The most wonderful and surprising email came to me in the winter of 2006.  It was from a son of Mr. James Moore, whose father, also James Moore, was the Foreman of the Main Greenhouse for Planting Fields.  James Jr. was born in Oyster Bay, but then he and his family moved to the Gate Cottage at the age of eight weeks, and he continued to live there until he was nine years old.   On April 14th, I had the pleasure of interviewing James Moore over the phone, currently residing in Connecticut.  On May 26th, he and his family came to the park as well.  We discussed his memories of his father, his childhood, and his reflections on his life now.  Volunteers at Planting Fields learned of these occurrences and suggested I contact Trudy Hunter-Lambertson, whose father, David, worked on the grounds and eventually became the Greenhouse Foreman.  Her mother, Mary, ran the boarding house.  They lived at Planting Fields in the Haybarn and Gate Cottage from 1930 through the 1960’s.  And after all, she lived locally also!  On June 12, 2006, I had the pleasure of interviewing Trudy Hunter-Lambertson.  During the interview, she mentioned that she kept in touch with Jackie Albrycht.  He and his sister, Eileen, are the children of John and Nellie Albrycht, who met while working on the grounds and subsequently married.  On July 27, 2006, I spoke with John, now residing in Mississippi, about his memories of his parents and sister at Planting Fields. One innocent email led to this string of conversations which has enriched our understanding of daily life on the estate at various points in history.  It has also brought a rich life to our archives. As you will read on, these conversations really do make history come alive!  Thank you to James, Trudy, and John for sharing your stories with us! Marianne Della Croce Collections Manager Excerpts from the James Moore Interview How did your father become interested in horticulture? His father told him that “He, as a young boy, or as a young man, broke his leg in a wagon wheel.  And took a book on plants, bushes and learned the names, the Latin derivations.  He could name, whatever was here, and give you the English name and the Latin derivation, what the Latin name was.”  That is what peaked his interest in the world of plants.  He owned a greenhouse company on Long Island, but jumped at the chance to work on the estate. Mr. James Moore, perhaps on his wedding day. Were you ever allowed inside Coe Hall? James spoke about his memories of Coe Hall as well: “My father used to bring me up there and I had a little car.  I had that car and was allowed to ride it in the cellar of Coe Hall.  I’d ride around and there was an electrician there.  I believe his name was Mr. Sutherland, who (put) electric lights on that car, headlights.  So that I could ride.  I would ride up and down, ah, the main road, and cars would almost go off the road when they would see this little car coming with little headlights on it.” He also spoke about the isolation he and his family felt living in such rural area at the time.  “I would bring friends home from school, but she (James’ sister Anne) was in high school then so she was dating a little bit.  We didn’t talk too much about the place except we used to take walks in the woods, and we had a huge number of acres, and I remember fondly looking at the beauty of that place: the daffodils when they came out, the rhododendrons when they came out.  We didn’t travel much beyond the gravel road, up towards what we now used to call the Big House.  So it was pretty much my sister and I and the dog.  It was a, we had a collie, if you remember the pictures…” James and his collie. James was home-schooled for one year when he became very ill with asthma.  He spoke fondly about his mother, his teacher, and some of the games they used to play.  “She (James’ mother, Mabel Dowd Moore) had a button box and it was loaded with all kinds and shapes and colors of buttons.  She would bring that in and dump it on the table and say, ‘Now, take them by color.’  I’d put all the white ones here and all the black ones here.  The next day, ‘Put all the circular ones here and the triangle ones here.’  So, she was doing geometry as well as math.  She did cardboards, she did numbers, in different combinations.  And she read to me everyday, every one of the Bobbsey Books, the Bobbsey Twins.” What do you remember about the May 1934 wedding of Natalie Mai Coe and Commendatore Leonardo Vitetti?  “I can remember us sitting out in front of the Gate Cottage and seeing just car after car after car, and of course, in those days, I’m sure, they were all Deisenberg’s and Rolls Royce’s too.  But my father had talked a lot about the floral decorations to get ready for the wedding, which I think he had a lot to do with.  I know the priest from St. Dominic’s, who was an Italian-speaking priest, married them in the Coe Estate, in the Great House, so to speak.  And he had a lot, my father that is, he had a lot to do with the floral decorations, talked a lot about that, but we were kind of, awe-struck with the number and kinds of cars, and they must have had police because, ah, there seemed to be an endless stream of cars going through the main gates.” Natalie’s wedding in 1934. He also discussed living at the edge of the property near the Carshalton Gates.  “I never remember those gates as being closed, although ah, they may have been at some point...  Another story is that up on top of those gates are, were two statues, and my sister, then,  she used to take me out and point up at those statues and say, she called them gargoyles, she said, ‘Those gargoyles are, if you’re not careful, are going to get you tonight.’” This photograph of the Carshalton Gates was taken in 1927, the same year James and his family moved into the Gate Cottage. And overall, James truly understand how blessed he was to have spent the early years of his life here.  “Well, I think what we liked, when I look back on it, what we liked was the vast expanse of area we had to play in.  I could take a tennis ball out and throw it against those walls, I could walk with the dog or with my sister all over that.  I think, if you look at the Gate Cottage and the surrounding wall, it goes all the way down Chicken Valley Road, Planting Fields Road.  That was a whole play area for us.  We could do anything we wanted in there and felt very protected.” When asked “What did your father like the most and dislike the most?”  He answered, “He was a, a very quiet, unassuming man.  He had more talent, more native intelligence than most, most people I’ve ever known and that’s probably his son talking, but he didn’t verbalize a whole lot, either pro or con about what he was doing.  He enjoyed his work; he was very good at it.  I think he, having had his own business first, then working in the, in the greenhouses in the Coe estate, I think he always had it in the back of his mind that he wanted to get back at being a Superintendent, being his own boss and being in control of things.  I mean, he, I never heard him say any word that would be negative about the Coe experience.” Excerpts from the Trudy Hunter-Lambertson Interview Can you describe the living arrangements?  “(The apartment) It was at the end of the stables in the Hay barn building.  It was, as you face it, on the left end, and it was two-story and it was attached to the stables, and above the stables were the boarding house rooms, where the men lived.  And, our little apartment at the end, we had three little bedrooms upstairs, one of them very small and right off another.  Downstairs we had a little room, another small room in the back, which I guess theoretically was the dining room, the bathroom, and  that all connected to the kitchen, which was where my mother prepared all of the food.  And then next attached to the kitchen was the boarders’ dining room, and then attached to that was the boarders’ sitting room, and then the stables began.  All attached.” The apartment was located in the left wing of this structure. “I ended up living in the Gate House.  I think I was a sophomore (in college), which would put it around 1956.  There was no more boarding house, you know, and they were converting our little apartment into a quarters for the house father (for the SUNY students).  And then I think they converted the part on the other side of the hay barn, the part that was a dairy, the end, there was an end building down there too, somewhat similar to the outside from our end.  And that was a dairy.  And they made that into an apartment for the girls, for the house mother.  So, we were moved down to the Gate Cottage.” Trudy also remembers the isolation she felt from living so far away from other children her age.  “Yes, (I had friends over) once I went to school.  But, it was always a hassle because somebody had to take…well, I would go home from school with friends, but then somebody had to bring me home or my father had to go pick me up.” Since Trudy stayed on the grounds until she was older in age than James Moore, she recalls helping out the other employees.  “I spent a lot of time working with the men who worked outside.  Like, the gardener, Bill Smith.  I would go out to him every day and ask him what I could do.  He would set me to weeding or to doing something.  And then with the work gang that went out to do all the outside work, I would go along with them and just hang out kind of thing.  It was to pass the time and I was probably a pest, you know?  But the men were very good to me.  I had, I remember during the war, they didn’t use trucks and anything that took gas very much, so they had a pair of work horses that were kept in one of the areas in the barn, in the hay barn yard there, and they would pull a wagon to take the men and the tools out to where they were working.  And I used to love to ride the wagon.” Trudy did run into the boss himself, Mr. W.R. Coe.  She recalls, “Yes, I was allowed (to run around freely) unless Mr. Coe was there.  Then you stayed close to home.  You just could not go beyond the greenhouse.  Oh, everybody always knew when he was there. Everybody knew.  So, we would then, the kids, Jackie (Albrycht), Eileen (Albrycht) and I, we would have to stay down in our area.  Well, a couple of times, we ran into him, being in the wrong place, where we shouldn’t have been there.  He never, knew who we were really, just somebody who lived on the estate.  They always referred to him as Old Man Coe or The Old Man.  ‘The Old Man is here, is out.’  So, that meant behave yourself.  Yes, “The Old Man is out.”  And I can remember when he came for short periods of time, like spring, summer, fall, if he wasn’t somewhere at one of his other residences.” Even though Mr. Coe did not know who Trudy and the other children on the estate were, he knew enough about her father’s strong work ethic to write this letter of recommendation in 1952.  Do you remember your father being injured? “I was pretty young and I do remember him having his finger that was bandaged up and then was covered with a rubber tube, because if he didn’t put that rubber thing on, he would get the bandage so dirty.  Because he was always working in the dirt, pot, in pots, often in the potting shed, and I do remember that.  And the broken leg, I believe it was when we already moved out to the Gate Cottage, and he fell off a ladder doing something in the greenhouse, and he couldn’t work for a period of time.  And I think that’s what the long vacation space is.” In this doctor’s bill sent to Mr. Coe, you can see the charge for removing a splinter from under the nail of Mr. Hunter. Excerpts from the John Albrycht Interview How did your mother and father meet? “The only thing I know about them meeting is, after my father graduated from an electrical school in New York, he was given an electrician’s certificate.  The Depression hit and the only job he could get, I was told by him, was driving a horse and wagon at Planting Fields.  My mother came over from Ireland in the (19)20’s and was working at Planting Fields, so they met there.  They were married January the 6th, 1931, in Glen Cove at St. Hyacintha Catholic Church.” What were some of your mother’s tasks? “You mentioned receipts for going into New York City.  She (My mother) had the responsibility of maintaining, or closing up and opening up the apartments they had on the East River.  She had had to go when they were coming back from somewhere: Aiken or Wyoming.  Someone from the office would call down (to my mother in the Big House) and say ‘Okay, you gotta open up the apartment’, and then she’d go in, and we’d spend a week.  If I was off from school in the younger days, I’d go with her and help her open up the apartment and it’d take us about a week, about five work days.” What were some of your father’s tasks? “He maintained everything electrical (in the Big House).  If anything went wrong he would either fix it or get someone in there to fix it.  One of his biggest problem areas was the ice machine down in the basement of the Big House.  It ran on ammonia type refrigeration concept, and when there was an ammonia leak he had to find that leak and seal it.  He also had the responsibility of keeping the furnaces going in that Big House.  There were two gigantic coal furnaces, and I can remember during the winter, when I was able, I’d go with him around seven p.m. every night up to the Big House.  We’d walk up there.  We would have to soak the furnaces for the night so they wouldn’t go out.  That meant loading up that coal car wherever the coal was, how far back it was, and pushing it up to the furnaces and then he’d shovel it in.  And I’d take the coal car back and I’d start loading it up and he’d push it back up there and shovel it in.  So he took care of the electrical.  Anything that went wrong in the Big House he had the responsibility of getting it fixed.  Also, prior to Coe’s arriving (back to Planting Fields after being away), he had the responsibility of making sure all the silver was polished.” Did your family own any pets? “Yes.  We had a smooth-hair fox terrier called ‘Skippy,’ which ruled the place.  We also took care of two of Coe’s dogs.  One was called ‘Tango’.  He was a black springer spaniel.  And the other one was ‘Sambo’ - the water spaniel and retriever.  And when Coe went shooting further out on Long Island, Sambo would go and be the retriever for him.  What was the chain of command? “Well, when the Coe’s weren’t there, it was the Superintendent.  First Mr. Carter, then Mr. Miller.” Mr. Coe and Superintendent Carter working in the Main Greenhouse. John also appreciated the beauty and wonder of spending his childhood here.  “The beauty of that estate in especially the spring when the rhodies and the dahlias are blooming…just outstanding.  In the wintertime when it snowed and the snow was right we would sled off of the West Portico - up at Big House - down that hill towards the front drive.  The heather garden, the lilacs blooming in the spring along near the rose garden, and just…unreal how beautiful it is.” Photo taken by Bill Barrash.