The Great Connector Series: Gilded Age Scandals

Join us for an engaging session as part of the Walkway’s Great Connector lecture series. This event will take place on Sunday, June 12 at 1pm at the Walkway Over the Hudson’s Ulster Welcome Center located at 87 Haviland Road in Highland, New York. Please note this event does not take place at the Poughkeepsie entrance to the bridge. This event is free and open to the public. Donations are welcomed.

Donald Fraser, Educator from Staatsburgh State Historic Site, will present “Gilded Age Scandals” focusing on the scandalous behavior and intrigues of the very rich at the turn of the century. Stories of sex, murder and money were not only whispered in the drawing rooms but published in the scandal sheet newspapers of the day.

We’ll learn about celebrity murders, heiresses for sale, and scandals that reached as high as the King of England and the President of the United States. Stories of misbehavior feature a monkey in the formal dining room, arsenic in the clam chowder, and the tale of the famous Society figure who told his distraught bride on their wedding night, “Your money is your only asset in my eyes.”

Don Fraser is the Educator at Staatsburgh State Historic Site (Mills Mansion). He creates education programs for students from 2nd grade to college, as well as special programs for adults, such as Tales of the Titanic, Gilded Age Scandals, World War I and the End of the Gilded Age, and A Life in Service.

Walkway Over the Hudson’s “Great Connector” lecture series hosts educators, historians, and authors for talks on a variety of regional interest topics including history, ecology, and industry. For a calendar of upcoming lectures, as well as links to recordings from a number of past events, visit www.walkway.org.