This week's blog entry was first written by Harriet Branton's Focus on Washington County: Volumn 4. Branton is considered to be one of Washington County's most famous historians, which is why we chose her stories for our blog entries. This week is all about Harriet Preble. Preble is considered one of Washington's most interesting people, keep reading to find out why!
One of Washington's most interesting citizens during the 1840s was an English-born artist and woman of letters named Harriet Preble. The daughter of an American merchant, Henry Preble, and his English wife, Frances Wright Preble, Harriet was born in Sussex, England on Sept. 26, 1795. Members of her father's family had for generations been leaders in the seagoing community around Falmouth Neck, Mass., and it was his older brother, Commodore Edward Preble, who commanded the famous frigrate Constitution in an historic encounter with the Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli in 1803-04.
Just why Henry Preble elected to spend most of his life abroad was never fully explained, not even to members of his immediate family. But he went to France at an early age, and it was there that he met his wife, who was a student in Paris during the wild days of the French revolution. Their civil wedding, which took place on Dec. 11, 1794, was followed by a church ceremony immediately after their return to England.
Harriet and her younger sister, Frances Anica, were, like their mother, educated almost entirely in France. They also traveled throughout Italy with their parents, for Henry Preble was engaged in the mercantile business. As youngsters they attended a famous school operated by Madame Campan and lived on a handsome estate, Draveil, about 15 miles from Paris. The little girls were classmates of Napoleon's sisters, Caroline and Stephanie, and along with their parents became close friends of a number of leading Frenchmen of the day, including the Marquis de Lafayette.
As the years went by Harriet cultivated an artistic talent which she shared with other members of her family, including her father, who also took great delight in drawing and painting. As a scholar she was equally fluent in French and English, read Italian with ease, and became an excellent translator. Her musical studies were not neglected, for she developed into a competent pianist. When she left France in 1830 to live in America, it was Lafayette himself who thanked her for a number of drawings she had given him, and praised her "excellent translation" of Cooper's "Notions of Americans."
Miss preble journeyed to America with her mother to join her sister, Anica, who had many years earlier married an American Lawyer and diplomat named Thomas Barlow, a member of a distinguished Connecticut family. His childless uncle, Joel Barlow, was an eminent lawyer, diplomat, and poet who regarded his favorite nephew, Thomas, as his adopted son and heir. After their marriage in France in 1817, Thomas and Anica Barlow lived in the United States, first in Washington, D.C., at Uncle Joel's lovely estate, Kalorama. Within two years, however, the family moved to Pittsburgh, where they settled in Manchester. In Pittsburgh the Barlows were joined by Henry Preble, who lived with them until his death in 1825. There they also entertained Mrs. Barlow's old friend, Lafayette, during his triumphal tour of the United States in 1825.
So it was not surprising that the Preble sisters, whose lives were so closely intertwined during their youth, would wish to be reunited in America. And Mrs. Preble longed to become better acquainted with her four grandchildren, whom she had enjoyed during the summer of 1827 when the Barlows spent three months in Paris. It was a move which Harriet, however, did nto take lightly. The project was considered carefully for many months and it was finally decided that the French halk fo hte family would join the American half in the spring of 1830. On June 24, 1829, Harriet informed Anica "I wrote to you, dear sister, on the tenth of this month, to tell you our decision was made, and that we should soon come to join you in America... I think we shall lead a very sweet life together, and I am enchanted with the idea of finding you established in the country (at a cottage named "Migonionette," on the banks of hte Ohio)... Your black town of Pittsburgh would have made a sad impression upon me, after leaving Paris and Versailles."
So, in spite of one of two misgivings, Miss Preble and her mother looked forward with great anticipation to their reunion with the Barlows. On Jan. 10, 1830, Harriet wrote to her sister "... a few months of patience, and many dreams will be realized." They sailed from France in March and landed in Philadelphia, where American friends of the Barlows recieved them cordially and made them feel quite at home. Soon they set out by stagecoach on the journey across the Alleghenies, and their progress was recorded by Harriet in letters and artistic sketches of the lovely countryside. These were regrettably destroyed later by her own request.
Two years after their arrival, Harriet and her mother rented a cottage and 10 acres adjoining the Barlow property which they named "San Souci." There in 1832 Miss Preble opened a school for six to eight young ladies from 12 to 15 years of age. Her approach to teaching was an appeal to "moral suasion." She set out to acquire "the respect, the confidence, and the affections of her pupils." And it wasn't easy. One student wrote that "the independence of American girls gave her trouble at first." But, true to her cultivated and disciplined mind, she preserved and won not only their respect and affection but an acknowledgement that some of her charges "esteemed it the highest privilege" of their lives "to have been blessed with the friendship of one so superior..."
After a strenuous four years of teaching, Miss Preble's frail health gave out, and she and her mother retired for about 18 months to the peace and quiet of Little Washington where, they had heard, the presence of a college and a female seminary "had created a very agreeable literary society, sufficiently large to afford variety... and not so large as to fatigue..." There they made many new friends, among them Professor Richard Henry Lee (who later became Harriet's biographer), and the LeMoynes. After this brief early stay, the Prebles moved to New Brighton and then back to Allegheny City.
In 1846, a year after the death of her mother, Harriet returned to Washington. She purchased a home and joined the Barlows, who had moved there so that their sons, Fredrick and Frank, could attend Washington College. They also desidered to be near the children of their daughter, Emma Barlow Wilson, who had died at the age of 28. As a member of the family Harriet took quite the maternal interest in teh motherless Wilson children, Edward, James, and Clara, just as she always had been close to her Barlow Nieces and nephews.
The family lived in Little Washington for four years, from 1846 to 1850, and during this period Miss Preble cemented friendships which she had begun a decade earlier. She also continued with her art, and among the works she completed during her stay in Washington was an engraving of Washington College which adorned the school's diplomas until it merged with Jefferson College in 1865.
Miss Preble particularly enjoyed her friendship with the LeMoynes. In her diary, under an entry dated Sept. 19, 1846, she wrote: "In the afternoon Mrs. LeMoyne came to see us. She is very friendly, and we like her very much. She proposed a walk; the weather was beautiful, the air pure and buoyant... We wandered about in the delightful meadows which are just out of town; all was lovely around us." Later she wrote of their good fortune in living in Washington, where they "could enjoy at once all the advantages of a town and of the country."
The family moved again, in the spring of 1850, back to Manchester, where they resumed friendships from their earlier years at "Mignionette" and "San Souci." It was there that Miss Preble's health failed rapidly. Afflicted with consumption, she died on Feb. 4, 1854, at the age of 59, and was buried in Allegheny Cemetary.
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