Susan Higginson Bowditch Long, American: 1857-1935

Striking a grin and looking back towards the camera at center of this hand-holding trio may be the artist’s first born child: Helen Bowditch Long Patterson, 1881-1956. The girl at left holds a bouquet of flowers while all three children hold hands.

Actually a lake, Spot Pond is located “in Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The pond is within the Middlesex Fells Reservation, a Massachusetts state park. It is almost entirely located within the boundaries of Stoneham, Massachusetts. Spot Pond was named in 1632 by colonial governor John Winthrop.” From a series of candid photographs believed to have been taken by the artist compiled in a late 19th Century album bearing the armorial bookplate of her spouse Harry Vinton Long, 1857-1949. Long attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1876-77 and she later worked closely in 1909 with the Olmstead Brothers- successors to famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead Sr.- in designing the extensive gardens for her family’s summer estate on Little White Head Island at Cohasset, MA.

Note: In 1903, the artist became a member of the Massachusetts Society of Colonial Dames of America, seventh in descent from Rev. Francis Higginson. Her husband Harry Long was a Mayflower descendent, Boston stockbroker and Director of Museums for the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. (now Historic New England)