Tea & Talk, Driving Miss Biddle
April 27, 2013 |
LENOX, MA. “Driving Miss Biddle: Michael Cole and the Life of a Lenox Chauffeur” will be presented at a Tea and Talk at Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum by James Cole, Michael’s great grandson, on Saturday, April 27, at 3:00 pm. A Victorian Tea will follow the lecture.
As part of Ventfort Hall’s ongoing series of Gilded Age reminiscences, the talk will offer a glimpse into the employer/employee relationship that developed between two families. In 1880 a nineteen-year-old, horse-loving Irishman, Michael Cole, made his way from County Derry to Philadelphia.
He began working as a coachman and soon landed a job with the prominent Biddle family. In the summertime he came to Lenox where the Biddles had a "cottage," Breezy Corner, on Cliffwood Street. When he married, the Biddles built Michael and his bride, Susan, their own house on the same street.
Over the years Michael Cole’s job evolved from coachman to chauffeur, and when Miss Emily Biddle died in 1931, he had worked for her for fifty-one years. She left him a significant legacy.
Three generations later, James Cole of Pennsylvania will return to Lenox, uncovering the heartwarming story of the mutual admiration and dedication between his great grandfather and the Biddle family.
Cornelia Brooke Gilder is the co-author of Houses of the Berkshires and Hawthorne’s Lenox. She first learned of Miss Biddle’s devotion to the Cole family in conversations with her mentor the late Julia Conklin Peters of the Lenox Library. Gilder will participate in Cole’s presentation.
Tickets for the Cole/Gilder Tea and Talk are $16 per person for non-members and $14 for members. Reservations are highly recommended as seating is limited. For reservations, please call Ventfort Hall at 413-637-3206. For information, please visit us at www.gildedage.org. The historic mansion is located at 104 Walker Street in Lenox.
An Official Project of Save America’s Treasures program sponsored by The White House, Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum offers tours of the historic mansion, as well as Tea and Talks, such exhibitions as Les Petites Dames de Mode,concerts, and theater. This elegant Jacobean-Revival Berkshire “cottage,” listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is open to the public year-around and is available for private rental. Built in 1893 for George and Sarah Morgan (sister of the financier, J. P. Morgan), Ventfort Hall has undergone substantial restoration, which continues.
Location: Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum
Date of Event: Saturday, April 27, 2013
Time: 3:00 pm
Cost: $16 per person for non-members and $14 for members
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Website:
www.gildedage.org |
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| Location Information |
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Ventfort Hall Mansion and Gilded Age Museum |
104 Walker Street
Lenox, MA |
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| Contact Information |
| Email:
housemanager@gildedage.org |
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