December, 1908 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



481 



the china that Ogle described in his attack upon Martin Van 

 Buren. 



Leaving the entrance hall and parlors, the visitor is taken 

 into the museum and the series of "Continental Rooms," 

 filled with old furniture, curios and rare treasures. One of 

 these is the "Indian Room," devoted to Indian relics of all 

 kinds. 



Beyond this is a hall, the stairs of which were in the old 

 Tracy mansion of Newburyport, visited by Washington, 

 Lafayette, Talleyrand and other celebrities. The chandelier 

 came from the first Senate Chamber in Washington, and 

 here are also preserved family portraits, old pictures and 

 some of the Colonial and Revolutionary 

 relics in which the house is so rich. Here 

 is also a collection of firearms, some of 

 which did duty at Gettysburg, and an old 

 clock imported by one of Major Poore's 

 ancestors and which has marked the time 

 for six generations of Poores. 



Beyond this is a room fitted up in the 

 style of an ancient kitchen, containing an 

 enormous fireplace, huge logs, pot-hooks 

 and trammels, dressers filled with pewter 

 platters, and a corner cupboard filled with 

 china that belonged to the Poores before 

 the Revolution. In another corner cup- 

 board is an entire dinner set that belonged 

 to the first British Minister to Washington. 



were originally in the old Province House in Boston. The 

 mirror over the mantelpiece belonged to Governor Winthrop. 



The suite of rooms used by Major Poore for his own in- 

 clude a bed-chamber, a dressing-room, and, down a short 

 flight of steps, a study that opens directly upon the lawn. 

 The study is an octagonal room, and is preserved as he left 

 it. The walls are filled with books on agriculture, history, 

 travel, military subjects and innumerable scrapbooks. The 

 desk was used by John Quincy Adams in the old Hall of 

 Representatives in Washington, from which he fell when 

 he died. 



The bedroom here contains a rare piece of furniture — an 





The bedstead once slept in by Washington 



Here also is a "sink-room," with its roller and old towel 

 spun at least a hundred years ago. Here also may be seen 

 a collection of firearms : blunderbusses, powder horns, cut- 

 lasses and patterns of all varieties of guns used in the 

 Revolutionary War, also a bugle and a drum to the beats of 

 which Captain Lunt's "Minute Men" of Newbury marched 

 to the battle of Bunker Hill, and swords worn in the same 

 battle by Colonel Robert Dodge and Colonel Jacob Gerrish, 

 ancestors of the Poore family. 



Above the museum are four bedrooms furnished with old- 

 fashioned articles that would break the heart of a dealer in 

 antiques. One contains, for example, a high-post bedstead 

 in which Washington once slept. 



The third room is lined with white wooden panels that 



The old-time kitchen 



Empire bed of mahogany, which was 

 owned by Napoleon Bonaparte. Swans' 

 heads appear at the four corners. The 

 gilded wreath that formed the canopy for 

 the curtains was used to frame a mirror 

 that now hangs in the hall. 



The woodwork of the "Continental 

 Rooms" is all from notable buildings, in- 

 cluding panels from the Province House 

 of Boston and Dearborn House of Rox- 

 bury, a fireplace from the old Stuyvesant 

 house in New York, and panels from Ed- 

 ward Everett's house in Boston, etc. 



Behind the house to the left is a famous 

 grove of trees for which Major Poore 

 took a prize offered by Essex Countv. 

 Many of the trees here were named for and planted by his 

 friends. Inside this grove is an exact representation of a 

 Masonic lodge; for Major Poore was a prominent Mason. 

 The gardens are laid out on the other side of the house, 

 and are a worthy accompaniment to the mansion. Forest 

 trees and imported shrubbery vie with each other in guarding 

 the graveled walks and flower beds. Arches are cut through 

 leafy aisles, walks are edged with box or walled in with lilac 

 bushes that are practically trees, while all the splendid colors 

 of hollyhocks, peonies, asters, lilies, roses, marigolds, poppies 

 and all the old-fashioned posies dear to true lovers of gar- 

 dens, burn and blaze in riotous clumps of blossom or in for- 

 mal beds. Major Poore was a great lover of flowers and 

 trees, and devoted much attention to tree-planting. 



