Judy Anderson
Only a Dozen Loyalists in Marblehead?!
The invaluable service of Marblehead’s many Patriots in the American Revolution is well documented, and rightly so. In the mid-1700s, Marblehead, Massachusetts, was the sixth most populous metropolis in British North America, second only to Boston. In 1775 the town suffered a dramatic economic and social decline, largely due to its ardent and gritty residents’ long years of service on behalf of independence. From this thriving international Atlantic seaport, approximately 1,400 men and boys from nearly 950 families served on land and at sea during the American Revolution.
Less well known is the story of Marblehead’s Loyalists. Of those roughly 950 families, only about a dozen heads of households can be identified as Loyalists during and after 1775, and all left town. Ten years later and after the war, however, half had returned.
In this illustrated talk, architectural and social historian Judy Anderson of Marblehead Architecture Heritage will share some of their stories and showcase their homes. Some still stand, including one now located in Washington, DC. Others are gone, but each has a compelling story to tell.
Judy Anderson (MarbleheadArchitecture@gmail.com) is an architectural, cultural, and social historian who has spoken about Marblehead for more than 30 years through illustrated presentations, public programs, and public walking tours. After a ten-year career in art museums in Los Angeles followed by grad school and a year at the MFA Boston, she became the first year-round staff person and administrative director at the Marblehead Museum (formerly Historical Society). For a decade there, she was privileged to serve as the only specifically designated curator of its exceptional Colonel Jeremiah Lee Mansion, writing grants for and managing preservation projects, then (once she became independent) writing a book about the Mansion’s superlative original 1760s English hand-painted wall murals on paper. She enjoys relating aspects of Marblehead’s compelling history during the colonial and early national periods (some familiar, much of it not) and its fascinating social history (especially women, children, and the human aspects of historical figures), along with its sophisticated 18th-century furniture craftsmanship and patronage, its surprising portraiture (which features two dozen portraits of Marbleheaders by John Singleton Copley), and its remarkable early architecture (which includes around 300 houses surviving of the 519 that stood in 1765). She has spoken at a few dozen museums and cultural organizations up and down the Atlantic seaboard and elsewhere and has brought the superlative Lee Mansion and Marblehead to prominent symposia, including the Charleston [South Carolina] Art and Antiques Forum, the Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
