The Howarths of Fall River and Swansea, Massachusetts

This is a colorized photograph of the farmhouse of my great-great-grandparents, Joseph and Sarah Anne Hamlet Howarth, taken in 1876. It was located on what is now 759 Marvel Street, Swansea. I was inspired to mosaic this scene by this photo of Sarah Anne, standing in front of the house she and her husband Joseph had purchased that year. I wanted to bring to life a happy moment of immigrants sharing their success with their families in England.

Joseph Howarth was a veteran of the British Army and fought in the Sepoy Rebellion in India in 1858, receiving a medal for valor in the Battle of Jansi. He married Sarah Hamlet and they had two children; they lived in Ashton-Under-Lyne near Manchester, England. In 1871 he was listed in the England census as a hat maker like his father before him, and she was a cotton weaver. He “commuted” many times to Fall River, Massachusetts over about 10 years to work in the Weetamoe Mills. He earned his way back and forth by working as an entertainer on steamships. It is likely Sarah was working during this period in Manchester as a weaver, helping to finance their move to Fall River.

In 1873 his family joined him to live in an apartment in Fall River. In 1876, when they were both 44 years old, he resigned from the mill, and “retired” to this farmhouse in Swansea, six miles from the city. It was built in 1844, and he paid $800 for it.

Pictured above: Joseph and Sarah Howarth

Their son John Joe, a supplier of vegetables for the Fall River market, inherited the house in 1917, and when he died in 1927, his son John (Jack) Henry Howarth inherited it. Jack, a WWI veteran, was my grandfather, and he moved his family into this house with no central heating, plumbing or electricity just in time for the Great Depression. The farm had little usable infrastructure, they went bankrupt, and Jack sunk into alcoholism- farming is not easy.

I have been diving passionately into my family’s history to discover the roots of my own life story. My mother’s history centers on Fall River, as both sides of her family immigrated there from England and Germany in the late 1800s, and all worked in the textile mills. Later, the Howarths brought vegetables to the city’s markets.

My mother, Muriel Howarth, lived here from ages 8-14, 1930-36. She told us stories about difficult times, like how cold it was in the unheated loft she shared with her sister. She boasted of how she had to walk over a mile to the one room school house down the road (which is still there as a duplex house in 2024). Her mother, Annie, who worked in the city mills until they shut down; would frequently leave her family, and stay with her own father and sister in Fall River on 85 Marchand Street.

Her father’s parents, John Joe and Alice, had built a house diagonally across the street for their large family in 1888, expanded and renovated in about 1902 . By the 1930’s, her fathers youngest brother Marsden Perry owned the house and scraped a living through market gardening and selling eggs and smoked fish. Other aunts and uncles lived nearby, but my mother did not speak of them and they did not keep in touch. Marsden and his wife Jane Carr adopted a son, Marsden Perry Jr. He eventually built a house next to his father’s and across the street from his grandfather’s house. By 1948 it was owned by Roland and Ethel Aubut, who lived here until their deaths in 1993 and 2001, respectively. The house was burned by the Swansea fire department in the early 2000s, most likely due to uninhabitable conditions.

In 1995 my mom took me and my children to see this house in Swansea- it was then painted red the same as when she lived there.

Creating this mosaic has been for me an empathetic meditation on her challenges growing up in this place and time and its impact on her and her children.

I am grateful to Cheryl Wheeler who lived next door to the house since the early 1970s, and knew the Aubuts. I met her wife Cathleen at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River when I had this piece in a show there in the fall of 2024. Cathleen told me of the connection, and that Cheryl had written a song about the couple. I knew that song “Quartermoon” very well, as I had heard Cheryl sing it many times since the 1980s. It was part of the soundtrack of my life in that era, it portrayed a lifestyle and relationship that I aspired to.

Sarah Howarth and her Swansea House, 1876

Much appreciation to the late M Perry Howarth for the Howarth family history and photos. Perry was my mother’s cousin and he put together an illustrated document that this story is based on. He was also the “Auto Answerman” columnist in the Providence Journal for many years.

Thanks also to Sarah Lynch, my friend and a structural engineer extraordinaire. This representational mosaic style was new for me and a huge challenge. Sarah taught me how to do perspective and offered invaluable hands-on support and suggestions as I tackled this house mosaic.