As I Remember / Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century

by Marian Gouverneur

In 1831 the small but pretty Gramercy Park in New York was established by Samuel B. Ruggles. I have heard that this plot of ground was originally used as a burying ground by Trinity parish. As I first recollect the spot, there were but four or five dwellings in its vicinity. One of the earliest was built by James W. Gerard, a prominent lawyer, who was regarded as a most venturesome pioneer to establish his residence in such a remote locality. Next door to Mr. Gerard, a few years later, lived George Belden, whose daughter Julia married Frederick S. Tallmadge. Mr. Tallmadge died only a few years ago, highly respected and esteemed by a large circle of friends.

In 1846 I was one of the guests at a fashionable wedding in a residence on the west side of this park, which was possibly the first ceremony of the kind to take place in this then remote region. The bride's mother, the widow of Richard Armistead of New Bern, N.C., who habitually spent her winters in New York, had purchased the house only a few months previously. The bride, Susan Armistead, was an intimate friend of mine, and a well-known belle in both the North and the South. The groom, a resident of New York, was John Still Winthrop, of the same family as the Winthrops of Massachusetts. The guests composed an interesting assemblage of the old régime, many of whose descendants are now in the background. I met on that occasion many old friends, among whom the Kings, Gracies, Winthrops and Rogers predominated. Mrs. De Witt Clinton honored the occasion, dressed in the fashion of a decade or two previous. Her presence was a very graceful act as she then but seldom appeared in society, her only view of the gay world being from her own domain. Her peculiarity in regard to dress was very marked as she positively declined to change it with the prevailing style but clung tenaciously to the old-fashioned modes to the end of her life. Miss Armistead was an ideal-looking bride in her white dress and long tulle veil and carried, according to the custom then prevalent, a large flat bouquet of white japonicas with white lace paper around the stems. In the dining-room, a handsome collation was served, with a huge wedding cake at one end of the table and pomegranates, especially sent from the bride's southern home, forming a part of the repast. The health of the newly wedded couple was drunk in champagne and good cheer prevailed on every side. The whole house bore a happy aspect with its floral decorations and its bright Liverpool coal fires burning in the grates. Furnaces, by the way, were then unknown. In New York there was at that time a strong prejudice against anthracite coal, and Liverpool coal was therefore generally used, the price of which was fifteen dollars a ton. I have many close and tender associations connected with this bride of so many years ago, especially as our friendship, formed in our early life, still extends to her descendants. Some years after Mrs. Winthrop's marriage, and in her earlier widowhood, four generations traveled together, and then, as at other times, dwelt under the same roof. They were Mrs. Nathaniel Smith, Mrs. Richard Armistead, Mrs. John S. Winthrop and her son, John S. Winthrop, who, with his interesting family, now resides in Tallahassee.

In 1841, Lord Morpeth, the seventh Earl of Carlisle and a worthy specimen of the English nobility, visited the United States, and while here investigated the subject of the inheritance of slaves by English subjects. His report seems to have been favorably received, as a law was passed subsequent to his return declaring it illegal for Englishmen to hold slaves through inheritance. England's sympathetic heart about this time was in a perennial throb for "the poor Africans in chains," apparently quite oblivious to the fact that the "chains" had been introduced and cemented by her fostering hand.

I recall with unusual pleasure an entertainment where Lord Morpeth was the guest of honor, at the residence of William Bard on College Place, at that time a fashionable street in the vicinity of old Columbia College. I have always remembered the occasion as I was then introduced to Lord Morpeth and enjoyed a long and pleasant conversation with him. Our host was a son of Dr. Samuel Bard, physician to General Washington during the days when New York was the seat of government.

Mr. and Mrs. John Austin Stevens lived on Bleecker Street and had a number of interesting daughters. They were an intellectual family and I attended an entertainment given by them in honor of Martin Farquhar Tupper, the author of "Proverbial Philosophy." Mr. Stevens' sister, Lucretia Ledyard Stevens, married Mr. Richard Heckscher of Philadelphia.

Another gentlewoman of the same period was Mrs. Laura Wolcott Gibbs, wife of Colonel George Gibbs of Newport. The first Oliver Wolcott, a Signer, Governor of Connecticut and General in the Revolutionary War, was her grandfather; while the second of the same name, Secretary of the Treasury under Washington and Adams, Governor of his State and United States Judge, was her father. I am in the fullest sympathy with the following remarks concerning her made at her funeral by the Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows: "I confess I always felt in the presence of Mrs. Gibbs as if I were talking with Oliver Wolcott himself, and saw in her self-reliant, self-asserting and independent manner and speech an unmistakable copy of a strong and thoroughly individual character, forged in the hottest fires of national struggle. The intense individuality of her nature set her apart from others. You felt that from the womb she must have been just what she was—a piece of the original granite on which the nation was built.... The force, the courage, the self-poise she exhibited in the ordinary concerns of our peaceful life would in a masculine frame have made, in times of national peril, a patriot of the most decided and energetic character—one able and willing to believe all things possible, and to make all the efforts and sacrifices by which impossibilities are accomplished."

Mrs. Gibbs was literally steeped and moulded in the traditions of the past; in fact, she was a reminder of the noble women of the Revolutionary era, many of whom have left records behind them. She was gifted with a keen sense of humor, and her talent in repartee was proverbial. Although many years my senior, I found delightful companionship in her society, and her home was always a great resource to me. Her accomplished daughter, the wife of Captain Theophile d'Oremieulx, U.S.A., was particularly skilled in music. Her son, Wolcott Gibbs, the distinguished Professor of Harvard University, maintained to the last the high intellectual standard of his ancestors. He died several years ago. I was informed by his mother that at one period of its history Columbia College desired to secure his services as a professor, but that the Hon. Hamilton Fish, one of its trustees and an uncompromising Episcopalian, objected on the ground of his Unitarian faith and was sustained by the Board of Trustees. It seemed a rather inconsistent act, as at another period of its history a Hebrew was chosen as a member of the same faculty.

As nearly as I can remember, it was in the summer of 1845 that I spent several weeks as the guest of the financier and author, Alexander B. Johnson, in Utica, New York. Mrs. Johnson's maiden name was Abigail Louisa Smith Adams, and she was the daughter of Charles Adams, son of President John Adams. During my sojourn there her uncle, John Quincy Adams, came to Utica to visit his relatives, and I had the pleasure of being a guest of the family at the same time. He was accompanied upon this trip by his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Charles Francis Adams, a young grandson whose name I do not recall, and the father of Mrs. Adams, Peter C. Brooks, of Boston, another of whose daughters was the wife of Edward Everett. Upon their arrival in Utica, the greatest enthusiasm prevailed, and the elderly ex-President was welcomed by an old-fashioned torchlight procession. In response to many urgent requests, Mr. Adams made an impromptu speech from the steps of the Johnson house, and proved himself to be indeed "the old man eloquent." Although he was not far from eighty years old, he was by no means lacking in either mental or physical vitality. Mrs. Charles Francis Adams impressed me as a woman of unusual culture and intellectuality, while her father, Peter C. Brooks, was a genial old gentleman whom everyone loved to greet. He was at that time one of Boston's millionaires; and many years later I heard his grandson, the late Henry Sidney Everett, of Washington, son of Edward Everett, say of him that when he first arrived in Boston he was a youth with little or no means.