JASNA Syracuse/Colgate JABC "Box Hill" in Cazenovia

Despite a continuing lack of cooperation from New York State's weather (see the preceding post), JASNA Syracuse and the Colgate Jane Austen Book Club enjoyed a successful joint "Box Hill" event in Cazenovia on Saturday, June 25. In keeping with the "Plan B" for rain agreed upon earlier, JASNA and JABC members met and mingled at Circa restaurant in the village. Below, JABC leader Heather Elia and Sandra Stevens...

...Nadia Vedder and friend Jason...

...Lynette Lundy-Beck and Linda Robinson...

...Signe Weaver and her mother...

...and Pym Mumford and Sheila O'Connor.


After lunch, we enjoyed guided tours of the mansion and the visitors' center at the Lorenzo State Historic Site, just west of the village. Although the interior of the mansion is decorated in the style of 1900 (the year for which the best documentation is available), the exterior is neoclassical, as befits the 1807-1808 construction dates. And certainly the saga of five generations of largely collateral inheritance by successive Lincklaens, Ledyards, Fairchilds, and Remingtons (see the Friends of Lorenzo website for details) would have intrigued JA herself--and had some echoes of Downton Abbey as well, although entail wasn't involved to the same extent as in the TV series!

Once we completed the tours, some of us ventured on a brief, if damp, exploration of the beautiful grounds. The formal perennial garden, originally laid out by the renowned designer Ellen Biddle Shipman, is surrounded by a small copse that's reminiscent of the "wilderness" at Sotherton Court in Mansfield Park.



JASNA Syracuse Co-Coordinator Lisa Brown ponders the inheritance of Lorenzo...


...and your Regional Coordinator practices her "Lady Catherine de Bourgh"/"Dowager Countess of Grantham" imitation!