The Family
Gertrude and her seven siblings, two brothers and five sisters, all lived here together with their parents, four servants, and an ever-changing assortment of nieces, nephews, cousins, aunts and other relatives. Only two daughters and one son ever married, which was unusual for that era and for an affluent family with social position.
Seabury died in 1865 and the remaining family lived at the home into old age. Gertrude, the youngest member of the immediate family, lived here alone for 24 years after the death of her sister Julia in 1909. As she grew older and more eccentric she became obsessed with holding on to the elegant home in a neighborhood that had become, by the early 20th century, a run-down, semi-industrial, and disreputable part of town. Burdened with severe financial hardship in her last years, she somehow managed to keep the beautiful home in nearly original condition, long after all the neighboring private homes had been demolished or converted into rooming houses, tenements, or commercial structures.
After her death, a distant cousin, George Chapman, purchased the building, saving it from foreclosure and demolition. In 1936, after needed repair and renovation, the house opened as a museum and has remained such ever since. The Merchant’s House Museum remains a unique time capsule of the lives of a typical affluent New York merchant family of the 19th Century complete with the original possessions of the family.
Read more about this topic: Merchant's House Museum
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“It was occasions like this that made me more resolved than ever that my family would someday know real security. I never for a moment doubted that I myself would ultimately provide it for them.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“In the years of the Roman Republic, before the Christian era, Roman education was meant to produce those character traits that would make the ideal family man. Children were taught primarily to be good to their families. To revere gods, one’s parents, and the laws of the state were the primary lessons for Roman boys. Cicero described the goal of their child rearing as “self- control, combined with dutiful affection to parents, and kindliness to kindred.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)