A Purple Tribute/Martha B. Tuttle (continued)
I am simply awed by what is stored in boxes and pinned to the wall. As we make our way back towards the front of the house a larger painting is leaning against the back staircase. That she explains, “is nothing,” it is just there to prevent her from falling down the old servant steps to the kitchen. The painting that she considers a scrap is remarkable in its depth and creativity, it reminds me of a sacred dance unraveling, and I am slowly grasping at all Martha has shared.
Before we turn down the front stairs we enter her “son’s room” on the right. On one of the small neat twin beds, on an ever so old-fashioned white knobbed cotton spread, sits several boxes of cherished and much cared for memorabilia from his years of service. The afternoon sunlight is almost penetrating. Someone she tells me is coming to look at these things, “to see if they want anything.” I cannot look at Martha.
Outside of this room the only art placed on an otherwise barren wall is a large needlepoint tapestry that her mother started when she moved in with Martha and Dick Tuttle. In it, her mother Florence Stephens McCrea Benedict, the last Betts descendent born in the house on Clark Street in 1877, had woven with love and devotion a history of her family. There lives the Betts Homestead, the College Hill Cockaigne, the Tuttle Retreat, the embroidered replicas of Scottish tartans. It is her mother’s timeline encircled by an ivy border that she admired because she thought quite simply it looked like waves across the hands of time, holding them. “My mother was a great artist,” Martha tells me. “But she had five children to raise and she didn’t have the time.” Martha’s mother started the needlepoint when she was well into her eighties.
Martha and I say our brief farewell and I thank her for this day. I will go home and try to find the right words for an afternoon well spent with a woman of great dignity and insight, with the colors of her art wrapping us with a history worth the telling. The mixed tones of greatness and grief unfurled as Persian purple velvet across two hundred years of Cincinnati history, a royal brush with time.
As I think of her, I do not believe we can end the Betts Family Timeline in 1892 because something extraordinary began again in 1988 when Martha Tuttle stood outside the remnants of the William Betts House and decided this home needed to be preserved for all of us. It was a rebirth of a district and a deeper belief in the journey we all take. Somehow all that love and sorrow reached down into the heart of Cincinnati to tell us that our history needs to be honored. See the beauty of this little house the way Martha saw it. The birth of a city took place here. There is no doubt that the story of the Betts House is worth honoring. But I found out why Martha’s vision has shaped this small property into something we can all hold onto and cherish. Like the beauty captured in Martha Tuttle’s exquisite enamels and the love enfolded in the family tapestry, the Betts House is alive with its own history and an eternal timeline to enjoy. You can almost look out its back door and see for miles, maybe forever. It was an act of love by Martha Tuttle that saved this for all of us. The impact of this one woman, a Colonial Dame, Mother, and Artist is to be treasured. And I hope Martha agrees it is a great and noble “nugget” for our Newsletter.
Historical information contained in this article is credited to Liz Tuttle Miller, Martha’s beloved daughter, who carries on her mother’s legacy at the Betts House Research Center as Curator. I would also like to thank Laura Chace and Anne Shepherd of the Cincinnati Historical Society Library for their consideration and assistance in preparing this issue of the Ohio Dispatch. July Issue, 2001, Ohio Dispatch, The Newsletter of the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Ohio. © 2001.
I am simply awed by what is stored in boxes and pinned to the wall. As we make our way back towards the front of the house a larger painting is leaning against the back staircase. That she explains, “is nothing,” it is just there to prevent her from falling down the old servant steps to the kitchen. The painting that she considers a scrap is remarkable in its depth and creativity, it reminds me of a sacred dance unraveling, and I am slowly grasping at all Martha has shared.
Before we turn down the front stairs we enter her “son’s room” on the right. On one of the small neat twin beds, on an ever so old-fashioned white knobbed cotton spread, sits several boxes of cherished and much cared for memorabilia from his years of service. The afternoon sunlight is almost penetrating. Someone she tells me is coming to look at these things, “to see if they want anything.” I cannot look at Martha.
Outside of this room the only art placed on an otherwise barren wall is a large needlepoint tapestry that her mother started when she moved in with Martha and Dick Tuttle. In it, her mother Florence Stephens McCrea Benedict, the last Betts descendent born in the house on Clark Street in 1877, had woven with love and devotion a history of her family. There lives the Betts Homestead, the College Hill Cockaigne, the Tuttle Retreat, the embroidered replicas of Scottish tartans. It is her mother’s timeline encircled by an ivy border that she admired because she thought quite simply it looked like waves across the hands of time, holding them. “My mother was a great artist,” Martha tells me. “But she had five children to raise and she didn’t have the time.” Martha’s mother started the needlepoint when she was well into her eighties.
Martha and I say our brief farewell and I thank her for this day. I will go home and try to find the right words for an afternoon well spent with a woman of great dignity and insight, with the colors of her art wrapping us with a history worth the telling. The mixed tones of greatness and grief unfurled as Persian purple velvet across two hundred years of Cincinnati history, a royal brush with time.
As I think of her, I do not believe we can end the Betts Family Timeline in 1892 because something extraordinary began again in 1988 when Martha Tuttle stood outside the remnants of the William Betts House and decided this home needed to be preserved for all of us. It was a rebirth of a district and a deeper belief in the journey we all take. Somehow all that love and sorrow reached down into the heart of Cincinnati to tell us that our history needs to be honored. See the beauty of this little house the way Martha saw it. The birth of a city took place here. There is no doubt that the story of the Betts House is worth honoring. But I found out why Martha’s vision has shaped this small property into something we can all hold onto and cherish. Like the beauty captured in Martha Tuttle’s exquisite enamels and the love enfolded in the family tapestry, the Betts House is alive with its own history and an eternal timeline to enjoy. You can almost look out its back door and see for miles, maybe forever. It was an act of love by Martha Tuttle that saved this for all of us. The impact of this one woman, a Colonial Dame, Mother, and Artist is to be treasured. And I hope Martha agrees it is a great and noble “nugget” for our Newsletter.
Historical information contained in this article is credited to Liz Tuttle Miller, Martha’s beloved daughter, who carries on her mother’s legacy at the Betts House Research Center as Curator. I would also like to thank Laura Chace and Anne Shepherd of the Cincinnati Historical Society Library for their consideration and assistance in preparing this issue of the Ohio Dispatch. July Issue, 2001, Ohio Dispatch, The Newsletter of the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of Ohio. © 2001.