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Show A "Lovely Exile" Thrilled and Scandalized U. S. 100 Years Ago She Claimed to Be a Descendant of the Man for Whom America Was Named, She Set - v. ., Statesmen's Hearts A-Flutter and She Almost Succeeded in Obtaining American Citizenship and a Grant of Land Before Gossips' Tongues Began to Wag. Then ... 1 Western Newspaper Union. By ELMO SCOTT WATSON IN THE city of Ogdensburg, N. Y., stands a stately old three-storied brick house embowered in a grove of the trees which give Ogdensburg the name of the "Maple City." They call it the "Parrish Mansion" and from its wide verandas you look out over the blue waters of the St. Lawrence river. A surprise awaits you as you enter the house. The walls of its rooms are covered cov-ered with paintings stirring, colorful scenes .of the Old West: Indians chasing buffalo buffa-lo or attacking stage-coaches and wagon trains; fur traders trad-ers cordelling their boats up the Missouri; galloping cav-" cav-" vJilrymen charging across the plains or through an Indian village; cowboys roping long-horn long-horn steers, "busting" broncos bron-cos or "shooting up" a one-street one-street frontier cow town. Here and there stand bronze statues of men and horses vibrant with action. In cases along the yfV S J'v f f Martin Van Buren walls hang Indian scalp shirts, feathered war-bonnets, bows, arrows, ar-rows, shields; frontiersmen's fringed buckskin shirts and leggings; leg-gings; army uniforms, carbines, revolvers, sabers. It's an amazing amaz-ing bit of the Wild West trans-plated trans-plated to this peaceful little city in upstate New York, but you understand un-derstand why when they tell you that this is the Frederic Remington Reming-ton Memorial museum. -' This article, however, Is not about this greatest of all painters of Western life. It will tell the story of a woman, one of the most romantic characters in American history, who once lived in this house and the memory of whom still lingers there in an upstairs up-stairs room. For if you enter this room you will see her portable porta-ble writing desk, exquisite with its delicate inlay work, some of the dainty, toilet articles which she used and miniatures of her and of the man whose name is perpetuated in the "Parrish Mansion." Man-sion." A Gossipy Chronicler. "A decided sensation was cre-" cre-" ' ated at Washington during the Van Buren administration by the appearance there of a handsome and well-educated Italian lady, who called herself America Vespucci Ves-pucci and claimed descent from the navigator who gave his name to this continent." So writes Ben: Perley Poore, a gossipy journalist, journal-ist, whose two-volume work called "Perley's Reminiscence of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis" was published half a century ago. In calling it "a decided de-cided sensation," this historian was writing somewhat less than accurately, as he was when he called her a "lady." Also he omitted certain details concerning her, in deference to the mid-Victorian morality of the period pe-riod in which he wrote. Later historians, however, have not been hampered by such inhibitions inhibi-tions and from the evidence which they have collected, the story of the lovely America (or Ameriga) Vespucci can be told as follows: It begins with a "boy-meets-girl" incident in the Italian city of Florence some time in the early 1830s. The boy was Ferdinand, Due d'Orleans, son of King Louis Philippe of France. The girl was America Vespucci. They immediately imme-diately fell in love and, of course, America said "yes" when Ferdinand Ferdi-nand proposed. But the king of France had other plans for his son and forbade the marriage. But their love was not to be denied and when Ferdinand returned re-turned to Paris, America accompanied accom-panied him and lived with him without benefit of clergy. Within a short time, however, the love of the Due d'Orleans waned and America, too proud to return to her disapproving family in Flor- ence, set out for the country which bore the name of her illustrious il-lustrious explorer-ancestor. In saying that her arrival in Washington caused a "decided sensation," Ben:Perley was guilty of understatement. Social life under the previous administration adminis-tration of "Old Hickory" Jackson Jack-son had been inexpressibly crude. It was becoming more refined under un-der the administration of the "Duke of Kinderhook," Martin Van Buren. The coming of a foreigner and one so beautiful who had been the toast of princes in Paris would lend it glamor. So Society in Washington welcomed America with operi arms. Ex-President John Quincy Adams Ad-ams became a special friend of the beautiful Italian and even the "god-like" Daniel Webster was not immune to her charms. President Pres-ident Van Buren was so attentive to her that the gossips speculated speculat-ed upon the possibility of the widower-President making her the First Lady of the Land. It soon became apparent that America wanted something else besides social position. She needed need-ed an income. So she drew up a petition to congress asking, first, to be admitted to the rights of citizenship; and second, to be given "a corner of land" out of the public domain, on which to live. Senator Benton presented the petition to the senate and it was immediately referred to the committee on public lands. The committee's reply eulogized eulo-gized the petitioner as "a young, dignified, and graceful lady, with a mind of the highest intellectual culture, and a heart beating with all of our own enthusiasm in the cause of America and human liberty." lib-erty." Then it went on to give the reasons why the petition could not be granted and commended the lovely Italienne to the generosity gen-erosity of the American people "The name of America our country's name should be honored, hon-ored, respected, and cherished in the person of the interesting exile from whose ancestor we derive the great and glorious title." All of which was very flattering, flatter-ing, indeed, but it didn't pay America's bills. She needed money mon-ey and she resorted to tears to get it. Thereupon, so Ben: Perley Per-ley tells us, "a subscription was immediately opened by Mr. Haight, the sergeant-at-arms of the senate, and judges, congressmen, congress-men, and citizens vied with one another in their contributions." America Returns. America accepted the subscription subscrip-tion gratefully and departed with it for Paris where she went to live with her sister, the Vicom-tesse Vicom-tesse Solen. Washington society heard nothing more of her for two years. It was busy with its own affairs under changing administrations. adminis-trations. But some of her friends did not neglect to write to her that under a new administration her petition might now have a better chance of being granted. So she immediately sailed again for the Land of Promise. When she arrived in Boston, she found that city preparing to give a magnificent ball in celebration cele-bration of the visit of Prince de Joinville, a younger brother of her lover, the Due d'Orleans. Accounts Ac-counts differ as to what followed. 1 , V," . - ",- 3 , ' John Quincy Adams Ben: Perley, with his characteristic characteris-tic delicacy, says that "it was whispered that Madame Vespucci had borne an unenviable reputation reputa-tion at Florence and Paris and had been induced by a pecuniary consideration to break off an intimacy in-timacy with the Duke of Organs" and because of this "the Prince de Joinville refused to recognize her, which virtually excluded her from reputable society." Later historians, however, tell a different story. For instance, Carl Carmer, in his book, "Lis- t A f America Vespucci ten for a Lonesome Drum," says: "Ameriga Vespucci entered the ball-room at Faneuil hall on the arm of the prince himself. Boston Bos-ton saw and worshiped, and all might have gone well with her and her plans had not a guest recognized her as the former mis- tress of the prince's brother." At any rate, it meant the .end of her social ambitions. All of her snobbish American friends deserted her all except one. That was John Van Buren, the son of Ex-President Van Buren, a hard-drinking, gambling spendthrift, spend-thrift, who was known as "Prince John." Evidently America decided decid-ed that an American "prince" was better than nothing. So she went to live with him again without with-out benefit of clergy. She Comes to Ogdensburg. It was through her association with John Van Buren that she came at last to Ogdensburg. According Ac-cording to local tradition Van Buren and America met George Parrish, a rich merchant of Ogdensburg, Og-densburg, at a hotel in Evans Mills. Van Buren challenged Parish to a poker game. When he lost all his money, he put up as a final stake his last possession pos-session and lost her, too. So when George Parrish returned to Ogdensburg, America Vespucci accompanied him. One account says that Parrish was a Belgian; another that he was an Austrian. Whichever he was, he had carried to this country coun-try regal ideas. The house to which he brought America was a veritable castle, compared to the humbler Ogdensburg homes. Of course, "there was talk" among the Puritanical residents of Ogdensburg. They called her a "fancy lady" or the "Floren- tine Fancy." But she didn't care. All her social ambitions were in the past now. George Parrish gave her every luxury she desired de-sired and she was happier than she had ever been before. So for 20 years the "interesting exile" enjoyed an idyllic life in her American castle with her merchant mer-chant prince. But, as Carmer records, "it ended with merciful suddenness. . . . One day George Parrish told her he must return to his lands in Europe. He was giving up his holdings in America and her. She met his decision bravely, thanked him for his settlement of $3,000 a year, told him she would go again to live with her sister, the vicomtesse." So back to Paris again went America Vespucci and there she remained until her death a few-years few-years later. She has become something of a legend in Ogdensburg, Ogdens-burg, albeit one of the most interesting inter-esting in that interesting little city. The relics of this exotic foreigner for-eigner strike a strange note in an art museum which perpetuates the memory of an artist so thoroughly thor-oughly and distinctly American as Frederic Remington was. However, as Carl Carmer says, "If in some ghostly state she has found a way to return across the ocean to her American home, I know she must be puzzled by all the rearing bronze bronchos, and the paintings of cowboys galloping gal-loping over the endless yellow desert. But I am quite sure she is not afraid." The paradox of the Ogdensburg museum housing relics of two such widely different characters as the American painter and the Italian adventuress is no stranger, stran-ger, however, than the paradox which gave the name of her ancestor an-cestor to a continent which he did not discover. For while history his-tory gives credit to Christopher Columbus for discovering the two continents in the New world, neither nei-ther of them bears the appropriate appropri-ate name of "Columbia." Instead, In-stead, both are named for an Italian Ital-ian explorer who never set foot j on the soil of North America and did not visit South America until several years after Columbus had. He was Amerigo, or Amer-icus, Amer-icus, Vespucci, born in Florence, Italy, in March, 1452, who grew up to become a merchant engaged en-gaged in trade for the Florentine house of the Medici. When Columbus in 1493 made his third voyage across the Atlantic At-lantic and reached the mainland of South America, he sent back to Spain five ships laden with pearls and with them a chart of the new discoveries of this mainland main-land and its rich pearl fisheries. Bishop Fonseca, who was in charge of all matters relating to the new discoveries, showed Co--lumbus' chart to a certain Alonso de Hojeda and gave him a license li-cense to go to South America to exploit its riches. With Hojeda sailed the merchant, Vespucci, who, incidentally, had supplied provisions for Columbus' two previous pre-vious voyages. The Hojeda-Vespucci expedition expedi-tion left Cadiz, Spain, in May, 1499, and landed on the coast ol South America 200 leagues south of the Gulf of Paria, the center of the pearl fishing industry. Towards the close of 1500 Vespucci Ves-pucci was induced to transfer his ! 1' " :i I Amerigo Vespucci services to the king of Portugal, who, in 1501 sent him to explore farther this new southern continent. conti-nent. Vespucci's three ships, crossing from Cape Verde, reached Cape St. Roque August 17 and proceeding southward, arrived ar-rived at Bahia on November 1 and at Rio de Janeiro January 1, 1502. They appear to have advanced ad-vanced as far south as latitude 32. degrees, although Vespucci maintains that they actually proceeded pro-ceeded a good deal farther. Two accounts of these voyages were shortly afterwards issued by Vespucci. In the first he gave an account to his fellow-countryman, Lorenzo Pietro de Medici, of these new regions he had visited vis-ited which "we may rightly call a new world." His second account, sent to the same person, he entitled en-titled "Mundus Novus." In it he describes how in these southern parts they had "found a continent conti-nent more densely peopled than Europe, Asia or Africa. We knew that land to be a continent and not an island both because of its long extension of coast and because be-cause of its many inhabitants." In 1504 Amerigo published a second account in the form of an Italian plaquette addressed to Pi-eri Pi-eri Soderini, gonfalonier of Florence, Flor-ence, who had been a schoolfellow schoolfel-low of his, wherein his two voyages voy-ages are expanded into four. It has not been aimcuit, nowever, to note the many discrepancies in this account and to bring the details back to the two voyages. These booklets had a tremendous tremen-dous vogue, and when compared with the labored attempt of Columbus Co-lumbus to describe the site of the "Garden of Eden" and the "Earthly Paradise," showed a much greater sense of what the public understood. It is not at all surprising, therefore, to understand un-derstand what took place in 1507. It so happened that at St. Die in the Vosges mountains of France there was a little collegiate colle-giate institution which was both a center of geographical learning and the owner of a new printing press, which was then something of a novelty in France. Two of its faculty members, Mathias Ringman and Martin Waldseemul-ler, Waldseemul-ler, were busy with a new edition of Ptolemy's "Geographia." Before Be-fore publishing it, however, they printed an essay called "Cosmog-raphiae "Cosmog-raphiae Introducto" or an "Introductory "Intro-ductory Geography," to which they added Vespucci's letter. In this essay, published in May, 1507, Waldseemuller wrote: "And the fourth part of the world having hav-ing been discovered by Ameri-cus, Ameri-cus, it may be called Amerige, that is, the land of Americus, or America." The name came into general use, being applied first to the southern continent, and later to both continents. |