in the lounge email from Susan C. Davis Comments in brackets are from Leslie Kostrich, proprietor of minniesland.com. We have also added hyperlinks for the convenience of our visitors. Many thanks to Susan for getting in touch and for allowing us to reprint her interesting emails. FIRST EMAIL -- JANUARY 6, 2002 Hello from Southern Oregon: In August of 2000 I was in New York City for the first time (hopefully not the last) to get my first taste of various Audubon sites, including Trinity Cemetery near the former location of Minniesland and which is the burial place of a number of my Audubon ancestors. John James and Lucy Audubon are my great-great-great-great grandparents through their [younger] son John Woodhouse and his marriage to Maria Rebecca Bachman, his first wife. Their child Lucy, the Audubons' first grandchild, is my great-great grandmother. Of course, the Rev. John Bachman and his wife Harriet are also my great-great-great-great grandparents. [Following the births of two daughters, Lucy and Harriet, Maria died at the age of 23 of tuberculosis. John Woodhouse eventually remarried and fathered several more children with his second wife including a daughter named Maria.] My grandfather, Charles F. Edwards, left his birthplace in Westchester County for Chicago, and from there he and his wife and my mother (age 5) and her brother (age 3), both now in their 80's, drove to Alameda, California in 1919 in a Ford Model T touring car. They were accompanied by Charles' mother, Lucy Audubon Williams Edwards, who wrote a 39-page handwritten "Log of the Hump Backed Liz," a delightful narrative about this harrowing two-month trip, parts of which was traveled over what is now the legendary Route 66. Charles F. Edwards remained in the San Francisco Bay Area until his death, and because he married late in life, I was barely a teenager when he passed away. Very little family history passed down to my sisters and I, and it was not until just a few years ago that I purchased my computer, which opened up a new world of learning about my wonderful heritage. I am particularly searching for more information about the lives of my gr-gr grandmother Lucy "Lulu" Audubon (Audubons' first grandchild) and her husband DeLancey Barclay Williams. I found your website tonight and am happy to see your interest in Minniesland. I have a copy of Herrick's book (second edition, which I chose over the first as it has more bibliographical entries) and recognize the photos of the various homes on the property. [See the photos to which Ms. Davis refers. Francis Hobart Herrick was the author of the classic Audubon biography Audubon the Naturalist. The first edition was published in 1917, the second in 1938.] On the day I ventured out to the site on the Hudson River, I knew the homes no longer stood, but I was so saddened by what replaced them. I walked along the river's bank and tried to picture just where John James Audubon might have stood or sat time and again to view the vistas that I too saw. I wasn't sure exactly where the main house stood in relation to the shoreline of the river. Now that I have been to Manhattan, I hope to return again someday and spend more time seeing so much more of my family's past. I have located two homes next door to each other in Westchester County, homes owned decades ago by the Edwards and Williams families, homes of my ancestors. I am happy to report that both homes are in beautiful condition and their owners plan to keep them that way. It is my understanding that although there is an "Audubon Park," it is a complex of buildings and not a true park. I believe there is not one public park in New York City in any of the boroughs dedicated to John James Audubon (not including nature preserves owned by Audubon Societies). I think it would be wonderful if such a park existed, considering that the Audubon family chose New York City as their final home. I have enjoyed your website and thank you for picturing all the Audubon homes. Do you happen to know where the originals of those photos are located, if they still exist?
Thank you, Leslie's note: The "Audubon Park" area includes two complexes of buildings that are worthy of note. The older of the two is the Audubon Terrace Cultural Complex located at Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets. This complex was first conceived by Archer Milton Huntington, whose family purchased part of the Audubon estate in the late nineteenth century. Having founded the Hispanic Society of America in 1904, Huntington offered land adjacent to this new institution to other cultural concerns, subsidizing construction of the buildings as necessary. My personal recollections of this area include a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian (now part of the Smithsonian Institution and relocated in 1992). Audubon Terrace is now home to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Hispanic Society, the American Numismatic Society -- another project of Huntington's -- plus a church and college. For a brief history of Audubon Terrace and information on nearby Trinity Church Cemetery (where John James Audubon is buried), visit this site sponsored by Columbia University. A more modern complex of buildings, this one first conceived by Columbia University in the 1980s and still under construction, is the Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology Park. This complex, the name of which is occasionally shortened in Columbia's literature to Audubon Park, now houses several buildings devoted to biomedical research. Located in the easternmost portion of the Columbia Presbyterian Center, about a half-mile north of Audubon Terrace, the name was chosen to commemorate the Audubon Ballroom (site of Malcolm X's 1965 assassination) that was formerly located there (166th Street and Broadway). During construction of the first building of Audubon Park, a portion of the ballroom was preserved and restored. SECOND EMAIL -- JANUARY 7, 2002 Hi, Leslie, and thank you for your very nice response to my email. I do know of Alan Gehret; he and his wife Carol welcomed me to their home in late summer 2000 when I took a four-day journey from Manhattan to Audubon, PA to see Mill Grove. They and the Mill Grove staff spoiled me rotten and allowed me free run of the place. During those four wonderful days I was able to do a bit of childish daydreaming, having quite a zest for history anyway. Standing in the attic window looking out at the ha-ha wall and creek from the same spot as my then-teenage ancestor was quite an experience. And the grounds and trails are much fun, following in the footsteps of the young courting couple John James and Lucy. Alan took me all over the place, which included a thorough inspection of the wonderful barn on the property ("Was that here THEN? What happened to this?" etc. etc.). I also saw the location of the Bakewells' Fatland Ford [adjacent to Mill Grove, Fatland Ford was the home of Lucy Bakewell and her family before Lucy's marriage to John James Audubon] and took a lone hike into the woods to see Lucy's parents' burial site, a lovely small cemetery surrounded by wrought iron fences and so well kept--my gr-gr-gr-gr-gr grandparents! Since beginning my quest to learn more about my Audubon heritage, I have been in touch with a number of other family descendants, including several from the Bakewell family, who have provided me with huge amounts of help and materials. We have had great fun together on the internet and hope to someday have a joint website. I also have been in touch with the folks at Henderson [John James Audubon Museum and Nature Center in Henderson KY] and at other locations. It would be just fine to put my emails or parts thereof onto your website, and it is quite OK to show my name and town. John James Audubon had dreamed of coming to the Oregon Territory; some of his descendants did make it, but it took us many decades! His great-grandson John Audubon Williams, brother to my great grandmother Lucy Audubon Williams Edwards, moved to the Seattle-Everett, Washington area and is buried in Snohomish, Washington. Recently I located a large family branch of my grandfather's sister, Alice. They don't know much more than I do. It appears when our branch left the east coast, we also lost touch with the Victor side of the family. [Victor was the Audubons' elder son. He married another Bachman daughter, Mary Eliza, who was called Eliza within the family. Eliza died childless at the age of 22 of tuberculosis, less than a year after Maria's death. Victor remarried and had children with his second wife.] When I return to NYC, which I WILL do but not sure when, I will contact you and perhaps we can tramp around JJA territory and you can show me the sights (and sites)! I understand from their website that Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project (public parks) is involved in some park development and restoration along the Hudson River at a number of sites. I wonder if that tiny strip along where I imagine JJA's Minniesland was located is one of them. I do think Bette could name a real park for John James Audubon, somewhere on Manhattan. Maybe I should write to her???? Never hurts to try! I was corresponding with Mary Durant ("On the Road with John James Audubon") for awhile in the mid-1980s. I am so sorry I never made it to the east coast to visit with her. [Mary Durant and her late husband Michael Harwood co-authored this wonderful book, published by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1981.] I have not yet acquired "Had I the Wings," but I believe it is readily available; it is on my list of wants. [This excellent and readable book by Jay Shuler, published by University of Georgia Press in 1995, is subtitled "The Friendship of Bachman and Audubon."] I found the discovery that JJA was not the lost dauphin quite exciting. [Herrick debunked this Audubon family myth in his biography by establishing Audubon's true parentage.] For some reason, I was somewhat relieved to learn that situation was not part of my heritage! Florence Audubon's goddaughter, who is my age and a friend of mine with whom I visited in Texas April 2001, still insists that there was a royal French connection! I hope to get the "Log of the Hump Backed Liz" onto an internet website. I have several ideas about it; I have been researching the trip extensively and have had some of the mystery photos of the trip identified for location. That allowed me to "meet" some great folks in the southwest part of the United States.
Susan C. Davis "The man that has nothing to boast of but his illustrious ancestry is like the potato--the best part is under ground." (Thomas Overbury)
Last updated 02.28.09 |
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