Major John Nealley House
About This Tour
The Nealley House presents one room of brightly stenciled walls. Attributed to father and son stencilers, Moses Eaton Sr. and Moses Eaton Jr., you’ll find careful stenciled green motifs on a pink wall. Compare these designs to those found in Moses Eaton, Jr.’s toolbox, now held in the collection of Historic New England!
The house has a simple beauty that is difficult to appreciate from the street.
The Major John Nealley House
The Nealley House was built in 1786 in what is now known as Northwood, New Hampshire. A document passed down through the Nealley family tells us that Major John Nealley (ca. 1754-1807) retained or commissioned the skills of John Johnson, joiner, of East Northwood, New Hampshire to build a house within twelve months of signing the contract. It lists that Nealley would cut and haul the timber and provide the boards and nails, while Johnson would complete the framing and boarding. It also notes that Johnson would provide the sash, or the framework of windows that holds the glass in place. Documents such as this help historians date historic houses that were built hundreds of years ago.
This large but simple residence has minimal decorative detail. The primary entrance, which likely was updated in the early or mid-nineteenth century, has simple sidelights and bold pilasters supporting a triangular pediment. Inside, the house was built with several unusual features, including a large center chimney attached to six fireplaces, one of which is a corner fireplace. The house’s triple run staircase is decorated with simple turned balusters.
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​The Nealley House was most likely stenciled sometime after the death of Major John Nealley in 1807, when stenciling grew in popularity. Upon his death, the house was passed to his oldest son Joseph, and then was passed to Joseph’s second oldest son, John. The house was given to John’s daughter Loanna and remained within the family until the home was sold in the 1960s.
The artist who created this full wall of panel-style stenciling made an unusual choice: the stenciled element placed just above the baseboard was typically used by other artists in the frieze.​
The stenciling in this house can be viewed in the upstairs hallway and in the bridal chamber. While the plaster and paint in the hallway are badly damaged, the bridal chamber is well preserved, probably because the house remained in the family for several generations. According to oral history, the room was shuttered and closed for over sixty years, protecting the stenciled walls inside from everyday wear and tear. Upon entering the bridal chamber, the viewer is met with the delightful, complementary hues of deep pink walls and green trim. While a color palette of greens and reds is not unusual for stenciling, the use of pink as a background color is less common.
About the Art
About the Artist
It is unclear who might have been the artist behind these walls. The nature of stencil art — an art form that is based on duplication, and thus inherently easy to copy — makes it difficult to definitively confirm the artist without a signature or some form of documentation. It is suspected by some painted wall scholars that these walls were painted by Moses Eaton, Jr. (1796-1886). It is believed that Moses Eaton, Jr., and his father, Moses Eaton, Sr. (1753-1833) both worked stenciling walls throughout New Hampshire and Maine.
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One way that scholars can identify Eaton walls is by comparing the designs on walls to the stencils found in Eaton, Jr.’s toolbox, now in the collection of Historic New England. In the early twentieth century, Eaton researcher and author of Early American Wall Stencils, Janet Waring, was given Moses Eaton, Jr.’s stencil kit after it was discovered in his former home in Harrisville, New Hampshire. A comparison
The artist who stenciled the Nealley bedchamber made a second unusual choice. In addition to the design at the baseboard, the stencil used just above the mantel was also more typically used for the frieze.
between Eaton’s stencils and the stenciled elements in the bridal chamber of the Nealley House shows a standard application of Eaton’s “Pine Tree and Cross Boughs” stencil for the frieze, as well as his “Arch and Candle” stencil for the baseboard border. Interestingly, the “Arch and Candle” is more frequently found as a frieze pattern in other Eaton houses.
The stenciled designs on the overmantel have given scholars pause. Here, the artist used the “Bell and Swag” pattern — representing liberty and the pursuit of happiness — to decorate the overmantel. Typically, this design was used to create a frieze. It seems the artist further deviated from standard stenciling methods by swapping the typical colors of the two stencils used to make up this design, and even omitting some parts of it in favor of the artist’s own embellishments. With these changes, the artist created his own design. The artist also added heart, a motif typically reserved for bridal chambers, to the pattern in an atypical way by choosing to put them below the gathering of the swag instead of the typical place as the “clapper” in the bell.
While this room has many Eaton elements, it is important to note even small differences and deviations as they can greatly change our perspective as to who might have painted these walls.
