Barron Court: Country retreat of Civil War surgeon, financier and sportsman

The granite Barron Court villa with its prominent porches and veranda overlook the estate's extensive formal gardens (foreground) in this 1908 photo. The photo was taken four years after the estate changed hands from founder Dr. John Conner Barron to the family of pencil manufacturer Emil Berolzheimer. Berolzheimer renamed the estate Gellian Court in honor of his wife, Gella. (Photo courtesy March 1909 American Homes and Gardens magazine, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

Barron Court was the late 19th century Italianate villa and country seat of Gilded Age businessman, adventurer and Civil War surgeon Dr. John Conner Barron.

In the early 20th century, it would become the family country home and farm of Eagle Pencil magnate Emil Berolzheimer and his wife Gella. The 50-acre Tarrytown, N.Y., estate would remain in the Berolzheimer family until after Gella's 1948 death. It was razed around 1950 and is now the site of the Sleepy Hollow Gardens apartment complex, 177 White Plains Road.

Dr. John Conner Barron,

ca. 1895.

John Conner Barron was the scion of two of Colonial America's pre-eminent families, the Barrons of Woodbridge, N.J., whose name appears prominently on that town's infrastructure today, and the Conner clan of Staten Island, N.Y.

At least two Barron family members served in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. On Barron's maternal line, Colonel Richard Conner played a prominent role in the revolt of the breakaway colonies as well.

This 1891 map gives an overview of Barron Court (shaded in light blue), including the 22-acre plot where the main house was located, the 16-acre plot immediately north of it (marked Dr. J.C. Barron), adjacent to Martling Avenue, and another 12 acres (plots marked "Jno. C. Barron") to its south across White Plains Road. The Hudson River and South Broadway, not pictured, would be to the west, far left. (Frederick W. Beers, published 1891 by Watson & Co., New York, N.Y., David Rumsey Historical Map Collection)

Barron, while still an undergraduate student at Yale, came into a large inheritance upon the sudden death of his father in 1859. The young Barron apprenticed with a New Haven, Conn., medical practice near Yale and after graduation earned his medical degree from the prestigious College of Physicians and Surgeons in Manhattan in early 1861. That school is now Columbia University's medical school.

Immediately upon receiving his M.D., Barron volunteered and served with the Union Army in the Civil War which began on April 12, 1861. He wound up as assistant surgeon in the 69th Infantry Regiment of the New York Militia which would be known to posterity as "The Fighting 69th" or "The Fighting Irish" for its Irish immigrant heritage and its battle reputation in the Civil War, World War I and World War II and the second Iraq War.

John Barron earned his medical degree at Manhattan's College of Physicians and Surgeons (pictured) on West 59th Street in 1861. The medical school had been born as part of King's College -- renamed Columbia College (later university) after the fledgling U.S. threw off British colonial rule in 1783 -- and has been fully re-integrated into Columbia University since 1891. Barron would certainly have recognized the horse-drawn street trolley (left) and horse-drawn carriage (right). (Image courtesy New York Public Library and Columbia.edu)

Aware that his regiment's medical side was under-supplied, Barron donated $1,000 $32,000 today) in medical supplies upon joining the unit. It came in handy at the First Battle of Bull Run (known in the South as First Manassas) at Manassas, Va., on July 21, 1861 when recently named U.S. Surgeon General Clement Finley failed to send any medical supplies to the front until after the battle had ended. The 69th had suffered 45 deaths at Bull Run and that number might have been higher but for the fact the regiment's additional 85 wounded had access to Barron-funded supplies.

With a brief exception, Barron remained connected with the military, specifically as surgeon of the New York National Guard, for years, rising to the rank of colonel in 1871. He did however give up the practice of medicine, turning his attention instead to the myriad business responsibilities left to his oversight by his father.

Visitors to the Barron estate arrived at the porte-cochere at the back of the Barron Court and later Gellian Court villa off White Plains Road as shown in this 1908 photo after the estate had changed hands from J.C. Barron to the family of Emil Berolzheimer. (Photo courtesy March 1909 American Homes and Gardens magazine, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

He and his bride, Harriet Mulford Williams, a direct descendant of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams, honeymooned in Europe after their 1869 wedding. Barron later embarked on a 700-mile journey up the Nile River to Egypt's frontier with Sudan. At the time, such an odyssey was considered extremely challenging because of the primitive travel conditions in the area.

In business, Barron served as president of the Carpenter Steel Works of Reading, Pa., as well as the Kentucky Coal, Iron and Development Company and the Lyons and Campbell (L&C) Ranch and Cattle Company in New Mexico. He also served as a director in the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, the United New Jersey Railroad and Canal Company and several banking institutions.

This 1886 color engraving shows Barron Court not long after its construction by Dr. John Conner Barron. Note the lawn tennis net in the foreground, center, just north of the estate's entrance off White Plains Road. (Photo courtesy Westchester County Historical Society)

Carpenter Steel earned a reputation as a premier supplier of armaments for the U.S. military, repeatedly exceeding contract requirements for quality.

The L&C Ranch was the second largest in U.S. history. Barron got involved in 1884 and it eventually covered some 240 square miles -- more than 1 million acres (Rhode Island is around 775,000 acres). At its peak in 1900 the ranch ran up to 100,000 head of cattle, sending some 30,000 head to market per year. One of Barron's partners in the ranch was former Union Army commanding General George B. McClellan, one-time governor of New Jersey.

This oak-paneled billiard room with Flemish motif and tiled fireplace shown in a 1908 photo would have likely featured at least a few big-game trophies from original owner John Conner Barron during his lifetime, but they no longer graced the property after it was purchased by the family of Emil Berolzheimer. (Photo courtesy American Homes and Gardens magazine, March 1909 issue, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

Barron was an avid big game hunter. Mounted animal trophies adorned the walls at Barron Court as well as his Manhattan townhouse at 37 Madison Avenue overlooking Madison Square Park.

His love of shooting extended to the pursuit of waterfowl on and near the Currituck Sound in North Carolina each winter. Barron, along with twenty-odd other Gilded Age millionaire sportsmen, was a member of two waterfowl hunting clubs on the sound, near the village of Corolla on North Carolina's famed Outer Banks close to the southeastern border of Virginia.

J.C. Barron was a member of the prestigious -- yet relatively primitive -- Currituck Shooting Club south of Corolla on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The club  catered to only 21 hunters, each of whom bought a deed to one of the 21 bedrooms in the main lodge building at right, remained off the grid until around 1940 when electricity and plumbing were installed. Remarkably, personal chamber pots were needed in each room until that period. The club was founded in Manhattan by wealthy male New Yorkers in 1857, disbanded during the Civil War, then re-established during Reconstruction. The 2-1/2 story clubhouse pictured here ca. 1935 was built in 1879 when Barron was a member of the club. The original 1857 clubhouse was similar in appearance but had to be replaced because of damage suffered during the war. Barron became an executive of the club in 1880. The club owned 3,100 acres of shoreline on the Currituck Sound side of the Outer Banks, a series of barrier islands, and was utilized for hunting the migratory waterfowl wintering on the Atlantic Flyway, specifically geese and ducks, for which the sound was renowned. Hunting season ran from mid-October to late January. The club also raised and released wild ducks to help keep stocks plentiful. Interestingly, the club survived relatively intact until the main building burned in 2003 and the island property was redeveloped as a beach resort called The Currituck Club. The membership of the shooting club had dipped to a dozen by 1980. (Photo courtesy Gloria Faye Bateman Roberts)

The Currituck Shooting Club had no plumbing or electricity until 1940, well after Barron's generation had passed on, but that didn't deter luminaries such as future U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, financier J.P. Morgan, railroad empire heir W.K. Vanderbilt and steel magnate Andrew Carnegie from gracing its halls. Morgan and Vanderbilt, like Barron, were members, the others, guests of members.

Barron was also a member of the nearby Narrows Island Club, which later was absorbed by the Currituck Shooting Club. If you are wondering how involved his family was with these hunting stays, it wasn't. The clubs were male-only. The only women permitted on the premises were cooking, cleaning and service staff employees.

A long stone stairway leads to the stucco casino -- a small recreation retreat, the name taken from the Italian word cascina or small house -- of the Barron Court/Gellian Court estate at the highest point on the estate. The casino consisted of a single covered room with nooks for fireplace, pantry and rest room. The main room was enclosed for four-season use by floor-to-ceiling French doors that could be opened in appropriate weather to incorporate the outdoor covered piazzas (pictured left and right) and the uncovered veranda to which the stairway leads. The views from this building were the best on the estate. This 1908 photo was taken after the estate had changed hands from the late John Barron to the family of Emil Berolzheimer. (Photo courtesy American Homes and Gardens magazine, March 1909 issue, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

The hunting season began in mid-October when members would travel to the area via private yacht from New York or sometimes by rail from New York City to Newport News, Va., then by boat, horse-drawn carriage or both to the club.

Club members often traveled further South after leaving the Outer Banks, spending the late winter and early spring at another exclusive Gilded Age club, the Jekyll Island Club. That club was on Jekyll Island, Ga., about 30 miles northeast of the Florida state line. Club members -- Barron was one -- included Morgan and the Vanderbilts as well as Barron's Westchester Rockefeller neighbors from nearby Kykuit and Rockwood Hall. The members purchased the island outright and used it as an exclusive private playground from 1886 to 1942.

This 1893 map shows the main residential section of Barron Court between White Plains Road (south, top) and Martling Avenue (not pictured, north, bottom) and South Broadway (not pictured, west, right) gives an indication of the type of buildings that would be on a Hudson Valley Gilded Age estate. Barron's estate included a stable, a bowling alley, greenhouses where fruits, flowers and vegetables could be grown year-round, a spring and reservoir to provide water for drinking and irrigation and likely ice in winter. The ice would be preserved deep underground, usually packed with insulating straw through much of the summer. Cottages and other outbuildings would have included housing for the estate superintendent and head gardener as well as a stable master and/or coachman or groom. (Joseph Rudolf Bien for Julius Bien & Co., New York)

Barron's favorite pastimes were not limited to shooting and hunting. He was a devoted yachtsman and member of the New York, Larchmont, Atlantic and Seawanhaka Corinthian yacht clubs and took part in races including one of the era's most famous, a showdown between his vessel Wave against the Scottish cutter Madge in one of the first international cutter competitions. It took place in 1881 from the Seawanhaka facility on Centre Island in Oyster Bay, N.Y., won by Madge.

He owned several racing yachts and it can safely be assumed he would have tied up at the New York Yacht Club's dock on the Hudson River at today's Ardsley-on-Hudson Metro North Railroad Station, at the time a private facility affiliated with the exclusive Ardsley Casino, of which Barron was also a member. The club included the usual Gilded Age luminaries from the Rockefeller, Vanderbilt and Morgan clans to name but a few.

Future US. president -- but at the time a Harvard University undergraduate -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt skippers his ice yacht Hawk on the Hudson River at Roosevelt Point near Hyde Park, N.Y. in this 1905 photo. FDR's uncle, John Roosevelt, was a founding member and the first commodore of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club in 1885 and FDR was a member of the club, which included Dr. John Conner Barron of Tarrytown. John Roosevelt inherited his father's Roosevelt Point estate near Hyde Park. The club still exists today. Ice yachts were the fastest means of transportation of their day. The National Park Service reports ice yachts being clocked in even modest winds at 75 mph. The sport came to the New World with New York's original Dutch colonizers. (Photo courtesy Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, N.Y.)

Barron competed in ice yacht racing on the Hudson River as a member of the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club. Fellow members included Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the future U.S. president, whose uncle, John Roosevelt, was the club's first commodore.

The renowned veteran physician -- he was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, an association of Union Civil War veterans -- had other interests, too. He was a founding member of the Union League Club of New York in 1863 as well as a member of the New-York Historical Society and life fellow of the American Geographical Society and box owner at Manhattan's original Metropolitan Opera House.

Two long porticoed wings flanking a roofed tea house (center) marked the south boundary of Barron Court's sumptuous landscaped gardens with a high stone wall backing up the buildings along White Plains Road. Flowers and flowering shrubs are planted in beds in front of the buildings. This 1908 photo was taken after the estate had changed hands from the late John Barron to the family of Emil Berolzheimer. (Photo courtesy American Homes and Gardens magazine, March 1909 issue, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

As Barron aged, his life at Barron Court became less than idyllic. On July 3, 1895, the 58-year-old Barron learned that his son Carlyle had shot and killed a woman shortly after dark on the Tarrytown estate. Carlyle, 18 at the time, told authorities he had been hunting woodchuck with a shotgun when he thought he saw a skunk at the crest of a hill on his father's land.

Carlyle said he fired at the creature and when he got to the site he found he'd mistakenly shot and killed a 40-year-old, well-dressed woman who'd apparently been lying down in the long grass. The woman's identity was not publicly revealed and in the July 4 New York Times, the killing was dismissed as "a mistake." Carlyle was never charged with a crime but soon left the area, caught up with some 100,000 fellow prospectors in the Klondike Gold Rush sometime after 1896 and before 1900. 

The 37 Madison Avenue townhouse that would become the Manhattan home of Dr. John Conner Barron (very narrow third building on right from corner with awnings over pair of windows on each floor) stood two doors away from the 41 Madison Avenue corner mansion of Leonard Walter Jerome, the original "King of Wall Street" and grandfather of future British prime minister Winston Churchill. Jerome's mansion is shown at 26th Street and Madison in this 1878 photo. The buildings were directly across Madison Avenue from Madison Square Park. The Jerome Mansion was leased by The Union League Club from 1867 to 1883 when it became home to the University Club until 1899. The Manhattan Club -- where the eponymous cocktail was created -- took over the space at that time and remained in the mansion until 1965 when it finally purchased the property from the Jerome heirs. It was demolished in 1967. The Churchill connection? Leonard Jerome's daughter Jennie married Lord Randolph Churchill on April 15, 1874 moved to London and gave birth to son Winston on Nov. 30, 1875. The Manhattan Club? One of its bartenders created the eponymous Manhattan cocktail for a reception hosted by the future Lady Randolph Churchill, later Churchill's mother. (1878 photo courtesy Library of Congress)

In Alaska, Carlyle suffered a mental breakdown that led to his being held in a straight jacket at a Seattle hospital for a documented two years at the turn of the century. He apparently never recovered, spending the rest of his life at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic -- now the New York-Presbyterian Westchester Behavioral Health Center in White Plains.

On Nov. 17, 1902, the bad news continued as J.C. Barron's wife of 33 years died in Tarrytown. Harriet's death led the widower to retreat from Barron Court, seeing him spend most of the rest of his time in New York at his Madison Square Park townhouse, two doors south of his Union League Club. He died of typhoid fever at his Manhattan home at age 71 in 1908.

Emil Berolzheimer (center, holding rifle) is pictured with two unidentified men, one likely a guide, after bagging a moose during a hunting trip to the Yellowstone River area of Montana a couple of years before his death at age 60 in 1922. The Berolzheimers shared a love of hunting and the outdoors with their Tarrytown estate's original owner, J.C. Barron. (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

No later than the summer season of 1904, Barron rented Barron Court to German immigrant Emil Berolzheimer, president of his family-owned Eagle Pencil Company, with U.S. headquarters in Manhattan and factory in Yonkers. Berolzheimer and his wife, Gella, bought the estate from Barron in October 1904 and renamed the property Gellian Court in Gella's honor. 

Emil Berolzheimer was born in 1862 in the town of Furth, near Nuremburg, in the Kingdom of Bavaria. Bavaria was absorbed into the fledgling German empire in 1871. His grandfather, Daniel, had co-founded what became Eagle Pencil in Furth in the early 1850s and Daniel and son Heinrich opened the company's U.S. operations in New York in the late 1850s. Heinrich took over his father's share of the company when Daniel died suddenly in 1859. By 1882, Heinrich had closed the German operation, bought out his father's former partner's share, and established the Eagle Pencil brand.

This octagonal room just off the porte-cochere had a domed ceiling illuminated by electric lights, relatively new in 1908 when this photo was taken at the Gellian Court mansion. This photo was taken after the estate had changed hands from John Barron to the Berolzheimers. (Photo courtesy American Homes and Gardens magazine, March 1909 issue, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

Heinrich entrusted two of his three sons, Emil and Philip, to run the U.S. branch of the company, Emil as president and Philip as treasurer. The company expanded to England in 1892 where it exists today as a subsidiary of Newell Brands.

Berolzheimer heirs would continue to run the company until 1986 -- eventually shortening and legally changing their surname to Berol and the company name from Eagle Pencil to Berol Corporation. The company was sold in 1986 when there was no sixth generation Berolzheimer heir to run it. 

The ice house (stone entry at side of mound, left) and rustic summer gazebo (rear) are shown in 1908 when this photo was taken at the Gellian Court estate. The gazebo was built atop a spring. This photo was taken after the estate had changed hands from the late John Barron to the family of Emil Berolzheimer. (Photo courtesy American Homes and Gardens magazine, March 1909 issue, University of Michigan Library)

Emil Berolzheimer built an Upper West Side townhouse at 21 W. 75th St., a half-block from Central Park West in 1909 that served as the family's Manhattan home. The brownstone was eventually purchased in 2010 and renovated by television home improvement host Bob Vila ("This Old House," "Home Again With Bob Vila").

Emil and Philip left one brother behind in Furth, Michael. Michael, an accomplished attorney, was a renowned art collector who was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1938 via Switzerland because of the persecution he faced as a Jew. His German real estate and art were confiscated by the Nazi regime. He wound up in Mount Vernon, N.Y., where he died in 1942.

The entrance to the estate's stables including carriage shed (foreground, right) and carriage house (center, rear) are pictured. Behind these buildings in the stable complex were a large number of horse stalls, a courtyard surrounded on two sides by wings housing a variety of farm buildings including a wagon barn, tool house, sheep shed, chicken houses and wood shed. Stairs on either end of the complex led to second floor accommodations likely for stable hands or other estate workers. The carriage house and courtyard likely became garages and parking areas after the advent of the automobile. This 1908 photo was taken after the estate had been sold to the Berolzheimer family. (Photo courtesy American Homes and Gardens magazine, March 1909 issue, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

Gellian Court made headlines on July 9, 1926 when Gella's daughter-in-law, Madeleine Rossin Berolzheimer, wife of Alfred C. Berolzheimer, was held at gunpoint in a home invasion along with her maid in the Gellian Court mansion while robbers grabbed $6,000 in jewelry (about $95,000 today) at approximately 3 a.m.

When Gella Goldsmith Berolzheimer died at Gellian Court at  age 83 on Feb. 13, 1948, her heirs had already established their own private estates elsewhere. They had shortened their surname to Berol during World War II and cut ties to the family estate,  selling Gellian Court to developers in around 1950.

The dining room on John Barron's former estate is shown in this 1908 photo after the estate had changed hands to the family of Emil Berolzheimer. (Photo courtesy American Homes and Gardens magazine, March 1909 issue, University of Michigan College of Agriculture digital library)

Four of the offspring of the Barron and Berolzheimer families who had lived at Barron Court/Gellian Court went on to establish great estates of their own. Here's a look ...

May Barron Archbold, 1872-1939

J.C. Barron's only daughter married John Foster (Jack) Archbold III, son of John Dustin Archbold, Standard Oil of New Jersey president and right-hand man of Standard Oil founder and Kykuit neighbor in Tarrytown, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. J.D. Archbold owned Cedar Cliff, an estate less than a mile north of Barron Court, across Broadway from today's Church of the Transfiguration. Cedar Cliff was later home to te St. Vincent de Paul Institute boarding school for children and is now the site of The Quay at Tarrytown condominiums.

The young couple built a winter estate with an 18,000-square-foot mansion on the 1,300-acre Chinquapin Plantation in Thomasville, Ga., in 1910. The estate was a hunting retreat on the banks of the Ochlocknee River with quail and deer figuring prominently. It remains in private hands today, though the Archbolds are long gone. The renovated and improved estate has been listed for sale at between $10.9 million and $25 million since around 2008.

This aerial photo of Chinquapin Plantation in Thomasville, Ga., gives an idea of the luxurious manor house built by Jack and May Archbold in 1910 as well as the acreage surrounding it. (Photo ca. 2012, courtesy farmflip.com)

May was a charter member of the Colony Club at 120 Madison Avenue -- four blocks north of her father's former townhouse, and now the home to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Widowed since Jack's death in 1930, May died in 1939 at her Manhattan home in The Majestic building, 115 Central Park West, immediately south of the famous Dakota building opposite the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park. 

Former Beatle John Lennon was assassinated outside The Dakota on Dec. 8, 1980.

May's brothers -- besides the mentally compromised Carlyle -- did not live gilded lives, although they did outlive May, who died at a relatively young 57. Retired banker John Conner Jr. and retired real estate investor Thomas each died in golf heaven -- Southern Pines, North Carolina, near famed Pinehurst Country Club. Each was living in a modest single family home in the small Tar Heel resort town when he died, John at 86 in 1965, Thomas at 85 in 1955.

Edwin M. Berol, 1887-1949

Gella's son Edwin M. Berol and his wife, Myra Cohn Berol, owned their own Upper West Side townhouse at 34 W. 74th St., a block away from his parents' brownstone and a half block from Central Park.

In addition, Edwin and Myra owned a 31-acre estate -- Cloister Farm -- in Bedford Hills, N.Y., which they built in 1936. They bred and raised hunting, jumping and show horses there. Cloister Farm remained in the Berol family until its sale by Berol heirs in 2007. Asking price on the estate was about $14 million in 2007.

They owned a much larger estate in South Carolina, purchasing the 2,400-acre Davant Plantation in Gillisonville in 1938. The plantation housed 41 slaves on the eve of the Civil War under the ownership of attorney and planter Richard Davant, a signer of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession on Dec. 20, 1860.

The 5,000-square-foot mansion at Davant Plantation in Gillisonville, S.C., is located between the Southern port cities of Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C. (Photo ca. 2007, courtesy Plantation Services Inc.)

Davant was used by the Berols to as a home for their kennels of champion purebred Irish setters and other bird dogs as well as a hunting lodge for themselves and guests. If you've ever seen the 1994 Julia Roberts film "Something to Talk About," also starring Robert Duvall, Dennis Quaid and Gena Rowlands, you've seen Davant Plantation. It was the location where most of the movie was filmed.

Myra, who was also an accomplished artist, maintained the plantation for 31 years after Edwin's 1949 death, her heirs selling it to another private owner in 1981, a year after Myra's death.

Alfred Charles Berol, 1892-1874

Edwin wasn't the only one of Emil and Gella's three sons to go on to own mega estates of their own, much larger in fact than Gellian Court itself.

Alfred C. and his wife, Madeleine Rossin Berol, owned a 72-acre country farm from about 1938 that they called Faraway Farm. It was locad in northern Westchester County adjacent to the Wade Pound Ridge Reservation. The couple raised horses and purebred Aberdeen cattle on that property. It was later sold and appears to be known today as Birdstone Farm, 20 Boutonville Road, Cross River, N.Y. 

Alfred, a lieutenant, served with the U.S. Army in France in World War I. He became Eagle Pencil president after Edwin's death and was appointed chairman later.

More famously, Alfred and "Mady" owned the 142-acre AMK Ranch on Jackson Lake near Jackson Hole, Wyo., on the outskirts of Grand Teton National Park. They bought the ranch in 1936 and quickly commissioned construction of a log retreat on the property which they named Berol Lodge. The AMK name was an acronym composed of the names Alfred, Madeleine and their only child, Kenneth.

Guests at Alfred Berol's Berol Lodge at AMK Ranch were treated to breathtaking views like this from inside the lodge looking across Jackson Lake to the mountains of the Teton Range. (Photo courtesy National Park Service, Grand Teton National Park)

Alfred and his family spent the last week of July up through the first week of October at AMK Ranch almost every year until Alfred's death in 1974. Kenneth inherited the property and sold it to the government as an adjunct to Grand Teton National Park in 1976.

Today it is known as the University of Wyoming/National Park Service Research Center. The rededicated Berol Lodge was used for three days in September 1989 for talks between U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, for talks that led to U.S.-Soviet agreements that eventually led to the end of the Cold War in 1991.

Henry Berol, 1896-1976

Like Alfred, Henry served as an officer in France during World War I, but as a major. The pair entered the fray for the U.S. against their native Germany.

Henry was higher ranked during the war, but at Eagle Pencil he wasn't. There he served as vice president and later vice chairman under Alfred.

Henry topped both of his brothers in the property department. He and his wife, the former Gemma Barbieri, owned a 401-acre estate for about 40 years until the mid-1960s in Chappaqua, N.Y., which they named Berol Lodge. There they raised champion bird dogs and game birds.

About a third of the Berol Lodge property was sold to the Town of New Castle in 1964 and is now Whippoorwill Park in Chappaqua. The rest was developed after 1966 as custom-built residential housing about half on two-acre plots, the rest on one-acre plots.

The video "Augusta Outdoors:  A Cemetery for Dogs" 

gives a look at Henry Berol's pet cemetery at his Di-Lane

Plantation home in Waynesboro, Ga., about 30 miles

south of Augusta. (Video courtesy The Augusta Chronicle)

In addition, beginning in 1934 he and Gemma began buying property in Waynesboro, Ga. -- including the Davis-Kilpatrick Plantation and numerous surrounding small farms, by the late 1950s consolidating it all into an 8,100-acre estate they named Di-Lane Plantation in honor of their daughters Diane and Elaine. There they hunted quail and raised champion bird dogs and Tennessee Walking Horses.

Henry's care for his beloved pets led to his establishing a pet cemetery at Di-Lane that features headstones to about 200 former pets, 122 of them his bird dogs, that is a tourist attraction in Waynesboro today.

Di-Lane became the site for regular bird dog field trials put on by the Georgia Field Trial Association and remains so today. Henry Berol's influence has led to Waynesboro being known as "Bird Dog Capital of the World." 

Di-Lane is now owned by the Army Corps of Engineers and leased to the University of Georgia and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources which run it as Di-Lane Plantation Wildlife Management Area.