← The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast
The History Chicks : A Women's History Podcast
Grandma Moses
02:02:10
Grandma Moses spent most of her life living on family farms in upstate New York, raising a large family and running a household. She was known in her neighborhood for her award-winning preserves and pickles... not her embroidered artwork! It wasn’t until her late seventies, when arthritis made needlework too painful, that she rediscovered her childhood love of painting and created the style that would make her famous. Her nostalgic scenes of rural life caught the eye of collectors, then museums, then the world, turning her into an international art sensation in her eighties and nineties. Grandma Moses kept painting until just before her death at 101, leaving behind a body of work that reshaped how Americans think about creativity, aging, and the history of our country.
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- [00:01]
A
Before we begin, a quick announcement. Tis the season to anticipate where we might be going in the next calendar year. And today we have two more trips for you that are open for your reservation.
- [00:15]
B
I'm just going to say this as two words. Hello, Chateau. We are going to tour the Loire Valley of France August 23rd through the 31st.
- [00:26]
A
Go to likemindstravel.com, click on Group Tours and then search for the History Channel Chicks trip to the Loire Valley to check out the itinerary and put your name down to be one of the friends that accompanies us on this New to US Tour.
- [00:42]
B
Not New to US Tour, but we're going to do it again because it was so wonderful last time is Italy. We're going to be going to Italy October 7th through the 16th. And that is also open for reservations at Like Minds Travel, Rome, Florence, Venice.
- [00:58]
A
And points in between, including a trip to Parma. And what do we get in Parma? Parmesan cheese.
- [01:06]
B
Yeah. And both of these trips have castle dinners, private dinners in castles.
- [01:12]
A
So get out your ball gowns, go to likemindstravel.com and check out the itinerary. We hope to see you there. And without further ado, on with the show.
- [01:23]
B
Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.
- [01:30]
A
And here's your 30 second summary. Grandma Moses spent most of her life living on family farms in upstate New York, raising a large family and running a household. She was known in her neighborhood for her award winning preserves and pickles, not her embroidered artwork. It wasn't until her late 70s, when arthritis made needlework too painful, that she rediscovered her childhood love of painting and created the style that would make her famous. Her nostalgic scenes of rural life caught the eye of collectors, then museums, then the world, turning her into an international art sensation in her 80s and 90s. Grandma Moses kept painting until just before her death at 101, leaving behind a body of work that reshaped how Americans think about creativity, aging, and the history of our country. The end let's talk about Grandma Moses.
- [02:29]
B
But first, let's drop her into history. In 1938, in addition to many global actions surrounding World War II, the National foundation for Infantile Paralysis was founded to help fight polio, in part by President Franklin Roosevelt. Years later, after his death, he was memorialized on the US Dime, which led to an eventual change in the name of the organization to the March of Dimes. Thornton Wilder's play Our Town premiered, and later in the year it won a Pulitzer Prize, Nescafe. The instant coffee was first sold in Switzerland. Singer Ella Fitzgerald was propelled to stardom with her recording of a Tisket a Tasket. LSD was first synthesized, although the psychedelic effects weren't discovered for another five years when the inventor was accidentally dosed. Etta James, Natalie Wood, and the first elected female head of state in Africa, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, were all born. Typhoid Mary Mallon died, and in 1938, Grandma Moses was discovered in a drugstore.
- [03:38]
A
Anna Mary Robertson was born on September 7, 1860, in Washington County, New York, the third child and eldest daughter of the 10 living children of Russell King Robertson and Margaret Shanahan Robertson. Papa was, in addition to being extremely handsome, Wait until you see him, y'.
- [03:58]
B
All.
- [03:58]
A
A farmer who owned and operated a flax mill. She described him as, quote, a dreamer, a believer in beauty and refinement. He was a kind neighbor, a help to all that knew him, a great instructor to us children, and a kind and helpful husband.
- [04:14]
B
Anna. Mary's Scotch Irish and a little bit of indigenous American roots go way back to Mayflower settlers on that side of her family. Her great grandfather, who had the awesome name of Hezekiah King, fought at Fort Ticonderoka during the Revolutionary War. So she had this little bragging point. So now she is a descendant of the Mayflower and also a daughter of the American Revolution.
- [04:41]
A
That battle, if you're a fan of, like, digging deep into rabbit holes, from Hamilton, Eliza, Angelica and Peggy. Their father got in trouble for that siege. I think he had to go to trial for some kind of misconduct.
- [04:55]
B
Interesting.
- [04:56]
A
Not doing what they wanted him to. Anyway, it was kind of a loss for the American side.
- [05:02]
B
But as far as her lineage goes, Hezekiah had kind of an artistic bent. He had taken his powder horn carved in a design and his name along with the sentence steal. Not this horn for fear of shame. For on it is its owner's name. I only know this because you can see it. It's like a picture of it. It's in a museum. It was just a design made with teeny, tiny little X's carved into this horn. Very intricate, very artistic.
- [05:32]
A
Mama, in contrast, came from immigrants. Her maiden name, Shanahan, might give you a guess as to where she might have come from. Mama. I don't know too much about Mama's family other than the fact that they, among so many other families, perpetuated the myth that their name got changed when they came to this country. And I just don't think that happened as much as people Think it did. We actually learned about that in Ellis island when we were there touring it. That, like, that kind of almost never happened for real.
- [06:03]
B
Right. People changed it themselves before they came over or after.
- [06:07]
A
Right. But Mama was able to go to school only from the years 7 to 11 years old. She learned to read and write. That's about it. She was very, very good at math. Almost had a natural talent that never got fully, fully developed. She had to go out to work at 11 as a servant girl and married young. And the children immediately started coming. First two sons, then our Anna Mary, and then another son. So right away she has got a full house. You know, the classic four under four, et cetera. Looking at Mama, she seems like the practical one. Honestly, looking from 2026 sensibilities, reading between the lines, it seems like Mama had all the mental load, all of it. And her husband got to be the fun parents.
- [06:57]
B
Yep. Y.
- [06:58]
A
Not saying he didn't work hard, but I'm just like, Mama held the whole puzzle together.
- [07:03]
B
Yes. I got exactly the same reading from her. He was involved in their lives, but definitely a playful involvement. The story of the naming of Anna Mary is kind of cute. And to me it kind of shows that Mama was just like, whatever, you know, it's fine. It's just a name. She had wanted to name the child after her sisters, Anna and Mary, but she didn't like the name Mariana. Papa wanted to name her after her sister Sarah.
- [07:30]
A
Neither parent really wanted to give in.
- [07:32]
B
And for the first six years of her life, Anna Mary thought that her given name was Sissy. She was given the name Anna Mary, but they just called her Sissy.
- [07:42]
A
And her slightly younger brother Arthur, who was her best friend throughout childhood, went by Bubby so Sissy and Bubby so Cute. One of Anna's first memories was of coming into town with her mama and an aunt and finding the town buildings swathed with black cloth all up and down the street. What is going on? Mama was alarmed and went into a store to ask what had happened. The country, of course, is in the middle of a civil war. It could mean anything and nothing good. You know, President Lincoln has been killed, said the shopkeeper. And her aunt put her hands over her face and said, oh, no. What will become of us now? And Anna never forgot that. And she was barely three years old when that happened. And that is her first official memory.
- [08:27]
B
But she has a lot of other memories, especially ones based on where she grew up. Where she is is at the upper end of the Hudson river between the Adirondack Mountains and the Green Mountains of Vermont. Very close to the Vermont border. The only word I can think of to describe it is bucolic. Even today, such a beautiful area. Rolling hills, mountains, all kinds of nature. And she just has all these memories of her childhood, being outside, maybe with her brothers.
- [08:57]
A
Anna's tomboy nature was somewhat indulged when she was really little. She talks about running through the fields with the brothers, walking on fences and over the ridge pole of the house. Shades of Anna Green Gables. I did not know that that was a usual. I mean, I guess when there's no roller coasters, you gotta meet your adrenaline. I don't know. Now the Victorian sensibilities of her mother leak out in the pages of Grandma Moses's autobiography. Many's the time that there were hijinks afoot outside with the bros. And as Sissy got a little bit older, she was required to mind children and help with the housework.
- [09:37]
B
That is the curse of the eldest daughter. In families like this, you get to.
- [09:41]
A
Be four or five and Victorians want you to lay off the roughhousing, and they would start molding you into a girl. We actually have a photo of her at about this time. She looks lovely. The dress is extremely elaborate, by which I think Mama must have been an expert seamstress. Absolute beautiful. So without the outside influence of, well, outside, she had to turn to her inner resources for entertainment. She had. Was it self defense? Some hobby you can do inside the house? She had lots of early artistic endeavors. Number one, she was an extremely good executor of the paper doll. She had a vast army of paper dolls that wore corsets and clothes that echoed the wardrobes of the ladies she saw around her. She would use natural materials to dye her paper dolls. Grape juice, crushed grass, any kind of flower she could find, anything in nature that would make a color. And this is something that sounds familiar to me. She would make foldable doll houses out of wrapping paper. And I had forgotten until I was researching this show why that sounded so familiar to me. My mom would go to a wallpaper store. Does anyone remember before the likes of Home Depot or Lowe's, you went to a room with like this library of sample books. Mom would have them, save any they were going to throw away, you know, like the patterns were discontinued or whatever. And she'd bring them home and we would make flip dollhouses out of them, and there's handles on the back for carrying them around. And we would draw furniture or cut it out of catalogs, and we'd Have a grand old time. I want to tell you a little bit more about the paper. In fact, again, I remember being just astonished. I go to a little friend's house and I'd ask where the paper drawer was. There was not always a paper drawer. And that blew my mind like, like, huh.
- [11:37]
B
We had a paper drawer.
- [11:38]
A
Just so you know, currency, just currency. When we covered the Brontes, remember they used to make tons of little books just at paper. It was just so valuable. And they used to use sugar packets and whatever paper came their way. We're so used to just being able to be like, let's go to CVS and get a package of typing paper. What's typing paper? Say the young among you. Yikes.
- [11:57]
B
Printer paper people.
- [11:59]
A
What's printer paper? Says Gen Z. Well, anyway, one time she had a grandma that came to her house and brought a whole package of different colored tissue paper. The sheer richness of the possibilities for that paper. So her artistic nature was encouraged as far as the family budget could stretch it and as far as creativity could make it happen in, in their hardworking family. Just any paper was so important to these children, especially to Anna. A neighbor once gave Papa an orange envelope and he brought it right home and gave it to her. And that stuck in her mind enough to make it into her autobiography.
- [12:41]
B
He also loved to give the kids paper and crayons so they could draw. It was like a penny a sheet. Anna Mary remembered that it lasted longer than candy, but for her it gave her an opportunity to start drawing and sketching. Her father was very artistic. He enjoyed painting now as a hobby. There's not a lot of time when you're a farmer and have five kids and run a flax mill. But he still enjoyed painting, landscapes mostly. And Papa was always modeling this artistic, you know, this is a good thing to have kids. Look what I'm going to do. One time he asked his wife if he could just paint a little on their wall of a room. And she's like, yeah, sure, go do whatever you want. Next thing you know he's got this picture done and she's like, oh, that's nice. So he goes around the whole room and it's kind of a mural of Lake George area where they were, you know, the mountains and everything. Just very picturesque mural around their room.
- [13:42]
A
And people in very wealthy houses would pay top dollar for hand painted wallpaper. And here he just did it for free. Yep, I've seen a picture of his work and he looks classically trained. So while his daughter and great grandson and everybody in the family afterward does have more of a naive quality to their work. He actually looks like he had art class or was exposed to some classical paintings. Mary, though, was very inspired by being surrounded by such beauty and began practicing on anything she could get after that. Her favorite were slates right out of the creek. They're nice and flat, and Papa thought they were wonderful. Mama thought there were better uses of her time than messing with painting. But Papa would prop them up and give them some praise and some room on the shelf. And I am getting this impression and based on really nothing, honestly, that he is impoverished gentry that married into the peasant class. Are you getting that? Yes.
- [14:40]
B
Yes.
- [14:40]
A
You should see these, lamb, because he really. He has the hard work gene, but it's like. It's not as part of his mental picture as it was for Mama. You know, he has some fine sensibilities that she did not have. Anyway, you know, that's just a feeling I'm getting.
- [14:57]
B
You told me an anecdote about paper from your childhood, and I would like to tell you an anecdote about paint from mine. You know, there was a story that suggests that, you know, they. They did not have a lot of money, but they certainly had some. One time, her father, on Thanksgiving, wanted to go into town and get a new pair of boots. And he said, I'm going to buy you a red dress. And she was so excited. She's very little. And he comes home after many hours, no boots, no dress. And he had to tell her, the stores are closed. It's Thanksgiving. And she was so heartbroken. But he followed up on it. He said, I'm gonna get you that red dress. Except when he got it, she was very disappointed because she, in her head, had bright red in her mind, and it was more of a brick red. And as a little girl, she remembers being so disappointed that it wasn't red red. And that resonated with me because my dad made all my childhood bedroom furniture. It was all Shaker pieces. And they gave me some selections of paint colors, and they said, what do you want? And all I saw was the word mustard. And I was like, I love mustard. French is mustard. Oh, my gosh, it's so good. Yellow's such a pretty color. I'm like, mustard. They're like, are you sure? Yes. The furniture gets painted, and it's like goldens or Dijon, not Frenches. And I felt exactly the same way. Anna. Mary.
- [16:17]
A
Huh? We could, if you want, use the time machine to tell little Susan that in the 70s, mustard equals harvest gold.
- [16:25]
B
I don't know. I still have the hutch in chested drawers.
- [16:28]
A
In your house right now.
- [16:29]
B
In my house right now. They are not mustard. They're not mustard. I painted them over the years, but, yeah, they're two of my most cherished pieces of furniture.
- [16:37]
A
In the neighborhood, there was a summer term and a winter term of school. Children had too many responsibilities on a farm to go in planting and harvest season. And girls, including Anna, did not typically go to the winter session because of insufficient clothing to make the journey. Do you remember Farmer Boy? The like out of sequence book. Almanzo Wilder and his sisters were also in New York, and in fact, they were further to the north. Almost the same age, actually, as our Anna was. But his family did go through the snow bundled up in stout boots and coats and full of calories. That's what most of that book is about, is about. They ate apple pie and donuts. And the Wilders, by comparison, were extremely well off. This is the part that I don't understand because she did write about playing in snow all day, sledding and capering around at 25 degrees below zero. So if you had enough clothes for that.
- [17:34]
B
Yeah. To make the trek to school, sit around in wet clothes all day. I don't know.
- [17:39]
A
Sort of reading between the lines of her autobiography. It seems like Papa was pushing a little for Anna to get more schooling, but Mama was of the camp that her daughter would learn more useful skills at home. The first of the younger siblings began to be born when Anna Mary was around 6, and she became more and more useful to Mama for rocking cradles and doing housework. She expressed resentment that she alone was stuck in the house while her classic companions, the three brothers, roamed free outside. But so it was Victorian. Mamas want you to lay off the rough housing. You know, you need to start getting trained for your place in society. And, you know, she'd try to play house even, which seems like, all right, then let me get ready for my place in society.
- [18:22]
B
Right.
- [18:23]
A
While getting my little friend and our little sunbonnets and we'll just make a house outside. And Mama's like, you do not have knitting in your hand. What is a woman who is six or seven years old doing without work in her hands? Idle hands are the devil's playground.
- [18:40]
B
She complained at the beginning of her autobiography about the schedule that her mother had for the week. How, you know, Mondays were for. For clothes washing, Tuesdays were for ironing and mending, Wednesdays were for baking. You know, every day had a chore.
- [18:54]
A
Everybody followed that, though.
- [18:55]
B
I even followed that. Remember you and I, when we started doing this, I had to get home because it was clean the bathrooms Friday.
- [19:02]
A
Yeah. And I remember Laura Ingalls Wilder talking about, like, churn on this day, wash on this day, iron on this day.
- [19:10]
B
Yeah. Well, the funny thing to me, and this is kind of skipping ahead, is that she kept that in her own life.
- [19:16]
A
Like the system is good. Systems are, you know.
- [19:19]
B
Yep, it worked great. Why not, you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it.
- [19:23]
A
In Mama's defense, there was lots of work to do. Women had to make most of the supplies we take for granted. Soap, candles, clothing, socks, garden vegetables had to be canned. I mean, they had to be grown and then canned. Eggs raised and then preserved. There were giant mental back off tables for each and every project on a farm. And an unprepared woman was to find farm life impossible. And Mama was very intent on getting her oldest daughter in to a good place with all of this. She taught her everything and expected a lot of her. And, you know, I have always thought about, you know, in like, Little House on the Prairie, that Pa's life would have been so different if he'd had a son. You know, Victorian times, you know, you remember how scandalous and sigrit Laura's involvement in farm work had to be. Well, here's Mama Robertson with one daughter old enough to help and four little children that have been born one right after the other since Anna was 6 years old. And she's got this one other person that can help her out because it's not societally acceptable for anyone else in the family to turn their hand to this stuff.
- [20:34]
B
Yeah.
- [20:35]
A
And it seems to be that between little Arthur and the next child, there might have been two or three lost children. Yes, there was a gap there. And that's how later Grandma Moses would explain. And so in addition to all of this work and all of these children, you are also bowed under by multiple griefs.
- [20:56]
B
Yeah.
- [20:56]
A
So I am. If we come off harsh about Mama, we are not. We're just.
- [21:00]
B
No, I thought she was kind of creative in some ways. She would say, oh, Anna, Mary, you want a new dress? Oh, yes, I do. Great. Well. Well, let's go buy some fabric and I'll teach you how to cut and pin the patterns and cut the fabric and sew the whole dress by hand. Isn't that great? And I mean, a kid who's growing out of her clothes has no choice but to say yes.
- [21:23]
A
Yeah. She was super excited about A new dress. Until she realized, oh no, his work. No. I thought this was curious timing, but just as soon as the next daughter, whose name was Celeste, turned six years old, I. E. Old enough to help around the house, Mama arranged for Anna to go out to work as a hired girl in the neighborhood. Anna was only 12. Papa objected. He wanted to send her away to school, but Mama put her foot down. And so Anna Mary went to live with a couple called Mr. And Mrs. Thomas Whiteside. She actually got along in a parental and child sort of relationship with these Whitesides. There's a super cute story they must have told her that Mr. Whiteside, when he was a young man, had told his parents he was off to fetch back a wife. And he hitched up the horses and he got to the Proudfit house to discover that his intended had just married someone else. The local preacher. Don't. So he married her younger sister and brought her home within his original three day time frame because he didn't want to break his word that he was going to be back with a wife in three days. So call that a whirlwind courtship. I don't know. I don't think it was a love match, but it worked out great. They got along very well. Mr. And Mrs. Whiteside treated her like a member of the family, by which I mean, yes, affectionate, but woo. She had an enormous amount of work to do. But she would have if she had been the daughter of the family. You know, Mrs. Whiteside did work along with her. This wasn't just a lady ringing for tea in the living room. I mean, everything from chicken care, which was always women's responsibility, to cooking and weeding this enormous garden, cleaning and laundry and churning the butter, which will give you a bicep or two. And so much sewing, so much sewing.
- [23:08]
B
Well, and I think she also had extra work. Maybe even at the beginning, Mrs. Whiteside had had what they called shock, which when I looked it up, it was like a disturbance to the circulatory system. I wondered if it was a stroke, maybe a heart attack.
- [23:22]
A
Yeah, it's a stroke.
- [23:24]
B
So she was frail and getting her strength back when Anna Mary moved in with them.
- [23:30]
A
But get this, she had her own room and there were no babies to take care of and there were beautiful pictures to look at all over. Now, the Whitesides, of course, had no Papa Robertson creating hand painted wallpaper. Who does? But what they did have was a large collection of framed Courier and Ives prints that were hung all over the house. Now, most of us, if we Know Courier and Ives. Know their names from that Christmas carol. Is it sleigh ride? There's a happy feeling nothing in the world will buy. They pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie. Yes. Okay, then the next line is, it'll nearly be like a picture print from Courier and Ives.
- [24:11]
B
Wow. See, I know it from the Travelers calendars that my parents always had hanging in our house. Yearly calendars. My dad worked for the Travelers. We got a new one every year. Awful Courier Knives prints. And you know what? I filled down a teeny, tiny Courier knives hole because I assumed that they were the artists. They just ran the printing company and the artists, where there was a number of them, including a woman, was one of their most popular artists.
- [24:37]
A
Currier and Ives produced sentimental, idealized pictures of America. Rural life, landscape, wildlife, historical events. They're most famous, though, for their wintertime and holiday scenes. You've likely those of you who celebrate Christmas at all, even now, you might get more than one Christmas card with a Currier and Ives picture on it. They were so popular, the smaller sizes could be bought for only 5 cents. And millions upon millions of those prints decorated the walls of American houses, hotels, and public buildings during the last half of the 1800s. And early exposure to art goes deep, deep. And later on, much later, spoiler alert. Much later, you'll see the influence of these Currier and Ives prints on Grandma Moses's work.
- [25:28]
B
But at this point, she's kind of copying them. The family provided her with paper and crayons and chalk, you know, things to draw with. And she was copying these Courier and Ives prints, and, you know, look at that.
- [25:43]
A
Though her quote, employers noticed that she loved these pictures, and unlike her own parents, they had money to spare, so they bought her art supplies and encouraged her to paint. Yeah, so it didn't come out of nowhere. She has been painting things since she was three or four years old.
- [26:02]
B
Yeah, for sure. And she used to call them her lambscapes because Papa painted landscapes. She called them lamb scapes, which is, you know, those words that your kids say, and they just cling on for the rest of eternity.
- [26:16]
A
Like frecus in my house.
- [26:18]
B
Exactly like freckus. Yup, yup. Looking back on this time in her life later, she called these the hard years. But she also said it was a good education. So I don't know. That just seems kind of a contradiction in some ways.
- [26:35]
A
People always look back at, you know, they go to boarding school and they have to eat like gruel and have no heat, like Prince Charles or whoever. Although he famously hated boarding school, but like, you know, let's call it Princess Anne who loved boarding school but lived through hardship. But once you're done with it like this amnesia settles over you.
- [26:53]
B
Oh yeah. Nostalgia.
- [26:54]
A
Like it was the best of times.
- [26:55]
B
Yeah, our memories get nice and polished up over time. You don't remember the mosquitoes eating you. You know when you go camping and you just. Oh, we were camping. And the. You could hear the owls all night or whatever. Yeah.
- [27:09]
A
Mrs. Whiteside died when Anna was around 14. And for about a year Anna took care of her 68 year old employer as the only, really the only servant in the house. She by now was an expert and was proud of setting a fine table table with their china and candles and glassware and shined up silver which she had never seen at home, of course. And she suspected that a lot of Mr. Whiteside's friends came not for his company, but for her cooking. You know, the new day dawns, the new year comes around and it's time for some self reflection and some goals. I'm not going to call them resolutions exactly, but some goals.
- [28:04]
B
Yes.
- [28:04]
A
And I think tidying and cleaning up my act is a theme I'm going to carry through this next year.
- [28:12]
B
I absolutely agree with you. And keeping an eye out for microplastics that I might be sending out into the world. Without thinking about it. I am exactly with you. Plus, plus, I think I like my house to be clean. What? And Blueland is helping with all of those things.
- [28:27]
A
Beckett. Blueland products meet the highest standard of clean. They're effective, yet gentle on people and on the planet. They have cleaning sprays, they have toilet bowl cleaner, which I have talked about before and you know I love. But you know what? I'm currently in love with the dishwasher packets.
- [28:43]
B
Oh, me too.
- [28:44]
A
That do not have plastic on them. And they come in a little tin that's decorative enough that you can leave out.
- [28:50]
B
Yep, let's do the laundry tablets. I have those sitting on a shelf in my laundry closet.
- [28:55]
A
I love not having to choose between the Planet Safe option and what actually works to get the house clean. Blueland is on a mission to make it easy for everyone to make sustainable choices. They believe that hard working clean products can be the norm, not the exception. So you can do better for your family and the planet at the same time. It's trusted in 1 million homes, including the house of wood, including the house.
- [29:20]
B
Of Vollenweider and my kids. Because the Blueland starter kit is an amazing housewarming gift.
- [29:27]
A
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- [29:34]
B
You won't want to miss this. Blueland.com chicks for 15 off.
- [29:41]
A
That's blueland.com chicks to get 15% off. A family of a nephew moved in to take charge of her employer. And Anna had to find a new place, which she did almost immediately. She began work for a Mrs. Abraham Vandenberg when she was 15 and a year later, so did her brother Alfred. He was the hired man. And get this. Mrs. Vandenberg encouraged them to go to the local Eagle Bridge School. It was just like home, wrote Grandma Moses later. Their teacher seems to have been an inspirational one. Anna was eager to learn. She is a person that really valued all the education that she was able to get. And she remembers that the maps she was assigned to draw for geography class were considered so good that her teacher, Mr. Mosher asked to keep them at the school and put em on the wall for other children to look at. That's pretty awesome.
- [30:44]
B
The maps that were only of the eastern portion of the United States because the west was just wild land. True.
- [30:51]
A
We talked about that during the Sarah Webster episode. You get past the Mississippi and it gets a little bit open and you.
- [30:58]
B
Know, she picked up enough that her handwriting was beautiful. As a child, I saw a letter she had written an essay or something she had written in one of these schools. And her handwriting was beautiful. She's getting more than I think I would have gotten given the sporadic nature of her education and the type of learning they usually did, you know, like rote learning and stuff. So I was very impressed.
- [31:22]
A
My country grandmother had the same exact writing, like a very copper plate hand. And I do think they drilled. I think that's the way you learned to write. But it is glorious. She could have made money doing calligraphy for fancy weddings. It's beautiful writing.
- [31:37]
B
While she's never gonna live at home, you know, her family home ever again, she's still kind of in the area so she can go back. At one point she went back for a visit and discovered that the entire family had measles. And she was just handed a new baby to hold. And that baby contracted measles the next day, so that wasn't much of a break for her. But she's still able to keep them close to her.
- [32:02]
A
Okay. So I just actually wanna say something about that measles episode and it irritated me.
- [32:07]
B
Okay.
- [32:08]
A
So she takes her day off and she walks over to her family home, which I Think was three or four miles. And the Vandenbergs had actually given her, they called it cab fare. It was train money. But the train schedule didn't fit with what she wanted to do. So she took the walk and it was very long. And she got met at the door by her father, who said, you better not stay. Everybody's got measles. You better just keep walking to your Aunt Mary's. It's not safe here. And her mother calls in, have her stay and take care of us. So Papa was looking out for her health and Mama's like, I could use another pair of hands.
- [32:39]
B
Yeah.
- [32:40]
A
And I'm so sorry, that made me mad. So she ended up being pulled down into the well of measles too. Which, you know, that one is on mom. Yeah, I'm sorry, it is. Those two years of school at Eagle Bridge were the last of her formal education. And after that she moved from job to job, which seems to be the norm for servants in this time and place. She does call out a few in her autobiography. But let's jump ahead to the year that Anna was 26. She had come back by special request to a house that she'd worked for before. The house of Mr. And Mrs. Sylvester James. I'm sorry to say I tried and I could not figure out what Mrs. James's first name was. I had no idea where. Notably, they called her Mary in this house because one of the daughters of the house was named Anna. So the servant became Mary. We've seen that happen before. One of the little boys was so happy to see her, he ran out. He dragged her by the hand into the house. Mary, Mary, come see Tom. Come see Tom. So here she goes, laughing into the kitchen, fully expecting to see the hired boy from the last time she was there. She liked him. It was so awesome. They had great times in the kitchen. But instead, oh ho, there's a tall, blue eyed, handsome, whole different Tom. Oh, hello, stranger man.
- [34:02]
B
His name is Thomas Salmon. Moses. And it's not Salmon, even though that's how it's spelled. It's from the Bible. He was just two years younger than Anna. Mary, if you were to see.
- [34:13]
A
I wrote something funny in my notes right here. I wrote, okay, bees, why don't we objectify the fellows of yesterday. So I guess what previous me meant by that is that new Thomas, as we'll call him, Thomas, is a handsome fellow also. So, hooray. And their work and their station in life just naturally threw them together. He's the hired man, she's the Hired girl. They eat in the kitchen. Over the course of the next year, it really became a mutual admiration society. Thomas, you know, the family called him Tom. She always called him Thomas. Could turn his hand to anything, like Chris Graham in my house, you know. Thomas, in his turn, in addition to Thunderbolt City, by the way, saw an immensely capable woman that would be. Be a good partner to him having to make his way in the world. He was saving his money diligently. He had dreams and aspirations, and she could be a good partner to him in any of his endeavors.
- [35:12]
B
What she saw in him is she actually spelled it out in her autobiography. In those days, we didn't look for a man with money, but for a good family, good reputation. Many of the boys were chicken thieves. Some women like a man because he's rich, but that kind of like, is not lasting, just lasts as long as the pocketbook. So she's not looking at this guy for money. And this is the same era of the Gilded age heiresses, where money is the only thing that's important. Money and titles. And she's just looking for someone who's a good family man.
- [35:46]
A
So they had the same goals and. And they had, you know, the same sort of starting place in life. And I think those ended up being advantages, really. And Anna and Thomas got engaged after her 27th birthday. So Thomas had a lead on a place to live and work. He was asked to go take a look at a horse ranch in North Carolina that he could run. He had $600 saved up and a vast store of potential. And Anna, of course, said yes to this. It. What an adventure. Though it was a bit of a whirlwind. So Anna and Thomas went to visit her parents, and then a week later, they were married in their best clothes. And she describes her wedding outfit. It was dark green, very elaborately trimmed. She might have actually taken the couple of months between engagement and wedding to actually make this dress. She had a pink feather in her hat. And I'm trying to picture a dark green with pink accents. You know, like, it kind of brave kind of fashion forward.
- [36:42]
B
Lily Pulitzer.
- [36:44]
A
Isn't that more like a citron and.
- [36:47]
B
Sure, dark green and yes, that's green and pink. When I think of it, I thought it was so funny. Like, she goes into this detail about what she was wearing, what. Which I personally love. But then she said he was dressed in black.
- [36:59]
A
Okay, well, if we were describing his wedding clothes in the 1780s, we could have gone into a lot more detail. You know, pink embroidery, whatever. But men's Fashion has really stagnated.
- [37:10]
B
Yeah, it's very simple and too very simple.
- [37:13]
A
And, you know, everybody likes to read about what the bride was wearing, and hardly anyone spares a thought.
- [37:18]
B
Well, if she had made the dress, of course she's going to go into detail about it because she spent time, energy and creativity on it.
- [37:24]
A
It. It was an art piece of its own. You know, fabric art is art I stand for.
- [37:28]
B
No, no argument for me.
- [37:30]
A
So standing in as their witnesses, one of his younger sisters and her fiance. And then the newly married couple ran to catch their train. Sailors certainly saw my ankles. She said she had to do a little leap of faith to catch the gangplank there at the end. They were a little bit late. And I think it's really funny. Their witnesses wrote later, your wedding cake sure was delicious. Like, they couldn't even stay to eat it. But the maid of honor and her fiance made sure to eat it all.
- [38:00]
B
Up and report on it. So thanks a lot for that.
- [38:04]
A
They were headed to New York City and then went to Washington by train, boat, and running through the streets, anxiously asking people for directions. I've been there. I think I've had a trip or two like that. Like, oh, no. So by the end of this journey, they were kind of exhausted once they had neared Washington. And Anna's like, please, can we slow our roll? Just. Can we just be for a day or two, Please, this pace is unsustainable. And they found a place to stay by asking friendly randoms on the street, yes, hey, where's a boarding house? It's sort of respectable.
- [38:37]
B
And then they sent them places. One place they didn't like how it looked, they went to another. The house they landed in was a widow. She had children. It was perfectly lovely. But what Anna Mary loved the most was the weather, because she's leaving upstate New York, where it's cold, it's in November. And now she's going down south. They're in Staunton, Virginia, and it's just warm and spring like, and the flowers are still blooming lovely.
- [39:03]
A
The meals were plentiful, and Anna felt cherished and refreshed. It was a good break. And Thomas went out to the drugstore, just on a little errand. I don't know, shaving soap or something minor. He got to talking to the drugstore owner. In a way, I've started many a conversation, like, where are those R's from? Like, you have the Chicago R. I've been known to say to people I don't know that I would ask People where they're from anymore. Given the current situation, the banter has a little edge to it now, but the man said, well, how lovely to meet someone from upstate New York. What are your goals? What are your dreams? Like, there's nobody here. Let's hang out, you know, Know. And they talked about his future, and he's like, you don't want to go down there. You know, hey, I got just to think for you. These neighbors went out of a farm that they had rented. City people, teachers. They're in over their heads. They want out. They've realized their mistake. It's more than a little self interest, by the way, because this man, Mr. Bell, the pharmacist, was the landlord. I don't know at what point he revealed that, but Thomas went out to have a look because that caused nothing. Yeah, I'm gonna go look at this farm and see what's going on. I can only imagine that people are like, really? And they were so excited that somebody was coming. Like, you know what you can have most? We're gonna take minimal stuff. We're just gonna leave so much stuff behind. We'll sell you the cow at a discount. You can have these chickens for pennies on the dollar. It's a hundred acres in the Shenandoah Valley. Comes with a house, comes with a barn. We just want to get out of here. And this package deal was almost too good to be true. I'm telling you, from here, there's no catch. It did leave all the stuff. They had a real chance of a good life here. And so Thomas wrote to the horse ranch guy, okay, I think I found a sure thing here. Thank you so much. He's not burning a bridge. You know, he's keeping that open. But he's like, I'd be a fool kind of not to at least try this. So they've just been married for a matter of weeks, a week or two, and now they have this operation to take over. And it was amazing. The very first thing thing they ever bought as a married couple was their coffee mill. I love that. And remember Laura and Almanzo's favorite thing they. They chose for themselves from the every word catalog. That plate, that bread plate. Give us this day our daily bread.
- [41:23]
B
Cute. Yes.
- [41:24]
A
I asked Chris Graham, like, what's the first major purchase we made as a couple? And he seems to think it was this big red couch in here. And I think he's right. The one you saw, and we still have it.
- [41:36]
B
Oh, wow. Ours was a bedroom set that. And we still have part of it.
- [41:39]
A
Yeah.
- [41:40]
B
And it's so early 90s.
- [41:41]
A
It's like light wood.
- [41:43]
B
There's like seashells carved on it or something like. Oh, man.
- [41:47]
A
Well, this was so unusual then. And it's still unusual. I think it'll hold up stylistically.
- [41:54]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. Mine did not.
- [41:57]
A
We were bumming out because we remembered as we were talking about that couch that the man tried hard to sell us, this deep plum colored purple, matching shade. But we did buy the big yellow chair, which we still have, that Jet tried to move out with. And we're like, no, ma'. Am.
- [42:13]
B
But it's my chair. I always sit here, play my games.
- [42:15]
A
I know.
- [42:17]
B
Well, I am very impressed with this couple. They're just newly married. They had a plan. They were going to make it happen. They had all kinds of things happen on the journey. And then they decided together not to go through with that plan and just switch gears. Like, let's just do this. Okay, we're here now, I guess we live in Staunton, Virginia.
- [42:39]
A
And their experience with, you know, animals and household management and really they're being used to hard work. Came to the forefront, came into the light. I mean, immediately. They each set to improving the farm in their own sphere of influence. Thomas had horses out there, harrowing and plowing. Almost immediately, he was going to plant some potatoes from seed, which seems crazy to me. I would like to know from farmers. I. I always thought you grew potatoes from starts.
- [43:10]
B
Yeah, that's how I've ever grown them.
- [43:11]
A
He knows better than like 40 acres of potatoes. Anna started seeds for a vegetable garden almost immediately. She made deals with neighbors. This is amazing. To trade her unfertilized eggs because they didn't have a rooster for ones that would produce chicks from other farms. And so she would trick those hens, take out the dud eggs for pancakes or whatever, and replace them with eggs that were going to hatch into chicks. And I mean, exponentially. She had a flock of chicks within a year. She made and sold butter from the two cows. They bought one on the sheep, and then Thomas bought another one. The local grocer had great suspicion at first. She's trying to sell butter and he's like, yeah, you and every army trying to sell me butter. But her butter was so good that he took it at a higher price because people were asking for it specifically. They wanted animosis butter. She must have salted it and. Oh, just thinking, I mean, maybe it was. Maybe it was like a fashion technique that, you know, up north you salt the butter down here. You right. Or what you might feed a cow might have been different up north because the butter gets colored differently based on what the cow is eating. Any number of things could have contributed to it. But the fact is, Anna's side quest paid for the cows within a matter of a couple of months. And so they bought some pigs.
- [44:33]
B
And she's not just making dairy butter. She's making apple butter and cherry butter and selling that too.
- [44:40]
A
She had a neighbor, and I don't remember the neighbor's name, I don't know that that's important, but kind of a. A recluse, rough and ready neighbor that used to tell her, because Anna was not used to so much fruit, they didn't have the abundance that was down here in the more temperate climate. This neighbor showed her how to process all this fruit. And it was pears and cherries and peaches and like everything. And before all of hers were ready, this neighbor would come over, knowing they were just starting out, and bring her some jars of preserves and all you want. Sometimes when you're living on bread and cheese and milk, you just want like a pickle.
- [45:23]
B
Yeah.
- [45:23]
A
You just want something with some flavor. And that lady would bring over her chutney and. And whatever. And it was like an interesting partnership. And Anna never forgot the kindness of all of these kind of strangers who wanted to make their place a success. Not as much as they did, certainly, but they didn't have to come over and help. And they. They often very much did.
- [45:45]
B
Community.
- [45:46]
A
She talks about the process of making apple butter, which is. Woo. That's a lot. And it's the subject of one of her major works later in the 1940s. These. You need patience and you need light clothing and you need to not care that your hair frizzes in the steam.
- [46:03]
B
I didn't realize that you needed the cider to make the apple butter. Like it was an ingredient in the apple butter. I thought you just cooked it down like applesauce and then you just cook it down. No, apparently not.
- [46:15]
A
I don't know, but I love apple butter.
- [46:17]
B
Me too.
- [46:17]
A
I. Yeah, I might have to go get a jar. Their work and reputation led them to be offered another farm six times bigger, that had a whole dairy operation to manage. Okay. They had to think about that because that's like a big commitment and that's a lot of work. And they said, if I can bring another couple into this, we can do it. And so who they chose was the same maid of honor and best man. His little sister and her now husband came out to share the work and to be companions for them. So they each had a friend. And you know, there's that concept of body doubling where, where sometimes you just have a friend, having a person with you, you makes the work go faster even if that person doesn't lift a hand. And now that these very helpful people were there, the work went on so well. Many is the hour that she sat on the porch, Anna churning milk for butter which went out branded with the Moses name. Time to think and absorb the views from this wrap around porch they had while her sister in law was inside handling the cook, cooking and the housework. So she had a contemplative, peaceful job to do that brought in money for the family. We can't talk about them all, but they lived on a series of farms of assorted sizes and assorted focuses, if you know what I mean. Some with hired help, some with families. She mentions several times that they employed freed enslaved people, sometimes as a nanny for the children. More on that in a second. And sometimes as farmhouses help one in particular, every time he changed jobs, he would change his last name because he had not had a last name. And so anytime he changed families. So he was Andy Moses the whole time he stayed with them.
- [48:02]
B
And I was, I would think, like I hear they were tenant farmers, which is absolutely nothing like sharecroppers at all. It sounds like it's going to be from similar, but it's not. This is their land. They're spitting, splitting the profits with somebody else. But this is their home, they can develop it. They have a lot of autonomy. There was a picture of one of the farms they lived at. I think it was the Dudley farm. The whole family outside with the formerly enslaved people standing there in this family picture. It was a beautiful big house like pillars and very southern looking.
- [48:38]
A
Well, Anna became known wherever she went on whatever farm it was for her preserves. And that's a fact that will come up later. Just know that she was locally and repeatedly famous for that. The lady that emerged out of the woods to show her how to preserve all the cherries and everything. Did a great job. She won prizes at state fairs for those and for butter. And my friend Emad got to be a pie judge at a fair. And I don't know how you get that gig anyway. That seems like a really fun.
- [49:09]
B
That would be a great little job. Yes.
- [49:11]
A
Somebody was the jelly judge. I don't know how like speaking of having to eat a pickle after.
- [49:17]
B
Woo.
- [49:18]
A
That's a lot of shit.
- [49:19]
B
Yeah. Amongst all this activity, these Moving to different houses. Anna, Mary, and Thomas are starting to have children. Over the next 12 years, they are going to have 10 children. However, only five of them survived infancy. The first one, finally, they're picking some new names. I mean, okay, they're from their families, but in 1888, she had Winona, who they called Ona. Lloyd came a couple years later, Forrest a couple years after that, Another Anna a couple years after that. And then five years. Was the baby Hugh Worthington? And the naming of this child just cracked me up because he was like, nine months old and he didn't have a name yet. And they were at church or something, and someone's talking about how her brother has this really great name, Hugh Worthington, and. And Anna. Mary's like, yeah, okay, that's a good name. And that's when the child got his name.
- [50:16]
A
But more grimly, I think the reason that he got to that advanced age without having a name. Between Anna and Hugh, there are five years of no babies, and there are at least three and maybe even four of the infants that she lost happened during that period. So when Hugh arrived after three or four losses, she didn't name?
- [50:39]
B
No.
- [50:39]
A
For three quarters of a year. She didn't want to get too attached to it. No.
- [50:43]
B
I don't blame her.
- [50:44]
A
Although it's a cute story still, I.
- [50:45]
B
Think, like how you pick your name, right?
- [50:48]
A
Well, this 50% death rate is a little high, but in Virginia, it was definitely 30% of children died in Virginia before their first birthday. And that's just standard. There is a headstone that says Moses Babies, and that's all it says. Anna did not dwell too much on the lost children. In her autobiography, all she said was, I left five little graves in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. While again, I say, not a resolution. It's a program for education and improvement, and Masterclass is helping me do that. I have taken a couple of classes that kind of dovetail together. Ron Finley teaches gardening. He is a man that once came from a food desert, and his course is all about sustainability and growing your own food. And then going along with last year's Eat More Plants. Alice Waters, of all people, teaches the art of home cooking. So I'll grow the vegetables with Ron Finley, and I will cook them with Alice Waters.
- [52:14]
B
I love it. When I finished my last masterclass and I thought of something that I wanted to do for myself. So just today, I started Dopamine, Take youe Brain Back. It's taught by Dr. Anna Lemke, who is the chief of Addiction medicine. At Stanford.
- [52:31]
A
Amazing.
- [52:32]
B
It's going to help me cut down on all that screen time.
- [52:35]
A
Well, with masterclass, you get thousands, thousands of bite sized lessons across 13 categories. And so when you're done listening to the history chicks, you can listen on your commute or your workout or your laundry, or like me, you could be out gardening. Turn all of those activities into a classroom. So with audio mode, you can listen to your masterclass lessons anytime or anywhere.
- [53:02]
B
And plans start at just $10 a month billed annually, and you'll get unlimited access to over 200 classes that are taught by the world's best business leaders and writers and chefs and more. More.
- [53:15]
A
One masterclass member wrote, masterclass has become a routine and it stretches my brain in a way nothing else does.
- [53:23]
B
Right now, our listeners can get an additional 15 off any annual membership@masterclass.com historychicks.
- [53:32]
A
That'S 15 off@masterclass.com historych Knicks masterclass.com history chicks. When she was 44, the family made, I think, as kind of a decision that was a bit of a sacrifice. They moved to a smaller farm just outside of town so the children could go to school. And to support the family, Thomas had to go out and sort of take care of a neighbor's farm. In addition to working their own land, they boarded the local mailman for a little extra income and Anna started a profitable industry.
- [54:15]
B
One day she was looking around for a way to make a little extra money and she saw some potatoes and she peeled them, let them soak overnight, dried them off, sliced them up, fried them up, took a bag about a pound down to the local store. And the shopkeeper was like, yeah, these are great. Bring me more. Next thing you know, she has this whole potato chip production line going on in her house and she is creating, creating barrels of potato chips to sell.
- [54:40]
A
And sending them to other cities too. And you know, the first big American potato chip brand wasn't even available until the 1920s. Can you guess which one it was?
- [54:51]
B
Uh, Lay's.
- [54:54]
A
Yeah.
- [54:54]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [54:54]
A
It was Lace. That was the first major national brand. But there were local brands that sprang up all over the place. And Ana Moses was a real entrepreneur. Kettle chips became super fashionable later too. But that's how they all started out, is batch produced small batch produced potato chips. Right. The postman, the renter named their house Mount Nebo after the place in modern day Jordan where the, in the Bible, Moses saw the promised land. I see what you did there. And this is a name that the family transferred to their last family home. Home at 45. The family moved back up north near where Anna grew up, to a dairy farm they bought near Eagle Ridge, New York.
- [55:42]
B
She did not want to leave the South. I think she was very happy down there. But Thomas was just homesick. You know, their families were all up in the same area in New York and he must have wore her down. But when they went down south, you know, it was just them and a couple suitcases. When they go back, back up north, they need to rent an entire train car for all their possessions, for some livestock, and take the train car up to New York.
- [56:10]
A
That's success. Yes, I mean, that is success.
- [56:13]
B
When they were on the train, this is so cute. They were on the train going back up, just Anna, Mary and three of her kids, including the 17 year old who immediately ditched her seats to go to another car. So she didn't have to be part of that group. Her mom was like, she just flirted all the way home back to New York.
- [56:32]
A
You know, you gotta take your chance. You got to take your chance.
- [56:35]
B
That's right.
- [56:37]
A
So at their new home, they were surrounded by Robertsons and Moses and all sorts of cousinly married in less names. It was a much different dynamic than they'd had in the South. Although it was a big adjustment period for her, her children were not used to having cousins around. And cousins let them know they did not own the whole orange. You know, playground justice is tough.
- [57:01]
B
The Moses kids are southern kids. That's all they've known. I mean, the oldest is 17. When they move back up to New York, they've been gone 18 years.
- [57:12]
A
Well, Anna and Thomas settled in and raised their family, including the year that Anna was 51, a niece named Eleanor, who they took in as a sixth child. Child after her mother died. Man, that was something, wasn't it? She got the news. I don't remember the name of the mother. Let's call her Beth. Just for the purposes of this anecdote. A neighbor stopped by and said, bess is going to die. Which child will you take?
- [57:40]
B
Right?
- [57:41]
A
So she took the baby, the youngest one. The six children were sent here and there to be raised. I will say it was good that people were willing to open their houses, but it was sad that they got scattered like chickens. You know, that niece Eleanor actually was raised from a baby in Anna and Thomas's house and didn't leave until she left to get married. So that was her home, the Moses home.
- [58:07]
B
It was a good place to live. I mean, she landed in a great spot. Anna Mary used to say you know, when people asked how she raised her children and she just said, I didn't bring up the children, they kind of come up.
- [58:21]
A
My mom always said that if you have three kids, you might as well have four, five or six because it makes no difference. Once you get to three is where the crack is and your brain just falls apart. Anna began to be referred to in the neighborhood as Mother Moses. All the maternal, neighborly and civic virtues were hers. She was related to lots of people. Everyone knew her. And I wish that for us all, you know, the lack of lonesomeness leads to longevity. That is my personal feeling.
- [58:51]
B
And she summed up life with the family is this. It was a Rollicksham happy house. And their father would join in with them. He really was one of them. So did she marry her dad?
- [59:05]
A
Oh, no. Well, you know what, that's good. That's kind of sweet.
- [59:10]
B
Absolutely. And all the kids were able to get more education than she had been able to get. They all went to school. Several of them went off to college or nursing school.
- [59:20]
A
In the case of her oldest daughter.
- [59:21]
B
That's right. And then about this time, the kids start getting married. Ona goes first and then Forrest and Lloyd married sisters.
- [59:30]
A
Convenient. Yeah, that's nice.
- [59:32]
B
That worked out well.
- [59:33]
A
Yeah. In the course of events, all the children grow up. That's inevitable. Anna and Thomas were able to help some of them get started on their own farms. In fact, I think the, the sisterly daughter in laws and their husbands were started on a farm similar to the way that they had started their married life with a sister and her husband. That whole gang got started together on their own farm. Their youngest son, Hugh, you know, he's much younger. He married at 19 and he and his wife Dorothy lived with ma and Pa and helped to run the farm and the house. And Dorothy was a great companion for her mother in law. Now all this time life had been so very busy that childhood love of painting had lain not lean dormant exactly. I mean, Anna would often dash off a little painting as a gift or paint up a Christmas card to send to somebody. Thomas thought it was foolish. She wrote to somebody. I'm sorry to. That makes me a little sad. I mean, but there's a story that actually made me very teary. So Thomas did have a love of beauty and a deep, deep love for his wife. And I just want to tell you this little anecdote. She, by context, I think had just lost a baby. She was in bed and she was feeling very, very sick and very, very low. And he on his travels in the farm wagon, had caught sight of a flowering dogwood across the field. And he went over there with his saw, and he caught a giant branch of it, all pink and white and smelling nice and fresh. And he went back and put it in the house.
- [61:06]
B
House.
- [61:07]
A
And put it in the corner and nailed it all along the side and draped the branches all along the ceiling and nailed them up there so she would have a lovely canopy of nature to look at. And that made me feel very warm toward Thomas.
- [61:21]
B
Yes.
- [61:22]
A
And it lasted about a month. It lasted so long, she couldn't believe it. And it made her feel so much happier. So, yes, he thought the painting was a waste of time, I guess. Kind of similar to her mother a little bit, but. But, you know, I think he gets redemption for that dogwood. I will never get over that. I got so teary that I went and told Chris Graham, who's a lot like that.
- [61:43]
B
Aw.
- [61:43]
A
Oh, that's so sweet.
- [61:45]
B
She is painting things like you just said. She's also doing a little bit of painting in the house a la her father. She ran out of paper wallpapering a room. There's a piece of wood called a fireboard, and you put it in front of your fire in the summer months. It keeps the bugs and the critters out. And it's usually decorative, so you have to look at it, so it's pretty. So she took the fireboard, covered it in paper, and then painted a scene on it. It's trees and shrubs, a lake in the sunshine. She considered that her first large painting.
- [62:19]
A
Right.
- [62:19]
B
It was quite a landscape.
- [62:21]
A
I'm sorry, I'm still stuck with that.
- [62:25]
B
Now.
- [62:26]
A
When she was 62, she went to nurse her daughter, Anna, who, I'm sorry to say, was suffering from tuberculosis, though nobody knows yet. While she was there at her daughter's house, where she stayed for a number of years, Anna caught sight. You know how you kind of. You see something on Pinterest or like, ooh, look at this. And you want to share it with somebody? Anna caught sight of. We might now call it a thread painting, a cruel work landscape. And she showed her mother and said, I could you do something like that? Like, do you think that you could pull that off? I love this thing, and I would love one. And so from now for a while, Anna mostly expressed herself through cruel work pictures. She called them worsted pictures. For the embroidery wool she used to create them was called worsted wool. And she was an expert. She was a genius. This is so hard. I have tried it it is the shading with the different stitches and the layers and the texture and. And she loved to give these as gifts, and people loved to receive them. And how come embroidery as art was okay, but painting wasn't? I don't know, proper lady stuff to have a needle in one's hand rather.
- [63:42]
B
Than a brush and some paint, maybe.
- [63:45]
A
I have some of this art on my flower wall. Oh, do you? And I've only seen it as thread painting. I'll have to send you a picture of what I have. The. It's amazing, and it's so hard, and it's advanced level, and I don't know that I could do it without lots more. No, no.
- [64:03]
B
I know that I wouldn't be able to do it, but it. It's beautiful. And like any crafter knows, is that when you do something that you love, you have a lot of it. So everybody, you know, has it too, because you give it to them. And these paintings are so interesting because they're landscapes or scenes from something, you know, barn or whatever. You have to do one color and then go to a different color to do that shading and to do blending of colors. It's just one color of thread next to another color of thread.
- [64:35]
A
It reminds me of those collages that people make with little paint, little paintings. And then when you back up, it's a face you kind of have to have in your head. The shading that's going to happen before you ever start it.
- [64:46]
B
Yeah.
- [64:47]
A
It's just mathematically experts.
- [64:49]
B
Yeah.
- [64:49]
A
I don't know how people do it.
- [64:50]
B
And she is like, now we would go to, well, Michael's maybe and get a pattern. And she's just making these up out of her head. Things she sees, you know, landscapes that she recognizes, trees that she knows, barns or covered bridges that she knows is what is going on. These worsted embroidery that she's creating. And she's still submitting her jams and her pickles and her cakes to the state fairs or the local fairs. But she's also starting to submit her needlework. So yay.
- [65:23]
A
She was able to vote for the very first time in the presidential election of 1920, when she was 60 years old, she and her daughter Anna made a point of going to cast their ballots. That presidential election was the very first one in which women could cast a vote. No word on who they voted for exactly, but it was Harding versus Cox. New York, as a class voted for Harding, and he ultimately won. So we can only guess that she may have voted for the winning. The winning horse in that particular presidential race. And I'm sorry to say that Thomas died suddenly when Anna was 67. He was 65. Hugh and Dorothy were still in the house with her, and she did live on the farm for some time afterward. Never idle for sure. We know that much by now. But she sort of officially retired from farm life when she was around 66. Almost like when the older gener sort of retires from hosting holidays. She's still there. She's still in major presence, but she's technically passed the torch to another generation for the primary responsibility. As she crept into her sixth decade, the name Mother Moses shifted inevitably to, you guessed it, Grandma Moses. Even if you were not related to her, she was everybody's grandma. She's one of those. Everybody's grandma. She never forgot those early days when she and Thomas were just married and neighbors went out of their way to help them out. She passed. Passed it on exponentially. She was sassy and spicy and funny and stern and great, you know, just great. But any kind of idleness was not natural to her at all. We know this about her. And she looked around for something that wasn't going to interfere with the running of the farm. She's passed the torch. It's gone. Somebody else is holding it. And so she had to find something to, quote, keep myself busy and out of mischief. And so those cruel work landscapes became her occupation. The way that I keep getting these latch hook kits and there's no point to them. It's something to keep my hands busy and not scrolling that phone. That's what those are for.
- [67:34]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [67:35]
A
She didn't even really care about the output. It's just right. Curlwork landscapes.
- [67:39]
B
Yeah. Oh, well, think of anybody that does anything. Any quilters or knitters. Oh, my gosh. Knitters? You got a knitter in your family? You have scarves, hats, because they've given. They just have to knit again. Like you do your hook rugs. What are they called? Latch. Hook rugs.
- [67:57]
A
It's so silly. Do you remember those latches?
- [68:00]
B
I have to say that my mom did several of them, or at least partially. They were all stacked up in her closet.
- [68:07]
A
Well, and then you do them and you're like, what do I do with this?
- [68:10]
B
How many pillows can I have?
- [68:12]
A
Yeah, I don't know, it seems silly. I did a Volkswagen bus, one that sold on ebay. Ebay, Really? I guess somebody hung it on their wall, but not the kit. I was done with it and then I sold it. Wow. I'm impressed. Yeah, wow.
- [68:26]
B
Let's fast forward about another, I don't know, 10 years or so. By 1936, at the age of 76, Anna Mary's hands were getting quite arthritic. She's sewing all day. Holding that needle is painful. Then she had to rest her hands so that she could do it again. But while she's resting, they're so sore. And one day her sister suggested that she swap that teeny tiny needle out for something that was a little easier to hold onto. Maybe a paintbrush so you can paint with paint instead of thread.
- [68:57]
A
That old love of yours for painting. Why have you ever given it up? Go back to it. Even Celestia was her name. Celestia actually had had some art lessons. Everybody in this family seems artistic in one way or another. By the way, the way I think it's funny that Grandma Moses says she never did anything with it.
- [69:15]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [69:19]
A
So just like that, you know, almost by accident, the. The suggestion of a sister, the career of Grandma Moses began. And you know, she certainly knew the gritty realities of farm life. Who would know better than she? But in her pictures that she began to paint, she went back into the time machine. Happy childhood memories of fields and those vistas she used to see while churning butter at the dairy farm. Barn dances, communal work like the sugaring time or a quilting bee, and holidays in rural New York and rural Virginia. And most of the time she deliberately left out things like telephone poles and tractors and electric lights and just kind of the effects of modern day.
- [70:05]
B
Yeah. Cars for a while, though, I will.
- [70:07]
A
Tell you, a car. And some trains crept in. They were on purpose, you know, later, later. And at first she used materials that she had laying around, like leftover house paint and pieces of board. She used match ends to paint the detail work because she didn't have little brushes. Pins.
- [70:23]
B
She used pins and sticks, which is very similar to how she painted when she was a little kid. She didn't have brushes, so she was, you know, using whatever she could find that did the job. And so she just picks that all back up, up.
- [70:35]
A
And actually a lot of her paintings, a lot of them, like even from here on out, are on mesa night, which I had to have Chris Graham tell me what it was like pegboard without the holes, that material instead of traditional canvases. Although some are flat canvas on a board, very few are actually the traditional stretched canvas. You've even got a couple on old pieces of tin roof.
- [70:58]
B
Yep. Whatever she could find. And a lot of the times, the size of the painting was dictated by Whatever frame she could find in her attic or somebody else's attic, you know, a broken frame from someplace, put it back together again around this picture. So that's what dictated the size of them, even from the get go. And she starts to submit these paintings along with her jams and jellies and pickles to the fairs. But the paintings didn't win any prizes.
- [71:27]
A
The jelly did, though.
- [71:29]
B
Yes, I won a fruit and jam. Yeah, I won a prize for my fruit and jam, she said, but no pictures.
- [71:35]
A
Yeah. Her paintings didn't seem to get a second glance, except for somebody was noticing there was a woman named Mrs. Caroline Thomas. last we have a first name. Hello. She ran Thomas's Drugstore in town with her husband, who we only know as W.J. which I think is great turnaround. Yep, yep, Mr. W.J. we don't know his name. Over in the nearby town of Hoosick Falls, which looks exactly like Stars Hollow, down to the gazebo, by the way. Mrs. Thomas invited Anna to contribute to this window display slash boutique she was organizing of local women's work. Now boutique is too fancy. Yeah, Mercantile. A window mercantile, I'm going to call it. Yes, honestly, it was an inspired idea as a window display for a drugstore. Because what else is Mrs. Thomas going to put in the window? A stack of Don's pills, tins or some boxes of Lydia Pinkham.
- [72:28]
B
That's right.
- [72:29]
A
That's all going to fade in the sun and not be sellable. So this was like so perfect of visual merchandising. So she's ahead of her time.
- [72:37]
B
So.
- [72:38]
A
So Anna's paintings and some of her embroidery rotated through that drugstore window for years. I mean, there's other stuff in the window, you know, like carvings of other people's. And it's not just her stuff, but occasionally someone would go home with one of Grandma Moses's artworks for a few dollars. Those lucky early adopters.
- [72:57]
B
Well, even then they were like three or five dollars, which is about 70 to 100 in modern dollars.
- [73:04]
A
Yeah, you just save up kind of for this.
- [73:06]
B
I love that painting. It reminds me of the time that we had that picnic with the kids. Remember the one where we all fell in the creek and I need to have that painting.
- [73:16]
A
So largely, they gathered more dust than.
- [73:18]
B
Customers until a Day in 1938 when a new York City water department engineer and amateur art collector by the name of Lewis Caldor was coming through town and he saw these paintings in the window. And it was kind of a thunderbolt city. This is her thunderbolt city. Moment, except I don't say it with the accent like you do, because he just loved these paintings. He was drawn to their simplicity. He was drawn to the nostalgia of them. The colors she chose, just muted and natural colors. And very different than a lot of the art that was being shown in the late 30s, you know, a little bit more modern art. This is the exact opposite, very primitive art. And he was so excited to find these paintings that he bought everything that the store had. And then he said, well, who painted these? And the woman was wrapping up his packages and said, oh, that's Mrs. Moses down the street. She might have some more at her house. So he goes to her house. She's not there, but her daughter in law, Dorothy was. And she said, well, she's not here right now. You might want to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow. And he did. And when he came back, he bought another 10 pieces. And mostly, like in the store window, mostly they were her paintings. But he also bought a couple of her worsted wool embroidery pieces too.
- [74:41]
A
Now, her family thought he was completely out of his mind when he told their grandmother that he planned to make her famous. Like, if you were them, you would definitely think this is a classic central casting flim. Flamingo man, right? What, what was his angle? You know, like, what is going on?
- [74:58]
B
I'm gonna bring you to the city, kid, and make you a star.
- [75:02]
A
And you know, but he paid his money, so as far as you know, that that's no trick. He just went away with good luck. I hope your wall looks great, sir, whatever. And. But Mr. Calder lugged her paintings around New York City and he was trying to get museums and galleries interested. I would like to note also, this is not the Calder that is the famous sculpt operating at the exact same time, confusingly, Calder with the large scale mobiles, it's not that guy. This is a whole other civilian man who did have contacts, though from being in the art world. He had a big problem because he could sell it and he could do the, you know, the tap dance and the story or whatever, and then the dealers would find out this artist was 78 years old. And you know, you put in a lot of work with promotions and building up inventory and building up demand for an artist's work and everything. And at 78, you're going to be wasting your time. You know, that career is going to end abruptly. Not to put too fine a point on it, they wouldn't make back their investment. But these early rejectors paid dearly for their lack of bravery and foresight you.
- [76:16]
B
Work on commission, don't you? Mistake. Big mistake. I had given my son Noah a Lola blanket last year as a gift. And he actually told me that that blanket has made him a blanket snob. Now I thought he already was. He's always been the kid that if I give him a fluffy blanket, he's so happy. But this blanket has set a new bar that no other blanket is going to reach. I don't have to give him any more because he loves his Lola blanket so much.
- [76:59]
A
You know, everyone that comes over here gets. They sit on that leather chair we have and they pull that Lola blanket down and they always exclaim, sometimes there's a word that I'm not going to repeat. Holy. Holy is the word. And everyone is like, I'm never leaving this chair. I'm never leaving this place. Blanket. I feel like I am in the absolute lap of luxury. I will tell you, I have given a Lola blanket as a housewarming present and I believe that has now become an heirloom in that house.
- [77:33]
B
Oh, I believe it. Lola blankets stay flawless. There's no shedding, there's no pilling, there's no delicate care worries. That's what makes it a great gift. You're not giving somebody the gift of more work. You're just giving them a gift of a blanket that feels like a hug.
- [77:49]
A
Definitely. Literally like a hug. And it also looks amazing in the house. It's a faux fur giant, I don't know, cloud.
- [78:00]
B
And they do come in different sizes, but the bigger the better.
- [78:03]
A
I say there's a reason it's called the world's number one blanket. It's the gift people don't stop raving about. Lola Blankets was founded by two brothers that had a mission to bring life changing softness to the world. And they were inspired by their mother who found comfort in her blanket while living with breast cancer.
- [78:23]
B
I love that. For a limited time, our listeners can get 40% off select Lola Blankets products with Code Chicks at checkout.
- [78:31]
A
Just head to lolablankets.com and use code Chicks. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you.
- [78:41]
B
Wrap yourself in Luxury with Lola Blankets.
- [78:53]
A
In 1939, when his artist was 79 years of age, Mr. Calder managed to get three of her paintings that are called Home, Maple Sugar Days and First Auto into a private exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art. It was an exhibition called Contemporary Unknown American Painting and it launched her career technically, but it didn't lead to anything really. Big. But everything changed the next year. The year Anna turned 80, Lewis went.
- [79:28]
B
Back up to Eagle Bridge and asked Anna Mary for more paintings. So he's getting even more involved in her career. I don't even think it's because he had, you know, 1500 now dollars invested in her work. I think he really believed he in her. And he was making his rounds and he came upon a fairly new gallery in town owned by Otto Collier. It is the Galerie Saint Etienne. Otto is an Austrian art historian and gallery owner who had to flee Austria after the Nazi annexation of the country. His family emigrated to New York with a lot of his gallery pieces. So he had stick stock to open a gallery. St. Etienne is actually named after St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna, even though it's French.
- [80:15]
A
Well, that gallery is still there in New York at 24 W. 57th St. If you are around and about. They specialized at the time in Austrian painters, modern ones. But Mr. Callier himself had a soft spot for self taught artists and he loved, like Mr. Calder before him, saw something in Anna's work and he agreed to mount an exhibition. He agreed to show her work.
- [80:45]
B
When Lewis Calder came by and showed him the paintings and Otto Kalier was like interested, do you have more? And Lewis said, yeah, they're in my car but I gotta go to work now so I'll meet you there after work. Just bring a flashlight. And that's exactly what happened. They went with a flashlight through the paintings in his car looking for pieces.
- [81:06]
A
For this exhibit that doesn't seem sketchy at all. There you go. So it opened the October of her 80th year under the title what a Farm Wife Painted. He thought that would be more of a selling point than her name, which at the time of course was Mrs. Anna Mary Moses. Fair enough, fair enough. 34 paintings and a piece of embroidery made it into the gallery gallery. And a few months later, a journalist that was visiting Eagle Bridge heard locals calling this artist Grandma Moses and the nickname stuck. The show itself did fine, not spectacularly. And in fact Grandma Moses didn't even go to it.
- [81:46]
B
She said herself things are too busy on the farm to leave. I, I can't go to New York City.
- [81:51]
A
But the real breakthrough came right afterwards. Gimbal's department store was going to host a Thanksgiving festival shortly after this and her gallery show was even over. They pitched something. Can Grandma Moses bring her nostalgic thematic. We are in Thanksgiving time and this is a very nostalgic time of year for Americans and these would go great in our auditorium they wanted Grandma Moses to come to do a meet and greet herself like she and the paintings. This is gonna win. You can't all have the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.
- [82:29]
B
Right, right.
- [82:30]
A
Weren't they direct competitors? I don't know. I don't think.
- [82:32]
B
And I don't think the movie's been miracle on 34th Street.
- [82:36]
A
Even before that, about this time, actually, there was a popular saying, does Macy's tell gimbals? Meaning, you know, why help your competitor type of thing. It was like slang. And I think this movie in its entirety kind of sprung out of that already existing saying.
- [82:57]
B
Yep.
- [82:57]
A
But anyway, I don't know if Macy's had a single thing to do with it, but they were mounting up this very, very nostalgic, emotional Americana. She decided she was gonna take up Gimbel's invitation. She was gonna go, and she went with drugstore Mrs. Thomas as her plus one.
- [83:12]
B
And she had not only them two going, the ladies in the big city, but they also provided a lot of her jams and jellies to display next to these paintings. I mean, how Americana is that? And she herself, you know, this 80 year old woman who looks like a grandma and oh yes, is a grandma. It was just evocative of a time gone by, another era. And so this whole presentation, they mic her, she starts talking and it's broadcast to like 400 people that are in the store, this conversation. And she just starts talking about her jams and jellies and how they won awards and how she's famous for them.
- [83:56]
A
And I think she pulled a blue ribbon out of her handbag to show people and the homespun nature. I mean, if you know anything about New York City, you know that people are jaded, they've seen a lot and they're not easily surprised. And something about her homespunness and her just charm and this kind of wit they'd never seen before. And she's so snappy and she's so old and it's just amazing. And you know, after the war, people, people were like, you know, it took a lot of juice out of everybody. It was, it was hard. And they wanted something that, you know, like when you refresh your algorithm, you're like cats. Cats, right, exactly, exactly. They wanted to refresh the analog algorithm. And this was. The New York reporters ate it up. They couldn't get enough of her.
- [84:49]
B
They loved her. Even though art critics were like, it's kind of primitive. It's. She's untrained. And everybody else is going, oh my Gosh, I just love these people paintings. And at that time, like you were just saying, you know, all the boys are coming back for more and people are getting married and starting the baby boomer generation and they want to settle down and they want to have this American dream. And her paintings exemplified that, you know, the simplicity of them, the hominess of them. And I'm not sure exactly where this fits, but I just want to share that Norman Rockwell and Anna Mary were very good friends. They lived not that far from each other. Each other. He put her into one of his paintings. It was a Saturday Evening Post cover called Christmas homecoming from 1948. So they were friends early on. If you're going to be painting a grandma in a painting, she's a good one to paint because she just exemplifies grandma.
- [85:48]
A
Gallery after gallery began to show her artwork, both local and as far away as Washington D.C. she became a local celebrity, celebrity up in Eagle Bridge. And she attracted vacationers who wanted a souvenir, would roll up to her house. And she was, she was so accommodating, more than I ever would have been. She was very delighted to see people and you know, people wanted copies of her work, which they'd seen at exhibitions, which seems like a strange thing to ask.
- [86:20]
B
Yeah.
- [86:21]
A
An artist really. But she rarely refused out. Right. She tried to accommodate as many as she could and she kind of wore herself out. And she, she did copy things, but she'd often like change the season.
- [86:34]
B
Right.
- [86:34]
A
That the church was in or she changed what the people in the picture were doing. It's like she made sequels.
- [86:39]
B
Right.
- [86:40]
A
Instead of copies.
- [86:41]
B
Yeah. Even though they may have been named the same thing. You know, sugaring off is a big popular one. But Thanksgiving was a big popular, popular theme through her work too. She did tell a reporter. I think maybe she was just getting a little sassy here. Maybe she was getting tired of it a little bit. Well, people tell me they're proud to be seen on the street with me, but I just say, why weren't you proud to be seen with me before? If people want to make a fuss over me, I just let em. But I was the same person before as I am now.
- [87:12]
A
You know what? So grounded. Yeah, I love it.
- [87:15]
B
In the New York Herald Tribune there was an article about her and it said in part, she's the white haired girl of the USA who turned from her strawberry patch to painting the American scene at the wonderful age of 80. You'll see her. I mean, this is a bit of marketing. I don't Think she's responsible for it at all. She's getting this image. She. She looks the part, she paints the part. She's the real deal in these people's eyes.
- [87:40]
A
Her paintings were officially called primitive, which is a label she hated. She thought it was very insulting. The possibly more acceptable folk art or naive. Often it's been called. Grandma Moses herself called it old timey, which is just her, isn't it? Y And if you can't picture them, they're just patchwork representations of things like country weddings, harvest planting, a storm is coming, a celebration, just the rhythm of life in the country. And she would spend five or six hours a day painting in her bedroom or on the sun porch. She had an amazing table that she worked from.
- [88:21]
B
She had this table that she had actually inherited. It had come down and the family lined to her and it was a tippy top table. The top of it flipped up so that it wouldn't take up a whole lot of space when you needed the room for people to sleep or something else. So that's what she used as her table. But before she started all of this big time painting, she had painted that table several times. And there was scenes of it's. The base is actually. Imagine a three sided box with a half open on one side where you could put your legs. So she had this scene painted around the whole table base and inside the table base. And that was just where she painted.
- [89:04]
A
She used, this is her technique, three coats of white as a base on whatever board she started with. And she would start each painting at the top and work her way down. And she got in this vortex when people were demanding a lot of her where she would sometimes do four paintings at a time because the paint would dry on her. She used a cardboard palette and the paint would dry and she was worried that she'd have to mix the color. And so she just would do all four skies. The blue and then the three other skies. It's like just at once assembly line.
- [89:36]
B
For work for potato chips. It's going to work for paintings.
- [89:39]
A
Yeah. She would work from the top down, you know, and then do the tree line, do the close up. And both the people and animals in her paintings were often not in person proportion really and not as detailed as some other painters might make them. Never cast shadows, never had people whose.
- [89:57]
B
Skin was a different color. But I think I. I'm not criticizing her for that because I know people do later on. But that's just her world. She's painting her world from her memory, right? Yeah. Fields Farmhouses, trees, and all her neighbors are in the paintings.
- [90:12]
A
You know, she was criticized for sometimes using glitter when she painted stuff. And she's like, have you never seen snow in the moonlight? Like, I don't know where your brain is, there's clearly glitter in the snow. So glitter goes on. It's my world. That's right, you know, happy little snow, my world.
- [90:32]
B
She's got like all of her brushes and sticks or whatever she's using in an old coffee can and she's mixing paints and mayonnaise jar lids. It's just very basic. She used what she had. She's still painting on Masonite with whatever frame she can get her hands on. The pieces are getting a little bit larger now, however, she's being, getting confidence and people are asking for bigger pictures. You know, before maybe they were, you know, a foot 15 inches maybe at the widest. And now we're talking, you know, 25, 30 inches at the widest.
- [91:06]
A
One of the books I'll talk about in the media section, so I won't like go too much into it now, but kind of dissects art of the time and where she got some of the inspiration for some of her life layouts. Even taking some inspiration from advertising of the time and from Collier's magazine and from those old Courier and Ives prints that stuck in her mind. She didn't, she said, spend too much time analyzing or preparing. They just. Things just came out by virtue of the joy of her fingers. Painting.
- [91:39]
B
She said painting is a very pleasant hobby if one does not have to hurry. I love taking my, my time and finish things right.
- [91:47]
A
She resisted signing any kind of agency contract. She resisted for a long time. She was convinced that, you know, I have managed the finances on a major dairy farm. I have run a potato chip business. I know about finance. I can do it myself. But by 84, she's kind of tired of chasing down payments and dealing with paperwork and nonsense. She's not able to do enough of the work that she really loves. So she finally agreed to be represented by the Galerie Saint Etienne and the American British Art center, both of whom got to work getting her paintings into traveling exhibitions in the United States and featured in magazine articles. And her paintings began to bring as much as $10,000 a piece. And people started asking her for her autograph, which she's like, that's weird.
- [92:37]
B
On the paintings.
- [92:39]
A
There is a funny. Right here, right here. She produced a painting that is, is a self referential commentary on her turn of fortune. And it's called Grandma Moses goes to the big city. And in the painting, Grandma Moses is leaving to go to Gimbel's.
- [92:59]
B
Yep.
- [93:00]
A
In a car. And the farm life is going on and everyone's watching her. It's from 1946, so she painted it when she was 86. It's held by the Smithsonian, actually. But so it's a very self referential, like, bye bye farm, I'm going to the big city. And it's kind of like the tipping point, I think. And she made sure to immortalize it on a painting.
- [93:24]
B
But, you know, it's kind of a truth universally acknowledged that an artist in possession of a good talent is in want of a manager. Otto Kalir took that position. I don't think he was being malicious at all. I don't think he was to trying, trying necessarily to, you know, wring her dry and get as much money as he could and move on. I think that he did care for her. He was very involved in her work. He was always visiting her. But he would be delivering checks that she got for her paintings and she would give them back to him and say, no, no, you just pay me what I think my art is worth. And he's like, your art is not worth what you think it is. It's worth a lot more. And at one point, she had signed an agreement to do greeting cards for a small company called the Brundage Greeting Card Company, which was named after another female artist. But anyway, so the checks are coming in even bigger. And he said, why are you not cashing this? And she's like making excuses. And he goes, go to the bank and cash it. And the next day he comes up and goes to her house and she's got piles of money around the house. He's like, okay, this is not going to work. And there was a family friend, a lawyer who lived in town, who took on the financial end of her business so she didn't have to think about it and she could trust him.
- [94:43]
A
The next year, 1947, when she's 87, our local Kansas City company, Hallmark, took over the license for the greeting cards and sold 16 million greeting cards featuring her paintings in that year alone. That number would grow to almost, almost 48 million in the next couple of years. When she was 89, Grandma Moses traveled to Washington, D.C. for the women's National Press Club Awards. And there were more than 700 guests to watch President Truman hand out an award. Women who'd made major contributions in their fields. Grandma Moses got the award for art. Among the other honorees, Eleanor Roosevelt, former First lady, who is being recognized for her. Her work leading the UN Human Rights Commission. So that's the level we're at right now. We're sitting at the table with Eleanor Roosevelt as a peer.
- [95:40]
B
Right. Who later. The Women's National Press Club is going to have an award named after Eleanor Roosevelt.
- [95:48]
A
The day after the ceremony, President Truman and his wife Bess invited Grandma Moses to their house. Now, it wasn't the one White House this year. There were a few years, the White House got awful creaky and honestly unsafe. And I know people like to point to this as a major remodel. It was like, do it or it's. It's gonna fall down. Yeah, you gotta fix some major structural things. So for a few years, the President actually lived at a place called Blair House, which they now use as a fancy and secure guest house for foreign dignitaries, including Queen Elizabeth II and Winston Churchill and all manner of people. So they invited her to that house for tea. The President of the United States. And here is what she said about him. Oh, I talked with him and. And I could not help thinking he was like one of my own boys, that nice young man, you know, Hilarious.
- [96:43]
B
Yeah. He was a huge fan. He would not forget her birthday for the rest of her life. He remembered her birthday every single year.
- [96:51]
A
When Grandma Moses returned home to Eagle Bridge after having been given the award by President Truman and then sat at tea with the first lady, the town turned out and the neighborhood turned out to like, basically, if they had known about ticker tape parades, this is what would have happened. Screaming, lining the streets. Everyone was so excited to see her. And she was, she wrote. After that day, it was a lot. She wrote. I was glad to get back and go to bed that night for sure. She's so homespun and she makes me laugh.
- [97:27]
B
With this agreement with Hallmark, she has hit like the major, big time. Otto started to copyright her work. A high quality print had to be made of each print that she did so that it could be registered with the copyright office in Washington. And then these prints could be manufactured and sold fairly inexpensive to anyone that wanted to buy one. It was just very inexpensive fine art for people's homes.
- [97:55]
A
Shades of Courier and Ives.
- [97:57]
B
Absolutely, yes. And she's appearing on plates and tea towels and fabric and ceramic tiles, basically, you know, if it prints, it ships, whatever they can put it on, it gets sold. They even made a short documentary about her filmed in 1950 at her home. And. And it's charming, a little saccharine. The music is Kind of overly dramatic, but you get to watch 20 minutes of Grandma Moses talking about her life, sitting down with her great grandchildren and showing them a photo album of their ancestors.
- [98:31]
A
I'm sorry to say that that same year in February, she suffered a terrible personal loss. Her youngest son, Hugh, who had lived with her all along, he stayed there after he got married and helped run the farm. He died so suddenly. Her daughter Ona returned from California, so she wouldn't be living alone. Daughter Anna had died a couple of years before, so this is the only daughter she has. I was going to tell you, you probably already know this, like, Winona was the first to get married and she went off TO World War I in the Navy and she and her husband in the service broke up. It's an early divorce, kind of. And so Winona's been living as an independent woman all this time. Their marriage just didn't survive the aftermath of war. I don't think there was any animosity, anything.
- [99:16]
B
No, I, I agree.
- [99:17]
A
Anyway, then everything accelerated. After World War II, her fame spread across Europe. People there had seen her work in magazines, you know, but they wanted to see the real thing. And Mr. Keller is no slouch like, you want it, I got it. When she was 90 years of age, 50 of her paintings toured major European cities. They went to Vienna, to Munich, Salzburg, Paris, the Hague. The London Art News reviewed her exhibition. Grandma Moses was one of the key symbols of our time. Her paintings showed a quality identical with genius. And you know, here's what I think it is. We touched on this earlier. After the worldwide turmoil of war, Grandma Moses's paintings would just take you back to a simpler time with no troubles, because she didn't paint the troubles into the pictures. You know, some critics, because no matter what, they will always be crazy critics dismissed her style as too simple. And the whole self taught artist, it was like a little bit of snobbery.
- [100:21]
B
Little.
- [100:21]
A
The lack of official training made it invalid, you know, in their eyes. But the nostalgia of this work just resonated deeply, deeply with the public. Comforting, familiar. It's not the macaroni and cheese of art, because that's like diminishing it, but it's like, you know, the best meal that your grandma makes is what this art represented to people. She stayed in the farmhouse for a little while, but in 1951, at age 91, she moved across the road into a brand new house that her sons Forrest and Lloyd had built for her. I mean, do you remember when Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter Rose Wilder Lane, as a gift for her parents, built this whole new house and they did move into it because it would be rude not to. But the first chance they got, they moved, moved back and I don't know, I don't know anything about this but like to move to a brand new house at 91 leaving behind the farm you'd had. Well, the, you know, farm was right.
- [101:21]
B
Across the street at 91. The falls are going to start to come and it was a ranch style house so she didn't have to go up and down the stairs anymore.
- [101:28]
A
I mean, no, I'm not, I'm not questioning their motives at all.
- [101:31]
B
No, I know. I. I think, I don't know. She just seems realistic enough to realize that it is probably for the best. There's a picture of her in front of the house. She looks very happy. So, okay, I guess she was happy with it. I don't know.
- [101:45]
A
One of those sons that built the house, his name's Forrest, he actually followed in her artistic footsteps. I mean actually several members of the Moses family did. But Forrest, not wanting to kind of draft on anyone's black dress with lace collar, you know, coattails, he actually signed his work Forest King. Ah, that was his middle name until after she died in 1961. And then he switched back and changed. He was a carpenter and in the winter he didn't have a lot of work to do. And so that's when he took up painting to keep his hand out of mischief. And he came by it naturally and he actually painted in a similar style and kind of did a similar subject matter palette as his mother. Artistic ability ran in the family. Family. You've heard us talk about Hungerroot before, so you know how much we love it. It simplifies our lives. We are very busy. You would think once the children move out that we're less busy. But somehow, somehow the things feel like of the day. Hungryroot has been such a game changer. You know, eat more plants has been my thing. And Hungryroot, in addition to having chef crafted recipes, over 50,000 of them each week, they also have over a thousand grocery items.
- [103:19]
B
And we've talked about it before Becky, at how much we really love that. The algorithm of Hungryroot matches the shopping lists and the meal kits that were interesting interested in to us. They figure out what I like.
- [103:31]
A
I have been ordering fruits and vegetables and pastas and all kinds of very convenient and healthy things for my refrigerator. And all of the vegetables and fruits come in so crisp and fresh and lovely right to my door.
- [103:48]
B
Yeah, I've always been surprised at the freshness of the fruits and vegetables that come from Hungry Root. I personally am on a mission to eat more protein. I think that's like something we should all be doing. As I was looking for items for my next Hungry Root order, I saw Cuban spiced black beans. Bake some rice, you got yourself a protein packed dinner right there.
- [104:08]
A
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- [104:34]
B
Sounds good. You're going to love hungryroot as much as we do. For a limited time, get 40% off your first box. Plus get a free item in every box for life.
- [104:46]
A
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- [104:50]
B
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- [105:07]
A
In March 1952, once the Trumans were at last able to move back into the safe and rebuilt White House, Grandma Moses wrote to first lady Bess Truman with a very straightforward offer. She wanted to donate one of her paintings to the White House in honor of its reopening and okay, send it along. And her long suffering agent brokered that transportation and which painting it was going to be. It's a painting called July 4th. People are chasing after a horse and carriage. Everybody's waving flags. The guy's getting ready to set off a couple cannon. Hooray, hooray. You know, it's the 4th of July and that is still in the White House collection. Though Susan and I looked and we can't seem to determine if it's actually hanging right now or if it's in storage.
- [105:57]
B
I don't know. In 1952, her autobiography came out. She started writing it with Otto, so he edited it for her. It's a delightful book, light on the actual page, painting heavy on her life, which I thought was wonderful.
- [106:14]
A
Unlike our previous subject, Mother Jones, who seemed to emerge as a full fledged activist in her 50s with no childhood at all. My copy of this autobiography has 140 narrative pages. It's got like a gallery at the back or whatever of those 140 pages. She meets her gallery agent on page 129. She really spends very little time Talking about her artistic career at all.
- [106:44]
B
Yep.
- [106:45]
A
Yeah.
- [106:45]
B
And you know what? I don't usually believe everything I read in an autobiography, but for some reason I like believed everything she wrote. I was like, oh, that must have happened.
- [106:54]
A
I'm not, it's just so straightforward.
- [106:57]
B
So like, yep, this happened. That happened. Yeah, exactly. I, yeah, it was a quick read and I kind of, kind of loved it.
- [107:04]
A
And she's kind of self deprecating. Like while knowing that her work is good, she answered a question a reporter had asked her. She wrote, I take no advice. I am a know it all. And I just like, I love you. You're so awesome. That same year, after her autobiography was a bestseller. Grandma Moses is a big deal. No less of a luminary than actress Lillian Gish played. Played her in a live TV dramatization of her autobiography. That's a big deal.
- [107:36]
B
Huge, huge deal. Also a big deal. About the same time she was on the COVID of Time magazine.
- [107:43]
A
Let me read you a quote from the article that was about her inside because it'll give you a little bit of the scope of her reach. Quote. In the years since she first started painting those rosy visions of her imagination, Grandma Moses had earned a unique place in the hearts of millions and in the history of American art. Her 1500 paintings have been shown in more than 160 United States exhibitions and in five one man shows abroad. She's represented in nine American museums and in Vienna's State Gallery. Hers is the only Ecole American Picture that is hanging in Paris's Museum of Modern Arts.
- [108:23]
B
Wowzer. About the same time she did an interview show with a journalism legend, Edward R. Murrow, where a film crew came to Eagle Bridge and filmed her working. Otto had always wondered why she would never let him see where she painted or her process watch her paint. And she said, it's because I paint in my bedroom and I don't feel comfortable having you there for this show. They moved it downstairs like her painting table so that they could film her painting.
- [108:55]
A
Again, I say she was brought up a Victorian lady.
- [108:59]
B
Yeah.
- [108:59]
A
Oh, that's really funny. And you know, on that same show that actually was one of the very first, if not the first color broadcast of that show. It's called See it Now on the same show with her, Louis Armstrong. I mean, not in her house. He was on the same episode. And I will say that's something because less than 1% of households that year had a couple color TV. I was 9 before we got a color TV. But we were very late adopters of we were too.
- [109:26]
B
I was probably about nine when we got our. We had black and white, and as far as I knew, it was color. Like, I saw colors. I was shocked when I saw real color tv. It was like, oh, I had his jacket as being yellow or whatever.
- [109:41]
A
Oh, I see, like your brain just filled it in.
- [109:43]
B
Yeah.
- [109:44]
A
During that interview, she was asked about her art, and she thought that self teaching was the best way to go. Often people that took lessons ended up painting like their teachers rather than using their own ideas. So she was also asked, so what would you have done if you hadn't taken up painting? Oh, probably would have ended up raising chickens. Or maybe I would have rented a room in some city or other and hosted some pancake suppers like that. Like, hilarious.
- [110:12]
B
You know, I read a critique from someone who was talking about how she carefully managed her media presence, and I'm like, buddy, she didn't. I don't understand why you, why you would think that somebody back when media was just developing would have the. Know how to manage their. Their media presence.
- [110:32]
A
I mean, and I think people that were savvy just saw like the New York reporters, delighted. Presidents, delighted. You know, we already had President Truman in the picture, didn't we? And now she created another gift, another president, President Dwight Eisenhower. She made him a representation of his farm and sent it up there. And he joked, because he's like, you've made it way bigger than it actually is. It's like, thanks for the street cred, lady. But back when he was only General Eisenhower, he had sent her a card from Europe with one of his little drawings on it. And he wrote for Grandma Moses, a real artist from a rank amateur. And so this painting was to thank Kim for reaching out. I mean, I mean, so you know what? She's not a fake person. She just is who she is.
- [111:21]
B
I completely agree, and I can see how somebody would be cynical about that from here, you know, from modern times, but no.
- [111:31]
A
After her daughter Ona died, When Anna was 98 years old, her son Forrest and his wife Mary took over the day to day care of Grandma Moses in 1950.
- [111:43]
B
In 1960, unlike Mother Jones last episode, it was Anna Mary's actual 100th birthday. And a huge celebration was planned. Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York designated her birthday, quote, grandma Moses Day in New York. In honor of her birthday, she appeared on the COVID of Life magazine. There was a blizzard of mail, greetings and well wishes dumped on the Eagle Bridge pool post office. Former President Truman sent a telegram. You can't miss her. Birthday. She entertained callers for a week of open houses at her home. And she said, I'm going to sit right here just so. And the others can do the work. I wish they wouldn't fuss, but it's a nice excuse for the young people to get together.
- [112:31]
A
Precious.
- [112:32]
B
So much.
- [112:33]
A
So precious.
- [112:34]
B
Now she was aging. The quantity and quality of her work was starting to slip. But you know what? Nobody cared. Yeah, you can see it if you look at her paintings all lined up. You can see that she's 100 years old and she's not painting as well as she used to. But people were still so interested in it for probably the same reason that I've watched the Pitch Perfect movies at least four times. You know, subsequently, they don't hold up like they did on the first one. But I don't care. I'm just in love with the franchise, you know?
- [113:08]
A
Yeah, I guess I feel that way about gilmore girls season seven.
- [113:11]
B
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. In 1960, that same year, she was a hundred. She began a pet project, something that was kind of new for her. It was an illustrating a book. The book was the Night Before Christmas, and she did manage to finish it up. But the falls had started. Forrest had written to Otto, and he said, grandma feels good only for her legs. They're so weak. Her hearing is good and her voice is strong. But there was just so many falls at home that they decided it was time for her to go into professional care at a nursing home, which she hated mostly, I would think, because her doctor ordered that none of her painting supplies could come with her. He wanted her to just rest.
- [113:53]
A
So she was pretty sad about that and did celebrate her 101st birthday there in the nursing home. But she passed away three months months later on December 13, 1961.
- [114:06]
B
The cause of death, according to her doctor, was she just wore out. Sorry. That's a great way to go.
- [114:13]
A
There's that old goal that you. You want to go out, like, with no gas, screaming on the brakes.
- [114:19]
B
That's right. Her death made the front page around the world. She was buried three days later at the Maple Grove Cemetery in Hoosick Falls, near New York, next to her husband, her son Hugh, and her daughter Ona. And it was a very small ceremony, just family and close friends.
- [114:38]
A
News of her death, though, traveled quickly all over the world, and tributes poured in from all over the country. President Kennedy issued a statement saying her paintings had brought a primitive freshness to the American scene, and both her life and her body of work had helped the nation reconnect with its pioneer renowned roots. Now, how about this for a little fun fact. The year after she died, there was a character named Daisy Mae Moses that was named in homage of Grandma Moses. Her physical appearance, attitude, everything was supposed to be based on the feisty, capable countrywoman Grandma Moses. You might know the character better as Granny from the Beverly Hillbillies.
- [115:23]
B
She did get a postage stamp in 1969. The painting on it was that July 4th one that she had gifted to the White House.
- [115:32]
A
Think about this. In her life, she was born when Lincoln was the president and she died when Kennedy was the president. She went from the Civil War to civil rights.
- [115:45]
B
Oh. Oh, that was good.
- [115:46]
A
I know it's a lot. And she honestly became living proof of the idea. And she still held up as the ideal of this. It's never too late to start something new. Now we know it wasn't new new like she'd been painting her whole life, but like her career, right, as a painter didn't start until she was almost 80 years of age.
- [116:08]
B
Yep.
- [116:08]
A
How about that for inspiration?
- [116:09]
B
Just over 20. Yeah, exactly. Something that you love, you know, maybe someday if you have the time, you can do it and it will be received. Received well, you know, like someday you might say, hey, friend, would you like to start a podcast just for fun? We'll just do it for fun.
- [116:26]
A
Now, we weren't 78.
- [116:27]
B
No, we weren't. But I was in my 40s.
- [116:31]
A
Forrest and his wife Mary helped preserve the legacy of his mother. They bought the schoolhouse in Eagle Bridge that she had gone to. Her kids and grandkids had all gone to. Mary as the daughter in law on site had a lot of Grandma Moses's things her like personal effects. And so they pulled that schoolhouse onto their property and created a museum. And they put everything on display in 1966. And in 1973, the whole kit and caboodle was moved to the Bennington Museum grounds. And when it was moved to the museum grounds, the director commissioned a painting from Forrest of this schoolhouse that would be hung in the new museum. And so Forrest painted it and gave it to them as a present. The thing I love the best about this museum. Well, not the best best. You can actually see the table. That's the best, I would think.
- [117:25]
B
So.
- [117:26]
A
The second best thing is the directions that were given in the article announcing that it was a museum. And I quote, if any visitor has trouble finding it, he may ask at the nearby Moses family vegetable stand, which is easy to to find. It's so homespun. I love it. So much.
- [117:41]
B
Thank you.
- [117:42]
A
And that will do it for our coverage of Grandma Moses. And now it's time for media. And of course, first and foremost, you should read the autobiography which Grandma Moses wrote in a series of little vignettes. And as we talked about before in my copy, at least 129 pages happen of the 140 before she even meets her agent. So to learn about her later life and her painting, you're probably going to have to branch out a little bit. Now, there's one that I started with that actually looks like it was probably sold at a museum. It is Grandma American Modern. And the thing I liked about this book is it goes into detail not only about her life, but about the influences artistically that you can see evidence of in her work, along with cultural references like sewing machine companies used to make drawing pages for the children of their customers.
- [118:45]
B
Yeah.
- [118:46]
A
Type of thing. And the art that went into the paper doll houses and the paper dolls that were sold in stores and that kind of thing. And how that influenced her work. And I really like it so much.
- [118:57]
B
I think it is from two museums. It's from a. The Shelburne Museum and the Bennington Museum, which are both in Vermont. They would have been her local museums when she was living in Eagle Bridge. Yeah, that's a great book. I love that her story was woven with all those beautiful photographs. I'm going to definitely hold onto that book for sure. Her first biography was written by her manager, agent, friend, Otto Kalir, and it's simply titled Grandma Moses. Also another great source because it kind of gives her story from his side, you know, so there's a little more of the business of being a painter in there.
- [119:33]
A
And then right after that, his daughter Jane Kellier wrote Grandma Moses in the 21st century. This one is so heavy. I'm holding it in my right hand. You could. Could you press a sunflower with it? Yes. It is big and it has many, many color plates and in depth analysis. Really, really love it.
- [119:55]
B
The other one that I really loved was Grandma Moses A Good Day's Work. It's edited by Leslie Umberger and Randall G. Griffey. It's a publication through the Smithsonian American Museum of Art. It was so fun to be able to look at so many pictures and read her biographies at the same time. That was. That was a treat. There are also a lot of kids books. Just pick which one, everyone. That looks great to you. I personally liked Grandma Moses by Megan Kopp. It's part of a series called the Greatest Artists. I Liked it because there's ways to teach kids about art in there. Not just Grandma Moses art, but art in general.
- [120:35]
A
And then there's kind of a middle grade book that I like, Grandma An American Original. All of these books, by the way, look very similar because as you would, they've chosen a piece of her art to use as the COVID So all the books have a very similar look and they all look like coffee table books, but this one is written by William C. Ketchum Jr. And it's a little bit thinner and kind of selects some specific work to talk about that and how each work kind of dovetails into what was happening in her life at the time.
- [121:08]
B
Nice. Yeah, I like that one too. I love that kids can have coffee table books. A kid coffee table book. There is a short documentary from 1950. We talked about this during the body of this episode. We'll link you up to it because it's. It's online.
- [121:22]
A
We would be remiss if we didn't point you toward the Keller Research Institute. We will direct you to their website. There is, of course, a section or two on Grandma Moses and her biography.
- [121:34]
B
What I liked about that one is there's the other artists that he represented, the Austrian artists. I think they're all Austrian. Yeah.
- [121:42]
A
Also, the Bennington Museum has its own website, so we will link you to that. And also I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole on Career and Ives. So a link to their history and all about their impact on American art appreciation, really.
- [121:58]
B
If you find yourself in Washington, D.C. there is a show, Grandma Moses. Good Day's Work is the name of the show. And it runs through July 16th of 2026 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
- [122:14]
A
And if you are more toward the center of the unit United States, that exhibit moves to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American art on September 12th of 2026 and runs all the way through to 2027. And you'll be able to see quite a bit of Georgia o' Keeffe there also. So that is kind of a twofer. But the Georgia o' Keeffes are there all the time.
- [122:38]
B
We've mentioned the Bennington Museum before, but if you are looking for the largest collection as well as Schoolhouse, that's where that's located, the Bennington Museum in Bennington, Vermont, which is lovely.
- [122:49]
A
And there is a link, I'll give you to an article in the New York Times that talks about how that schoolhouse was made into a museum.
- [122:57]
B
That's all I have.
- [122:58]
A
And in closing, let's leave you with a quote from Grandma Moses herself. I look back on my life like a good day's work. It was done and I feel satisfied with it. I was happy and contented. I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life life offered. And life is what we make. It always has been. Always. Well, thanks for listening.
- [123:19]
B
Bye.
- [123:20]
A
If you liked what you heard today, please, as usual, tell a few friends about us or leave a review for us on your favorite podcatcher. This subject, more than most, will have an amply furnished Pinterest board. Find our friend Grandma Moses and most of our other subjects on our Pinterest page. Links to the things we talked about today will be at our website thehistorychicks. And itineraries for the two upcoming trips that we have to the Loire Valley and then back to Italy can be found at likeminds travel.com the song at the end is It's a Beautiful World Out There by a band called National. See you next time.
- [124:06]
C
There is something we need It's a leap of faith Step away from the comfort zone and be a little brave so take a look around you how far can you see? How far do you think you can run standing on your knees? It's a beautiful, beautiful world out there Just don't pass on the dare if you have a will and a moment to spare It's a beautiful world out there It's a beautiful world out there it can be a bit frightening Something you don't know you need a little.
- [124:57]
A
Enlightenment.
- [124:59]
C
It'll make you go It's a beautiful world out there Just don't pass on the dead if you have the will and a moment to spare It's a beautiful world out there It's a beautiful world out there It's a beautiful world out there Just don't pass on the dead if you have the will and a moment to spare It's a beautiful world out there It's a beautiful world out there oh, if you had the will and the moment to spare It's a beautiful world out there It's a beautiful world out there.