While the terms “1 percent” and “99 percent” are recent phrases that highlight the wealth disparity between Americans, back in 1852, when the summer home enclave and fisherman’s harbor that was Swampscott separated from industrial Lynn, the gulf between the haves and have-nots was pretty wide.
Enter Enoch Reddington Mudge.
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A combination of Warren Buffet, Jack Welch and Donald Trump, he was a self-made captain of industry with a mansion on Beacon Street in Boston, and a 130-acre summer home in Swampscott, which he maintained from the 1840’s until his death in 1881.
Yet Enoch Mudge was of a time when the wealthy believed that it was their duty to better the public space, and he left a legacy to Swampscott and Lynn that we enjoy to this day.
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To read about Mudge’s life is to learn about America. His relatives came from Plymouth, England, and had fought in every major war this young country had entered into — King Philip’s War against the Native Americans, the Revolutionary War against the British.
His father was a circuit preacher, but Enoch Mudge began in banking and then lost it all in the “panic year” of 1837. While opening and running a hugely successful hotel in New Orleans, he bought a family of slaves, freed them, paid for their passage north and employed them.
He brokered businesses. He made huge amounts in cotton manufacturing and his book, Reports On Cotton, is still available on Amazon.
His oldest son, Charles Reddington Mudge, a Harvard graduate employed in a responsible position at one of his father’s cotton mills, joined the Union Army in 1861. He rose rapidly through the ranks until he became a lieutenant colonel. He was killed at Gettysburg at the age of 23.
When his adult daughter, Fannie (Mudge) Van Brunt, died a decade later Mudge decided to memorialize both children with a church.
Not just any church — a $250,000 church designed by the best architects of the day, Ware and Van Brunt, who also designed Harvard’s Memorial Hall. Inside the gothic Romanesque building that became St. Stephen’s in Lynn, Mudge hired August St. Gaudens and Francis David Millet to design windows that Tiffany would create. St. Gaudens, you might recall, is the sculptor whose bronze depiction of the all black regiment in the Civil War graces the gate of the Boston Common across from the State House in Boston.
In all they created 41 windows, and they are exquisite, museum-quality pieces sitting on South Common Street in Lynn for all to view. Double glazed and costing $4000 a piece, each is a marvel, from the larger rose window of the Annunciation to the depictions of St. Stephen’s life, as well as the number of smaller gems that pepper the interior with light and color. They weren’t painted, but layered to create texture, and the facial features were etched giving the figures a fluid, life-like quality.
When old man Mudge died suddenly in 1881 his funeral was the first service held in the just built St. Stephen’s Church.
Mudge’s family continued his legacy of giving. His daughter, Mary Louise (Mudge) Joy built the Church of the Holy Name in Swampscott, also with beautiful stained glass windows.
And, most importantly, when the family sold the 130 acres that was the summer Mudge estate, the family didn’t do it on the cheap, to make as much money as possible. They hired the premiere landscaper in all of American history, Frederick Law Olmstead, the man who had planned Central Park in New York. That the center of Swampscott is not a mish-mash of hastily built buildings or some kind of strip mall is because Mudge’s family, upon selling the land, did what old man Mudge would have wanted them to do, leave a legacy.
In the end, we aren’t reading about Enoch Mudge 140 years after his death because he made a lot of money and lived large. Fortunes disappear faster than reputations. Mudge and his family chose to turn tragedy into something truly beautiful, three times.
So, next time you’re in the Monument area, or visit St. Stephen’s or the Church of the Holy Name, take a moment to thank the Mudges. We can all learn something from their generosity and willingness to cultivate beauty.
Courtesy of Marilyn and Rick Cloran, here is a link to a slide show depicting some of the St. Stephen’s windows: http://www.photodex.com/share/mrcloran
