Ethel Stanwood Bolton, historian and genealogist, artist, and an expert on early American wax portraits, silhouettes and samplers, was born on Boston’s Beacon Hill in 1873, daughter of Edward and Eliza Stanwood. Her father was a newspaper editor and published the popular periodical “The Youth’s Companion”. He served as secretary to Maine Senator and later U.S. Secretary of State James G. Blaine. Her grandfather, Samuel Topliff, gathered international news at his coffee house in the port of Boston and established the forerunner of the Associated Press. In 1905 she edited with a memoir the publication of Topliff’s Travels, Letters of 1828-1829.

After graduating from Wellesley College, Ethel married Charles Knowles Bolton in 1897. Charles was born in 1867 in East Cleveland, Ohio, where his father Charles Edward Bolton was mayor and his mother Sarah Knowles Bolton was an educator and author of many books. A graduate of Harvard University in 1890, he was librarian of the Brookline, Massachusetts public library and then began his long career as head of the Boston Athenaeum (1898-1933). They had two children; Stanwood born in 1898 and Geoffrey in 1901.

Ethel’s first literary work was her 1898 publication of The History of the Stanwood Family in America.  A year later her interest in local history was stimulated when in 1899 she moved into her new summer residence Pound Hill Place in Shirley, Massachusetts. There she found diaries written in the margins of almanacs and records of the previous owners, the James Parker family, who had been prominent in the history of the town. Her transcriptions of the diaries of James Parker for the years 1770 to 1829 were published in “The New England Historical and Genealogical Register.”  The town’s selectmen gave her the contract to research and publish the Vital Records of the Town of Shirley to 1850 which has provided invaluable information to genealogists by listing the town’s births, marriages and deaths since its founding in 1753.

The Bolton family descended from a colonial settler in Shirley, and while searching the records for family history, Ethel came upon her inspiration to document all of the early houses in town and record oral histories from its descendants. In the first decade of her life in Shirley she photographed every house in town that predated 1850, and from those images she drew pen and ink sketches. Those drawings, along with her stories of early Shirley and excerpts from the Parker diaries, were published in her 1914 book Shirley Uplands and Intervales. Her artistic talents were also used to illustrate many of the history books written by her husband.

American antiquities were a special interest of Ethel and she furnished her Shirley home with them. Her research in early American art resulted in the 1915 publication of her book Wax Portraits and Silhouettes which was reprinted and expanded in 1929 as American Wax Portraits. Following seven years of research, she co-authored with Eva Johnston Coe their 1921 book American Samplers.

Ethel and Charles made Pound Hill Place in Shirley their year-round home upon his retirement from the Boston Athenaeum in 1933. They remained active in town and church activities, enjoying visits from their two grandsons and many friends.  Charles died in 1950 at age 83 and Ethel passed on in 1954 at age 81.  Although she is well respected for her many writings and books, it is her memoir The Hip-roofed House which best portrays her love of family and a life well-lived.

—Contributed by Paul Przybyla, Treasurer and Director, Shirley Historical Society

With support from the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area’s 2024 Partnership Grant Program, the Shirley Historical Society published The Hip-Roofed House: Rambles in Remembrance, a memoir written by Ethel Stanwood Bolton in 1935. To reserve your copy, please contact the Historical Society via email at mail@shirleyhistory.org.