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Historical Materials

Historical Materials  »  Other Locales  »  Manchester, Mass.

Manchester, Mass.

View related Fitz Henry Lane catalog entries (8) »

Manchester-by-the-Sea is located on Cape Ann in Essex County, Massachusetts. Incorporated in 1645, Manchester has many beaches and coves, including Manchester Harbor, and several small islands off the coast. Dubbed the Gold Coast in the nineteenth century, it became a summer destination for "rusticators", wealthy families escaping the heat of their residences in Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Among these was the famous shipbuilder and merchant Robert Bennet Forbes, who built a summer house, Masconomo, in the area known as Newport Beach in 1847. Lane painted portraits of vessels built and owned by Forbes, the "Massachusetts" and the steam bark "Antelope".

Related tables: Forbes, Robert Bennet »

manuscript
Description of photograph of "Masconomo"
c. 1970
Typed transcription of photograph caption
Manchester Historical Museum, Manchester, Mass.

Also filed under: Forbes, Robert Bennet »

photo (current)
Kettle Cove
Alison Anholt-White
2016
photograph
View of Kettle Cove and Baker's Island, as depicted by Lane in his painting "View from Kettle Cove" (inv.94)
map
Map of Manchester, Massachusetts
1872
map
Manchester Historical Museum

Also filed under: Forbes, Robert Bennet »

photo (historical)
"Masconomo", Manchester, Mass.
Photograph
c. 1857
Manchester Historical Museum

In 1856 Robert Bennet Forbes bought nineteen acres of land for $2,800 from Israel F. Tappan in the section of the West Manchester shore known in those days as Newport. There he built Masconomo, named for the sagamore of the Agawam. In her unpublished letters to her son Robert, his wife Rose Greene Forbes wrote:

"...I think Father will put up a good sized cheap summer house, rough pillars, pine furniture etc., and very likely we shall all be there for two months next summer. He means to show people how rational people ought to live at the seaside. What nice times we shall have..."

The house was sold to Benjamin G. Boardman in 1865.

Also filed under: Forbes, Robert Bennet »

photo (historical)
"Masconomo", Manchester, Massachusetts, The Robert Forbes House, 1856
Edith Perkins Cunningham
1939
Book "Family Photographs" 1:45
Privately Printed: The Riverside Press
Collection of the Forbes House Museum.
Citation: "Historical Materials." Fitz Henry Lane Online. Cape Ann Museum. http://fitzhenrylaneonline.org/historical_material/index.php?section=Manchester%2C+Mass. (accessed December 3, 2024).
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