Montgomery Place; by John Ross Delafield

The Story of Grasmere Maunsell S. Crosby

I cannot begin telling about Grasmere better than by quoting from a paper read by Miss Alice Hill of Rhinebeck at a meeting of Chancellor Livingston Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution on October 9, 1919, who then said: "Grasmere originally formed part of the Beekman Patent and was included in that part of it which fell to Henry Beekman, Jr., when, after his father's death, the property was divided between him and his two sisters. Through whose hands it passed is not known until it was found in the possession of General Montgomery, whose wife was Janet Livingston."

When I was a boy I remember seeing an old corner stone lying in the basement with the date 1755 cut on it. I am unable to give its history, but it is possible that it came from some building formerly situated near by. Antedating it by no doubt many years are the Indian arrowheads, of which I have a number, found on the place.

General Montgomery built mills on his property along the Landsmans Kill as early as 1773. The house had not been completed when he went to the war in 1775 and he never lived in it himself. The bricks were made from clay taken from a field just south of the house and still known as the "Brick Lot."

The General's widow later built the house at Montgomery Place and spent the remaining years of her life there.

To quote Miss Hill further: "After she left Grasmere it was rented to Lady Kitty Duer—Lord Sterling's daughter, and her family. It was then called Rhinebeck House. Mrs. Montgomery afterwards rented it to her brother-inlaw Morgan Lewis, who occupied it nine years, just before he became Governor of the State. Mrs. Montgomery then sold the property, which consisted of about nine hundred acres, to her sister Johanna, wife of Peter R. Livingston. who lived there twenty-five years. In 1828, during their occupancy, the house burned down. It was rebuilt, but Mrs. Peter R. Livingston died before the new building was finished. Peter R. Livingston died in 1847 and having no children, bequeathed all his property to his brother Maturin, who, dying the following year, left it to .his wife, Margaret Lewis Livingston, who gave the Grasmere estate to her son Lewis Livingston, who lived on it until his death."

I do not know when the name of the place was changed to Grasmere.

Up to 1861 the house was a single-storied structure. I have a colored glass stereoscopic slide, made about that time, showing Mr. and Mrs. Livingston, their sons James and Lewis, and several other persons. The group is standing on the back piazza and its general ap-

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pearance is almost the same now as it was then. I think it is probable that the walls which stood prior to 1828 were not destroyed and were incorporated in the rebuilt structure. My study window especially seems to belong to an early period. In 1861 second and third stories were added and a tower placed in the northeast corner, the whole covered with a Mansard roof.

When my mother Mrs. Ernest Crosby, in 1894 bought Grasmere from Mrs. Margaret Lee, who had inherited it from her cousin Lewis Livingston the younger, it was thus that it appeared, with a bay window on the east, and the study and library forming a small extension on the west. My mother added the west wing,—hoping at some time to built an east one,—removed the tower, changed the roof and replaced the wooden front piazza with the present marble one. What is now the front hall was in 1894 three separate rooms, and the present parlor comprises what used to be two rooms. During the interim between the Livingston and Crosby regimes, the place was rented to a farmer and when we arrived rye was being raised literally up to the front and back doors. All the present garden, shrubbery, walks and balustrades were made by my mother and she directed the cutting of the present vistas to the south.

We were able to find the remains of an old garden arbor extending from the road corner east of the house, northeastward to where the vegetable garden stood. This, and a few clumps of lilacs and lilies, were all the traces of planting that remained. That the great trees were spared we were most thankful, and it was primarily because of the trees that my mother selected Grasmere from the several places for sale at the time.

It was only a few years ago that. I heard of the "Montgomery Willow," supposed to have been planted by the General before he left for the war. I remember a very sickly, miserable willow standing just east of the flower garden in what is now the shrubbery garden„ which my father cut down himself over thirty years ago. If this was the Montgomery Willow, it must have been a mere shoot from the former tree, as it was not over a. foot in diameter. Had we known its history it would probably not have been cut down.

In 1894 the farm buildings were all of wood and were falling down at the rate of about one a winter. As they collapsed, stone buildings were put up to replace them, built from old stone fences dividing the fields.

As you came up the State Road you passed on the left an old stone house; and as you came up the South Drive you passed near another on the right. I do not know their origin or age, but suppose them to be Dutch. The northern house is reputed to have been an inn. A counterfeit shilling of one. of the Georges was found in it.

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Montgomery Place By Brig. Gen. John Ross Delafield, A.M., L.L.B., D.S.M.

There is something about a home which gives it individuality. No two are alike and indeed their character is as various as are the characters of men and women. It is with what the architect and the decorator have given, good, bad, or indifferent, that every house begins. But with time the house begins to take on something more, to gain an atmosphere and this may grow from decade to decade and with each succeeding occupant until the story of the house and its associations make it different and far more than the architect, the decorator and the landscape gardener ever gave it. Indeed these may remain to hallow the place long after the house itself has gone. It is so of Tara Hill, the ancient home of the kings of Ireland, and of Kenilworth and of many another more humble home. Our own Mount Vernon owes but a small part of its charm to its physical appearance and setting.

Montgomery Place is such a home to which the generations have each added their interest. In the century and a quarter since its completion it has never been sold and its six successive occupants have each received it by will from those who had it before them. So also the furniture, pictures, documents and everything about the place have gone with it from generation to generation. Each occupant has added to it what he or she thought best, not necessarily what was new, but often things that had come to them from other branches of their families. Yet the house is not overcrowded for some things are necessarily broken or lost as the years go by.

When Mrs. Montgomery built the house and completed it in 1805 she brought to it much that she had had in her house at Grasmere, which you visited this morning, including the portrait of her husband, General Montgomery, his clock and doubtless many other things, which cannot now be identified. The land, 250 acres, had been bought by her in June, 1802, for $8,250.00. The former owners were John van Benthuysen and Catherine, his wife, who had this and much adjoining land, once a quarter part of the great grant obtained by Colonel Peter Schuyler in 1688, and by him sold to Barnet Van Benthuysen about the year 1719.

Though there is not now any proof in writing, it is believed that Janet Montgomery, who was then nearly sixty years old, wished to move from Grasmere because of sad associations. It was the home she had planned for with her husband and half completed before he started on the northern campaign, and also she wished to live nearer to Clermont, her mother's summer home. She was the oldest of the eleven children of Judge Robert R. Livingston of Clermont, and Margaret Beekman, his wife, and was

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born on the twenty-seventh of August 1743.

Mrs. Montgomery built the main portion of the house as it stands today. It is of stone with walls about two feet thick with great windows and high ceilings after the fashion of the day. There was then no doubt some sort of an extension or wing on the south end of the house. But this was small for there were windows in the south end of the dining room just as there are now in the north end of the drawing room. The extension was probably for a pantry and to give access to the basement stairs.

Mrs. Montgomery called the place Chateau Montgomery and here she spent her summers, entertaining her guests, and members of her family, especially her youngest brother, Edward, twenty-one years younger than she, and his family. Here in 1824 General Lafayette stopped and stayed the night in the room now called the library when he visited his .friends the Livingstons. Martin Van Buren and many other distinguished men have also stayed in the house as guests.

Here, on the six of July, 1818, Mrs. Montgomery then in her seventy-sixth year stood on the veranda overlooking the Hudson to watch the steamship bearing the remains of her husband, General Montgomery, to their last resting place beneath the monument erected by order of Congress on the east front of St. Paul's church, New York. The scene is thus described by Charles Havens Hunt: "The Governor had advised Mrs. Montgomery at about what hour the boat, bearing the remains of her husband, would pass her house, Montgomery Place. By her own request she stood alone upon the portico at the appointed time. She had lived with the General but two years. It was then almost fortythree years since she had parted with him at Saratoga. For a third of a century out of this latter period, the waters of the Hudson, like all other waters, had been ignorant of steam-vessels. The change which in the meantime had come over her person was not greater than that which the face of her country, its government, and all the objects with which she was familiar, had undergone. Yet she had continued as faithful to the memory of her "soldier", as she constantly called him, as if she still looked for him to come back alive and unaltered. The steamer halted before her; the "Dead March" was played by the band, a salute was fired, and the ashes of the departed hero passed on. The attendants of the venerable widow now sought her. She had succumbed to her emotions, and fallen to the floor in a swoon."

Mrs. Montgomery added to the furniture and ornaments in the house from time to time. Some handsome furniture was sent her from France by her brother, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, about the time the house was built. He was Minister to France in 1801 and 1803. Other pieces were given her, as for example the beautiful small Hepple-white desk and bookcase containing Bell's edition of

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the poets of Great Britain which is now in the library.

Mrs. Montgomery had intended to give Montgomery Place to her late husband's nephew, the Honorable William Jones, younger son of the Earl of Ranelagh who had married General Montgomery's sister. But after his strange death unmarried and without issue, and after the death of her nephew Lewis Livingston in 1822, she devised it by her will to her brother Edward, who received it on her death on November sixth, 1828.

Edward Livingston, born May twenty-eighth, 1764, and young enough to be her son, had long been much attached to his sister, Mrs. Montgomery, and had often visited her at Montgomery Place. After an active career at the bar and in politics in New York he had moved to New Orleans in December, 1803, had taken a prominent part in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, had spent a number of years as Congressman from Louisianna and in 1828, about the time of his sister's death, had been chosen United States Senator by the Louisianna legislature. His duties kept him occupied in Washington for the following years though his wife and daughter had visited the North River and spent the summer of 1828 with Mrs. Montgomery. On the adjournment of Congress in March, 1831, Edward Livingston went with his family to Montgomery Place to spend the summer until the next session of Congress. But he could not remain long for his friend General Andrew Jackson, then President of the United States, in April offered him the post of Secretary of State, which he accepted and was obliged to remain in Washington. In May 1833 he was appointed Minister to France, but before the appointment he was made a member (foreign associate) of the Institute of France. He sailed with his family on the Delaware, ship of the line, which was chosen for the purpose. He was already well known abroad, not only because of his positions and long service at Washington, but also because of the wonderful Penal Code which he had worked out and drawn up, and which attracted much attention in Europe. It soon became clear that the principal difficulty he had to encounter in France was to secure the payment of the French Spoliation claims. The King, Louis Philippe, was willing enough and had signed the treaty fixing the amount, but the Chamber of Deputies would not appropriate the money. The matter having reached a controversial stage requiring that diplomatic relations be severed, Edward Livingston demanded his passports from the French Government in April 1834, which he received. But rather than to return directly to the United States he traveled for a while in Switzerland, Germany and Holland returning to New York on the U. S. frigate Constitution in June 1835. In New York he received an ovation. He then resigned the office of Minister to France and again went to Montgomery Place, where he spent the summer and autumn enjoying the

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