How women shaped the landscape and Montgomery Place

SALISBURY – Montgomery Place, in Annandale-on Hudson, N.Y., developed over the 19th and early 20th centuries from a functioning farm to an example of an “American Arcadia.”

And the prime movers in the process were women.

That was the message from author and curator Kate Johnson, who spoke at the Scoville Memorial Library in Salisbury on Saturday, March 18, as part of the Era of Elegance series of talks (sponsored by the library and the Salisbury Association Historical Society).

The four women were Janet Livingston Montgomery, Louise Livingston, Cora Livingston Barton and Violeta Delafield.

In the Colonial and immediate post-Revolution eras, women were not expected to engage with the outdoors except in genteel ways: flower and kitchen gardens, flower arrangement and the study of basic botany.

But the wealth and social status of Janet Livingston Montgomery allowed her to ignore convention.

Montgomery, who died in 1828, was Hudson River Valley gentry. Her husband, General Richard Montgomery, was killed in 1775 in the Battle of Quebec.

“The young, childless widow continued to run the farm” the couple had established, Johnson said. And Montgomery began buying up “hundreds of acres” of land along the Hudson River, in order to build what is now known as Montgomery Place.

Her goal was to establish a “fashionable country seat” and to leave an estate for her nephew  and heir, William Jones.

The house was built in the federal style, with a lot of classical features.

And in partnership with a James McWilliam, she established commercial ventures: a fruit orchard and tree nursery.

The estate also collected rent from tenant farmers in Dutchess, Ulster and Delaware counties.

“Janet’s stature increased,” said Johnson. “She became an emblem of personal loss for the nation’s liberty.”

William Jones died before he could inherit, so the properties next passed into the hands of Louise Livingston, wife of Janet’s brother Edward.

Edward was a national political figure and served as secretary of state for President Andrew Jackson. The Livingstons were an early example of a Washington power couple, Johnson said.

Montgomery Place became a seasonal home, and after Edward died in 1836, Louise began a series of improvements, using the services of prominent architects and designers.

The most notable of these was perhaps the conservatory, built in 1839, where Janet Livingston’s cattle had formerly grazed.

Some early conservation work occurred in the 1840s, when Louise and a neighbor together purchased the Sawkill Ravine to protect the stream and its surroundings from development.

It was a shift in attitude, from seeing the wilderness as something to be exploited, to “wilderness as an aesthetic and spiritual resource.”

The couple’s daughter, Cora, who married Thomas Barton, kept the improvements coming, adding to the house and building a coach house, garden follies, even a Swiss-style cottage for factory workers.

By 1850, Montgomery Place was an example of “lavish pleasure grounds.”

The fourth woman who had a major impact on the property, Violeta Delafield, came along later, in 1921.

A member of the White family from Litchfield (the same family that established what is now the White Memorial Conservation Center), she was a cosmopolitan woman. She married John Ross Delafield, who inherited Montgomery Place, and designed a series of pocket gardens for the property that were small and intimate.

She also compiled a census of animals and plants on the property that is still used as a reference tool today.

Under Delafield, the emphasis shifted again, to an appreciation of nature as a healthy antidote to city life. (The conservatory was replaced by a tennis court.)

The estate remained in the Delafield family until 1986, when it became a museum. The property was purchased in 2016 by Bard College.