American Furniture, Folk and Decorative Arts

Note

The celebrated Manhattan hostess, Catharine Ludlow Morton, elegantly inscribed this manuscript recipe book,"Catharine Morton/ 1791" - the year of her marriage to New York City attorney, politician, merchant and military officer Jacob Morton (1761-1836).

In his 1897 Prominent Families of New York, Lyman Horace Weeks characterized Catharine Morton as the doyenne “of the exclusive social life of the city.” Born to prominent parents, Hester Lynsen Ludlow (1750-1828) and Carey Ludlow (1736-1815), Catharine’s father was a wealthy New York City merchant whose staunch royalist views caused him to move his family to England during the American Revolution.The Ludlow family returned to New York City in 1784, and in the 1790s, Ludlow began construction on one of New York City’s most elegant homes-a 26-room mansion with gardens, stables and out-houses at 9 State Street. The “Ludlow Mansion” would become the home of Catharine and Jacob Morton and, according to Appeltons' Journal, the epicenter “of intellect, refinement, and feminine loveliness." The ball held by the Mortons in 1824 for the Marquis de Lafayette was long considered to be the most magnificent social function the city of New York had witnessed up to that time.