Marrett House tour

The Woman’s Literary Union’s Antiques Study Group enjoyed a tour of the Marrett House in Standish Sept. 24, led by docent Elaine Bradbury. We also met Chuck Ruby, caretaker, who lives in an apartment on the property.

Several of the club members had lunch at the Sebago Brewing Co. in Gorham, before the house tour. The varied menu gave us several choices, and we all had generous servings of our orders.

From Gorham we drove up Route 25 to Standish and met other members at the Marrett House. The house was built in 1789 in the Georgian style and remodeled in the Greek Revival style in 1840. It is a beautiful 2 1/2-story, white house. In 1796 young Daniel Marrett, a recent Harvard graduate, moved to Standish to become the town parson. The grand house he purchased reflected his status as the community’s leading citizen. Our docent told us that it was because of his wife’s dowry that they were able to buy the house. She was from a wealthy family. Over the years, his children and grandchildren enlarged and updated the house, but left untouched many furnishings and interior arrangements as relics of the past. They preserved the southwest exactly as it had appeared on the occasion of a family wedding in 1847.

Daniel’s family included 14 children. After the death of his first wife, he married again. The eight offspring from his first marriage were grown when the next six joined the family.

In 1889, the family celebrated the house’s centennial, refurbishing several of the rooms with reproductions, wallpapers and bed hangings, and organizing a large reunion to honor the Marrett legacy.

The Marretts were the first to have a stove in Standish, and the first to have a Franklin stove.

The house now belongs to Historic New England, formerly know as the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. It is open June through Oct. 15, the first and third Saturday of the month. Tours are at 11 a.m., noon, 1, 2, 3 and 4 p.m., with admission. Historic New England members and Standish residents get in free.

We all were given blue plastic slippers to put on over our shoes for the tour.

Our tour started in the left parlor, the one which was furnished just as it was originally. We walked on a beautiful Oriental rug and admired the bed hangings.

Every room in the house had a stove. Those in the second floor bedrooms cannot be lit because of fire danger. But the large bedroom above the left parlor gathered some warmth from the large stove below, in that parlor.

There were books and bookcases throughout. I always wish that I could stop and study the books, looking at the title pages, etc. But of course we are warned not to touch anything in these lovely homes. I was pleased to see a copy of Shelley’s poetry on the dresser in a bedroom, and also I noticed a copy of William Wordsworth’s poetry in a bookcase. (He is my favorite poet). I was fascinated by a large, leather-bound set of books on the lower shelf of a bookcase – the Century Dictionary and Encyclopedia – but I could not know the long-ago year they were printed.

The bedroom floor coverings were of straw matting, with braided scatter rugs atop it. Mrs. Bradbury told me that they removed the matting in the summer months. I recall the same straw matting in all the bedrooms of my grandparents’ old home in Wellesley Hills, Mass.

During the War of 1812, when it was feared that Portland would be taken by the British, the coins from Portland banks were hauled by six oxen to Parson Marrett’s house, and stored in a room where the foundation had been strengthened for that purpose. The heavy locks, placed on the doors of the house at that time to protect the treasure, are still in place.

The gold coins arrived in 1814 and were returned to Portland in 1816. Mrs. Bradbury told me that the coins went back to Portland, where they were stolen. Investigations found they were stolen by the locksmith. What a story!

A grandson of Daniel, Walter Marrett, graduated from Bowdoin College and then from medical school at Dartmouth College, where he got his degree. He next went to Alaska, where he raised silver fox, living there from 1897 to 1937. After those many years in Alaska, he returned to Standish. We saw a beautiful picture of Walter in his sister’s bedroom, and learned then that while he was at Bowdoin, he had chatted with the famous Portland poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The house was left to Avery Marrett, a grandson. When he died, he left the house to his daughter, Frances, who was living in Boston. Relatives in the house wanted her to return to the Standish home, but Frances would move back only if they would install a toilet and put in electricity. She did return, with her friend Alice. Frances died after a few years, and Alice lived on and stayed until her death 15 years later.

Helen Keller, whom Frances met while in Boston, came to the Marrett House to visit after Frances’s return. There we saw the letter to Frances from Helen Keller in a frame on the bureau in Frances’s room.

There are many stories from that large family, of course. Mrs. Bradbury told us that the Marretts’ graves are all in the Standish Cemetery. I called my Standish friend Clayton Collins, to ask where the cemetery is located. I asked, at the red church? That is a landmark in Standish. But Clayton said the cemetery is at the white church, across the Oak Hill Road from the red church.

I plan to drive up soon and study all the Marrett names after that fascinating account we heard about many of them.

Birthday ducks

In the Sept. 29 Boston Herald I read with interest an editorial about sculptor Nancy Schon’s bronze ducklings. They represent the duck family in Robert McCloskey’s classic children’s book, “Make Way For Ducklings.”

When I visit Boston I include a walk in the park to see these ducks, often when young children are seated on the backs of them. The ducks have just turned 20 years old. After Barbara Bush, then our first lady, visited the park with her Russian counterpart, Raisa Gorbachev, in 1991, she had them duplicated and sent to a Moscow park, as a gift from the children of the United States.

You might try to see them on your trip to Boston. They are now a fixture in the park and a pleasure to see.

If possible, take your camera.

Make ahead

Today’s recipe is from “Cooks by the Yard,” the Harvard Neighbors Centennial Cookbook, 1994. It was submitted by Janice Ehrmann. It is an excellent and delicious make-ahead tea or breakfast loaf.

LEMON BREAD

Yield, 1 loaf

Equipment: 9 by 5-inch loaf pan, buttered; mixing bowl

2 tablespoons butter, slightly softened

1-1/3 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon lemon extract

1 lemon, juice and grated rind

1-1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 scant teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Cream the butter and 1 cup of the sugar. Beat in the eggs, lemon extract and lemon rind. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and add alternately with the milk to the butter-sugar mixture. Fold in the nuts.

Pour into the loaf pan and bake for one hour. Cool for 10 minutes. Mix together the lemon juice and remaining 1/3 cup of sugar and pour over the bread while it is still in the pan. Let cool completely before removing from the pan.

Ramblings