A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family (Excelsior Editions)

One woman's journey to uncover her family's history and understand the ties that bind us to a particular place.After her father's death in 1992, Leila Philip and her family faced the imminent loss of the Hudson River Valley Farm that had been home to the Philip and Van Ness families since 1732. Taking an unpaid leave from her job, Leila set out with her mother to save their farm and the family home, a sprawling Federal period mansion called Talavera. After fifteen generations of Philip and Van Ness men, it would be up to these two determined women to hold off the twin threats of bankruptcy and urban sprawl.Returning to Talavera led Leila on an unexpected journey into the past even as she and her mother sought to chart a future for their commercial fruit orchard. Stumbling upon family letters, belongings, and secrets, Leila discovered a past that was inextricably woven into three centuries of U.S. history. In A Family Place, Leila Philip brings to life the people and events that shaped her family and Talavera. Across the generations we meet colonial Dutch farmers, Revolutionary Generals, Civil War heroes, freed slaves, ambassadors, and a cast of wonderfully renegade aunts who fled Talavera in search of adventure around the world. Set against this background of land and people are the day-to-day elements of farm life at Talevera, from horticulture and beekeeping to art history and Romantic-era landscape gardening. It is in this quest to uncover and understand life at Talavera that Leila inevitably finds a place for herself, as she and her family and their farm embark on a new century in the Hudson Valley.

one Woman's Journey To Uncover Her Family's History And Understand The Ties That Bind Us To A Particular Place.

publishers Weekly

tracing Her Family History For Nearly Two Centuries By Focusing On Just One House, Philip's Meandering But Mesmerizing Memoir Is Set In Talavera, A Rambling Federal-period Manse On Several Hundred Acres In The Hudson Valley, Two Hours From Downtown Manhattan. Spurred By The 1992 Death Of Her Father, Who For More Than 40 Years Had Tended The Land's Thousands Of Apple And Other Fruit Trees, Philip Began To Dig Through The Accumulated Household Accounts, Daily Journals, Family Letters And Collected Artifacts Stretching Back To 1807, When The House Was Built, And Even To 1730, When Her Dutch Forebears First Settled The Land. Her Aim Was To Learn How Her Family Has Held On To The Land For So Long, And To Understand Why, Though Confronted By Harsh Financial Realities, She And Her Mother And Four Siblings Are Determined To Carry On. In A Style That's More Prosaic Than Poetic, She Tells Of Her Own Decision To Take A Leave (as Professor Of English At Colgate) To Help Her Mother Run The Farm, While Exploring Her Fascinating Family Past Of 18th-century Manor Lords And Tenant Farmers, Civil War And World War Ii Heroes, Dissipated Sons And Rebellious Daughters, Suffragette Aunts And Grandmothers And, Most Stirring Of All, The Existence Of A Half-sister Her Father Never Knew He Had (or If He Did, Never Told His Own Family About). Both Narrative Threads Are Profoundly Personal. Braided Together With Insight, They Pay Homage To The Ideals Of Home And Family With A Resonance That Should Extend Beyond Her Home Region. (sept.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.