Country Zest and Style Summer 2021 Edition

Carry Me BACK: Miss Charlotte and the Beagles

Kathleen Harriman Mortimer was a member of the riding team while at Foxcroft.

Miss Charlotte Noland, head of the Foxcroft School.

Image Foxcroft School

By Jimmy Hatcher

When I was running the stable for former New York Governor

W. Averell Harriman and his wife, Pamela, at their Willow Oaks farm just outside Middleburg, friends and family members often came to ride. None of the guests were more welcome than the governor‘s daughter, Kathleen Harriman Mortimer.

A Foxcroft graduate, she loved to take her horse over to her old school just down the road, all the while fondly remembering the trails there when she had been “Master of the Beagles” in her student days.

Kathleen always laughed when she told the story about the day her pack of beagles had gone off the Foxcroft property on a run and she had gone after them.

In those days, leaving the campus without permission was a serious offense, possibly leading to expulsion. One of her fellow hunters had actually squealed on her and that afternoon she was called up to appear before Charlotte Noland, or “Miss Charlotte,” as she was known, the long-time founder and Foxcroft Head of School.

Somewhat mortified and fearing the worst beforehand, Kathleen met with Miss Charlotte, but was obviously relieved when she was told “if you had not gone after your hounds, you would have been shipped (expelled).”

After she told me that story, I asked Kathleen if she had ever seen Miss Charlotte‘s grave. She had not, so we rode into the great field behind the school’s Alumni House and found the fenced-in cemetery. We got off our horses and walked into the handsomely planted space.

After a quiet time, I turned to see that this “woman of the world“ was in tears. I asked her if she was all right.

She replied “you don’t understand Jimmy. Our mothers were busy being wives to important men. We had nannies, governesses etc. But you see, Miss Charlotte was always there for us.“