Henry’s canes
Canes and walking sticks were one of Henry Sheldon’s primary collecting passions—they were among the first objects he acquired for the museum, and he even crafted several canes himself. This case features just a few of the many canes in his collection, whose extensive scope is suggested by a numbered inventory of 35 canes, drafted around 1900. Each cane or walking stick also bears a small paper label printed with a number that corresponds to its provenance, its history and origins.
The first two canes on the left were constructed by Henry Sheldon and his friend Charles Bruya from fragments of sites of historical interest, sometimes referred to as “relics” (for more on Henry’s practice of relic-collecting, see the case in the Ladies’ Bedroom across the hall). Rather than turning the wood into a smooth cylinder with the help of a lathe, Sheldon often carved or planed his canes into an octagonal shape that tapered to a narrower tip. The left-most cane (A) is derived from one of the oak timbers that had supported the wooden bridge that crossed Otter Creek and connected downtown Middlebury’s Main Street before succumbing to fire in 1891, when it was replaced by a stone bridge; a tiny inscription “Beacon Dam Co. Goodyears Patent 1851” stamped on its brass finial indicates that its handle has been adapted from a powder flask, alluding to another one of Sheldon’s favorite hobbies: target shooting. Next to this is an ivory-handled cane (B). While we don’t know the story of its handle’s elaborate carving, we do know that the wood was taken from the cupola of Middlebury’s original courthouse, built in 1796.
Cane #7 (C, third from left) is topped by the angular carving of a man’s features. Sheldon’s accession log entry hints at the adventures it must have witnessed: “A cane with human features, said to be very old, and travelled much.” It’s unclear how Sheldon’s friend and former business partner William Mulchahey acquired the cane or why he decided to donate it to the Museum in 1884, but Sheldon’s inventory of canes offers a few more tantalizing details: “Head like man’s face, owned by Capt. Sargent of Mass., has been around the world and to China, several times, before 1830.” This is a far cry from the other cane with a human head featured in the case (E), a mass-produced cane with a cast metal bust representing U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant (#12). Although Sheldon asserted that he purchased this cane at Grant’s funeral, his ledger indicated its purchase in March of 1885; Grant died in July of that year and was interred in New York’s Riverside Park on August 8, 1885. The cane was likely created either as election paraphernalia for Grant’s Presidential campaigns of 1868 and 1872, or as a memento after his death in the summer of 1885 (#12).
The rough-hewn cane in the middle of the case (D, #17) is another “relic,” constructed from a tree that grew at the site of the American Civil War’s Battle of the Wilderness. In only a few days (May 5-7, 1864), nearly 5,000 soldiers died in this bloody conflict that raged in dense wooded areas of Virginia near Spotsylvania County. In the following decades, the battlefield became renowned for the visceral evidence of warfare its landscape offered, with blasted trees and human remains testifying to the brutality of the fight.
The two right-most canes (F & G) are souvenirs. Cane #16 (F), with its dark sheen and thorny protrusions, is another well-traveled walking stick; Sheldon’s label describes it as a “Full-Blooded Irish Cane from Queenstown- Presented by Alson B. Colby 1889” and “Bought by him on his return from South America in 1888-1889.” Indeed, the cane’s appearance is similar to shillelaghs crafted from Irish blackthorn and marketed as traditional souvenirs of Ireland. Sheldon’s friend Alson B. Colby, a native of Lincoln, VT, had established a “first-class restaurant” in downtown Middlebury in the 1870s, offering “confectionery, fruit, and pastry,” as well as “ice cream and oysters, in their season” (Middlebury Undergraduate, Feb. 1878). While research has yet to reveal his connection to Ireland, Colby is known to have traveled to South America in the hopes of trading livestock and horses in 1887-1888; writing from Buenos Aires in July of 1888, he promised Sheldon “I will try and bring you all something curious also [for] the Museum.” The port of Cobh (known as Queenstown from 1849-1920), along Ireland’s south coast of County Cork, might have been the last overseas port of Colby’s circuitous return trip to the United States.
The fanciful curves of the twig cane at the right end of the case (G) evoke the tumbling waters of its site of origin: Ausable Chasm, a popular tourist destination in the Adirondacks. Sheldon visited the site in August of 1890, a few days after his 69th birthday.