George Perkins Marsh's Walking Stick
Made by Isaac Smith
circa 1840-1860
Exotic tropical hardwood, silver, and silver wire
Length 93.0 cm, diameter at head approx. 3.5 cm.
MABI 2890

Title page
Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action , by George Perkins Marsh, 2nd printing (New York: C. Scribner, 1865)

Portrait
Engraved portrait of George Perkins Marsh by H.B. Hall Jr. of New York, after an oil portrait by G.P.A. Healy. The engraving appears as the frontispiece portrait of the book, Life and Letters of George Perkins Marsh , by Caroline Crane Marsh (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1888), vol.1.

Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park
Photo credit: Jon Gilbert Fox

This walking stick with a silver head engraved "GPM" was long stored among the canes and parasols in the Mansion attic at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. It was owned and used by George Perkins Marsh -scholar, diplomat, and author of Man and Nature (1864), a founding text of the worldwide environmental movement. Marsh grew up in Woodstock, Vermont, on the property that is now Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. As a boy, he lived in the house that is now known as the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller Mansion.

Frederick Billings purchased the house and property from the Marsh family in 1869, and he and his descendants occupied the property until it was deeded to the National Park Service and opened to the public in 1998.

When the walking stick was first observed and cataloged at the Mansion in 1975, it stood out as the only item, among all the antique furnishings of the house, with an identifiable connection to the Marsh family. Why was it alone among the Billings heirlooms, when all the other Marsh possessions and furnishings were dispersed to the Marsh heirs long ago?

The origin of the walking stick was revealed in an exchange of correspondence preserved in the Billings Family Archives-a series of letters between Frederick Billings in New York and Caroline Crane Marsh, George Perkins Marsh's widow, in Florence, Italy. The correspondence mostly concerned the purchase of George Perkins Marsh's library for the University of Vermont. But it also revealed that Mr. Billings asked Mrs. Marsh for a memento from George Perkins Marsh, and Mrs. Marsh complied, in 1883, by offering a cane, or walking stick.

The walking stick was evidently accepted, and made its way to the house in Vermont in later years, where it is treasured as an emblem of the high regard of Billings for Marsh, resonating in the story of conservation stewardship at Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park.