Gilded Age Labor: The workers who made the estates run

Irvington’s Gilded Age estates sometimes included a gardener’s cottage such as this one from the Cyrus West Field Sr. estate he named Ardsley. Usually the head gardener would reside in such a house, along with his wife and children and often a fellow worker or two from the estate who might lodge with his family. (Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1886-88, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

Research into Irvington's Gilded Age estates and mansions most often targets properties and owners. But those remarkable estates didn’t run themselves. So who made them work?

The estates were primarily summer retreats for uber wealthy Manhattan residents at the peak of their professions. Many were gentlemen farmers, happy to potter around estates with horses for riding or pulling their carriages, a pedigreed cow or two to provide dairy products (maybe even a pedigreed bull), ducks and chickens for the dinner table, donkeys and mules, vegetable gardens and fruit orchards, as well as greenhouses to spare tropical plants from the cold.

The “help” at Cyrus West Field’s Ardsley estate would be required to tend to livestock, including pedigreed dairy cows -- known as “blood stock” at the time -- such as these. The Gilded Age robber barons thought of themselves as gentlemen farmers and their summer estates working farms. (Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1886-88, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

On a less utilitarian scale there were hedges and lawns to trim, flowering trees and gardens to plant and maintain and even ornamental animals -- swans, koi in fish ponds -- to take care of.

And each estate often employed a year-round superintendent to make sure everything went swimmingly whether the owner was around or not.

Oh, and then there was the mansion. There was likely a butler, waiters/waitresses, maids, a laundress, a cook or a cooking staff and a coachman or two to pilot the horse-drawn carriage … you get the picture. These estates were not built along paved roads. The automobile had yet to be invented.

The estate of John D. Wendel, known after 1931 as Murray Hill, occupied 10 acres between Dows Lane and West Clinton Avenue and South Broadway and the Old Croton Aqueduct State Park trail as well as a huge tract of land directly opposite and east across South Broadway. In 1880, the U.S. Census shows that the Wendel family shared their Irvington summer residence with seven servants -- five women and two men ages 19 to 40. At least one of them, probably more, would have had the responsibility of hand washing the laundry in this, the family’s laundry room. (Irvington Public Library, Local History Collection)

Don’t get the idea that the estate owners were getting their hands dirty. Perish the thought. They hired folks to get the job done. Some likely only for the summer growing season, but others on a year-round basis, living with their wives and children in houses apart from the main residence on the estates themselves.

The housing could be standalone buildings solely for that purpose, or stables with rooms above for stable hands, grooms and coachmen. You name it, they probably had it.

Horses played an indispensable role in the lives of 19th and early 20th century Irvingtonians and Cyrus West Field’s immense and impeccable stables pictured on his Ardsley estate make it clear just how important they were. They provided transportation in the days before the automobile while also pulling plows and providing exercise and fun for riders, fox hunters and polo players alike. (Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1886-88, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

Some gardeners, stable hands, farmhands and seasonal workers may have lived off-estate on one of the lettered streets -- A, B, C, D, E, F, etc. -- off Main Street in downtown Irvington. It’s difficult to track those folks down.

I can be certain of at least one hired hand in that situation. While researching this story, I stumbled across a relative of mine by marriage, Matthew J. Kelly, who worked as a gardener on David Dows' Charlton Hall estate (basically where Dows Lane Elementary School and Half Moon Co-op Apartments are today). Kelly lived at 32 South E (now Eckar) Street in a house he bought for $1,400 in 1912. The house remained in my family until 2018.

My Irish immigrant great-grandfather Michael John Connors was working as a 23-year-old coachman and living on an Irvington estate in 1870 and later worked and lived on different Irvington estates as a gardener and then superintendent through at least 1915.

Fox hunting was a popular sport among the uber-wealthy Irvington upper crust in the last half of the 19th century. One such recorded hunt took place at retailer Isaac Stern's Cedar Lawn estate on the site of today’s Irvington High School. Field likely had his hand in it, too, and these kennels would have provided the perfect home for his hounds. (Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1886-88, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

What we can find in census listings are estate workers who lived in the main house with the estate owner’s family or other housing on the estate.

Let’s take a look at three of these estates’ federal census entries to get an idea. Bear with me -- it’s a little tricky since the census generally tracked people living in their year-round houses, most often Manhattan, not at their summer estates.

Here’s a look at the 1870 census record of Cyrus West Field and his 780-acre estate Ardsley -- in the areas of Ardsley Park and Ardsley Country Club and thereabouts today, the 1900 census record of Charles C. and Julia Worthington’s 13-acre estate, and the 1910 census record of Isaac Newton Seligman’s estate which had been split off from James Congdell Fargo's one-time 39-acre estate, which stood south of West Sunnyside Lane on the Hudson River side of North Broadway. The northern half of Seligman's estate, which included his house, was called Willowbrook and lay north directly across West Sunnyside Lane. Today the estate is called Shadowbrook. Seligman's land to the south was used strictly as farmland.

In those three estates, all of the in-residence indoor and outdoor help were white, the vast majority Irish immigrants.

The 1870 census was the only one in which Cyrus West Field was living in Irvington when canvassed. In 1880 he was canvassed in his Manhattan house, while most of the 1890 census was lost to a fire and he died shortly thereafter.

Field's Ardsley household in 1870 included Field, his wife Mary and four of their seven offspring. Also living in the main house were domestic servants Mary Smith 40, Mary Riley 35, Lucy Lagena 28, Camelia Cahart 26, and Bridget Fitzpatrick 19. Lagena and Cahart were from France, the others were from Ireland, all born before or during the great Irish famine.

In other houses on the estate lived coachman James Best 29, laborers Peter Dugan 40 and Philip Kennedy 29 and gardener James Downey 48. All were Irish immigrants.

This was the help as the estate was just getting established. It grew to include houses for all seven of Field’s children as well as massive greenhouses, stables, barns, kennels and an ice house and photos exist of all of them.

Unfortunately as noted above, the 1870 census is the only real snapshot in time we have of that estate which was in its infancy. 

Cyrus West Field’s Ardsley featured barns and livestock including horses, cows, donkeys and mules and the accompanying staff of workers needed to care for them. (Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1886-88, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

In the 1900 federal census, Charles and Julia Worthington had an extended household consisting of their own children plus Julia’s sister and widowed mother.

The help living in the main house included coachman James McFarland 39, groom David Hagland 20, laundress Annie Rose 45, and servants Annie Burns 20, Mary Walsh 30, Eliza Boyle 25 and Katie Brady 25.

All the household help were immigrants from Ireland except Annie Rose, who hailed from Sweden.

Like many Gilded Age estates in the Hudson River Valley, Cyrus West Field’s Ardsley had an ice house (pictured) dug deep into the earth. Farmhands would cut large blocks of ice from ponds or lakes on the estate -- in this case likely Woodland Lake -- or even from the nearby Hudson River. The ice would be stored deep underground in these ice houses, packed all around with hay or straw. Remarkably, the ice could remain for most of the year. (Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1886-88, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

Also living on the estate were gardeners Laurence Trees 30, Robert Griffiths 39, Andrew Taft 54 and John Taft 26, and coachmen William Davidson 27 and Frank Kenney 28. All were born in the U.S. except Trees (Germany), Griffiths (Wales) and Andrew Taft (Ireland).

In the 1910 federal census, Isaac Newton Seligman shared a house with his wife, son and daughter. Also in the household were servants Thelma Carlson 23, Delia Brady 28, Margaret Keane 27, Madelaine Hogg 22 and Katie Gilroy 30. All were Irish immigrants except Carlson from Sweden and Hogg from Hungary.

In Seligman’s case, we can also see his outdoor workers who lived in three other houses on the estate, each of the buildings housing a married couple and their children or lodgers. Of the estate workers, superintendent Thomas Rassidy was 50, gardener Edward Gilbert 26, groom Patrick Lenehan 42, coachman George Cady 43, butler Andrew Windahl 34 and gardener John Bringer 38. The outdoor workers were all born in the U.S. with the exceptions of Lenehan (Ireland), Windahl (Sweden) and Bringer (England).

What kind of compensation did the workers receive? At the turn of the 20th century, a housemaid would be paid between $2.75 and $4.25 per week plus room and board. A farm worker, gardener, coachman or groom likely between $5 and $6.50 per week, the lesser amount if receiving room and board, the latter if not.

Farmhands generally saw their wages cut in half during the winter months, usually December through March. In some cases, estate owners laid off most of their  summer estate staff during the winter after closing the estates for the season.

Maids reported working as many as 14 hours per day and not being allowed to quit for the day until after 8 p.m. Many were given a half day off on Sundays which usually meant ending their day after 4 p.m. 

Cyrus West Field’s Ardsley featured greenhouses, conservatories and grafteries for growing flowers, fruits and vegetables year round. This greenhouse lies outside a cottage for workers, likely a gardener or farm worker and his family.(Photo by Charles D. Arnold, ca. 1886-88, Ardsley Park Collection, University of Maryland-Baltimore County)

* Click here for links to dozens of other Gilded Age stories by this author