Christmas vacation has arrived, and with it a few moments to devote to this project. The first few chapters of the existing school history, Gordon Clark Ramsey's Aspiration and Perseverence, contain some interesting insights. He found in a history of Westover School an anecdote about the time when TPR was hoping to convince her parents to move to Farmington. It seems she was walking outside with her mother when she looked down to find a rattlesnake on the ground in front of her. Not wanting to give the snake any influence over her mother's decision, TPR stepped over it, concealing it with her hooped skirt as her mother walked by!
I didn't know also that TPR's grandparents - the Popes - were from Maine - Vassalboro - and that it was the failure of their woolen mill that inspired Alfred (TPR's father) to resolve to be a success in business. Ramsey points out it was that business success - in the steel business - that created the fortune TPR spent building and founding AOF.
Looking again at Dearest of Geniuses, I realized that Katz quotes a "cousin's son" who visited while a student at Yale. Unless I misread the genealogy, that "cousin's son" has to be Brooks Shepard, who was my godfather! Uncle Bubs, as we called him, was related to TPR and once told me he specifically remembered a fly in amber that enthralled him while he was visiting at Hill-Stead (I assume that visit was before his Yale days).
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