Willey House

I use Google Analytics and StatCounter to track visits to RobertBallHughes.com. I can track the number of Visitors and what country and city they are in, among many other things.

I can see the Search keywords that where used to find the site and repeat the Search. This helps me to know what Visitors are interested in. I can also see the Traffic Sources including Search Engines and Referring Sites.

One recent referral site was the Library of America’s StoryOfTheWeek.loa.org which posted an article about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1835 story: The Ambitious Quest, about the Willey Tragedy. There is a link on that page to The Willey House page on RobertBallHughes.com.

After the article was posted, visits to the site increased from an average of about 10 per day to about 90 on Jan. 8th and have continued to be about twice as high as normal for the last 10 days.

Shortly after this article appeared, Letters from a Hill Farm posted the article: Short Stories on Wednesdays - The Ambitious Guest by Nathaniel Hawthorne, based on the Library of America’s Story of the Week. It also includes a link to The Willey House on RobertballHughes.com.

I’m very flattered (and humbled) about the referrals and grateful for them. I hope that Visitors will find the information interesting and helpful.

David Brown

Christmas Comes to Dorchester in the 1840's

I have no record of how the Ball Hughes' family celebrated Christmas in Dorchester, but I can imagine that Ball Hughes, being the innovator that he was, may have been one of the first to have a Christmas tree in his neighborhood.


From the Dorchester Reporter, December 6, 2001:

It Happened Here

Just Another Day

For Dorchester's First Two

Centuries, Christmas Was

No Holiday

In the 1840s, as the Victorian Era hit New England full-bore, Christmas in Dorchester began to change. A social historian notes: "But with the beginning of the nineteenth century, the need for a festival to have some commemorative time made the Americans embrace Christmas as a perfect family holiday. Christmas was declared as a national holiday for celebration on June 26, 1870. And that was not all; Americans even re-invented the Christmas celebration and transformed it from a mere carnival into a family-oriented day of feast, fun and frolic." Read more

Interested in Genealogy?

Are you interested in learning more about genealogy research? According to a poll by Maritz Marketing Research in 2000, sixty percent of Americans were interested in tracing their family history, up from 45 percent in 1995.The number is probably even higher today with Baby Boomers retiring and having the time and interest in their ancestry.

I started my quest with some sketchy family stories about my ancestor. I went online and was immediately surprised to find numerous books and articles that mentioned him. I was lucky in that he was fairly famous in art circles in the early to mid 1800’s. The work got more difficult as I had to research each piece of information and search for more information but is was worth it. New information leads to more new information.

There is a wealth of free information on the Internet to help you. I recommend that you start with About.com Genealogy. This comprehensive site is led by professional genealogist, Kimberly Powell. The site has information on how to get started, searching online, and how to share and preserve your family history.

About.com Genealogy also has a blog, a user forum, and numerous links to free tutorials, online classes, and magazines. You can sign up for the free weekly Genealogy Newsletter, the Intro to Genealogy (E-Course), and the About Genealogy Tip of the Day (E-Course) from Kimberly Powell of About.com Genealogy.

Of course, most genealogy websites rely on advertising and you can evaluate the services offered to see if they are of interest to you. Genealogy research does not have to cost you any money if you’re on a tight budget like me. I use Google, free Internet resources, and Inter-Library Loan. I’m increasingly getting help from art collectors, museums, researchers, and art enthusiasts for which I am extremely grateful.

The Early Years: 1804-1829

In January 2009, Fred Brown sent me a copy of the Sketch of the Life of Robert Ball Hughes by Mrs. E. Ball Hughes. At the time, he said that it should keep me busy for a year. Well, it’s been over two years and I still have not published the entire manuscript on the website.

It's proved to be a treasure-trove of information that was previously unknown. I have added many facts and quotes from Eliza’s journal throughout the website where it added to our understanding of the events.

My goal for 2011 is to publish the entire journal in monthly installments. Please see The Early Years: 1804-1829 on RobertBallHughes.com for the first monthly installment. It has some exciting information that has never been published before about the reason Robert Ball Hughes came to America and why he considered returning to England a few months after his arrival.

The Trip to America

From the Sketch of the Life of Robert Ball Hughes by Mrs. E. Ball Hughes, pp. 3 & 4, we read that “… shortly after his marriage to Miss Wright – the daughter of David Wright of Oxford St. London they started November 12th 1828 for New York in the ship Robert Edwards, one of the regular line of Packets, and after severe storms landed in New York on the 19th of January 1829.”

I wanted to know more about the ship Robert Edwards and the Ball Hughe's ten-week voyage to America. Initially, I found only one article and put the research on hold. Recently I found several more articles including one on Old Fulton Post Cards newspaper archive at http://www.fultonhistory.com/

The article contained the account of arrival of the Robert Edwards in New York, with a passenger list that included the Ball Hughe's. That article included details about the storms and the Ship Master’s name. That led to more information about the London Line of packets.

A project like this new page takes many hours of research over several weeks or months before the information can be summarized. The actual posting on the new web page took about four hours to edit and format.

Read more about the arrival of the Ball Hughes at Ship Robert Edwards on RobertBallHughes.com.

Mr. Bowditch has left the building.

The over-life-size plaster model for the bronze statue of Nathaniel Bowditch has left the Boston Athenaeum for the first time since its arrival in 1851. He doesn't get out much!

Read more about his departure at The Conservation of a Historic American Masterpiece, Boston Athenaeum E-Newsletter: November 2010, Volume 4, Issue 11. See also the Nathaniel Bowditch Statue on RobertBallHughes.com for more information about the statue.

Obituary for Robert Ball Hughes

The Obituary for Robert Ball Hughes has eluded me for several years. I finally found it through Google News Archives on p. 2 of the Boston Daily Evening Transcript for Friday, March 6, 1868.

It turns out I had most of the text already on the Biography page on RobertBallHughes.com. It was quoted in The New England Historical & Genealogical Register For the Year 1868, Vol. XXII, p. 185, after Ball Hughe's death. Part of the first sentence and one complete sentence starting with “For some time past…” were omitted.

I could not find this article directly with Google Search. The digitizing of newspapers is not always accurate due to the condition of the paper and the limitations of character recognition software.

After finding the daily issues of the newspaper for March 1868, it was a matter of reading an entire paper, starting with March 5th issue, to find the article about Ball Hughes. This can be a tedious, especially if it turns out that there is no information to be found.

Since the obituary was not in the March 5th issue, I hoped that it might be in the March 6th issue, and it was. It helps to have a range of dates to narrow down the search.

I also found another obituary from The (London) Art-Journal that was based on the New York Tribune obituary that I have not seen yet.

Read more at the Obituary for Robert Ball Hughes on RobertBallHughes.com.

Silhouettes News

I received information about the two books on Silhouettes that I was looking for. They contain references to the Ball Hughes family silhouettes by Auguste Edouart in 1842. I had hoped that the books would contain images of the silhouettes but they didn't.

I did learn the Arthur S. Vernay purchased the silhouettes from Emily Jackson. She acquired them after they were recovered from the shipwreck of the Oneida on Edouart's return to France in 1849.

Vernay exhibited the silhouettes, including at least one of Ball Hughes, at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1914 before selling them. Read more about it on the Silhouettes by Edouart page on RobertBallHughes.com.

See New Blog

I''ll be posting announcements on the the What's New blog on http://www.robertballhughes.com/.

Please bookmark the new blog and visit for announcements, updates, and revisions to the website.

Unfortunately, the new blog does not support comments. Please leave your comments below this post or e-mail me directly.

Note that I'm going to continue to use this blog for feature articles so please visit again.

Thanks

New Home for RobertBallHughes.com

The transition from Google Pages to Google Sites is complete. Please visit the new home for RobertBallHughes.com. The new site has improved navigation, a "search this site" function, a sitemap, and a "What's New" blog with RSS feed. Please let me know if there are any bad links.

I'm working on several new pages with new material, including pages for the statue of Oliver Twist, a pokerism of Daniel Webster, and an original watercolor by Georgina Ball Hughes.

I hope you enjoy the new site. Please send me your comments and suggestions.

Dave Brown

The Mystery of Ball Hughes name and birthdate Solved?

A recent email inquiry from a researcher in Australia got me thinking again about the discrepancy in Ball Hughes middle name and his birthdate. I didn't know when and how Robert acquired the middle name “Ball” since it didn't appear to be a family name. His birth year has been widely reported as 1806 instead of 1804 as reported by his wife Eliza and the family genealogy. This makes a difference because he was so young when he entered the Royal Academy in 1818. Then I realized that I had a clue all along. A copy of the record of marriage for Robert and Eliza Mary Wright on November 2, 1828 from All Souls Church, in the Parish of St. Marylebone, in the County of Middlesex, held the clue.

The copy of the marriage record was obtained by a descendant of Ball Hughes in 1891 and passed down through the Brown family. It lists Robert's name as “Robert Balls Hughes” from the parish of Saint Martin in the Fields in the County of Middlesex. I thought that “Balls” may have been misspelled in transcription. Every reference to Robert Ball Hughes in articles and books has his middle name spelled “Ball.” I didn't think anything about the name of his parish at the time.

I assumed that Robert added the middle name “Ball” sometime before he entered the Royal Academy. An account of Ball Hughes in London by John Neal gives us a rare account of Ball Hughes early works and personality. According to Hughes the Sculptor by John Neal (1793-1876) from American Phrenological Journal Vol. 49.--No. 8, New York: March 1869, p. 98: “This eminent artist, generally known here, through a strange misapprehension, as “Ball” Hughes, was a man of great originality and fine genius; but wayward, whimsical, and capricious.” The quote marks around Ball are in the article.

Neal's comment in his article above about the name “Ball” made me wonder if Ball Hughes acquired this name for himself by a misunderstanding or for some other reason unknown to us. The Royal Academy listed Robert Balls Hughes as his name when he entered the Academy in 1818. I wondered if his name was misspelled twice (on the RA records and the marriage record) since he was never known as Robert Balls Hughes after his marriage record in 1828. His name is recorded by the Royal Academy as Robert Ball Hughes in 1819 and 1822, when he won silver medals. After arriving in New York in 1829, he was widely known as Robert Ball Hughes.

Regrading the discrepancy in Ball Hughes year of birth, most sources since one in 1843, quoted by Orcutt in Good Old Dorchester, cite Jan 19, 1806. Only The American Cyclopedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, Volume IX by Ripley and Dana, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1874, cites 1804 as his year of birth. According to a family genealogy prepared by his Grandson, George Edward Brown (1857-1933), Robert's date of birth was Jan. 19, 1804. Ball Hughes grave monument in Mt. Auburn Cemetery also shows his date of birth as Jan. 19, 1804.

One family document shows 1804 crossed out and 1806 written in. His fathers name was John Hallett Hughes (1773-1824/1827) and his mothers name was Amelia. He was born Jan. 19, 1804 and his father was a carriage maker of Long Acre (street), Middlesex according to the Sketch of the Life of Robert Ball Hughes by Mrs. E. Ball Hughes. His mothers maiden name is believed to be Amelia Susannah Rogers, who was a cooper in London according to a court record from 1796.

Ball Hughes daughter, Georgina, was quoted in article about Ball Hughes in the (Boston) Sunday Globe, March 1907 as saying that her father was born in 1806. You would think that his family would have known his actual birth year. To add more confusion, a death notice from The New England Historical & Genealogical Register For the Year 1868, Vol. XXII says he died at age 62. That would have him born in 1806.

According to the Royal Academy of Arts Archivist, Mark Pomeroy, “Robert Balls Hughes entered the schools 3 Sep 1818, aged 14, as a sculptor...Fourteen is a young age at which to enter the Schools. Among the students entering at roughly the same date were William Bewick, William Boxall, Edwin Landseer (who was 16) and Richard Westmacott Jr. the sculptor.” If 14 was young, 12 would have been very unlikely. This was still not the proof I was looking for. I thought that a baptismal record from a church in London, England might help settle the birthdate question, but which church?

And now we have the answer. The clue was the name of Robert's parish on his marriage record. I contacted the parish of Saint Martin in the Fields, located in Trafalgar Square in London. I was referred to the City of Westminster Archives that keeps parish records from the London area. According to his baptismal record on 17 Feb 1804, Robert Balls Hughes was born on 19 Jan 1804, making him 14 when he entered the Royal Academy and almost 19 when he won the gold medal in 1823. We don't know how his birth year became recorded as 1806 in many reference works or why some members of his own family thought he was born in 1806 after his death. We don't know why his parents gave him the middle name “Balls” or when and why he changed it to “Ball.”

One mystery solved and another partially solved. Ball Hughes was born on Jan. 19, 1804 and was baptized Robert Balls Hughes on Feb. 17, 1804. The baptismal record was uploaded to the International Genealogical Index by the City of Westminster Archives after my inquiry. I don't think I ever would have learned this information without Robert's parish name on the marriage record. See the Biography webpage at http://www.robertballhughes.com/ to view the baptismal record and the copy of the marriage record.

Rev. 1/4/2010

Ball Hughes Favorite Pitcher

I receive new information and requests for information almost every week. Recently this unique item was brought to my attention. It's a handsome relief molded pitcher with a brass tag attached to the handle by a brass wire.

One side is inscribed "Ball Hughes Favorite Pitcher". The other side is inscribed "E.B.H. to Daniel B. Steadman with kind regard, Nov 26th 1868". "EBH" are the initials of Eliza Ball Hughes, Robert Ball Hughes wife.

This gift was given about 8 months after Ball Hughes death in March, 1868. A Daniel B. Steadman was born in 1826 in South Boston and was presumably a friend of the Ball Hughes family.



This item has been in one family for over 40 years. The owner's grandmother was a collector of American antiques and may have picked it up at auction (Sounds like the Antique Roadshow!). This pitcher is English, about 9" tall and in perfect condition.

The pitcher is a type of thinly potted stoneware with moulded designs, popular during the years 1830's-60's. (I believe it may be known as creamware.) They were inexpensive but artistic, and used to serve a variety of hot and cold liquids, including water, beer, milk, mulled ale and wine.

The pitcher was registered in 1857 according to the English registry mark on the bottom. It could have been made in 1857 or within a few years after registration of the design. Today, this type of pitcher can sell for over $500.

Many thanks to Sally Rude for providing the images and information above.

New Details About the Brown's & the Ball Hughes

I am always amazed at the new information I discover when I review books, articles, and websites that I have researched before. While searching for more information about the Patrick Henry statuette, I found the book, The Lineage Book of the Order of Washington by J. G. B. Bulloch, M.D. It includes details about Robert Ball Hughes grandson, George Edward Brown (1857-1933). He was a charter member of the Order of Washington that was formed in 1895 and reorganized in 1908.

I discovered from the book that seven or eight members of George's mothers family were artists. That would include George's mother, Augusta Ball (Hughes) Brown, her sister, Georgina, Augusta's parents, Robert and Eliza Ball Hughes, and several others who are not known. We know that Eliza was trained in the arts, an artist, and an art teacher, Georgina was an accomplished painter and art teacher, and Augusta was an amateur artist.

I also discovered that George's father, Benjamin Franklin Brown, was a Boston merchant. Owing to ill-health, George spent some time with his family in Europe in 1875, presumably in London with his aunt, Georgina Ball Hughes, who spent much of her time there, and possibly his mother. The Statue of Hamilton research led me to the Patrick Henry statuette and that research led me to George Edward Brown and more information about my ancestors.

RobertBallHughes.com

Statuette of Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry: Liberty or Death
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Art Inventories Catalog

Image S9D630004_b.jpg available on SIRIS

While researching Robert Ball Hughes plaster model for the Alexander Hamilton statue, I came across a record for this statue by Ball Hughes in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Art Inventories Catalog on the SIRIS database. I have searched this database before and never saw this statuette. I was quite excited to see an image of it.

The SIRIS record states that the 26" high plaster statuette is inscribed "Liberty or Death" on the base. The description says: "Full-length portrait of Patrick Henry. He holds his drawn sword in his upraised proper right hand and points downward with his proper left hand. His hat is on the ground behind him." The statuette is owned by a private collector near Boston.

In the article, Patrick Henry: Sentinel for the People, William Rasmussen of the Virginia Historical Society wrote "Henry's military role was celebrated well into the nineteenth century. In the 1830s, Robert Ball Hughes depicted this side of Henry's public service with a small, standing sculpture of the Virginia colonel. This fragile plaster figure is one of many by Hughes never put into marble or bronze due to the artist's poverty and lack of patronage." The article appeared in the February - March 1996 issue of American Art Review. The article is available on the scholarly Traditional Fine Arts Organization website.

Note that in the 1830's, Ball Hughes survived the Cholera of 1832 in New York by fleeing the city and he lived through the The Panic of 1837. These events no doubt had an effect on Ball Hughes poverty and lack of patronage.

Rev. 10/7/2009

RobertBallHughes.com

The Missing Statue of DeWitt Clinton

According to Georgia Stamm Chamberlain, in The Ball-Hughes Statue of Alexander Hamilton in Antiques Journal March 1957, “Ball-Hughes had already demonstrated his ability to recreate a living portrait in sculpture in his larger than life marble statue of De Witt Clinton for the front of Clinton Hall in Theater Alley on the southwest corner of Beekman and Nassau Streets.” “Shortly after Clinton's death, Ball-Hughes had worked from prints and portraits to secure the satisfactory likeness.” This account was before Ball Hughes plaster model for the famous full-length marble statue of Hamilton was approved by the Merchants' Exchange committee in December 1830.

The Feb. 13, 1830 issue of the New York Mirror reported the following: "The directors of Clinton Hall Association, some time since, applied to Mr. Hughes, the sculptor, for the model of a projected statue of our late Governor, intended for the front of Clinton Hall. This model has been completed, and the exquisite accuracy of its execution has so fully satisfied the directors that they have ordered one of marble, larger than life." Now we know that a model was made by February 1830 and a marble statue was ordered, but was it ever executed?

A search for statues of Clinton did not reveal any record of one ever being completed by Ball Hughes. A pair of cast statues of Alexander Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton, by Adolph A. Weinman in 1941, adorn the front facade of the Museum of the City of New York. The statue of Hamilton is based on the famous marble statue by Robert Ball Hughes that was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835. But what was the source of the design for companion statue of Clinton?

Microfilm records entitled “Adolph A. Weinman Papers, 1890-1959” have been digitized and are available on the Smithsonian Archives of Art website. They include an article from the New York Times, Tuesday, January 14, 1941 that states that “The De Witt Clinton statue is an original work resulting from an exhaustive study of numerous contemporary portraits on the part of the artist.” Absent is any reference to a statue of Clinton by Robert Ball Hughes.

Perhaps the reason we cannot find other references to a life size marble statue of Clinton is that it was never executed after the model was made and approved. In 1830, Ball Hughes was busy making the model for the larger than life statue of Alexander Hamilton for the rotunda of the Merchants Exchange on Wall Street. That 28” high plaster model of Hamilton was enthusiastically received and approved in December 1830. Ball Hughes would not have had enough time to procure such as large piece of marble for the statue of Clinton in 1830 before embarking on the Hamilton statue. The marble for the statue of Hamilton took some time to be procured from Italy. Ball Hughes worked on a full size model of the Hamilton, probably starting in 1831, and then on the marble statue in 1834 when the marble and carvers from England had arrived.

What about the references to a larger than life marble statue of Clinton by Georgia Stamm Chamberlain in 1957? Even Wayne Craven, writing in Sculpture in America (1968 & 1984), quoted the 1830 New York Mirror article and concluded that Ball Hughes was working on a statue of DeWitt Clinton for the Clinton Hall Association. A model was definitely made by Ball Hughes by February 1830 but I have not found any record of a life size marble statue ever being executed after it was ordered.

More information was found in the recently rediscovered Sketch of the Life of Robert Ball Hughes by Mrs. E. Ball Hughes, Robert's wife. Eliza states that about the time Ball Hughes had completed the Monument to Bishop Hobart (about October 1832 according to The Diary of Philip Hone) that Ball Hughes "made a very fine statuette of Governor Clinton." Perhaps Eliza recalled the order of events wrong as her account is not always chronological. The statuette she describes may have been the model that was approved in February 1830. If Ball Hughes had made a life size marble statue of Clinton, Eliza didn't mention it, only a statuette.

I reviewed all of the source material that I have accumulated so far and found a possible answer in American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. 1, A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born before 1865, edited by Thayer Tolles (1999). “... when he arrived in New York, he (Hughes) was perhaps the most talented and technically proficient sculptor in the United States. As such, he had access to New York's prominent citizens and he received some important commissions, but they were too few to sustain him and he had difficulty extracting payment. In 1829-30, for instance, he prepared a model for a statue of De Witt Clinton, a plum commission from the Clinton Hall Association that was never realized.”

Once again, more answers lead me to more questions. What ever happened to the statuette of DeWitt Clinton?

Census Records for Sunnyside

Thanks to an observant researcher, I have a copy of a census record for 1900 showing Georgina Ball Hughes. The record for Suffolk County, Massachusetts includes the residents on School St., in Dorchester. Robert and Eliza Ball Hughes eldest daughter, Georgina, lived in the family home, Sunnyside, on School Street until her death in 1911 at age 82.

The Ball Hughes family moved from Adams St. to School St. in 1851. Robert lived there for 17 years until his early death in 1868. We learned from the Sketch of the Life of Robert Ball Hughes by Mrs. E. Ball Hughes that the Ball Hughes apparently rented the home from several different owners over the years. In 1866, Mrs. Ball Hughes convinced her daughter, Georgina, who taught art in the public school for many years, that it would be a good investment to buy the house. Robert and Eliza continued to live there, probably with Georgina at times. She spent much of her time in London, England working as an accomplished artist.

What I didn't know was Georgina's birth date and city of birth. Several art biographies listed her birth year as 1828. This always bothered me since her parents, Robert and Eliza, where married in November 1828 and left for New York by packet ship shortly after they were married. Georgina would have been an infant on the stormy 10-week ocean voyage in the winter of 1828/29 if she was born in 1828. Eliza made no mention of Georgina's birth in the biography. Without knowing Georgina's city of birth, I had no way of verifying her birthdate, until I saw the 1900 census record.

I have no reason to doubt the census record as the information was provided to the census-taker by Georgina, the owner and resident of the house. The record lists the house number as 1 School St. (at the corner of Washington St.). The house number is now 3 School St., since the house was moved about 60 feet west from the corner. This tells me that the house may have been moved after the 1900 census but not what year. The census record for residents as of June 1, 1900 shows “Ball-Hughes Georgina” as the head of the house and no other residents or tenants at the time. A photograph of Sunnyside shows a “For Let” sign in front of the house in the late 1800's. The next house shown on the census record for School St. is No. 9.

The census record shows Georgina's color or race as “W” for white, sex as “F” for female, date of birth as Sept. 1829, age at last birthday as “70”, place of birth as “New York” (City), birth places of father and mother as “England”, and she was single as we already knew. The record also shows her occupation as “Artist”, and months not employed as “0”. The entry for attended school (in months) was blank and the entries for can read, can write, and can speak English were “Y” for yes. The owned or rented entry was “O” for owned, the entry for owned free or mortgaged was “M” for mortgaged, and the entry for farm or home was “H” for home.

This tells us quite a bit. Georgina was born in New York in September 1829, not 1828 as previously reported. She apparently was a honeymoon baby, conceived on the long ocean voyage since the Ball Hughes arrived in New York on January 19, 1829. September 1829 to June 1900 is 70 years, the same as Georgina's reported age as of June 1, 1900. Georgina probably completed public school in Philadelphia and Boston but nothing more is known about her education. Her obituary states that she was 83 when she died in October 1911. She would have been 82 years old if she was born in September 1829 instead of 1828. Perhaps the writer also had the wrong year of birth.

It's interesting that after owning the home for about 34 years since purchasing it in 1866, she still had a mortgage on it. Maybe long mortgage terms were common at the time to keep the payments low. It's also interesting that at age 70, Georgina did not consider herself unemployed. Retirement, as we know it today, is a relatively new phenomenon.

As I have learned, a one-line census record can reveal valuable information to confirm what is already known and add more details to it. I'd like to obtain more census records for the Ball Hughes from New York City for 1829-1830's, Philadelphia from the 1830's to 1840's, and Boston, from the 1840's to 1900's. I'd also like to get birth records for Georgina (born Sept. 1829) and her younger sister, Augusta (born Feb. 16, 1832), both in New York City. These birth certificates might list the parents birth date and city so I can track down Robert and Eliza's birth records.

I'm also looking for a passenger list for the packet ship, The Robert Edwards, that arrived in New York from London on Jan. 19, 1829. This list might also show Robert and Eliza Ball Hughes birth date and city. Please contact me if you have access to these records and can help me. Thank you.

Dave Brown
www.robertballhughes.com

The Panic of 1837

Cartoon showing the problems of a tradesman during the Panic of 1837
Library of Congress LC-USZC4-3240

You can't study the life of Robert Ball Hughes (1804-1868) and his family without studying the times in which they lived. Robert and his wife, Eliza (Wright) came to New York from London, England in early 1829. Many of his early customers for portrait busts were merchants and bankers who were becoming very rich as commerce in the young republic grew rapidly. In 1835, Ball Hughes completed the marble statue of Alexander Hamilton for the NY Merchants Exchange. It was the first life-size statue carved in marble in America. Ball Hughes became an artist of celebrity before the statue was sadly destroyed in the Great Fire of 1835.

In 1837 or 1838(?), Ball Hughes moved to Philadelphia to compete for an equestrian statue of George Washington. He was kindly received in Philadelphia and found plenty of work in the way of busts and medallions while waiting for an opportunity to make the Washington Monument, as it was to be called. Finally he was called upon to make a sketch and a model of the proposed statue. The committee for the equestrian statue approved his design in 1840(?) but the panic of 1837 was still having an impact on the economy after a brief rally from 1838 to 1839.

According to Eliza Ball Hughes, the committee "told the sculptor more important things demanded their immediate attention." That was an understatement. The Second Bank of the United States, located in Philadelphia, failed in 1841 and funding was lost for the statue. During the 5-year depression that followed the Panic of 1837, 40% of the country's banks failed. Confidence dropped and currency was devalued.

Businesses went bankrupt and many people lost their entire life savings. Unemployment at the time has been estimated to be about 30%. Mobs in New York raided warehouses for food and soup kitchens and bread lines sprouted up. This was Americas first major depression, second only to the Great Depression of the 1930's. Economists still argue about the cause: land speculation, easy credit, Specie Circular, government intervention, government inaction, etc.

Even with high unemployment, Ball Hughes still had work, though not always steady work. In 1839 he was hired by the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia to modify the Christian Gobrecht design of the Seated Liberty on U.S. coins. He apparently was paid $75 for his services. By 1842 (or 1840), Ball Hughes had given up hope of completing the Washington Monument and moved his family to Dorchester, MA, near Boston, where several orders awaited him. He was most kindly received in Boston and made it his final home.

By about 1843 the depression was over and the economy improved again. Ball Hughes continued to do colossal sculpture, including the Nathaniel Bowditch Monument in 1847. It was the first life-size statue cast in bronze in America. He also continued to work in clay, plaster, and marble, engrave medallions, and carve cameos.

In the 1850's Ball Hughes reinvented himself by creating "poker pictures" burnt in wood with a hot poker. He is credited with being the first person to popularize pyrography in America. He also supplemented his income in his later years by lecturing on art. Eliza taught art students to help support the family and their oldest daughter, Georgina, also an accomplished artist, taught drawing in the public school.

Note that reported dates are sometimes difficult to verify, even some of those recorded by Eliza Ball Hughes have been shown to be wrong. We can use historical events like the Great Fire of 1835 and the Panic of 1837 to place Ball Hughes at certain locations at the time. The year 1840, etched on the back of the First Poker Work, places Ball Hughes in Boston with his studio in Bromfield Hall. Eliza records that they moved to Boston in 1842. I'm leaning towards 1840. He was in Philadelphia in 1839 when he worked for the U.S. Mint. I estimate that funding was lost for the Washington Monument between 1839 and 1840 and not after the Second Bank of the United States failed in 1841.

Rev 5/1/2009

More Silhouettes of the Ball Hughes Family

I purchased the book, Auguste Edouart's Silhouettes of Eminent Americans, 1839-1844 by Andrew Oliver (1977) for $12 through Amazon.com. I was looking for images of silhouettes of the Ball Hughes family.

According to the Appendix, Edouart cut four silhouettes of the Ball Hughes family in Boston on Nov. 2, 1842, including the two that I knew about and have on my Silhouettes webpage on RobertBallHughes.com. They are recorded as "Hughes, Ball, sculptor from London, doing a bust of Edouart" and "Hughes, Mrs. Ball." The book by Oliver is apparently an edited version of the 1926 book by Emily Jackson by the same name.

According to the Appendix to the book, Edouart also did a silhouette of Ball Hughes daughter Augusta and one of daughter Georgina at the same time as the ones above. Unfortunately, none of the four Ball Hughes family silhouettes appear in Oliver's book. I'd like to know if they are in Jackson's 1926 book or if anyone has images that they can share with me.

Once again my research answers one question and creates another. I learned from the book that the silhouettes were done in 1842 in Boston and this is very helpful. I also learned that there are two more silhouettes that I didn't know about and don't have images of (yet).

Silhouettes of the Ball Hughes Family

Since I started using a web tracker, I've noticed that many visitors to RobertBallHughes.com are looking for silhouettes. In fact, more visitors to the site are interested in the silhouettes by Auguste Edouart than in Ball Hughes. I average about three visitors a day to the Silhouettes webpage from all over the world.

I'm glad that so many visitors are finding the page and hope that it's of interest to them. Visitors appear to be searching for "silhouettes" with a search engine or for images of silhouettes and are linking to the Silhouettes webpage from the image results.

The web tracker shows me what search terms and search engine the visitor used or what webpage they came from. If you search for "silhouettes" and "Edouart," the Silhouettes webpage on RobertBallHughes.com or the images of the silhouettes of the Ball Hughes family show up among the top results.

I'd love to hear from visitors about what they think of the Silhouettes webpage and if they found what they were searching for. Drop me an e-mail or add a comment below this post. I'm also looking for references to the Silhouettes of the Ball Hughes Family or books that have copies of these images or others of the Ball Hughes family.

Enjoy the site!

RobertBallHughes.com is One Year Old

I started this research in February 2008 at age 55. I was "Googling" my family name and found a reference to my cousin's Ball Hughes poker work at the Antique Hall of the E-Museum of Pyrographic Art. The E-Museum of Pyrographic Art is the premier site for Pyrographic Art by Kathleen Menéndez. That site lead me to search for more information about Robert Ball Hughes.

The books, Good Old Dorchester by William Dana Orcutt and The History of American Sculpture by Lorado Taft provided more information. In March 2008, I started the Robert Ball Hughes website on Googlepages. I was finding information on the Internet and at a university library faster than I could edit and publish it online.

I had valuable help from many people including Kathleen Menéndez, Boston author Anthony M. Sammarco, and several numismatist experts. At the end of May, after I saw a new Wikipedia entry about Robert Ball Hughes, I announced my site to the sculpture, pyrography, and numismatist communities and added a link to it on Wikidepia.

In the next few months, I found the descendents of my grandfathers brother. My branch of the family had lost touch with them after my grandfather died in 1935. The two brothers had moved from Boston to different states in the early 1900's. Both Brown families had inherited artwork and documents from Ball Hughes and his family. Many of the items are already on the website including the portrait of Robert by Col. John Trumbull, family photographs, The Gold Medal, The First Poker Work, images of sculpture, and the Hughes Crest.

The greatest discovery was the Sketch of the Life of Robert Ball Hughes by Mrs. E. Ball Hughes, wife of Robert. My offer is still open for anyone to help with the transcription of portions of the 49 page hand-written book. As sections are transcribed, I can add them to the website for all to read, so please volunteer! See Biography of Robert Ball Hughes Rediscovered for more information.

In August 2008, I purchased the domain name www.robertballhughes.com for $9.95 a year to make it easier to find the site. It's gratifying to see the number of visitors to the site (see What's a Web Tracker?) and I enjoy meeting new Friends of Robert Ball Hughes online.

There is so much more work to be done. The Please Help Write This History webpage lists additional information that I'm looking for. Check this blog and the What's New webpage for updates in the coming months and please let me know your comments.