I recently found and purchased an old book related to my research.

Gretchen Blaine Damrosch Finletter was the daughter of Walter Damrosch, a famous composer, and Margaret Blaine Damrosch. Margaret was the daughter of James G. Blaine, former Secretary of State and Republican nominee for President in 1884, and also the sister of Harriet Blaine Beale, Truxtun Beale’s first wife. In 1946, Gretchen published a book: From the Top of the Stairs about growing up in her famous family. Grethen was the second oldest of her three sisters.

The book is mostly filled with lighthearted stories about her childhood and family. It has a chapter titled “Courage and Convictions” that is mostly about her mother’s dedication to the Republican party. Finletter started her chapter by writing that, “When I was very little, I felt that there was something wrong with being a Democrat. I didn’t know what a Democrat was, where he fitted in – I wasn’t even sure he was an American – but I did know he was an outcast.”

She went on to tell an amusing story about the election of 1900. She was five years old and her cousin, Walker Blaine Beale, four, and his mother, her aunt, Harriet, came to visit them at their summer home in Bar Harbor, Maine. One day she and Walker went out to explore the woods, hoping to get lost when they encountered Amos Pinchot, who apparently thought it was funny to pin William Jennings Bryan buttons on both of them. Bryan was the Democrat nominee for president (again) that year. Pinchot told the children, “Wear these and your mothers will do what you ask.” “Anything?” they asked. “Anything,” he replied.

Gretchen and Walker proudly wore their buttons home, “eager to see how soon the magic would begin.” Harriet Blaine Beale was the first to notice them. She “started to laugh” and said to her sister, “Margaret, look. They’re Bryan buttons!”

Margaret “did not take it so lightly.” “‘Get rid of them immediately!’ she cried. ‘No one can wear a Bryan button in this house. Destroy them!”

So Gretchen and Walker ran to the bathroom where they threw them in the trash. “‘Walker was more informed than I. ‘He’s a Democrat,’ he told me.” While neither of them could yet read, it is pretty cool that Truxtun’s son at age four knew that William Jennings Bryan was a Democrat.

She closes the chapter with another funny story about her mother’s encounter with a drunk man on election day. She wrote that her house had so many political posters on it that one man was confused and thought it was his polling place. But for whatever reason, Margaret was under the impression that the man was there to kill her husband. They fought at their front door, as the man attempted to gain entry to vote.

The police were called and showed up and not long after, her husband, Walter, also showed up. The drunk man was arrested, but Walter quickly figured out what was going on. Walter asked his wife, “why didn’t you listen to his story and find out what he wanted?” She replied that there was no time as she believed the man wanted to shoot him. Walter replied, “He was going to vote, probably the Republican ticket, and now they’ve taken him off and you’ve lost that vote for your side!”

Margaret “looked more stricken than if he’d killed my father.” But her daughters cheered her up by telling her, “He was a Democrat.” She took comfort in that and said “Then I did right.”