An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew(55)

SOURCES

This reconstruction was put together, as always, with the help of numerous sources. The most important are listed below. Since I gained a lot from my peregrinations to all of the places Allene Tew called her own during her life, I have also made a short overview of them.

To start with, I’d like to emphasize that I wouldn’t have been able to write this book without the godsend of the internet. Just as Jamestown was able to flourish in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the Industrial Revolution, stories from that period have been able to come to life thanks to the digital revolution—and in particular the treasure trove of digitized historical newspapers. On top of this, I was also fortunate that historical archives are not only generally easy to find in America, but relatively easy to search. It would be too much to list the many sites I consulted during the course of my research, but I would like to bring a few to the reader’s attention—if only because they were so essential to this book and perhaps may be of use to other researchers.

The genealogical site Ancestry.com was an inexhaustible source of birth certificates, passport applications, passenger lists, census files, and other hard facts so essential to reconstructing a life. The society columns in the New York Times and the Washington Post, easily accessible via their digital archives, made it possible to follow the comings and goings of the main characters—and minor ones—almost tracing their steps. Finally, through Newspapers.com and the Dutch variant Delpher.nl, hundreds of smaller and lesser-known papers were searchable at the push of a button so that everything and everyone I wanted to know something about could be found.





PEOPLE


Every book, and this one, too, has its guardian angels—people who in some way or other have played a special role in its production. Like Victoria Theisen, the current owner of Castel Mare, whose hospitality allowed me to get the idea for this book in the first place and who helped me during the ensuing years in so many ways with information and inspiration. Her daughter Marie Sch?fer was a great help in locating and deciphering Allene’s letters. I’m also incredibly grateful to her.

Then there were my standard “angels” in the guise of Kees van der Sluijs and Jo Simons—the former was yet again an invaluable mainstay as historical conscience and as a creative researcher, the latter a tireless travel guide and field researcher. Flip Maarschalkerweerd, director of the Dutch Royal House Archives, was kind enough to read my manuscript and offer commentary where necessary. He also contributed as much as he could. I would also like to thank Jeroen Kwist for the use of his beautiful house on Lake Chautauqua, and Anne Walton, the daughter of Charlotte Felkin née Rosewater, and her son David for their hospitality—they provided the research period with a warm and pleasurable ending.

I also owe great thanks to Patricia de Groot, Gaia Cerpac, Annette Portegies, Paulien Loerts, and the other staff of my Dutch publishing house, Querido, for the enthusiasm and professionalism with which they turned my manuscript into a book. If courage was the theme of Allene’s life, then there’s no more fitting publishing house to come to mind than this one, which decided recently to become independent and stand on its own two feet. Finally, the people close to me, whom I won’t name by name, if only because—to my great pleasure—they are almost the same as those in my previous books and know by now that sometimes the story in my head takes priority over the life I share with them.

The following people—ordered by location—provided assistance in all kinds of ways:

Jamestown

Karen Livsey, Fenton History Center

Barb Cessna, Fenton History Center

Kathleen Crocker and Jane Cadwell

Samuel R. Genco, Lake View Cemetery Association

Pittsburgh

Kelly Linn, Fort Pitt Block House

John Canning, the Allegheny City Society

New York City, Long Island, Newport, and surroundings

Frank Ligtvoet and Nanne Dekking

Consuela Almonte, Consulate General of Pakistan

Rick Hutto

Roberta Maged en Nick Nicholson, The Russian Nobility Association in America, Springfield, New Jersey

Linda Beninghove and Doris Oliver, Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey

Michael Perekrestov, Foundation of Russian History, Jordanville, New York

Amy Driscoll, Locust Valley Historical Society

Marianne Howard, Planting Fields, Oyster Bay

Simon Forster, Saint John’s of Lattingtown Episcopal Church, Lattingtown

Dolores and Thomas Gahan, Lattingtown

Robert Mackay, Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities

Heather Andren, Pomfret School, Pomfret

Kyle De Cicco, Harvard Library, Harvard

Kathleen M. Sylvia, City Clerk Newport

Bertram Lippincott, Newport Historical Society

France

Tanguy de Vienne, Chateau de Suisnes

Hans Buys, Institut Néerlandais

Pierre Mavoud, ?le-de-France

Helena Stork, Salernes/Amsterdam

Switzerland

Alexandre Vautier-Kotzebue

Germany

Princess Woizlawa Feodora Reuss, born Duchess zu Mecklenburg

The Netherlands

Tatiana and Hans Crooijmans

Freek Hooykaas

Angela Dekker

Bearn Bilker and Angelika Bilker-Steiner

LOCATIONS

Few of Allene’s footprints can still be found in Jamestown. Her great-uncle George Tew’s blacksmith’s shop and her grandfather Andrew Smith’s livery stables, on the corner of Main and Second Streets and at 19 West Third Avenue, respectively, are long gone, and the family house at 32 Pine Street has also disappeared beneath the dreams of subsequent generations. Lake Chautauqua, however, is largely as idyllic as it was when Allene was a young girl.