Peirson’s Place. Richmond, Massachusetts. © Award winning photograph. By Paul Goldfinger. Click left for full view. Re-posted from March, 2014. Blogfinger.net
By Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger (We like to re-post this piece about every 1-2 years. Last post was July, 2019.)
Photographer’s note: If you go to the Berkshires in Massachusetts, near Tanglewood, there are lots of old B and B’s. Our friends Dick and his wife Luisa used to stay at Peirson’s Place, an old house, sort of ramshackle, with a large barn in the back where the kids could play and even sleep.
Maragaret would make breakfast each morning — nothing fancy like some places where they serve Eggs Benedict. Dick is an internist, now retired, who also is a pianist. His wife Luisa is an artist, so they’re the sort of people you run into at Pierson’s Place.
Eileen and I went there a few times. During the day you could visit farmers’ markets or historic attractions or towns in the area such as Lenox and Stockbridge. You could also wander the grounds of the Tanglewood Music Festival where the peaks of the Berkshires give off vapors in the morning. You can listen to a rehearsal in the afternoon and then picnic on the great lawn, under the stars, while enjoying the magnificence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
One morning I got up and meandered around the property at Peirson’s Place. There’s something about those cool mornings in the mountains as the new sun ripples across everything that’s still wet with dew and crisscrossed with leftover shadows.
I looked at the old house and the barn. There were flowers all around, and you could touch them, but not pick them. That’s what Margaret did before everyone came down for breakfast.
As I walked about, I came upon an old garage where I was startled by the eye of a creature peering out at me. It seemed alive even after I moved closer and identified it. The big red eye belonged to an old English sports car that was just itching to roar out of there onto the country roads.
SOUNDTRACK. “Someday Soon” by Judy Collins.
2018 Addendum: Eileen came upon a 1992 interview about Peirson’s Place. Margaret Mace Kingman (1912-1998) was being interviewed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology archives. She was a descendant of the Peirson family which owned the property .
The interview was about her life and education, but this is what she said about the family’s Richmond, Mass. home:
“My childhood was right here on the property because I was born in the same room, in the same bed my mother was born in, in the same room my grandfather was born in. The property had been in the hands of my family since the land was bought from the Indians in 1761.”
Margaret became a college professor, and she added, “Sometimes I take students up around on the trails; we have quite a number of trails because we have, along with the property I gave to my son, more than 400 acres here. And you can see the trees still, some of the crab apple trees to which he had grafted other types of apples. They’re still growing although everything’s grown up now into forest. It used to be much more open than it is today.”
Thank you Catherine. You have added some lovely memories to our piece about Pierson’s Place. Paul
I am so so glad you reposted your blog. Every few years I search for information on what happened o Peirson Place after Margaret Kingman died. This year, your blog popped up in my search.
Margaret Kingman (I called her Mrs. K) was my friend, my mentor, and my employer during the summers of my 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th years – so 1970-74. She was Quaker, as was my family, and she and my mother taught at SUNY New Paltz. I would go live at Peirson Place during the summer and help her run the guest house. I went back in 1977 for my honeymoon and took my son up to see her in 1993. I knew she had gone into a home and passed away. But I never met and had no contact information for her son and my efforts to find an address or email for him failed. Sadly, I have never been able to find her obituary either. She was an incredible woman – way ahead of her time. She was a professor of geography. She was a pilot. She’d been a spy and worked for the OSS during the war. She loved young people and surrounded herself with teenagers by choice!
She would take me to music concerts and art shops in Lennox. During the day we worked at cleaning up and getting ready for guests. It was a big property with several buildings in which we could house guests. We didn’t have much weekday traffic but from Friday through Sunday it was full on with folks coming up from New York to go to Tanglewood (summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra) We hosted blind teenage and young adults who’d attended Perkins School for the Blind for a couple of weeks at the end of most summers. That was a life changing experience for me; those guys taught me a lot. Better wrap it up now lol. It’s hard to express how much Mrs. K and those summers at Peirson Place affected my life.
I could talk for days and not be able to tell you I’ll never forget her or that place.
Thank you Michael. I enjoyed adding your comment to our Pierson’s Place collection. I guess I missed the wild strawberries. Makes me want to go back to the Berkshires.
My doctor sent me a letter last week saying that he is moving his practice to that area. It’s cold there in winter, but quite beautiful. Now I have to re-post our piece.
Thanks. I was one of Mrs. Kingman’s Geography students from SUNY New Paltz who lived at Pierson Place in the summer of 1975. I did research for the Richmond Bi-Centennial Committee and waited on the Pierson Place guests. On top of the mountain at the end of the trail we looked out to the Berkshires on exposed rock outcrops eating wild strawberries. Mrs. Kingman back in the day was the first woman who worked for what was to become the CIA. A great cartography professor and she always smiled.
Honeymooned there 28 years ago yesterday! Incredible memories of Margaret’s breakfasts and chocolate cake at tea time. She sat with us doing puzzles and innocently regaled us with tales of her life, family and the house.
The eggshell blue Tahitian print wallpaper from Paris…original to the room! How is that possible? Quote from Margaret: “Well, it’s not the original layer most likely. When you brought it back over from Paris by boat (!), you always bought enough to cover the room more then once.” (Duh! Cool historical factoid). OSS, revolutionary war, Woodstock attendees camping on the property, on and on and on. Spellbound for life!
We retell her stories over the years, and wish we could go back again.
Reblogged this on Blogfinger.
Judy Fan: I totally missed that performance. Too bad. I really like this song. It’s very emotional.
Paul, Did you hear Judy Collins when she sang here in town? It was a wonderful change from some of the entertainment.
I love your writing style. would you consider holding writing workshops?
just read the piece on the b and b in mass…had to write.
Hi Paul dear…what a lovely piece on Pierson’s Place…
you are a romantic to the core,,,you pair music with your delightful writings as some pair wine with food..
your piece brought back memories and smiles….all my best to you and Eileen…Luisa
Paul, That is such a nice piece. I didn’t remember that I had spoken about it to you. Some more information is that the first time we stayed there we just happened upon it by accident looking for a place to stay.
The main house was quite stately and dated back to the 1700’s and in the dining room
was a gigantic walk in fireplace roaring even in the summer. I remember that the wall paper was original old hand-pressed paper and everywhere else were dated antiques—each beautiful.
You didn’t mention the large pond where we swam and the row boat etc. Looking back, it was quite something which, at an older age now, I can think that I didn’t appreciate it as much as I could have, although we all knew we hit upon a treasure.
Mrs Pierson sat with us, talked etc. She was an employed cartographer once with the US government and, at that time, when we were there, teaching at some college; I
do not remember which.
We stayed there many times, several with Phoebe and Wally and also with Cilli and Yehoushua from Israel and others.
Also, after the evening concerts there was always coffee, tea and pastries for us when we returned.
What a nice memory you have just evoked.
I’ll carbon-date myself and say this reminds me of the Rush song “Red Barchetta,” where the theme of the song is driving the restored red English sports car stored in his uncle’s barn in Canada.
Wish I was there. Lovely photo.