Ambrotype of John Orville Terry, c.1855.

John Orville Terry: Oysterponds’ 19th-century Poet

Emily Dickinson, known for her brevity and ambiguity, was certainly an outlier in the world of Victorian poetry. More typical of the time was the work of Oysterponds’ homegrown poet, John Orville Terry. In 1850, at the age of 54, Terry – a sailor by trade – published The Poems of J.O.T.: Consisting of Songs, Satire and Pastoral Descriptions, chiefly depicting the scenery, and illustrating the manners and customs of the ancient and present inhabitants of Long-Island. The length of the title gives readers advance warning that there will be no brevity within the book’s covers! The verses within are long, overwrought, and sentimental, as much poetry was at that time. Yet his poems are also, by turns, charming, funny, and illuminating. The descriptions of Orient life in the first half of the 19th-century are vivid; he writes of the Long Island landscape, local politics, and his family and friends, including Orient’s schoolmaster Augustus Griffin, noting his grace and “jocund face.”

In his diary Griffin extolls Terry’s brilliance and eloquence. “Had Burns, Dryden, or Byron, have written much that he (Terry) has written, we should have heard it cited from a thousand tongues; seen it quoted through the length and breadth of the land, and canonized ‘immortal song.’” This may be a bit of a reach but Griffin, the recorder of local history and customs, obviously found real value in Terry’s work. OHS is lucky to have several copies of Terry’s book in its library collection. His poetry may not live on like Dickinson’s, but his keen observations and florid descriptions of Oysterponds allow us a window into the early life in this region. As Amy Folk, OHS Collections Manager notes, “Terry was a mediocre poet, but a wonderful historian.”

In honor of Spring’s upcoming arrival, we present the first two stanzas of Terry’s poem The First Leaf of Spring. If you are interested in reading more of Terry’s poetry please stop by OHS!

The First Leaf of Spring

The first leaf of spring is unfolding again,

In splendor to flourish, in beauty to reign.

Green among blossoms, and hid among flowers,

Waving on high, on the tree-top it towers.

Sad that a being so beauteous and fair,

Child of the sun and companion of air,

Feeding on light and inhaling the dew,

Should live but one season—alas! is it true?

–John Orville Terry, 1850

THE JENNIE FRENCH POTTER, FIVE-MASTED SCHOONER, by S.F. M. Badger, 1901.

A Painting Returned and a Painting Still Missing

To celebrate the 10^th anniversary of the return of the stolen OHS painting The Bark Washington, we want to retell the story of our small-town art theft for those OHS members who may not know it and for those who would like a refresher.

Back in the 1990’s and early aughts, stolen art seemed to be having a moment. There was the daring theft of 11 masterworks from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; a Cezanne painting lifted by a rope-propelling, smoke-canister-releasing cat burglar taken from the Ashmolean Museum in London; and a thief nicknamed “Monkey” who used a sledgehammer to gain access to the Van Gogh Museum. And then there was the OHS thief, who, as far as anyone can tell, one day in 2001 simply strolled through the doors of Hallock in a moment of construction confusion, and took off with two paintings and some scrimshaw.

Thanks to then-OHS Board President Freddie Wachsberger (current Board Emeritus) and then-Executive Director Courtney Burns, the stolen pieces were entered in the FBI’s National Stolen Art registry. In the Spring of 2015 OHS Collections Manager Amy Folk received a call from an agent explaining that, after nearly 15 years, The Bark Washington had been located. An unidentified man had purchased the painting for a few hundred dollars at an East Marion antiques shop years before and whilst researching it on the internet discovered it was on the FBI’s list. Subsequently, he returned the painting and it once again graces the walls of OHS. An almost happy ending…

The second painting stolen still waits to be recovered. The Jennie Potter French was a grand five-masted schooner, 260 feet long, that carried bulk up and down the East Coast. It was named after Orient resident Jennie Potter, the wife of the boat captain’s younger brother. Captain Joseph Potter resided on Village Lane and was at the helm when the boat sank off the coast of Cape Cod in 1909. There were no casualties but the boat was lost. Thankfully it was memorialized by the prolific ship portraitist S.F.M. Badger (1873-1919) before its demise. The painting remains on the FBI’s Stolen Art Registry, and needless to say, OHS looks forward to one day welcoming it back.

WHALER ATTACKING A SPERM WHALE, Charles Sidney Raleigh, 1877

THE BARK WASHINGTON, Artist unknown, 1860

In early 2025 the “Americana Week” preview exhibition at Christie’s featured a painting reminiscent of one in the OHS collection. Whaler Attacking a Sperm Whale by Charles Sidney Raleigh, depicts the drama and violence of hunting sperm whales, just like our painting The Bark Washington, which was last on view at Village House in the summer of 2023. Both paintings capture the power of the whale as it fights for its life, churning up waves, toppling the whalers’ rowboats, and flinging the men into the sea. (Unfortunately, The Bark Washington was stolen in 2001 and, if not for some good luck and the persistence of the FBI, our painting was eventually returned, thus avoiding winding up on the walls of an auction house, too!).

As for the rest of the Americana auction preview, time and again many of the pieces shown were reminiscent of ones in the OHS collection. An Antonio Jacobsen portrait of a tugboat had pride of place in a room full of notable American artists. Jacobsen, a prolific painter known for his flat and exacting style of depicting 19th century boats, is well-represented in OHS’s collection; we are fortunate to have four(!) Jacobsens, all on display at the Webb House Permanent Maritime exhibition. And in a gallery full of 19th century paintings Christie’s described as sublime, we thought of East Marion’s own romantic painter Joseph Henry Miller. We have an excellent example of his work, depicting brooding clouds over a grassy ravine, hung in Village House.

We are heartened to see that the OHS collections’ status as world-class is confirmed!