​Independent Spirit, Mind, and Vision July 2024

Independence Day!  Fourth of July!  Miss Edith's life certainly embodied independence.  Growing up in a wealthy family allowed her the luxury of being financially independent, but as one of five children, she was also, simply, an independent child.  She was the only one who regularly chose to accompany her father to the Litchfield Hills during the summers.  The other four children spent the summers in traditional beach vacation mode with their mother at the Chase cottage on Long Island Sound in Madison, CT.
 
Miss Edith was independent-spirited.  She did have a boyfriend when she was younger, and it was rumored that she was to marry the president of the Waterbury Savings Bank, but she chose to live her life as a single woman.  And she enjoyed that life.  Her extensive travels included trips all over Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Egypt, and the United States.   She was often accompanied by Lucy and Mary Burrall, who were her original travel companions when she went on her grand tour of Europe at the age of seventeen after graduating from the Farmington School.  One of her Waterbury friends and travel companions, Carrie White Griggs, said of Miss Edith, "I've never known anyone like Miss Edith for finding her way anywhere.  The most intricate streets twisting and turning as they do all over Italy, but especially here, never fazes her and she always gets there."
 
Miss Edith was independent-minded.  When her father gave her seventeen acres in Litchfield for her very own, she had a rustic cabin built on the property where she could "rough it" during summer visits.  Then, she decided that she wanted to expand her rustic Litchfield cabin into a Cotswold cottage.  She hired architect Richard Henry Dana, who had designed and built her father's Litchfield house at 101 North Street.  Early in the planning stage, however, Miss Edith's independent mind presented itself again when she insisted, against Dana's advice, that her rustic cabin be affixed to the new Cotswold cottage.  Thankfully, she finally accepted Dana's compromise to integrate the cabin's footprint along with its magnificent stone chimney into the great room of the new house. 
 
Miss Edith was independent-visioned.  She built her father's seventeen-acre gift into a 500-acre working farm.  With its livestock--including chickens, turkeys, pigs, sheep, and jersey cows for milk, cream, and butter--with its vegetable gardens, grape arbors, blueberry bushes, a 300-tree apple orchard, and its haying and maple sugaring, the farm became truly self-sustaining and independent.  In her will, it was her final vision that her property, Topsmead, be enjoyed by the people of Connecticut. 
 
During this month of July, which comes in with a blast of patriotic July 4 fireworks, let's take the opportunity to appreciate, celebrate, and perhaps even emulate Miss Edith's independent spirit, mind, and vision. 
 
 
Margaret Hunt
BlogMistress