Talk:Assonet, Massachusetts

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Taunton Hill merger

Nominate for merge and support. The hill is not named "in honor of" Taunton, which is an understandable misconception. The article is well-intentioned, but overemphasizes a hill and has little chance of expansion. Sahasrahla 04:10, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Chimneys, white with black rings

The history of the "18th century" section of this article mentions that white chimneys with black rings painted around their tops signified that the household had Loyalist or "Tory" sympathies during the American War of Independence. Circa 2003, James Garvin, New Hampshire's State Architectural Historian, investigated the topic of "Tory chimneys". Here's some of what he said in an e-mail to me:

While most coastal New England houses of either frame or brick construction do not have painted chimneys, there are enough such chimneys to attract attention and comment. The appearance of a proportion of white stacks among a sea of unpainted chimneys has given rise to legends that have persisted for a long time. The most prevalent of these legends among coastal communities states that certain chimneys were whitewashed during the Revolution to warn the Royal Navy that Loyalists lived in those dwellings and that the houses should be spared during naval bombardments like the one that leveled Falmouth, Massachusetts (later Portland, Maine). The spurious nature of this legend is clear when we reflect on the inaccuracy of eighteenth-century bombardment and the impossibility of targeting or sparing individual buildings. The result of naval bombardment during the Revolution was usually a conflagration that consumed the entire town, as at Falmouth.

The legend persisted, however, and was apparently transferred eventually to the War of 1812. A Portsmouth, New Hampshire newspaper, the New Hampshire Gazette and Republican Union, for March 11, 1847, used the old legend to vilify the Federalist and Whig parties. Under the heading “White-washed Chimnies,” an anonymous writer stated that “it was said the federalists of Portsmouth during the last war [the War of 1812] had an understanding with the enemy to white-wash their chimnies in case an attack was made on the town, in order that their property might be known and spared. A fifty-year-old boy … pronounces this story an ‘infamous lie,’ and says that although he has lived in Portsmouth fifty years he never heard it before! Now we venture to affirm, the assertion of this venerable and indignant citizen to the contrary notwithstanding, that so notorious is and always has been this story, it would be difficult to find a boy in Portsmouth of the age of five years who has not heard it. Such an understanding is no more infamous than to burn blue-lights on our coast to warn the enemy’s vessels of danger or to guide them into our harbors, or to supply them with provisions, and in every way to afford the enemy aid and comfort as the federalists did the British and as the Whigs are doing the Mexicans in the present war. And the wrath of the above correspondent goes far to confirm its truth. Very likely his father was the writer and himself the bearer of this proposition to the British commander off our harbor.”

The assertion of this partisan editorialist “to the contrary notwithstanding,” I suspect that white chimneys were a choice made for aesthetic and practical reasons by those who could afford the extra labor and materials for such painting. There is an advantage in painting chimneys. A coating of paint (or lime whitewash) keeps moisture out of the stacks and helps to prevent the efflorescence that often forms on tall chimneys that are exposed to driving rains. Even in houses where chimney bricks were left unpainted, it was not uncommon to waterproof the stacks above the roof with a transparent coating of linseed oil and turpentine. For the same reason, the tall, flat chimneys of the federal era often had caps, in the form of pointed Gothic arches, built over each of their open flues to exclude rainwater.

The walls of some all-brick houses of the federal era were also painted out of preference, just like wooden dwellings. In such cases, it would have been natural to paint the chimneys to match the color of the bodies of the houses.

During the American War of Independence, if word had leaked that a Loyalist could be recognized simply by looking at the chimney on his house, how much time would pass before such Loyalists were driven out of town, and how much time would pass before Loyalists repainted their chimneys? I speculate that after the War of Independence, no one would have wanted to live in a house with a black band on the chimney signifying that they had sympathized with the enemy. Shortly after the war, the (new?) owners of such homes probably would have hidden those bands with fresh paint. I might speculate further that the purpose of the black band was simply to hide soot that settled on and around the top of the chimney.Cwkmail (talk) 16:18, 25 June 2010 (UTC)

External links modified

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