Untangling Threads at the 1719 William Trent House

Untangling Threads at the 1719 William Trent House: Researching Intimate Portraits of Domestic Servants in the Gilded Age

Full Presentation Script with Suggested Slide Labels

Slide 1: Title Slide
Untangling Threads at the 1719 William Trent House: Researching Intimate Portraits of Domestic Servants in the Gilded Age

“Hello, and thank you for being here with me, for inviting me to be here with you. My name is Denise McCormack, and I’m a storyteller and researcher with a deep appreciation for the quiet threads of history—the ones often overlooked, especially those woven by women in service. Today, I invite you to join me as we explore the lives of three such women whose presence at the 1719 William Trent House helped shape its story during the Gilded Age.”

Slide 2: The House Restored
Opening Script:

Before we begin exploring the lives of the women who lived and worked here during the Gilded Age, I want to take a moment to reflect on the house itself—a physical space layered with stories.

The 1719 William Trent House, as we see it today, has been restored to reflect its 18th-century roots, in accordance with the wishes of Edward A. Stokes, who gifted the house to the City of Trenton in 1929. This decision helped to restore and preserve the colonial architecture, but in doing so, 

Slide 3: Image: View of House Before WPA Restoration - South & East Sides

it also stripped away the later Victorian-era additions—additions that had more than doubled the home’s original footprint, including a greenhouse and expanded domestic quarters.

This is the House Before WPA Restoration - South & East Sides

Note: The purpose of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), established in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, was to provide jobs for the unemployed during the Great Depression. It aimed to offer work in various projects, including construction, arts, and cultural programs, to stimulate the economy and preserve the skills and self-respect of individuals. 

Slide 4: Image: View of House Before WPA Restoration - North & East Sides

Slide 5: Layers of Time  Image: Home of Edward H. Stokes
These later expansions are essential to our story, because it was within that Victorian configuration, not the colonial one, that the lives of Sarah Lanning, Sarah Rowland, and Bridget Coleman unfolded.

From 1861 to 1887, this house was occupied by Edward H. Stokes, a photographer, a prominent businessman, financier, and philanthropist, and his family. Their residence here followed the brief tenure of Edward’s father-in-law, Joseph Wood, who lived here from 1859 to 1861. Wood, a celebrated merchant and the 16th mayor of Trenton (1856–1859), was at the time the wealthiest man in town—a title that gives insight into the stature and domestic expectations of the household, particularly when we consider that his estate passed not to his only child, Permelia, his daughter, but to her new husband, Edward.

Slide 6: Household Labor Then and Now
So while today’s structure whispers of colonial formality and early American enterprise, it once bustled with Victorian refinement and industry—not just of silverware and china, but of chamber pots, nursery rhymes, coal buckets, and the quiet, tireless labor of women whose names were seldom recorded.

Slide 7: Trenton’s Industrial Pulse  Image: 1860 Map of Trenton
As Trenton pulsed with industrial promise—powered by the Delaware & Raritan Canal and buoyed by waves of immigration—the Trent House mirrored that expansion, becoming not only a family home, but a workplace teeming with domestic enterprise. 

The canals and trains, integral to the movement of goods and ideas, helped Trenton grow into a thriving city. And just as these new and expanding modes of transportation offered new paths westward for those seeking opportunity, they also brought individuals like our subjects here, shaping the daily lives that played out inside homes like this one.

Slide 8: The Domestic Web  Image: Trent House Chart of Owners & Residents
Domestic Staff Overview:

From 1870 to 1915, census records and directories document a rotating staff of at least two dozen individuals, including:

• Laborers, gardeners, and coachmen (all men)
  
  

• Governesses, chambermaids, seamstresses, cooks, and general servants (predominantly women)
  
  

The household often supported five to seven workers at any given time. But among all these names, only a few women left enough of a trail to be known at all.

Slide 9: Featured Women  Image: Mocked up triple image of domestic servant with text Sarah Lanning, Sarah Rowland, Bridget Coleman

Today, we focus on just three:

• Sarah Lanning, who appears as a nurse in 1870
  
  

• Sarah Rowland, a servant in 1880 who would later become a professional massage therapist
  
  

• Bridget Coleman, who served for decades but remains largely in the shadows
  
  

These women were not chosen because they were the most important, or even the most representative. They were chosen because a loose thread presented itself—just enough to tug at—and in doing so, revealed a world.

Slide 10: Sarah Lanning’s Journey
Sarah Lanning
Sarah Lanning came from a deeply rooted New Jersey family with strong ties to Trenton's earliest history. Her father, Ralph, was a farmer; her mother, Diannah, was an English immigrant. Sarah, born in 1849, was one of ten siblings born within a fourteen-year span. 

The family moved west to Greene County, Illinois, in 1854, pursuing farmland and opportunity, traveling by rail and canal in a journey and lifetime detailed in the journal of her older brother, Aaron.

Slide 11: Notes from Aaron Lanning’s Journal Image: Screen shots of Aaron’s Journals
That journal is how we know that education mattered to the Lannings, and how we learn that young girls, like Sarah, were often sent east for schooling. At just 13, Sarah worked for Ann Rice in Trenton while, I am guessing, she also attended school. With practical farm experience, passed down lessons of self-sufficiency and know-how, and early exposure to childcare, as well as dealing with the public as she attended to her duties at Rice’s Fancy Shop, she would have been an excellent choice for the Stokes household, where she served as a nurse for the children, ages 7, 5, and 1 —likely helping with both supervision and domestic education.

Her tenure was brief. By 22, Sarah married Daniel Goode and became a farmer's wife in Kansas, returning to a rural life but clearly enriched by her years in Trenton. Her story speaks of endurance, family loyalty, and quiet success. She seemed to live her version of "happily ever after."

Slide 12: Some Interesting Tidbits in the News  Image: 3 articles:

P.T. Barnum’s Grand Collossal Museum and Managerie! Flyer citing Homer, Illinois as a destination, near where Lanning family landed in 1854.

The Prarie Farmer, A Weekly Journal for the Farm. Orchard and Fireside.  Chicago.  Saturday, May 22, 1875, detailing the Chinch infestation that descimated the area, worse than locusts or grasshoppers.

Human Interest: Saturday, May 15, 1886 “Diannah and Ralph Lanning in the Flood Water.” –As Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Lanning were Thursday of last week returning from La Cygne to their home in Scott township, they attempted to drive through “Moore’s branch,” when, in consequence of high water, they were both carried from the vehicle.  Mrs. Lanning floated down stream until she reached some trees, by which she pulled herself out of the water. Her husband was taken ashore by holding the lines as the horses swam there.

Slide 13: Image of Sarah with her sisters Cornelia and Hattie.

Slide 14: Sarah Rowland’s Distinction  Image: Illustration of domestic servant sitting in a chair and reading a book or newspaper  https://www.victorianvoices.net/images/servant.jpg
Sarah Rowland
Sarah Rowland

In contrast to Sarah Lanning, Sarah Rowland stayed rooted in Trenton after immigrating with her family from England in 1873. She grew up in a large family and lived with her siblings until adulthood. In 1880, at the age of 19, to 1881 and possibly up to 1884 or 1885, she worked as a domestic servant and chambermaid and would have been part of a structured, hierarchical household staff tasked with maintaining the smooth and refined operations of the home. Her duties likely included general housekeeping, childcare assistance, and possibly helping with food preparation or laundry. The presence of other staff, such as a gardener (John Seothen), governess (Mary Stackhouse), and fellow servant (Emily Nelson), suggests a clear division of labor, a clear shift in need from a nursemaid for little ones to extra hands to maintain the household, and with Sarah Rowland expected to rise early, dress plainly, remain industrious and discreet, and serve at the pleasure of her employers.  She would have worked long hours, lived on site, and been subject to the rhythms and expectations of the household—cleaning rooms, emptying chamber pots, tending to children’s needs, and assisting with family meals—her own ambitions deferred, temporarily,  in service to the Stokes family’s comfort and status. 

Slide 15: Sarah Rowland Sarah Rowland’s Distinction Image: women working in a pottery factory in Trenton

1900 and 1901, she appears in the City Directories as a pottery decorator, living with her sisters and other members of the family, and then Sarah vanished from view for a few years, from 1902 to 1904. But all the while, Sarah pursued a path of professional identity.

Slide 16: Electric Specialist & Beyond  Image: “Christmas Cheer Every Day of the Year,”  Life Magazine, 1914. New-York Historical Society Library. https://wams.nyhistory.org/modernizing-america/modern-womanhood/housework-and-electricity/#single/0

Then in 1905, at 44 years old, she was listed as an electric specialist in the census– a striking designation for a woman in the early 1900s. Her sister Rose, at that time, was listed as a clerk and later rose to prominence as  chief operator at a telephone exchange.

But it was Sarah who took the bolder title, even if only briefly.  

Sarah Rowland’s brief designation as an “electric specialist” is unusual for a woman of her time—but telling. It may have indicated her work with or around new electric technologies entering homes and businesses at the turn of the century. Trenton, a hub of innovation and industry, was a prime location for early adoption of electric conveniences:

• Electric sewing machines (patented 1889; mass-marketed by the 1890s)
  
  

• Electric irons (available by 1890, widespread by early 1900s)
  
  

• Electric lighting (urban use began in the 1880s, expanding by 1900)
  
  

• Early washing machines (electric models appeared by 1907)
  
  

• Refrigerators or iceboxes with electric components (1900s–1913 prototypes, rare in homes before 1920)
  
  

Sarah’s title may suggest she was a demonstrator, installer, or advisor—roles sometimes held by women hired to introduce new technologies into domestic spaces. Even if brief, the title “electric specialist” paints her as someone savvy, forward-thinking, and part of a generation navigating technological change with curiosity and skill.

“Unlike a telephone operator, who was often restricted to switchboard work, an electric specialist may have advised women on how to use or maintain the newest home appliances—irons, washing machines, or even lighting fixtures. These roles were rare but emerging, especially in modernizing cities like Trenton.”

Slide 17: Human Interest: Rose Rowland Career and Marriage/Sarah Rowland Marriage   Image: Several news articles about Rose’s marriage to John MacCrellish

Of interest to me, here is a newspaper announcement which gave testimony to Sarah’s youngest sister’s career and led to a bit of confusion and ambiguity over what “electric specialist” might mean, at first suggesting the road for Sarah led into the telegraph or telephone industry.

Leavenworth (Kansas) Times, April 7, 1907, that attests: "Telephone Courtship Lasts for 17 Years, And Now Miss Rowland, Chief Operator, Becomes Ex-Manager's Bride.  Trenton July 3 — John A. MacCrellish and Miss Rose Rowland, both of this city, were married last night after a long courtship.  Mr. MacCrellish was a local manager for the Bell Telephone company for twenty-four years and when he left to take a similar position with the Inter-State Telephone company, Miss Rowland, who had been chief operator for 17 years, resigned from the Bell office and became chief operator in Inter-State.  The bridegroom is now head clerk in the office of the city treasurer of Trenton."  

(Rose was 35 years old at the time.  Her husband had been a widow since she knew him, raising a son alone. Sarah was the maid of honor.)

Slide 18: Slide 18: Electric Specialist & Beyond

But in that same year of being noted an electric specialist, in 1905, at 44 years of age, Sarah switched careers altogether. We see her listed as a bonafide masseuse who lived and worked at the same address on Brunswick Avenue, still surrounded by family and friends, in a field in which she earned community respect and sustained work.

Slide 19: Summers at the beach and Community Connections Image: newspaper clippings: one regarding time at Allenwood, Manasquan, and various points along the shore; one noting her attendance at a Fifth Presbyterian Church Supper to celebrate the opening of a new Sunday School bldg and seated with sisters and friends at Table 4.

She enjoyed vacations, partaking in church functions, and remained close with family and friends.

Slide 20: Marriage  Image: Wedding announcement newspaper clipping Trenton Evening Times Mon, Aug 25, 1913 ·Page 7

At 52 years of age, on Saturday, August 23, 1913, Sarah married widower, produce dealer, and deacon Jasper H. Allen at the Central Baptist parsonage, 215 Academy Street.  The article notes that both Sarah and Jasper are prominent in religious circles, she being a teacher at the Fifth Presbyterian Sunday School, and he being deacon and treasurer of the Central Baptist Church.  They planned to have a honeymoon in Niagara Falls and Canada, and, of course, to live happily ever after—which I’m sure that they did.

Slide 21: Goodbye Sarah Image: Mrs. Jasper H. Allen newspaper announcement of her death; Thomas Rowland’s Burial Rites newspaper article.

On Wednesday, June 8, 1941, Sarah Allen died in her home.  Newspaper notice.

Finding Sarah was difficult.  It was through the men in her family that connections were discovered, that threads were pulled.

Even so, Sarah’s visibility in directories and newspapers suggests a woman who insisted on being known, despite the tendency of records to bury women under their husbands' and employers’ identities.

Slide 22 : Bridget Coleman, Nurse and Enigma  Image: Silhouette
Bridget Coleman
Bridget remains the most enigmatic of the three women. She was an Irish immigrant, arriving possibly in 1886, and served as a domestic worker in the Stokes household for decades. She never married. Census records list her as a servant from 1895 through 1910, and later as a domestic, assistant, nurse, and housemaid, from1915 through 1927, at the New Jersey School for the Deaf.

In 1932, she resided at 214 Mercer Street.  Right now, That’s all that I know of Bridget.  She had family.  She had friends.  And she flourished, we hope.

Slide 14: Closing Reflection
Closing Reflection
Through the stories of Sarah Lanning, Sarah Rowland, and the near absence of stories like Bridget Coleman—we begin to grasp a larger truth: that identity and recognition were privileges not evenly distributed, especially for women.

Today, we hear concerns about discrepancies between maiden names and married names affecting voting rights. We can see where these concerns stem from. In historical records, women were often nameless, identified only by their relationships to men, recorded not as individuals but as "Mrs." someone. Even educated, skilled, and independent women appeared in directories only if they had no husband to obscure them.

Undoubtedly, some men also faded into the background, but for women, it was the default.

If not for Aaron Lanning’s journal, we would know very little about Sarah Lanning. If not for a newspaper article on a long courtship, we wouldn’t know that Rose Rowland had been a chief operator. And if not for a few surviving city directories, we would not even know that Bridget Coleman worked at the School for the Deaf.

It is through these names, these glimpses, that we are reminded how history is not made only by the famous or the powerful—but by those who dared to be seen, and those who still wait to be found.

Slide 15: Thank You / Q&A
Image of William Trent House or montage of the three women’s associated records or locations.