Word: blennerhassett
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...Harman Blennerhassett was gifted with some talent for music and a flair for science; a contemporary notes that he had "all sorts of sense but commonsense." At 31, seven years after the Bastille's fall, he married his niece, the beauteous and witty Margaret Agnew whose father was Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man. Ostracized by both families, the honeymooning couple crossed the Atlantic to New York. Hunting for a home in the wilderness, they reached Pittsburgh by post, floated down the Ohio River on a keelboat. Some 14 miles below Marietta and hard by the mouth...
Meteorological cataclysms were the terror of Blennerhassett's life. At the approach of thunderstorms, he bolted all the windows, buried himself in bed. Consequently, he built his island home of wood "to resist earthquakes." A noble edifice with two spacious wings, its lawns and gardens were as fine as any in England. Inside, "foreign frescoes colored the ceilings, the walls were hung with costly pictures, and the furniture, imported from Paris and London, was rich, costly and tasteful." The dining room sideboard offered a hospitality as fine as could be found in Virginia, for Blennerhassett Island, discovered by Surveyor...
...seven years the Blennerhassetts enjoyed their island paradise. In one wing lived a staff of Negro slaves who waited on them hand & foot. In the other, the squire tinkered with his physical experiments. Beautiful Mrs. Blennerhassett, in a habit of red velvet and gold lace, galloped over the island and mainland on horseback or pointed her myopic husband's gun for him on hunting expeditions. And then one day in 1805 Mr. Blennerhassett met a man as eccentric and mercurial as himself, retiring U. S. Vice President Aaron Burr...
...office, that of presiding at the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. And all the while, unpredictable Aaron Burr had been dickering with the British Minister at Philadelphia for funds to split off the nation's West from the East. The adventurer Burr interested Blennerhassett in a different scheme: to colonize a portion of the Mississippi Valley with young men who would be ready for anything from secession from the U. S. to an invasion of Mexico. Tired of his isolation, Blennerhassett readily helped finance the promotion. In May 1805 Burr first visited Blennerhassett Island...
...Blennerhassett cellars for liquor. Subsequently, someone knocked over a candle. Up went the hemp, up went the wing, up went all that was left of Harman Blennerhassett's mansion in the wilderness. In Canada, whither the Blennerhassetts had moved following the embargo of the War of 1812 and the collapse of the cotton market, Mrs. Blennerhassett wrote a melancholy elegy to her Ohio River home: Like mournful echo, from the silent tomb, That pines away upon the midnight air, While the pale moon breaks out, with fitful gloom; Fond memory turns with sad, but welcome care, To scenes...