"To the Fair Isle"

One enthusiastic spectator who was in the Field of Mars on the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille was an Irish gentleman named Harman Blennerhassett. A native of County Kerry, a graduate of Dublin's Trinity College and a member of the Irish bar, he wandered the Continent for several years. Profoundly excited by the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, Blennerhassett had been attracted to Paris, where he soon began intensively cultivating the taste for revolution and romanticism which was to be his ruin a few years later a few thousand miles away.

Harman Blennerhassett was gifted with some talent for music and a flair for science; a contemporary notes that he had "all sorts of sense but commonsense." At 31, seven years after the Bastille's fall, he married his niece, the beauteous and witty Margaret Agnew whose father was Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man. Ostracized by both families, the honeymooning couple crossed the Atlantic to New York. Hunting for a home in the wilderness, they reached Pittsburgh by post, floated down the Ohio River on a keelboat. Some 14 miles below Marietta and hard by the mouth of the Little Kanawha, the wandering Blennerhassetts came upon a narrow island three miles long. There, in 1798, Harman Blennerhassett began building a mansion.

Meteorological cataclysms were the terror of Blennerhassett's life. At the approach of thunderstorms, he bolted all the windows, buried himself in bed. Consequently, he built his island home of wood "to resist earthquakes." A noble edifice with two spacious wings, its lawns and gardens were as fine as any in England. Inside, "foreign frescoes colored the ceilings, the walls were hung with costly pictures, and the furniture, imported from Paris and London, was rich, costly and tasteful." The dining room sideboard offered a hospitality as fine as could be found in Virginia, for Blennerhassett Island, discovered by Surveyor George Washington in 1770, lay within the broad boundaries of the Old Dominion.

For seven years the Blennerhassetts enjoyed their island paradise. In one wing lived a staff of Negro slaves who waited on them hand & foot. In the other, the squire tinkered with his physical experiments. Beautiful Mrs. Blennerhassett, in a habit of red velvet and gold lace, galloped over the island and mainland on horseback or pointed her myopic husband's gun for him on hunting expeditions. And then one day in 1805 Mr. Blennerhassett met a man as eccentric and mercurial as himself, retiring U. S. Vice President Aaron Burr.

A brilliant bundle of contradictions, Aaron Burr had not been able to get along with General Washington at his New York headquarters. Yet as commander of the Revolutionary forces in Orange County he had distinguished himself for soldierly competence. After the Revolution he had practiced law in New York, become embroiled in a dubious land deal, survived it to go to the U. S. Senate and receive as many votes as Thomas Jefferson for President, only to be kicked downstairs into the Vice-Presidency by vote of the House of Representatives. Cast out by both parties for killing Alexander Hamilton, he nevertheless had impeccably executed one of the final duties of his office, that of presiding at the impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. And all the while, unpredictable Aaron Burr had been dickering with the British Minister at Philadelphia for funds to split off the nation's West from the East. The adventurer Burr interested Blennerhassett in a different scheme: to colonize a portion of the Mississippi Valley with young men who would be ready for anything from secession from the U. S. to an invasion of Mexico. Tired of his isolation, Blennerhassett readily helped finance the promotion. In May 1805 Burr first visited Blennerhassett Island. By the following year it had become headquarters for the proposed expedition. In December 1806 Burr was at the mouth of the Cumberland with 60 stalwart recruits, waiting for the flotilla of keelboats and supplies of men and munitions which were being assembled at Blennerhassett Island. But they never arrived. At this critical juncture a Federal agent, detailed to spy on Burr and Blennerhassett, sent back his report to Washington. President Jefferson issued a proclamation warning citizens not to give aid to Burr's plan. Shortly a detachment of Virginia militia raided and looted the island, just missed catching its master. Before next spring, Aaron Burr had been arrested three times for treason in Kentucky and Mississippi. Blennerhassett was arrested twice on the same charge, the second time in Kentucky, where his case was defended by a promising young lawyer named Henry Clay. There followed the great Burr treason trial in the U. S. Circuit Court at Richmond, with Chief Justice John Marshall presiding. Specific charge against Burr was that he had behaved treasonably by "levying war" against the United States. Chief Justice Marshall, however, ruled that no "overt act" of war had been committed by Burr or his associates, and that was the turning point of the 26-day trial which ended in Burr's acquittal. Blennerhassett's case, similar to Burr's, was quashed. Glamorous Aaron Burr went on to 29 more years of life and a succession of political intrigues which were as consistently disastrous as his amatory adventures were successful. Blennerhassett went back to his island in the Ohio. Bankrupt and heartbroken at his mansion's ruin, Blennerhassett moved farther south, settling on 1,000 acres of cotton land at St. Catherine's, Miss. Meantime, Blennerhassett Island had been rented to a friend, who subsequently was dispossessed. Creditors took over the estate, leased it to a farmer who stowed part of his hemp crop in one of the wings of the house. One frosty evening a boatload of slaves, rowing home to the island, tipped over, received an icy drenching. To warm themselves, they broke into the Blennerhassett cellars for liquor. Subsequently, someone knocked over a candle. Up went the hemp, up went the wing, up went all that was left of Harman Blennerhassett's mansion in the wilderness. In Canada, whither the Blennerhassetts had moved following the embargo of the War of 1812 and the collapse of the cotton market, Mrs. Blennerhassett wrote a melancholy elegy to her Ohio River home: Like mournful echo, from the silent tomb, That pines away upon the midnight air, While the pale moon breaks out, with fitful gloom; Fond memory turns with sad, but welcome care, To scenes of desolation and despair, Once bright with all that beauty could bestow, That peace could shed, or youthful fancy know To the fair isle reverts the pleasing dream. . . . In 1831 Harman Blennerhassett died. A decade later his widow and his old lawyer, Senator Henry Clay, were trying to get a bill through Congress to indemnify her for the loss of the mansion. Mrs. Blennerhassett died before any action was taken. During the Civil War, both Union and Confederate soldiers used the brushy island and the shelter of its huge old sycamores for a refuge. After that it was divided into small farms. In the 20th Century bootleggers made it a hideout. When he was a boy, Amos Kilgore Gordon of Parkersburg, W. Va. used to visit his grandfather's farm on Blennerhassett Island. He remembers swimming out into the river with his brother to collect driftwood logs washed down by the Johnstown Flood. When he grew up, he went to work for Standard Oil, is now vice president and treasurer of Standard of Louisiana. Last week Mr. Gordon bought up all the rest of Blennerhassett Island that his family did not own. The Federal Government, naturally, has never attempted to preserve the 227 acres which once threatened to be the jumping-off place for its dissolution. But Mr. Gordon is going to clean up and preserve the island. He is going to cut the brushwood out of the depression which is all that is left of Harman Blennerhassett's home, freshen up the well which is the last material relic of this half-forgotten episode in the days of the nation's growing pains.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.