Colonial Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Enslavement at the Colonel John Ashley House

by Livy Scott

Thanks to the generosity of the Decorative Arts Trust and the Gerry Charitable Trust, I have spent the last year as the Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Fellow at The Trustees of Reservations (The Trustees) working at the Colonel John Ashley House (figure 1). In this two-year fellowship, my role entails cataloging the house’s collection, reinterpreting its historic interiors for a new furnishing plan, and conducting new scholarly research.

The Ashley House is situated in the agrarian landscape of Sheffield, in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts. Colonel John Ashley (1709–1802) and his wife Hannah Hogeboom (1712–90) built this center-chimney saltbox home and an integral lean-to (no longer standing) in 1735. In the early 1770s, the Ashleys renovated the home, adding refined paneling, molding, and a shell cupboard that survive in the upstairs study and the largest bedroom. In 1810, the house was modernized by Colonel Ashley’s grandson, John Ashley IV (1767–1823). These updates included the addition of a curved stairway, replacement of the lean-to with a rear ell, and reconfiguration of the first floor to create a large kitchen. The home underwent minor renovations by subsequent 19th-century owners. In 1930, Harry Brigham—a descendant of the Ashleys—and his wife, Mary, moved the house a short distance to its present site and completed an extensive restoration. It survives today under the stewardship of The Trustees as the oldest extant house in the Berkshires.

A key aspect of this stewardship involves uncovering the histories of all who lived in the Ashley House and how the property connects to the end of slavery in Massachusetts. A woman named Elizabeth Freeman (c. 1744–1829, figure 2)—also known as Bett or Mumbet—was enslaved by Colonel John Ashley. In 1781, she and an enslaved man, Brom, sued Colonel Ashley for their freedom on the basis of the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution. Freeman’s pivotal role in the 1783 constitutional end of slavery in Massachusetts is celebrated annually on Elizabeth Freeman Day on August 21, the day she successfully won her freedom. This year’s festivities at the Ashley House were especially meaningful due to the visit of Freeman’s descendant, Lisa Shepperson (figure 3), whose ancestral ties to Freeman were recently uncovered by the New England Genealogical Society.

Although an extensive historic structures report was conducted on the house in 2003, much remains to be explored about how the house functioned in its earliest decades. The loss of the original lean-to and cellar and the altered rearrangement of the first-floor rooms poses curatorial and interpretive challenges. Namely, how do we tell the stories of the eight enslaved people who labored for the Ashley household when the parts of the house where they may have lived no longer exist? Also, how can the furnishing plan best tell the story of a house that spans several generations of change and a collection accumulated over time?

The 1930s restoration and current interpretation of the house’s interiors were heavily influenced by a Colonial Revival mindset. The Brighams stripped the house of all surviving paint and finishes in 1930. The present color schemes are not historically accurate. With the help of furniture and decorative surfaces conservator Chris Thomson, we gained new insights from the small fragments of paint she recovered and hope to reintroduce historical colors—including olive green, Prussian blue, and yellow ochre—back into the house. As I develop the new furnishing plan, I will be guided by probate research into Colonel Ashley’s 1802 inventory, his son’s 1799 inventory, and their patterns of consumption that I discovered within their 29 surviving account books. Comparing Colonel Ashley’s estate at the time of his death to other regional examples that were similarly taxed will also provide context.

Cataloging the contents in our new collection management system, Qi, has led to fruitful research and many new discoveries (figure 4). During a day of conservation work with the collections team, I discovered textiles tucked in a dresser drawer. Upon examination, I realized that these were two of the original seat covers to upholster chairs (figure 5) donated to The Trustees by Ashley descendants. We believe they are part of a set of 12 chairs embroidered by Mary Ballantine (1744–1827) of Westfield and brought to Sheffield after her 1769 marriage to Colonel Ashley’s son, General John Ashley, Jr. (1736–99). We are excited to soon have handmade reproductions of these seat covers on the original chairs.

A rich set of crewelwork bed hangings produced by Mary Ballantine Ashley also survives, and pieces from that set are stewarded by Historic Deerfield and The Trustees. I am continuing my in-depth study of these textiles and other surviving Ashley embroidery and will present my findings at the Decorative Arts Trust Emerging Scholars Colloquium in January 2025.

The most exciting aspect of the collection to catalog thus far was the extensive earthenware holdings. With over 200 pieces of redware, this assemblage is considered one of the best in the country. Redware is difficult to identify, and research on its makers is limited but growing. My study of the attributes, forms, techniques, and materials enabled me to geographically identify an origin (and sometimes the maker) for over 80 pieces. The collection includes a candlestick and a small jug manufactured by the Daniel Clark Pottery (c. 1792–1885) in Concord, NH. A stew pot (see figure 6) produced by John Safford, 2nd (1797–1879) at the Safford Pottery in Monmouth, ME, between 1838 and 1854, exhibits the maker’s distinctive mottled olive-green glaze and incised lines. The unique raspberry and light-yellow glaze brushed with manganese and incising techniques of the Bradford Pottery (c. 1750–1857) of Kingston, MA, can be found in full display on a rare, covered pitcher (see figure 6). A small greenish-yellow glazed snuff jar (see figure 6) is a rare survivor of the understudied pottery industry of Middlebury, VT.

At the time of his death, Colonel Ashley owned 27 “earthen plates,” one “earthen pot,” and one jug. Whether these wares were domestically produced or imported is unknown. No historic redware pottery in the Berkshires has been identified, but the Great Barrington historian Charles Taylor suggests that a pottery may have operated there. Alternatively, maybe the Ashley family procured their redware from the nearby Hervey Brooks Pottery (c. 1803–64) in Goshen, CT. The Ashleys also could have purchased earthenware in nearby Litchfield County, CT, or Hudson, NY, where they frequently visited and conducted business. Nevertheless, the Ashley family would have never owned the scale of redware presently on display or the diversity of products from a range of origins. The 20th-century collectors who created the Ashley House collection opted for a range of rich colors and forms, which better illustrates Colonial Revivalist patterns than an accurate representation of what the Ashleys owned. While much of the redware is currently stored together in the buttery (figure 7), the new furnishings plan will allow visitors to focus on individual pieces. We will incorporate new displays on the first floor to highlight specific objects and discuss redware use in a historical context.

My interest in how to accurately interpret redware usage in the Ashley House led me to reading the 29 surviving Ashley Family account books. The three account books owned by The Trustees and housed at our Archives and Research Center in Sharon, MA, were recently conserved and digitized thanks to a National Endowment of the Humanities grant received in 2023. The remaining 26 account books are stewarded by the Sheffield Historical Society at the Mark Dewey Research Center, and I am greatly indebted for their continued support of my research. The daybooks and ledgers contain entries dating from 1768 to 1859 and track debts and credits from the daily business at their general stores, grist mill, ironworks, sawmill, and farming operations. Most were written by Colonel John Ashley, General John Ashley, and Colonel Ashley’s grandson, William Ashley (1773–1849), who inherited his grandfather’s empire.

I found very limited mentions of buying or selling any kind of pottery in the account books, but upon a close study of these volumes, I knew that a much larger story about the household remained untold, buried within lines of small historic script. The account books revealed new details into the realities of day-to-day life in bondage in the Ashley House, the identities of those he enslaved, and their lives post-emancipation. I expanded my research beyond just the account books and utilized a wide breadth of primary sources that aided in illuminating these individuals’ identities. Through this research, I found the names (and glimpses of the lives) of seven people enslaved by Colonel Ashley: Adam Mullen, Betsey Freeman, Brom, Caesar, Elizabeth Freeman, Harry, and Zach Mullen. Additionally, a man named John Sheldon, enslaved in Connecticut, was coercively indentured to Colonel Ashley in 1782 to repay his enslaver’s debt. Furthermore, General John Ashley Jr. purchased the freedom of a woman named Mary in 1789 from her New York enslaver upon the condition of ten years of indentured service for the Ashley family.

This research is pivotal to how we tell the story of the Ashley House, Elizabeth Freeman, and, more broadly, enslavement in rural western Massachusetts. Along with refreshing the didactic panels in the Ashley House interpretation center, we will profile each of these individuals in displays on the first floor and seek ways to further ingrain their presence in this space. I have also recently published these nine individuals’  American Life. This new information will let us tell a more complete and accurate history of slavery within the house. The second year of my fellowship will focus on planning and implementing these types of interpretation and curatorial changes with The Trustees.

Anna Thomson (Collections Manager), Christie Jackson (Senior Curator), and Mark Wilson (Director of Historic Collections) have supported me throughout this process of cataloging the collection and encouraged me to push the boundaries of historic interpretation. The incredible support of my team at The Trustees over the last year has allowed me to already grow immensely as a researcher, curator, and cataloger, and I am greatly looking forward to the exciting changes forthcoming at the Ashley House in this fellowship’s second year.

Livy Scott is the Peggy N. Gerry Curatorial Fellow at The Trustees of Reservations, funded by the Decorative Arts Trust.

A print version of this article was published in The Magazine of the Decorative Arts Trust, one of our most popular member benefits. Join today!