"Wedded Bliss:" An 1801 Wedding in Salem, Massachusetts

Federal architecture and Neoclassical fashion - an ideal combination. Miss Sally Peirce (1780-1835) wore this Empire-style gown, of a fine cotton voile, apparently brought back from India by her fiancé, Mr. George Nichols (1778-1865). In 1801, she wed Mr. Nichols in the room in which the dress was displayed. The parlor of her childhood home, it was updated in the latest Adamesque style by Salem's Federal architect extraordinaire, Samuel McIntire, for the wedding ceremony. This vignette is from the 2008 exhibition "Wedded Bliss" at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA. 


George wrote: "…the ceremony took place on the 22nd of November, 1801, on Sunday evening. We were married by Rev. Dr. Hopkins, in my Father Peirce's great eastern room, which was finished and furnished only a short time before." [1] 


Photography by Jim Steinhart, 2011

The Peirce-Nichols House is part of the Peabody Essex Museum's extensive holdings of noteworthy historic buildings. Most likely designed by Samuel McIntire (c. 1784), he updated the east parlor in the Adam style by 1801.

 [1] See "The Peirce-Nichols House" Historic House Booklet Number Four, by Gerald W.R. Ward, Essex Institute Publications, 1976.

For more on the architecture at the Peabody Essex Museum, see www.pem.org

For more on Samuel McIntire, see Samuel McIntire: Carving an American Style, Dean Lahikainen, Peabody Essex Museum, 2007

For more on Sally Peirce & related textiles, see Painted With Thread: The Art of American Embroidery, Paula Bradstreet Richter, Peabody Essex Museum, 2000

Salem Letters: Quaker Rebecca Kinsman Ponders the Architecture of Macao, 1840s

FORUM: Architecture and World History World History Connected University of Illinois Press Rebecca Kinsman and the Architecture of Macao, 1843-1847 Kimberly Sayre Alexander, Ph.D.             In the study of world history, architecture has a resonance that is often lost on scholars who work outside the haunts of the art historian.  Yet, the significance of the built environment should not be underestimated.  Considerations of structure and design have frequently influenced the nature and development of early global encounters.  These matters certainly predisposed the perceptions of those involved in first contacts, both those who traveled to “exotic” lands and those who received them.  Consider the classic example of global encounter, an indigenous peoples’ first impressions of visitors from abroad, seen in the architecture of the visitors’ ships.  In the Aztec empire, it was Cortes’s floating islands that so astonished Moctezuma’s people in 1519; in East Asia, it was Perry’s black ships that impressed the Japanese in 1853.  Likewise, the ways in which travelers described indigenous architecture often reveal underlying cultural values and assumptions.  Examination of both sets of impressions, focused on the built environment, sometimes remind us, too, that the sites in which encounters took place were neither indigenous or foreign, but rather a collage of places of cosmopolitan intermixture – clearly the case with Macao by the nineteenth century.  Rebecca frequently provided detailed descriptions of the domestic, public and religious architecture she experienced in her travels throughout Macao. Seen through her Antebellum Western lens, she was clearly cognizant that her time in China marked an important episode in her life, and indeed, we know almost nothing about her after her return to the United States. Her letters and journal entries are significant on several counts: the majority of the sites she describes in this significant city, Macao, no longer survive; we have few accounts by women travelers and expatriates of the multinational architectural character of Macao during the 19th century (or any time for that matter), and finally, her writing is highly descriptive and largely without racial, ethnic or religious bias. While a handful of excerpts from her correspondence have been used in larger works, little attention has been paid to her writings on architecture, landscape and the experience of place.

Rebecca describes the burned out Baroque/Mannerist St. Paul’s Cathedral (constructed by the Jesuits from 1582-1602; elaborate carved stone façade, 1620-1627), among many other sites, many long disappeared or altered. MORE: World History Connected article here:

A Quaker in China & Her 1845 Bonnet: "I long to show thee my very pretty bonnet"

Silk moire bonnet, c. 1840
Courtesy, FIDM

It was July 5th, 1843 and Rebecca Chase Kinsman (1810-1882) departed her home port of Salem, Massachusetts for Macao and Canton, China. Joining her on the ship Probus (with Captain John Sumner at the helm), was her husband, Nathaniel Kinsman (1798–1847), and two of their three children, Nattie and Ecca.  Nathaniel was taking up a position in Canton with the trading house of Wetmore and Company, and the couple had made the atypical decision in antebellum America to travel together to what was then an exotic and strange world.  Indeed, the diaries and letters shared between the couple offer a rare glimpse into an early American household that challenges conventional interpretations. The written record for the Kinsman family is particularly strong.  Not only have a decade of letters between husband and wife and their respective families survived, but also household receipts, diaries, and Nathaniel’s ship logs are among the rich collection housed at the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum, the Schlesinger Library, the Smith College Library and private hands. 

Rebecca frequently provided detailed descriptions of her travels throughout Macao, who she met, where she walked, how she organized her new domestic responsibilities. Seen through her Western lens, she was clearly cognizant that her time in China marked an important episode in her life.  Her letters and journal entries are significant in that we have few accounts by women travelers and expatriates to Macao during the 19th century (or any time for that matter).  

Rebecca Chase Kinsman by
Charle Osgood, c. 1842
Courtesy Peabody Esses Museum

Rebecca is a devout Quaker. However, her family back home in Salem frequently register concern over the “luxuries” she is surrounded by in Macao as compared to her modest Salem home and her dearly loved Pine Street Meeting House. That Rebecca, her niece Mary Anne and young daughter, Ecca, have access to the latest in fashion, even in China, is quite clear. For example, one of Rebecca’s letters reveal that 16 year old Mary Anne receives Heath's Book of Beauty for 1845 as a gift from William Moore. [3d mo. 20th 1845, in “The Daily Life of Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman in Macao, China,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, LXXXVI (1950), 120.]

1840s Quaker bonnet
Courtesy, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rebecca writes to her sister regarding the “arrival of three beautiful bonnets from Philadelphia…mine trimmed with a white riband, as neat and pretty as possible -- Some shoes for all three of us, which fit perfectly and are very nice.”

It is interesting to note that in her letters to her family, she is fairly straightforward and without flourish. However, when Rebecca writes about her new bonnet a short time later, this time to her much beloved Nathaniel, we catch a rare glimpse of her. It is almost as though she was a giddy schoolgirl, with a crush, when she says to her husband of ten years: "I long to show thee my very pretty bonnet. I am sure thee will like it -- tho' it has more trimming on it than I usually wear." [Mid-June (?) 1845, EIHC, 137]

So the question that comes to mind, given that Rebecca notes her new bonnet "has more trimming on it than I usually wear" is did her bonnet look more like the one pictured from the FIDM Museum Library or the more traditional Quaker bonnet shape from the Metropolitan Museum?

For further information on Rebecca Chase Kinsman in China, see author’s previous work:

Kimberly Alexander, “‘Demure Quakeress’: Rebecca Kinsman in China, 1843–1847.”  Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Annual Proceedings, 2006/2007.  (Boston: Boston University, 2009): 102-113.

For information on Quaker bonnets and clothing, see:
http://www.quakerjane.com