The Trustees: Castle Hill on the Crane Estate, Part 2

Back in September 2025, I took the comprehensive, 2.5-hour “Grand Stairs to Back Stairs” tour of Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich, MA, which is managed by The Trustees of Reservations. Due to the length and breadth of the tour, this is a three-part series, with one post released per day over the next three days. During Part 1, I focused on the building of the estate, the early history of the Crane family, and the first few stops on the tour. Today, I describe the life of the family and the middle section of the tour.

Richard Teller Crane, Jr. was 37 and his wife Florence Higinbotham Crane was 39 when they moved to Castle Hill in 1910. They had two children: five-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane (named for one of the richest men in America) and baby Florence Crane. As the children grew older, their parents were concerned that they would not have friends to play with during summer vacations at the Great House. They invited local children to massive summer parties, as their children were sure to find friends when enough of children were available.

When the children grew up, their family wealth allowed them to have unique experiences and meet interesting people. Cornelius wanted to be an explorer. In 1928, at age 23, he launched the Cornelius Crane Pacific Expedition co-sponsored by the Field Museum of Natural History. The journey took place on the Italian yacht Illyria gifted by his father Richard. The voyage lasted almost a year, with young Cornelius falling in love along the way. Wealthy socialite Catherine Isabella Parker Browning had previously married U.S. Navy officer Miles Rutherford Browning in 1922 when she was 16 and he was 25. The pair had one daughter, Cathalene, and then divorced. Cornelius adopted Cathalene upon marrying her mother, and she apparently thought of him as her true father. When Cathalene had a son with her first husband, Edward Tinsley Chase, in 1943, they named the baby Cornelius Crane Chase, but he is better known as the comedian Chevy Chase.

Unfortunately, the marriage of Cornelius and Catherine did not last, as they divorced in 1940. Richard, Jr. had already died from heart disease in 1931 on his 58^th birthday. Mother Florence died in 1949 at age 78, having deeded over 900 acres to the Trustees in 1945 and another 350 acres upon her death. In 1954, Cornelius married Miné Sawahara, who he met while on vacation in the Pacific, since he had another house in Tahiti (along with houses in New York, NY; Aspen, CO; Dark Harbor, ME; and nearby White Cottage on Choate Island). Miné became an American citizen by 1960. She was a talented artist and musician, and her artwork is displayed in the house. A white tree against a deep blue background is on display over the fireplace in one of the bedrooms of the Great House. (Personally, it reminds me of the White Tree of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings, but the guide never mentioned if she was a fan.) Cornelius died suddenly in 1962 of a cerebral hemorrhage; he was 57 years old, nearly the same age of death as his father. He was buried on Choate Island, which is now part of a wildlife refuge maintained by the Trustees. Miné gifted the property in 1974 but continued to visit until she died in 1991 at age 78, having outlived her husband by twenty-nine years.

Younger sister Florence Crane took a different route in life. Like her brother, she married fairly young at age twenty-four to to William Albert Robinson of Illinois. The pair had a son, Christopher, but a hometown boy was apparently not the right match for Florence, and they divorced. She married Prince Sergei Sergeevich Belosselsky-Belozersky in 1943, who was living in New York City having escaped the October Revolution of the Bolsheviks, during which many other members of the Russian royal family were assassinated. Prince Sergei’s mother was Susan Whittier, an American from Boston, a connection that allowed him to save both his life and much of his money. As for their marriage, Florence adopted the Russian name Svetlana, and the pair had two daughters, Tatiana and Marina. Florence seemed less connected to the property than her brother and sister-in-law, and she donated her portion of the land from Crane Estate to the Trustees in 1952. She died in New York in 1969 at age 60.

Back to the house tour, the guide brought us to the main living quarters of the house. We admired the colorful paint and wood paneling, especially a hidden bookshelf (or liquor closet) hidden in the master bedroom. Despite its grand size, the house seemed livable, embracing the country style with comfortable furniture and regular carpet rather than the ostentatious furnishings and fancy rugs found in other mansions. One of my favorite decorative elements was a plaque commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Crane Company, which had been established by Richard, Jr.’s father, Richard Teller Crane, Sr., in 1855. I also loved the whimsical wallpaper lit by a skylight in an upstairs hallway leading to a storage area. While the scenes initially seem to be neoclassical architecture with dignified people wearing early 19^th century clothing, a closer inspection reveals nurses consoling a child having a tantrum, women frolicking across the grass, and men dragging along an inebriated friend as a nanny pulling a baby carriage watches in dismay.

Two other important pieces of artwork are family portraits. A silhouette made of black paper shows the Crane family having tea when Cornelius and Florence were teenagers, along with their pets cat and spitz dog. The cutout was made by Eveline Adelheid von Maydell, an Estonian-German woman who had lived around the world and moved to the United States in 1922. She was known for using both hands while creating art: the left hand sketched, and the right hand snipped. Elsewhere in the Great House, an oil painting shows the children when they were younger, about ages 9 and 4. The portrait was painted by Lydia Field Emmet, a prolific artist who painted out of her studies in New York City and Stockbridge, MA. With her ability to paint children in naturalistic poses, Emmet found her niche as portrait painter for wealthy families. After this stop, it was time to head to the roof, which I will discuss in the final post.