February 23-29, 1916

Before I can begin sharing Kate Roosevelt’s diary entry for the last week of February, 1916, I must first re-visit the year 1891 and escort readers to a “Charming Wedding,” as reported in the New York Times. I have been sharing the life of Kate Shippen Roosevelt through her diary entries written beginning in 1912, and many times along the way I have had to stop in amazement as I read her most candid comments relating to people she knew and places she went.

Horace Greeley on his farm in Chappaqua, 1869

When I began editing the diary written by the widow of Hilborne Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt’s first cousin, I was ready for her to share stories about family members and what life was like for a wealthy widow at the turn-of-the-twentieth century, but I was not prepared for the name-dropping that I would encounter in nearly every one of her writings. In each one I was pleasantly surprised at how knowledgeably she discussed world events and the important participants, most of whom she knew on a first-name basis. In just a few words, the diary of Kate Shippen Roosevelt shared with me and hopefully for my readers a slice of life that has long -since passed.  Sometimes it has even reminded relatives of the Roosevelt and Shippen Families of fond family memories and has also peaked the interest of historians who are just getting to know Kate Roosevelt through The Dowager’s Diary.  Thanks to this journal, as I write, descendants of the family and members of the history community have contacted me to add an obscure fact or an ancestral anecdote.

This was the case just the other day. After New York’s Social Diary shared The Dowager’s Diary on their Facebook Page, a member of the Westchester County Historical Society in New York sent me a note.  He said the he immediately recognized the name of Kate Roosevelt as a member of an impressive guest list that helped celebrate what the New York Times referred to as “A charming wedding.”

Now a whole new cast of characters was introduced to help round out the life of Kate Roosevelt going back as far as 1891.  Since I only have access to her diary through the years 1912-1919, it is always interesting to fill in some of the blanks of her earlier life.  In 1891, at the height of the “Gilded Age,” she had been a widow for just five years, but a very well-connected one at that and her attendance at the wedding of Horace Greeley’s daughter added to her celebrity status.

The Bride, Gabrielle Greeley

The wedding of Gabrielle Greeley and Reverend Frank Montrose Clendenin, the pastor of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in the Bronx was solemnized at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Chappaqua on Sunday, April 23, 1891.  The bride’s deceased father was Horace Greeley, the former owner of the New York Tribune and a notoriously controversial politician. He served as a United States congressman and ran against Ulysses S. Grant in the 1872 presidential election on the Liberal Republican Party Ticket and coined the phrase “Go west young man.”

The newlyweds were anything but a young couple.  Because of their religious calling and active participation in the Episcopal Church, neither thought that marriage would be in their future.  Miss Greeley, known as “Lady Bountiful of Chappaqua,” was thirty-two and Reverend Clendenin, a graduate of the Princeton Theological Seminary, was thirty-seven when they said their “I do’s.”

The Groom: Rev. Frank Montrose Clendenin, 1900

The New York Times described the simple but charming wedding, reporting that the bride was given away by an old Greeley Family Friend, the Reverend Thomas McKee Brown, the rector of St. Mary the Virgin Church located on Longacre Square in New York City.  The area is now known as Times Square.

The newspaper reported, “The bride wore a gown of silver brocade with a train trimmed in chiffon, the latter embroidered with little bowknots.  A veil of Duchesse Lace was caught in the back of the head with a diamond pin.  A bouquet of lilies of the valley and ferns were placed on top of a prayer book. The only attendant was Miss Elizabeth Chamberlain of Pleasantville, New York.”

Elizabeth Chamberlain’s Home, the Orchard

Elizabeth Chamberlain was the spinster daughter of Ivory Chamberlain, the editor of the New York Herald. Miss Chamberlain’s lifelong, domestic partner, Miss Maria Gerard Messenger, was the organist.  Independently wealthy, the spinsters were active in church and charitable pursuits in the town of Chappaqua.  In old age, they shared the Chamberlain estate known as “The Orchard.”

After the small church ceremony, the bride went to the rectory to change into a grey wool traveling suit and matching hat and the Times reported, “At eleven o’clock, she and her husband made their appearance at the railroad station where the drawing room car was waiting on a siding to take them to New York City.”

More than twelve hundred invitations were sent out, requesting the honor of the ranks of the “Who’s Who” in the United States to attend a wedding reception at the home of Miss Maria Messenger at 114 East 19^th Street.

Kate Roosevelt and her sisters, the spinsters Shippen along with her married sister Anna Davis and brother, William Shippen made the impressive guest list.

Rev. Henry Codman Potter

The party-goers included many noted Episcopal bishops and clerics of the day.  Reverend G. H. Houghton, the founder of the Church of the Transfiguration also known as the “The Little Church Around the Corner” on Mott Street in Manhattan and Henry Potter, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York provided a sacred presence.

Mrs. Washington Roebling, a wedding guest

The non-sectarian society members that were listed in the wedding announcement were impressive to say the least and included: Mr. and Mrs. James M. Waterbury, of the Waterbury Rope Company; the pioneering philanthropist, astronomer, Miss Catherine Bruce; the former New York City Mayor and Mrs. William Grace; Mrs. Washington Roebling, the widow of the builder of the Brooklyn Bridge; General and Mrs. Louis di Cesnola, the first director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and their daughters; the author, Mary Mapes Dodge who wrote Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates; Bishop Potter’s daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop Cowdin;  Honorable Oscar Straus, Commerce and Labor Secretary under President Theodore Roosevelt; John Hay, a former member of Greeley’s New York Tribune staff who was also President Lincoln’s private secretary and  future Secretary of State under President Theodore Roosevelt; Esther Cleveland, Horace Greeley’s sister and her daughters and Mrs. Choate, the widow of Dr. George Choate.  Horace Greeley was a patient at Choate’s Psychiatric Sanitarium in Chappaqua.  He went there to regain his mental health after losing the 1872 presidential election to General Ulysses S. Grant and died just weeks later.

Left to Right: Secretary John Nicolay, President Lincoln and Secretary John Hay

With the Greeley wedding over, we will now travel ahead twenty five years, to 1916 where another wedding is on the mind of Mrs. Kate Roosevelt, the upcoming nuptials of her nephew, Oliver Wolcott Roosevelt.  To celebrate the engagement, she attended a reception for the couple at her sister- in- law, Laura Roosevelt’s home on East 31^st Street. As the widow of Dr. James West Roosevelt, Laura played gracious host to many.

According to the book, Edith Kermit Roosevelt: Portrait of a First Lady by Sylvia Jukes Morris, “In the beginning of February, 1912, Edith Roosevelt went to Laura Roosevelt’s town house on East 31^st Street for a few weeks.  She said she wanted to see a few plays and operas and friends, but in effect she was upset with Theodore’s growing involvement in politics and wished to disassociate herself from the Republican intriguers thronging Sagamore Hill.”

Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee, Oct. 1912

Maybe the former first lady had an inkling of events to come. It was at Laura Roosevelt’s residence that Edith was staying in October, 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt was shot while campaigning on the “Bull Moose” Progressive Party Ticket in  Milwaukee for a third term as president. According to her niece, Corinne Robinson, Edith Roosevelt had moved to New York once again to stay with Aunt Laura and that evening to two women went to the theater together. Morris’s book recreated the scene, “They were seated on the aisle, with Edith on the inside.  There was a spare seat next to her for Laura’s son, Oliver, who was working at his cousin, Theodore’s New York City Progressive Party Headquarters at the Hotel Manhattan and had not yet arrived.  He did not do so until after the curtain rose.  As Oliver sat down, Edith reached out and touched his knee in greeting, only to find that he was shaking violently.  She realized at once that something had happened to Theodore.”

Edith Roosevelt

In silent inquiry, Edith Roosevelt gripped Oliver’s hand. The groom-to-be was the one that first informed Edith that telegrams had come in from Milwaukee with news of the assassination attempt. “Edith grasped his hand and asked Oliver to go back to headquarters and make sure the news was not worse.  He did so and soon re-appeared to report that Cousin Theodore had in fact been “scratched” but had kept on with his speech.”  Even though Laura urged her to leave the theater, the two women stayed until the end of the performance. Edith insisted on staying, feeling re-assured at the good news Oliver Roosevelt had given her.

Whatever the mood, happy, sad, annoyed or worried, the Roosevelts stuck together. Now they were preparing to welcome a new member into America’s “Royal Family.”  Grace Temple Olmstead was the bride-to-be and her future mother-in-law, Laura Roosevelt was pleased to introduce her to society and to two important family members, Kate and Edith Roosevelt.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Opening Photo:
Horace Greeley and his New York Tribune Staff
Greeley, third from left, front row
Library of Congress

Photo Two:
Horace Greeley on his farm in Chappaqua, 1869
Wiki

Photo Three:
The Bride, Gabrielle Greeley
Westchester Archives

Photo Four:
The Groom: Rev. Frank Montrose Clendenin, 1900
New Castle Historical Society

Photo Five:
Elizabeth Chamberlain’s Home, the Orchard
Westchester County Historical Society

Photo Six:
Rev. Henry Codman Potter
wiki

Photo Seven:
Mrs. Washington Roebling, a wedding guest
Brooklyn Museum

Photo Eight:
Left to Right: Secretary John Nicolay, President Lincoln and Secretary John Hay
Library of Congress

Photo Nine:
Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee, Oct. 1912
Library of Congress

Photo Ten:
Edith Roosevelt
wiki

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Fifty-Five appeared first on Woman Around Town.

February 23-29 And March 1, 1916

1916 was a leap year and so Kate Roosevelt was able to add an extra day to the month of February. Evoking a scene from the Sixth Season of PBS’ series, Downton Abbey when Mrs. Hughes, the head housekeeper married Mr. Carson, the head butler, two members of the Roosevelt staff tied the knot. Kate’s longtime and long-suffering, chauffeur, Louis Bourke, and her grandsons, Langdon and Shippen Geer’s devoted governess, Miss Gowans were married on February 23, 1916 at the Church of the Transfiguration on East 29^th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenue. Also called the “Little Church Around the Corner,” it was located literally just around the corner from Kate Roosevelt’s home at 301 Lexington Avenue. As a benevolent employer, she probably arranged for the ceremony as she was friendly with all of the Episcopal elite of the city, including the beloved rector of the church, Reverend George Houghton, who  celebrated  many happy occasions with her, including the wedding of Horace Greeley’s daughter many years before.

George Holland

In addition to joyous occasions, the clergyman also presided over some sad ones as well and that is how the church became known as “The Little Church around the Corner.” In 1870 the rector of nearby, Church of the Atonement refused to conduct funeral services for an actor named George Holland, who was thought of as a social outcast because of his profession. The rector said, “I believe there’s a little church around the corner that does that sort of thing.” Reverend Houghton answered a higher calling and sent the impoverished actor off in style. The Church of the Transfiguration was established in 1848 and held services in a private home at 48 East 29^th Street until its permanent home was built. The Neo-Gothic-style church sits behind an English-inspired garden and is now a New York City Landmark and also on the United States Register of Historic Places.

P.G. Wodehouse, Novel Cover, Gentleman of Leisure, 1910

Additionally, it is home to the Episcopal Actor’s Guild and used was used as inspiration for the church scenes fictionalized in P.G. Wodehouse’s novels. The author was married there in 1914.

Kate did not say where the happy couple honeymooned, but she did own a beautiful farm called Merdlemouth in Hightstown, New Jersey that was empty for the winter. A new addition and up-to-date plumbing had just been installed along with a spacious new servant’s wing. Maybe she graciously gave them the key to the main house and hopefully a few days off to start off their life as man and wife, not just Bourke and Gowans, the hired help.

After-all, Kate could at times be a romantic and as she watched these two members of her staff say their vows, I imagined her looking over to the church’s side chapel and admiring the beautiful organ, her late-husband, Hilborne Roosevelt’s firm had installed there in 1885, the year before he died. She and Hilborne were also married during the month of February in 1881 at what was described as “The Wedding of the Season.”  It was a bittersweet moment for sure, two just starting out in life and her love, long- gone.

But enough for sugary sentimentality, Kate Roosevelt still had lots to do in the fleeting last days of February, 1916.

Flora Sandes

“I to lecture on Serbia, given by Miss Sandes at Juliet Hamilton’s studio.” Flora Sandes was the only British woman to officially serve as a soldier during World War I. She was a volunteer ambulance driver and traveled to Serbia. During the confusion of war she was formally enrolled in the Serbian Army, injured and decorated with seven medals. Most likely she was in the United States promoting her autobiography, An Englishwoman-Sergeant in the Serbian Army,” with proceeds going to the comfort of Serbian Soldiers and prisoners of war.

Like many other well-heeled ladies in the city, Kate and Juliet were doing their part to become educated about what was happening in Europe as America tittered on the brink of falling into World War One.

Juliet Morgan Hamilton and her sister, Anne

Now that I found out who the soldier Flora Sandes was, I thought I might try and see who’s salon Kate was visiting. The name Juliet Hamilton didn’t mean much to me, but when I began doing some research I realized that she was more than just another New York City socialite.  She was the middle daughter of the extraordinarily wealthy financier, J.P. Morgan and most likely she was hosting this lecture at the encouragement of her younger sister, Anne Tracy Morgan who was actively involved in the relief effort in France along with her friends, the theater agent, Elisabeth Marbury, and actress, Elsie de Wolfe.

Children of J.P. Morgan

Born in 1870, Juliet was said to be the prettiest of the three Morgan daughters. Her best friend was Emily Post, the American author and etiquette expert. The two were friends since childhood when Emily was Emily Price and Juliet was Juliet Morgan. Like their friend, Kate Roosevelt, they did not support women voting or taking an active role in war efforts. Juliet frowned on her younger sister, Anne’s radical tendencies and warned her of “overextending” herself.

Emily Price Post

Besides being the offspring of one of the richest men in America, Juliet was the wife of Alexander Hamilton’s great-great-grandson, William Pierson Hamilton. The couple was married in April, 1894 at St. George’s Episcopal Church on 16^th Street in Stuyvesant Square.  Two of the buildings that make up the historic complex were gifts of the bride’s father, J.P. Morgan.

The New York Times described the wedding ceremony as being “overcrowded with more than 3,000 guests in attendance.” The bride wore a satin dress trimmed with point lace ruffles on the bodice and skirt. A crown of diamonds fastened a lace veil that hung delicately over a long train. The Times reported “Elaborate masses of lilies and Jacqueminot Roses filled the vestibule. Rare and tropical palms crisscrossed the chancel with white ribbons trailing the plants in front of the church. The aroma of hothouse flowers and the perfume of well-bred women filled the air.” The reception was held at the Morgan’s brownstone at 219 Madison Avenue, just down the block from the Morgan Library at 225 Madison Avenue.

It seems that the salon belonging to Juliet Morgan Hamilton had long been the place for women to discuss politics, swap stories and give book reviews. In 1895, Emily Post and some friends had lunch with Juliet to gossip about the recently brokered wedding of Consuelo Vanderbilt to Charles Spencer Churchill, the 9^th Duke of Marlborough and present a book written by Post entitled The Title Market that dealt with “a highfalutin social world that exchanged European titles for American cash.” Edith Wharton’s novel, The Buccaneers was based on the concept of sending moneyed-maidens into the arms of calculating European landholders.

Anne Tracy Morgan

Neither marriage lasted. Juliet divorced William Hamilton and Consuelo fell in love with Colonel Jacques Balsan, a record-breaking French aircraft pioneer who once worked with the Wright Brothers.

From gossip to government, there weren’t enough hours in the day to keep up with the energetic Kate Roosevelt.

It was a good thing that February had an extra day that year, because Kate would need every minute to keep pace with her commitments.

Right after saying her farewell to Juliet Hamilton, she rushed over to Park Avenue, “To have tea with Mrs. George E. Roosevelt.”  It seemed a bit cold to identify a family member so formally, but that was how the diary introduced her.  Thanks to Philip Roosevelt, the great-great grandson of W. Emlen Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, I found out who this momentarily-mentioned Mrs. Roosevelt was and voila, another branch on the family tree had sprouted.

Her full name was Julia Morris Addison Roosevelt. A near-newly-wed, she was married in 1914 to Emlen’s son, George Emlen Roosevelt.  A 1909 Harvard graduate, George E. Roosevelt was private secretary to his cousin Theodore Roosevelt during his failed 1912 presidential election and the Vice President and Treasurer of Roosevelt Hospital and senior partner in Roosevelt and Sons, one of the oldest investment banking firms on Wall Street.

I am sure tea was lovely, but maybe a bit tepid, finding the two women possibly discussing family business. Kate Roosevelt and her daughter Dorothy Roosevelt Geer owned stock in Roosevelt and Sons and cousin Emlen made sure their dividends were enough to keep them living like Roosevelt Royalty.

On February 26^th, Kate and her side-kick, sister, Ettie Shippen attended a pageant at the 19^th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue and 26^th Street to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the YWCA.  The entire month of February was dedicated to the founding of this organization founded to benefit the welfare of women and girls.  At the membership banquet that Kate and Ettie attended, students from Barnard College were among the ticket-holders who had come to hear Mayor Mitchell, Miss Lucetta Daniell of Columbia Teacher’s College, Mrs. Vera Cushman a YWCA volunteer and former President Theodore Roosevelt speak. Even though Kate and Cousin Teddy didn’t always agree on political matters they were each involved with charitable and civic causes that bettered the lives of both men and women.  Suffrage was another “can of worms,” a subject not always welcomed to be opened at family gatherings.

Next on the agenda was shopping at one of the world’s best known department stores, Wanamaker’s on Broadway and Tenth Avenue for something to wear that night.

Century Theater

On February 29^th Kate and of course, Ettie attended two presentations on “preparedness.”  The first one was held at the Century Theater on Central Park West. No mention was made of the topic, but according to Kate Roosevelt, whatever was it was, it fell, “very flat.” Not to be discouraged, the sisters traveled over to Carnegie Hall on Seventh Avenue between West 56^th and West 57^th Street to see a documentary called “Defense or Tribute” put on by the National Security League. As part of a campaign to raise membership to one million in 1916 it carried the message that the countries who were most prepared for war were victorious. Called a “mass meeting by the media,” it was called “enthusiastic” by the well-connected critic, Kate Roosevelt.

Theodore Roosevelt speaking at Carnegie Hall, 1912

Carnegie Hall held a special place in the hearts of the Roosevelts. In 1878, when Kate’s husband, Hilborne Roosevelt, along with the German conductor,  Leopold Damrosch, founded the New York Symphony, Carnegie Hall was just a dream, but Andrew Carnegie appreciated the fact that the city had its own orchestra. Soon after the deaths of Damrosch and Roosevelt, Damrosch’s son, Walter took over as conductor of the symphony and held the baton in1891 at the newly-opened Carnegie Hall, financed by the Scottish industrialist.  The Roosevelts were always in the audience, weather for a musical performance or a political rally.  In 1912, when Kate’s cousin, Theodore spoke there during his campaign for president, the crowds wrapped around block waiting to hear the former president give his pitch for a third term as president.

1916 was a Leap Year and the 29^th day of February is also called Sadie Hawkins Day where it is a tradition that ladies can propose to men.  Even though no proposals of marriage were mentioned in this month’s diary, lots of weddings were talked about and also took place.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday. 

Photo One:
Church of Transfiguration
wiki

Photo Two:
The Actor George Holland
From the Wallet of Time: Google Books

Photo Three:
P.G. Wodehouse, Novel Cover, Gentleman of Leisure, 1910
wiki

Photo Four:
Flora Sandes
wiki

Photo Five:
Juliet Morgan Hamilton and her sister Anne
Pierpont Morgan Library

Photo Six:
Children of J.P. Morgan
Pierpont Morgan Library

Photo Seven:
Emily Price Post
Library of Congress

Photo Eight:
Anne Tracy Morgan
Bain News

Photo Nine:
W. Emlen Roosevelt
wiki

Photo Ten:
Century Theater
Central Park West
New York Architect Magazine

Photo Eleven:
Theodore Roosevelt speaking at Carnegie Hall, 1912
Carnegie Hall Archives

The post The Dowager’s Diary – New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Fifty-Six appeared first on Woman Around Town.

March 7-15

Residents of New Orleans call it Fat Tuesday and celebrate with a raucous Mardi Gras, and on March 7, 1916,  Kate Roosevelt and her reserved fellow Episcopalians called the day before Ash Wednesday, Shrove Tuesday. The Lenten Season for Christians around the world began with going to church and deciding what sacrifices to make in preparation for Easter Sunday. Two things Kate did not give up for Lent were going to the theater and dishing out critical comments of the performers and their performances.

Church of the Incarnation

After attending services at the Church of the Incarnation on Madison Avenue and 35^th Street she went over to the Astor Theater at Broadway and West 45^th Street with “Bop,” one of her four unmarried sisters, whose given name was Georgiana (Georgie) Shippen.  When she arrived home that evening, I guess she forgot it was a season of self-reflection and sacrifice when she wrote, “Bop and I to Cohan Revue. Rather poor and elaborately staged.”

George M. Cohan Statue on Broadway

Even though she just dashed-off the name Cohan in her diary, I immediately recognized it as belonging to George Michael Cohan, one of the most prolific and successful songwriters of his day.

When she called the production “poor” I was amazed because it consisted of his signature style of dancing, singing, loud talking and brash acting. But the year was 1916 and there was more on people’s minds than the musical offerings of a gifted song and dance man and maybe Kate Roosevelt was feeling a bit “starchy” about the elaborateness and emptiness of this production that introduced the song “Only One Little Girl” and included 165 five bouncy chorus members.

Cast of George M. Cohan’s Out There

Oscar Hammerstein II said of George M. Cohan, “He has a songwriter’s genius and was able to say what everyone was unconsciously feeling.” It was quite possible that being the ultimate showman, he took the country’s cue and began working on something new. He was described as writing as fast as he danced and in less than a year he finished a war play called, Out There.

This patriotically-themed play premiered just two days before President Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany and introduced what has been called the greatest war song of all time, the stirring march entitled “Over There.”

Laurette Taylor, starring in George M. Cohan’s play, Out There

Starring Kate Roosevelt’s good friend, Minnie Maddern Fiske, its theme had a Cinderalla-like story line focusing on a Cockney waif raising herself to new status by donning a Red Cross Uniform and nursing a handsome French soldier back to health. Cohan and company took the show on the road, putting on performances in 17 cities across the country. The actors took no pay and $683,632.00 was raised for the benefit of the Red Cross.

I have not read Kate Roosevelt’s diary for the year 1917, but I am sure that she would have given this play a good review and welcomed its generous contribution. Both she and her daughter, Dorothy Roosevelt Geer, were active Red Cross Volunteers.

Dorothy Roosevelt Geer serving coffee and sandwiches at Red Cross canteen

“I stopped at the Red Cross Station on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34^th Street.”  Throughout the coming years, this was a frequent stop on Kate Roosevelt’s schedule. She took part in their bandage rolling classes and knitting circles where socks were made for the troops overseas. Her daughter, Dorothy, wore the official Brooks Brothers Red Cross uniform when she volunteered at the embarkation hospital that was set up at Pennsylvania Station to welcome troops coming home from the front.

Embarkation Station

“Ash Wednesday, to meeting at Bellevue Nurses Training Hospital.”  Located at 440 West 216^th Street, Bellevue was established in 1873.  It was the first hospital in the country to run according to Florence Nightingale’s nursing principles. Another of Kate Roosevelt’s charitable endeavors, in her words, she was “There to arrange for a class to be attended by lay workers who wish to prep the area themselves before joining the Bellevue Hospital Unit in case of war in this country.

Cartoon from Kate Roosevelt’s Diary

It is in connection with the Red Cross.” She also attended lectures there on bacteriology and caring for wounds. I  must say that I was amazed at the metamorphosis taking place in this social butterfly. Perhaps she chose to become more caring and decided that Bellevue was the place to do so because of family loyalty. Cousin Euphemia Van Rensselaer was a relative from the Philadelphia branch of the Shippen Family and had a summer cottage not far from the Shippen’s in Sea Bright, New Jersey.

Bellevue Hospital

Euphemia was in the hospital’s first class of nursing school graduates. In 1877 she received her school pin, depicting the crane of vigilance surrounded by a wreath of poppies signifying the alleviation of pain, designed by Tiffany and Company. She designed the blue and white uniforms worn at the hospital and was the first nurse to enter an operating room.

Red Cross Parade on Fifth Avenue in New York City

From rolling bandages at the Red Cross Headquarters to making rooms ready at Bellevue Hospital for sick soldiers, all of these activities were related to the “Preparedness Movement” that was enveloping the country. Kate’s cousin, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (President Theodore Roosevelt’s sister) was chairman of a national preparedness league headquartered in New York City.

March, 1916 was a sobering month. From Broadway plays to politics the ever-involved Kate Roosevelt’s diary included a pasted-on, crinkly clipping from the New York Times that contained a letter from President Wilson pertaining to the May 5, 1915 sinking of the luxury liner, Lusitania.

The Lusitania sinking

Astutely paraphrasing the letter written to the United States Senate, her handwritten caption said, “The above was the main point at issue. A stand was made in the Lusitania Case, to date still unsettled. The `Sea Law’ is now neutral but must be changed since we are in the middle of a war. The president is right and the country-at-large hopes he will stand his ground on arming ocean liners.” The Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat on May 5, 1915 and many felt was the impetus pushing the United States into declaring war on Germany on April 2, 1917.  Kate’s comments on President Wilson’s hoped-for plan of attack were spoken like a true Roosevelt, patriotic and to the point!

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
President Wilson announcing war on Germany, April 2, 1917
wiki

Photo Two:
Church of the Incarnation
Madison Avenue, New York City
wiki

Photo Three:
George M. Cohan Statue on Broadway
wiki photo by George Hathorn

Photo Four:
Cast of George M. Cohan’s Out There
Woodlawncemetery.org

Photo Five:
Laurette Taylor, starring in George M. Cohan’s play, Out There
Woodlawncemetery.org

Photo Six:
Dorothy Roosevelt Geer serving coffee and sandwiches at Red Cross canteen
author collection

Photo Seven:
Embarkation Station
Library of Congress

Photo Eight:
Cartoon from Kate Roosevelt’s Diary
author collection

Photo Nine:
Bellevue Hospital
Museum City of New York

Photo Ten:
Red Cross Parade on Fifth Avenue in New York City
author collection

Photo Eleven:
The Lusitania sinking
Engraving
The London News

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Fifty-Eight appeared first on Woman Around Town.

The Last Week of March, 1916

Music, a matinee and great mourning were on Kate Roosevelt’s agenda for the last days of March, 1916.

David Mannes

Her week began by going to see, “A recital of Negro music put on by the Colored School Settlement.” Although her husband, the world famous, organ maker, Hilborne Roosevelt had been dead for 30 years, his impact on the world of music was still very much alive in New York City and his widow, Kate Roosevelt, did her bit to elongate his legacy. The concert she wrote about in her diary was the brain-child of David Mannes, a gifted violinist who had studied in Harlem with composer and violinist, John Thomas Douglass, the son of a freed slave.

Walter Damrosch, Symphony Orchestra

Mannes was a member of the New York Symphony Orchestra, a musical institution founded by Hilborne Roosevelt and Leopold Damrosch in 1877.  On this day, in 1916, the founders were dead but what they envisioned had taken on a life of its own and was flourishing through the participation of loyal family members like Hilborne’s widow, Kate Roosevelt, and Leopold’s son, Walter Damrosch, who became the symphony director after his father’s death.

W.E.B. Dubois

Leopold Damrosch’s daughter, Clara, married the violinist, David Mannes, and the family’s musical chords grew stronger. In 1912, Mannes founded the Colored Music Settlement School located at 6 West 131^st Street as a way to bridge divides between races and social classes in America. He believed that music was a universal language to be shared by all. The African-American social activist, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, also known as W.E.B. Dubois was instrumental in the music school’s founding. Mannes also established the Mannes Music College, originally located on East 70th Street.  It is now part of the New School.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

For many years, David Mannes conducted concerts like the one Kate Roosevelt attended at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall, possibly accompanied by her friends, Juliet Morgan Hamilton and Louisa Morgan Satterlee, the two eldest daughters of J.P. Morgan.  The fantastically wealthy financier was a sponsor of such musical endeavors and an advocate for the appreciation of art in all forms.  Along with Kate Roosevelt’s uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. and others, J.P. Morgan founded the Metropolitan Museum Art on Fifth Avenue and 80^thStreet in 1870.

Taking a break from music, the next day, Kate and her eternal sidekick, Ettie Shippen, went to a matinee at the Booth Theater at 22 West 44^th Street to see The Fear Market.

Amelie Rives, ca. 1890

The theater was named for the Shakespearean actor, Edwin Booth, whose deranged brother, John Wilkes Booth, shot President Abraham Lincoln to death. Coincidentally, the play produced there in March, 1916 was written by Amelie Rives, who was the goddaughter of Lincoln’s nemesis, the South’s illustrious, Civil War General, Robert E. Lee.

The play was an interesting one based on blackmail, deceit and scandal. As stated in Kate Roosevelt’s diary, it was, “Quite interesting and very well done,” but the play’s plot was placid compared with the real life story of its author.

Quick or the Dead by Amelie Rives

Amelie Rives was born to a distinguished family in Richmond, Virginia and began writing a string of scandalous novels at a young age.  Her most scintillating was Quick or the Dead and much of her life was lived according to its morals. She married John Jacob Astor’s great-great grandson, John Armstrong “Archie” Chanler, the victim of a trust-fund, who in addition to his thoroughbred lineage, was insane.

According to the book, Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age by Donna M. Lucey, their public and scandalous romance unfolded far better than fiction. The bluebloods met at a ball in Newport, Rhode Island and almost immediately her Southern charm and his Northern swagger and social status set off sensual fireworks. The couple settled at her family’s mansion known as Castle Hill in Virginia, but the newlywed’s life soon became unspooled as Archie’s mental illness manifested itself in the most bizarre behavior.

One of Archie’s brothers wanted to get him back to New York to try and have him committed to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum.  Located in White Plains, it was called the “madhouse for the rich,” where the silverware and table linens were monogrammed. Just like in one of Amelie’s novels, the plot thickened when Archie’s old friend, the architect Stanford White, whom he fondly referred to as “Fuzz Buzz” and family friend, then, New York’s Commissioner of Police Theodore Roosevelt lured him back to New York where a judge declared him insane and committed him to the asylum for “silver spoons.”

Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy

After Amelie divorced Archie, she married the penniless, Russian artist and aristocrat, Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, and soon became addicted to morphine. It is said that her silver syringe is still at Rokeby, the run-down mansion located in the Hudson Valley, where some impoverished Astor ancestors still call home.

Rokeby, the Astor Mansion

And so it seemed that drama both real and imagined was put on the back burner for a few days as Kate and her family went about their usual routine of scurrying around the city, but that all changed with a phone call.

Madeleine Astor, wife of John Jacob Astor IV

By this time, Georgina Morton Shippen had moved to a smaller residence at 126 East 39^th Street in New York City. Dr. Reuel Kimball made a house call and informed Kate and her five sisters and brother that their mother was seriously ill with a spot of pneumonia on her lung. Dr. Kimball was the trusted family physician who summered near the Shippen’s cottage in Sea Bright, New Jersey and maintained a prestigious medical practice in New York City. He was also Mrs. John Jacob Astor IV’s  physician. She survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and Dr. Kimball was at the dock to meet her when she arrived back in New York safely and five month’s pregnant.  But even his reputation as one of the finest physicians in New York City could not save the 87 year-old matriarch. Kate’s diary transcribed the sad news, “Dear Mother died at 2:30 p.m. We were all here, six daughters and one son.”

Church of the Incarnation

A crumpled clipping from the New York Times read, “Georgina Elmina Shippen, widow of William W. Shippen and daughter of the late George W. Morton and Caroline Denning passed away at her New York City residence. Funeral services will be held at the Church of the Incarnation at Madison Avenue and 35^th Street and the family kindly requests that flowers are to be omitted.”

It is a tradition in the Episcopal Church that flowers should be kept to a minimum at burial services, so as not to distract from the sanctity of the ceremony, but music is encouraged.

The month of March began with music and memories and so it would end for Kate Roosevelt, seated at her mother’s funeral mass in a front row pew listening to the sacred music emanating from an organ built and installed in the church by her late-husband, Hilborne L. Roosevelt.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Archie Chanler on horseback
Holsinger Studio Collection, University of Virginia

Photo Two:
David Mannes
Library of Congress

Photo three:
Walter Damrosch, Symphony Orchestra
wiki

Photo Four:
W.E.B. Dubois
Library of Congress

Photo Five:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Postcard

Photo Six:
Amelie Rives, ca. 1890
wiki

Photo Seven:

Book Cover:
Quick or the Dead by Amelie Rives
Albert and Shirley Small Collection, University of Virginia

Photo Eight:
Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy
University of Virginia Library Collection

Photo Nine:
Rokeby, the Astor Mansion
Historic Structures.com

Photo Ten:
Madeleine Astor, wife of John Jacob Astor IV
Library of Congress

Photo eleven:
Church of the Incarnation
Madison Avenue, New York City
nycago.org

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Sixty appeared first on Woman Around Town.

April 1-8, 1916

“To Franklin Simon’s to buy a dress,” and for the first time it was “off the rack” for a Roosevelt. Up until now, the only mention Kate Roosevelt made of fashion was when she traveled downtown to her dressmaker’s for a fitting.

Carrie Astor Wilson

Located just around the corner from Kate’s Lexington Avenue home, The Franklin Simon Department Store sat on the corner of 38^th Street at 414 Fifth Avenue. It occupied the former home of John Jacob Astor’s sister, Carrie Schermerhorn Astor and her husband, the “new-money” millionaire, Marshall Orme Wilson. They, like others in their social strata sold their mansion, a wedding gift in 1884 from Carrie’s father, William Backhouse Astor and marched up Fifth Avenue to a limestone palace on the corner of East 64^th Street.

Franklin Simon on Fifth Avenue and 38th Street

In the early nineteen hundreds, it seemed like everything and everyone was moving further uptown.  All of the finest department stores in the city, once securely ensconced in an area of Broadway between 6^th and 23^rd Street, known as the Ladies Mile, one-by-one made the move and settled near Franklin and Simon’s. Opened in 1902, the specialty store’s neighbors included Lord & Taylor, B. Altman’s and Best and Company. A few blocks down the street, Tiffany’s set-up shop in a Venetian-like palace designed by the famous architectural firm, McKim, Meade and White on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 37^th Street. Their competitors, Gorham sold silverware on the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 36^th Street in a much more subtle and graceful building, also designed by the McKim, Meade and White Firm on land rented from the Astor Family for $36,000 a year.

Advertisement for Franklin Simon

On April 7, 1916 it was convenient for Kate Roosevelt and other socialites to simply take a walk up or down Fifth Avenue and take home a dress, a new pair of shoes or a piece of jewelry. Things were changing and that included lifestyles and fashion as World War One crept closer to the shores of the United States. Ready-made clothes, like the ones sold at Franklin and Simon suited a new lifestyle where ladies of leisure swapped their silks for sensible fabrics.

War Crinolines

Hemlines were rising and a skirt called, “The war crinoline” allowed women to be more mobile while performing volunteer war work. According to Lucy Adlington’s website, www.comestepbackintime.com, “It was considered to be both practical and patriotic.” Dresses were less extravagant and bright colors faded into somber hues. Two-piece walking suits were serious in design and tailored in dark, practical  and less-expensive fabrics. To save on leather, needed for the military, shoes were made with wool gaiters on the instep, corsets were less restrictive and thanks to fashion designer, Coco Chanel, costume jewelry was the new fashion accessory. Conservation was the war-cry.

Ambulance arriving at Bellevue Hospital

Quite possibly wearing her ready-to-wear dress Kate Roosevelt was ready for work and participated in the “preparedness movement” by reporting to Bellevue Hospital to attend a lecture on caring for the wounded.  She didn’t say what was discussed but wrote in her diary, “A waste of time.”

In true Roosevelt form, she rallied and the next day went back to 440 East 26^th Street where the Bellevue Nurses were training to see a demonstration on bathing patients.

Women wearing the new styles

The idea of Kate Roosevelt wearing an off-the-rack outfit was believable, but the image of her bathing wounded soldiers coming back from battles fought on the foreign front during World War One was something that I was having trouble picturing. Quite possibly she would hold her nose, keep a demure distance and primly hand a washcloth to someone else, but her actually bathing someone is something, that I am positive was not on Kate Roosevelt’s list of accomplishments. After all, according to her diary, she didn’t even wash her own hair.  A woman named Mary came in once a week “To wash and treat,” her hair.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Franklin Simon Window
Simon Family Archives

Photo Two:
Carrie Astor Wilson
Museum City of New York

Photo Three:
Franklin Simon on Fifth Avenue and 38th Street
Museum City of New York

Photo Four:
Advertisement for Franklin Simon
wiki

Photo Five:
War Crinolines
wiki

Photo Six:
Ambulance arriving at Bellevue Hospital
Museum City of New York

Photo Seven:
Women wearing the new styles
Library of Congress

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Sixty-One appeared first on Woman Around Town.

May 9-16, 1916 

The second week of May, 1916 found the four Shippen Spinsters safely ensconced in Rumson, New Jersey getting their cottage known as “The Anchorage” ready for the summer season.  With their mother, Georgina Shippen’s recent death, the sisters, along with their married siblings, Anna Davis, Kate Roosevelt and brother, William Shippen, were left guardians of this shingle-style home, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. As noted in Kate’s diary, “They took their domestics with them for the season.” After doing some research, I found out that these young maids had names.

The Shippen Family on the grounds of their home the “Anchorage”

Bella was the kitchen maid and Mary took care of the parlor. I was sure there were other servants but their names did not survive them. They were simply referred to as “domestics,” employed to keep the Shippen domicile ship-shape and ready to welcome the constant stream of visitors and vacationers who came to enjoy the ocean breezes and quiet lifestyle of a seaside town in the early nineteen hundreds. Edwardians loved their leisure time and prepared for it meticulously with the help of maids and man-servants and the wealthy Shippens were no exception.

Summer Cottages along the Jersey Shore

With her sisters busy as little bees swarming around the hive, Kate Roosevelt was free to visit her small farm, Merdlemouth in Hightstown, New Jersey and take advantage of springtime in the city.

“I to matinee of Galsworthy’s play, Justice. A strong appeal for prison reform exceedingly well-given. Best thing that Jack Barrymore has ever done.” Her warm words caught me off guard. Was this the same Kate Roosevelt, amateur theater critic speaking? By now I was used to her curt and cutting assessment of most everything she saw on Broadway. But not this time and I was wondering if the Jack Barrymore she was praising was one and the same actor, John Barrymore, known for his commanding stage presence and comedic talent. Was she calling him by his nickname, Jack, because of the strong family connections the Roosevelts had with the entire Barrymore Family? His niece, Ethel Barrymore, was a friend of cousin, Alice Roosevelt’s since the two were teenagers, often causing Alice’s father, President Theodore Roosevelt to throw his hands up and say, “I can run the country or tend to Alice, but I cannot do both!”

Ethel Barrymore

The Barrymore’s were to acting what the Roosevelts were to politics. Both families had taken on the role of American Royalty and now John Barrymore was being crowned the king of the theater for his performance in John Galsworthy’s thought-provoking play. Set in England, a New York Times’ review said, “Seeing a man imprisoned for a petty crime influenced a new look at the British penal system and greatly influenced public policy.” Apparently English law-makers were as impressed as Kate Roosevelt was with both the storyline and Barrymore’s dramatic take on the role.

Critics concurred that the actor had reached his pinnacle playing the role of the wrongly-incarcerated young law clerk, found guilty of simply forging a check to help a woman in need.

Theater critic, Clayton Hamilton said, “Barrymore grasped the opportunity to prove himself.” Driven by his desire to make good, Barrymore shaved his moustache, the symbol of a decades-old emblem of being a “Broadway Blade” and stopped drinking. His beverage of choice became a “Near Beer” called Bevo. Brewed by the Anheuser-Busch Company in St. Louis it was a big seller when it was introduced in 1916 as an alternative to liquor during Prohibition. At its peak in the 1920s, more than five million cases of Bevo were sold annually.

In addition to Bevo, I was wondering if Coca-Cola was also served in the lounge at the Candler Theater, where the play was staged. According to Christopher Grey’s New York Times’ column, Streetscapes, “The theatre, located on West 42 Street was built by the Coca-Cola King of Atlanta, Georgia.”

Asa Griggs Candler

Asa Griggs Candler, an Atlanta-based druggist developed the cream-colored, terra cotta-clad building in 1911, using money made from his Coca-Cola patent.

Coca-Cola Headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia

Candler began his soft drink empire while working at Jacobs’ Drug Store in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1870s. Eventually he had his own drugstore and was selling concoctions that included, “Everlasting Cologne” and “Botanic Blood Balm.” He also became the exclusive distributor of another exotic-sounding product. It was a dark-colored syrup sold in small bottles to soda fountains around the country. Added to seltzer water, it was known as a popular soft drink called Coca-Cola. Thirty years after purchasing the formula from John Pemburton in 1888, Candler was selling 280 million glasses and bottles of the beverage a month.

Candler Theater, West 42nd Street

With money to spend, Candler, like other out-of-town developers purchased land in New York City, with and eye toward experimenting with skyscrapers. In 1911 he announced plans to build a tall, narrow tower that would eventually house the Candler Theater.

Advertisement for Bevo, Trenton, New Jersey

Designed by Thomas W. Lamb, a noted theater and cinema architect, the Candler Theater was housed inside a five story office building.  Its main entrance on West 42^ndStreet included a long and narrow lobby where Kate Roosevelt and other theater-goers might have stopped for an ice-cold Coca-Cola or even toasted the star, John Barrymore with a frothy Bevo in the Spring of 1916.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
John Barrymore with sister Ethel and brother Lionel, 1904
Library of Congress

Photo Two:
The Shippen Family on the grounds of their home the “Anchorage”
Author Collection

Photo Three:
Summer Cottages along the Jersey Shore
Author’s collection

Photo Four:
Ethel Barrymore
wiki

Photo Five:
Asa Griggs Candler
Library of Congress

Photo Six:
Coca-Cola Headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia
wiki

Photo Seven:
Candler Theater, West 42nd Street
Museum City of New York

Photo Eight:
Advertisement for Bevo, Trenton, New Jersey
Library of Congress

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Sixty-Six appeared first on Woman Around Town.

May 16-23, 1916

During the middle of May, 1916 Kate Roosevelt’s younger sister, Caroline Shippen, had minor surgery. She didn’t go into details about the operation, but Caroline’s recuperation required that she stay at her sister Kate’s home at 301 Lexington Avenue under the care of private-duty nurses. Although the procedure was not a big deal, the people that came to visit the sickly-spinster certainly were. “Ann Morgan and Maude Wetmore came to see Caroline,” was the diary entry for May 16^th.  By now I knew that Ann Tracy Morgan was the unmarried daughter of the fantastically wealthy financier, J.P. Morgan.  She was one of the founding members of the elite Colony Club for Women and also an active volunteer, raising funds for the fatherless children of France and driving an ambulance during World War One. Ann Morgan along with her sisters, Louisa Satterlee and Julia Hamilton, and their former governess, Florence Rhett, kept company with all of the Shippen sisters, Caroline, Sophie, Ettie, Georgie and of course, Kate Roosevelt. Her father, J.P. Morgan referred to Ann as “The woman who runs me” and gave in to her every whim.

The identity of the moneyed-Ann Morgan was no mystery, but Maude Wetmore was another story and what a story she had to share.

After visiting with Caroline Shippen in New York, Maude, who lived at15 Waverly Place, soon left the city for the summer season at her family’s mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. Chateau Sur Mer certainly outshone the simple shingle-style seaside cottage called the “Anchorage” in Rumson, New Jersey that the Shippen family spent their summers at.

Up until 1966 when Edith Wetmore died, she and her maiden sister, Maud Wetmore, who died in 1951 remained loyal guardians of this grand mansion that could most certainly give Downton Abbey’s Highclare Castle a run for its money.

George Peabody and his wife in an electric car, 1906

Maude’s father, George Peabody Wetmore, the former Governor of Rhode Island, also known as the “Silent Senator” devoted his life to public service after graduating from Yale in 1867 and Columbia Law School in 1869. George Wetmore inherited Chateau Sur Mer from his father, William Shepard Wetmore, who made his fortune trading in the Orient.

Between 1850 and the turn-of-the-twentieth century, as the mansions went up along Bellevue Avenue, they became testaments to America’s own brand of aristocracy. With few prospects to achieve English rank or title, the newly-minted millionaires were propelled into the pursuit of riches that translated into social status. The “nouveau rich” earned a reputation for fostering an obsessive quest for material gain.  There were few places where this addiction to affluence was more evident than in Newport, Rhode Island and no home more impressive than Chateau Sur Mer. When it was built in 1857 the New York Times called it “One of the largest and most magnificent houses in Newport.”

When George Wetmore and his new wife, Edith inherited the mansion in 1870, they began renovations under the direction of noted architect, Richard Morris Hunt. Known for designing the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the Vanderbilt Mansion on Fifth Avenue and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hunt was put in charge of modernizing and enlarging Chateau Sur Mer.

Servants

When Hunt began the project, that spanned ten years, servants were just starting to enjoy a certain social status of their own and their living and working arrangements mirrored those changes. The architect’s goal, according to Domestic Life at Chateau Sur Mer by Holly Collins, “Was to achieve servant detachment and a proper isolation without proximity to their employers.” An addition to the stable complex made room for the coachmen and grooms and a housekeeper’s room was added to the servants’ wing.

The 1880 Census, taken when Maude Wetmore was seven years-old listed fifteen servants living on the estate. The staff included an English butler, a French cook, four footmen, a groom, a maid, a nurse, two chambermaids, two kitchen girls and two laundresses.  Fifty percent of the servants were Irish immigrants.

Chateau Sur Mer

According to The Transformation of Chateau Sur Mer by Winslow Ames, “Mrs. Wetmore chose the footmen who performed a vast array of duties and had frequent contact with the family from dawn to dusk.”

The Wetmore’s four footmen took charge of the basement boot room, located directly under the library in the main house it was where they cleaned and polished the family’s footwear.  Their early morning tasks, done before laying out the breakfast table, included cleaning knives and forks, trimming lamp wicks, brushing-out the master’s clothing and polishing the furniture.

In 1907 the regimental running of the basement kitchen was commanded by a French Chef named Urbain Dubois who oversaw the  twenty-seven year-old French Cook, Louis Cuffenpre and Irish kitchen maids, eighteen year-old, Nellie Martin and twenty-six year-old, Angie Qnaltie who spent hours standing over cavernous copper stock pots, stirring simmering sauces and unmolding elaborate aspics. The perfect presentation of the jellied side-dish would have been praised even by the fictional Mrs. Patmore who ran the kitchen at Downton Abbey like a delightful drill sergeant.

Upstairs, the English Butler, John Callajheue, polished the silver and arranged the battalion of china and serving pieces. The four footmen, referred to by their last names: Cosgrove, Johnson, White and Shekey dusted and polished the dining room before laying the table and awaiting the approval of mansion’s major-domo, the white-gloved butler.

One or both chambermaids, Annie McDonald and Elizabeth Riley, arranged flowers grown by the estate’s gifted gardener, Robert Christie.

The Dining Room at Chateau Sur Mer

After their parents died, the two spinsters, Edith and Maude Wetmore remained at Chateau Sur Mer, maintaining a long-gone lifestyle with the help of a retinue of loyal servants, some still wearing full livery.

The sisters divided the daily running of the estate.  Maude was in charge of the house, assisted by a butler, a cook, three kitchen maids, a houseman, a footman, three pantry helpers, two upstairs maids, two ladies maids and two chauffeurs.  Edith took charge of the grounds with the help of nine gardeners.

Following in her father’s footsteps, Maude Wetmore became a nationally-known Republican leader and served as President of the Women’s Republican Club.  Edith Wetmore was President of the Old State House in Newport, founder of the Newport Theater and a fellow in perpetuity of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

When Edith Wetmore died in 1966, her butler was quoted in the New York Times, “She was a great lady, really one of the old guard.”  Edith and her younger sister, Maude, who died in1951 were referred to as “The last representatives of the conservative elegance that dominated society a half century ago. When society gradually began breaking the rules of times past, the two very proper ladies did not.  The Wetmore’s tradition of distinguished Victorian and Edwardian culture stood unflappable and the lengthy tenure of many of their servants attests a relationship bound by mutual respect.”

In her will Maude left generous bequest to all of her servants including Jeanie Binden, whose late-husband, James, came from England to work as caretaker at Chateau Sur Mer in 1897. He died in 1949 after forty-five years of service to two generations of Wetmores.

Now the mystery of Maude Wetmore had been solved and I had taken a trip back in time to another era and another place where Edwardian etiquette still held court, servants were more than necessities and money, even though it couldn’t buy class, certainly helped to sustain it.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
The Shippen Sisters:
Author Collection

Photo Two:
George Peabody and his wife in an electric car, 1906
Library of Congress

Photo Three:
Servants
National Trust, England

Photo Four:
Chateau Sur Mer
Library of Congress

Photo Five:
The Dining Room at Chateau Sur Mer
Library of Congress

The post Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Sixty-Seven appeared first on Woman Around Town.

May 25-30, 1916

“To Lusitania Memorial Meeting at Carnegie Hall. Rather a flat affair.” On May 19, 1916 Kate Roosevelt was among an audience that the week before had been denied the right to congregate at a gathering scheduled to observe the one year anniversary of the sinking of the ocean liner known as the Lusitania. The passenger ship, owned by the Cunard Steamship Company was torpedoed by a German submarine on May 7, 1915 and since then the event and the ship itself have been symbols of an evil empire with an agenda that was fueled by an insatiable thirst for war and world-dominance.

Lusitania Maiden Voyage, 1907

The ship left the Chelsea Piers, a luxury liner berth located on Manhattan’s West Side, on May 1, 1915 on its way to England with a ship full of innocent men, women and children bound for England under the competent command of the crusty Captain William Turner, a seasoned navigator.  According the book, The Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy by Diana Preston, “It was the ship’s one-hundredth crossing of the Atlantic.”

But on this day, no amount of experience would have been able to steer the Lusitania out of harm’s way when a torpedo was fired without warning by a German U-boat that was lurking nearby, just off the coast of Ireland.

Among those New Yorkers lost were the millionaire playboy Alfred Gwynn Vanderbilt, on his way to England to attend the International Horse Show in London and the Broadway producer Charles Frohman, who was going abroad in search of new plays to stage at his Empire Theater on West 41^st Street.

In addition to the passengers and crew, the ship also had onboard 111,762 pounds of copper; odd pieces of machinery; 217,157 pounds of cheese; 342,165 pounds of beef; 43,615 pounds of lard; 185,040 pounds of bacon; 205 pounds of oysters; 25 barrels of lubricating oil; 655 packages of confectionary, several bales of leather sides; five packages of automobiles and automobile parts and 17 packages of dental goods.  Another type of cargo was also hoisted onboard before departing. Consisting of 4,200 cases of small-caliber rifle bullets and more than 100 cases of empty shrapnel shells and unloaded fuses these items were considered ammunition and the supposed reason for the German attack.

Survivor of the Lusitania

The small arsenal was nestled securely below-deck while the rest of the ship resembled an expensive hotel with a first-class lounge decorated elaborately in the late-Georgian style and graced with a gleaming inlaid mahogany floor. The heavy velvet curtains were freshly cleaned, the dining room was adorned with beautiful murals. During the voyage the band played and some young girls danced the “Turkey Trot” on deck.

Everything seemed like it would be smooth sailing for the nearly 2,000 peace-loving passengers aboard the un-armed vessel until early afternoon on a foggy Friday.

World War I began in Europe in August, 1914 and its rumblings were reaching across the waters to America in waves, sometimes inconsequential, but more and more often shocking. It was not until May, 7, 1915 that the country was shaken from its slumber when the “Lusitania” was sunk. Never before in the history of warfare had an unarmed passenger ship been attacked without warning and the world was roused. Approximately one hundred and twenty four Americans went down with the ship in addition to many innocent European passengers and crew. A total of 1,198 died of drowning, injuries or hypothermia. This event, which the government called “manslaughter,” brought the United States to the brink of war.

Poster by Fred Spears “Enlist”

Many other factors had tempers flaring.  A reminder of this tragedy was a poster produced in 1915 by the artist Fred Spears in response to the sinking of the Lusitania.

It chillingly and hauntingly stirred emotions by showing the callous destruction of innocence. At first glance the poster reflects a softly rendered, tender, passionate and almost romantic image, but what it really conveyed was a horrible reality showing a mother clinging to her baby while sinking in a blue-green ocean, the two tangled in the nightmare of the murky sea.

New York City Mayor John Mitchell

Like the event that inspired it, this poster rallied the troops and Americans were out for revenge. President Wilson, who was still in a critical stage of negotiations with Germany wanted to avoid embarrassment and remain neutral, implored New York City Mayor John Mitchell to cancel the Lusitania Memorial Meeting planned to take place at Carnegie Hall on Seventh Avenue exactly one year after the tragedy.

The Imperial German Government, wanting to avoid embarrassment and bad press asked for the postponement of the meeting they knew would erupt into a protest.

Some, like Kate Roosevelt and her circle of socialites, had purchased tickets to the event in advance and were going to honor the deceased but others planned on using it as a forum to let President Wilson know how they felt and foster anti-German sentiments.

Quentin Roosevelt in World War I Uniform

Thanks to the Executive Committee of American Rights headed by liberal-minded men like George Haven Putnam, William Gardner Hale and Professor Franklin H. Giddings of Columbia University, the meeting was re-scheduled 12 days after the anniversary. Kate described it as a “rather flat affair” and I was wondering if she had been expecting something a bit more political.  After all, the Roosevelts did love a rousing rally. Who knows, Cousin Theodore, former President Roosevelt might have been in the audience chanting from his “bully pulpit.” He had been urging President Wilson to declare war and eventually sent his three sons to the front. His youngest son, Quentin Roosevelt, a pilot in the United States Army was shot down and killed by the Germans in 1918.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Sinking of Lusitania
Engraving by Norman Wikinson: Illustrated London News, Library of Commons

Photo Two:
Lusitania Maiden Voyage, 1907
Library of Congress

Photo Three:
Survivor of the Lusitania
Library of Congress

Photo Four:
Poster by Fred Spears “Enlist”
Library of Congress

Photo Five:
New York City Mayor John Mitchell
Library of Congress

Photo Six:
Quentin Roosevelt in World War One Uniform
public domain, wiki

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Sixty-Seven appeared first on Woman Around Town.

June, 1916

June, 1916 found Kate Shippen Roosevelt at her summertime retreat known as Merdlemouth, nestled among the shady evergreen trees and winding brooks of Hightstown, New Jersey.  Her small farm was often the setting for family and friends to gather.  Located just outside of Princeton, Kate often played host to university alumni and landed gentry of the small academic haven.

On this day, her diary read, “Bessie Alexander came over from Princeton to see us.”

                Bessie Alexander by John White Alexander

I already knew that Elizabeth Swan Williamson Alexander was the widow of the world-famous artist, John White Alexander.  She married him in 1887 when she was just 22 years-old. Coincidentally her maiden name was also Alexander. When the wedding invitations were engraved, her mother insisted on using her entire name which was rather long. When she realized that her name would take- up the entire width of the card, she insisted that her fiancée use his middle name to even things out. Up until then, the artist had never used his middle name, preferring to be called simply John Alexander.

Bessie’s father was James Waddell Alexander, the first Vice President of the Equitable Assurance Company in New York City.

Dorothy Quincy Roosevelt

Kate and Bessie were girlhood friends, summering together along the bluffs of the Atlantic Ocean in their respective shingle-style cottages that dotted the shore line in Sea Bright, New Jersey.  As they grew older, they had many other things in common.  When Kate’s daughter, Dorothy Quincy Roosevelt made her debut in 1902, John White Alexander was commissioned to paint her portrait.  He had just returned from Paris, portrait paintings were in demand in New York City and thanks to the family friendship, Dorothy’s debut was immortalized by the world-famous artist.

Kate Roosevelt had many interests, and after reading excerpts from her diary I knew that the theater and art were on the top of the list.  Both she and the Alexanders were members of the McDowell Club.  Located at 108 West 55^th Street the organization supported an artist retreat in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Maude Adams as Peter Pan

Another club the two widows belonged to was the somewhat snooty, Colony Club. The actress Maude Adams was also a member and she hired John White Alexander to design sets and stage lighting for many of her plays.  Bessie Alexander designed the costumes.  The “Peter Pan” collar became famous after Maude Adams appeared in the production of the same name.

Like her friend Kate, Bessie divided her summer days between several spots. Kate’s Hightstown, Sea Bright and New York City homes and Bessie’s Princeton, Sea Bright and New York City residences gave the two widows plenty of options for where and when to get together.

“Mother and Child” by John White Alexander

On this day it was at Merdlemouth where Bessie Alexander drove over from Princeton for tea.  Princeton was a town with a storied history that involved a long-line of Alexanders, all from Bessie’s side of the family. Her husband, the artist, John White Alexander, was orphaned at a young age. His guardian, former Civil War Colonel Edward Jay Allen gave him the money and idea to move to New York City. John Alexander got his start when he was hired by Harper Brothers as an illustrator. In 1876, he covered the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, where coincidentally, Kate Roosevelt’s future husband, Hilborne introduced the world’s first electric pipe organ.   Through diligent study and talent, John White Alexander earned his own accolades unlike his wife Bessie, who earned hers by being born into a family who had roots planted deep and wide in world of  New York City business and the academic community of Princeton, New Jersey.

Bessie Alexander’s great-grandfather, Archibald Alexander was the first professor and principal of the Princeton Theological Seminary.  There are two building on the Princeton Campus named for him.

Her grandfather, James Waddell Alexander, was the rector of the Fifth Avenue Church in New York City, a congregation of great Presbyterian wealth and influence.  One of its congregants, Henry Baldwin Hyde, was the founder of the Equitable Life Assurance Company, the largest life insurance company in the world.  He hired her father, James Waddell Alexander and promoted him to first vice president.

John White Alexander

Bessie Swan Williamson Alexander and John White Alexander had only child. James Waddell Alexander was born at their summer home in Sea Bright, New Jersey on September 19, 1888.  Like the rest of the Alexanders, James graduated from Princeton University and became an instructor there in 1916. He was a bit of an odd but very intelligent “duck.”  He was a pioneer in topology (the study of geometric properties and spatial relations unaffected by the continuous change of shape or size on figures) and a protégé of the Princeton mathematician, Oswald Veblen. They were among a group of scholars who enticed Albert Einstein to join Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study.

In addition to being a mathematical genius, James Waddell Alexander was a world-ranked, mountain climber and often honed his skills scaling the tall buildings on campus. He liked to reach his top floor office at Fine Hall by climbing up the outside wall and entering through the window which was always left ajar.

James Waddell Alexander died a recluse in 1971, but his mother, Bessie Alexander was anything but.  When her husband died in 1915, Bessie Alexander lived to memorialize his work and up until her death in 1930, her New York City home was the meeting place for anyone “who mattered in the world of art.”

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Alexander Hall from the arch of Blair Hall, Princeton University
Library of Congress

Photo Two:
Bessie Alexander by John White Alexander
Los Angeles Art Museum
Public Domain

Photo Three:
Dorothy Quincy Roosevelt, 1902 at the time of her debut
by John White Alexander
wiki and Dallas Art Museum
Public Domain

Photo Four:
Maude Adams as Peter Pan
Museum City of New York

Photo Five:
“Mother and Child” by John White Alexander
Library of Congress

Photo Six:
John White Alexander, 1901
Notable Men of Pittsburgh, Public Domain

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Sixty-Eight appeared first on Woman Around Town.

The roots of the Roosevelt family tree run deep and wide and thanks to Kate Roosevelt’s diary entry for June 18, 1916. Another branch on the tree sprouted when she mentioned that Fred Roosevelt had passed away. “Fred Roosevelt died last Thursday, but I was unable to go.”

Judge James I. Roosevelt

Now I had some serious Roosevelt Family history to untangle. The deceased, Frederick Roosevelt was the son of Judge James I. Roosevelt. A congressman and Supreme Court Justice, The Honorable James Roosevelt was the brother of Cornelius Roosevelt who just happened to be the grandfather of President Theodore Roosevelt and Kate Roosevelt’s late-husband Hilborne Roosevelt and a founder of Oyster Bay on Long Island.

Judge James Roosevelt sired eleven children, but only three survived to adulthood and Frederick was one of the lucky ones. He lived to be sixty-six years old.

Like a true Roosevelt, Frederick lived life to its fullest.  Born in 1850, his youth was spent in New York City at his parents’ mansion at 836-838 Broadway, next door to his grandfather, Cornelius Roosevelt’s grand mansion on the corner of 14^th Street.  The Roosevelts owned an entire block on Broadway from 13th to 14th Street.

Like other family members, Frederick Roosevelt inherited and made millions. His business associations included the Evansville and Terra Haute Rail Road, Indiana’s first railroad company; the Twelfth Ward Bank in New York City; the Skaneateles Railroad and the Mecca Oil Company.

He enjoyed his money and all of the social status it could buy. Like his second-cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick belonged to the Union Club, the Metropolitan Club, the New York Athletic Club, the Lotos Club, the Automobile Club of America, the St. Nicholas Society, the Holland Society and was a life member of the New York Yacht Club. His ocean-going yacht was named the Maggie.

His New York City mansion at 583 Fifth Avenue was on a stretch known as “Two Miles of Millionaires.” His neighbors included the Whitneys, Vanderbilts, Goulds, Astors, Rockefellers and Carnegie. His summer home was in the Village of Skaneateles on the Finger Lakes in Upstate New York.  It was his wife, Mary Loney Roosevelt’s hometown.

According to Skaneateles historian, Kihm Winship, Frederick Roosevelt bought a portion of land from his cousin, Henry Latrobe Roosevelt and now I had the task of unraveling yet another Roosevelt ball of yarn.

Mary Loney Roosevelt

Henry Latrobe Roosevelt was the son of Nicholas Roosevelt who was the brother of President Theodore Roosevelt’s great-grandfather, Claes Van Rosevelt, who used the Dutch spelling when he arrived in New York City from Holland around 1638. Henry’s uncle, Samuel Montgomery Roosevelt, the grandson of Nicolas Roosevelt was a famous portrait painter who owned a mansion called Roosevelt Hall not far from Frederick Roosevelt’s. Nicholas and Henry both married women named Eleanor.  Henry even named his daughter Eleanor and now there were three more Eleanor Roosevelts to add to the family tree, one more famous than the others.

Henry Latrobe Roosevelt was one of four family members who served as Secretary of the Navy. During the summer months his yacht, the SS Roosevelt sailed up the Potomac and docked on Skaneateles Lake just west of Frederick Roosevelt’s property on the corner of Leitch Avenue and East Genesee Street .

It was on this spot that Frederick Roosevelt built a summer cottage at a cost of $20,000. He hired the New York architectural firm of McKim and Mead to design the home. An assistant, Sidney Stratton drew up the final plans for the understated splendor that characterized it. Built in pieces and shipped from New York City for assembly, Thomas Dobbin, of Skaneateles was the construction supervisor. In the fall of 1879, when the young architect, Stanford White joined the firm he was given the task of sketching the details for the interior of the sprawling home called “Roseleigh.” Until recently it was a Catholic retreat house called, Stella Maris.

Roseleigh, home of Frederick Roosevelt

A local carpenter, John Wheeler built the “commodious” boathouse that housed Frederick Roosevelt’s yacht christened “The Speedy Lotos” in honor of one of the oldest literary clubs in America,  located at 5 East 66^th Street in New York City. The yacht was built by H. Piepgras of Greenpoint, New York and was often seen gliding across the glassy waters of Lake Skaneateles.

Also often seen on the shores of the lake were important visitors and favorite family members. They included Frederick’s second cousin-by-marriage the widow, Kate Roosevelt.

From just one small sentence in a diary written on June 18, 1916 some very large roots of the Roosevelt Family Tree had been unearthed and I was introduced to Frederick, Henry Latrobe and Samuel Montgomery Roosevelt.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Yacht, the “Lotos” owned by Frederick Roosevelt; Characteristics of a Lakeside Village, public domain

Photo Two:
Judge James I. Roosevelt; Library of Congress

Photo Three:
Mary Loney Roosevelt; Skaneateles: Characteristics of a Lakeside Village, public domain

Photo Four:
Roseleigh, home of Frederick Roosevelt; Skaneateles: Characteristics of a Lakeside Village, public domain

The post Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Seventy appeared first on Woman Around Town.

July 20, 1916. When Dr. Reuel Kimball met a passenger who survived the sinking of the Titantic back in 1912, the New York Sun reported, on a pregnant passenger, “The nervous condition which has caused her friends some alarm on Thursday night has passed almost entirely away and Dr. Reuel Kimball, the Force Family Physician said that it had not been necessary to give Mrs. Astor a single drop of medicine.”    The pregnant survivor the article was referring to was Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Madeline Force Astor, the second wife of Colonel John Jacob Astor who perished when the ship sunk and he gallantly gave up his life jacket to a young woman.

John Jacob Astor and his teen-aged bride Madeline were on a belated honeymoon cruise to Europe when the Titanic sunk and by the time she returned safely to New York she was five months pregnant.  Dr. Kimball was at the Astor mansion at 840 Fifth Avenue and 65^th Street four months later to assist in the birth of  the baby boy, named for his father,  John Jacob Astor on August 14, 1912.

A newspaper account of the Titanic and its illustrious survivors

Dr. Kimball’s practice catered to the well-connected members of  New York City’s high society that included not only the Astors, but  the Roosevelts and the Shippens, too.  He was at the bedside of  Kate Roosevelt’s mother, Georgina Morton Shippen during her final illness in early April, 1916.

Like many wealthy New Yorkers, Dr. Kimball maintained a medical practice in New York City and summered at a seaside resort.  In 1895, the doctor and his wife, Caroline Kimball purchased  2.5 acres of land in an development called Belbea in Rumson, New Jersey for $6,500 and built a mansard-roofed mansion on the site just down the road from the Shippen’s cottage on Ward Lane , not far from the Sea Bright Lawn Tennis and Cricket Club founded by Kate’s father, William Shippen.

On July 20^th, 1916, Kate’s sister, Sophie Shippen was invited along with some other Rumson residents to the Kimball home to attend  what she called, “a bandage class.”  Wrapping and rolling bandages was a worthwhile cause taken up by many “ladies of leisure.”  They felt they were doing their patriotic duty by getting together and like mothers with infants, swaddling small packets of cloth together, packing them up and shipping them overseas to hospitals on the European Front during World War One.

Mrs. John Jacob Astor

According to Kate Roosevelt’s diary written during the summer of 1916, it seemed she was straddling several different worlds: the secure and comfortable life she led at the seaside Shippen Cottage in Rumson, her remote farm called Merdlemouth nestled among the evergreens in Hightstown, New Jersey and the  far-off  battlefields of Europe. And of course her recently widowed daughter, Dorothy Quincy Geer was always on her mind.  In a letter she wrote to Theodore Roosevelt’s sister, Anna (Bamie) Roosevelt Cowles in 1895 she remembered how much she missed her late husband, Hilborne Roosevelt, cousin to Theodore and Bamie.  He died in 1886, but his memory never faded.  The letter is in the Theodore Roosevelt Collection in the Houghton Library at Harvard University and the archivist there, Heather Cole was kind enough to scan a copy of it for me.

It reads: “Dear Bamie: I miss Hilly (Hilborne) at every turn and my whole life centers on Dorothy.  It frightens me sometimes to think how much her existence means to me.”  Writing about her then, twelve year-old daughter, Kate Roosevelt added, “She is as tall as me and is still very pretty.”

Long Pond

And like her mother, Dorothy Roosevelt Geer never re-married and just like other young widows, followed the social protocol practiced in the early nineteen hundreds. She pursued a life of quiet pleasures and acceptable pastimes.  But unlike her mother, she did not seem as devoted to her own children. Her two little boys, Langdon Geer, Jr. and Shippen Geer were raised by what their grandmother, Kate referred to as “nursery governesses,” and sometimes seemed to be afterthoughts. But on July 20, 1916 Dorothy took them on a little vacation to visit her Aunt Anna Davis and cousins Theodore and Ruth Steinway at a place called Long Pond.

I had never heard of this tranquil sounding spot, but thanks to yet another relative of Kate Roosevelt’s, this time from the Shippen side I soon learned lots.  Sam Chapin, who has been following the “Dowager’s Diary” and currently lives in the area known as Long Pond is the great-grandson of Kate’s Sister, Anna Davis, and the grandson of her niece, Ruth Steinway and her  husband, Theodore Steinway.  Located on Boston’s eastern South Shore, the Shippen Sisters and the Geer Family left their well-heeled footprints on this historic area of Plymouth, Massachusetts for many years.

Long Pond

As most readers of “The Dowager’s Diary” already know, Kate Roosevelt’s maiden name was Shippen.  She was one of twelve children born to William and Georgina Morton Shippen in Hoboken, New Jersey (only seven survived to maturity). In 1916 the siblings included, Kate Roosevelt, Anna Davis, the spinster sisters, Ettie, Caroline, Georgie and Sophie Shippen and one brother, William Shippen. The family patriarch had lots of children and an equally-expansive income that enabled him to offer them the best money could buy thanks to his mentor, Edwin Augustus Stevens.

At an early age, William Shippen became the protégé of Mr. Stevens, a member of the landed gentry, who owned acres and acres of property in and around Hoboken, with interests in its quickly-growing development that included the Hoboken Land and Improvement Company, Hoboken National Bank and Hudson County Gas Light Company. He was a chairman of the New Jersey State Democratic Committee and a member of New York’s Yacht Club and the Union Club, but his greatest affiliation was the one he had as the founder of the Steven’s Institute of Technology.

As Edwin Stevens’ business and money flew to great heights along the cliffs of the Hudson River, he took William Shippen under his wing. When Stevens died in 1868 he left William Shippen in charge of all of his business and properties that included a large estate called Castle Point and a small home on the property called the “Shanty.”

Driving home through the woods, Long Pond

The “Shanty” was used by the Stevens family as a temporary home while their mansion was being constructed.  When Stevens moved in into his new home, he gave the “Shanty” to Shippen and his growing family. According to a letter written by Anna Davis, Kate Roosevelt’s sister, “The Shanty was a wooden house built on a hill.  From the upper side you entered into a large dining room and there were four bedrooms on the same floor.  Below were the servants’ rooms, the kitchen and a large store room.  As the family expanded many additions were made. This was the happy, hospitable home in which we spent our childhood. Life in the “Shanty” was very happy, busy and varied.”

The children were constantly with their parents, swimming and boating in the Hudson River, just steps from their front door. In the winter William Shippen had part of the lawn flooded to make a skating pond. School, dancing classes, music lessons all took place in the “Shanty.” Horses for riding and driving and playing whist on the front porch overlooking the river were all part of the idyllic life the Shippens led.

I think Anna Davis was trying to re-create the piece of heaven she had known as a child when she and her husband, Howland Davis purchased the property known as Long Pond and named its centerpiece , a shingle-style summer cottage the “Ashanty.”

Dorothy Roosevelt Geer, the young widow

My image of a small wooden cabin with a symbolic- sounding name tucked into the woods in Massachusetts was quickly squelched as I began speaking to this fourth generation Shippen. “Oh no,” Sam Chapin said and explained that the name was not a throw back or badge of Indian honor.  My instincts were correct. The cottage was christened “Ashanty” by his great- grandmother, Anna Davis. It was the vacation home she and her wealthy, banker-husband, Howland Davis built in 1913.  No Indians living here, only the Davis tribe who named their home “Ashanty” after the one the Shippen sisters lived in back in the 1870s on the banks of the Hudson River.  So much for the romantic ramblings of a writer.

Whatever its name or correct pronunciation, the home on Long Pond is beautiful and still remains in the extended Shippen-Davis family.  According to Chapin, “It is an idyllic setting, over the years enjoyed by generation after generation.  When the land was first settled by Anna and Howland Davis, each of their eight children was offered a piece of property on the twenty-five wooded acres to build their own home when they married.”  Chapin’s grandparents, the Steinways took them up on the offer.

Theodore and Ruth Steinway lived at 125 East 56^th Street in New York City during the winter, but during the summers, Long Pond was where they camped-out.  According to Chapin, every Friday, his grandfather, Theodore Steinway, would leave his job as chairman of the Steinway Piano Company and begin his journey by side-wheel ferry departing the Fall River Line’s14^th Street Pier at 6 o’clock, travel through the Long Island Sound to Middleboro, Massachusetts and finally by carriage to Long Pond, arriving around 11 the next morning just in time to begin a weekend of baseball games, fishing, boating and swimming on the pristine pond.

Now the name “Ashanty” made sense.  When Anna and her husband, Howland Davis, the son of well-known Plymouth historian Thomas Davis, built their home on Long Pond, she wanted it to evoke the fond memories of her childhood home in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Now I began to understand why Kate and her daughter, Dorothy kept returning there.  It seemed to me from reading her diary that she criss-crossed back and forth between her farm in Hightstown, New Jersey her apartment in New York City, her seaside cottage in Rumson, New Jersey and her sister’s summer retreat in Plymouth, Massachusetts many times.  She was a frequent flyer on all of the means of transportation available to a wealthy widow in 1916 that included ferries, trains, carriages and motors.

“Ashanty” at Long Pond was not exactly a hop-skip-and-jump from any of her departures, but well worth the trip.  On this summer day in 1916, Dorothy arrived by the motor that met her and her boys at the train station at Middleboro.  The next day was sunny and for the entire week, Dorothy, Langdon, Jr. and Shippen Geer enjoyed the company of her aunt, Anna Davis and her cousins, “Picking raspberries on Saturday. To church on Sunday, a lobster supper here on the beach and a lovely run home through the woods by starlight.”  For the young widow, it was quite a romantic spot, even if she was sharing it with two little boys under the age of five.

Opening photo: Shippen sisters watching the Cedarville Game, 1907
courtesy Sam Chapin

Photo One: A newspaper account of the Titanic and its illustrious survivors
Library of Congress

Photo Two: Mrs. John Jacob Astor
Library of Congress

Photos Three and Four: Long Pond
Courtesy Sam Chapin

Photo Five: Driving home through the woods, Long Pond
courtesy Sam Chapin

Photo Six: Dorothy Roosevelt Geer, the young widow
courtesy, Noel Geer Seifert

The post The Dowager’s Diary: New York City’s Downton Abbey – Week Seventy-Five appeared first on Woman Around Town.

August 24-30, 1916 

With summer swiftly slipping away, Kate Roosevelt wasn’t letting any grass grow under her feet. After spending a few days at her home at 301 Lexington Avenue in New York City, she had her chauffeur, William Bourke, drive her down to her farm in Hightstown, New Jersey. Nestled in the woods, just outside of Princeton, its name was Merdlemouth and I am still trying to find out why Kate gave it such a mythical-sounding name. A visit to the Hightstown Historical Society gave me lots of information on the farm’s location but even the experts and life-long residents were at a loss as to the origin of the name. But the quest continues.

Apparently the heat wave Kate wrote about in last week’s diary entry was still simmering in Hightstown. “I sent to Etra for three hundred pounds of ice.” Etra was a small village not far from Kate’s farm and unlike Merdlemouth, I was able to find out how the town got its name. ETRA were the initials of the town’s most prominent resident, Edward Taylor Rosel Applegate, an assemblyman and Mercer County judge. Originally called “Scrabbletown,”  I was a little surprised that the town’s name hadn’t been changed one more time to Roosevelt. Residents knew that a member of the Roosevelt Family owned a farm in Hightstown, and many just assumed it was Theodore Roosevelt, but thanks to my reading Kate Roosevelt’s diary, I was able to put that rumor to rest.

Shippen Geer on the porch at Merdlemouth, HIghtstown, New Jersey

The ice was delivered and stored in the farm’s icehouse by one of Merdlemouth’s maids, known simply as “Emily” who had arrived with Kate’s daughter Dorothy Geer and her two young sons, Langdon, Jr. and Shippen Geer.

Back in the summer of 1916, arriving in Hightstown with children in tow wasn’t an easy task as evidenced by Kate’s diary entry. “Very difficult to move children about on account of the strict quarantine for infantile paralysis (polio). At either end of the main entrance, streets at Hightstown, men with red flags stop all people with children who want to enter or leave. Sometimes adults are stopped, too.  All children under sixteen years of age must have a certificate from the Board of Health from the town which they came from, testifying that the children are free of this disease and state whether or not there is any paralysis in the district from whence they came.”

A young polio victim being transported to hospital

The epidemic was particularly virulent in New York City due to overcrowded conditions and poor sanitation. The disease affected everyone, whether it was a child left crippled, a family who buried one of the virus’ victims or those who just wanted to help in some way.

The Stettheimer Sisters – Florine, Ettie and Carrie  – were charitable New Yorkers as well what the New York Times described as “New Women.” The fabulously wealthy trio declared, “Men impossible but worthy of flirtation.” They wore pants, smoked cigarettes, disdained marriage, romance and children. Sounding a smidgeon like the Shippen sisters, Kate Roosevelt’s spinster siblings, the Stettheimer’s were inseparable. Also similar to the Shippens, they were immersed in the world of art, intellectual pursuits and good deeds.

The Stettheimer Dollhouse

The Stettheimer’s charitable legacy, “The Doll House” was donated to the Museum of the City of New York. The New York Times reported, “It has delighted esthetes for decades. Now estimated to be worth millions, the “Doll House” grew out of generosity typical of Carrie Stettheimer.” Always a do-gooder, rolling bandages for the Red Cross during World War One and arranging flowers for charity, I was sure she and Shippen Sisters traveled in the same social circles.

The Times reported, “Summering in a house on Saranac Lake in upstate New York when a polio epidemic broke out in 1916, Carrie Stettheimer donated a doll house she had made to a raffle to raise money for the afflicted families. Her mother, Rosetta Stettheimer, won the raffle and re-donated it, bringing in $1,000 for the cause.”

Apparently the spinster Stettheimer had a talent for building miniature buildings. Two years later Carrie began construction on another doll house, a project she worked on for twenty-six years, leaving it unfinished when she died in 1944.

Florine Stettheimer in her Bryant Park Garden

The two-story, 29 -inch dollhouse has sixteen rooms that mimic the interiors Carrie and her sisters created for themselves at “Chateau Stettheimer,” the family’s mammoth apartment at the Alwyn Court on West 58^th Street.  Each sister decorated her room to reflect their personality. Ettie, the novelist, painted hers in vivid blues and reds with Chinese-inspired furnishings; Florine, the artist, hung hers with lace and swags of sparkling cellophane and Carrie’s was an extension of her idiosyncrasy.

The “Doll House” became a showcase for her alter-ego. According to Barbara Blooming, the author of The Life and Art of Florine Stettheimer, “Carrie had always been in the shadow.  The doll house gave her an identity. Suddenly she became an artist in her own right.”

Until then, Carrie Stettheimer’s concerns had been mostly domestic and revolved around the feeding, clothing and sheltering of her two sisters.  She was devoted to writing the daily menu for the family cook to prepare that included dishes like oyster salad and feather soup (chicken and dumplings) and never forgetting to include the strawberries in meringue that her sisters relished.

Like the Shippen Sisters, Ettie; Caroline; Sophie and Georgie, the Stettheimers had many interests. Their friends included the decorator, Cecil Beaton; artists, Georgia O’Keefe and Marcel Duchamp; the journalist, H.L Menken; the author Carl Sandburg and photographers, Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz.

Langdon Geer, Jr and his brother, Shippen Geer with their Steinway Cousins at Merdlemouth, Hightstown, New Jersey

Both families summered along the Jersey Shore, the Shippens  in Rumson, New Jersey at their family home the “Anchorage,” and the Stettheimers in rented mansions along the shore in Elberon, New Jersey where according to Stephen Birminghman’s, book, Our Crowd, many New York City Jews owned property. All were spinsters with lots of time and money on their hands, who used their good fortune to help make the world a better and more beautiful place.

And speaking of beautiful places, Kate Shippen Roosevelt’s farm in Hightstown, New Jersey was just that, an oasis where she spent time “pottering” around in the greenhouse and garden while doting on her daughter’s sons. Her diary for August, 1916 ended with relief, “Dorothy secured health certificates for the children from Dr. Wilcox and passes from the health authorities.”

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Tenement in New York City where polio ran rampant
Library of Congress

Photo Two:
Shippen Geer on the porch at Merdlemouth, HIghtstown, New Jersey
Courtesy Sam Chapin

Photo Three:
A young polio victim being transported to hospital
Library of Congress

Photo Four:
The Stettheimer Dollhouse
Museum City of New York

Photo Five:
Florine Stettheimer in her Bryant Park Garden
Smithsonian Digital Collection

Photo Six:
Langdon Geer, Jr and his brother, Shippen Geer with their Steinway Cousins at Merdlemouth, Hightstown, New Jersey
Courtesy, Sam Chapin

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Eighty appeared first on Woman Around Town.

September 14-21, 1916

“Dorothy, Anna and I to lunch with Bessie Alexander in Princeton.” The four women mentioned in Kate’s diary entry for September 14, 1916 were her daughter, Dorothy Roosevelt Geer; her sister Anna Shippen Davis; herself and the widow of the world famous portrait painter, John White Alexander. Bessie Alexander was often mentioned in Kate Roosevelt’s diary, not as the widow of a well-known artist and the subject of many of his paintings, but as an old family friend.

The Alexander Family lived in New York City and summered in Sea Bright, New Jersey in a cottage not far from the Shippen’s home called the “Anchorage.” Their only child, James Waddell Alexander was born in Sea Bright in 1888.

The Ring by John White Alexander

Seeking a sedate setting and comfortable company, Bessie Alexander spent many quiet weekends with Kate Roosevelt and Kate’s daughter, Dorothy at “Merdlemouth,” their little piece of heaven in Hightstown, New Jersey. Located just down the road from Princeton, a day’s excursion to the historic town was often on the agenda.

Today, the foursome was going there for lunch. Three of the four women were widows. Bessie Alexander’s husband’s death was the most recent. John White Alexander White passed away at the age of 59 in May, 1915. Just sixteen month’s into her role as widow, this trip to Princeton was probably a melancholy reminder for Mrs. Alexander. Her husband taught drawing at Princeton University from 1881 to 1890 when he was drawn to Paris to participate in the salons of the “Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts and perfect his signature style of portraiture.

Harper’s Magazine

Before his marriage to Miss Elizabeth Alexander in 1887, Alexander lived in Germany and studied with the equally-talented portrait artist, William Merritt Chase at the Royal Academy in Munich. After returning to the United States Alexander settled in New York City where he was introduced to Elizabeth Alexander by Joseph Harper, the publisher of Harper’s Weekly where Alexander had once worked as a traveling illustrator. Now called Harper’s, founded in 1850, it is the second oldest consistently published monthly magazine in the United States.  Scientific Monthly is the oldest. Playing Cupid, the magazine mogul was fascinated by the fact that Elizabeth and John shared the same last name, Alexander.

Elizabeth “Bessie” Alexander’s father, James Waddell Alexander was a wealthy businessman, the president of the Equitable Life Insurance Company of New York.  John White Alexander did not have as proud a pedigree.  He was orphaned as an infant in Allegheny, Pennsylvania and worked his way to New York City by saving money through his employment as a telegraph messenger.  His first job in New York was with Harper’s, as a lowly office boy.

But his artistic talent was soon recognized and he began illustrating major events for the magazine including the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876 where Kate Roosevelt’s late-husband, Hilborne Roosevelt won awards for his latest invention, the electric pipe organ.

The widows Roosevelt and Alexander both had husbands to be proud of. After leaving Princeton in 1890, the Alexander’s made Paris home until 1901 when they returned to New York. During their foray in France, the couple counted among their circle of friends the sculpture, Auguste Rodin; the novelist, Henry James; the actor, Oscar Wilde and the painter, James Whistler but remained loyal to their American friends that included Kate Roosevelt and the Shippen Sisters from Sea Bright, New Jersey.

Alexander’s American portrait subjects included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, President Grover Cleveland and the infamous, Evelyn Nesbit the subject of the scandalous Stanford White love affair and ultimate murder by her jealous husband, the millionaire, Harry K. Thaw in 1906. Before becoming entangled with the evil architect, Stanford White, Evelyn Nesbit was sought after as a model by all of New York City’s famous painters including Charles Dana Gibson, Carroll Beckwith and Frederick S. Church.

An Interesting Book with Evelyn Nesbit as the subject, 1901

An Interesting Book was the title of Alexander’s work that Evelyn Nesbit sat for. Nesbit’s youthful innocence was captured beautifully by the artist who often used another beauty as his subject.  His wife, Bessie Alexander White posed for many portraits.  The most famous highlighting her fragile beauty is a study in muted pinks and moss green, the artist’s favorite colors. Painted in late 1902, it was exhibited at the famous French art dealer, Durand Reul’s gallery in Paris. It is titled simply: Mrs. Alexander. 

Bessie Alexander, the subject of beautiful paintings created by her talented husband showing her to be the epitome of gentle grace was also an outspoken supporter of Suffrage. Disagreeing with her good friend, Kate Shippen Roosevelt, Bessie Alexander joined the bandwagon and promoted women winning the right to vote.

Nassau Inn, Princeton, New Jersey

Kate’s diary did not say where the group had gone for lunch, but maybe it was the historic Nassau Inn on Palmer Square in view of Princeton’s campus.  Built in 1756 as the home of Judge Thomas Leonard, it became the Beekman Inn upon his death.  Christopher Beekman and his wife welcomed travelers and politicians alike to their tavern and in 1776 hosted delegates traveling to Philadelphia to attend the First Continental Congress, the result of many a heated debate held there by the likes of patriots, Paul Revere, Robert Morris and Thomas Paine.

One hundred and forty years later, on September 14, 1916  it was called the Nassau Inn, and could possibly have been the scene of another sort of debate involving a different declaration of independence, one authored by women who wanted the right to vote.  Over luncheon, I was sure that Bessie Alexander and Kate Roosevelt voiced their differing opinions in lady-like tones between bites of bitter watercress sandwiches and sips of tepid tea. Whoever won the debate that day, I was sure delicate decorum was observed and no hard feelings followed. Bessie and Kate remained friends for life.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Nassau Hall, Princeton University
Library of Congress

Photo Two:
The Ring by John White Alexander
Library of Congress

Photo Three:
Harper’s Magazine
Public Domain

Photo Four:
An Interesting Book with Evelyn Nesbit as the subject, 1901
John White Alexander
Public Domain

Photo Five:
Nassau Inn, Princeton, New Jersey
Library of Congress

The post The Dowager’s Diary: Week Eighty-Three appeared first on Woman Around Town.

September 21-28, 1916

From the hallowed halls of Princeton University to the bright lights of Broadway, Kate Roosevelt was never far from places and events that were important in 1916.

Booth Theater

Taking a break from entertaining her friend Bessie Alexander at her farm, Merdlemouth, Kate returned to New York to attend a new play at the Booth Theater at 222 West 45^thStreet.  It was titled, “Pierrot the Prodigal.” A French pantomime, it re-told the age-old tale of the sorrowful son who sheepishly returns to his father’s home after being away for years.

The word Pierrot is French symbol for a stock character, the sad clown, who eternally is cast wearing a white floppy outfit, skull cap and a sad, snowy face. The magazine, Musical America summarized the play as being “delightful.”

Paul LeGrande as Pierrot, 1855

“Played with a small orchestra, the music for Pierrot the Prodigal can scarcely be called a mere accompaniment nor can it be said to supply simply a background for the pantomime. It is as vital a factor in the success of the play as the action itself.  The music is buoyant, refreshing and sparkling when need be and melancholy, ominous and tragic according to the fortunes of the wayward Pierrot.  Novel, often bazaar effects are employed in the score to imitate the pantomime. Mr. Freidheim Kremer, the solo pianist was particularly careful to time the music to the action and he succeeded remarkably well. The pantomime was artistically acted and staged as anything that has been done in New York City in many a season.

Margot Kelly as the heroine in Pierrot the Prodigal

Margot Kelly, the red-headed actress who played the laundress and the play’s heroine was a stand-in, but gave a star performance. Marjorie Patterson, as the chasened Pierrot was impeccable and Paul Clarget, as the father, carried off the honors in a performance that was unfailingly splendid. Pierrot easily made its way into the hearts of its audience.”

Kate Roosevelt concurred. On September 19, 1916 she wrote, “I went to Booth Theater to see Pierrot the Prodigal. It was a charming pantomime with lovely music. Beautifully set, the great artist of the cast was Paul Clerget, the French actor, who plays the father.  His pantomime was simply wonderful. Clarget throws everyone else into the shade. The whole thing was charming, but I could see fear in the hearts of the New York audience.”

Kaiser Wilhelm II

That’s where Kate’s amateur review differed from that of the professional’s. Hers ended on a less upbeat note. The play may have warmed the hearts of the audience, but after the curtain came down and lights went out, a shadow lingered on in the theater and throughout the world and Kate’s words captured the mood.

The New York Times echoed those forewarnings while quoting the Kaiser’s speech to his soldiers fighting on the Somme, “It is your special privilege that you are fighting the English, a nation that has sworn to destroy Germany.”

No matter how wonderful the plays that she attended were, Kate Roosevelt knew that World War One was waiting in the wings.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Pierrot from Moliere’s Play, A Feat with a Statue
Public Domain

Photo Two;
Booth Theater, 222 West 45th Street, New York City
wiki

Photo Three:
Paul LeGrande as Pierrot, 1855
wiki

Photo Four:
Margot Kelly as the heroine in Pierrot the Prodigal
New York Tribune, October 8, 1916

Photo Five:
Kaiser Wilhelm II
Library of Congress

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Eighty-Four appeared first on Woman Around Town.

September 28-30, 1916

“These Catholic affairs are horrible.  To my mind they are utterly meaningless. There is no help or confirmation in them!”  From Kate Shippen Roosevelt’s pen to the ears of austere Episcopalians everywhere, these words echoed off the pages of her diary written on September 29, 1916 after having attended a funeral service for her dear friend, Gertrude Adams.

Apparently the service held at St. Agnes’ Church located at 143 East43^rd Street and Lexington Avenue was as elaborate as the edifice itself. The brick and limestone neo-Gothic structure with lacy spires, imposing rooflines, sky-high twin towers and slabs of stained-glass was christened St. Agnes in 1873 as a sanctuary for the Italian laborers working on the construction of the Grand Central Terminal. Taking a break from their back-breaking work, these immigrants came to hear Mass, confess their sins and say their prayers in the middle of bustling mid-town Manhattan. The original building was destroyed by fire in 1992 and re-opened in 1998.  The two original towers anchor the new structure, built in the Italianate style to resemble the Church of Il Gesu in Rome.

Convent of St. Elizabeth

Kate had no criticism for the architecture of the building, but what went on inside was another matter. She made no bones about her disdain for Catholics and their rites and rituals. A diary entry she wrote in 1912 rambled and ranted about her son-in-law, Langdon Geer’s aunt who had gone to St. Elizabeth’s School for Girls in Morristown, New Jersey, lamenting “the nuns made a catholic out of her.”   She made converting to Catholicism sound more like joining a cult of cannibals or moving to a leper colony.

Whatever her thoughts on the funeral ceremony, I was sure that she could not criticize the music. Catholics know how to put on a show with hymns and choirs that usually insure there’s not a dry eye in the house. And as readers of The Dowager’s Diary know, Kate Roosevelt had an ear for music, often attending concerts and church services featuring organs designed by her late husband, the talented,  Hilborne L. Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin.

St. Agnes Catholic Church

From the time he showcased his award-winning invention, the world’s first electric pipe organ at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876 until his death in 1886 Hilborne oversaw the design and personally installed organs all over the world.

Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City, Long Island

In 1883, just after he married Kate Shippen, Hilborne Roosevelt set up shop at 145-149 West 18^th Street not far from the newlywed’s first home at 40 West 18^th Street. The adjoining four-story brick buildings had a combined frontage of fifty-one feet. The rear portion was narrowed to thirty-six feet to accommodate an alley on either side. It was at this new and enlarged facility that the musical master-mind undertook the manufacture of his Magnum Opus, the world’s largest organ, designed for the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, Long Island.  This Roosevelt Organ was just slightly larger than the one at Royal Albert Hall in England. It was built through the years 1879 to 1883 at a cost of $34,100.

A.T. Stewart

The cathedral was the memorial of Cornelia Stewart to her late-husband, Alexander Turney Stewart (1803-1876), the Irish immigrant who single-handedly invented America’s first department store. In 1823 he opened a dry goods store in lower Manhattan. After several moves and expansions, his business, named A.T. Stewart’s moved into the Cast Iron Palace on an elite stretch of Broadway known as the Ladies’ Mile. It was the site of many a shopping spree indulged in by President Lincoln’s wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. The “First Lady” once ran up a bill there of $27,000.

Moses Taylor Memorial Church, Elberon, New Jersey

When Catherine Taylor, the widow of the New York City, banker Moses Taylor, erected a memorial to her late-husband she also had a Hilborne Roosevelt Organ installed. It was not the largest in the world, but it is one of most enduring. Now called “The Cadillac of Organs,” it was one of the last to be built and personally installed by Roosevelt himself. The organ at the Moses Taylor Memorial Church in Elberon, New Jersey is still in pristine working order and has been used for summer services in the sea-side chapel since its dedication in 1885.

Hilborne Roosevelt Organ

Neither of these two memorial churches is Catholic, both are Protestant, but the Roosevelt Organ Works was not prejudice as to where or for whom they installed their organs. According to the book, Hilborne and Frank Roosevelt by David Fox, “Purchasers of Roosevelt organs included churches, chapels, residences, schools and temples throughout the United States, Canada, Ecuador, England, France, Germany and Italy.”

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
St. Agnes Catholic Church Interior
New York Organ Project

Photo Two:
Convent of St. Elizabeth
from a postcard

Photo Three:
St. Agnes Catholic Church
West 43rd Street, New York City
wiki

Photo Four:
Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City, Long Island
website: Cathedral of the Incarnation

Photo Five:
A.T. Stewart
Engraving, New York Public Library Digital Collection

Photo Six:
Moses Taylor Memorial Church, Elberon, New Jersey
Organ Historical Society Photo by Robert Lubischer

Photo Seven:
Hilborne Roosevelt Organ installed at Moses Taylor, Elberon Memorial Church, 1885
Author Collection

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Eighty-Five appeared first on Woman Around Town.

October 12-19, 1916

“Dorothy and Eva McAdoo arrived in Princeton Junction by the 4:04 train from New York City. Had chauffeur pick them up and drive them here to Hightstown. I gathered all of the flowering cosmos left.  Bella (the kitchen maid) received a cable saying her brother was wounded fighting in France, taken to a hospital in England and died there.”

That was just one day’s news as reported by Kate Roosevelt in her diary entry dated October, 18, 1916. Her daughter, Dorothy Roosevelt Geer and good friend, Eva McAdoo made a quick train trip from the city to enjoy a fall get-away at the family farm, Merdlemouth, in Hightstown, New Jersey.  Eva McAdoo and the Roosevelts had a lot in common.

William McAdoo

Miss McAdoo’s father, William McAdoo, was chief magistrate of New York City. From 1904 to 1905, he was the city’s Police Commissioner, a post Kate’s cousin, former President Theodore Roosevelt held from 1895 to 1897. William McAdoo, an Irish immigrant, was a Democrat and the Roosevelts were Republicans but that didn’t stop their relatives, Eva and Dorothy from being friends. Although differing in their political affiliations, the McAdoos and Roosevelts had many things in common. Honesty and civic stewardship were among them. When Chief Magistrate William McAdoo passed away in 1931 New York City newspapers reported that he had never let any of his influential offices affect his finances, as evidenced by his leaving his widow and daughter with an inheritance of a mere $5,000. The 1910 Federal Census listed the family living in the Patterson Hotel  at 58 West 47^th Street in New York City

Union Workers Rally

Like father, like daughter, Eva McAdoo was active in making the city a safer and more sanitary place to live and like Theodore Roosevelt’s confidant, social-reformer, Jacob Riis, she was sympathetic to female factory workers and tenement dwellers.

In Theodore Roosevelt’s autobiography he wrote, “During my years as New York’s Police Commissioner, Jacob Riis was closest to me.  I was ignorant of the extent to which big men of great wealth played a mischievous part in our industrial, social and political life. But I was well-awake to the needs of making ours better.” Jacob Riis’ book, How the Other Half Lives was a real eye-opener, giving enlightenment and inspiration to social crusaders like Theodore Roosevelt and amateur advocates like Eva McAdoo.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

In January, 1911 just three months before the tragic fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory on Greene Street in Lower Manhattan, Harper’s Bazaar ran a poignant piece on the Label Shop. An outgrowth of the Consumer’s League Movement and The Guild of Hand Industries, of which Eva McAdoo was treasurer, the Label Shop was located on the top floor of a small factory located at 4 West 28^th Street. It operated as a salesroom. Only items made under clean and healthful conditions by members of the unions, paid a fair living wage were sold there. Every garment bore a label attesting to its originations and that is why the retail outlet was called “The Label Shop.”

Tenement Workers

The Harper’s Bazaar article stated, “Women of social prominence back the Label Shop. Displayed with the labeled garments, is the handwork of the women of the tenements who are being guided and helped by the settlement workers. The tenements of New York City are full of women who have brought with them to this country both the skill and the habits of industry that produce these marvels of beautiful handiwork. In their effort to adjust themselves to the bewildering new conditions here, most of these skilled workers are swept into the factories and sweatshops or else they continue to work at their own handicrafts in their tenements homes, selling their products to exploiting purchasers for the merest pittance. It is natural that the settlements located in the midst of foreign populations should make some attempts to help these workers and give them a fair chance. But all settlements which have conducted small industries in the effort to conserve and develop the skill of our foreign-born women have had to face a serious problem in marketing their products. This is why the Guild has united with the Label Shop and is there exhibiting the products of its women workers who produce Irish Lace, portieres (hanging curtains placed over a door-less entry to a room, usually made of velvet or brocade and derived from the French word for entrance, porte), and cushion covers. The exhibit is most interesting and will make a strong appeal to women who appreciate novelty and are ready to help a most deserving effort to teach these women of the tenements how to make a decent living under fair conditions.”

Dorothy Roosevelt Geer and her cousin, Eleanor Roosevelt, along with their friend, Eva McAdoo and many other socially aware women in New York City were actively involved in the “Settlement Movement,” encouraged by the example of their elders. Kate Roosevelt was no doubt proud of her young widowed daughter, Dorothy, and the life she led after the untimely death of her husband, Langdon Geer, in 1914.

Flanders Field Poster

Dorothy’s entourage included members of the social set, but she also hob-knobbed with  politically and civic-minded women who spent many hours rolling bandages for the troops overseas and knitting warm socks for soldiers trapped in soggy trenches on the Western Front.

New York City was a swirl of men and women involved in the “Preparedness Movement,” aimed at getting America ready for its marching orders.  By now the war in Europe had been churning out dead soldiers and fatherless children for more than two years and on this day in 1916, its steely shadow hovered over Hightstown, New Jersey and pierced through the peaceful mood at Merdlemouth when Kate’s Irish maid, Bella, got word her brother was one of the casualties of war.

As a hush fell over the farm on this fall day Kate Roosevelt was found gathering the last of her pink cosmos and digging up the roots of her coral colored geraniums while red poppies were sprouting up over the graves of fallen soldiers buried in Belgium’s Flanders Fields.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Tenement Workers
Lewis Hines Photo
Public Domain

Photo Two:
William McAdoo
United States Government Photo

Photo Three:
Union Workers Rally
National Archives

Photo Four:
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
Library of Congress

Photo Five:
Tenement Workers
Lewis Hines Photo
Public Domain

Photo Six:
Flanders Field Poster
Department of National Defense, Ottawa

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Eighty-Seven appeared first on Woman Around Town.

October 25-31, 1916

“Florence Rhett lunched with me at the Cosmo Club, shopping, taxi to Penn Station. Bella and Maud, the maids, were with me.”  By the year 1916, Florence Rhett was long-retired from her position as traveling companion/governess to multi-millionaire, J.P. Morgan’s daughters.  But well before she took this prestigious position, she was a friend of the six Shippen sisters, who fondly referred to her as “Flossie.”  Florence Mason Rhett was one of ten bridesmaids, five wearing pale blue and five wearing pink, attending her friend, Kate Shippen when she married Hilborne Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin on February 1, 1883.

J. P. Morgan

When J.P. Morgan died in 1913 his will stated, “I leave the sum of $100,000 to Florence Rhett for her many years as a member of my household.” During her employment she was a traveling companion and governess to Morgan’s three daughters, Louisa, Julia and Anne Tracy Morgan, often accompanying them on extended European vacations. Florence Rhett lived at 122 East 34^th Street.  She died a wealthy spinster on October 30, 1921.

Will of J.P. Morgan

Back in 1883, it was nice of her employer, J. P. Morgan to give her the day off, but how could he refuse when she was going to what the New York Times, later described as “One of the most brilliant weddings of the season.” Mr. Morgan would also have been impressed by the guests invited to celebrate the nuptials.  Nine train cars were reserved to carry guests from New York City to the train station in Sea Bright, New Jersey located just across the street from the Shippen Family’s seaside cottage known as the “Anchorage.” Well-wishers included captains of industry, political leaders, philanthropists, millionaires and most of the Roosevelt Family.  Even though Hilborne Roosevelt was not a politician like his cousin, the future president of the United States, Teddy or a banker like his other cousin, Emlen Roosevelt, the director of the Chemical Bank of New York, he was one of New York City’s most prominent entrepreneurs. He owned the Roosevelt Organ Works. Located at 40 West 18^th Street and Sixth Avenue, directly across the street from the exclusive, B. Altman Department Store, the company produced some of the most expensive and well-turned out organs in the world.  Hilborne Roosevelt ran the company until his early death of a lung disease in 1886.

Elizabeth “Libbie” and Colonel George Custer at Fort Lincoln in the Dakota Territory

Hilborne was not as wealthy as the fantastically-rich financial mogul, J.P. Morgan, Florence Rhett’s boss,  but wealthy enough to leave his widow Kate and daughter, Dorothy with plenty of money, some of it coming from his organ business, inventions and patents as well as from the vast Roosevelt Estate. The family patriarch, Cornelius Van Schaak Roosevelt (1794-1871)  made a fortune importing transparent window glass, known as “French Plates” and buying up real estate in the once-rural  area of lower Manhattan. Kate and Dorothy enjoyed the fruits of the family wealth which afforded them membership in all of New York City’s most exclusive women’s clubs.  In addition to the Colony Club, Kate Roosevelt and her daughter Dorothy Roosevelt Geer were on the list of “ladies  who lunched”  at the Cosmopolitan Club.

The Cosmopolitan Club Dining Room

Founded in 1909, just seven years before Kate and Florence’s fall luncheon on October 25, 1916, the private woman’s club was intended as a place where New York City governesses could gather and socialize on their days off.  In 1916, the club was located at its second location in a former stable at Lexington Avenue and 4oth Street. Today it is located at 122 East 66^th Street on New York’s Upper East Side. Quite possibly Florence Rhett joined the club at the urging of the Morgan Family who wanted their loyal family governess to have a nice place to go on her day off.

Original members of the Cosmopolitan “Cosmo” Club included the author, Willa Cather; first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt; philanthropist, Grace Dodge; General George Custer’s widow, Elizabeth “Libbie” Bacon Custer; violinist, Katherine Parlow; the actress, Helen Hayes and anthropologist, Margaret Meade.

Yearly dues were twenty dollars and lunch cost forty cents with omelets, crabmeat salad, soup and finger sandwiches on the menu. Now that Kate Roosevelt’s good friend, Florence Rhett was an heiress, I was wondering who picked up the lunch tab, which for two would have totaled, eighty cents in 1916.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Sunday.

Photo One:
Sea Bright Train Station
From a postcard

Photo Two:
J. P. Morgan
wiki

Photo Three:
Will of J.P. Morgan
Clipping from Kate Roosevelt’s Diary

Photo Four:
Elizabeth “Libbie” and Colonel George Custer at Fort Lincoln in the Dakota Territory
Library of Congress

Photo Five:
The Cosmopolitan Club Dining Room
Library of Congress

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Eighty-Nine appeared first on Woman Around Town.

November 8-15, 1916

“I sent Anna Roosevelt’s Christmas check to Paris. $16.50 went out at 10:50 a.m.” Anna Roosevelt was President Theodore Roosevelt’s older sister and first cousin of Kate Shippen Roosevelt’s late husband, Hilborne Roosevelt. Fondly referred to as “Bamie,” short for the Italian word for baby, Bambino, Anna was the glue that held the family together.

Alice Lee Roosevelt

When Theodore Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice Lee, died of Bright’s Disease shortly after giving birth to baby Alice in 1884, Anna stepped in as surrogate mother, allowing the grieving widower the freedom to dry his tears with an extended trip out west to the Dakota Badlands. Little Alice Roosevelt often referred to her energetic aunt as Auntie Bye, because it seemed that she was always rushing here or there and biding everyone a cheerful “bye-bye.”

Kate Roosevelt’s nephew, Nicholas Roosevelt, the son of Hilborne’s brother, Dr. James West Roosevelt, said of Anna Roosevelt, “She had an extraordinary personality. Bamie had possessed the best mind in the family and the most varied and fascinating character.” Alice Roosevelt said of her aunt, “I always believed that if she had been a man, she, rather than my father would have been President.”

Alice Roosevelt

Born with a curved spine, Bamie was an old soul with wisdom and understanding that spanned far beyond her years. That is why all of her cousins and siblings respected her opinion about politics and often romance.

Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt

On matters of the heart, Hilborne Roosevelt often poured his own out to this wise woman. Shortly after establishing his famous Roosevelt organ shop on West 18^th Street in New York City and obtaining several lucrative orders for his award winning instrument, the bachelor began considering the serious matter of marriage. For some time he had been courting a Miss Bulkley whom he had met at a dancing class in 1867. In the spring of 1873, Roosevelt proposed to her, but much to his surprise and disappointment, she turned him down. In a letter to Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt, he showed a stiff upper lip, though he alluded to the fact that she had “led him on” and questioned Ms. Bulkley’s morals. Additionally, he requested that the matter not be mentioned to his mother or other family members.  His secret was safe with the sympathetic spinster.

Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands

Three years later, Hilborne Roosevelt picked himself up, dusted himself off and took his newest invention, the electric pipe organ, to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition where he won first prize. He was on his way to becoming a successful businessman as well as property owner in New York City and the beach town of Sea Bright, New Jersey where he purchased the Harmony Hotel. He spent many summers entertaining in the sea side establishment and one in particular, wooing  twenty-eight year-old Kate Shippen, whose family owned a summer cottage, “the Anchorage” just across the street.

On November 1, 1882 he proposed and when Kate Shippen accepted, he wrote of his betrothal to Bamie, “I am in the most confused state of happiness.” The couple was married soon after. Anna Roosevelt was one of the bridesmaids. When her girlhood friend, Sarah Delano, married a distant cousin, James Roosevelt, in Hyde Park, Bamie Roosevelt was in the bridal party.  Poor Bamie, always the bridesmaid and never the bride.

Henry Cabot Lodge

Even though she was the nineteenth century’s version of the twentieth century’s advice columnist for the lovelorn, Anne Landers, Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt did not find true love herself until she was nearly forty years- old. While visiting London she met an American naval attaché, William Cowles. Saving her from a life of spinsterhood, in 1895,she married the forty-nine year-old divorced man and gave birth to a son when she was forty-three years-old. Her brother, Theodore Roosevelt, was all for the union. He implied that her decision to marry was long overdue, “I always felt it a shame that you, one of the two or three finest women whom I have met or known should not marry.” Family friend, Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, was not so enthusiastic and asked her, “Why on earth should you get married when you have Theodore and myself?”

Kate Roosevelt did not say in her diary why her cousin, Anna, was in Paris in November, 1916, but I knew from reading about the family, that the Roosevelts were frequent visitors to London and France.

But 1916 was not a time for casual traveling in Europe. World War I was in full force and the ocean was a treacherous booby trap fraught with German U-Boats ready to sink passenger and merchant ships. Under these circumstances, I was wondering if Kate’s Christmas gift arrived at all.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One
Anna Roosevelt with her father, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.
Library of Congress

Photo Two:
Alice Lee Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt’ First Wife
Library of Congress

Photo Three:
Alice Roosevelt
Library of Congress

Photo Four:
Anna “Bamie” Roosevelt
wiki

Photo Five:
Theodore Roosevelt in the Badlands
National Park Service

Photo Six:
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
Portrait: John Singer Sargent
Smithsonian Institution

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Ninety-One appeared first on Woman Around Town.

November 16-23, 1916

On November 16, 1916, Kate Shippen Roosevelt was securing the shutters on her shingled farmhouse, packing trunks with freshly-aired linens and polished silver, stacking wooden barrels with her fine china and stabling her team of horses for the winter while  getting ready to say good-by to another splendid season spent in Hightstown, New Jersey at the family farm, “Merdlemouth.”

Hightstown, New Jersey

The quiet forest and lavish flower gardens surrounding her farm were reluctantly getting ready to wave good bye to Kate, her daughter Dorothy and two tiny grandsons, Langdon and Shippen. With the help of the farm’s caretakers, local residents, Mrs. McKnight and Mrs. Connor and her New York City staff, Bella and Maude transplanted to the farm for the day, the move back to New York was planned with the precision of a Swiss timepiece.

John Drew, with cane

Once back in the city Kate Roosevelt resumed her ritual of going to the theater then coming home to write her often unflattering review of the play and actors. Apparently the peaceful setting of “Merdlemouth” hadn’t tamed her tongue. “I back in New York.  I went to see John Drew in the play Pendennis. I thought it very dull and he was very poor.”

Georgie Drew Barrymore

These were surprisingly scathing remarks coming from a member of the Roosevelt Family. The actor, John Drew’s niece, the actress Ethel Barrymore, and Kate’s cousin, Teddy’s daughter, Alice Roosevelt, were best friends and often partners in crime. While running for president in 1904, the Republican candidate, Theodore Roosevelt, lamented that Alice and Ethel were getting more press than him and forbid his daughter to be seen in public with the free-spirited actress until after the election was over. Of course his wish was not his command in the case of his hot-headed daughter Alice and the president once complained, to his friend the author, Owen Wister, “I can either run the country or attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.” This was after he threatened to throw her out the window.

Ethel Barrymore

John Drew’s sister, Georgiana, married Maurice Barrymore and their daughter, Ethel, helped populate the family dynasty. The aging actor once complained that he didn’t like playing “second fiddle to his preposterous nephew, Lionel Barrymore,” but as he grew older parts for John Drew were scarce and often stereotypical. Already sixty-three years-old when he played the part of the properly foppish Major Pendennis, newspaper reviews were much kinder than Kate and said it was “the best part he had played in years.”

The Roosevelt Family

Always the gentleman, like the role he played in ““Pendennis,”when he was dying in 1927, he asked family members surrounding his sick bed, to make sure his nurses were taken care of.  Hopefully Kate Roosevelt took a cue from the eccentric actor when it came to being kind to her long-suffering staff  who were seasonally shuttled between New York City and Hightstown, New Jersey.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One
The Farm at Merdlemouth
Sam Chapin Photo

Photo Two:
Hightstown, New Jersey
wiki

Photo Three:
John Drew
Public Domain

Photo Four:
Georgie Drew Barrymore
Sarony Photo, public domain, 1880

Photo Five:
Ethel Barrymore
wiki

Photo Six:
The Roosevelt Family:
Theodore and Edith and children:
Alice, Teddy, Archie, Kermit, Quentin and Ethel
Library of Congress

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Ninety-Two appeared first on Woman Around Town.

November 23-30, 1916

Thanksgiving, 1916 found Kate Roosevelt breaking-in a kitchen maid. “New waitress, Ida Anderson, came.  She has cleaned the silver and I sent the Roosevelt Family “flat silver” and tea and coffee service to Dorothy.” Kate’s daughter, Dorothy Roosevelt Geer, was the recipient of the family heirlooms as well as a fine and pampered pedigree.

Servants

As the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt’s late cousin, Hilborne Roosevelt, the young widow was born with her own silver spoon in her mouth that afforded her the opportunity to enjoy the life of a socialite in New York City in the early twentieth century. She was an only child. Dorothy and her mother, Kate Shippen Roosevelt were best of friends and often went to the theater, concerts and social events together and of course celebrated all of the holidays with each other. A live-in governess for Dorothy’s two sons, Langdon Jr. and Shippen Geer, Miss Gowans, made this gad -about life style possible.

Ruth Chatterton in “Out of the Kitchen”

With the fledgling Ida Anderson in the kitchen helping to prepare Thanksgiving dinner, Kate and Dorothy were able to partake in “Come Out of the Kitchen,” a play that Kate described as “Rather pretty and amusing.”  Based on the novel of the same name written by Alice Duer Miller it told the story of a reversal of fortune suffered by a formerly well-to-do southern family, the Dangerfields. When a wealthy investor from the north, played by Bruce McCrae, offers to lease the old Virginia plantation, he asks the family, that includes the beautiful Olivia Dangerfield, played by Ruth Chatterton and her siblings to stay on as cooks, housekeepers and butlers, offering them a reversal in roles as well. They were the ones used to having servants waiting on them.

Bruce McCrae

Staged at the George M. Cohan Theater on Broadway and 43^rd Street, it was a romantic comedy performed in three acts. The plot was right up Kate Roosevelt’s alley. Light enough for a laugh yet saturated with satirical innuendos, the play was also thought provoking involving the issue of slavery in the South.

After reading Kate Roosevelt’s glowing review, I wondered if she knew anything about the author, Alice Duer Miller.  A graduate of Barnard College, Miller actively influenced political opinion and her writings and poetry positively impacted the suffrage movement, a topic that Kate Roosevelt was not averse to voicing her own negative opinion on.

1916 Buick

Wrapping up the evening, Kate Roosevelt, wrote, “The new black and white taxis don’t come up as far as Broadway yet,” but she wasn’t worried about taking that mode of transportation that newspapers were boasting offered a luxurious, limousine-like ride for far less fares than the competition. Elmer McCue, her chauffeur, was waiting curbside. He was introduced in her diary as just another one of her employees. “Elmer McCue has been here in New York since Wednesday.  He is here to be our chauffeur and houseman and will drive our new four cylinder Buick equipped with winter top.”

The theme this Thanksgiving seemed to be servants, those working on Southern plantations and those employed at plush apartments in New York City.

Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.

Photo One:
Alice Duer Miller’s Poem Illustrated in Puck’s Magazine
public domain

Photo Two:
Servants
Library of Congress

Photo Three:
Ruth Chatterton in “Out of the Kitchen”
public domain, 1916

Photo Four:
Bruce McCrae the actor
Actor’s Birthday Book

Photo Five:
1916 Buick
wiki

The post The Dowager’s Diary – Week Ninety-Three appeared first on Woman Around Town.