Seal the Border, 1901

“While we Roosevelts are Democrats in the broadest sense we are not in favor of the scum and criminals of other countries being dumped on our shores.”

— Local resident Laura Fitch, daughter of Russell Fitch and Rosetta Roosevelt, quoted in the Skaneateles Free Press of October 15, 1901.

Miss Fitch was commenting after her cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, became President following President William McKinley’s assassination, an act she blamed on anarchists, whose presence in the U.S.A. she attributed to immigration. It was her wish to end immigration and eliminate any anarchists who had already arrived.

Miss Fitch died in New York City in 1905. She was a descendant of immigrant Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt, a Dutchman who came to New Amsterdam circa 1638. (His farm is today the site of the Empire State Building.)

Isaac Peace Hazard

I imagine there aren’t many members left at the Skaneateles Country Club who remember Isaac Peace Hazard. A 1905 graduate of Harvard University and a descendant of one of Rhode Island’s first families, he found his way to Skaneateles and the Country Club through a family connection.

After Harvard, Hazard spent a summer in the wilds of Maine and Newfoundland, and then went off to Cincinnati to serve as an apprentice at the Bullock Electric Company. That didn’t work out, so he accepted “a job in the testing room” at Triumph Electric Co., which turned out to be sweeping the floor and cleaning cuspidors. At the first opportunity, he moved on to the Cincinnati Traction Co.

In the spring of 1907, Hazard took two weeks off to attend to some family business in Santa Barbara, California, where the Hazard clan owned land, and took a horseback trip into the foothills. Shortly after that, he left Cincinnati for good, spent some time in the woods north of Lake Huron, and then returned home to Peace Dale, Rhode Island, to ponder his future.

One can imagine that draining cuspidors in Cincinnati had taken the bloom off the rose of his independence, and in 1907 he accepted a position with a Hazard family concern, the Solvay Process Company in Syracuse, New York.

Founded in 1881, the Solvay Process Company was bankrolled by Rowland Hazard (1829-1898). His son, Frederick Rowland Hazard, eventually served as president, and Frederick’s brother, Rowland G. Hazard II (1855–1918), served for a time as vice president. In 1895, the Hazard family invested in an affiliated business, the Semet-Solvay Company.

Working for his uncle and cousins, I. Peace Hazard learned the ropes in the engineering and manufacturing departments, and by 1915 was a department manager. In 1911, he had married Katherine Munroe Burnett. They lived in a house in Syracuse’s Sedgwick Farms neighborhood. In the summers, the couple with their four young children lived on Skaneateles Lake in “the Stearns cottage” just north of Ten Mile Point, close enough to Solvay for Hazard to commute.

Already a member of the Bellevue and Onondaga country clubs, Hazard joined the Skaneateles Country Club as well. In his 1920 “report” to the Harvard alumni, Hazard spoke lightly of his day job:

“Devoted all time up to Nov 11, 1918, building plants for the manufacture of high explosives and trying to make the plants produce the required quantities of these high explosives. Since Nov. 11, 1918, have been energetically engaged in destroying all evidence of my previous labors.”

The November 11th date was, of course, Armistice Day, the last day of World War I. (It was also Hazard’s birthday — what a gift indeed.) Throughout the war, Semet-Solvay had a contract with Russia, manufacturing trinitrotoluene (TNT) at its Split Rock plant. It was a hazardous occupation (if you will forgive the pun), and in the light of what followed, one can understand why the Harvard graduate was eager to put it behind him.

TNT No. 1, in Split Rock

On the evening of July 2, 1918, when Hazard would have been at home in Skaneateles, a gear began to overheat on a mixing machine in Plant No. 1.

More than a ton of TNT was in the mixer at the time, and when the overheated gear started a fire, the emergency whistle blew. It was 8:40 p.m. The 600 night-shift employees fled, but some returned to help fight the blaze and keep it from spreading to other buildings, especially to the 400 tons of TNT stored in the magazines across the road from the plant.

At first, the fire seemed under control, but then the fire hoses went limp and the electrical power failed, and the flames roared unhindered through the wooden buildings. At 9:30 p.m., the fire caught up to more than a ton of TNT.

As one account described it, “A blinding light was followed by a deafening roar. A fiery ball shot up into the sky, split like a rocket, and descended in a cloud of sparks.”

Split Rock had been chosen because it was relatively isolated, but the blast was of such a magnitude that six miles away in Syracuse the ground shook, buildings and houses rocked and doors slammed, sending everyone into the streets where they gaped at the boiling yellow sky over Split Rock.

At the plant itself, approximately 50 men died instantly, tossed into the air, incinerated, dismembered or crushed by debris. Fifteen were never identified, and a number vanished completely. One man close to the blast. a patrolman named Eugene Rice, was never found, but his coat, with his unbroken eyeglasses and pocket watch still running, appeared half a mile away.

At night, the scene was horrific; in the morning, worse.

The Split Rock plant managed to continue operations in other buildings, but closed entirely at the end of the war. The Solvay Process Company and Semet-Solvay were absorbed by Allied Chemical in 1920, and the Split Rock plant was sold for scrap.

But while Hazard was “energetically engaged in destroying all evidence,” he had to endure another, more personal, tragedy.

On August 4th, 1919, the Hazard’s four-year-old daughter drowned in Skaneateles Lake. The Hazards’ children were in the care of a nurse, who was preoccupied by one child who was sick. Margaret Burnett Hazard was missed. Footprints in the sand led to the lake and her body was found a short distance from the shore.

After this, the family moved on, summering at Newport, Rhode Island, and living in Peace Dale, Rhode Island. Hazard served as Vice President of the family’s Rhode Island Estates Corporation from 1919 to 1929, and from 1933 to 1946.

His love of the outdoors continued. In 1935, accompanied by his daughter Adeline, Hazard was a part of the Walter Abbott Wood Expedition to the Yukon, doing research in the photographic mapping of the rugged, unmapped wilderness.

I. Peace Hazard died August 26, 1946, in Peace Dale, Rhode Island.

* * *

The Skaneateles house most commonly associated with the Hazard family is still standing, on West Lake Road, just north of the Skaneateles Country Club, but that is a story for another day.

* * *

My thanks to the Skaneateles Historical Society for the loan of The Night the Rock Blew Up (1973) by Jasena R. Foley, Onondaga Town Historian.

$2 a Night

In 1940,  the Duncan Hines Directory of Hotels Possessing Modern Comforts, Inviting Cottages and Modern Auto Courts, also Guest Houses Whose Accommodations Permit the Reception of Discriminating Guests cited the Eleanor May guest house at 7 Onondaga Street, open from April to October. For a room without a bath, one could expect to pay $2 a night; with bath, $5. No meals, no pets. The house today is pretty much as you see it in the postcard above.

Elizabeth T. Porter Beach

“Mrs. Elizabeth T. Porter-Beach, a native of Skaneateles, attained considerable distinction in literature. She wrote ‘Pelayo; an epic of the olden Moorish time,’ in recognition of which the Queen of Spain and Empress Eugenie conferred upon her royal honors.” — Onondaga’s Centennial (1896)

Elizabeth Townsend Porter was born in Skaneateles, New York, in 1813, a birth year she coyly obscured for the rest of her life.

Elizabeth was the granddaughter of William Vredenburgh and his first wife, Elizabeth Townsend Vredenburgh. Her grandfather was the first man of significant wealth in Skaneateles and its first postmaster, requesting and receiving the appointment because he didn’t like to wait for his mail to come from Marcellus.

Elizabeth’s parents were Eliza Vredenburgh and James Porter, wed on Christmas Eve in 1812. Porter was a Skaneateles businessman and attorney. However, James Porter soon went to Albany to serve in the New York State Assembly, from 1814-1815, and from 1817 to 1819 he served in the U.S. House of Representatives. He then returned to the practice of law, serving as surrogate of Onondaga County from 1822 to 1824. Finally, he returned to Albany and was register of the New York State Court of Chancery.

Throughout her life, Elizabeth was close to her siblings: William Vredenburg Porter (b.1815), James Edward Porter (b. 1823), and Frances “Fanny” Lopton Porter (b. 1825).

Elizabeth was also close to her uncle by marriage, Enos Throop, the husband of her aunt Evelina. Enos Throop (pronounced “troop”) of Auburn, N.Y., was close friend of Martin Van Buren, and followed him as Governor of New York when Van Buren ran for the U.S. presidency. Throop served as Governor (1829-1832), as naval officer for the Port of New York (1833-1838) and then as Charge d’Affaires in Naples for the Kingdom of Two Sicilies (1838-1842).

When not in Albany, New York City, or abroad, Enos Throop made his home at a simple farm that eventually grew to become an estate, called Willowbrook, at the south end of Owasco Lake just outside of Auburn. Here he hosted Van Buren and two other presidents, Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant, as well as Washington Irving, a close friend of Van Buren’s, and on one occasion, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose travels would result in the classic Democracy in America.

[Alexis de Tocqueville visited Enos Throop on July 12, 1831. He wrote, “We found him living in a very small wooden farmhouse of one story, and occupied in personally supervising the cultivation of his fields.” His traveling companion, Gustave de Beaumont, added: “He is a man of very simple manners. He has little money… Therefore he spends only five or six months of the year at Albany, the time during which the legislature is in session… Owasco Lake touches its garden, and on the other side it is surrounded by great high trees. He took us for a walk in his woods. While admiring the beauty of the trees we caught sight of a squirrel. At that the governor began to run as fast as his legs would carry him to get his gun at the house. He soon came back, all out of breath, with his murderous weapon. The small animal had the patience to wait for him, but the big man had the clumsiness to miss him four times in succession.”]

Governor and Evelina Throop had three children that died in infancy, and Evelina herself died in 1834 in New York City, leaving the Governor alone. The Porters, however, continued to think of him as a member of the family. In the years to come, the Skaneateles and New York City Porters corresponded with Throop and visited him at Willowbrook. Elizabeth, especially, kept up an active correspondence with her uncle.

A letter of June 28, 1861, illustrates the warmth and humor of their relationship. Responding to a comment about her handwriting, Elizabeth writes, “My very dear Uncle, Your kind letter was received by us all with great delight, as are ever your highly valued epistles. If I had not been somewhat overcome by the excessive use of my risibles, called forth by your facetious remarks, relative to my poor little self, I might have risen to curtsy my thanks, which, however, presuming upon your absence, I only did in spirit. I am only too thankful that you can decipher my rapidly penned thoughts.”

One more set of friends requires an introduction: After Louis-Joseph Papineau, the leader of Quebec’s reformist Patriot movement, fled Canada during the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837, he was found “friendless and unknown” in the city of Albany by James Porter and taken to the Porter home. Porter then saw him safely to Pine Grove, the Saratoga estate of his superior, the Chancellor of the Court of Chancery, Reuben Walworth. There Papineau was reunited in exile with his wife and children. The Papineau family always remembered the kindness of James Porter, and visited and corresponded with the family for the rest of their lives.

* * *

Into this warm circle of family and friends entered a serpent. Some time prior to 1837, Elizabeth Porter gave her hand in marriage to John P. La Forge, a lawyer who worked with her father. In the next few years, La Forge proved himself to be a cad of Dickensian proportions.

In April of 1838, the New York State Assembly issued a report which noted, “Mr. La Forge, who is a son-in-law of the register in chancery, has in several instances charged and received an exorbitant fee or reward for the examination of title and for drawing the papers, in putting out certain moneys of the court of chancery, and was so employed by the borrowers of said moneys; but it does not appear to your committee that the register was either informed of, or assenting to, such charges.”

One witness noted, “Mr. La Forge drew the money from the bank, and I think I saw him take out $100 from the wrapper which enclosed the money, before he paid over the balance… He told me he kept the balance for his trouble.”

In February of 1839, John Porter died, leaving Elizabeth without his protection and still married to John La Forge.

In April of 1840, Eliza Porter, Elizabeth’s mother, wrote to Mrs. Papineau from Skaneateles, “I am sorry to say he (La Forge) shows no disposition to attend to business, and spends all his time in hunting. You know what has transpired, and therefore I speak freely… I feel assured there is no confidence to be placed in him.”

By January of 1842, Elizabeth had left La Forge and wrote, “You knew, my dear Mrs. Papineau, of my first domestic affliction, and Amédée [the Papineau’s son] has doubtless informed you that I am again similarly afflicted.”

In August of 1842, Elizabeth wrote to Mr. & Mrs. Papineau, “Mr. La Forge has been to see me and said he should soon wish me to return; but expressed no contrition, gave no explanation and made no promises of amendment. My friends, with one voice, urge me not to return; and I fear should I do so, it would be but to endure a repetition of past trials. It is my ardent desire to cease to think of him… At present, my situation is desolate.”

A letter from La Forge himself in October of 1842 is instructive. He writes to Edward O’Callaghan, who fled from Canada with Papineau, and reminds him that five years before he, La Forge, paid for O’Callaghan’s room at a boarding house in Albany, calling it “a little matter,” but adding, “If you can pay $5.00 to Mr. A. [Amédée] Papineau, I shall consider all canceled,” adding, “I owe Mr. Papineau some little money & therefore I ask you to hand this to him.”

In August of 1843, La Forge gave up on asking Elizabeth to return, and moved on to threatening to ruin her should she attempt to divorce him. Elizabeth wrote of her fear of pressing the case, “It is a delicate and fearful thing, for a fatherless female to place her character in the power of one so wily and revengeful. He threatened this because should I succeed here, it would prevent his wish to marry some wealthy person and also injure him at the New York Bar… They say he would not hesitate to bring up false witnesses from his criminal clients to say everything vile against me, as his only means of saving himself would be to attack my character.”

Elizabeth then cited evidence she could produce from a worker at her husband’s office. “Richard has written me that he carried notes continually to Miss Packer, daughter of a dancing master, that she came daily to the office, when Mr. L. sent him out, closed the blinds, and she remained four or five hours.”

In November of 1843, William V. Porter wrote to L.J.A. [Amédée] Papineau, “Mrs. La Forge’s affairs remain in about the same situation as when you left us. The Devil, alias La Forge, is still prowling about the city, but he is so expert in villainy that it is difficult to detect him.”

In February of 1844, Mrs. La Forge wrote Mr. & Mrs. Papineau that her lawyer felt he had a strong case for divorce, but, “Mr. L., you are aware, has threatened me with his ‘direst vengeance and opposition’ and so clever, cunning and base as he is, I fear according to his declaration, he will not leave a stone unturned to injure me. However this may be but threats, and I can only pray my Heavenly Father to support my case, and release me from one who has caused my beloved Father, our little family & myself such misery!”

Late in 1844, Elizabeth La Forge did obtain a divorce, a legal step which required an act of the New York legislature in that day and age, and again began signing her letters Elizabeth T. Porter.

* * *

When Elizabeth remarried in 1851, she found happiness. Her husband was John Campbell Beach, born in 1813, the son of a successful Auburn businessman. After graduating from Yale College in 1833, John C. Beach studied law in Skaneateles with Daniel Kellogg; Beach took over the practice after Kellogg died in 1836. When his own father died in 1839, Beach found himself with his family’s business interests to manage as well. In 1843, he served as the Skaneateles Village President, but the next year he moved to Auburn to form a law partnership with New York Governor William Seward (who had also worked with Kellogg).

In 1845, prompted by business, Beach reluctantly left the practice of law and moved to New York City. We can assume that over the next years he prospered and his interests widened.

Elizabeth T. Porter and John C. Beach were married in New York City on July 13, 1851, but their years of wedded bliss were to be cut short.

On Saturday evening, July 26, 1856, John Beach was returning to New York City from Boston, steaming down the Atlantic coast on the Empire State (shown above), one of four steamships operated by the Bay State Line. The steamers were the luxury shuttles of their day, taking travelers from New York City to Fall River, Massachusetts, and thence by train to Boston, and back, stopping at Newport, Rhode Island, along the way. A shipboard supper, the music of an orchestra and a private cabin for a good night’s rest were among the amenities. Soon after leaving Newport, as the Empire State rounded Point Judith and passengers at the rail took in the view of the famous lighthouse, John Beach stood by himself on the lower deck as a boiler exploded. Just 15 feet away, hurled to the deck, he lay stunned and scalded in the steam’s path for 10 long minutes before rousing himself to crawl down a stairway. He lived for several more hours. An account published a month later noted:

“In full health and vigor he had left his happy home and its dear inmates for two days’ absence, and on his return was fondly anticipating that the morning would find him again in their midst. How differently dawned the morrow! Suffering agony unspeakable, ‘beyond (as he calmly expressed it) all conception,’ among strangers, he yielded up his precious life! In all his indescribable torture, he so composed his mind as to deliver his last wishes and fond messages to his beloved wife, with perfect distinctness. When asked if he ‘feared to meet death?’ he replied, ‘No, that his trust was in his God.’ That suavity which attended him through life and made his friends legion in number, did not leave him but with his last breath.”

Tragedy had struck the good and prosperous lives of John and Elizabeth T. Porter Beach. The grieving widow turned to writing for solace. She began penning, in her words, “Sad woven rhymes, in days of gloom/Strung but to stay the tear!/In dream-life to illume my tomb/Of buried joys – so drear!”

Years later, editor and poet William Cullen Bryant would observe, “A severe and sudden calamity held her for a long time in a state of melancholy bordering upon despair, until, by some accident, her mind became turned to poetic composition, and she was so fortunate as to obtain a respite from her grief in the task of putting in order romantic incidents of love and war.”

Her choice of subject matter — a verse romance about Pelayo (690-737 AD), a Christian hero of Spain — was influenced by her acquaintance with Washington Irving, who she met, most probably, through her Uncle Enos. People today remember Irving, if at all, as the author of Rip Van Winkle. But he was also in the U.S. foreign service in Spain, at the Embassy from 1826 to 1829, serving as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the court of Queen Isabella II from 1842 to 1845. He knew the Queen as a young girl, and then as a monarch, and other members of her court as well, including Eugenie Montijo, who sat on his knee as a child in Granada, and who grew up to be the Empress of France.

Irving returned to the United States in 1846, one year after John and Elizabeth Beach moved to New York City. From 1848 until his death in 1859, he was President of New York’s Astor Library, later known as the New York Public Library. He was widely known as a gracious and willing mentor to other writers.

Mrs. Beach received encouragement from other quarters as well. She was acquainted with William Cullen Bryant, one of America’s best known poets and the editor of The New York Evening Post. One cannot understate Bryant’s influence at the time. He was a much-loved man of letters and a very influential figure on the political scene, a vocal supporter of abolitionists, of President Lincoln, and of the Union cause, all sympathies in which he was in perfect accord with Mrs. Beach.

Newspapers at the time carried much poetry and when the Civil War began, Beach occasionally set aside the writing of her epic of the Spanish struggle to write patriotic verse about the present conflict. In a letter to her uncle, in June of 1861, she speaks of one such poem:

“I sent a ms. (manuscript) copy to Mr. Bryant as a slight testimonial of gratitude, stating this and saying I knew, he being a patriot & poet, would appreciate the theme, that I did not send them for public attention, for a friend had already requested them; neither as a specimen of my poetry, for I had better pieces, and my pen, compared with his, would be as the tiny plume of the twittering spring bird, to that of the soaring Lark, or a mighty Eagle, but only as an offering To my surprise, I confess flattered pleasure, it was published in the next Evening Post.”

In 1862, when a Union blockade ship was sunk by the Confederate C.S.S. Virginia (also remembered as the Merrimac), Beach was inspired to write a poem entitled, “The Last Broadside of the Frigate Cumberland.” It recounted the story of the U.S.S. Cumberland at the battle of Hampton Roads, and the heroism of the ship’s captain and crew, who, in full knowledge that they were sinking, chose to stay aboard and fire one more broadside as they went down. Mrs. Beach’s poem read:

Shall we give them a broadside, my boys, as she goes?
Shall we send yet another to tell,
In iron-tongued words, to Columbia’s foes
How bravely her sons say ‘Farewell’?

“Aye! what though we sink ‘neath the turbulent wave,
‘Tis with DUTY and RIGHT at the helm!
And over the form should the fierce waters rave
No tide can the spirit o’erwhelm!
No tide can the spirit o’erwhelm!

For swift o’er the billows of Charon’s dark stream
We’ll pass to the immortal shore,
Where the ‘waters of life’ in brilliancy beam,
And the pure float in peace evermore!

“Shall we give them a broadside once more my brave men?”
“Aye, aye!” rose the full, earnest cry.
“A broadside! A broadside we’ll give them again!
Then, for God and the Right nobly die!”

“Haste, haste!” For amid all that battering din
Comes a gurgling sound fraught with fear
As swift flowing waters pour rushingly in
Up! up! ’till her portholes they near.
Up! up! ’till her portholes they near.

No blenching. No faltering! Still fearless all seem.
Each man firm to duty doth bide.
A flash! and a “Broadside!” A shout! A careen!
And the Cumberland sinks ‘neath the tide!

The “Star Spangled Banner” still floating above
As a beacon upon the dark wave!
Our Ensign of Glory, proud streaming in love,
O’er the tomb of the Loyal and Brave!
O’er the tomb of the Loyal and Brave!

Bold hearts! Mighty spirits! “Tried gold” of our land!
A halo of glory your meed!
All honored, the noble-souled Cumberland band!
So true in Columbia’s need!

The Last Broadside” struck a chord and created a national sensation, at least north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Such was its popularity, that it was set to music by Frederick Buckley, a well-known figure in American musical theater. Beach followed the poem with another, titled “Our Monitor,” no doubt prompted by the U.S. Navy’s answer to the Merrimac.

“The Last Broadside” brought fame to Beach, and that, together with the influence of William Cullen Bryant, may well have influenced New York’s Appleton publishing house to take her Spanish epic, which was coming to completion.

When Pelayo: An Epic of the Olden Moorish Time, was published in 1863, Beach noted in the introduction, “The author is indebted to the kindness of the lamented Washington Irving, who most courteously proffered her the free use of any of his writings that might subserve her purpose.” (She refers, most probably, to Irving’s Legends of the Conquest of Spain and the then unpublished “The Legend of Pelayo” which appeared posthumously in a later edition of Irving’s works.)

But Irving was not the only available source on the Pelayo legend. Thirty years earlier, Anna Cora Mowatt had written a verse romance entitled Pelayo, or The Cavern of Covadonga (New York, Harper & Brothers,1836). Mowatt in turn noted her debt to Robert Southey’s Roderick, the Last of the Goths: A Tragic Poem (1814). Southey’s work followed that of his friend Walter Savage Landor, Count Julian (1812), and Sir Walter Scott’s The Vision of Don Roderick (1811). Two years after Anna Mowatt’s romance in verse appeared, in 1838, author William Gilmore Simms of South Carolina published a novel entitled Pelayo: A Story of the Goth.

I do not know how many of these treatments of the legend Beach read before embarking on her own Pelayo, but her style and her work are clearly her own, a point made by Bryant at the time of the epic’s publication. Written over a six-year period, Pelayo: An Epic of the Olden Moorish Time fills 424 pages in 20 cantos, a marathon of rhyming narrative in an a/b/a/b rhyme scheme, or a/a/b/b when the spirit moves the author. Pelayo was published in at least two editions, one in leather with gilt edges, marbled end sheets, and an embossed cross on the cover, and a more humble edition with blue cloth boards.

Beach made it clear who she favored in the Christian vs. Moslem struggle:

God is with his children now!
God the impious neck doth bow!
God doth raise the Holy Cross!
Christians shields from woe and loss!
Glory to the God on High
Who to suff’ring Spain draws nigh!
Glory to his name e’er be!
Glory bright, Eternally!

In addition to many capital letters and exclamation marks, there is much in Pelayo about the gentle breezes and sheltering bowers of Spain, warbling birds, the tenderness of love in pure hearts. But, being a guy, I liked the battle scenes the best. My particular favorite has a band of Moors attacking the Christian heroes in their mountain stronghold, chasing them up rocky paths to a drawbridge that spans a rocky, raging river far, far below…

On, and still onward yet they rush,
O’er rocky crag and mountain brush;
Up, up that steep and wild ravine,
The Draw-Bridge reached! brief time I ween!
Her quiv’ring beams quick open flung,
Her oaken sinews trembling rung!
Firm all, till Christian-men have passed,
Ere yet the chain asunder cast,
And safe the Band!
— A moment more,
T’is covered by that dark mass o’er!
A swaying of those pond’rous beams,
A sev’ring of the sinewy seams,
A shiv’ring, wrenching, ringing crash,
And downward, downward, headlong dash
Deep in the seething gulf below,
With shrieks and oaths — the impious foe!

Shades of Lucifer’s fall in Paradise Lost. The dark foe takes a plunge and the reader shouts, “Wahoo!” At least one critic, in The Eclectic Magazine of May, 1864, went for this in a big way, writing, “In the conception and plan of this beautiful historic poem, the gifted author has shown a poetic skill and genius in the language and style of her verse rarely equaled.”

The tale most often repeated about Beach’s Pelayo is that it inspired “royal honors.” In fact, Isabella II, the Queen of Spain, did send Elizabeth Beach a bracelet with a topaz on which the royal monogram was set in diamonds. And Empress Eugenie of France did send a gold medal with the inscription, “To Mistress Elizabeth T. Porter Beach.”

However, because of what we know of her later correspondence, we can be sure these gifts were not entirely spontaneous, perhaps even prompted by Beach herself. We know that Beach knew Washington Irving, and that Irving knew both the Queen and the Empress, and that Beach was a world-class name-dropper.

As for the royal response, we know that the monarchs had grown up together, were devout Roman Catholics, remembered Washington Irving fondly, and were thus a receptive audience for a poem coming from a friend of Irving, extolling the virtues of a Christian hero. Isabella, especially, was known to shower gifts upon the Church and her favorites. Also, her mother was a Princess of the Two Sicilies and her daughter, Isabel, married a prince of the Two Sicilies, a small principality where Enos Throop had served as Charge d’Affairs. Also, Empress Eugenie of France had an American mother, Mary Kilpatrick, hence another tie to the United States.

Elizabeth T. Porter Beach did not lack for strings to pull. And if we wonder how she directed copies of Pelayo to these heads of state, we need only remind ourselves that, in 1863, the U.S. Secretary of State was William Seward of Auburn, N.Y., her late husband’s law partner.

With Pelayo in print, Beach continued to write patriotic poetry, including “To the Loyal League,” a poem addressing, and no doubt encouraging, the Loyal League of Union Citizens in New York City. Trading on the fame of “The Last Broadside,” Beach was at her networking, name-dropping best in this letter to President Abraham Lincoln, written on November 6, 1864:

President Lincoln, Dear Sir

The enclosed articles were cut from a Canadian paper, entitled the “Montreal Daily Witness,” sent me with the request that I would forward them to you. I showed them to Mr (William Cullen) Bryant, Editor of the N. Y. “Evening Post,” who thought it well I should send them as desired.

I take this opportunity to thank you for your genial acknowledgment of my poem sent you, — “The Last Broadside” — also to express my grateful appreciation of your appointment of of my brother, Major Wm V. Porter as “Paymaster”. He is well worthy of confidence, having almost passed into a proverb for his beauty of character, to which Gen’ (John) Dix can testify. With my earnest thanks for all the good you have done for our Country & Humanity, — & prayer that you may still be retained to us as an instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father for continued good, I am, most respectfully, your friend,

(signed) Mrs Elizabeth T. Porter Beach

There is no record of either President Lincoln’s earlier “genial acknowledgment” or of a reply to this letter.

In 1864, Beach published another song with Frederick Buckley, “Leaf by Leaf the Roses Fall,” but it did not enjoy the fame of “The Last Broadside.”

In May of 1867, Beach went for a three-monarch parlay, enlisting Rear Admiral Hiram Paulding, Commandant of the New York Navy Yard, to forward a copy of Pelayo to the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Cassius M. Clay, who could then give the book to the Emperor of All the Russias. Paulding wrote to Clay, enclosing Pelayo with his letter. Two weeks later, Beach wrote directly to Clay, mentioning her family and friends, and noting that Pelayo had already been favored with “Royal Honors.” In November, she wrote to Clay again, this time a thank-you letter, presumably after he had delivered Pelayo to the Emperor, whose response, if any, is lost to history.

After this, life seems to have quieted down for Mrs. Beach. Every ten years when the census was taken, she subtracted another two or three or four years from her age, and her official date of birth gradually moved from 1813 to 1827. In 1878, she published her last work, “A Tribute to Cervantes.” One copy survives today, in the Brown University library. Her uncle, Enos Throop, died at Willowbrook on November 1, 1874. He is buried in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Auburn, N.Y.

On May 1, 1883, Elizabeth T. Porter Beach died in New York City. She was buried in the Porter family plot in Green-Wood Cemetery, in Brooklyn, New York; there is no birth date on her gravestone. A writer in The New York Times said of her final resting place, “It is the ambition of the New Yorker to live upon the Fifth Avenue, to take his airings in the [Central] Park, and to sleep with his fathers in Green-Wood.”

And so she does.

* * *

My heartfelt thanks to: Georges Aubin, a French Quebecer historian and Papineau authority who opened a new door with his sharing of the Elizabeth T. Porter Beach letters in archived in Quebec; Pat Blackler, Village Historian of Skaneateles; Dr. Melissa Conway of the University of California at Riverside, for tracking down Beach rarities in U.S. academic libraries; Gretchen Pearson of LeMoyne College for providing copies of Anna Cora Mowatt’s Pelayo and William Gilmore Simms’ Pelayo; Stephen Goodwin Porter, the great-great-great grandson of James and Eliza Porter, for clarification of Porter genealogy and Elizabeth’s final resting place; Rosemary Switzer, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of Rochester, for Elizabeth Beach’s letters to Enos Throop.

* * *

Sources: Pelayo: An Epic of the Olden Moorish Time by Elizabeth T. Porter Beach; New York and London, D. Appleton and Company, 1864 (1863); Elizabeth T. Porter Beach’s letter to Abraham Lincoln, November 6, 1864; Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress; Past and Present of Onondaga County by William Beauchamp, p. 289; “An Epic of the Olden Moorish Time” (review) by W.H. Bidwell, The Eclectic Magazine, May to August 1864, pp. 371-376; “The Town of Skaneateles,” in Onondaga’s Centennial; Dwight H. Bruce, ed.; Boston History Co.,1896; Vol. II; “Washington Irving: Squire of Sunnyside” by Joseph T. Butler; The Cassius Marcellus Clay Papers, Lincoln Memorial University; Digital Scriptorium, Duke University, Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library for “The Last Broadside” and “Leaf by Leaf the Roses Fall”; Lives of the Governors of the State of New York by John S. Jenkins; Auburn, N.Y., Derby & Miller, 1851, pp. 478-545; History of Skaneateles, by Edmund Norman Leslie; New York, Andrew Kellogg, 1902; p. 336-338; The Empire State: A Compendious History of the Commonwealth of New York by Benson John Lossing, for the image of Enos Throop, an etching from a painting by Charles Loring Elliott; The Phillips History of Fall River, Chapter XIX, for the illustration of the steamer “Empire State”; “John C. Beach” in the Skaneateles Press, October 1, 1856.

Summer’s Love, Winter’s Tragedy

What were the odds? In 1880, a young Prussian Baron sailed to visit America and perhaps do some hunting “out west.” In New York City, he heard of the beauties of Skaneateles and decided to visit. Imagine the stir caused by his arrival. Imagine the quickening of hearts when the Baron’s gaze first fell upon the love of his life. It was a fairytale, a handsome nobleman from Europe, a blushing young woman from a small village on a lake.

So it was when the Baron Carl Joseph von Jena met Edith Porter, daughter of James Edward Porter. The Baron, a descendant of one of the oldest noble families of Prussia, was charmed. And in the words of a contemporary journal, “He laid siege to the citadel of her affections, and won her heart and hand.”

The Baron came by his military bearing honestly. In 1864, his father had fought and died at the storming of the fortress of Dybbøl during the Prussian Danish War (a conflict largely overlooked here as the U.S. was embroiled in its own Civil War). A graduate of the German Naval Academy, Carl von Jena served as an Ensign in the North Sea during the Franco-Prussian War, and then in the German Army as a Lieutenant of dragoons. An inheritance gave him the wherewithal to travel. Time spent on an estate in Silesia had prepared him to run the large estate left to him by his grandfather. He was the real deal, and he was just 29.

Edith Porter was, of course, royalty in Skaneateles, the great-granddaughter of William J. Vredenburgh, our first wealthy and regal personage. Her grandfather was James Porter, who served in the New York State Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives. She was the only child of James Edward Porter and Clarissa Wilmarth Porter; James Edward had served for a time at the American Legation in Rome; he was said to be conversant in many languages; he liked to sail.

When the ship Ben H. Porter was launched on Skaneateles Lake in 1866, young Edith did the christening “gracefully and pleasantly.” The Porters lived in the house next-door to the newly built (1873) St. James’ Episcopal Church.

That autumn, the Baron parted briefly from Edith, returning to Germany to publish the announcement of his betrothal and prepare his estate for his bride-to-be. By January of 1881, he was back in New York City, where he stayed with Porter relations, probably William Vredenberg Porter (James Edward’s brother) or Elizabeth T. Porter Beach (James Edward’s elder sister). Edith joined Carl in New York to make wedding preparations. The fairytale was building to its happy ending.

In this age of immunizations, antibiotics and intensive care, it is difficult to understand how perilous life was in the nineteenth century. On a Tuesday afternoon, the Baron came down with a cold. But it was not a cold; it was diphtheria, which could, and did, paralyze the muscles of his throat.

With Edith Porter at his side, Carl von Jena died on Wednesday afternoon, March 9, 1881. He was 30 years old. Three days after his death, his body was sent back to Germany aboard the steamship Mosel of the North German Line. And so the dream ended, suddenly, forever.

Edith returned to Skaneateles to live with her father and mother in the house next to St. James’. Many years later, in 1895, she married Albert Melrose Burritt of Connecticut, who had been widowed in 1880. Perhaps the two understood each other’s loss and loneliness. Mr. Burritt was the inventor of an automatic sprinkler system for mills and other large buildings. He was also the director of a flatware company in Waterbury. His home was filled with his collection of china and old prints, “beautiful things,” his real joy in life.

In 1902, A. Melrose Burritt died. His obituary, somewhat cryptically, said the cause was “nervous prostration,” and that his life was lost “by too close devotion to what he felt to be his duty.” He was 54 years old.

Edith, a widow after just seven years of marriage, auctioned off her husband’s collections in New York City, and returned to Skaneateles. Her mother, Clarissa, had died in 1896; her father had died in 1901. She shared the Porter home with Margaret Wilmarth Burdsall, her half-sister (her mother’s daughter from an earlier marriage to J. Richard Burdsall who died of consumption at the age of 36 in 1855).

In 1906, when Amie Willetts, of The Boulders next-door, married Samuel Roosevelt Outerbridge at St. James’, Edith and Margaret opened their house to wedding guests who had come from all over the country.

In 1907, Edith sold the Porter house to St. James’ for use as a rectory, and moved to New York City. Margaret sold her mahogany furniture and moved to New Rochelle, where she died in 1917.

When Edith Porter Burritt’s will was read in 1927, her estate totaled almost $100,000. She left $500 each to St. James’ and to the Skaneateles Library Association.

The house where young Edith was courted by a Prussian Baron is still the St. James’ rectory. If only its walls could talk.

Upstream

A watercolor by Bob Ripley, of Marietta, N.Y. Bob’s work can be seen now at Skaneateles Artisans, 11 Fennell Street, where his originals, prints and note cards are on sale. I love this one.

The Bandstand

The Willetts and The Boulders

Joseph Clarence Willetts has a unique memorial in Skaneateles: The Boulders (noted as “The Bowlders” in its early days), a home on Genesee Street with large stones distinguishing the first story of the main house and the boathouse.

The Boulders first served as a summer home, but it was a long summer; the Willetts family would arrive in the spring and generally leave around November 1st, their arrivals and departures noted in both the New York Times and the Skaneateles Press. In the fall, Mrs. Willetts, the former Emma Calista Prentice of Brooklyn, returned to New York; Mr. Willetts accompanied her, or continued on to warmer climes, California or the South, for his health.

Joseph C. Willetts was a wealthy businessman, serving as president and director of Associated Farms, the Dexter Folder Co., and the New Domestic Sewing Machine Co. He was the secretary and a director of Syracuse Chilled Plow Co., as well as a director of Toledo Carriage Woodwork Co. and the Williams Typewriter Co. In Skaneateles, he was vice president and a director of the Bank of Skaneateles, and active with the Skaneateles Library Association and St. James’ Episcopal Church.

Willetts was also an ardent naturalist, and in 1882 sent four fish from Skaneateles Lake to the U.S. National Museum.

And now, a chronology of The Boulders:

:: 1883 ::

On April 7th, The Free Press reports that ground has been broken for the cellar of J.C. Willetts’ new house on Genesee Street. For at least two years, Willetts has been personally selecting boulders for the construction of his home. In April, the Skaneateles Press reports:

“A man from Rochester is engaged in blasting field boulders on J.C. Willetts’ premises in this village. The stones are to be used in Mr. Willett’s new house. Dynamite is used, the cartridge being simply covered with a shovelful of earth on the top of the boulder, with a fuse about a foot long. The dynamite does its work effectively, and is far superior to powder.”

One can imagine what kind of a spring that was for the neighbors.

This photo was taken in July:

The man atop the stone wall is carrying a roll of plans, and is thought to be the architect.

:: 1884 ::

In January, the Auburn News and Bulletin reports:

“An Auburn builder, James C. Stout, takes an important contract in competition with several celebrated firms in Albany and Syracuse, to execute the inside finish of an elegant residence for J.C. Willetts, Skaneateles. The work is to be done in cherry, oak and mahogany. The plans are by Green & Wicks of this city.”

In June, the Skaneateles Free Press reports that J.C. Willetts is occupying his new house.

:: 1886 ::

On October 9th, the Skaneateles Press confirms the identity of the architect of The Boulders, in an article about the new Skaneateles library building:

“Its construction will probably be in the hands of Mr. Green of Buffalo, whose work is familiar to Syracusans in the Frazer block on Billings Park, and in several unusually pretty dwellings, among them the Willetts residence in Skaneateles, and the Case cottage [Casowasco] on Owasco lake.”

“Mr. Green” is architect Edward Brodhead Green (1855-1950), born in Utica, N.Y., and educated at Cornell University.  His partnership with William S. Wicks, Green & Wicks, started in Auburn, N.Y., in 1880, and moved to Buffalo, N.Y., in 1881.

On October 17th, the Willetts’ first son, Joseph Prentice Willetts, is born in Brooklyn. He has an older sister, Amie (born in 1877), who is named for her grandmother, Amie Frost Willetts Lapham. The lad will be educated at Miss Reynolds’ School and the Cutler School.

:: 1888 ::

In March, architect Edward B. Green visits Skaneateles to present plans for the new library building. He is the guest of J.C. Willetts, a director of the library board, at The Boulders.

In June, a second daughter, Marion Willetts, is born in Skaneateles.

:: 1890 ::

In March, Joseph Willetts is elected president of the Village of Skaneateles.

On May 13th, William Allen Willetts is born in Skaneateles.

In December, The Boulders is almost lost. The Syracuse Weekly Express writes:

“The home of J. C. Willetts in Genesee street barely escaped being burned Saturday morning. The fire originated from an overheated steam pipe in the basement and did quite a little damage before the blaze was extinguished.”

:: 1899 ::

The Willetts’ eldest son, Joseph Prentice Willetts, enters St. Paul’s School, in Concord, N.H., where he will letter in hockey and football, row with the crew and join the literary society as well.

:: 1900 ::

The U.S. Census finds all six members of the Willetts family at home in Skaneateles, with three servants: Lizzie Seibert, Violet Tibo (Thibeau?) and Bessie Guigham.

:: 1904 ::

On August 31st, Joseph C. Willetts dies at The Boulders, at about 7 o’clock in the evening. He had been ill since the previous autumn, and since coming to Skaneateles from New York in June, had “steadily failed in health.” He was just 58 years old. His obituary remembers him as “a man of liberal ideas and generous impulses.” His funeral is held at home, and he is buried in Lake View Cemetery, which he, as president of the Cemetery Commission, had done much to beautify.

:: 1905 ::

Joseph Prentice Willetts enters Harvard University. In the next four years, he will play hockey, football, row crew, serve on the student council and class day committee, and be a member of the Polo, Hasty Pudding, Fly, and St. Paul’s School clubs.

:: 1906 ::

In the summer, Mrs. Willetts tours the Berkshires with friends.

On September 25th, Amie Willetts marries Samuel Roosevelt Outerbridge at St. James’ Episcopal Church. The groom is the son of Ellen Roosevelt Outerbridge who is the sister of Samuel Montgomery Roosevelt, the daughter of Samuel Roosevelt and the granddaughter of Nicholas Roosevelt, who lived across the street from The Boulders on the west corner of Leitch and Genesee. Amie is escorted down the aisle by her brother, Joseph Prentice Willetts.

The Auburn Weekly Bulletin reports:

“Following the ceremony, breakfast was served at the Bowlders, the beautiful summer home of Mrs. Joseph C. Willetts situated on the shores of Skaneateles lake. The bride’s table was charmingly decorated with white anemones and asparagus ferns. Kapp’s orchestra of Syracuse furnished the music. The bride received many beautiful and valuable gifts.”

A graduate of Harvard, Class of ’97, Mr. Outerbridge is a partner in the firm of A. Emilius Outerbridge Co., Ltd., running steamship lines to Bermuda and the West Indies. The couple will make their home in Oyster Bay, L.I., N.Y.

:: 1907 ::

In February, the Harvard Crimson writes:

“The University hockey team defeated the second by a score of 4 to 1 in a fast practice yesterday afternoon in the Stadium rink. All the scoring of the first team was the result of close team work. The goals were made on passes or from scrimmages, while the second team’s only point was due to a brilliant individual rush by Leonard. Toward the end of the second half, the second seven made a number of hard rushes down the rink with excellent passing, but were prevented from scoring by Washburn’s steady defensive play at goal. Foster, Willetts, and Carpenter, the University defense, played on the second team, so as to give the University forwards as much hard practice as possible.

“During the practice Willetts had his nose broken; this is not expected to interfere with his playing throughout the remainder of the season.”

Emma, Joseph Prentice and Marion spend Christmas at The Boulders. Marion brings two friends, probably from Miss Master’s School in Dobbs Ferry, where she is a student.

:: 1908 ::

On February 28th, Joseph P. Willetts, Class of ’09, is elected captain of the Harvard hockey team. Willetts has played point on the team for the past three years, and is a three-time All American. In the 1908-09 season, his team is undefeated. He is noted for “absolute fearlessness” and is said to possess a personality that infuses confidence into his teammates.

In April, the Skaneateles Democrat reports that The Boulders’ chimneys have been repaired.

:: 1909 ::

Joseph Prentice Willetts graduates from Harvard and begins work at the Syracuse Chilled Plow Company, “starting at the bottom.” He leaves Skaneateles each morning by the 6 a.m. trolley and returns home in the evening. He often shares his lunch with “the more unfortunate men,” and makes it a point to visit any workman who is hospitalized.

On December 29th, Marion Willetts marries Ernest Cuyler Brower, an attorney of Brooklyn, N.Y., at St. James’ Episcopal Church.  The bride’s sister, Amie, now Mrs. Samuel Outerbridge, is matron of honor, and their elder brother, John Prentice Willetts, escorts the bride down the aisle.

The Skaneateles Press notes:

“Following the ceremony a wedding breakfast was served at The Bowlders, Mrs. Willetts’ magnificent home, by Teall of Rochester to about one hundred guests from New York, Rochester, Syracuse, Auburn, Skaneateles and other places. The bride’s table was decorated with orchids and maidenhair ferns.

“Mrs. Willetts’ home, always beautiful, was gorgeously but tastefully decorated with Christmas greens tied with red ribbons, holly branches and poinsettia blossoms.”

The Auburn Citizen adds:

“The Willetts home was elaborately decorated in Christmas greens, great masses of holly being hung in all rooms and hallways, while banks of Christmas trees enhanced the beauty of the green and red of the Yuletide decoration.”

:: 1910 ::

On June 29th, after a six-week siege of typhoid fever, Joseph Prentice Willetts dies at The Boulders. He is remembered as one who had no enemies, a person of constant good cheer, and for “his absolute lack of conceit or thought of himself.” His funeral is held at home. He is one of 23 members of Harvard’s Class of ’09 to die in 1910.

In the autumn, William Allen Willetts enters Harvard; he will change his middle name from Allen to Prentice, to carry on his mother’s family name.

Samuel Roosevelt Outerbridge reports to the Harvard annual that he and Amie now have two children, Joseph Willetts Outerbridge (b. 1907) and Marion Ellen Outerbridge (b. 1910). Of his steamship company, he writes, “I am still a partner, but am not getting rich,” and adds, “Beyond the usual round of social activities of city life in the winters, and the simple life of the suburban commuter in the summers, the narrative of my experiences must be left to a fertile imagination to make them interesting.”

:: 1911 ::

Mrs. Willetts does not open The Boulders, but rather spends the summer motoring in Europe.

:: 1912 ::

In June, Mrs. Willetts hosts a house party for her son William, gathering his “young society friends” at The Boulders. The party includes Elsie Pollard, Pauline Pollard, Sidney Clark, Stephan Hopkins, Alvin Foye Sortwell (the son of the Mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts), Magnus Swanson, Helen Whitney, George Bourne and John Angus Milholland. Clark is William’s closest friend from Harvard; William will marry Sidney’s sister, Christine, in 1915. Alvin Sortwell will marry Elsie Pollard in 1914.  J.A. Milholland, with whom William played football at Harvard, will marry Mandida Dundas Bareducci, of Italy and New York, at Meadowmount, his father’s 1000-acre estate, before sailing for Java where the groom is in the export trade. All in all, a colorful gathering.

:: 1913 ::

The Harvard hockey team spends the Christmas holiday at The Boulders, guests of the team captain, William Prentice Willetts. The lads travel to Syracuse to play four games, splitting their two games with Syracuse and losing twice to Ottawa.

:: 1914 ::

After graduating from Harvard, William Prentice Willetts spends the summer in Norway with his mother and his fiancee, Christine Newhall Clark.

:: 1915 ::

In June, William Prentice Willetts weds Christine Clark and, after “a month’s splendid honeymoon,” returns to Brooklyn and begins working for E.W. Bliss Co. By the following year, he is in charge of 400 men who load and ship high explosive shells to war-torn Europe.

Mrs. Clarence Hancock and Mrs. Stewart Hancock summer at The Boulders, and host “a large tea” in September.

:: 1916 ::

William Prentice Willetts goes to Wall Street and at the same time learns to fly, rising at 4 a.m. to go to the airfield, then rushing to Hallgarten & Co. to be there by 9 a.m. and deal with bond issues. He is commissioned as a First Lieutenant in the Signal Officers Reserve Corps, Aviation Section.

In November, he is one of 12 pilots to take part in the first mass cross-country flight of military aircraft, from Mineola, Long Island, to Princeton, New Jersey. Their mission: to attend the Princeton-Yale game. The pilots fly over the field, performing aerial acrobatics, before landing nearby and taking seats in the stadium. And so aviation history is made.

:: 1917 ::

On March 21st, Willetts participates in another aviation first: the first aerial funeral cortege. The deceased is 22-year-old pilot Tex Millman; 12 airplanes escort him to the cemetery in Westbury, Long Island. Three drop wreaths upon the grave site and then all 12 planes form a cross as they pass over the funeral service.

In December, William is sent to Washington, D.C., beginning a tour of duty that takes him to every aviation field in the United States. The following year, he is discharged and goes to work for a steel company.

:: 1919 ::

On June 1st, the Syracuse Post-Standard headlines an article “ ‘The Boulders’ Sold by Mrs. J.C. Willetts to Senator Hendricks” and reports:

“ ‘The Boulders’ has been known for years as one of the finest places in Skaneateles, and derives its name from the style of construction employed on the residence and boathouse. It took Mr. Willetts a number of years to get the boulders, which were split and used for the first story of both buildings.

“The property, is located in Genesee Street, between the residence of Mrs. James Holland Davis and the rectory of St. James’s Episcopal Church, and was part of the original estate of Mrs. Charles H. Poor. It has a front of 150 feet; and extends back 140 feet to the lake. The transaction includes the purchase of the house furnishings and all equipment of the boathouse, including a launch and numerous smaller boats. The boathouse has a living room with a fireplace, and in the house proper there are numerous fireplaces.

“The house is one of the most spacious in the village and has been the scene of many large house parties at which prominent men and women were entertained for long periods. The first floor has a large entrance hall extending the length of the house, and the balance of the floor contains a living room, library and dining room. The two latter rooms overlook the lake. The second and third floors have ten bedrooms, with numerous baths. The rooms have hardwood floors, and the trim is of selected cherry and oak with the walls decorated in oils.

“The purchase included a garden with residence for chauffeur and garage located in Academy street. The garden contains nearly two acres of land. The price paid by Mr. Hendricks is not made public Mr. Stone said yesterday that the Genesee street house alone cost Mr. Willetts $50,000.

“Since his death, the family has not opened the house every season, having established a summer residence on Long Island as well as at Skaneateles. Mr. Willetts and Mr. Hendricks were friends. Mr. Willetts had a wide acquaintance in Syracuse and entertained local people at his Skaneateles house on many occasions.”

In addition to being well known in politics, Francis Hendricks was the founder of the Hendricks Photo Supply Company, and the man who donated $500,000 to Syracuse University for Hendricks Chapel, named in memory of his wife.

On July 2, Hendricks has the Willett’s belongings sold at auction by W.H. Hetzel. Contents include a “massive” oak dining table, 12 leather-seat dining chairs, a high-post mahogany bed, a billiard table, antique guns, pistols and sabers, stuffed birds, bear robes, trunks, pictures, mirrors and crockery.

:: 1920 ::

In June, Francis Hendricks dies at his home in Syracuse, just one year after buying The Boulders. The estate of Senator Hendricks sells The Boulders to Allen V. Smith, head of Allen V. Smith Co., Inc., Marcellus, a miller of pearl barley and split peas. Smith, his wife Carrie, daughter Aleene, and sons Carlton and Richard move in.

In this, the first year of Prohibition, William Prentice Willetts reports to the Harvard annual, “We have been blessed with a small daughter, a smaller son, and a still smaller supply of liquor — here’s hoping they all multiply!

:: 1926 ::

On August 12th, this ad runs in the Skaneateles Press:

“LOST – Will the persons who were seen picking up an Angora kitten on Genesee St. kindly return same to the Boulders and avoid trouble. Richard Smith.”

:: 1927 ::

Marion Willetts Brower, widowed for two years, marries her brother-in-law, George E. Brower.

:: 1929 ::

On April 20th, Aleene Smith is married at The Boulders, to John Odell of Marcellus. The wedding is said to be the last one catered by Cora Krebs.

:: 1935 ::

Emma Prentice Willetts dies at her home on Park Avenue in Manhattan. Her New York Times obituary reminds us that her father, John H. Prentice, was the treasurer of the group that built the Brooklyn Bridge. Her daughter Marion’s second husband, George Brower, is now a justice of the New York State Supreme Court.

:: 1937 ::

Joseph Prentice Willetts, son of William Prentice Willetts, graduates from St. Paul’s School and enters Harvard University. Like his father and uncle, he will play hockey.

:: 1938 ::

In October, Alfred H. Gaylord buys The Boulders from Allen V. Smith. Gaylord is the vice president of Gaylord Bros., a stationery and library supply company in Syracuse. The company was founded by Alfred’s father, Henry Gaylord, and Alfred’s uncle, Willis Gaylord.

:: 1940 ::

In March, the Harvard Crimson writes:

“Prennie Willetts, left wing play-maker on the second forward trio, was unanimously elected to succeed Captain Bill Coleman as leader of next winter’s Varsity hockey attack, at a meeting of the team yesterday afternoon.

“Though an injured shoulder which he received before the Canadian trip, kept him on the bench during the last part of the season and handicapped him during the second Yale game, the new captain showed himself to be one of Clark Hodder’s strongest stickhandlers during the first part of the winter.

“Willetts captained his Freshman hockey team and has played left inside on the Varsity soccer team during the last two years, receiving a major H in the fall of 1938 for being a member of the team which won the Intercollegiate Soccer League title. From Roslyn Heights, Long Island, he prepared at St. Paul’s School and now lives at 52 Mt. Auburn Street.”

And this:

“With Prennie Willetts who has recovered from a shoulder injury, at his old wing position, Hodder will once again play his smooth-scoring combination of center Dave Eaton, Stacy Hulse, and Willetts in the second line. Teaming together until they were riddled by injurious several weeks ago, they accounted for most of the Crimson scores, and they should be able to account for at least a few tallies tonight.”

In October, The Crimson reports on soccer:

“Captain Dave Ives, in the right fullback position, heads a strong soccer eleven, out to garner its fourth win of the season. Jack Penson, goalie, Prennie Willetts, right outside, and Bill Edgar, center halfback will be counted on heavily by Coach Carr.”

:: 1941 ::

In February, on successive days, it’s back to the ice:

“In an attempt to shake the Crimson out of its doldrums, Hodder will ice the line which showed up best against the Tigers, with gridman Burgy Ayres flanked by Captain Prennie Willetts and George Duane.”

“Prennie Willetts provided the winning margin at 16:45 when he passed Hannock, the Williams net minder on a power play.”

:: 1942 ::

On March 30th, Joseph Prentice Willetts completes flight training and is commissioned as a Ensign; he marries Mary Louise Wiener, daughter of Mr. & Mrs. Gustav Blatz of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the same day in the Navy Chapel at Pensacola, Florida.

:: 1943 ::

On August 18th, Lt. Joseph Prentice Willetts, along with the 11 men on his Mariner aircraft, dies in a crash during a submarine-detection exercise off Montauk Point, Long Island.

:: 1944 ::

William Prentice Willetts and his wife, Christine N. Willetts, write and publish a book, The Loss of the Mariner PBM3-No. 9, VP-210, USN, and present it to the families of the lost officers and crew.

:: 1946 ::

William and Christine Willetts establish and endow a meteorology exhibit at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History in memory of their son, Joseph Prentice Willetts.

:: 1949 ::

Alfred H. Gaylord dies at Syracuse Memorial Hospital following a heart attack. The Gaylord family sells The Boulders to Thomas Speno of Ithaca. Mr. Speno divides the dwelling into seven (7) apartments, turning it into The Boulders Apartment House.

Residents over the next two years will include Mr. & Mrs. W.H. Shackleton, of Cleveland, Ohio; Mr. & Mrs. Richard I. Bobbett, Mr. & Mrs. Robert Hettler, Mr. & Mrs. William E. Emerson, and Leonard Young.

:: 1951 ::

On August 17th, the Skaneateles Press reports a brush with death at The Boulders:

“W.C. Quarnstrom of Town Line Rd., Coon Hill, had a narrow escape from serious injury, if not death, about 8 p.m. last Thursday night when he slipped on a ramp in rear of The Boulders and fell into the lake… Donald Klump and A.L. Young Jr., both residents of The Boulders, swimming nearby, saw Quarnstrom fall, swam after him and brought the unconscious man to shore. A physician was summoned and examined the man, where it was found the injured man had a three-inch gash in his head.

“Quarnstrom recovered from his experience and is about as usual again.”

On August 24th, Arthur H. Poole of the Jefferson Electric Co., of Syracuse and Bellwood, Illinois, buys The Boulders apartment house from Thomas Speno, who has owned the property for just two years. Poole will occupy one of the apartments; his son and daughter-in-law, Mr. & Mrs. Allen H. Poole, will occupy another. Another tenant, Mrs. E. W. Cromwell, is mentioned in the local press.

The newspaper, for the first time, erroneously attributes The Boulders to architect Stanford White, a legend that will grow in the years to come.

:: 1952 ::

In January, two ads appear in the Skaneateles Press:

FIVE ROOM unfurnished apartment—two bedrooms, porch overlooking lake, lake privileges, heat, light, hot water, one block from shopping center. The Boulders, 100 E. Genesee Street. Skaneateles. (Available now—references).

AVAILABLE NOW — Three room apartment, one bedroom, heat, light and hot water, beautiful yard—lake privileges, one block from shopping center. The Boulders, 100 E. Genesee Street. Skaneateles, N.Y. (no pets). References.

:: 1953 ::

Samuel Roosevelt Outerbridge dies and is buried in the Willets family plot in Lake View Cemetery. In 1956, Amie Willetts Outerbridge dies and is buried at his side.

:: 1957 ::

In August, Dr. Albert Benjamin Smith moves his office (and his wife, DeEtta, and three daughters: Judith Madelene, DeEtta Anne, and Susan Adelene) from 2 West Lake Street to The Boulders; his office is at the back of the house on the lower level.

:: 1961 ::

Judith Smith goes to Mt. Holyoke, and DeEtta Smith, a student at Sweet Briar, studies in Paris for a year.

In May, a house tour program tells us that The Boulders’ stone foundation is five and a half feet thick, and the house has a chandelier ordered from Czechoslovakia by Mr. Willetts. Again, Stanford White is cited as the architect.

:: 1964 ::

William Prentice Willetts dies in Southern Pines, North Carolina.

:: 1995 ::

Dr. Albert B. Smith dies.

:: 2002 ::

In September, DeEtta G. Smith dies.

:: 2007 ::

The house is purchased from the Smith daughters by Elizabeth and Evan Dreyfuss, who make extensive renovations, removing two kitchens on the upper floors left from the apartment house days, and fully restoring the house to its original intent as a family residence. After the restoration is complete, the couple and their three children move into the house in December of 2008.

* * *

The United States Post Office introduced zone numbers in 1943, so we know the letterhead below dates from before that time.

Above, the Willetts family plot in Lake View Cemetery. The smaller stones (l.-r.) mark the graves of Joseph Prentice Willetts, Emma Prentice Willetts, Joseph C. Willetts, and on the opposite side of the large stone, Amie Willetts Outerbridge, Samuel Roosevelt Outerbridge and Amie Frost Willetts Lapham.

* * *

My thanks, as always, to the Skaneateles Historical Society, to Pat Blackler, Village Historian, and to Elizabeth and Evan Dreyfuss of The Boulders.

A Musical Interlude

Hilary Hahn in the woods near Brook Farm