22 ACUMEN • SPRING 2026 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. MELINDA RIZZO CHRISTINE KRESCHOLLEK Informational treasure trove, from timber types to cost of loyalty Elizabeth Barrett explores a “minor” English family to better understand transitions in British history— and the cost of blind loyalty to the crown 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. Elizabeth Barrett
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