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Records of Gabrielle Greeley Clendenin, 1891-1999
When her sister Ida moved away from New Castle in 1875, three years after their parents’ death, Gabrielle Greeley (1857-1937) took possession of the family farm and remained there for the rest of her life. She married Episcopal minister Dr. Frank Montrose Clendenin in 1891. This photograph shows her in her wedding dress. Gabrielle and her husband transformed the concrete barn that Horace Greeley built in 1856 into their home, and they named it Rehoboth. It remains a private residence.
Gabrielle worshipped her father’s memory. This letter she wrote to Westchester historian Alvah French concerns a statue of Horace Greeley that was proposed for erection in New York City.
The Clendenins were generous supporters of the community. In 1906 they erected the Episcopal church of St. Mary the Virgin, just north of the grove of evergreens that Gabrielle’s father had planted 50 years earlier. Gabrielle donated the land and her husband the building. Constructed of local fieldstone, it was patterned after the parish church, built in 1494, in the English village of Monken Hadley.