Portrait of a “Grand Dame”

Posted on Sunday, December 20, 2009 by Kathy Fisher in History, Long Branch
Tags: History, Long Branch

I’ve mentioned Sallie Page Nelson in previous blogs, but thought it appropriate to dedicate this one to her because she lived at Long Branch for so many years.  She died the year I was born; I never got the chance to meet her.

Wedding, March 1943: Page Huidekoper to Frazer Dougherty. Standing next to the bride is her grandmother, Sallie Page Nelson.

What kind of person was she?  I’ve always wanted to learn more about the woman I heard so much about from my mother, growing up in California so far away and detached from the history that surrounds me here.

Sallie Page Nelson lived at Long Branch for a total of 66 years.[1] We know that she, along with her husband Hugh Nelson, Jr. (they married in 1885) established a reputation for hospitality and entertaining.

Recalling the occasion of the Nelsons’ tenth wedding anniversary celebration, Christopher Fordney cites Stuart Brown’s description of the party in The Annals of Clarke County:

. . . their baronial residence, where culture, refinement, and the most genial hospitality ever keep high carnival, was elaborately and tastefully decorated for the occasion with a profusion of the rarest flowers . . .

The music soft and gentle, which echoed from the spacious rooms like siren voices . . . was conducted exclusively by Mr. Nelson himself, with inimitable skill and harmony . . .

Towards the wee hours of the morning, when the truant moon should have stood high in the heavens in her greatest splendor, to illuminate us on our homeward way, the guests reluctantly took their departure, with a fervent prayer in their hearts that the Long Branch Reception of the 22 of April 1895, which would ever be remembered as one of the pleasantest episodes of their lives, might be repeated in the coming years without end.[2]

Proud wife and mother of their two children, Sallie struggled to keep Long Branch going after Hugh’s death in 1915, during difficult economic times in the region.  She attempted to maintain the farm and orchard, but subsequently began to lease those fields.[3] Carolyn Nelson Henderson, granddaughter of Carolyn Peyton Nelson Britton (sister of Sallie Page Nelson), and her relatives “spent many holidays at Long Branch with Aunt Page officiating as the “grand dame.”[4] She recalls:

Aunt Page had little money so the place was quite run down.  The back stairs were missing many of their square pickets, their dark green paint was peeling, and it was “off limits.”  In the “New Room” on the other side of the house there was a piano very much out of tune with some of the ivory gone.  The cats were fed in the “New Room.”[5]

Granddaughter Page Huidekoper Wilson recounts that almost all food consumed at Long Branch was produced on the farm, which included a very large vegetable garden.  She also remembers her grandmother’s wit and charm.  She had “a vast capacity for friendship. She was a remarkable, resilient spirit.”[6]

Traditional in her beliefs, Sallie initially did not support universal suffrage.  But when women were granted the right to vote, she cast her ballot in the election of 1920.[7]

One of only a few free-flying staircases with no visible means of support. A significant engineering feat.

Family always came first for Sallie Page Nelson.  During the Depression, she often took in women relatives who lived at Long Branch for many years (see my blog entitled “Need an Excuse to Lark in the Countryside?”).  She used Long Branch as collateral to borrow money to help her daughter and son-in-law when their business declined in the 1920s and 1930s.[8]

She entertained less in her later years, but relatives and grandchildren often traveled to Long Branch to stay for several weeks during the summer and enjoy large Sunday afternoon dinners.  In addition to the farm animals, “Aunt Page” kept a number of ponies for children and young adults, including my mother, to ride.

Sallie continued to attend church at Old Chapel, where Henry Johnson, who worked at Long Branch, would push her to her pew in a wheelchair.[9]

After her death in 1951, her estate revealed considerable assets such as silver, china, antique furniture, jewelry, and Gilbert Stuart portraits of some family members—but little cash.  Ironically, Long Branch electricity was not added until after World War II because Sallie did not have the money to pay for the work.[10]

I would have loved to have known her.  Nonetheless, her spirit lives on in the photographs, family memories, and the halls and rooms of Long Branch.

[2] Fordney, Christopher R.  Long Branch:  A Plantation House in Clarke Country Virginia. Millwood: Harry Z. Isaacs Foundation, 1995.

[3] Ibid.

[4]Henderson, Carolyn Nelson.  “Long Branch in the Forties Through a Child’s Eyes.”  Clarksburg, MD:  1995.

[5]Ibid.

[6] Wilson, Page Huidekoper.  Lecture Notes: Long Branch.  February 11, 2007.

[7] Fordney, Christopher R.  Long Branch:  A Plantation House in Clarke Country Virginia. Millwood: Harry Z. Isaacs Foundation, 1995.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.