Exploring Veblen House Genealogy

By chance and serendipity, through friends in Durham, NC, I learned of Patricia Brady, an expert genealogist who teaches at Rutgers University. After a career as a therapist, Pat has become an avid genealogist who has generously offered to explore the lineages of former owners of the Veblen House. 

She began by researching the Whiton-Stuarts--the idiosyncratic and once wealthy couple who moved the prefabricated house to Princeton in 1931, and had the house interior customized with oak trim and paneling. 

Now she is turning her expertise and energy to the lineages of Oswald and Elizabeth Veblen, 50 years after they made their last gift of land and home to the public. The Veblens donated the first nature preserve in Princeton and Mercer County: 82 acres for Herrontown Woods back in 1957. Then, when Elizabeth Veblen died fifty years ago, on January 26, 1974, the Veblen House and its 14 acres were added to Herrontown Woods. 

Thanks to Patricia for sharing her passion and knowledge, in exploring the history of those who made history. 

More Vignettes from the Whiton-Stuarts' Days in Prescott, AZ

Removal of asbestos-containing wallboard in the Veblen House revealed this misspelling of the original owner's name. Jesse's name was J.P.W. Stuart, not Stewart. Still, if someone supplying wood for the Whiton-Stuarts' house didn't get the spelling right, maybe others made the same mistake. 

Mary and Jesse Whiton-Stuart brought the prefab house to Princeton from Morristown, NJ, lived in it for ten years, then sold it to the Veblens in 1941. Being wealthy, at least until the crash in 1929, they were frequently mentioned in society columns. Their children's lives too can be tracked in this way. Mary and Jesse married for life, but the son and daughter had seven marriages between them. 

I decided to google J.P.W. Stewart, and got some interesting results. One was a page from a newspaper called the Weekly Journal-Miner, dated Feb. 12, 1913 This dates back to the Whiton-Stuarts' time in Prescott, AZ, when their two kids were young and Jesse left his real estate business in Manhattan to spend his days on a horse, herding cattle in Arizona. 

I love newspapers, which used to cause problems back when I'd save them, to read another day. Now that they are digital, the love can be unfettered by matters of storage. 

Page 5 of the newspaper offers glimpses of their time in Arizona. Here they are, attending a "most attractive and elaborate dinner." This was back when accounts of high society included long lists of who attended. 

Jesse also attended another function, described at length in the "Social Mirror" section of the newspaper. 

That event included amusements for the "misses" who wished to sew. 

Perhaps sewing was not Mary Whiton-Stuart's thing, as she did not attend. 

It can be fun to see what other news appeared on the same newspaper page. Here's an eye-catching headline: the bones of a "giant type of humanity" were found while doing some grading work for the railroad. The bones provide "indisputable" evidence of people who were at least 8 feet tall and dated back to the Toltec period. Similar stories were told of early encounters with a giant race of indigenous peoples in Patagonia. 

The page's politics section also includes mention of George Babbitt, who was likely one of the ancestors of former presidential candidate and environmentalist Bruce Babbitt.

Historical Research Can Uncover Uncanny Coincidence

There are some aspects of my role in adopting Veblen House as a longterm project that border on the uncanny. Coincidence has accumulated as I've researched the people who lived in the house. The Veblen House itself, I realized at some point, has much in common with the house I grew up in. 

That house, next to Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, is now also named after a renowned scientist, the astronomer Otto Struve, and is similar in color to what the Veblen House was, and is at the end of a drive, surrounded by woods, 

Also echoing the Veblen House, it's even approached along a slightly curving walkway, down and to the left as one pulls into the driveway. 

Oswald Veblen came to Princeton after growing up in the midwest, as did I, and after having lived in a progression of university towns, as did I. His grandparents emigrated from Norway to Wisconsin, where I spent my childhood. His father's father built houses and barns, as did mine. His father was a physicist, mine an astrophysicist. Veblen got his PhD at the University of Chicago, where my father would later spend most of his career. It's likely that Veblen as a boy of 13 saw the 40 inch refracting telescope my father used--the world's largest refracting telescope--on exhibit at the 1893 world's fair in Chicago. I almost went to Carlton College, where Veblen's father and all of his aunts and uncles got degrees. I spent my childhood roaming the expansive grounds of Yerkes Observatory, where brilliant scientists lived on the outskirts of a small town with school colors orange and black, not unlike the circumstances of the Institute for Advanced Study, which Veblen helped to found on the outskirts of Princeton. 

As if these coincidences aren't enough, there's also the first owners of what would later be called the Veblen House, Jesse and Mary Whiton-Stuart, who lived their last years in towns I have familial connections to--San Luis-Obispo, CA and Tucson, AZ, the latter being where we'd go as part of my father's work at nearby Kitt Peak Observatory.

And then there's the uncanny coincidence that came to light when I began researching the origins of the house in Ann Arbor where I lived for many years. It was built and lived in by Walter Colby, a nuclear physicist who in many ways played the same role at U. of Michigan that Veblen played in Princeton, bringing brilliant scholars from Europe to raise the level of science and math in the U.S. They had parallel lives, born in the same year, retiring the same year, their legacies largely forgotten and in need of rediscovery. Neither had children, and both played important military roles in World Wars I and II. Both were married to women who also led singular lives, and tended to beautiful gardens. 

The Bradley-Martin Ball of 1897--two Veblen House Connections

On May 3rd, a couple months ago now, the New York Times style section ran a piece entitled "Much Gilt, Little Guilt: The Met Gala 2022 celebrated themes of opulence, excess and fame." Opulence and excess conspicuously displayed? This sounded like the conspicuous consumption that Oswald Veblen's uncle Thorstein wrote about in The Theory of the Leisure Class. But there was another surprise connection to the Veblen House that jumped out from the text of the article: the Bradley-Martin Ball.

When “Gilded Glamour,” the dress code of the 2022 Met Gala, was announced, it seemed to be either a recipe for extravagant disaster or irony. After all, the current era has often been compared to the late 19th-century Gilded Age, that period between 1870 and 1900 when extreme wealth was concentrated in the hands of the very few, the robber barons came to the fore, and income inequality grew ever greater just beneath the gold veneer on the glittering surface.

That first gilded age came to a symbolic end with a famously ostentatious party, the Bradley-Martin Ball of 1897, in which many of the attendees, the good and great and greedy of New York society, dressed in full swag as Marie Antoinette. Also, Queen Louise of Prussia.

A bit of background: The Veblen House was built not by the Veblens but by Jesse and Mary Whiton-Stuart, a prosperous Manhattan couple well-steeped in wealth, old and new, with family connections to the Rensselaers and Juilliards, the Pynes and Stocktons. They in turn had had a son and daughter, both of whom married three or four times into wealthy families. Son Robert's third marriage was to Edwina Atwell Martin, who had previously been married to Esmond Bradley Martin. 

The lineage goes something like this: The Bradley Martin who hosted the ball of 1897 met his future wife Cornelia Sherman at the wedding of one of the Vanderbilts. One of their sons, Bradley Martin, Jr, married Margaret Phipps, the daughter of Henry Phipps--the business partner of Andrew Carnegie. Phipps money in Pittsburgh would later fund the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden. Their son Esmond Bradley Martin was married for a time to Ewina Atwell, who later married Robert Whiton-Stuart. That marriage, in 1972, came 75 years and two generations after the extravagance of the Bradley Martin Ball. A son of Edwina's, whom I corresponded with, said that when Robert and Edwina married, each thought the other had money, only to soon discover they both had already spent their respective inheritances. 

The other son of Edwina's, Esmond Bradley Martin, Jr., left the plush world of his upbringing to devote his life to saving elephants and rhinos in Africa. Robert Whiton-Stuart's marriage to Edwina late in life made him Esmond's father in law, though it's not clear if the two ever met. 

Note: Esmond the conservationist embodies the 20th century shift from conquest to conservation. His great grandfather Bradley Martin "leased Balmacaan, a well known game preserve" in Scotland. His grandfather, Bradley Martin, Jr "listed his recreations as shooting, fishing, motoring, travelling and deer stalking." His father, Esmond, Sr, for many years "was the world's fly-fishing record holder for Atlantic salmon." From this paternal lineage of conquest came Esmond, Jr, the conservationist.

Mystery Solved!: Veblen House research Leads to Celebrated Arizona Painter, Kate Cory

By chance, there has been a Hopi-related discovery at Veblen House that happens to coincide with Native American Heritage Month.

A long lingering mystery has been solved in the most surprising way at Veblen House. That mystery was 2'x3'--the dimensions of what for two decades has been a blank space above the mantel in the living room. The story was told that, soon after the house was boarded up by the county in 1998, someone entered the house and tore the painting off from above the mantle, in search of hidden treasure.

In a previous post about paintings that once hung in the living room, I told how Bob Wells, who rented the house with his family from 1975 to 1998, described the painting as a desert, with scrub rather than cacti, with a view from a rise out across a broad valley, with mountains in the distance. Bob would sit there in the evening and gaze at that painting and let his imagination go.

A bit of an aside here. People often take little notice of paintings on their walls, but my brother recently sent me a photo of the painting that hung above the fireplace in our childhood home. It was of waves breaking on a rocky shore, and I realized that I too had been one to gaze for long stretches at that elemental scene. It's fitting to have a painting you can get lost in above a fireplace.

Of the desert painting above the hearth in the Veblen House, Bob had always believed it to have been painted by Robert Oppenheimer of the IAS, during his time at Los Alamos, New Mexico. That story fit to the extent that Oppenheimer loved the landscapes of the southwest. But we haven't found any evidence that he had painting skills, nor time to paint while leading the Los Alamos Project to develop the atomic bomb.  

The breakthrough came when our carpenter pulled the panelling away from the wall, and it occurred to me that we could remove the painting's frame from the surrounding paneling.

Perhaps the paint could be tested for age and origin,

but that expense was rendered unnecessary when my friend Clifford Zink stopped by to donate a workbench to use at Veblen House. I showed him the frame and he immediately noticed that the frame was not very well made, pointing to the bent nails. The close attention he paid caused me to look more closely as well, and notice that there was some writing on the back of the frame. 

The words "Cory", "Prescott", and "Arizona" were easily discernible,  

along with "#9" and what looked like an "11". 

Prescott has resonance because past internet research of the original owners of the house, the Whiton-Stuarts had uncovered the story of their unusual move from high society mid-Manhattan to a cattle ranch outside of Prescott, AZ. The earliest evidence we have of the Arizona connection thus far comes from the Nov. 17, 1911 issue of the Arizona republican, listing J.P. Whiton-Stuart as having spent the night at the Hotel Adams. 

1911 was the same year that the painter Kate Cory moved to Prescott, and Kate Cory is the extraordinary woman and artist you discover upon googling the words on the frame. Cory became nationally known for her paintings, which can be found in many museums. There are multiple points in her life that overlap with Whiton-Stuart's, both in NY city, where she lived and painted from 1880 to 1905, and in Arizona. Moving to Arizona in 1905, she lived with the Hopi for seven years, documenting their lives, language, and traditions in her notes, photographs, and paintings. In Prescott, she helped found the Smoki Museum. Fascinating bios are easily found on the internet.

The Arizona Women's Hall of Fame tells of her years spent living with and documenting the Hopi.

Enthralled by the light and life of the West, Kate stayed with the Hopi for seven years photographing, painting and writing about Hopi daily life. She took more than 500 photographs of the Hopi people. She was a schoolteacher at the Polacca Day School near the Hopi village of Walpi on First Mesa for many years. During this time, she compiled a dictionary titled, Hopi Alphabet, containing over 900 Hopi words and phrases. In addition to chronicling the Hopi people on canvas and film, she also wrote down her experiences of living with the Hopi in her unpublished journal, “Of Living with the Hopis.” The Hopi called her “Paina Wurta” meaning “Painter Woman.”

The Arizona Archives Online offers some other tidbits:

During the 1920s and ‘30s, Cory was a consultant for Western films in Hollywood. And in 1930, the Bureau of Reclamation hired Cory to paint the site where the Boulder Dam would soon after be built. She completed several works from the trip, each one residing in the Arizona Capitol Museum, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott.

Though Cory is described as having lived a very frugal life in Prescott, there are multiple points in her life where the world of business influenced her trajectory. Her family moved east from Waukegan, IL to Newark so that her father, an abolitionist and newspaper editor, could better manage his Wall Street interests. She was convinced to go to Arizona by a painter who had been employed by the Sante Fe railroad to do paintings out there to promote the rail line. In Prescott, she advised businessmen who were seeking to preserve the Hopi ceremonies. 

Life among the Hopi had caused her to reject materialism. An entry in Wikipedia tells of her combination of frugality and generosity:

In her earnest intention to avoid living a wasteful life, she became known in Prescott for being eccentric. Fellow church members offered to replace her torn and tattered clothes. She was frugal, but gave away two cabins she owned to renters. She removed debris from rain water and used it to develop photographs. Rather than sell her paintings, she bartered them.

From wikipedia:

She died in Prescott on June 12, 1958 at the Arizona Pioneers' Home and was buried at the Pioneers' Home Cemetery[3][17] near her friend Sharlot Hall.[21] The inscription at her gravesite names her "Artist of Arizona" below which is: "Hers Was The Joy of Giving".[22]

Though we now know the name of the painter, we still don't know what happened to the painting. It was not torn out, but in fact carefully cut out of the frame, so may well still exist. 

Of these paintings, Bob Wells thinks the Mesa With Indian Village in Distance most closely resembles the painting he remembers from his days at Veblen House.

Thus far, I've reached out to the Sharlot Hall Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Northern Arizona, the Prescott Public Library, and also the Museum of Indigenous People, seeking someone who can help us better understand the frame and lost painting that for 90 years had been embedded in the custom paneling at the Veblen House.

That Jesse Whiton-Stuart would have owned artwork by a prominent artist doesn't come as a surprise. He was, at least until the market crash in 1929, a man of considerable means, who accumulated not only horses, dogs, cats, and likely other animals as well, but also photography. His collection of "Rare Views and Maps of Old New York" was sold at auction by Anderson Galleries in 1918. 

The discovery of the source of the painting--a unique and courageous woman who left behind a remarkable legacy--and the painting's setting above the family hearth, speak to Whiton-Stuart's taste. Having grown up on Park Avenue in New York, in the center of a vibrant city, he later sought out people and places on the periphery. Before he and his family moved to Prescott, he had traveled widely, "crossed over- land through Persia, visiting missionaries and hermits who had not seen a traveller for twenty-five years." His interest in mathematics ("Between these travels I attended Williams College, Massachusetts, and Cambridge University, England, principally for the courses in mathematics") also turned at times to those on the periphery, like Charles Sanders Peirce, the philosopher and mathematician who was rejected by academia yet credited with being the "father of pragmatism."

Veblen House continues to serve as a window into the early 20th century, connecting to worlds otherwise unknown or forgotten.

Addendum:

The description of Kate Cory, later in life, as an old, somewhat eccentric woman dressed in rags reminded me of a scene in a movie that was Michael Douglass' cinematic debut, back in 1969. I know of "Hail, Hero!" only through Sandra Whiton-Stuart, granddaughter of Jesse Whiton-Stuart. She had a supporting role in the movie, and says that she and Douglass were involved at one point. Navigating the troubled world of a young man during the Vietnam era, Douglass's character visits an old woman who lives alone in a cave. Though the old woman in the movie lacks any of the substance of Kate Cory, it raises the question of whether the character is based on any woman or women who adopted a solitary and spare lifestyle in the early west. 

Who Put the Herring in Herringtown, and the Whiton-Stuarts in Princeton?

The name Herrontown, which lives on in Herrontown Woods and Herrontown Road, keeps trying to merge with the word "herring." Some people call the preserve "Herringtown Woods," either because the word "herring" is more familiar, or they just like the sound of it. Some claim that Herrontown Road was originally called "Herringtown Road," so named either for fish wholesalers nearby along the Millstone River or for farmers who fertilized the rocky soil with herring from the ocean. Jac Weller, a Princeton University football star and historian who later ran a farm on land where Smoyer Park now stands, across Snowden Lane from Herrontown Woods, wrote an article in the Recollector about the small landholder farmers in "Herringtown" who supposedly brought wagonloads of fish back from the coast to fertilize their vegetables.

That article is an important documentation of the farming era from which the Veblen Cottage sprung, but the only part of the herring story to be verified thus far is that members of the herring family of fish definitely did swim up the Millstone River, in the form of shad and river herring. 

Into these herring-rich waters of historical speculation swam this past fall a human Herring. I had been asked by a friend to teach him about the flora growing in his backyard along Arreton Road in Princeton. As I gave names to the towering trees and native and nonnative shrubs in his woodlot, he explained that his land had previously been part of a large equestrian estate owned by Donald Grant Herring. Crossing a stream that runs through my friend's property, I looked down and spotted an old, rusty horseshoe. Knowing how much Jesse Whiton-Stuart, the builder of Veblen House, loved horses, my curiosity was piqued. Might there be some connection between this Herring and Herringtown, and between the Herrings and the Whiton-Stuarts?

Donald G. ("Heff") Herring made a big name for himself in Princeton in the first quarter of the 20th century, according to an article entitled "A Bloomsburg Boy Makes the Big Time." Son of a Pennsylvania senator, he went to prep school in Lawrenceville. Entering Princeton University in 1903, he starred in football and wrestling, and was master of ceremonies at his class's commencement. As Princeton's first Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford University, he excelled at British sports, including rugby. After gaining a masters degree, he returned to Princeton to teach english and write sports columns that were avidly read. In WWI, he again excelled as part of an elite squadron of pilots who flew missions over France. 

Having married Jessie Markham in 1910, he returned to Princeton after the war and together they bought land overlooking the divide where 206 crosses the Princeton ridge. These 117 acres became Rothers Barrows, an equestrian estate with 

an “extraordinarily elegant stone house” designed by noted architect Wilson Eyre in the Arts & Crafts style. Eyre also designed the landscaping in the “Chestnut Hill” style characterized by native trees; there was a stone-walled sunken terrace, a croquet lawn, and for the horses a show ring and barn and a 960- yard race track.

A 2018 tour guide by the Historical Society of Princeton states that,

In constructing their estate, the Herrings prioritized their recreational interests, completing the barns and stables in full, but only fulfilling about one-third of Eyre’s original plans for a large, three-wing manor house.  

Theirs was one of several estates that ringed Princeton at that time, including Edgerstoune, Constitution Hill, Drumthwacket, and Tusculum. For two decades, from 1919 to 1939, the Herrings lived a life of high society. They hosted Stony Brook Hunt Club events (like this one in 1933) and would show up on the society pages when, for instance, they spent a winter in Lausanne, Switzerland, where their four children attended school.

It's probably coincidence that their last name was Herring, and that their address, 52 Arreton Road, can also be found in the 452 Herrontown Road address for Veblen House. 

But it is likely not coincidence that the Whiton-Stuarts' arrival in Princeton in 1930, and their departure around 1940, tracked closely the rise and fall of the Stonybrook Hunt Club (1928-1937) and the club's hosts at Rothers Barrows. The Historical Society of Princeton found the Whiton-Stuarts listed as "hunting members" of the hunt club in 1931. Somewhere in this 1937 photo of the Stonybrook Hunt Club, the Whiton-Stuarts may be standing. 

According to Community News, "financially impacted by the Great Depression, the Herrings sold Rothers Barrows 20 years after the house’s completion." That would have been around 1940.

Around that time, in the fall of 1939, tragedy struck the Herring family when their son, Donald Jr., lost a leg after complications from a Princeton University football game injury required amputation. The injury, which sparked renewed concerns about the sport's safety, came just before Donald Sr's book, 40 Years of Football, was published, on Jan. 1, 1940. The father's defense of the game in newspapers describes the nationwide attention given to the incident. 

It is the fervent hope of the boy who was injured, and of his family, that no foolish outcry against football may be raised as the aftermath of an accident almost unprecedented in the seventy-year history of the game. Somehow, I do not pretend to know why, this incident has captured the imagination of the American public. A veritable flood of messages of warm hearted sympathy has poured in, from intimate friends, from heads of universities, from many college organizations, both graduate and undergraduate, from football teams, from individual players and coaches, past and present, from the medical and surgical professions, from men and women who have lost limbs; from the press, and particularly the sporting writers, from a wide and deep cross section of the American people.

He went on to find connection with the outbreak of WWII just months prior:

We Americans have been infumed by the controlled press of certain other nations that we are a soft people, because we thrill to the march of an eleven down the field instead of to the tramp of armies of our boys toward and over a neighbor's frontier.

In 1943, the big stone barn at Rothers Barrows burned down, along with 6000 tons of soybeans. 

But two other houses from the original estate survive just down the street from the mansion. 

There are also some photos of some of Donald Sr's mementos, found in a trunk.

The Whiton-Stuarts sold their house to the Veblens in 1941, but many things suggest that Jesse in particular would have spent the decade prior riding his horses along the Princeton ridge, mingling with Pynes, Herrings, and others of means. 

Also riding Whiton-Stuart's horses was his caretaker, Max Latterman, who spoke of that time in an article from 1980:

Latterman’s responsibilities, while employed by Mr. Stuart, included caring for the grounds, the two houses, the barn, shed and hay barrack, and also the hunting horses. Saddle sore or not, Latterman rode the horses every day to give them exercise. “It was not fun by the time I got off all of them”, he said.

Latterman continued as caretaker after the Veblens acquired the house, and though some accounts suggest the Veblens owned horses, the barn burned around 1950, and one item in the Veblens' wills suggests Latterman was able to spend less time riding horses and more time chopping wood and planting flowers. One of the stipulations in the 1957 deed for the Veblen's donation of Herrontown Woods for public use read as follows:

"It is specifically reserved by the grantors that the nature trails shall not be used for horseback riding.”

The Whiton-Stuarts likely returned to Greenwich, CT, another era in their lives, and perhaps in the life of the Princeton ridge, now past.

Who Put the Paulmier in Jesse Paulmier Whiton-Stuart

Between them, the couple who built and first lived in what later became the Veblen House carried seven names: Jesse Paulmier Whiton-Stuart and Mary Marshall Ogden. It has taken awhile to realize just how much lineage and pride each of those names might carry. 

Research on Jesse's middle name, Paulmier, began with an email received out of the blue, pointing to a mansion in Jersey City once owned by a Jesse Paulmier. Our Jesse of Veblen House, born in Jersey City, was clearly named after his grandfather, Jesse Paulmier, whose last name in turn came from Francis Zaner and Susan (McLaughlin) Paulmier.

John Beekman of the Jersey City Free Library, which happens to be located on Paulmier Place, provided some insights into Susan Paulmier's remarkable life, in the form of old newspaper articles from the Evening Journal. For a change, the articles invest more ink in the women than the men. According to our very helpful librarian:

"Susan Paulmier, widow, and her son Jesse first show up in the Jersey City directories in 1855. At first listed as a grocer, Jesse became secretary and later a director of the Jersey City Insurance Co. His mother did well enough as a real estate speculator to merit an obituary in the Evening Journal - though her son Jesse only got death notices, the more substantial being in the Argus.  His wife Cornelia got a brief paragraph even though she had moved out of the city."

The obituary for Susan Paulmier, on April 22, 1874, described her this way: 

Mrs. Paulmier was a remarkably active and energetic woman, and by her business capacity and industry in her younger days, and by judicious investments, had accumulated a large fortune. Her self reliant, independent ways, and her unusual business ability, were always noticeable. She was kind-hearted and generous, choosing always her own methods of doing good, and many of the poor will miss her sadly. 

The obituary tells of the heroic manner in which she died:

The death of Susan Paulmier, one of the older and among the best known residents of this city, which occurred yesterday, was very sudden, being caused by heart disease of the rheumatic type. Her death came almost without warning to herself or her friends, and was no doubt hastened by over exertion. The last act of her life, and the one which brought on the fatal attack, was one of kindness to a poor friend. Mrs. Paulmier, hearing that an old German woman, who had been frequently employed by her, was lying very ill, went by the horse cars to Greenville, where the poor sick woman lives. In the forenoon, for the purpose of making provision for her comfort, and remarked to Dr. Bowen, before going, that if the poor woman was found well enough to be moved, she would have her brought to her own residence to be nursed. Mrs. Paulmier, who was in her usual health apparently, little thought that she herself was so near death. She went to Greenville, and walked some distance over rough roads to pay her visit to the sick woman, and on returning in the horse cars was seized with a severe attack of the malady which proved fatal. She succeeded in reaching Dr. Bowen’s residence, near her own, and there remedies were applied which gave her much relief. She was removed in a carriage to her own house, and while the doctor was absent to prepare additional remedies for her, she went to bed and died almost immediately. Her son, Mr. Jesse Paulmier, President of the Jersey City Fire Insurance Company, had arrived home only a few moments before her death, not having been aware that his mother was ill. Most of the other members of the family are absent in Minnesota. 

 

It is likely due to Susan Paulmier's status in Jersey City that Mercer Street changes its name to Paulmier Place for a block, in the middle of town at the intersection with Jersey Avenue. 

The Barrow Mansion, which Susan bought for her son Jesse, dates back to the beginnings of Jersey City, when Cornelius Van Vorst owned much of the land and dreamed of turning what was largely tidal marsh into a fashionable suburb of Manhattan. According to the Barrow Mansion website, he divided his land in 1835 into large lots, one of which became Van Vorst Park, and along with William Barrow built twin mansions on some of the higher ground. Their families remained there for 30 years before selling the Barrow Mansion to the Paulmiers in 1868.

Susan also bought land next door where in 1880 the Paulmiers built Hampton Court Terrace, a series of seven row houses, described at the time as “The handsomest and most unique buildings in the city…" According to an article in Jersey Digs, the Paulmier's Hampton Court Terrace was "likely named after Hampton Court on the Thames, a castle in London, as the Paulmier family had deep connections to England." The deep connections to England probably refer to the ancestor Andrew Newcomb, who was born in England in 1618, then moved to America. When Jesse Paulmier died suddenly in 1879, his wife and three daughters moved out of the Barrow Mansion and into the seven row houses of Hampton Court. Perhaps as as continuation of Susan's tradition of assisting the poor, the Barrow Mansion was bought by the YMCA and continues to provide community services. 

The oldest of the older Jesse's daughters was our Jesse's mother, Jennie Madelein Newcomb Paulmier. Jennie's second middle name comes from her mother, Cornelia Bush Newcomb, whom on page 298 of Andrew Newcomb, 1618-1686,and His Descendants, is listed as one of ten children of the Honorable Obadiah Newcomb, an architect and builder who settled in New York City.  "He had a very large and valuable law library; was assessor and chairman of State Whig Committee; also, State Senator." 

I'm going to go out on a family limb and speculate that Obadiah Newcomb (1787-1857), our Jesse's great grandfather, is somehow related to Obadiah Newcomb Bush (1797-1851), an ancestor of the Bush political family. 

It appears that Jennie was the only one of the three Paulmier daughters to have children. After Jennie married Augustus Ward Whiton on Oct. 15, 1873, our Jesse was born on June 4, 1874, and according to Find a Grave, Jennie lost her husband less than one year later, on April 8, 1875, when he "died from an illness contracted when he was on his honeymoon in Europe ..." The father's gravestone, located some distance from the Whiton family's obelisk in Greenwood Cemetery, states simply "Thy will be done."

Jennie nearly lost her son Jesse as well, two years later. According to this account in the Jersey City paper of record, the future builder of Veblen House was saved only by the quick reflexes of his grandmother Cornelia.

Oct. 8, 1877, Evening Journal

Criminally Careless Driving
"A very remarkable and serious accident occurred in NY yesterday, with painful results, to Mrs. Jess Paulmier, of this city. Mrs. Paulmier, her daughter, Mrs. Whiton and a little boy about 3 years old, Mrs. Whiton's child, went in Mrs. Paulmier's carriage to NY, and stopping in front of the Vienna Bakery, on Broadway, near Tenth Street, the coachman drove close up to the curbstone, and Mrs. Whiton entered thestore to make a purchase, leaving her child in the carriage with her mother. Presently one of the immense coaches of the NY Transfer Company came dashing along Broadway at a rattling pace, and the careless driver of the coach drove directly against Mrs. Paulmier's carriage with such terrific force as to throw the lady out through the carriage door that was closed, shattering the panels of the carriage, and landing Mrs. Paulmier in the street. At the moment of the collision, Mrs. P. caught the child in her arms, and it was dashed out along with her, but fortunately escaped unhurt. Besides receiving a fearful shock, a large splinter of the broken glass from the carriage window, was driven into one of her limbs just at the knee, making an ugly wound. The injured lady was immediately brought home to this city, where she was attended by Dr. Horace Bowen. She is confined to her bed, and suffering greatly. Mrs. Paulmier's coachman jumped from his seat and secured his horse by the head, preventing a runaway. It is wonderful that Mrs. Paulmier and her grandchild were not both killed outright. The accident was caused by the criminal recklessness of the driver of the coach, who was arrested, and both he and his employers should be rigorously dealt with."

The New York Transfer Company's "immense coach" mentioned was a freight coach, part of a big operation started in 1870 to transport baggage between railroad terminals and steamship docks. 

Nearly two decades later, Jesse's grandmother's obituary appeared in the Evening Journal, at the bottom of a page otherwise filled with news of exploding locomotives, piano and jewelry thieves, rogue cowboys, labor tensions, poisonings, a suicide, and an outbreak of typhus fever. Sounds like it was a good time to go. She died on new year's day, 1895.

Mrs. Cornelia B. Paulmier, widow of the late Jesse Paulmier, died on Sunday at Lakewood. Mrs. Paulmier has lived with her son-in-law, R.W. Stuart, at 85 Park Ave, New York, since she left Jersey City about a year after her husband's death. The funeral took place from Mr. Stuart's residence this afternoon.

By then, our Jesse was 21 and off to college and world travel, but it suggests that he grew up with his grandmother close by. 

There are several other intriguing potential connections. Who are our Jesse's remarkable great grandmother Susan (McLaughlin) Paulmier's ancestors? Does the Paulmier name date back to Binot Paulmier de Gonneville, the celebrated French explorer? 

And what is this French website that explores the genealogy of the House of CROY, which dates back to the 12th century in Picardy? It includes mention of a Cornelia-Evelyn Paulmier, daughter of Jesse Paulmier and Cornélia Newcomb, apparently the aunt of our Jesse, who married a Belgian prince. 

- SAS Henri de Croÿ (21st generation?), Prince of Croÿ and Solre, was born in Brussels on March 8, 1860. He was captain of the Belgian guides. On July 14, 1884, he obtained admission to the nobility of the kingdom of Belgium with the title of Prince and the qualification of Serene Highness, transmissible to all his descendants. He died in Rumillies (Belgium) on February 6, 1946. He married in London (Great Britain), November 26, 1936, Cornélia-Evelyn Paulmier (born in Jersey-City: US.A, October 4, 1877), widow of William Scott, and daughter of Jesse Paulmier, and Cornélia Newcomb. She died in Ghlin (7011, Hainaut, Belgium) on December 17, 1943.

What we do know is that the Jesse who later built Veblen House grew up in very well off circumstances, first in Jersey City, then later on Park Avenue in Manhattan, surrounded by adults: his mother, step-father, grandmother, a tutor and no doubt some servants as well. 

Exploring Ancestral Connections Between the Whiton-Stuarts and prominent Ogdens, Stocktons, and John Marshall

Before the Veblen House gained its name, it was built and lived in for about ten years by Jesse and Mary Whiton-Stuart. Mary's maiden name was Mary Marshall Ogden, with ancestry reportedly extending back to one of NJ's founders, David Ogden, and Chief Justice John Marshall. There also appears to be a Stockton connection. Two generations of Stocktons studied with two generations of Ogdens in Morristown. How closely related these Ogdens are to Mary's ancestors, and whether Mary is actually descended from the Chief Justice as reported in her obituary, is unclear. An earlier post notes that the Whiton-Stuarts and Richard Stockton III were both members of the Stony Brook Hunt Club in the 1930s.

In an effort to clarify and confirm the ancestral connections, I'm assembling some info below (click on the "read more"). Lineage doesn't really say much about who Mary was, but it's a start. 

What Old Housewrap Tells Us About the Building of Veblen House

It was August 14 of this year, while beginning repairs on the east wall of the Veblen House, when we discovered the name Miller and Son. 

The name had been printed onto an early form of housewrap, found just under the wooden siding.

The name of the housewrap was Sisalkraft, named after the sisal fibers that gave it strength. Advertisements in the 1930s and '40s appealed to a home builder's thrift and high standards--"So moderate in cost, so gratifying in results." Words like "reenforced", "highgrade", "twentieth century product", and the slogan "Sisalkraft resists every draft" were reinforced by images of powerful draft animals--horses and oxen doing the work that needs to be done. The builder and first owner of what later became known as the Veblen House, Jesse Whiton-Stuart, was a lover of horses and surely liked the idea of his house being wrapped in images of horses. The house itself was ringed by a split rail fence, as if occupying its own corral. 

Sisalkraft, the Tyvek of its day, appears to have a Princeton connection. A 1927 Princeton Alumni Weekly reports that Princeton alum Charles Higgins, sales manager for Sisalkraft, had just moved east from Chicago to start a company branch in NY. Whether it was new to the east coast when the Whiton-Stuarts wrapped their house in it three years later is not clear.

Sisalkraft was 6-ply--a sandwich of alternating layers of kraft paper, bitumen and sisal fibers all pressed together. The sisal comes from an agave-like plant most associated with the Yucatan peninsula, where its strong fibers were big business, fading in the mid-20th century as synthetic fibers began to compete. The Sisalkraft label mentions "java rope", probably because sisal was also grown in Java.

Now, 90 years after the Veblen House was built, the paper has lost its storied strength and become so brittle it crumbled in our hands. 

Paul Davis of the Historical Society of Princeton helped us with some initial research on the Sisalkraft's Miller and Son label: 

"The Joseph W. Miller & Son Company operated on Alexander Street from 1928 through the late 1950's/early 1960's. According to their newspaper advertisements over the years in The Papers of Princeton, they were a building contractor, supplied building materials, milled lumber, installed residential heating systems, and delivered coal."

To put this in context. The Whiton-Stuarts moved their prefab house to Princeton in 1931 or so, and sold to the Veblens ten years later. More articles we found through that fantastic resource, Papers of Princeton, fleshed out the story of the Miller family and that era in Princeton. A 1942 obituary tells of Joseph Walter Miller's life:

"Mr. Miller was graduated from Princeton University in 1897 and afterwards attended Auburn Seminary. He was ordained in Spring Street Presbyterian Church, New York, and later preached in the Bethlehem Chapel in that city. In 1912, Mr. Miller moved to Princeton, where he purchased a farm. He was active in the Mercer County and Princeton Young Men’s Christian Associations, and a trustee of the First Presbyterian Church."

In 1928, Miller and his son Robert sold their dairy business on Provinceline Road and bought Boice's Lumber and Coal Yard at 316 Alexander Road. The younger son, Joseph, Jr, graduated from Princeton University in 1934, joined the business and also joined the Army Reserve Corps. Other suppliers of coal in town included some familiar names like Gulick and Grover.

Central heating with coal was coming into widespread use, often with furnaces that lacked fans to blow air through the house. Instead, the hot air would simply rise through an octopus-like tangle of ducts that spread from the furnace up into the various rooms of the house. Coal would be shoveled into the basement through a window, and fed into the furnace, requiring periodic stoking. Fans to blow the air became generally available in the mid-30s, five years after the Veblen House was built.

Soon after his wife died in spring of 1941, Joe Miller hosted a Men's Club picnic supper, after which "the oldest living alumnus of Princeton University, a member of the class of 1865," made "a short talk on the subject, "How to Live to be Ninety." Joseph died less than a year later, probably in his late 70s. 

As home heating shifted from coal to oil, Miller's sons began selling fuel oil in 1954. The Cold War influenced their business as well. By 1961, Joseph, Jr. was head of the Culligan Water Conditioning Company of Princeton, and attended a conference entitled "Survival," about how to minimize the radioactivity in drinking water in the event of a nuclear war.

Miller and Son may have merely supplied the Sisalkraft for the house, or they may have served Whiton-Start as contractor and supplier of lumber, furnace, and coal, conceivably continuing to provide services through to the end of Veblen's life in 1960.

A Mingling of Whiton-Stuarts and Pynes in 1920s Morristown

The Whiton-Stuarts, builders and first residents of what would later become known as the Veblen House, are a fascinating family to research. They were wealthy, idiosyncratic, peripatetic, adventurous. The husband, Jesse, dropped out of Harvard to travel the world, then settled down long enough to get married and build a prosperous company selling high-end real estate in Manhattan. The marriage endured, but their means and apparent restlessness caused them to make frequent shifts to new locales. It may have been Jesse's passion for the outdoors, particularly hunting, horses and hounds, that prompted a move to a cattle ranch in Prescott, Arizona when their kids were growing up. Moving back east, they lived in Morristown, seemingly timed with Jesse's stepfather's last years, but also lived in Greenwich, CT, before moving to Princeton in the early 1930s. Their two children each married three times, into families of prominence and wealth.

Our research into the Whiton-Stuarts always swings back to two central questions: What prompted their move to Princeton, and what is the story behind the prefab house they brought along with them from Morristown, NJ? The answer to the latter almost certainly resides in the microfilm of old newspapers in the Morristown and Morris Township Public Library. Those newspapers have yet to be digitized, so we're first harvesting whatever clues to their whereabouts and lifestyles can be found on the internet.

A few tidbits recently popped up in some digitized issues of a newspaper called the "Morristown Topics." It was found in a google search that included the Whiton-Stuarts and the Freylinghuysens. A researcher at the Morristown library had checked the 1917 Morristown city directory and found the Whiton-Stuarts listed as living on Whippany Road. The summer estate donated by the Freylinghuysen family to Morris County in 1969 to create Freylinghuysen Arboretum borders Whippany Road, so it's likely they knew the Whiton-Stuarts. The Whippany River Club, of which Whiton-Stuart was a member, is named after the river that flows through Morristown.

Though the Morristown Topics was published from 1921 to 1928, only the first year's issues could be found online. In those were 8 references to the Whiton-Stuarts, providing clues to their upscale social circles and Jesse's passion for horseback riding. Newspapers back then tracked closely the whereabouts of people of wealth and status, making it easy to see who was socializing with whom.

THE PYNES AND THE WHITON-STUARTS
One possible answer as to why the Whiton-Stuarts moved to Princeton in the early 1930s, and ended up living next to the Pyne's horse farm, is that they moved in the same social circles as the Pynes who were based in Princeton. A list of those who took part in fox hunts in the Morristown area in the fall of 1920 includes Jesse Whiton-Stuart and two members of the Pyne family: Grafton and Rivington.

The major benefactor of Princeton University, Moses Taylor Pyne, was related to three men named Percy Rivington Pyne. He was son of Percy Rivington Pyne I, brother of Percy Rivington Pyne II, and uncle to Percy Jr. and Grafton Howland Pyne.  Grafton was Rivington Jr.'s older brother, having been born in 1890.

Thanks to Paul Davis of the Historical Society of Princeton, I have learned that Princeton had its own version, the Stony Brook Hunt Club, that continued through 1937. The list of members for the 1931-2 season shows the Whiton-Stuarts as members, along with the wives of Moses Taylor Pyne and his son, M. Taylor Pyne, Jr. The latter is likely Agnes, who owned the horse farm in eastern Princeton next to the land the Whiton-Stuarts built their home on--what we now know as Veblen House and Herrontown Woods. Other names on the membership list include Richard Stockton, III.

The lives of the Whiton-Stuarts and the Pynes may have intersected in New York as well, where they both had homes on Park Avenue. A connection can be found two generations prior, when Jesse's step-grandfather signed a letter to Congress during the infamous hung election of 1876, also co-signed by ancestors of the Pynes and Marquands.

JESSE AND THE CONSPICUOUS LEISURE OF THE ESSEX FOX HOUNDS

Gigs I've played as a musician have sometimes landed me in one or another of the old country clubs, where paintings on the walls depicted fox hunts. Why, I would wonder, would people want to dress up like that and chase a fox?

(A bit of an aside: Just visited the Institute for Advanced Study, and was surprised to find two paintings of this sort on the wall of the room in Fuld Hall where elite scholars meet every afternoon for tea (see photo). Among other decor in the room is a bust of Einstein.)

The Morristown Topics offers some insights into that world of conspicuous leisure, which may or may not be the same world Oswald Veblen's uncle Thorstein wrote about 20 years prior in "The Theory of the Leisure Class."

The aim here is to describe rather than judge the culture of the wealthy in the 1920s, of which the Whiton-Stuarts and Pynes were a part. It's tempting to look back and judge those who found sport in a fox's distress and (sometimes) demise. But any judging must be done with full awareness that our own era will be the most harshly judged of all, as we knowingly alter the global climate. We can question past behaviors, but any notions of moral superiority are illusory.

Fox hunting season extended from November into April. The red foxes that now populate our neighborhoods, nonchalantly trotting down our streets and nesting beneath the neighbor's house, were originally introduced from Europe for the purpose of fox hunts. The native gray fox is a less sporting quarry, since it can quickly elude the hounds by climbing a tree--a skill red foxes do not have. The fox was pursued by hounds and horses through a mixed landscape of forest and fenced farms that tested all participants' riding ability. There was cooperation among landowners who would make their land conducive to the hunt, and the fall/winter hunting season presumably minimized any trampling of crops. Wire fences were "paneled" with wood to protect the horses from the barbs as they jumped. The chase began when the hounds "found," i.e. picked up a scent in a "covert"--a thicket where foxes often hide out during the day. The chase would end when the fox was "run to earth," meaning it disappeared down a hole, or more gruesomely when it was caught and killed by the hounds.

This account of a hunt, from the first issue of the Morristown Topics on Dec. 31, 1920, gives a sense of the experience:

ESSEX FOX HOUNDS
The members of the Essex Fox Hounds are hoping that the snows and rains of the first of this week will not close an enjoyable season. The hunters have had several excellent runs, two record breakers, and very few blank days, one of the most famous taking place on Thanksgiving Day when the hounds, meeting at Hickory Tree, found very shortly after the meet in the woods, north of the river. The fox led them across the farms of Messrs Harry Hoy and S. Harold Freeman and on to the neighborhood of Pottersville where he went to earth after a run of ten miles with only three checks, except for a few moments when the field was held up by wire and winter wheat. The hounds were in sight practically all of the time. Another run, the hounds found late in the day in a field south of the river. The fox ran to earth a hundred yards beyond the fins but was dugout and led a glorious chase across the Bedminstjer-Pluckamin road, up the Schley hill and then circled around the woods on the summit. The run lasted almost two hours, darkness causing its close. Among those who have ridden this fall are: Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Symington, Mr- and Mrs. J. McAlpin Pyle, J. P. Whiton Stuart, Earle N. Cutler, LeEoy Whitney, Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Williams Jr., Mr- and Mrs. Crawford Barton, Mr. and Mrs. Winston Chanler, Mr. and Mrs. Fred W. Jones, Mr. and Mrs- Hagan, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Scribner, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. K. B. Schley, Miss Emily Stevens, Miss Mary Stevens, Miss Agnes Fowler, The Misses Brice, the Misses Hawle, Dr. A. S. Knight, A. Hyde, F. Van, S. Hyde, A. Musgrave Hyde, Rivington Pyne, Grafton Pyne, Arthur A- Fowler, Alexander Philips, William A. Larned, George Meseroy, DeCoursey Fales, Richard A. Gambril.

Reports from Somerset Hills in December, 1921, nearly a year later, illustrate that the fox hunts could be perilous for the hunters as well:

Mr. Whiton Stuart had a fall and broke his arm. The fracture was impacted and it was with considerable difficulty that Dr. Green had him carried to Mr. George Brice's house from which he was later taken to All Souls' Hospital. 

Mr. J. P. Whiton-Stuart, who has been at All Souls' Hospital recovering from a serious injury received on the hunting Held, has left for New York, where he will undergo an operation.  

Mr. Whiton-Stewart, who broke his arm while hunting with the Essex Fox Hounds last month, is reported as doing well at his home in Greenwich. 

Other mentions of the Whiton-Stuarts are about travels and schooling for their son, Robert:

Robert Whiton Stuart will return on Wednesday, January 5, to the Stuyvesant School, Warrington, Va. 

Jan. 21, 1921: Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Whiton-Stuart have left for their apartment on Park avenue, where they will spend the remainder of the winter 

Sept. 23, 1921: Mrs. J. P. Whiton Stuart was among those returning from Europe on the "Lapland"

CONSPICUOUS LEISURE AND GOOD WORKS
Mixed with the conspicuous leisure is evidence of people achieving remarkable things for the public good. In the Jan. 21 issue, talk of sport segues into news of a woman who fought to protect the cliff dwellings of Colorado and to found Mesa Verde National Park.

The extreme cold of the last few days will cause many to feel the lure of a mild climate where life is filled •with all the sports of the great out-of-doors—golf, polo, fishing, swimming, hunting and aeroplaning, that new pastime which has not yet lost its novelty. 

Mrs. Gilbert McCIurg, formerly a resident of Morristown, has been spending a few days with her sister, Miss Donaghe. Mrs. McCIurg, who recently made her home in Colorado Springs and Stonington, Conn., is known as a writer and lecturer, her special work dealing with pre-historic ruins of America. The public knew very little of the historic value of these ruins previous to the founding of the Cliff Dwelling Association, of which Mrs. McCIurg was the originator and which has now been placed under the protection of the Government. Mrs. McCIurg has returned to her summer home in Stonington, where she has purchased an interesting building of the Georgian period. 

Virginia McClurg was also a member of the Mayflower Descendants--an organization that included Jesse's wife, born Mary Marshall Ogden.

The Kuiper Belt and Veblen House--a Chance Connection

Here's a mix of recent news and personal past with a chance Veblen House connection. Kuiper, a name familiar to me from childhood, was in the news as 2019 began. In the wee hours of January 1st, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by "Ultima Thule," an object 4 billion miles from Earth in what is called the Kuiper Belt, home to Pluto and other frozen objects in what has been described as "a vast rim of primordial debris encircling our solar system."

The term "Kuiper Belt" was new to me, but astronomer Gerard Kuiper for whom it is named was a colleague of my father's at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory. Kuiper's best known student was Carl Sagan, an astronomer who later did much to popularize science through his Cosmos television series and many books. From my recent correspondence with one of Sagan's friends and fellow student, Peter Pesch, it looks like Sagan was pursuing an unusual route in astronomy even back then: "Kuiper was exclusively interested in the solar system, which few of us were, except, of course, Carl Sagan."

In the photo, my father Al Hiltner and Gerard Kuiper are 2nd and 4th from the left, respectively, with Nobel prize winner Chandra first on the left.

Kuiper's name also popped up in a much more obscure location when I was researching the life of the Whiton-Stuarts, first owners of what became known as the Veblen House. The wife, Mary (Marshall Ogden) Whiton-Stuart, spent her last years in Tucson, AZ. Kuiper moved there in 1960 to found the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory. Here's a snippet from a previous post on this website:

Astronomy and the Whiton-Stuarts came together in the Nov. 16, 1964 issue of the Tucson Daily Citizen, which included Mary's obituary and, elsewhere on the same page, an announcement:

"To Speak At Dinner--Meet Dr. Gerard Kuiper, director of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona, will speak Sunday at the annual Compact Day dinner meeting of the Society of Mayflower Descendants in the State of Arizona." 

Mary was an eighth generation descendant not of Mayflower pilgrims, but of a pilgrim who settled in what would become New Jersey, John Ogden.

Update: In another unexpected link between Yerkes Observatory and Veblen House, I recently contacted a U. of Chicago alum who had written a strongly worded letter to the alumni magazine lamenting the university's having moved out of the observatory. The author, Daniel Campion, happens to live in Iowa City, where Oswald Veblen grew up. Daniel took a break from his writing to research Veblen's childhood home, which will be the subject of another post. He also sent me a "squib" he had published--a short poem about Ultima Thule called "Marriage Made in Heaven."

Renowned Wildlife Champion, Esmond Bradley Martin: The Veblen House Connection

Today, on World Wildlife Day, a tribute to one of the world's great champions of elephants and rhinos. Esmond Bradley Martin devoted his life to investigating illicit trade in tusks and rhino horn, uncovering information critical to efforts to stem the slaughter of these extraordinary animals. Dr. Martin was murdered in his home in Nairobi a month ago, on Feb. 4. He was 76. The motive is not yet clear, though the nature of his often dangerous work could potentially have made him a target. Other possible motives were a botched robbery and a local land dispute. Whatever the motive, the meaning is in his extraordinary life and the cause he devoted himself to.

The news had additional meaning for all of us working to save Veblen House. Research into the Whiton-Stuart family that built the house (the Veblens were the second owners) had uncovered a remarkable connection. At age 63, Robert, the son of the Whiton-Stuarts, married Edwina Atwell Martin, mother of Esmond, making Esmond the step-grandson of the builders of Veblen House. Esmond is the great grandson of Henry Phipps, boyhood friend and business partner of Andrew Carnegie. There is a botanical connection as well: Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Garden in Pittsburgh, PA.

As Dan Stiles described in one of countless tributes, Esmond worked closely with his wife Chryssee and colleague Lucy Vigne, often going under cover to "find the obscure open-air wildlife markets and back-alley shops and count the numbers of what he saw, note the prices, find out who was supplying and who was buying, for what purpose ..." Without this information, it would have been impossible to identify what countries were creating demand for poaching.

He was, it could be said, seeking to expose the perilous cultural addiction that has driven an unconscionable pillaging of nature. 

Again from the Smithsonian article:

"Among Martin’s contributions to the field: highlighting increased demand for rhino horn in Yemen in 2008, showing the drop in Japanese demand for ivory in 2010, detailing a burgeoning ivory trade in Hong Kong in 2011, and explaining the reduction in rhino poaching in Nepal in 2013. His most recent research documented how Laos’s and Vietnam’s ivory markets are booming."

There were tributes from Jane Goodall, disciple Tom Milliken, Brian Jackman, and many others. Brian Jackman begins his tribute this way:

"Snappily dressed like Tom Wolfe in a cream linen suit, a silk handkerchief spilling from his breast pocket and his silver hair flopping over his forehead, Esmond Bradley Martin, who was murdered in Nairobi last week, looked more like a literary critic than the sworn enemy of the illegal trade in ivory and rhino horn. He was a man with impeccable manners and a fondness for string quartets and antebellum architecture.

But beneath that deceptively fey exterior he was as tough as teak and totally fearless as he worked undercover, posing as a buyer to expose the smuggling cartels and their international trafficking routes between Africa and south-east Asia."

Additional homages from a Huffington Post article:

“Esmond was one of conservation’s great unsung heroes,” said Save the Elephants’ founder, Iain Douglas-Hamilton, who, along with Bradley Martin and Stiles documented the catastrophic fall in elephant numbers and brought the issue to the world stage. His meticulous work into ivory and rhino horn markets was conducted often in some of the world’s most remote and dangerous places and against intensely busy schedules that would have exhausted a man half his age … He was my friend for 45 years and his loss is a terrible blow both personally and professionally.” 

“He was a giant of a man in his field – quite literally, his tall, gangling figure and shock of white hair made him an unlikely undercover investigator,” said Greg Neale, ex-environment correspondent at the Telegraph. “But that was part of his role as he sought to understand the extent of the rhino horn (and ivory) trade, often putting himself at real risk in some of the world’s most lawless places to establish the economic and cultural background to the forces driving the rhino and elephant towards extinction.”

The Friends of Herrontown Woods has reached out to the Martin family with condolences for this tragic loss, and has expressed a desire to use Veblen House in part to honor Esmond's work and example in an ongoing way. From what we've learned, Esmond Bradley Martin exemplified the quiet yet indefatigable and profoundly influential approach for which Oswald Veblen was known.