.

A particular point of pride for Marblehead in the silent era was a movie called “The Pride of the Clan,” for which an entire Scottish village was built on the beach at Castle Rock. While today we can sit on our couches and watch Adam Sandler movies for a glimpse of our town, movie buffs in the 1910s had Mary Pickford in Marblehead Neck.

The Marblehead Museum encompasses many historic properties in town and offers several tours throughout the year to further their mission of making Marblehead “a museum without walls.” Other tours to look out for include a Sports and Leisure Walk and a Black History Tour.

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