Boscobel (Garrison, New York)

] According to one biographer, he saw himself as a "conspicuously well-fixed farmer, surrounded with objects of taste...who did not farm too seriously". He began this process by marrying Elizabeth Corne, daughter of another Loyalist family, in 1794. But within a year he faced financial difficulties: Erskine's heirs stopped the annuity after his death, and his own lavish tastes and generous gifts to less fortunate family members contributing to reduce his circumstances.

Dyckman returned to London in 1799, expecting to mend his fortunes and return to his wife, son and daughter within a year. Instead he remained three years, finishing the remaining quartermasters' investigation under John Dalrymple, himself once one of the inquiry's targets. He restored his fortunes by persuading the Erskines to restore their annuity and negotiating an extremely generous settlement with Dalrymple and the other quartermasters whom he had helped clear, apparently by manipulating evidence.

Wealthier but injured and ailing, Dyckman returned to the United States in 1803 and set about building the house he had long planned. It is possible that he had blueprints drawn up in England, since work began within six months of his return. The architect is not known, although surviving records show that a William Vermilye was heavily involved as construction manager. He died in 1806, before it was finished. His loving widow completed it, and she and their surviving son moved into it in 1808.

Restoration

It would stay in the family until 1920. For the next 35 years, under subsequent owners, it frequently faced the possibility of being demolished. In 1955 an organization called Friends of Boscobel saved it at the last minute from a contractor who had bid $35 to knock it down after the Veterans' Administration had built a hospital on the site. They arranged for it to be moved to a similar location upriver, near Cold Spring, a year later, using photographs from the Historic American Buildings Survey to guide the reconstruction.

Lila Acheson Wallace, wife of "Readers' Digest" founder DeWitt Wallace, had at first anonymously provided the $50,000 donation to make the move and reconstruction possible. As Friends of Boscobel became Boscobel Restoration, Inc., she took a more public role as a director particularly in overseeing the landscaping and interior decoration. Richard K. Webel designed grounds for the new site that bore little resemblance to its original surroundings, instead taking the "country house" style popular in the early 20th century. Large grown trees were planted to give the impression that the house had always been there.]

References

External links

* [http://www.boscobel.org Boscobel website]