Category: Uncategorized
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Wedding Album
Our wedding coordinator Roberta just sent me this link to a wedding at Clermont featured on the blog Style Me Pretty New York. If you need more convincing that a wedding at Clermont can be absolutely beautiful–well, then I guess I don\’t know what to say to you. Anyway, don\’t miss the adorable croquet pictures.…
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A Photo Tour of Clermont
It occurred to me today that probably most of the 1,000-2,000 visitors to this blog every week have never physically set foot inside of Clermont. Using my internet stalking device (also known as a stat counter), I see that our web visitors come from down the road in Red Hook, New York, glamorous and beautiful…
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"Company at Dinner:" The Sorrowful Tale of Nancy Shippen, part 10
Not all of Nancy\’s life was sorrowful. In fact, the round of parties, teas, and socials she describes are enough to dizzy the modern reader! With the issue of her daughter\’s custody finally at a settlement and her dreadful husband for the moment out of the picture, Nancy Shippen Livingston could rejoin the dazzling Philadelphia…
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From Our Fellow Bloggers
Our good friend and steamboat enthusiast Pete sent us this link to the blog of the Morgan Library & Museum today. Definitely the livliest contemporary image of Robert Fulton that I have seen, the picture had me all in smiles. Don\’t miss the associated essay where Fulton defends his \”invention\” against competitors and interlopers!
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Tricky Script: Finding Woolacombe Beach
One of the banes of an historian\’s existance is historic script. Especially in pencil, which fades and smudges. Reading it can be slow and involve a lot of guesswork and sighing. Thankfully, Alice Livingston had reasonably clear handwriting, like this: \”S.S. Rotterdam/Plymouth 24 June 1921\” Nevertheless, when I come across a word I don\’t know…
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Roman Holiday
In 1921, Alice and John Henry Livingston decided their two daughters needed a cultural education–\”Culture with a big \’C,\’ we called it,\” said Honoria of the trip. The family packed up and moved to Italy. For six years, they lived in Florence, renting villas and traveling around Europe to see the sites (Seen at right,…
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New Acquisitions
Clermont is a museum dedicated to the long history of the Livingston family. But the Livingstons aren\’t gone; many of their descendants can still be found in the Hudson Valley and beyond. In fact, hundreds of descendants have come to our family reunions held every five years or so (photographed at right in the Livingston…
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Well Served: Service in Chancellor Livingston\'s House
This post is part of a new series on servants in Livingston households. What was it like to serve one of the richest families in the country? What kind of life did these people live? It\’s a big question, and a blog is not the place for a complete investigation, but I am attacking it…
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Growing up Livingston: The Sorrowful Tale of Nancy Shippen, part 9
Little Peggy was no longer a baby, but a little girl, growing up in one of the most wealthy and notable households in the northern United States. In December of 1785, while her mother Nancy was attempting to rouse herself from a crushing depression, Peggy was turning four years old (at right, a contemporary portrait…
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Well Served: Servants in the Eighteenth Century, #1
(Please excuse my little hiatus during October. Between assembling costumes, writing scripts, and rehearsing ghosts, the Ghost Tours quite devoured my time! You may be glad to know that our tours were quite thronged with people and well worth the effort. But back to the history!) We talk a lot about the Livingstons and the…
Clermont State Historic Site 