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 65th 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 20th, 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 56th 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’s14th 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
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