Bedford Garden Club Originals
JUDY CULBRETH’S BEDFORD GARDEN CLUB ORIGINALS:NEW YORK’S ELOISE LUQUER AND DELIA MARBLE
Judy Culbreth’s daughter, Brett Cameron, co-owner of La Maison Fête and President of the Bedford Village Business Association, lives in the historic Airlie Farm in Bedford – former home of a woman named Delia Marble...and that’s where Judy’s new book, Bedford Garden Club Originals: New York’s Eloise Luquer and Delia Marble, starts.
Judy is actually a Southern belle, as she was born and raised in Alabama, went to the University of South Alabama, and is now enjoying her retirement, with her second husband, back home in Fairhope, Alabama. But Judy got a job right out of college working at Seventeen Magazine, which led to a successful career as a writer and editor at several other prominent magazines in New York City.
For three decades she lived in New York, and that’s where she raised her daughter, Brett, and son, Charlie. “When Brett moved to AirIie Farm in Bedford, I became intrigued with its history and was interested in giving my grandkids – Grey, Harry and Georgia – the full legacy of growing up in such a fabulous place,” Judy says about the undertaking. “I was a history major, and genealogy is one of my hobbies. As soon as I started doing a bit of research, I became fascinated with Airlie Farm’s long-ago owner, Delia Marble, and the remarkable work she did. She and her dear friend Eloise Luquer developed so much that’s still wonderful about Bedford.”
Eloise Payne Luquer (1862-1947) and Delia West Marble (1868-1951) were both born in the late- Victorian and early-Progressive eras – before women had the right to vote! They experienced the advent of electricity and running water, and lived through World War I and the Suffragette Movement. They helped pioneer what role women could play in American society. As Delia was famous for saying: ‘If you have an idea, and you know it’s a good idea, get the people together and go ahead and do it!’ There seemed to be no limit on Delia’s or Eloise’s imagination, fortitude, or resolve. “The lesson for women today,” says Culbreth, “is the power of collaboration! Leadership through affiliation.”
Eloise’s father, a graduate of Columbia College and former lawyer, was pastor at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church for more than half a century. Delia’s father, a political operative and editor of New York World newspaper, hobnobbed with brilliant, powerful men of that day and may be best known for having stood-up to President Lincoln. However, although Eloise’s and Delia’s fathers were well-educated and intellectual men, and both the women’s brothers were sent off to private boarding schools and universities like Columbia and the U.S. Naval Academy, Eloise and Delia were each tutored at home. Besides home-schooling, they were each given a sprinkling of mail-order courses, and random art and botany lessons, but they were mostly self-taught, and completely self-started. They were both single women, or what was then known as spinsters. They were both intuitive leaders.
Together, Eloise and Delia were founders of the Bedford Free Library and essential supporters of the Bedford Historical Society. Also, as the title of Culberth’s novel would suggest, they were among the earliest members of the Bedford Garden Club, with Delia serving as president from 1917 to 1919 and Eloise, a founder, serving as president from 1929 to 1932. And, as such, they championed the development of the Nature Trail and Museum at Ward-Pound Ridge Reservation. In tribute, the wildflower pathway there is named for these two friends – the Luquer-Marble Memorial Garden.
Eloise and Delia were also leading members of the Garden Club of America, with Eloise, importantly, Chair of the GCA’s National Conservation Committee in the critical years from 1929 to 1932. As such, Eloise was a leading fundraiser – with the Town of Bedford as the second largest contributor behind only the State of California – for the GCA’s acquisition, dedication, and preservation of the 2,552 acre Redwood Grove at Canoe Creek, in Humboldt County, California. The parcel is no incorporated into GCA’s 5,100 acre collection of 17 groves.
Eloise was an accomplished artist, and her 200+ watercolors of the wildflowers of Westchester County are a part of the body of artwork and work as a preservationist that earned her the title “The Audubon Of Wildflowers.” As Culbreth writes: “Eloise’s art glorified the stunning beauty of native flowers. She also understood and preached the complex role these creations played in sustaining life: nurturing pollinators and thus the food supply, filtering pollutants, controlling erosion and regulating air quality. ...Eloise’s artwork and her mission had perfect synergy: she used her watercolors to illustrate knowledgeable talks on wildflower conservation. Work for garden clubs provided her a multitude of forums to communicate about these twin passions - she gave an estimated twenty thousand presentations in thirty-six states.” In 1939, the GCA presented Eloise with their Medal of Achievement for her outstanding work in creating interest in nature and wildflowers.
And, perhaps most impressive, during the era of World War I, Delia championed and helped prepare the way for the creation of the Farmerettes and the Bedford Agricultural Training Camp of the Woman’s Land Army. Bedford Camp was the cradle of the Farmerettes – and put the Town of Bedford on the world’s map! A generation before WWII’s ‘Rosie The Riveter’, Delia cultivated the idea of ‘farming girls in dungarees with peanut caps on their heads, doing man’s work’. Bedford Camp recruited college girls, city women and factory gals to do the hard work of farming to help with the nation’s food supply during wartime. The Bedford Camp, with headquarters located right across from where the Rippowam Cisqua School sits today - and Delia was a ‘Founding Mother’ of Rip as well! - was the first Farmerette training site of what quickly developed into a nationwide movement! Farmerettes also lived and worked at Airlie Farm up until the 1930s.
“These were great women,” declares Culbreth, “and I enjoyed every minute of doing the deep dive into their lives and rich history. The Bedford Garden Club, Frick Collection and Frick Art Reference Library Archives, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and the Bedford Historical Society – and particularly Evelyne Ryan and Diane Bamford – were generous with their knowledge and shared treasures. I’m thrilled that The History Press published the book, so the legend of Eloise and Delia is told and their legacy continues.”
