The Devereux Mansion

(Much of this information on this page derived from the informative work of Jacqueline Mara Lynch)

John Devereaux, a Marblehead fisherman received the property on July 1, 1659. The farm, farmhouse and a large tract of land was passed on to his descendants. In time, parcels of land were sold off. In the 1850s the farm and much of the surrounding acreage was purchased by the Smith Family of Marblehead.

The Devereux Mansion, an Italianate style home, was  built in 1856 by George Smith as part of the Smith family estate on the Western outskirts of Marblehead. The Mansion’s lawn extended all the way to the beach. At one time, the home served as the “club house” of the Devereaux Country Club.  

On May 31, 1870, John Golthwaite of Boston, William Goldthwait of Marblehead and Henry Pitman of Marblehead purchased the Smith property that included several buildings including the mansion and a large barn. The mansion was leased to a Boston group that opened it as “The Devereux Mansion Hotel.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a guest at the hotel. The second second stanza of his poem, Fire of Drift-wood is thought to represent his Marblehead experience.

The Fire of Drift-wood

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

DEVEREUX FARM, NEAR MARBLEHEAD.

We sat within the farm-house old,

Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,

Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,

An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,

The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,

The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,

The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

We sat and talked until the night,

Descending, filled the little room;

Our faces faded from the sight,

Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,

Of what we once had thought and said,

Of what had been, and might have been,

And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,

When first they feel, with secret pain,

Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,

And never can be one again;

The first slight swerving of the heart,

That words are powerless to express,

And leave it still unsaid in part,

Or say it in too great excess.

The very tones in which we spake

Had something strange, I could but mark;

The leaves of memory seemed to make

A mournful rustling in the dark.

Oft died the words upon our lips,

As suddenly, from out the fire

Built of the wreck of stranded ships,

The flames would leap and then expire.

And, as their splendor flashed and failed,

We thought of wrecks upon the main,

Of ships dismasted, that were hailed

And sent no answer back again.

The windows, rattling in their frames,

The ocean, roaring up the beach,

The gusty blast, the bickering flames,

All mingled vaguely in our speech;

Until they made themselves a part

Of fancies floating through the brain,

The long-lost ventures of the heart,

That send no answers back again.

O flames that glowed! O hearts that yearned!

They were indeed too much akin,

The drift-wood fire without that burned,

The thoughts that burned and glowed within.

The hotel was short lived. By 1882, the property had become a boarding school.

From May 5, 1910 until 1912 the mansion was reopened as the New Cliff Club, a private resort that was also known as the Devereux Country Club. Yearly membership dues for the club was $5.00.

1912-1936

Herbert Hall married Eliza Pitman Goldthwait in 1887.

In 1912 the 40 acre Mansion property was still owned by the the Goldthwaits and Mr. Pitman. Dr Joel Goldthwait allowed Herbert Hall to use the Marblehead property as a residential community for patients with “nervous disorders.” 1912 Hall moved the Handicraft Shop to Beech Street in the Devereux section of Marblehead.  The mansion was turned into a sanatorium with rooms to house up to 40 patients.  A large structure on the property termed “the Barn” was used for the craft industries.  These included metalwork, carpentry, cement work, weaving and basketry. Several other out buildings were present on the property.