Six Degrees of Rebecca Gratz

The United States was so much less densely populated in Rebecca Gratz's day that the linking game of the 19th century would probably have been called "four degrees of separation." For an upper-class woman like Rebecca, two or three degrees were probably all that were necessary to link her to the prominent men and women of her time.

Here are just a few of her many  friends who connected her to the larger world:

William Henry Furness, the minister at the First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia, was a lifelong friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, providing a link to the New England intellectual and literary establishment.  Furness personally introduced Rebecca to theologian William Ellery Channing and the English economist Harriet Martineau, two intellectual lights of the era, when they came to Philadelphia.

Francis Preston Blair, from 1830 a Washington insider, as newspaper editor, founder of the Republican Party and advisor to presidents, was a resource for contacting practically anyone in the federal government.    Rebecca called upon him for help in getting friends and family federal appointments. And when she wanted to get a message to Abraham Lincoln, it was Blair who read it to the president.

Washington Irving and the actress Fanny Kemble connected her to literary and artistic circles in both America and England; Irving, most famously, to Walter Scott.

There are more surprising connections as well.  A few weeks ago, I read a review of a new book, Freedom's Gardener:  James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America, by Myra B. Young Armstead.  Based in part on Brown's diary, the book traces his rise from slavery to freedom as a politically enfranchised citizen, a master gardener for a wealthy family in the Hudson Valley.

Sure enough, there was a Gratz connection.  His employer was the Verplanck family whose estate Mt. Gulian was at Fishkill Landing, about 70 miles north of New York City.  The man who hired him was Daniel Crommelin Verplanck, whose son Gulian married Rebecca's good friend, Eliza Fenno.  The young couple took up residence at Mt. Gulian, and although Eliza died in 1817, well before Brown arrived as gardener,  Rebecca, who always took an interest in the children of her friends, maintained her friendship with Eliza's husband and their family, visiting Mt. Gulian repeatedly.

By 1837, Sara Moses, Rebecca's niece, was already familiar with the estate.  She wrote that she and her aunt were going to visit the Verplanck's at "that most beautiful spot...on the river only a few miles from West Point" and were planning to spend a week there.  Certainly during that time, Rebecca saw and enjoyed Brown's gardens.  And it was just around this stage of her life, that she started to mention her roses in her letters, suggesting that she was either taking a greater interest or had found a new hobby in growing flowers.  It is pleasant to think she might have consulted with James F. Brown on her trips to Mt. Gulian.

(Sara's letter is in the Gratz Family Collection at the American Jewish Historical Society.)

Rebecca Pulls Some Political Strings

During Rebecca Gratz's lifetime, obtaining a federal job often began with knowing someone who knew someone who knew someone in power. A contact did not necessarily get you the job, but it opened the first door to employment.

A young man named Robert Pettit (1804-1878), a descendant of Pennsylvania governor Thomas McKean, whose family moved in the same social circles as Rebecca Gratz, approached her in 1835 for her help in furthering his prospects.

Rebecca herself was apolitical although her sympathies lay with (in consecutive order) the Federalists, the Whigs and the Republicans. Yet she did have a friend in the Washington of Andrew Jackson. Her brother Benjamin's brother-in-law Francis Preston Blair was a member of Jackson's "kitchen cabinet" and the editor of the Washington Globe. Rebecca and Blair had been warm friends since they had first met in 1820, but the bond between them had been strengthened by Rebecca's care for Blair's daughter Lizzie who had come to Philadelphia to boarding school in 1833.

In 1834, Blair had written to one of Rebecca's nephews on a business matter and ended his letter on a personal note:

"I pray you, make my best respects to your family -- to Rebecca and the rest of my Jewish relatives. I am under great obligations to them all for their favors to me and mine, especially to my daughter who is the only one of my young folks for whom I could ask the world's kindness. My boys can rough it with the roughest."

And so when Robert Pettit asked for her aid, Rebecca wrote a letter of introduction for him, asking Francis Preston Blair to see what he could do. After Pettit returned from Washington, Rebecca reported that he had been "delighted with the attentive kindness of Mr. & Mrs. Blair -- he thanked me for the most useful document he carried -- he wants an office, and Mr. B's influence will do it for him."

In fact Blair wrote a letter of introduction for Pettit to take to the Secretary of the Navy Mahlon Dickerson. It survives today and demonstrates how to handle a recommendation for someone you hardly know -- you praise the recommender:

"Mr. P. was recommended to my good offices by one of the finest women in the Republic --Miss Rebecca Gratz. She, I know, would not recommend anybody but the worthy..."

Robert Pettit entered the United States Navy on April 6, 1837; his obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1878 described him as a "retired pay director in the Navy." If Rebecca's and Blair's letters of introduction had any influence, it took about two years for them to have an effect. Perhaps these things took time; perhaps the letters were just the opening shots in a long campaign necessary to get employment.

For more information on this topic, see "Rebecca Pulls Some More Strings."

(Blair's 1834 letter is reproduced in B. & M. Gratz, Merchants in Philadelphia 1759-1798, edited by William Vincent Byers, 1916. His letter to Dickerson is in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Rebecca's letter quoted above is in Letters of Rebecca Gratz, edited by Rabbi David Philipson and accessible on Google Books.)

Aunt Becky to the Rescue

Rebecca Gratz was "Aunt Becky" to a host of Gratz nephews and nieces and to the children of close friends as well. Among these "honorary" nieces and nephews were Montgomery, James, Elizabeth (Lizzie) and Frank Blair, the children of Francis Preston and Eliza Blair of Blair House, Washington DC. Rebecca's brother Benjamin had married Eliza Blair's sister Maria Cecil Gist in 1819; both families were clannish by nature and looked upon each other as relatives for at least two generations.

In October 1843, James Blair, a naval officer, was in love with Mary Boswell, a relation of his mother's from Kentucky, who was visiting Rebecca Gratz. James went to Philadelphia, proposed to Mary and was rejected. The same day he proposed to another young woman named Elizabeth Guillon, the daughter of a doctor, and was accepted.

Naturally his family, knowing of his feelings for Mary Boswell, opposed a rash marriage on the rebound. Preston Blair wrote to Mrs. Guillon, suggesting that wedding plans be delayed, but James announced that he would not leave Philadelphia unmarried. At this juncture, someone with a cool head and a talent for tact was needed on the ground for face-to-face negotiations.

Rebecca enlisted the aid of Jo Gratz (the most charming and sociable of her brothers) and together with Dr. Guillon and James they worked out an arrangement which left any wedding plans in abeyance until James returned from his next voyage. Despite his initial opposition to his parents' wishes, Rebecca Gratz thought James seemed "greatly relieved."

On January 14, 1846, James married Mary Jesup. I have found no record of how Miss Guillon fared.

(This post is drawn from Elbert B. Smith's Francis Preston Blair, New York: Free Press, 1980. pp. 183-84.)