Historic House and Gardens
Enjoy this article in the Loudoun Times-Mirror:
Planting History
Graham, K. (2015, May 3). Planting history: Hamilton’s Wegmeyer Farms and Oatlands partner to harvest strawberries in Leesburg. Retrieved from https://www.loudountimes.com/news/planting-history-hamilton-s-wegmeyer-farms-and-oatlands-partner-to/article_5f7226ec-b51f-5dfd-a738-b780ff4a4862.html
Enjoy this article in the Loudoun Times:
Meet a Loudouner: Caleb Schutz
Page A10. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.loudountimes.com/special_sections/spring_loudouner/page-a/page_a55f3b06-7701-53ad-b237-c7088b987e7a.html
Following the announcement of their engagement in 1900, William Corcoran Eustis, and Edith Morton experienced an avalanche of congratulatory letters. One in particular caught our eye.
The author of the letter seems sentimental, referencing a poem, the final line of which is, “love is best.” Who could this romantic be?
Is that what it looks like? You better believe it! Edith received a sweet letter from then Governor of New York, Theodore Roosevelt.
Edith enjoyed impeccable connections; her father, Levi P. Morton, served as the 22nd Vice President under Benjamin Harrison.
While we certainly agree with Teddy’s sentiment that, “Nothing in the world in any way compares with happy love”, finding letters like these comes close!
See the complete letter below:
Dear Miss Morton, March 25, 1900
You have touched and pleased me very much by writing me of your engagement; will you think me very old-fashioned if I say, of your great happiness? Nothing in the world in any way compares with happy love. Do you know or care for Browning’s “Love among the Ruins”? Give my warm regards and heartiest congratulations to Mr. Eustis. I feel as though I were fairly well acquainted with the whole Eustis family. Indeed, if by any possibility I can, I shall be at your wedding. Mrs. Roosevelt is away in Cuba, whither she has gone with a very nice Louisiana fellow, John McIlhenny, a lieutenant in my regiment, in her train[?].
Faithfully yours,
Theodore Roosevelt
Governor Roosevelt illustrates his own interesting affiliations when he mentions his close friend, and fellow Rough Rider, John McIlhenny. If this name appears familiar, take note when next you see a bottle of Tabasco sauce.
Part of the joy in reading the family letters within the Eustis Archive at Oatlands is getting a feel for who these people were and how they lived their lives.
Morton is not merely a face in a photo album; he is a melodramatic teenager, excited to share his school adventures in North Carolina with his sister in April, 1918.
(No snakes were harmed in the making of this blog.)
Dear Margey. April 25, 1918.
Thank you so much for your very nice long letter which I recieved this morning. Today I did something which I have never done before. I killed a snake. It was a deadly poisnesous one. about 1 ½ ft long. I had a shovel with me when I saw him and ⌃a coloured man who was near stuck it down on its tail and it rose right up and struck at the shovel. It also swelled up big. Then I killed it by sticking the shovel on his neck, by the way a master killed a snake 4 feet long and another boy killed one just like mine. Whenever you go out in a motor you see about 5 snakes on the road. Today a boy ran over one on a bicycle. the country is lilteraly full of snakes. It is not safe to sit down in the woods or go in any swamp. They have about a every kind of poisenous snake down here (here are some of them)
Rattlesnakes, coperheads, mocasins, adders, bullsnakes, pinesnakes, ⌃vipers and about 1,000 other kinds. I for one dont like it very much. (by the way all the snakes that I have mentioned are very poisenous, also it was a adder that I killed. Please write and tell Helen and Mother this.
Goodbye dear Margey Lots of love from Morton P.S. Louis and Win are enchanted cause there are so many snakes here. P.S. I exagerated alittle about the snakes Dear Margey, This is a letter that I wrote a week ago and forgot to mail Very best love (Will write long letter tomorrow) Morton
The snake above is one of the friends to the Oatlands garden, found at his home in what was formerly a carbide plant at the foot of the garden. Not one of the “deadly poisonous” snakes described by young Morton, but a nonvenomous Eastern rat snake.
*Historical transcriptions are precise- grammatical errors, mistakes, misspellings, and all.
*Cousins to the Eustis children, Louis and Winthrop Rutherfurd belonged to Winthrop Chanler Rutherfurd and Alice Morton, Morton’s aunt through his mother.
