Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/1162395
Hamilton and Wenham are known for their history of equestrian sports. the character of the North Shore in profound ways. When equestrian sports like polo and fox hunting arrived in the midst of the Gilded Age, the region became a breeding ground for talent. For decades, the U.S. Equestrian Team trained in South Hamilton. George S. Patton, perhaps Hamilton's most famous resident, competed on horseback at the 1912 Olympics before earning renown during World War II. And that regional embrace of equestrian life left a gift even for locals who've never sat in a saddle: The landscapes set aside for riding are at the core of some 15,000 contiguous acres of open space carved out just miles from Boston. Equestrian Histories, an exhibition at Wenham Museum that opened in June, celebrates this legacy with 1,100 square feet of artifacts, images, and mementos aimed at riders and nonriders alike, offering a glimpse of how equestrian sport has transcended its aristocratic origins and left a lasting influ- ence. "This is part of history," says Winifred Perkin Gray, chair of the committee that developed the exhibit and a lifelong eques- trian. "And it's not just a part of the history of Wenham; it's part of the history of the North Shore and New England." Beginning in the late 1800s, the North Shore became a destination for leisure-seeking titans of the Gilded Age. They could head north from Boston by train, sail yachts on the North Atlantic, and ride their steeds on the horse farms clustered around the region. Ham- ilton's Myopia Hunt Club—a locus of polo and foxhunting—was founded by a member of the Forbes family. Bradley Palmer, who co-found- ed the United Fruit Company in 1899, rode on a 700-plus-acre estate in Topsfield. And in the wake of the 20th-century housing boom, those pristine acres were natural candidates for land conservation; the trails and carriage paths on Appleton Farms in Ipswich and Bradley Palmer State Park in Topsfield, for example, were initially created for the rigors of riding. 95