Country Zest & Style Spring 2020 Edition

Carry Me BACK

Always an Adventure With Pamela Harriman

By Jimmy Hatcher

When Averell Harriman and his wife, Pamela, purchased the property along the Foxcroft Road in 1974, I had been leasing a barn from the previous owner, Millicent West.

Averell’s father, railroad baron E.H. Harriman, and several other Wall Street financiers, had started the Orange County Hunt in 1904 and Averell had been a joint master in 1914-15. When he was at Yale, he often took a train down to The Plains, then hunted on Saturday and Sunday and was back to class on Monday.

Pamela Harriman enjoyed many fine days out riding in Middleburg.

Photo by Janet Hitchen for The Middleburg Mystique © 2001.

I once asked Mr. Harriman how many horses he needed when he hunted and he told me it was usually two a day. Of course, his man needed a horse, as well. One of them was always lame, so seven horses a weekend, and they definitely got a workout.

Before the Harrimans moved into their new Middleburg residence, there was a fire in the basement of the main house. Back then, the farm manager’s home was out of sight from the main house, but right next to it was a small log cabin. Mrs. Harriman asked me if I would move in to the cabin if they renovated it. They wanted me to be there so I could keep an eye on the main residence.

When they moved to Middleburg in ’74, Pamela started to ride again. I had actually called her secretary one day and asked if Pamela would like me to show her all the trails on the property. Her secretary told me Pamela had once gone out alone and been lost for three hours, and she would welcome having me along. So I started riding with her.

Then she decided she wanted to jump again. She had done that as a little girl, she hadn’t jumped since 1938. Her father was Lord Digby in England and she had competed in hunter trials and horse shows. When she came here, she occasionally took the field. I rode with her for ten years and we became good friends. She stopped riding after she started doing some campaign work when Bill Clinton ran for president.

In addition to our riding, we also had some other interesting adventures. One Sunday there was a knock on my log cabin door. It was Pamela, with an odd question.

Her son, Winston Churchill, was going into the air taxi business in the North Sea, and Pamela had bought him a plane in Texas. His pilot went down there to get the plane and flew it up to Dulles. The pilot and Winston had to fly back to England that Sunday night. Did I know anyone who could get her $5,000 in cash? Why cash? She explained that they had to stop in Greenland on the way to re-fuel the plane, and the Greenland fueling station did not take credit cards. It was cash only on a Sunday night. My local knowledge came in very handy that morning. I knew that Billy Leach, who had been the mayor of Middleburg and also owned the hardware store in the village, actually had a big safe in the store. I told her to call Billy to see if he might be able to help. He told her come on down to the store right away and he’d see what he could do.

Needless to say, she got the $5,000 out of the safe, they gassed up the plane in Greenland and went on their merry way to jolly old England.

Jimmy Hatcher, a native of Richmond, is a long-time rider and fox-hunter and moved to the Middleburg area in 1966.