12 Facts About Eliza Ridgely

1.

Eliza Eichelberger Ridgely was an American heiress, traveler, arbiter of fashion, and mistress of Hampton, the Ridgely plantation north of Towson, Maryland.

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2.

Eliza Ridgely was an heiress who became a foreign traveler and an arbiter of fashion.

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3.

Eliza Ridgely was the son of Charles Carnan Ridgely who served as Governor of the state of Maryland from 1815 to 1818.

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4.

Eliza Ridgely was childless and as he approached the end of his life, willed that his sister's progeny should take the Ridgely name and in doing, would inherit his vast estates.

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5.

Eliza Ridgely recorded her subscriptions, such as those to the Baltimore Humane Impartial Society from 1849 to 1854 and her donations to a Widows Asylum between 1849 and 1851.

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6.

Eliza Ridgely ordered church services for her slaves in the attic of the Hampton carriage house.

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7.

Eliza Ridgely herself oversaw funerals and weddings in the house's great hall.

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8.

Ridgely's daughter Eliza recorded having taught a group of slave children the Lord's Prayer.

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9.

Eliza Ridgely was an avid gardener, and in the 1830s and 1840s she improved the gardens and enhanced the landscape at Hampton, planting exotic trees such as the Lebanon Cedar which still stands on the house's south lawn.

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10.

Eliza Ridgely is said to have brought this herself as a seedling from Europe, carrying it in a shoebox.

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11.

Eliza Ridgely really did play the harp, and her surviving bills and receipts include those for music lessons and for the repair of her harp in the years 1820 to 1826.

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12.

Eliza Ridgely helped to arrange a deal under which the Ridgelys sold the house to Ailsa Mellon Bruce's Avalon Foundation, which in 1948 gave it to the National Park Service.

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