Clara Elizabeth Hudson and the Shaw Hudson House
This virtual tour of the Shaw- Hudson house, the centerpiece of the town of Plainfield, Massachusetts, is viewed through the eyes of its last inhabitant, Clara Elizabeth Hudson, granddaughter of the original owner, Dr. Samuel Shaw. Miss Hudson left wonderful memoirs of her relatives and her many years of living in the home.
Click on photographs to see a larger image. All blue text is hyperlinked to pages with more information.
Clara Elizabeth Hudson (1880-1963), granddaughter of Dr. Samuel Shaw, was the last surviving member of the Shaw family to live in the Shaw-Hudson house. She owned the house and with her brother, Darwin Shaw Hudson, into the 1960s, and while Ms. Hudson didn’t live in the house permanently, she did summer in the home throughout her childhood until her death in 1963. The house was left, virtually intact, with the possessions of three generations of Shaws and Hudson remaining as if they had just walked out for a summer stroll.
Upon her death the house was put into a trust and to this day is maintained by the trust and curated by the Plainfield Historical Society. Thankfully, Ms. Hudson wrote several “memoirs” of her life in the Shaw-Hudson house, and it is through these writings that we are able to piece together the wonderful history of this house.
The residents of Plainfield and those that appreciate history, owe a debt of gratitude to Clara Elizabeth Hudson. Throughout her life she chronicled much of the history of her family and relatives, giving us a glimpse of what life was like for a well-to-do family from rural Plainfield, Massachusetts. The daughter of Dr. Hudson and the granddaughter of Dr. Samuel Shaw, Ms. Hudson had great insights to the newly expanding world of science and the import of recorded history, and so she meticulously curated her family’s lives.
The University of Massachusetts Special Collections, which now holds many of the family’s records, states that, “Clara Elizabeth Hudson (1880-1963) was a community leader and the last of the Hudsons. Her papers, 1923-1951, and her book of family and local history, Plain Tales from Plainfield, provide several important links within this diverse collection, including writings on Samuel Shaw (1790-1869), a physician in Plainfield, MA, his son, Samuel Francis Shaw (1833 -1884), a surgeon who served in the U.S. Navy during the Civil War, Charles Lyman Shaw (1842-1902), an educator, and Anne Laura Clarke (1788-1861), who traveled widely as a lecturer on history and who originated many of the Cooke and Clarke family records in the collection, The Hudson Family Papers.” This really only scratches the surface of what Clara has left for us.
The late Federal-style Shaw-Hudson House was built in 1833, for Clara’s grandfather, Dr. Samuel Shaw, and his family. The front of the house is unique in that it has two front doors, one for the family and one for patients of Dr. Shaw’s. The house remains very much as it did in the late 1800s, a time capsule, both architecturally and in the contents inside.
Clara’s mother, Laura Agnes Shaw and her siblings grew up in this house. By 1870 the house was owned by Dr. Shaw’s two unmarried daughters, Stella and Sarah, who occupied it during the summer and fall months. Eventually the house was willed to Clara Hudson, who, along with her assorted aunts, brothers, cousins, and their families, summered at the home. The home remained in the Shaw-Hudson family until Clara’s death in 1963. To this day it contains objects, art and family furnishings dating to the late 18th century. Furniture, pictures, books, photographs, kitchenware, quilts, clothing and related items of everyday life in early Plainfield were lovingly preserved by Clara Shaw Hudson, the last family member to live in the house, which she left in trust for the benefit of the Plainfield Congregational Church and community; the house is maintained with support from a modest endowment she provided. “Clara stipulated in her will that the room be left as it was as a museum of her grandfather,” Judy Williams, president of the Plainfield Historical Society, said of the medical office.
Clara Hudson was close to her grandfather, even writing a booklet, The Romances of a Country Doctor, which includes wonderful vignettes of him. Many of these “wonderful vignettes” have been used to give this virtual tour of the Shaw Hudson house, and the families that lived there, a more personal touch than is usual in an historic house tour.
The following are excerpts from The Romances of a Country Doctor, a paper read at the annual meeting of the Northampton Historical Society at the Unitarian Church, Northampton, on October 7, 1947 and Plain Tales from Plainfield or The Way Things Used to Be, 1962, both by Clara Elizabeth Hudson.
“Grandfather Shaw’s medical office in Plainfield was a most unusual room. It was papered in deep red, and its window shades were a deep brown with a gold stripe near the outer edges on the side facing outdoors. One of its three doors led into the house proper. Behind the office was a small bedroom where the doctor could sleep when be came in very late from an emergency call, so as not to awaken the family. The third door led outdoors. On its inner side the red paint had been applied in imitation Of the grain of natural wood – a lost art, it is said. This third door was a duplicate of the other front door, which opened into a long hall running the length of the house, thus ensuring fine ventilation.“
Clara goes on the write, “On my seventieth birthday I was in Plainfield with my brother Darwin and my sister-in-law, Christine Barclay Hudson. We had been talking about the times when our grandparents lived. My grandmother, Elizabeth Clarke Shaw, was Dr. Samuel Shaw’s second wife, the daughter of Joseph Clarke of Northampton. His first wife was Sarah Snell Bryant, the sister of the poet, William Cullen Bryant. Wishing to make sure that my records of grandmother’s birth and death were correct, I decided to walk to the cemetery (Hilltop Cemetery) about a quarter of a mile away and obtain the dates from her monument. Several rough stone steps led to the level above the road. Stubbing my toe, I plunged forward onto the grass. The idea came into my mind that, being seventy years old, I was living on borrowed time, according to the Bible, but that I wasn’t expecting to be precipitated into a cemetery so suddenly or so soon.“
The Shaw-Hudson House
“The Shaw-Hudson House in Plainfield Massachusetts is the best and rarest kind of House Museum, a time capsule with layers of family history, archives, and collections, all intact and what a fascinating family family it is located in the center of the historic district what makes Plainfield in this house special is that so much of what was there when this map was made about 1870 is still there. You can walk the streets and get the sense of a place and time as vividly as anywhere in New England.” – William Hosley, a graduate of Middlebury College and the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture.
Included in the house is Doctor Shaw’s medical office, just as he left it upon his death in 1870. He apprenticed to Dr. Peter Bryant – father of author William Cullen Bryant – in neighboring Cummington, and his bookshelves contain many of Dr. Bryant’s medical books from the early 18th and early 19th centuries.
The shelves of the apothecary cabinet in what once served as the Plainfield home office of 19th century physician Samuel Shaw are full of medicine bottles and herbs, many of which you can still smell when you open up the drawers.
William Hosley, an independent scholar, cultural resource consultant, planner, writer and photographer, described Shaw’s apothecary as “the most important collection of medical material in the whole country.” His presentation, “Rediscovering the Shaw Hudson House, Envisioning the Possibilities” is well worth watching.
The 1833 Shaw-Hudson House is a time capsule – the rarest and most important type of historic house museum. Built in 1833 for Dr. Samuel Shaw and his family, the house and its contents contain objects, art and family furnishings going back to the late 18th century and the origins of the town of Plainfield. Furniture, pictures, books, photographs, kitchen-wares, quilts, clothing and related things of everyday life in early Plainfield were lovingly preserved by Clara Shaw Hudson, the last family member to occupy the house – which she left in trust in 1960.
“There is nothing like this, if you want to get a sense of the origins of the modern medical profession,” believes Hosley “It’s a perfect snapshot of an emerging industry that needs to be preserved and promoted.” Since he is principal of Terra Firma Northeast, an Enfield, Connecticut based cultural resource development firm, and former director of New Haven Museum and Connecticut Landmarks he knows of what he speaks!
Hosley goes on, “The beauty of a house museum like this is its archeological integrity. The house is not a restoration or the product of some curator’s idea of the past. It is a time capsule that contains nothing more or less than the family gathered over the course of several generations. A unique resource like this tells the story of its time and place in vividly authentic details. While there are several hundred house museums in New England today – there aren’t more than a dozen that have the kind of authenticity and archeological integrity of the Shaw-Hudson House. Every room and every detail tells a story rooted in the unique cultural heritage of this fascinating Highlands community.“ If it (the Shaw Hudson House) were in Deerfield or Salem, it would be the most important house,” among those communities’ “house museums,” he said. Though not operating as a “house museum,” the Plainfield home’s authenticity status ranks it with only a dozen others out of the several hundred “house museums” in New England,” he said.
“It’s a rare thing to see,” said Hosley. “I’d like to see it become an active house museum.” That is the hope of the Plainfield Historical Society as well, and this virtual tour is our way of sharing this one-of-a-kind museum.
Today the Shaw-Hudson House remains as it was left by Clara Hudson, filled with family treasures and items of significant historical value. Dr. Shaw’s office has been maintained just as it was during his lifetime, first by his family and then by the Plainfield Congregational Church, which currently manages the Shaw-Hudson House Trust. The main floor of the house is used by the Ladies Benevolent Society for their annual Yule Log Tea and is opened to the public for tours by appointment. The rest of the house has also been preserved and the Plainfield Historical Society uses some of the upstairs rooms as a museum, reference library, and storage of their collections.