While in Richmond we took a tour of the Maymont Mansion . This gilded age estate is situated on 100 acres in the middle of Richmond. From the Maymont website:  During the Gilded Age of the late 1880s through the 1910s—the era of Carnegie, Rockefeller and Vanderbilt —millionaires demonstrated their prosperity through their elaborate homes. Richmond-born financier James Dooley was among this new class in American society. His home, Maymont, stands today as a remarkably complete expression of Gilded Age luxury and opulence. Maymont was the 100-acre Victorian country estate of James Henry and Sallie May Dooley. In 1886, the Dooleys first viewed and purchased the rough pasture and field that would become Maymont. At the age of forty, with no children and the resources of her husband’s prosperity at her disposal, Sallie Dooley led the effort to transform the landscape into a showplace that would rival the lavish estates that were springing up throughout the c...

The Beautiful James River The plantations along the James River offer some fantastic views of the river and surrounding areas, as well as several plantations that offer tours. During the Holidays some of the plantation homes are decorated in traditional colonial holiday themes ... except for the fact that they include a Christmas tree, which was not introduced to America from Germany until Victorian times. Unlike the antebellum plantation mansions of the deep south, these colonial buildings are seemingly much more modest. It is true, however, that they were luxury homes in the 1700s ... but times were different.  These estates entertained the truly privileged of their time. Presidents, generals, civic leaders all dined, danced and slept in these homes. We visited two of these historic estates ... the Shirley Plantation and the Berkeley Plantation. Shirley Plantation Shirley Plantation is Virginia’s first plantation, founded in 1613, after a royal land grant carved...

When I was a kid growing up in Hawai’i, my Mom would often mention Doris Duke. I kind of knew something about her, but not much. I knew she had a plush home on the beach in Kahala, on the other side of Diamond Head. So when in Newport this time, we decided to visit the Duke’s “summer home” along the Cliff Walk where all the NYC hoi-polloi from the turn of the last century built their vacation or weekend retreats. Her home, Rough Point , was where she spent most summers as a youth, and again starting in the 1950s. Upon her death in 1993, Doris Duke bequeathed the estate to the Newport Restoration Foundation with the directive that it be opened to the public as a museum. Doris at the Mermaid Pool at the Family Farm in New Jersey Doris Duke (1912 – 1993) was an American heiress, socialite, horticulturalist, art collector, and philanthropist. The daughter of a wealthy tobacco tycoon, Duke was able to fund a life of global travel and wide-ranging interests. These e...

Several years ago I obtained a sizable archive from the family of Robert Clement Sconce (1787-1846). It contains hundreds of photographs and negatives, dozens of letters and documents, a hundred or so drawings, sketches and watercolor paintings, and a number of books, journals and diaries. Robert Clement Sconce, while born and raised in England, spent most of his adult life in the Mediterranean on the British controlled island of Malta. He held numerous positions in the British Admiralty that afforded him time and space to dabble in botany and art. He was in Malta as secretary to Admiral Sir John Duckworth and for ten years he was also Naval Agent Victualler for HM Dockyard, Malta. Although he was never wealthy, he and his family lived well and circulated in upper class English society. Portrait of Robert Clement Sconce In 1861 his daughter put together his life and Letters in two volumes:   LIFE AND LETTERS of ROBERT CLEMENT SCONCE, formerly Secreta...