A doctoral student in English, Elizabeth Barrett discovered there’s nothing better than being where events occurred and sifting through clues and histories first-hand to understand past lives.

A Lawrence Henry Gipson Institute for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Lehigh travel grant recipient, Barrett spent two weeks in England last summer visiting sites and combing through archives and documents to explore the life and economic rise and decline of the Huddleston clan, a minor noble family from Cumbria and Yorkshire.

The two-week research trip took Barrett to Millom in Cumbria, Whitehaven and Carlisle in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and the National Archives in London, among other historically significant sites, she says.

Wood held both practical and symbolic importance. Oak, an English symbol, was used for everything from furniture to shipbuilding. When the Great Frost of 1709 caused a timber shortage, demand grew for Colonial American walnut. Ironically, what people called "English style" at the time was actually the product of continental craftsmanship, transatlantic resource networks, and a shifting ecological landscape, Barrett explains.

From wood to war and its heartbreaking consequences Barrett, compared the long seismic changes to the oak as the English solid, dependable “status quo” of the 1600 and 1700s — and walnut’s continental strength, beauty and versatility — embodied after major climatic events. 

“Oak was a native English timber that symbolized steadfast loyalty to the monarchy and reflected a rooted royalist identity in heavy, traditional household furnishings. Walnut rose in prominence, reflecting refined, Baroque sensibilities brought back by returning elites” from the continent, Barrett explained in her Gipson grant application. 

Sourced from the American colonies, walnut became a symbol of “trade, luxury, refinement and the expanding status of opulence within the British transatlantic empire,” she says.

“The style was super popular in the late 1600s to early 1700s and was made from walnut rather than oak, a stylistic change that is happening. This household shift of décor, the sources and making furniture that isn’t made in England but represents what was made,” Barrett explains.

As period styles enjoyed a resurgence in the later 1800s as reproductions, the marketplace expanded along with British household style tastes.

The comparison invited closer inspection against a backdrop of English politics, culture, public economies and one family’s private fortunes. The Huddlestons, which can trace roots beyond Charlemagne, experienced wealth and “upward mobility” until their Royalist associations culminated in profound, life-altering losses.

The family’s abundance — and eventual decline — forms the backbone of Barrett’s research.

“What is most striking is how much is missing… the bigger picture demands that I read beyond the archive into the literature of the period. If the archive tells me what happened and when, then poetry, novels and plays tell me what it meant as a lived experience,” Barrett says. 

Barrett's core research focuses on 1600–1750, though the broader "long 18th century" extends into the American Colonial era. Her work examines how land ownership and wealth connected to political power, and how significant debt affected a family's influence, social standing, and welfare.

“Equally relevant with this family and this period is the aspect of war. My angle is a women’s side of war,” Barrett says.

In mining the long-ago past, Barrett discovered aspects of political loyalty, ancestry, war and American Colonial expansion were grounded in the lived experiences and ideal type representations of women.

Barrett considered ideal type-representations of women and the household during the English Stuart Period (1603 –1714) and Age of Enlightenment, dominated by England’s Hanoverian kings (1714-1910) including King George III who reigned during the American War for Independence.

Great Britain was “becoming multi-cultural” during this period and their ideas of governance are absolute. “Before the war Parliament certainly existed, but times were changing, and certainly not everyone was always together for the king,” she says.

The Huddlestons’ loyalty to the crown eventually cost them their heritage forests and estates to deal with debts incurred during the English Civil War, Barrett adds.

Fierce Royalists, the Huddleston’s abundance and declining standing and fortunes became a cautionary tale.

Barrett investigated Huddleston estate records, wills, deeds and inventories, which became a daily record of their wealth and losses — especially war casualties the family sustained.

A mother and U.S. military veteran, Barrett was “trained for war and to mobilize” two personal aspects which brought a deeper level to her work.

“There were nine brothers who were Royalists in the English Civil War. Sources suggest many of them died in the war — as a mother that is unimaginable,” she says.

One military strategy of the time was damaging, or "slighting," a castle so it could not be defended again. This happened to the Huddleston family, who lost everything because of their political affiliations, Barrett explains.

In making connections between the modern concept of “total war, which disregards traditional lines between combatants and civilians, and this war, seemingly one on the land and people,” Barrett drew historic conclusions from a contemporary concept.

Her interest in the family led to an appreciation of the family’s women, home and hearth practices – through their lens – along with those “who don’t show up on muster lists for the war and battles. It was really a project to find out more about this family.”

The Huddlestons were an ambitious and “upwardly mobile family” and their story illustrates their personal rise and fall.

Barrett says connecting interdisciplinary dots led to stories of valor, early Colonial American settlements, the transatlantic impacts as well as their family tree’s descendants, which connect to modern times.

“As for doing the research, I learned there is so much more to dig into…to really put these two important pieces together in forming my analysis and narrative. It was a huge opportunity to get the experience overseas in all those rooms with old, amazing documents, and I take the responsibility of doing this work very seriously,” Barrett says.

Another outcome of Barrett’s research was understanding the 17th century as a period of “blossoming of the middle class,” which began to shift the dynamic cultural and economic weight of the aristocracy and royals toward commoners.

She says the experiences traveling, researching and writing about the Huddleston family have been two-fold, and the “boots on the ground” opportunity was a first-hand way to learn more deeply about their lives.

“It is one thing to think about wills and inventories from the middle of the 1600s, it is quite another thing to hold the brittle paper and parchment covered in iron-gall ink in my own hand,” Barrett says.