#fairingpigs

By Jonathan Monfiletto

The L. Caroline Underwood Museum is named for the woman – whose given first name was Lucy, though she always went by her middle name of Caroline – who was a prominent, lifelong citizen of Yates County and a distinguished, longtime teacher in the Penn Yan school district. While she taught for nearly 50 years – reaching the mandatory retirement of 70 years old – and served as a substitute teacher for another year or two after that, Caroline had a vision to turn her home into a museum.

The Underwood Museum, of course, is not that home; throughout most of her adult life, Caroline lived in a home at 425 Liberty St. in the vicinity of the Yates County Courthouse. In the late 1990s, toward the end of Caroline’s life, when Yates County decided to expand its courthouse complex and construct an office building, the county gave Caroline the choice of selling her home to the county or forfeiting it through eminent domain. She did agree to sell her home to the county with the stipulation she could live in it until she died, which she did in December 1998 a week shy of turning 96.

Through Caroline’s bequest, the Yates County History Center established the Underwood Museum in the home at 107 Chapel St. to bring her vision to fruition and acquired her collections and belongings, which are on permanent exhibit on the second floor of the home. Being an only child and never having married nor had children, Caroline inherited many items through her parents, acquired possessions of her own, and purchased souvenirs on her travels across the country and around the world as well as at yard sales and estate sales.

Though Caroline Underwood is not a household name, even among the local history of Yates County and the Finger Lakes, her collections fascinate me. Particularly, there is a display case on the second floor of the Underwood Museum that houses souvenirs Caroline purchased on her many vacations. Having several of her travel journals in our collection, we at the Yates County History Center can match up many of the items in this display case to the several trips Caroline documented.

Still, one section of this display case has mystified me for the two and a half years I have worked at the History Center. That is Caroline’s ceramic or porcelain – it’s described as both in our collections database – pig collection. It stands out prominently on one of the lower shelves of the display case and typically draws visitors’ attention more than anything else in the exhibit. But I haven’t known as much about this part of Caroline’s collections as I would have liked to, and I still don’t.

Did Caroline acquire this collection for herself, or did someone purchase it for her? The 59 pieces all seem to be part of a related collection, but did other people – perhaps students – give her pieces of the collection at separate times? Why did Caroline like pigs so much? Did she even like pigs that much (I have a weird theory to go with this regard)?

Until now, the most I had known about Caroline’s pig collection came from former Yates County Sheriff Ronald Spike, whose father, George, was the sheriff before him at a time when the sheriff had quarters inside the county jail. Ron lived with his parents inside the jail on Liberty Street, near Caroline’s home. In his youth, Ron apparently struggled in school and needed extra help, so he would go to Caroline’s home after school for tutoring. Afterward, so the anecdote goes, he would tell his friends about seeing Miss Underwood’s pig collection and how the teacher told him not to touch it.

Recently, though, through a couple of visitors to the exhibit, I learned this collection may be examples of what are called fairing pigs, or fairings for short. Fairings were small porcelain or ceramic – again, the articles I found in my research describes them both ways – trinkets given away as prizes at fairs (hence the name) or sold for just a few pennies each. They were generally produced during the Victorian era, from 1840 to 1900, and they were German in origin – Germans believing pigs are a sign of good fortune or luck.

The figurines were usually 2 to 3 inches in height or width at a maximum, according to an article from the Polohouse. “Some where (sic) match holders with a match strike area, some were small banks, vases, or lidded boxes,” the article states. “And others were sweet little figural pieces without a purpose – many with a humorous inscription.” Indeed, one of Caroline’s figures features a mother pig peering into a cradle perhaps, with three piglets pictured on its side with the phrase “Triplets, O fancy.” Another of her figurines depicts a mother pig wearing an apron with a bell at her eye level and is labeled “The Dinner Bell,” as she calls her piglets to the table. Yet another of Caroline’s pigs, which is also pictured in the Polohouse article, shows a mother pig leaning over her piglet’s crib; the side of the pig reads: “Hush a bye baby, don’t you cry, you’ll be a sausage by and bye.”

An article from the Treasures in Your Attic column adds that fairings functioned as small dresser boxes, toothpick holders, chamber sticks, match holders, and ashtrays as well as small figures riding in early automobiles, playing piano, posed beside a bean pot, sitting on a sofa, or mailing a letter. Polohouse describes fairings as being painted with the same green paint and the same peachy pink paint for the pigs, along with metallic gold and deep orange-red and other colors. While Caroline’s pigs aren’t identified in our collections database as fairings, they certainly fit the bill with these color schemes on the figurines in her collection.

Based upon the evidence in these articles and a few others I consulted in my research, I am almost certain (I feel like I cannot be fully certain without documentation) that Caroline’s pig collection is indeed a set of fairings. Now, my next is where and how did she acquire this collection or from whom did she receive these pieces?