The Union Meeting House

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Commentary-Rose Cravens

THE UNION MEETING HOUSE

According to John Dearborn in the History of Salisbury New Hampshire:

The building of the Union Meeting House at Smith’s Corner was proposed in 1832 and a meeting to take action to build the church occurred Feb 26, 1834. Forty two people voted to contribute to the building and to continue to support it financially until it was built.

Paul Shaw in the book Salisbury Lost  copyright 1993 Revised 2003, has the building date as 1834. It served as a forum of the Universalists, Congregational, Christian and Methodist denominations. Ministers of various faiths preached on a rotational basis and deacon filled in when ministers were unavailable.

“For several years after the church services were discontinued, the building was used for reunions of the Bean family, a very prominent family in this part of town.  In 1929 it was bought by Mrs. Storrow of Boston. She had it taken down and removed to Springfield, Massachusetts where it is a part of Storrowton, on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition.

The land was taken by the U.S. Government in 1941 for the Blackwater Dam Basin, being tract #87 on the Army Engineers map.”

 

The Amazing Story of  the Moving and Reconstructing of The Union Meeting House

Please note that the reconstructed church is indeed the Union Meeting House with a new facade. Explained further on.

From the website:

http://www.thebige.com/ese/about/history/

“Another unique feature of Eastern States Exposition is Storrowton Village Museum, an Early American village of the 1700s and 1800s. In 1926, Boston philanthropist and Exposition trustee Helen Osborne Storrow began her search for an early New England building to house her Home Department at the Exposition.

“Storrowton’s Meeting House was originally located in Salisbury, New Hampshire, where it stood at Smith’s Corner and was known as the “Union Meeting House.”

Members of four religious denominations combined their efforts to build the Meeting House where each (Methodist, Christian, Congregational and Universalist) could alternately use the pulpit.

In 1929, the Meeting House was brought to Storrowton timber by timber. The paneled wainscoting, pews of unpainted pine and choir gallery were put back in place. In another New Hampshire town, a pulpit was found which now graces this building. A bell cast in 1851 was taken from an old church in Neponset, Mass., and a clock was also installed.

The Meeting House is the postcard-perfect focal point of Storrowton Village. It faces south and serves as the site of programs about 19th century life, re-enactments and a hundred weddings annually”

Excerpts from the same website on the Big E Exposition specifically on Helen Osborn Storrow.

http://www.thebige.com/sv/history-of-svm/helen-osborne-storrow/

Time frame: 1920’s

Because of her sister’s ties with Springfield, the now Mrs. James Storrow kept in touch with the happenings in the Pioneer Valley. When the Eastern States Exposition was started in 1916 it was organized as a livestock exhibition. The founders soon realized that such a show would appeal to the men on the farm but not their entire family. To correct this oversight the Trustees of the Exposition created what was then called the “Home Department.” With her experience in organizing Girl Scout training, establishing regional camps for that same group, organizing relief efforts for Belgium during World War One and funding the Saturday Evening Girls of the Boston Settlement movement for Eastern European immigrants, Helen Storrow was asked to head this new effort as chairman of that department.estock exhibition. The founders soon realized that such a show would appeal to the men on the farm but not their entire family.

In the capacity as chairman, she organized displays and exhibits which represented the old and new in the area of homemaking in the 1920s. She developed displays about the use of coal for heating and cooking, the use of natural gas which was just making its way into many people’s homes, food preservation and home canning as well as organizing demonstrations of English Country dancing and traditional needlework. Helen had a lifelong interest in dancing and handcrafts. This interest may well have been influenced by the popularity of the Arts & Crafts movement of the early 20th century.

The small, temporary buildings being used for the Home Department exhibits were adequate but unattractive.  Each year before the Fair these buildings were moved into place and members of the Home Department had to decorate and furnish them for the theme of that building’s particular exhibit.

The theme for the Exposition in 1930 was to be “Three Hundred Years of Agriculture in New England 1630 to 1930.” The idea was put forward of decorating one of the temporary buildings in an Early American style in order to present a more attractive setting for the handicrafts displays. This initial concept was translated into the even more exciting thought of moving an authentic Early American home to the grounds. In 1926 when this idea was first brought forward, no antique structure in the United States had been restored after being moved from its original site of construction.  Historically significant buildings, such as the Paul Revere Home and the Rebecca Nurse House had been restored and opened for public viewing, but those were still on their original lots. This was years before the Wells family conceived of Old Sturbridge Village or the Rockefeller’s Colonial Williamsburg or Henry Ford’s museum in Michigan.

Helen liked the idea though and shared it with her friends when they visited her home in the eastern part of the State. One person who heard the idea of the Home Department committee was Philip Gilbert who was a Trustee of the Eastern States Exposition as well as Commissioner of Agriculture for Massachusetts. He told Helen about an old farmhouse that his family owned and used as a summer house. He told her that if she was interested she could visit the building and see if it was suitable for her needs. As a result, the 1794 Gilbert House in West Brookfield was selected, disassembled, and moved to the West Springfield fairgrounds in 1927. The purchase price was $200.

The old farmstead proved so popular with the fairgoing public that she expanded the idea of moving just one building to incorporate a recreated village where youth and their families could see how people lived in the 19th century. Mrs. Storrow hired an architect and spent time locating buildings in Massachusetts and New Hampshire which had been built in the late 18th or early 19th centuries. She chose buildings that had been abandoned or were scheduled for demolition; thus, she saved some very valuable examples of building styles and made them accessible for others to learn about our New England heritage.

Finally, when the buildings had been located, she presented her proposition to the Exposition Board of Directors — she would purchase and restore the buildings if the Exposition would provide the land. From her original purchase of the Gilbert House, her final cost for all the structures that were moved totaled nearly $350,000 when the project was completed.

Helen had created what she called “The New England Village,” and in the first few years she and her friends helped to furnish the buildings through loans of period pieces. She staffed the buildings with guides comprised of Girl Scouts who annually competed to earn the privilege of staying at the Village throughout the Fair.

 

Researching the Union Meeting House-Rose Cravens

 

 

While researching Sawyers chair mill with Ed Sawyer on Jan 2, 2015, we visited George and Dolly Little of Webster. George is familiar with some of the history of Smith’s Corner. While discussing the Union Meeting House, he reminded me that it was not moved for the flood control project but rather moved earlier for Eastern States Exposition’s Storrowton Village in Springfield Massachusetts where it stands today.

Using Dr. Paul Shaws book, Salisbury Lost as my reference point for this webpage, I began to put information on this site about the Meeting House. I looked at the old postcard picture of the church and the new construction at Storrowton and was initially baffled. I knew the building was changed into a Federal style but the height of the building seemed altered. I contacted Mr. Dennis Picard, the Curator at Storrowton, and we discussed my question. It began a day long exchange of emails and he resolved the issue of the church size. He had encountered a similar odd question before concerning another structure and provided measurements and data to the questioner. They too wondered why their building looked so different. Sure enough it measured out perfectly. What seems to happen is this:

Photos and camera angles can distort proportions. The old postcard showing the Union Meeting House has no other structures nearby making a guess at size difficult. Certainly it is clear from the photo of it being taken down that it had a very large framework. The photo of the Scribner House, on the Smith’s Corner Page on this website, clearly shows the Union Meeting House down the road and it is very, very large. Though they (Salisbury Union Meeting House and reconstructed Storrowton Meeting House) look quite different in size, they are one and the same basic structure. The frontal alterations make it an elegant beauty giving it a sense of a grander scale that did not come across in the images of the Salisbury structure which was more a lovely rural gothic style and perfect for its congregation and location at the time. The interior had not been radically altered. Had it not been removed however in 1929, twelve years later it very possibly would have been destroyed as were the other structures that were removed during the Blackwater Dam Project.

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The other mystery tackled were the box pews.

In his book Salisbury Lost published in 1995, Dr. Shaw shows the above image of the box pews in the Union Meeting House.

Not being an architectural historian I didn’t think much of it until I sent the image to Dennis Picard of Storrowton who insisted that it was not a photo of the interior of the Union Meeting House. His reason was that the use of box pews was an earlier style of architecture and a style no longer in vogue at the time the meeting house was built in 1834. When I inquired if they could have used recycled materials to save costs (the Congregational Church of Salisbury had at that time recently removed their box pews for more in line ‘modern ones’)  he thought it possible but very unlikely.

The issue:

1) Did Dr. Paul Shaw make an error by attributing the above image to the Union Meeting House in his book Salisbury Lost?

2) The windows in the Union Meeting House in the postcard dated 1913 are gothic but the windows in the image in the book showing the box pews are paned…12 over 12 likely, indicating a different building or a renovation. If by some chance it was originally built with box pews and paned windows then there would have a a major alteration that occurred prior to its removal at a time when the population of Salisbury was decreasing rather heavily.

3) Mr. Picard found in their records where it is stated that the Storrowton Meeting House has the original pews (straight line) received from our Union Meeting House and they were not altered. Dr. Paul Shaw states that the pew arrangement was not followed at Storrowton. The curators at Storrowton insist they were.

4) In a 2022 conversation with Dot Bartlett a Salisbury senior,  she recollected visiting Storrowton with an elderly aunt who worshiped at the Salisbury Union Meeting House and was familiar with it. She only pointed out that the pulpit was changed. A change as big as removal of box pews would have been notice during her lifetime.

Any additional information or opinion is welcomed on this topic

to help clear up this confusion.