Domestic Staff

Miss Florence was not alone in running her boardinghouse for artists. To help her with the daily operation of the house, she retained a small team of live-in domestic help comprised of a housekeeper, a cook, and a handyman. Most stayed for only a short time, the length of a season or a few years at best. The exception was the handyman James Kent who worked for Miss Florence for over 20 years. Like James, the female staff was largely of Irish descent taking advantage of the influx of workers immigrating to the United States from Ireland seeking work and religious freedom. The women lived in the small rooms on the upper floor of the back ell of the house. James was known to sleep in one of the barns, at least when there was limited space in the house. Although they were low paid workers, according to one of the artists, “they loved Miss Florence, and they stayed.”

There was a great deal of work to be done each day, especially when the house was filled to capacity with over a dozen boarders. Working in a kitchen behind the main house, the cook would have been busy preparing the noontime and evening meals for the boarders, as well as those who came to the house just to eat. The fare was always ample, with a week’s menu consisting of a roast, turkey and ham, as well as shad, trout and salmon caught in nearby waters. James, who “kept a beautiful garden going for the house,” would harvest fresh vegetables and fruit from the gardens and ancient orchard. He was known to cut the grass after dark with an oil lantern tied to the handlebars of the mower to catch up on his endless list of chores. Working in unison with the cook, the housekeeper prepared the dining room for meals and tidied up the common areas of the house. Room service for the boarders was limited to a fresh pitcher of water daily and full kerosene lamps to light the way after dark.

“‘Whistling Mary,’ a tall, deep-chested waitress standing at the kitchen door, raised a two-foot-long tin horn, and blew such a blast that not only did every artist sketching for a mile around instantly know that lunch was ready at ‘The Holy House,’ as the students called it, but so also did the villagers along Main Street, the farmers among the rock-bound hills, and even the fishermen away out on Long Island Sound.”

~ Artist and Author Arthur Heming in Miss Florence
and the Artists of Old Lyme, c. 1938

Most of what we know about the domestic staff comes from census records and fanciful memories of the artists. The 1900 census list two servants in the house, the Irish-born Margaret Johnson, an illiterate widow of unknown age and Charlotte Eling, a 25 year-old single woman born in New York who was able to read and write. Ten years later, the census lists Margaret Beckwith, a single woman aged 22 who was born in Connecticut, and James Kent is cited as a single, 41 year-old man “managing the farm.” The 1920 census lists two servants, Mary A. Holland, age 35, and Catherine J. William, age 27, along with Mr. Kent. Other records list a woman named Marie, on probation from the nearby women’s prison, Katherine Willis, a French Canadian who cooked for Miss Florence from 1921 to 1933, and a woman named Hannah McCabe.

The artists fondly remembered certain helpers who they nicknamed “Barefoot May” the cook, “Whistling Mary” the waitress, and “Old Kate, a “character and a privileged domestic” who one artist remembered “came thudding into the room to pass around the morning’s mail. She walked as though her feet had been amputated and she was treading on the stumps of her legs. So heavily did she pound around that she made the dishes and silverware jingle.” Less of a caricature is the figure of James, a large, “ruddy, dark haired, rugged looking” man who “wore overalls, boots, simple clothes” and rarely spoke although “he could quote reams of poetry,” who was dedicated to Miss Florence and continued his role of caretaker of the house even after she died in 1938.

Meet the people of the boardinghouse by clicking choices below:

• Overview
• Miss Florence
• The Artists
• Distinguished Guests
• Domestic Staff
• Female Artists
• Non-Boarding Guests