The Manor

by Mac Griswold

  “a usable past”: Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 6.

  “substantial New England cheer”: Rodris Roth, “The New England, or ‘Olde Tyme,’ Kitchen Exhibit at Nineteenth-Century Fairs,” in The Colonial Revival in America, ed. Alan Axelrod (New York: W. W. Norton, 1985), 159–83, 162. Also see Celia Betsky, “Inside the Past: The Interior and the Colonial Revival in American Art and Literature, 1860–1914,” in the same volume, 241–77.

  The annual sojourners: The paragraph below draws on annual guest book entries, family scrapbooks, garden plans, and photographs of the manor. SMA, NYU IV/A/3/97/13; IV/I/5, 7; VI/B.

  Cambridge’s women and girls: Henrietta Channing Dana Skinner, An Echo from Parnassus: Being Girlhood Memories of Longfellow and His Friends (New York: J. H. Sears, 1928); Mary Towle Palmer, The Story of the Bee (Cambridge, MA: Riverside, 1924); Anita Israel, Archives Specialist, Longfellow National Historic Site, pers. comm., Dec. 2009.

  “the imperative of memory”: Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory, 101.

  The Danas’ father, Richard Henry Jr.: The elder Dana is better known as the author of Two Years Before the Mast. Charles Francis Adams, Richard Henry Dana: A Biography (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890), 263–96; von Frank, The Trials of Anthony Burns; Lawrence Lader, The Bold Brahmins: New England’s War Against Slavery, 1831–63 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1961), 204–16.

  Benjamin Robbins Curtis Jr: Proud of his father’s life and works, Curtis Jr. wrote the preface to an 1879 memoir of his father, written by his uncle, George Ticknor Curtis, the federal commissioner charged with enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act in Massachusetts. In the 1850s, like Daniel Webster, their ally in Congress, both Curtis brothers acted to strengthen Southern concerns (including the return of fugitive slaves) in order to keep Northern industrial and banking interests profitable. George Ticknor Curtis, A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, LL.D., with Some of his Professional and Miscellaneous Writings Edited by His Son, Benjamin R. Curtis, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1879), https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=XP08AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&authuser=0&hl=en&pg=GBS.PP4; Menand, Metaphysical Club, 10–12.

  the infamous Dred Scott case: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 145–237; Michael Boudin, Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Massachusetts Court of Appeals (2001–2008), pers. comm., Nov. 2009; Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University School of Law, pers. comm., Dec. 2009.

  Curtis’s views on slavery: In 1836, Curtis argued that Med, a six-year-old black girl from New Orleans, was the property of her Louisiana owner who was visiting Massachusetts. He lost the case in Massachusetts Supreme Court, which ruled that a slave brought into a free state was freed on the moment of arrival. (Massachusetts had abolished slavery in 1783.)

  Quaker Graveyard: The family burying ground became known as “the Quaker graveyard” when the monument was erected and the remains and slabs of Brinley and Mary Sylvester were removed to the island’s Presbyterian cemetery. The earliest burial of the remaining ten was that of Jonathan Hudson of Shelter Island, d. April 5, 1729, whose son, Samuel, married Grizzell L’Hommedieu, daughter of Patience Sylvester and Benjamin L’Hommedieu of Southold. According to descendant Shirley Hudson, Jonathan Hudson came first to Connecticut from Barbados in 1680, and may have been a Quaker. See “Shelter Island,” extracts transcribed by Jane Devlin from Harris, “Ancient Burial Grounds of Long Island,” 54–58; also Mallman, Historical Papers of Shelter Island, 203, 310, 307; pers. corresp., Shirley Hudson to MKG, Jan. 4, 2007.

  “This venerable colored woman”: The Long-Islander, Huntington, Long Island, July 25, 1884.

  Baptism of the Calves: Shelter Island Historical Society Bulletin, April 1984 and Spring 2001.

  “a custodian”: Kammen, Mystic Chords, 10.

  unlikely romance: Eben and Cornelia both circulated “traditional accounts” that appeared in magazine articles about the manor and in local histories: Lamb, “The Manor of Shelter Island,” 1887; Mallmann, Historical Papers, 1899; and Ralph Duvall, The History of Shelter Island (Shelter Island Heights, NY: no publisher indicated, 1932). They became part of the “history” of the island. Also see Alice Morse Earle, Old-Time Gardens (New York: Macmillan, 1901); Louise Shelton, Beautiful Gardens in America (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915); Cornelia Horsford, “The Garden at Sylvester Manor, Shelter Island”; and Cornelia Horsford, “The Manor of Shelter Island.”

  detailed plans: Sylvester Manor plans for C. Horsford, twenty-seven sheets of Henry Bacon, actual state, alterations, and additions for four floors, all 1908. SMA, NYU IV/H/7.

  the spot: Cornelia Horsford to “Mrs. Strong,” June 16, 1928, “Three Photocopies of Letters from Cornelia Horsford,” SMA, NYU IV/H/1/104/68A.

  A remarkably detailed letter: Cornelia Horsford, to “Mr Jefferys,” August 17, 1934, “Three Photocopies of Letters from Cornelia Horsford,” SMA, NYU: IV/H/1/104/68A.

  a letter to her mother: SMA NYU IV/C/1/93/13.

  “died at Sag Harbour”: Mary K. Horsford (attrib.), “A Pilgrimage to Shelter Island,” The Friend (Aug. 28, 1908): 576.

  “slight smell”: Farlow, “Memories of Samuel S. Gardiner.”

  Nematodes: Mary Ann Hansen, “Major Diseases of Boxwood,” 450–614, Virginia Cooperative Extension, http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/450/450-614/450-614.html.

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