Pinehurst

John Maunsell was a well-loved Anglo-Irish officer and a veteran of the French and Indian War. In 1763, while stationed in New York, he married his second wife, Elizabeth, the widow of Captain Peter Wraxall. Elizabeth was from a prominent New York family and her sister, Mrs Mary Clarke, lived at Chelsea House where Mary's grandson, Clement Clarke Moore, allegedly wrote "The Night Before Christmas" in 1823.

After their marriage in 1763 the Maunsells leased a house in Greenwich Village belonging to Oliver Delancey. In 1767, Maunsell and his wife's brother-in-law, John Watkins, purchased adjacent tracts of land on Harlem Heights from Jan Dyckman. At what today would be roughly Convent Avenue and 148th Street, Maunsell built a "large dwelling" in the Federal-style, known as "Maunsell Place". It was situated between the Morris-Jumel Mansion and immediately south of "Watkins Glen". It is not to be confused with "Maunsell House" built by his widow on Kingsbridge Road near 157th Street.

Maunsell Place during the Revolution

As Revolution became inevitable, Maunsell (still attached to the British Army as Commander of the 56th Regiment) requested leave from America as he had no wish to fight against his family and friends. In 1770, he sold off the greater portion of his considerable country estate to Charles Aitken, a wealthy Scots-born merchant from the Island of St Croix in the West Indies. Aitken was attracted to the area by his wife, Cornelia Beekman, who was the first cousin of both James Beekman (1732-1807) and Jacob Walton (1730-1782), the respective builders of Mount Pleasant and Belview.

In September 1776, after destroying Belview, British troops landed on Manhattan and the American army retreated back to the Harlem Heights. The Aitken's home was commandeered by General Joseph Spencer (1714-1789) as they built earthen defences across what is now 147th Street. During this time, George Washington occasionally dropped in to dine or write despatches. Later, Harlem fell into the hands of the Loyalists and with the mansion in mind a young British Lieutenant wrote, "(the estates in Harlem contain) the most beautiful houses… I had the honour of taking possession of these handsome dwellings... All of these houses were filled with furniture and other valuable articles, lawful prizes of war; but the owners had fled, leaving all their slaves behind".

Dr Bradhurst of Pinehurst & the Hamilton Duel

In 1787, three years after Charles Aitken's death, his three co-heiresses agreed to sell the 110-acre estate to a neighbouring landowner, Dr Samuel Bradhurst III (1749-1826). While Bradhurst was a distant relation of Mrs Elizabeth (Stillwell) Maunsell through his grandmother (Anne Pell of Pelham Manor), it was his wife, Mary Smith (1753-1841), who was Elizabeth's favorite niece and who'd frequented Maunsell Place since childhood.

Dr Bradhurst grew up on Harlem Heights where his father, Samuel, had been helped by his parents to establish an estate. Formerly a surgeon and a veteran of the Battles of Princeton and Brandywine, after the Revolution Dr Bradhurst entered into the wholesale drug business with Josiah Hazard Field (d.1806) and by 1804 was a Member of Legislature.

On taking possession of the old colonial mansion built by the Maunsells, Dr Bradhurst renamed it "Pinehurst". He set about making various improvements to the house and continued to expand his land holdings, not only in Harlem, but also in New York City itself and Virginia. The Pinehurst estate soon stretched across the entire breadth of Manhattan, from the Hudson to the East River. The magnificent, panoramic views from the mansion took in the Bronx, New Jersey, and Long Island, as well as both rivers.

In 1799, Bradhurst sold 20-acres of his land at Harlem Heights to his friend, Alexander Hamilton, on which he built Hamilton Grange. Such was their friendship that when talk of a duel between Hamilton and Aaron Burr was imminent, Bradhurst stepped in: Burr's wife, Theodosia, was a first cousin of Mrs Bradhurst. After failing to reason with Burr, Bradhurst challenged him to a duel with swords in an effort to waylay or stop the challenge to his friend. The duel took place almost entirely in secret and Bradhurst was said to have fought using General Maunsell's sword. The ruse failed as Burr escaped unharmed and Bradhurst was left nursing a wound to his arm/shoulder.

John and Lillie Bradhurst and the Pinehurst Gardens

Dr Bradhurst died in 1826 and left the Pinehurst estate to his only surviving son, John Maunsell Bradhurst (1782-1855), who lived there with his German wife, "Lillie" Elizabeth Wilmerding (1786-1858). Like his father, John was an assiduous collector of land, but it was the gardens at Pinehurst in which he took most pride. These were tended for by a troupe of Irish gardeners (nearly all the servants employed by the Bradhursts were Irish, almost certainly descended from those brought over by Maunsell) and overseen by John's third son, Henry Maunsell Bradhurst (1822-1894),

The 1840s saw "Harlem Heights" renamed "Washington Heights" and Hickson Woolman Field Jr. (1823-1888) put up an elegant mansion west of Pinehurst for his wife, Henry's sister, Mary Bradhurst. But, the decade also brought less welcome changes - urbanisation was fast encroaching over the once rural idyll of the Pinehurst estate, and others like it. From 1845, New York City's new water supply cut the Bradhurst land in two, obscuring their view and disrupting the drainage from their prized gardens.

The End of an Era

In 1858, on the death of his mother, Henry Maunsell Bradhurst (1822-1894) succeeded to Pinehurst. Its rural charm now all but lost and their genteel neighbours all but gone, Henry divided the estate up for development and began to dispense of it piece by piece.

By 1865, Henry and his wife, Elizabeth Tracy (1825-1879), were disheartened by the ravages of the Civil War, the demise of Pinehurst, and most of all the loss of two of their three children within months of one another. That year, with their only surviving child, Augustus, they left America for England and took up residence at Faulkbourne Hall in Essex. The land that had once formed the Pinehurst estate continued to be urbanized with increasing voracity until finally the old family house itself was sold in 1875.

Demise

The once grand mansion became "Koch's New Mount St. Vincent's Hotel" - essentially a gathering place for sporting gentlemen who raced their thoroughbreds from Central Park along St. Nicholas Avenue. Its new owner surrounded it with a white picket fence that was soon plastered with various billboards. In about 1890, Pinehurst was finally demolished to make way for the extension of Convent Avenue north to 152nd Street & St. Nicholas Ave.

As for Henry Bradhurst, having disposed of all his real estate, at his death in 1894 it was assumed that he was a millionaire. But, his executors failed to find, "even a tenth of his property". His only surviving son, Augustus Maunsell Bradhurst (1865-1923), was the last of the Bradhursts to be born at Pinehurst and in 1910 he privately published "My Forefathers, their History from Records & Traditions". He married "Minna" Evangeline Page Wood (d.1946), of Wakes Hall (who similarly published "A Century of Letters, 1820-1920") and they too remained in England, making their home at Rivenhall Place, Essex.