Catalog entry

A painting of Little Good Harbor Beach which Lane made from the drawing Little Good Harbor Beach from the Western Upland, 1861 (inv. 152) was given as a prize in a raffle at the 1863 Cape Ann Sanitary Fair, according to the Gloucester Telegraph of December 26. Salt Island and Thacher's Island are visible in the background of the drawing. The painting's current whereabouts is unknown.

Good Harbor Beach is on the other side of East Gloucester, towards Rockport, near Salt Island.

For centuries the Thacher Island Twin Lighthouses, or Cape Ann Light Station, have guided mariners off Cape Ann to safety. Thacher Island is a 52-acre island located on the eastern shore of Rockport, MA about a half-mile offshore and has been visited by Europeans as early as 1605, but didn't have a light station until 1771. On December 21, 1771 two 45-foot stone towers were lit on Thacher Island to mark the dangerous Londoner Ledge to the southeast of Thacher Island. These Thacher Island Twin Lighthouses were the 11th and last lighthouses to be built under the British occupation of the colonies. In the century after the original towers were built, the Cape Ann Light Station underwent numerous changes. New lamps were installed in 1810, a two-story wooden keepers house was built in 1840, a fog bell was added in 1853, but the most substantial change came in 1861 when the Thacher Island Twin Lighthouses were rebuilt. First lit on October 1, 1861, the formidable 124-foot-tall towers were built from New Hampshire Granite and boasted first-order Fresnel lens, making each of the lights visible from 22 miles away. A three-story keeper's house was built the same year and housed two separate families. Fitz Henry Lane depicted the Cape Ann Light Station on at least two occasions; the works date to the 1850s and 1861.

This information has been shared with the Lane project by Jeremy D'Entremont. More information can be found at his website, www.newenglandlighthouses.net or in The Lighthouse Handbook New England. This information has also been summarized from Paul St. Germain's book, Lighthouses and Lifesaving Stations on Cape Ann.

John J. Piper’s life intersected with that of Fitz Henry Lane on several occasions.  Both men joined the Gloucester Lyceum in the 1840s, signing the register in succession. In 1849, Piper and Lane helped organize Gloucester’s annual Fourth of July observances and rode together in an open carriage in the celebratory procession. John J. Piper, both of his wives and his son are all buried in Oak Grove Cemetery, adjacent to the grave of Fitz Henry Lane.

On at least two occasions, Piper ordered paintings done by Lane: one based on a pencil drawing entitled "View at Bass Rocks Looking Eastward," and the other from a drawing of Stage Rocks and the Western Shore of Gloucester Outer Harbor (1857).  What became of these two paintings following Piper’s death in 1869 remains unknown. 

John J. Piper was born in Stratham, New Hampshire, in 1825. He began teaching school in his hometown at the age of fourteen and at the age of sixteen, moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts where he also found work as a teacher. By 1842, he was employed in the Gloucester public schools as a teacher in the girl’s high school. During the 1846–47 school year, Piper was moved to Gloucester’s Numbers 1 & 2 High School for Boys.

While Piper had an early interest in teaching, his true passion was in printing and newspapers. In 1847, under his leadership, the boys’ high school began printing a small newspaper called The Germ which was envisioned as a means for Gloucester boys to improve their composition skills. While officials were pleased at first with Piper’s project, regular visits to the classroom revealed a growing undercurrent of resentment and disrespectfulness among students who were being kept after school to work on the newspaper. Absenteeism became a problem, student progress dropped and mid-way through the 1848 year Piper’s tenure with the Gloucester schools was abruptly terminated. 

Later that same year, Piper focused his attention on the world of newspapers, starting a semi-weekly publication called the Gloucester News and Messenger. In 1851, the publication was taken over by the Gloucester Telegraph, and Piper moved to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where he started The Reveille, a political paper that advocated the principals and policies of the Whig party. 

Despite his move to Fitchburg, Piper maintained his connections to Cape Ann. In 1856, he and Eliza Sayward of Gloucester were married. Following Eliza’s death a year later, Piper married her younger sister Mary. Together they had one child, a son born in 1868. John J. Piper died in 1869; Mary passed away shortly thereafter, leaving their young son to be raised by his maternal grandmother who lived at the corner of Middle and Washington Streets in Gloucester.

– Martha Oaks

George Homans Rogers (1808–70) was the owner of at least four of Fitz H. Lane’s paintings. At a May 1871 auction, these four were sold: “A coast scene, representing the beach at Newport just above Manchester, to John J. Babson, Esq. for $51.25; a scene in Gloucester Harbor representing the old Fort and its surroundings, with one of the Surinam fleet at anchor, to Capt. David Plumer, for $154; a harbor view, embracing Ten Pound Island, to Mr. Nath’l Webster, for $89.00; a ship working off a lee shore, to the same purchaser for $135.00.” (1)

Rogers was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, the second child and eldest son of the six children of Daniel Rogers Jr. & Phoebe Homans. In 1834, he married Lucy Davis (1814–1907), who was born in Gloucester, the second child of the four children of Elias Davis & Abigail Somes. Lucy Davis Rogers' parents built and owned the Captain Davis House that forms part of the Cape Ann Museum. George and Lucy Rogers had no children.

George H. Rogers began his adult life as an apothecary, and then became involved in the Surinam trade. Between 1831 and 1868, he was owner or part-owner of one ship, four schooners, eight barques, and sixteen brigs, and his homes (Gloucester in summer and Boston in winter) were filled with the spoils of this trade: silver candelabra, plates, tea and coffee services, Delft china tea and dinner sets, and bowls of brightly and realistically painted plaster fruits of the tropics (pomegranates, mangoes, plantains).

Rogers was also heavily involed in real estate and became known as "the great conveyancer" because of the number of properties he bought and sold. He was also called "the great remover" for the number of buildings he moved both into and around town. He is quoted as saying: “I believe in spot cash, many deals, no mortgages because they are a damned nuisance, do your own surveying, get there first, and give quitclaim deeds only and let the Lord take care of the rest.” (2)

Nonetheless, George H. Rogers was a generous man. When the town decided to construct a new street along the wharves in the harbor, and his land was taken for the road, he refused to accept compensation, and in appreciation the street was named for him—Rogers Street. He was a Unitarian, although an infrequent churchgoer, but his religious curiosity spread wide, leading him to finance investigations into spiritualism in his later years.

At the time of Rogers' death, he owned property at the Fort, including wharves, a windmill, a sail loft, freight and packing stores, a hoop-skirt factory, and a block of stone buildings on the south side of Front Street, and several houses in the vicinity of Bass Rocks. The buildings on Front Street later became the Cape Ann Savings Bank. Rogers also ran a working farm with more than two hundred and fifty acres of pasture, tillage and marsh land, cows, horses, pigs, and chickens. He also owned six pews in the Unitarian Church, his residences in Gloucester and Boston, a billiard table, a piano, and his Lane paintings.