Tag: Gloucester Ma

hey joey – this is the photo al mentions in gordon thomas’ ‘wharf & fleet’, shot by martha harvey (not hovey), one of gloucester’s photographer legends.  she grew up on prospect court as martha rogers, married the artist george harvey and they set up shop in annisquam on river road.  she stood about 4’10" in her socks and wandered all over the cape with a mammoth box camera and a suitcase of unexposed glass plates, some of them 11×14!  she deserves an honorary chair in the lumpers’ lounge.
gordon thomas’ caption for this photo reads:  "Winter Quarters on Five Pound Island, 1893.  This fine Martha Harvey shot shows several schooners hauled up for the winter on the eastern end of Five Pound Island.  Many vessels for various reasons were hauled up during the winter months and as most of the wharves around the harbor were busy, vessels were laid up at the Island until spring.  In this photo, the inner harbor is frozen solid.  The schooner, bow on with flying jib boom, is the beautifully names ‘Herald of the Morning,’ owned by John Pew and built in 1875.  The clipper bowed schooner to the right is the ‘Columbia’, built in 1891 for Parmenter and Co. (not to be confused with the racing ‘Columbia’ of 1923.)"
Cape Ann Museum has a large collection of Harvey plates, as does the Annisquam Historical.  CAM’s brilliant photo archivist has arranged a set of binders with inkjet prints from scans of the Harvey plates, available for browsing during regular library hours.

-infamous (and brilliant) fred buck

The infamous one is responding to yesterday’s post from Al Bezanson-

19th Century Gloucester Windmills From Al Bezanson

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Joey C

This illustration appears in History of the town and city of Gloucester, Cape Ann Massachusetts, 1892, by James R. Pringle, who wrote,

“A sketch of the town in 1817 was drawn by Capt. John Beach, from a point in the harbor opposite Ten Pound island, off Pavilion Beach.  Standing out prominently in the foreground was an eight-sided wooden windmill erected on the site now occupied by the Pavilion Hotel.  This had been built in 1814 by Ignatius Webber, and its long arms, fitted with sails, made it a conspicuous object, and gave the town quite a foreign aspect.  It was subsequently removed to a position on Fort Square, where it became a familiar landmark, being destroyed by fire a few years ago.”

Another windmill, of more modern design, is prominent on Five Pound Island in an 1893 photograph by Martha Hovey, reproduced in Wharf and Fleet, by Gordon W. Thomas.

Al Bezanson