Secondary Story: Behind the Exhibition – From the Townspeople HOLD TEXT

Tucked away in the parlor at Historic New England’s Cogswell’s Grant in Essex, Massachusetts, is a warming pan with a turned wooden handle and a brass container pierced with holes and engraved with scrolling vines and flowerheads. Also referred to as bed warmers, warming pans were a common household tool in colonial and post-revolutionary America, filled with embers and placed under the sheets of a bed to warm it before use.

This particular warming pan had more than just decorative motifs adorning its metallic surface. Engraved on its lid are the words: From the Townspeople / Patriot and Friend of Gen. Washington / Bell Tavern, Danvers, Massachusetts / Francis Symonds Esq. Innkeeper and Poet. On the pan’s sides, inside the incised outline of a bell: I’ll toll you / if you have need / and feed you well/ and bid you speed. On the other side: Francis Symonds / makes and sells / the best of chocolate / also shells.

So much information to glean! I was immediately drawn to this item for Myth and Memory, though the bed warmer is far from a new discovery. Curator emeritus Nancy Carlisle wrote about the warming pan for the 2003 catalog for Cherished Possessions: A New England Legacy and collector Nina Fletcher Little included it in Little by Little: Six Decades of Collecting American Decorative Arts, published by Historic New England in 1984.

Nina Fletcher Little and her husband Bert Little owned Cogswell’s Grant and spent more than half a century collecting superb and unique examples of New England’s folk arts. They were also avid researchers and documentarians of the region’s material history. Of this warming pan, which the Littles purchased from a dealer in 1966, Nina Fletcher Little wrote, “[this is] a rare artifact able to re-create in imagination the essence of a given historical period.”

The story goes that the pan’s original owner was Francis Symonds of Danvers, Massachusetts, owner of Bell Tavern—which was, by all accounts, the center of life and politics in that town. In 1770, the Sons of Liberty brought an accused seller of boycotted tea to the tavern and made him sign a confession and apology. The morning of April 19, 1775, local militia companies gathered at the Bell Tavern before marching to Menotomy (Arlington, Massachusetts) to intercept British Regulars returning to Boston from their expedition to Concord. Symonds himself took part in the Battle of Menotomy, the bloodiest engagement of the day.

By its history, as recorded by Nina Fletcher Little, the warming pan was presented to Symonds around 1785: “After the war’s close, the citizens of Danvers evidently wished to present Symonds with a token of their esteem and decided on a warming pan as a practical gift.” The engraved inscription inside the bell matched the Bell Tavern’s signpost. The additional inscription praised Symonds as a patriot, friend of George Washington, and a poet, truly a prominent citizen and worthy of appreciation.

Much of this same history is presented in Cherished Possessions, fleshed out with details of Symonds’s military service during the American Revolution: He served as a captain of Glover’s Massachusetts Regiment from May to December 1775 and as captain of the 11th Continental Infantry in 1776. Carlisle muses, “We may never know why the townspeople of Danvers gave [Symonds] this impressive gift. The inscription on the lid speaks to a man honored for the role he played in his community’s recent life and death battles.”

When researching this object for Myth and Memory, one major detail of Symonds’s life challenged its story: Francis Symonds died on September 22, 1775. According to the Essex Gazette: “On the 22nd Instant died at Danvers and on the 24th was very decently interred, Mr. Francis Symonds, Innholder, in the 5th Year of his Age. He was very just in his Dealings, and compassionate to the Poor as far as lay in his Power. In his last Sickness, especially towards the Close of Life, his Calmness and Resignation were very remarkable. He has left a sorrowful Widow and 6x Children, for whom we wish that the fame Compassion that he has shown to others may be shown to them.” 

This obituary, along with town records, verifies that Symonds died before the attributed date of this warming pan. There was another Francis Symonds from Danvers who fought in the American Revolution, and he died in May 1776, which is likely the reason for the misattribution of Symonds’ military service. But the town records clearly identify our Symonds as “innkeeper at Danvers.” Francis Symonds mustered for two days with Colonel Pickering’s regiment during the Battle of Lexington and Concord, and again on April 24, 1775, serving for a little over three months, until August 1, 1775. He was at home when he died of illness.

So, what about the warming pan? It seems very unlikely that the town of Danvers presented it to him on his deathbed, nor to his family immediately after, given the ongoing Siege of Boston. What is its true history?

I’m inclined to agree with Nina Fletcher Little that this pan was made sometime after the end of the war. Stylistically, it resembles numerous examples produced by coppersmiths in Boston or Providence between 1785 and the 1830s (before the war, the majority were imported from England). In addition, while the inscriptions on the pan directly recognize Symonds’ life and achievements, some of the claims appear to be embellishments: “Friend of Gen. Washington,” for example, seems a bit too good to be true. Their paths may have crossed when Washington came to Cambridge in July 1775, but there is no evidence that they had a friendship.

I also wondered at the designation of Symonds as a “poet.” In 1839, John Warner Barber published Historical Collections: Being a General Collection of Interesting Facts, Traditions, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, &c., Relating to the History and Antiquities of Every Town in Massachusetts. This volume included a history of Danvers and reference to “Old Bell Tavern” and Francis Symonds, “who, besides being the landlord, claimed the honor of being the poet laurate of the village.”

Symonds’ status as a poet likely referred to the little poems he included in his advertisements, which were more distinctive than the standard formats of his era. For example, when he advertised grinding and selling chocolate, he wrote: If for confirmation you incline / and would have that that’s genuine / then please come and try mine. Similarly, on his sign for the Bell Tavern, quoted on the warming pan: I’ll toll you / if you have need / and feed you well / and bid you speed.

While Barber’s book is typical of the kinds of antiquarian sources produced in the early- to mid-nineteenth century, accompanying the rise of historical and genealogical societies in New England. Not always factually accurate, these sources rely on town memory and local mythology to fill in the gaps. Yet, his coverage of Danvers provided a clue to help me locate the possible origins of the warming pan. Barber wrote about a monument outside of Bell Tavern erected by the town in 1835 on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It may have been that, as part of the festivities, the warming pan was commissioned to be engraved in honor of Francis Symonds, one of the town’s most prominent citizens and patriots.

This theory is pure speculation: There is no specific reference to the warming pan in any of the surviving documentation about the 1835 commemoration, but neither does there appear to be any significant occasion before that date where the warming pan could have been presented to Symonds’ surviving family or installed at Bell Tavern when it was a popular tourist attraction. Bell Tavern was demolished only a few years later, in 1840. Perhaps the warming pan was orphaned in the aftermath and circulated among collectors and dealers until it came to Nina Fletcher Little in 1966, its history lost if not for the engravings on the pan and lid.

Commemoration is an act of memory-making and memory-keeping. Through this warming pan, Francis Symonds became an avatar for a town whose own history was changing in the nineteenth century, as it lost its most famous historic structure in 1840 and the southern parish of Danvers was incorporated into Peabody in 1855. The same people who inscribed this tribute to Symonds on the warming pan were also hoping to inscribe their town’s story in the annals of the American Revolution in New England, hoping not to be forgotten.

Written by Erica Lome, Curator of Collections