The cut-paper pictures referred to are the ones which are reproduced in this book, and which are still preserved. Anna's father finally received them. Mrs. Deming and other members of the Winslow
family seem to have excelled in this art, and are remembered as usually bringing paper and scissors when at a tea-drinking, and assiduously cutting these pictures with great skill and swiftness and with apparently but slight attention to the work. This form of decorative art was very fashionable in colonial days, and was taught under the ambitious title of Papyrotamia.
The "biziness of making flowers" was a thriving one in Boston. We read frequently in newspapers of the day such notices as that of Anne Dacray, of Pudding Lane, in the Boston Evening Post, of 1769, who advertises that she "makes and sells Head-flowers: Ladies may be supplied with single buds for trimming Stomachers or sticking in the Hair." Advertisements of teachers in the art of flower-making also are frequent. I note one from the Boston Gazette, of October 19, 1767:—
"To the young Ladies of Boston. Elizabeth Courtney as several Ladies has signified of having a desire to learn that most ingenious art of Painting on Gauze & Catgut, proposes to open a School, and that her business may be a public good, designs to teach the making of all sorts of French Trimmings, Flowers, and Feather Muffs and Tippets. And as these Arts above mentioned (the Flowers excepted) are entirely unknown on the Continent, she flatters herself to meet with all due encouragement; and more so, as every Lady may have a power of serving
herself of what she is now obliged to send to England for, as the whole process is attended with little or no expence. The Conditions are Five Dollars at entrance; to be confin'd to no particular hours or time: And if they apply Constant may be Compleat in six weeks. And when she has fifty subscribers school will be opened, &c, &c."
This was James Lovell, the famous Boston schoolmaster, orator, and patriot. He was born in Boston October 31, 1737. He graduated at Harvard in 1756, then became a Latin School usher. He married Miss Helen Sheaffe, older sister of the "two Miss Sheafs" named herein; and their daughter married Henry Loring, of Brookline. He was a famous patriot: he delivered the oration in 1771 commemorative of the Boston Massacre. He was imprisoned by the British as a spy on the evidence of letters found on General Warren's dead body after the battle of Bunker Hill. He died in Windham, Maine, July 14, 1814. A full account of his life and writings is given in Loring's Hundred Boston Orators.