When visitors take the special tour of our extensive Archives and Collections department on the third floor, they invariably comment that we must know everything there is to know about the Pardee/Van Wickle family. But hardly a week goes by that we do not discover some new detail that adds to, or even changes, the story. It may come to us through research in our collection, or by reviewing letters and journals, or from an outside source.

This month we received a beautiful new portrait of Augustine Van Wickle, taken around 1917 when she was eighteen years old. It is from a collection of family photographs now in the care of her great-granddaughter, Heather Brown. Heather’s father, Shaw Butler, is Augustine’s grandson. He has shared stories with his children of summer vacations at Blithewold, and we hope to hear some of them when Heather and her daughter (another Augustine) come to visit Blithewold this spring or summer.