The
first connecting link came in a fat file of Shaker papers in the vault
in the basement of the Historical Society. A yellowing newspaper clipping
headlined "Blind Girl's Doll 'Back Home' in Warren co." set
forth an appealing, but somewhat mystifying, story. The basic story line
was that a doll in the shape of the traditional Shaker women's dress had
been made years ago by the Shaker women for a little blind girl named
Georgia Duckworth Trader, and was now was being returned to Glendower
Museum, in Lebanon.
The article
was datelined "Lebanon, Dec. 18" but carried no year. An interior
date in the article indicated that the article was written in 1944. The
pre-Christmas narrative was heartwarming, but the writer, one Bob McNeill,
seemed to have some of the dates askew. He seemed to indicate that the
doll was given to little Georgia at the same time the Shakers also gave
some looms to Georgia, and her sister Florence Trader, for the new home
for the blind they were starting in Mt. Healthy in 1903. At that time,
Georgia was no longer "a little girl" but, although blind, a
poised young woman.
Georgia and
Florence Trader had been inseparable ever since Georgia had become blind
at the age of 11, and her sister, two years younger, took over her care.
They walked without restriction everywhere arm and arm, with Florence's
hand signals on Georgia's arm telling the blind girl exactly how to proceed.
It COULD have
been that the Shakers made the beautiful doll for Georgia when she was
small because the Traders were of a long-standing Lebanon family, the
girls' grandfather, Robert Duckworth having started the first coal yard
in Lebanon in the 1840s. Perhaps the Shakers got their coal from him.
In any event, the family surely knew about the Shakers just west of town.
It is interesting
to note that the Duckworth Coal Yard started a chain of businesses which
now, almost 170 years later, is reputed to be the site of the oldest continously-operated
business in Lebanon. Over the intervening years, it became Lewis Brothers
feed and coal dealers, then Lewis and Drake, and is now operated as Brants,
Inc., Hardware..
First of the
Trader girls' ancestors was George Duckworth who married Sarah Corwin
of the renowned Corwin family, first settlers of Warren County, including
the illustrious Tom Corwin, early governor of Ohio, U. S. Senator and
ambassador to Mexico. One of George and Sarah Corwin Duckworth's daughters,
Elizabeth Jane, married James F. Trader and they went to Xenia to live,
and then later moved to Cincinnati where they were active in the Methodist
Church in Avondale as well as in wealthy social circles there.
As Georgia and Florence grew into womanhood they began to dream of starting
a home for blind women. This culminated in their founding. in May of 1903,
the Clovernook Center for the Blind, now grown into an extensive facility
providing all kinds of services for persons with impaired sight. According
to information on Clovernook's current website,
"(The
Trader sisters) contacted their friend, William A. Procter, a prominent
businessman in Cincinnati and head of Procter and Gamble, to inform
him of their mission and ask his advice about purchasing the 26 acre
former estate of Alice and Phoebe Cary in Mt. Healthy. He took an interest
in their work and, to their surprise, purchased the beautiful land for
them. "
It was at that
time that Georgia and Florence contacted the Shakers at Union Village
to secure looms on which the blind women would weave cloth as the first
activity of Clevernook School. The Shakers gave to them not one loom,
but two, of different sizes for different widths of fabric. Notes from
a colorful sketchbook called "Shaker Days," drawn in 1966 by
Miriam Logan tells of Florence Trader's having later told about the "Shaker
aged men bringing the old loom to them in a horse drawn wagon and setting
it up in the old Cary House." In that book there is a sketch of a
Shaker woman, and the blind girl holding the doll dressed in Shaker costume.
So now the
question arises, how did the Shaker doll, and, as it turns out, the looms
as well, get back to Warren County? This introduces Hazel Spencer Phillips,
another one of the remarkable women included in this story, the people
with whom the Shakers began to interact in the later years when they were
no longer able to be self-sufficient. A resident of Lebanon, Mrs. Phillips
became very interested in the Shakers and their history and began to write
about them and preserve their artifacts. She was also one of the founders
of the Warren County Historical Society, which in those days, was headquartered
at Glendower, a beautiful big house museum on Cincinnati Avenue. Miriam
Logan, who did the sketchbook, worked closely with Mrs. Phillips.
Mrs. Phillips
and Miss Logan kept in touch with the Trader Sisters. After Georgia Trader
died on March 12, 1944, Florence Trader gave the Shaker doll to Glendower
Museum and this then was the inspiration for the touching Christmas story
in the newspaper clipping with which this narrative began. The doll still
remains, carefully displayed in its own glass case, in the children's
room of the second floor of Glendower. The costume is of the finest Shaker
fabrics, the hooded Dorothy cloak is a creamy off-white, the dress a light
pink.
The typical
Shaker woman's bonnet is made of straw. Beginning in 1827 Shaker bonnets
had been made from woven palm leaves and in 1837 Abner Beedle invented
a palm leaf weaving loom. The palm leaves were imported from Cuba and
were the same palm leaves that were used in fans so prevalent in churches
and funeral parlors at the time. However, the palm leaf trade was interrupted
by the Civil War and after that time straw was adapted to the Shaker bonnet
manufacture.
In 1961-62
the Ohio Historical Society took possession of Glendower, including all
its contents, and the Warren County Historical Society acquired Harmon
Hall on Lower Main Street to use as its Museum. (In this year of 2005,
negotiations are now going on between the Ohio Historical Society and
the Warren County Museum with the possible outcome that ownership/management
of Glendower may be returned to the local group.) The Historical Society's
records show that on May 11, 1962, the big loom, "built for Miss
Georgia Trader in 1902-1903," was returned to them and is now on
display in the upstairs Shaker rooms, along with a large collection of
specimen Shaker furniture .
It is not fitting
to close this story without mentioning that there were two other sisters:
Effie Corwin Trader and Louise King Trader, both of whom were of help
in the Clovernook activities for the blind. Effie was, in addition, a
well-known painter of the time. In fact, a check of today's internet shows
that her work is even now being shown in Cincinnati Galleries and a very
attractive oil of Taos Pueblo has recently been sold.
Also mention
must be made of the first set of sisters: Alice and Phoebe Cary, whose
family home was the nucleus of the site for Clovernook. The Cary sisters
were poets of note during their time period (1820-1871). Their writings
attracted the favorable attention of such writers as Edgar Allan Poe,
Horace Greeley and John Greenleaf Whittier. After their joint works were
published as Poems of Alice and Phoebe Carey and met with such success,
even though their name was spelled wrong, they moved to New York City
where their fashionable salon "became a popular meeting place for
the leading literary lights of the city," - this a quote from the
1999 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica on the internet. These were the
sisters to which the June 9, 1909, journal
made reference, thus bringing our story to full circle - the end. |
