Acair Fearann

Julie to Morris:

“Yesterday I drove out to Esperanza, both horses, taking Nell (Helen) and Lucy. It was a lovely day, and they had a thoroughly good time. It was curious to see their joy, and hear their reminiscences of their last year’s happiness…I only mention this to show you how every thing belonging to the place is dear and precious to them. Nell went all over the favorite spots bidding them adieu.”

While most of Julie’s letters are dominated by business (the rest of the letter is a very interesting discussion of the cows, poultry, orchards, and hired help); the letters also contain glimpses of the very real people and emotion.  And sometimes, as in this one, a hint of the constant strain that must have existed due to Morris’ yearly absences.  Esperanza was an escape from Hartford, which was ‘Julie without Morris’, and from New Orleans, which was ‘Morris without Julie’.  It was a new place, where they would all be together.  Interesting psychology at work.

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Until after World War II, Esperanza was only a summer home; although, there is evidence that suggests that the farm cottage was being lived in year round as early as 1905 by Carlotta.  This leads to the obvious question…’what about the other six months?’

While Julie was alive, the winter home was Hartford.  However, from the earliest period the situation was somewhat more complex and speaking of a winter home is somewhat incorrect.  Julie lived in Hartford, but Morris was generally in New Orleans, while her daughters were spread out from upstate New York, to New York City, to New Orleans.  Right from the beginning then, Esperanza functioned as a gathering spot for a far flung family.

After Julie’s death the focus, now based on WWE and Helen in the next generation, shifted to New York City and, by the late 1890’s, to Yonkers.  Yonkers, or NYC’s environs, would remain the winter focus until the house became a year round place.  The NYC focus had a longer tradition for Julie and Morris had first met in New York.

Oddly, due to generational/cultural/social shifts no doubt, about the time the house became a year round place, the summer-time ‘gathering of the clan’ so to speak began to reduce.  A social/cultural shift, the white-collar professional/middle class ceased to take long multi-generational vacations, shorter vacations focused on the immediate nuclear family became more typical.

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From Morris in New Orleans to Julie in Hartford:

“I tried to find a ‘Brigand’ Hat, and was unsuccessful, but the Hatter said he had a style that none but brigands wore, so I bought one of them. Now I am a brigand, as well as a vagabond.

The pony phaeton idea is a good one. I hope you will be successful in carrying it out. The great requisite is a gentle horse.

What is Lottie’s (Carlotta) post address? I do not know the name of the school, of the Madame, street or number.

…Well I will be with you before long, only eight weeks more, and I fret for the time to pass. Shall we have plenty of flowers the coming season? I hope so. I enjoy seeing them in the parlor and dining room. I wish you would get Wetmore to put up the new grape trellis and move the one on the lawn back.

…Business is still discouraging, but I have one great comfort, and that is I have no one to report to. You are my only partner, dear Julie, and the best in the world. And Darling, I look forward to the very best of times with you this coming season. A real good old fashioned time. Good bye. Morris”

As always, Morris’ letters to Julie have a certain elegance, perhaps one might even say romance, to them.

Comments Off on April 29, 1871

Julia in Hartford to Morris in New Orleans:

“Nell (Helen) has had a young friend staying with her, and they two went down to the station after a trunk with Lady Jane. An engine came up and she began to back, but would have done no damage had it not been for that drunken Charles Griffin, who must needs jump up and catch her by the nose. She won’t let anybody do that, and although Nelly begged him to leave go, he kept hold till she run the wheel into a post and broke it. He came up and said we need not feel any obligations for any little favours he had done, and wanted to borrow “Chris and Otto”. The wheel is mended now, and alright. That is the second time the carriage has been at the shop. The other time the axle was split,nobody knows how.”

Lady Jane was one of the horses, of course. I know of few horses that will tolerate their nose being grabbed as a means to make them stop backing up, especially in harness; most will, as Lady Jane did, keep backing up and usually do so with more haste. 

‘Chris and Otto’ was one of the novels written by Julie.

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Julie, in Hartford, writing to Morris in New Orleans.

“Yesterday Fanny and I went up to Esperanza. It looked cloudy when we started, and before we reached there, it began to snow, and culminated into the worst storm I ever was out in in my life. It snowed and sleeted and blew, and the driver had to turn back after going round the hill because of the drifts, which have been fifteen feet deep in some places. He had to get out and walk because the horses got stuck, the wheels sinking to the hubs in the soft snow and mud. The road straight up the hill has not been cleared this winter, and there are women up there who haven’t been outside their own door yards since Christmas. We could not get through Pussy Lane, but had to go in at the bars of Satis Bene, and away around the old house place, and out through the big gateway, and so into the road before we could get in at Esperanza gate.”

This is a very vivid, but frustratingly unclear passage.  If we look at the broader history of the town, Julie’s comment about the Town Hill road not being cleared actually makes sense. This was probably the straight section, about a mile and a half in length, that begins above the two minor roads that go around the hill: Steele/Burdick road to the east and West Hill/Maple Hollow to the west.  By the 1870’s Town Hill, the former town center, had lost most of its year round population.  Julie had purchased, in addition to Esperanza: Satis Bene, Appleby, and Aunt Piney’s house lots.  Their close friends, the Yales, lived next door and were also summer residents.  These were five of the central Town Hill lots, additionally, the dozen or so house lots south of the center on Yellow Mountain had been abandoned and returned to pasture.  The church had been vacant for nearly two decades.  There were probably no more than ten, at a most generous count, houses that were occupied year round on the hill by this time; in the following three decades, several of these would also become second homes or summer residences.  The town’s population centers, and main traffic routes, had shifted to the two river valleys.  It would only be in the 1930’s, when the state built the highway, that Town Hill’s population would start to increase again.

Comments Off on Mid April, 1873

In an age before movies, TV, radio, and most assuredly lacking in the internet, the theater was the main entertainment venue and the opera was the main type of performing art.  Many of the letters by family members comment on operas they have gone to see, as they also comment on books they were reading, or pieces of music they were learning.  Sometimes, there was an element of comic relief evident, and the wry humor of the writer who knows they oughtn’t have laughed, but did, shows through.

Julie writing to Carlotta in 1875, from New Orleans:

“Saturday evening went down to L’Affricaine.  The soprano was sick- seven months in the family way- and in the third act when Vasca is looking at the mop, she stood on the other end of the stage singing, when suddenly without warning she fell over backwards in a dead faint. I thought it was part of the role but wondered how she could fall so awkwardly with her feet towards the audience- because her feet were Not her strong point. Then they came near crushing her with the drop curtain and it took six men to carry her off the stage. And yet she came out and tried again- and got on somehow till the last act, when she gave out and they had to stop the thing for good.”

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Morris, in New Orleans, writing to his daughter, Carlotta, who was in Brockport, NY.

“That was a good long letter you sent me. I enjoyed it very much and then your Mother had a good laugh over it. It is undeniable that the bills of the Butcher and the Grocer were never so small, even making allowance for a short month and Lent at that. I renclose them with checks to pay, and when paid you can put them with the others in the desk drawer.

It has been a continual rain for weeks, yesterday we went to the French Market and had breakfast with Madam Eugenia, before the 15th April we will make an excursion to Carrolton, but not till strawberries are ripe.  And if it is ever pleasant we will go to the lake….

…Advices from Esperanza speak of horses as well in every particular. Mr. Kellogg offers his farm but wants more than I will give. I had rather buy his place than build a tenant house, if Ican get it at the right price. If he does not meet my views in his next letter, I suppose I must wait for his ultimate decision till July.”

The Kellogg place was Appleby.  This 1780’s house stands, though in poor shape, still.  The family did end up buying it, and owned it, along with a good apple orchard, for several decades, before selling it in the early twentieth century.  However, Morris also ended up building, or rebuilding, a tenant house on the plot in between Appleby and Esperanza, on the site of the family’s original purchase.

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One of the fun things about being able to study a fairly decent run of family history, in comparison to most middle-class families, is being able to pick out patterns.  One of the odder ones is where else in the country (and world) family members have lived.  While there are significant outliers: Vermont, New Mexico, the UK, Washington DC, Minnesota;* four places have been consistent either as places family members live or routinely visit in multiple generations: Montreal, New York City, Florida, and California.  While NYC, Florida, and California were all well known connections, Montreal was a bit of a surprise.  Today, three family members are based out of there, and I had assumed that it was only a single generation** connection.  However, on doing more research into the travels of the early nineteenth century, I found that the family had friends there and visited multiple times, furthermore that this activity predated Elizabeth Creevey’s marriage to Frederick Goucher, a Canadian.  One particularly interesting strand was the family’s relationship with Malcolm Fraser, a Canadian artist of some note.  Several portraits were done by him and there are two landscape oils done by him which appear to have been of Esperanza.  This raises a raft of questions, not the least being that Malcolm Fraser is not well known in the US, so why….?

*and elsewhere, there are relatives all over the country.  I was also not counting places where people who married into the family grew up, unless they became places people lived/visited after marriage into the family.

**technically two now!

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