The folk art rebellion that shocked America’s Impressionist art family

The Sugar Heiress Who Rescued America’s Forgotten Past

Shelburne Museum in Vermont exists because a sugar heiress shocked her wealthy parents by collecting “American trash.”

Electra Havemeyer Webb grew up surrounded by Impressionist masterpieces but fell in love with cigar store Indians and weather vanes instead.

Her mother was horrified when nineteen-year-old Electra bought folk art rather than European paintings.

By 1947, Webb had collected 150,000 objects and began moving entire historic buildings across New England to house them.

She hauled a 220-foot steamboat overland and faced angry neighbors who wanted housing for returning veterans, not old barns. Here’s how this rebellious collector created America’s first village museum.

Rich Girl Buys "American Trash" That Her Mother Hated

In 1907, Electra Havemeyer spotted a wooden cigar store Indian in a Stamford, Connecticut shop. The 19-year-old sugar tycoon’s daughter quickly paid $15 for the folk art piece.

When she showed her mother Louisine the wooden squaw holding cigars, her mother was shocked. “What have you done?” she asked. Electra stood firm and said, “I bought a work of art.”

Louisine called it “perfectly dreadful” and “American trash. ” She complained about raising a daughter on Old Masters only to see her taste sink so low.

This purchase started Electra’s love for American folk art, twenty years before most collectors noticed these everyday items.

Her Parents Filled Their Home With European Masterpieces

Electra came from big money. Born August 16, 1888, she grew up as the youngest child of Henry Osborne Havemeyer, who ran the American Sugar Refining Company, and his wife Louisine Elder.

Her parents owned one of America’s best private collections of European paintings, many now in the Metropolitan Museum.

The family often traveled through the American West, France, Italy, Spain, Egypt, Greece, and Austria. Electra skipped college but learned plenty about culture at home.

Her parents held Sunday music events in their mansion and knew famous artists like Mary Cassatt. Her mother Louisine looked down on regular Americans and really disliked President Teddy Roosevelt.

She Married Into The Vanderbilt Fortune And Found Her Vermont Paradise

Electra’s life changed on February 8, 1910, when she married polo champion James Watson Webb II, great-grandson of railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Watson lived near Shelburne, Vermont, on land where his father ran the largest hackney horse breeding farm in America.

The property had a horse barn as big as Madison Square Garden, America’s first private golf course, and a castle-like coach house. When Electra first saw the Webb estate, she fell in love with it.

“I felt as though I was in dreamland,” she told friends.

Watson cared nothing for art and had little money himself, but wanted to live an expensive sporting lifestyle.

The Sugar Heiress Filled Her Tennis Court With "Junk"

Electra started collecting American folk art seriously in 1911, more than ten years before Colonial Williamsburg even existed.

She lived two ways: her Park Avenue penthouse at 740 Park Avenue showed over twenty Impressionist masterpieces, while her Vermont farmhouse displayed quilts, tiger maple furniture, and hooked rugs.

She turned an old tennis court building into storage for her growing collection of cigar store figures, weather vanes, and ship figureheads. Her children often said, “Mother is over in the tennis court with her junk.”

Her collection grew to include dolls made of many materials, plus doll clothing, houses, and carriages. She worked with top antique dealers to build complete collections of American crafts.

The Death Of Her Mother Planted A Museum Seed

The idea for a museum first came to Electra soon after her mother Louisine died in 1929. She first planned a small, free folk art museum in an old house in Shelburne.

But the project got delayed for 17 years. Part of the problem was that experts knew little about American folk art then.

Another issue was her husband Watson, who thought folk art wasted money and “made her feel bad about how she spent her own money.”

Finally, in late 1946, Electra hired handyman Bob Francis to start fixing up her first building.

Family Carriages Faced The Scrap Heap Until She Stepped In

The real push for the museum came in 1947 when her brother-in-law Vanderbilt Webb decided to get rid of the family’s collection of carriages and sleighs from their huge coach house.

The collection included “a vehicle for every possible occasion” from double buckboards to a shiny black Berlin, plus gigs, phaetons, and sleighs.

Electra couldn’t stand to see these carriages destroyed, so she asked if she could keep them in Shelburne. The family let her house the carriages in a horseshoe-shaped barn.

This became “the spark that lit the fire” for her outdoor museum. In 1947, Electra met with friends to officially create the Shelburne Museum.

She Hunted For Old Buildings Across New England

Electra became what friends called “an expert on old Vermont farmhouses, barns, schools, churches, bridges, and paddle wheelers.”

The Vermont Highway Department gave her a 168-foot covered bridge from the Lamoille River after they decided its two lanes were too narrow for cars.

The bridge, built in 1845, had served Cambridge, Vermont until 1949 and weighed 165 tons. It featured a unique outside walkway.

When a fancy Long Island estate architect showed plans for the museum layout, Electra rejected them as “too pompous” for the modest, weather-beaten buildings she loved.

She picked a simpler plan, placing buildings casually around a nice lawn without trying to copy a historical village layout.

Local People Thought She Was Crazy For Buying Old Buildings

The Webb family always faced suspicion from locals as the richest people “in it but not of it. ” When Electra started buying old buildings, town officials put many roadblocks in her way.

Returning World War II veterans felt especially upset about the museum project.

Angry neighbors wanted to know why this rich old lady bought old houses instead of building new ones for returning GIs. Local critics said, “Those old buildings won’t last ten years.”

Handyman Bob Francis knew better, but kept quiet as he carefully fixed each structure to match its original condition.

Five Men Risked Their Lives To Save A Lighthouse

In 1952, Electra bought the Colchester Reef Lighthouse after the Coast Guard stopped using it.

Built in 1871, the lighthouse had a post and beam frame held together by pegs, bolts, and iron rods to handle strong winds.

Five of Webb’s workers spent 26 dangerous days taking apart the lighthouse piece by piece during high winds and lake storms. The tricky job moved the old structure from the middle of Lake Champlain to the museum grounds.

Workers carefully numbered each piece so they could rebuild it exactly right. They put the lighthouse next to where a future steamboat would stand.

The Museum Opening Changed Local Minds

The Shelburne Museum opened to the public in 1952 after five years of work. The first visitors were mostly local people who entered through the covered bridge entrance.

They saw the results of hard work and good carpentry in buildings like the stagecoach inn that held Electra’s folk sculpture collection.

The general store caught everyone’s eye, restocked with complete merchandise from biscuits to “7 Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower.”

Local bad feelings quickly faded as visitors saw that Webb had created “a warm and eloquent tribute to the doughty virtues of their own Vermont forebears.

A 220-Foot Steamboat Traveled Two Miles Over Land

The most amazing feat came in 1955 when Electra saved the steamboat Ticonderoga.

Workers floated the boat into a specially dug, water-filled basin off Shelburne Bay and positioned it over a railroad carriage on special tracks.

They pumped the water out of the basin, allowing the 220-foot steamboat to settle onto the railroad carriage during winter.

Then came the hard part – hauling the massive vessel two miles across highways, over a swamp, through woods and fields, and across Rutland Railway tracks.

The operation took eight months of difficult labor and cost Webb $250,000.

Workers restored the interior to its original grandeur with butternut and cherry paneling and gold stenciled ceilings.

Visiting Shelburne Museum, Vermont

You can explore Electra Webb’s remarkable story at Shelburne Museum on 6000 Shelburne Road in Shelburne.

The sugar heiress moved 25 historic buildings from across New England to create this 45-acre campus with 39 buildings total. Your ticket costs $25 online ($27.

50 at the door, Vermont residents $15) and works for two days.

The museum opens daily 10am to 5pm from May 10 through October 26, 2025, with free shuttle service around the property.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.