A century of creative women in Pittsford
By the Pittsford Historical Society
The town of Pittsford sits nestled between the Taconic Mountains to the west and the Green Mountains to the east. It may best be known as an area of marble production, with the boom time of that industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries leading to most of the homes and buildings you see in town today. The exhibit Creative Women in Pittsford, curated by the Pittsford Historical Society, offers a glimpse into the work of five women who lived in Pittsford at various points in their lives, and while there drew upon the landscape, people, and events to create paintings, prints, and photographs that reflected the town over the course of one hundred years.
Martha Wood (later Belcher, 1844-1930) and her partner Lucia Gilbert (1832-1898) met while working as teachers in Poultney and Castleton. When Lucia’s parents returned to Pittsford, Lucia followed them and Martha came along. They set about to bring art to the area, and their first accomplishment was an art camp up in the hills above Pittsford. The Rutland Herald recorded an exhibition of paintings by the group at the home of Simeon Gilbert in the fall of 1872. “Two rooms were entirely devoted to the pictures, over one hundred in number, all grouped and arranged with admirable taste and effort.” (Rutland Herald, December 13, 1872). Martha later spent two years in Europe (1873-5); her return occasioned another exhibition reported by the Rutland Herald. She and Lucia Gilbert then set up a workshop copying great masters on slate.
Mary Randall (later Allen) was born in Pittsford in 1878 and lived most of her life there. She graduated from the University of Vermont in 1899 and began work as a photographer in addition to serving as the town’s librarian and as a correspondent for the Rutland Herald. Her images range from portraits of children to landscapes to scenes from community events and even natural disasters, bringing Pittsford of 1895 to 1920 to life one image at a time. The Pittsford Historical Society has a collection of approximately 1,100 of her glass plate negatives and is working on a project to digitize and share those images.
Hilda Belcher (1881-1963), a child of Pittsford and daughter to Martha Wood Belcher, went on to significant artistic success in New York circles and beyond in the period from 1907-1940. She attended the New York School of Art and studied with the likes of William Merritt Chase, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and George Bellows. She was best known as a watercolorist (one of her early works, The Checkered Dress, is an early portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe), although during her active career much income came from oil portraits. Belcher also published illustrations, cartoons, and caricatures that appeared in popular magazines of the time. Many of her models were family, friends, and neighbors in Pittsford. She was the second woman to be accepted into the National Academy of Design and a founding member of the Southern Vermont Artists’ League in Manchester.
Katherine Crockett (later Marnell, 1898-1979) studied art in Boston and New York City. She made greeting cards for personal use and was persuaded to sell them. Around 1929, she found commercial success with a silk-screened Christmas card featuring a Noel design. She moved the business to Vermont in 1951, where she had lived for some time as a child. In 1954, Crockett told Vermont Life that her business challenge was to make a good product, “one that is beautiful, original and cheap enough to make people want to buy it” (Vermont Life, Vol 9, issue 2). Her designs ranged from traditional to modern and included religious and secular themes. The company was quite successful, distributing some half a million cards annually. It is claimed that the volume of her mail-order business led the USPS to upgrade the Pittsford Post Office and there are still Pittsfordites who recall working for her. Crockett retired in 1966, though her card business continued for a number of years after under different management.
This article originally appeared in the Summer/Fall 2024 issue of our member magazine, History Connections. To get it and support the Vermont Historical Society, sign up as a member.
