A Tavern Q&A

Tell us about your professional background.

I’ve come to the Museum with a background in marketing and client relations within the institutional asset management industry, with a focus on real estate investing. I’ve written RFPs, strategically positioned products, and worked with clients in the U.S., Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand. Concurrently with my professional career, volunteering has been a near constant part of my life having been raised by two parents in the not-for-profit and education sectors. Over the years I’ve held various leadership positions with 501(c)(3) higher education, community-based and performing arts organizations helping to advance their respective missions.

You are a member of Sons of the Revolution in the State of New York, Inc (SRNY), who own and operate Fraunces Tavern Museum. What drew you to SRNY?

I’ve had a passion for history and historic preservation from a very young age, having grown up in 19th century houses and participated in a summer youth program at our town’s local 18th century tavern museum. Unlike many SRNY prospects who join through friends or family members, I sent a blind e-mail to the SRNY website after taking the genealogical work started by my father and extending it a few generations back, discovering various relatives (from my mother’s side) who fought in the Revolutionary War.

My first visit to the Museum was actually for SRNY’s Tallmadge Day in January 2018 when I attended a program on SRNY founder Frederick S. Tallmadge presented by 2020’s George Washington Birthday Ball Distinguished Patriot Dr. Laurence S. Simpson. It was a perfect combination of history and revelry and I was warmly welcomed by the Sons in attendance.

I was eventually inducted into SRNY at our Summer Tavern Night at Fraunces Tavern Restaurant’s Bourbon Lounge in July of 2018. Since then, I’ve participated in almost all of our annual events including the presentation of various historical flags at several NYC parades, commemorating historical Revolutionary War events, and memorializing individuals significant to the Revolutionary War and SRNY.

What is your favorite part of the Museum? Favorite piece in the collection?

This is a little embarrassing, but my favorite part is the staircase connecting our third floor McEntee Gallery to the second floor reception desk. As you descend the stairs, there’s a certain smell that emanates from the wood after years of exposure to smoking candles, food and drink, which to me, is so inviting, so evocative of the period, it immediately transports you back in time. If I can figure out how to capture and bottle that scent, look for Samuel Fraunces cologne in our gift shop in the future!

My favorite piece in the collection is a fragment from George Washington’s coffin given to "M.E. Hernandez of Cuba from S.S. Williams of Virginia, August 1857." It highlights the important (and often overlooked) alliance that merchants and military leaders in Cuba such as Juan de Miralles and Captain General Don Diego José Navarro Garcia y Valladares formed with George Washington during the Revolutionary War. I became aware of this part of history on a trip to Havana where I discovered Cuba and the American War for Independence, or, in Spanish: Cuba y la Guerra de Independencia de los Estados Unidos by Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring, at a local bookstore.

What have you learned about the Revolutionary War since you started working at the Museum that you didn’t know before?

Having lived in New York City for over 20 years, I would say learning the role that the City and Fraunces Tavern played in the Revolutionary War has been the most fascinating: the Battle of Long Island (Brooklyn) (present day Green-Wood Cemetery) in August 1776 where the Continental Army almost lost the war before it began; Evacuation Day, celebrating the last British ship to leave our new country’s shores; Washington’s emotional farewell to his officers in our Museum’s Long Room in 1783, and then shortly afterward, the establishment of our country’s first Federal departments of Defense, State and Treasury right here at Fraunces Tavern.

What is your favorite meal at Fraunces Tavern? Favorite room?

I love the Serrano Ham & Burrata Rustic Sandwich – ham & cheese for real foodies. It’s the perfect combination of sweet & savory and is attractively plated on a wooden cutting board. My favorite room is the Tallmadge Room, directly to your right when you walk in our main entrance. It’s open, airy, and reminiscent of the time period – good for friends, family, colleagues and clients, special occasion or not.

If you could have dinner with any figure from the American Revolutionary era, who would it be?

Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. He was a Prussian, and later American, military officer who Washington contracted to transform his Continental Army troops from a ragtag band of militiamen to a disciplined fighting force. Baron von Steuben’s hygiene and organizational standards for encampments as well as his drills and training of soldiers influenced the American military for years to come. He famously trained his soldiers in full military dress uniform, swearing and yelling at them up and down in German and French. When that was no longer successful, he recruited Captain Benjamin Walker, his aide-de-camp, to curse at them for him in English. Baron von Steuben never married and left his estate to Walker and his other long-time companions Major General William North and John W. Mulligan who he lived with in Manhattan and Oneida County, New York (in a town that now bears his name) respectively.

What are your hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the Museum and for SRNY?

I want to see our Museum membership and sustaining donors grow to be as large and diverse as the tens of thousands of people who visit the Museum each year. To do that, we have to proactively engage a broad-based audience across multiple platforms offering dynamic programming and unique exhibitions that speak to both traditional and fresh perspectives on, and interpretations of, the American Revolutionary War era.  We can’t do that without working to preserve the structural integrity and period-appropriate esthetics of our five-building complex, within a Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, that includes 54 Pearl Street, the landmarked, and one of oldest standing structures in Manhattan, in which Samuel Fraunces established Fraunces Tavern prior to the Revolutionary War.

For SRNY, I also want to see our membership ranks grow – particularly the ranks of our young adult and junior members – as well as see more active participation in all of our commemorative events. To do that, we have to ensure that there are always elements of fun and fraternity that accompany our duties to preserve our organization and its mission to memorialize the individuals and events that defined the United States of America during the Revolutionary War era.  There is no better place for that to happen than in the galleries of our Museum and in Fraunces Tavern, with its eight different dining spaces open seven days a week serving delicious food and drinks, including over 200 whiskeys and 130 craft beers!