The HRC is pleased to introduce Snapshots!, a new column that examines museums through interviews with the people who know them best--their directors, curators, and educators. This week's Snapshots! question asks, "What are your favorite objects in your collections?" Snapshots! is written by Anne Farrow, senior content editor for the Encyclopedia of Connecticut History Online and a frequent contributor to the Heritage Resource Center.

Snapshot 4 of 4: Mary Beth Baker, Stonington Historical Society

Director Mary Beth Baker of the Stonington Historical Society (Stonington, CT) began her working life as an English teacher, but then got smitten (her word) by local history and went to the University of Connecticut for a master's degree in history. She's been at the helm of the Stonington society for nearly five years, but before this appointment she took care of historic houses across Connecticut, including the Glebe House in Woodbury, the Hale Homestead in Coventry (she wrote her master's thesis on Nathan Hale), the Hempsted Houses in New London, and the Avery Copp House in Groton.

Among Baker's favorite objects in the Stonington collections is the flag that flew over the battery on Stonington Point while British ships bombarded the town for three days in August 1814. Made by women of the town between 1796 and 1803, the Stonington Battle Flag is 11 feet by 17.9 feet, and is "Stonington's Star Spangled Banner, except older," Mary Beth says. "It's probably the most iconic object we own," she explains, adding that it flew over the battery as a sign of the town's defiance and has been paraded, displayed, and lauded in Stonington ever since. One of the first gifts to the newly formed historical society in 1895, it was repaired after World War II at the Brooklyn workshop where the Star Spangled Banner had earlier been restored. It was not a sensitive job, and the pieces of the old flag were zig-zag stitched onto a backing. It then went on display in a glass case in the Ocean Bank on Cannon Square until 2004, when it was removed to the textile restoration lab at the University of Rhode Island for study and analysis. The flag came home to Stonington in 2007. Thanks to a grant from the Mystic Rotary Club, a special rack was made for it, and the flag was very gently wound onto the rack with 20 yards of muslin and stored in the society's collections storage. Every year or so, it is brought out, Mary Beth says, and there's a lecture and afterwards a great party. A board member, Steven Martin, paid to have a modern copy made of the flag, with its 16 stars - shaped like starfish - and 16 stripes. Once a year townspeople take the giant replica down to the Point to fly it over the harbor. The old flag is too fragile to be flown, but it is still, the director says, "the pride and joy of the town."

Another beloved object, and this, too, relates to the long-ago shelling of Stonington, is a photograph of Mrs. Henry R. Palmer - Reita Woodruff Babcock Palmer - leading the Stonington Celebration Parade on August 14, 1914. Looking positively Wagnerian in helmet, shield and spear, Mrs. Palmer, dressed as the embodiment of Stonington, was a descendant of all the town's great early families. She even got her husband to write the lyrics to the song "The Flag of Stonington." A book by their son, Henry R. Palmer Jr., will be published by the society this fall. Discovered in manuscript, and currently being edited with the help of board member Rob Palmer (Henry's son), "My First 300 Years" contains events and often amusing reminiscences in Stonington. This will be the first time it has been published.

Also among Mary Beth's favorites is a bit of graffiti etched on a pane of glass in the Captain Nathaniel B. Palmer House, a National Historic Landmark owned by the society. The house was called Pine Point when Libby Dixon Palmer, born in 1848, scratched her initials in the window - L D P - sometime between 1853, when her family moved into the house, and 1873, the year she married the son of her father's best friend, Richard Fanning Loper. Her mother had died in 1851 and Libby, whom Mary Beth described as "indulged," was raised by her Aunt Eliza, her grandmother and her widowed father Alexander. (Uncle Nat and Aunt Eliza also lived at Pine Point.) In September 1873 her wedding was the social event of the season, complete with a brass band, fireworks, food catered by Delmonico's of New York, and the diminutive novelties, General and Mrs. Tom Thumb. She died a widow at age 81, surrounded by her four children and four grandchildren. Visitors, and children especially, like hearing her story, Mary Beth says. "Libby's initials really spark people's connection to history," she says, "and Connecticut's historic houses, like Glebe House and Avery-Copp, have similarly powerful notes from the past."

All images courtesy of the Stonington Historical Society.

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