Edmund Rennolds interview 2 (2004-06-23)

              VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY
JAMES BRANCH CABELL LIBRARY, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS 
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: TWENTIETH CENTURY RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

NARRATOR: EDMUND ADDISON RENNOLDS, JR.	
INTERVIEWER: KATHRYN E. COLWELL
Place:	6410 Three Chopt Road			No. of tapes: 1
	Richmond, Virginia	     			No. of sides: 2
							Length of tape:  93 minutes
Date:	June 23, 2004				Interview: 2 of 4

Counter Index		Topic of Discussion
[Cassette 1 of 1, Second Interview 6/23/04]
 0:00:01.0		Introductions
0:00:47.0		Education and early work experience
0:02:58.2		Service in the Navy during World War II
0:13:31.2		Grandmother Beulah Gould Branch
0:17:15.7		Marriage to Mary Anne Pinder and early family life
0:25:03.6		Quaker Hill, New York (Branch family summer home)
0:29:38.0		Rennolds and Addison family histories
0:31:45.0		Associations with the Episcopal Church
0:38:05.2		Influence of places outside of Richmond and interest in architecture
0:44:34.8		The Rennolds family; Father E. A. Rennolds’ employment
0:46:14.0		Depression of the 1930s
0:48:11.3		First Merchants Bank, state legislation related to banking
0:52:52.3		Selection of Richmond as the location for the Federal Reserve Bank
0:54:22.5		American’s spending and investing habits
0:57:26.2		Blythe Branch’s Richmond activities
0:59:03.0		Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
1:01:35.2		Experiences with the Gottwalds of Ethel Corporation
1:07:44.8		Floundering businesses in Richmond, early- to mid-1900s
1:12:31.0		Richmond residential expansion in the early 1900s
1:13:57.6		Pinder family homes in Richmond and Urbanna
1:16:29.7		Mary Anne Pinder’s early life
Break in taping
1:19:44.4		Fitzhugh ancestors
1:21:54.5		Life in the Rennolds’ household when the children were young
1:33:03.0		End of side B
End of Interview 6/23/04


START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A
00:01.0		Introduction
 	Kathryn E. Colwell:  It is June 23, 2004, this is an interview with Edmund Addison 
Rennolds, Jr..  He will be the narrator.  I am the interviewer; I am Kathryn E. Colwell.  We are at 
Mr. Rennolds’ home on Three Chopt Road in Richmond, Virginia.  Sir, do you know where 
you’d like to start today?
	Edmund Addison Rennolds, Jr.:	(pause) No.
	KEC:	Okay.  I realized that, when I started looking over my notes and listening to the 
tape [Rennolds interview 6/18/04], that I didn’t have the basics, your exact date of birth and 
where that took place, some of those kind of details of life.  
	EAR:	Yes.
	KEC:	Should we start there?
0:00:47.0	Education and early work experience
	EAR:	I was born on January 7, 1916 in Richmond.   I am the fifth generation of people 
in Richmond.
	KEC:	When you say the fifth generation, you are the fifth generation Rennolds?  Of the 
Rennolds family or of —
	EAR:	Well, fourth of the Rennolds.
	KEC:	Okay
	EAR:	No, no, wait a minute.  It is actually third because my grandfather Rennolds 
moved here from Fredericksburg.   My other side, the Branch family, moved from Petersburg and 
I am the fifth generation from there.
	KEC:	Where did you go to your elementary school and then—
	EAR:	Well I went to St. Christopher's here and then I was three years at boarding 
school, Woodberry Forrest.
	KEC:	Where is that?
	EAR:	In Orange, Virginia.  Woodberry is spelled funny, you know.  
	KEC:	Help me out.
	EAR:	W-o-o-d-b-e-r-r-y
	KEC:	Like two words combined—
	EAR:	—instead of b-u-r-y, which is the English way for Woodbury.  And then I went 
to the University of Virginia; graduated with a BS in 1937.  Then I went to the Harvard Business 
School and got a MBA from there in 1939.  I worked for a couple of years with a brokerage firm, 
Davenport and Company, same one I am with now.
	KEC:	Oh, you are?
0:02:58.2	Service in the Navy during World War II
	EAR:	I joined the Navy in 1942 and was with them for four years.
	KEC:	Where did you serve?
	EAR:	I was on the Supply Corp and they assigned me to the Sea Bee Base Construction 
Battalion.  Did you ever hear of them?
	KEC:	Um hm
	EAR:	—in Rhode Island, Davisville, Rhode Island.  I was there for two years and then 
they assigned me to a ship that was being built in Baltimore, a repair ship.  It was not the most 
glamorous part of the Navy. 
	KEC:	(laughing) Was that also a ship that did construction work or repairs on—
	EAR:	Well it— You know, the construction battalion was a brand new thing in this 
war.  They’d never had it before.  So they created these ships.  They could go and build an 
airport.  And they got everybody of different kinds, metal people and carpenters.  There was a 
routine of how many people of different kinds they had to have.  I think there were five hundred 
people on this ship.  So I was in—the ship was—I was there while it was being built in Baltimore, 
which was just a thrill.  Moving on.   So we had to go to Norfolk from Baltimore to try various 
things.  They had opening trials.  Then make sure that we had all the materials that we were 
supposed to have on it.  Then it went on through the Canal [Panama] and into San Diego. That 
was our last change to buy anything or get the supplies that we needed.   We went on to Hawaii; 
were there for a month.  I don’t really know why.  Anyway, we were there; still getting supplies 
from there.  And then we went to—were in the Pacific in various places.  We usually were 
working with the craft that were going in to the next invasion.  We were for a long time on an 
island called Manus, which is M-a-n-u-s, which is just north of Australia.  That had been a 
German island before World War I.  The Australians got it later.  It was a wonderful big harbor.  
After the Philippines had been conquered back, we went there for quite a while.  The next place 
was Okinawa, which was supposed to be preparing for the attack against Japan.  Okinawa is a 
division of Japan, very close to it.  By that time the war was over.  But we still had—  
(clatter of dishes as lunch is brought to Mr. Rennolds)
It would be awful to eat in front of you.
	KEC:	It will not bother me for a second.  Really.
	EAR:	Thank you.  Can I get you something, a glass of water?
	KEC:	A glass of water would be nice.  Thank you.
	EAR:	(Noise of tray being rearranged) They still needed us; even though the war was 
over.  There was an interim in the Sea of Japan.  It was full of bombs and things that had been 
dropped there.  We had to service those people who were sweeping those things out.  So after 
they had supposedly swept everything out we went on to Japan ourselves.  We were quite a while 
at Kobe, K-o-b-e, which had been fire bombed, the town.  Of course everything in Japan is—is 
mostly very—I mean burns, burns easily.  But you were stuck.  You could not go anywhere; 
although there was somebody on our ship that did go.  He got on a train and went somewhere.   
But—
	KEC:	So basically you stayed on the ship in the harbor and would just go ashore for a 
period—
	EAR:	There was a club that had—where English and American’s were members of it—
no Japanese. (chuckle)
	KEC:	Right.
	EAR:	We used to—we were allowed to go over there.  They were very scarce of food, 
particularly meat.  We would take meat from the ship and they would produce vegetables and all 
and have—  You know how the Japanese eat.  I don’t know if you have ever eaten at a Japanese 
restaurant before.  You sit around and somebody cooks something right in front of you.
	KEC:	Right, and usually that food is very fresh.
	EAR:	Yes.  I did get a chance to go to Kyoto, which was the only big town in Japan 
that had not been bombed.  That was the capital before Tokyo.
	KEC:	(pause) How about you eat some of your soup and I’ll take a couple of 
photographs?  Would that be okay?
	EAR:	Sure.
	KEC:	I think we will just—
12:08.2		(taping resumes after a break while Mr. Rennolds eats lunch)
	KEC:	When we broke off we were talking about World War II and your service in 
World War II.   Are there ways that that experience contributed to or influenced your later life?
	EAR:	I don’t think so, particularly. (both laugh)
	KEC:	That’s fine.  It was just an experience among many.
	EAR:	I think that people that were of my age—who were of good health—just 
participated.  It is interesting that I have some people in my generation that for one reason or 
another were not in it.  They missed what many people, the experience that many people had.  I 
think they felt very badly about it when people would say, “What are you doing?” and they had to 
tell why they couldn’t do it, and all that.  It was an interesting experience to be part of.
0:13:31.2	Grandmother Beulah Gould Branch
	KEC:	Your grandmother, Beulah Gould Branch, had grown up in a Quaker family—
	EAR:	Yes.
	KEC:	Was she a pacifist or did she have, did her—
	EAR:	They had kind of a—  The Quaker influence had lessened a lot.  
(addressing Emile) Emile, will you go up to my room and pick-up some little books on Quaker 
Hill?  I think they are somewhere in the room.  You will see where they are.  Helen Grosso 
[daughter] sent them yesterday and I was reading them.  I would like to show them.  
	I think an interesting development about my grandmother was that she was not terribly 
interested in religion or services, where you had a definite regime of it.    You know the Quakers 
don’t have any service at all.  In the old days the men sat on one side and the women on the other; 
for an hour.  If you had something that you thought was important they would let you talk.  The 
section where we were at, there at Quaker Hill, one winter was the headquarters of Washington’s 
army, in 1778.
	KEC:	I’m trying to do my geography.  Valley Forge was one winter spot, so this was—
	EAR:	I’m not sure.  I think that it was after Valley Forge.  But they, the Quakers, 
allowed them to use their meetinghouse as a hospital.  They were willing to go that far.  But they 
were not—  They didn’t believe in fighting themselves.
	KEC:	But they were humanitarian in their focus and so they encouraged that, or 
allowed it.
	EAR:	Um hm.
	KEC:	Your grandmother Gould, I read— or rather grandmother Branch—that she was 
active in the Women’s Suffrage Movement.  Did she ever talk to you about that?
	EAR:	No. (chuckles)
	KEC:	—your mother didn’t?   It is always interesting to come across someone that was 
active in that movement because it, obviously, influences all of us ultimately.
	EAR:	Yes.
	KEC:	Where would you like to go now with the conversation? I feel like—
0:17:15.7	Marriage to Mary Anne Pinder and early family life
	EAR:	Well, we’ve gone through the war.  The war kind of cut four years out of my life 
so that I was married later than I otherwise would have been.  I was married in March of ’49 
[1949].  My wife was from Richmond.  Mary Anne Pinder was her name.  She was a fine 
musician, started out with the piano and ended up with the viola.  That portrait of her was painted 
the year before we were married.  See she is playing the piano there. (Mrs. Rennolds’ portrait 
hangs in the dining room)
	KEC:	How did you meet your wife?
	EAR:	Well she—in Richmond you knew everybody—she was a classmate of my sister, 
Zayde Dotts.
(Emile enters the room and explains that he cannot find the books about Quaker Hill)
	EAR:	You don’t see them?  David [son David W. Rennolds], you know they are a little 
gray book.  I thought it was upstairs— maybe it wasn’t.  Everything—what were we talking 
about?
	KEC:	You purchased this house, as I recall, in 1951?
	EAR:	Yes in ’51.  We had an apartment at first.  But then we started having children 
fairly rapidly.
	KEC:	The education of your children—and by that I mean more the education within 
the home.  I know there was the strong music influence.  What were some of the other things that 
your wife and you valued?  That you —
	EAR:	Well she was an athlete, tennis player, and she loved to ski.  We went, quite 
often, on trips to ski.  Went to New England quite a bit, and to Aspen twice, and we went to—  
Anne [daughter Anne Rennolds Gray], what is that other place?  
	Anne Rennolds Gray:	Jackson Hole.
	EAR:	What?
	ARG:	Jackson Hole.
	EAR:	We went to Jackson Hole.  We also bought a condominium in Snow Shoe, which 
is in West Virginia.  That is about five hours driving from here, went there quite a bit.
	KEC:	Your routine—  It seems as though you were so active at the office.  You had 
numerous community responsibilities.  You had a large family.  How did you prioritize?  How 
did you find time for it all?
	EAR:	(pause, distracted by noise from outside of the room)  They are still looking for 
those books.  I don’t know where in the world.  I had them yesterday.  I don’t know what has 
happened to them since.  
	I never thought about priorities.  I just did the things as they came along.  
	KEC:	You also pursued many of your own intellectual pursuits.
	EAR:	Of course.  Another thing, we both loved to sail.  We had a twenty-three foot 
sailboat.  My mother-in-law lived at Urbanna, which is on the Rappahannock River.  We went 
down there a good deal.
	KEC:	And that is the home that Bucci and John—
	EAR:	—have now.  And then as long as my grandmother Branch was alive, we’d go up 
and stay with her, as a family.  
	KEC:	When you say “go up,” was she staying in New York more frequently after your 
grandfather’s death?
	EAR:	After she died in 1952, my mother took over that house.  We would go up and 
stay with her in the summer, too.  It was a nice place because it was nine hundred feet above 
level, above sea level.  It was just a little bit cooler than the rest.
	KEC:	The photos that you shared—  I mean it was beautiful.  I think it was—
	EAR:	It was a beautiful place.  Of course, unlike Nebraska (interviewer’s birthplace), a 
family might have a hundred acres. (laughter)  Whatever they grew—it didn’t make them 
millionaires—it was enough to keep the place going.
	KEC:	Your professional life.  I didn’t realize until just now that you are with 
Davenport.
	EAR:	I was not at Davenport when I came back from the war because we had an old 
family company that was dormant.  With a couple of cousins we revived that and called it Branch 
and Company.  In those days, if you were in business and wanted to be able to buy and sell on the 
New York Stock Exchange, you had to have a member as one of your partners.  I was the 
member for twenty-five years.  My grandfather had been a member and also my great-
grandfather. 
	(Emile and David enter room)  You still haven’t found those things, have you?  That is an 
extraordinary thing, David.
	Emile: They came in the mail yesterday?
	EAR:	I took them upstairs, I think.  I wonder if I could have put them in the library.  
But I don’t think so.  But anyway—
	As I said, we used to go up there for two or three weeks every summer.  
	KEC:	And then you were with Branch—
(David enters the room with the books about Quaker Hill.)
0:25:03.6.0	Quaker Hill, New York (Branch family summer home)
	EAR:	Where were they?
	DWR:	In the library.
	EAR:	Oh.  I’m sorry to send you to the wrong place.  Now this is—  I was looking at 
these last night.  (narrator looks at the books and passes each to the interviewer.)  This one is 
“Ancient Homes in the Early Days,” and this one is “Quaker Hill in the Nineteenth Century,” and 
then this one is “Quaker Hill in the Eighteenth Century,” (laughter) and then there was a summer 
theater, the Starlight Theater.  We had a couple of celebrities.  Lowell Thomas lived up there and 
Tom Dewey, that ran for the—he was Governor of New York—ran for the presidency against 
Roosevelt, unfortunately for him.  The—
	KEC:	Quaker Hill is the name of a town near Pauling?
	EAR:	It is not really a town.  It is a—  What do you call it?
	DTR:	Place?
	ARG:	Neighborhood?
	EAR:	It’s not really a town.  It is a neighborhood like Westhampton in Richmond.
	KEC:	Alright.  Did they call the entire area, those sixty miles by three miles, Quaker 
Hill or did—
	EAR:	No, just our part of it.  That was called The Oblong originally.
	KEC:	So this included your family’s home and then, adjacent to that area—
	EAR:	I’ll show you their home.  It burned, of course, in 1872.  But this is it before it 
burned.
	KEC:	(reading photograph caption) 1872.  It would have been—I need to get out my 
genealogy—who would have rebuilt it, in the Tudor Style?
	EAR:	My grandmother was twelve years old.  Her mother was a widow then.  She 
rebuilt it, but not very elaborate because there were only the two of them in the family.  
	KEC:	But they maintained the barns?  Were the barns original?  I mean the existing 
barns.
	EAR:	No, they had barns but they—  (shows a photograph of the original house) That 
was the home that burned.
	KEC:	Oh, quite different from the home that was rebuilt.  It appears to—
	EAR:	It was rebuilt a lot like that, I’m sure.  But my grandfather started to work on it 
(laughs) and Elizabethan-ed it.
	KEC:	It would be your grandfather—
	EAR:	Who was Beulah Gould’s husband.  
	KEC:	Oh, you mean John Kerr, John Kerr Branch.  I was taking it up the wrong branch 
of the family.  So, Beulah lived there then.  One needs to be thankful for all the work people have 
done over time.  The Rennolds family—we know quite a bit about the Branch family—the 
Rennolds family, I believe you were saying that they lived in the Fredericksburg area?
29:38.0		Rennolds and Addison family histories
	EAR:	They lived in Essex County for five generations.  One of them became a doctor.  
After the Civil War, he moved up to Fredericksburg.  
	KEC:	He was the son that went to the University of Pennsylvania?
	EAR:	Yes.  
	KEC:	We talked about that [first interview 6/18/04].  He became a doctor and moved to 
Fredericksburg.  How about the Addison relation, they came down from the Streshleys?	
	EAR:	No, my grandfather married an Addison.
	KEC:	Oh, Robert Gordon Rennolds married an Addison.
	EAR:	They had a very interesting background.  Their house was called Oxon Hill, just 
outside of Washington in Maryland.  O-x-o-n.  Do you know why it was misspelled that way?
	KEC:	No.
	EAR:	(chuckles) Well, it is a Latin word of praise for Oxford.
	KEC:	Oh, really.  Very different than the image that it brings to mind when you just 
hear the word.
	EAR:	They were very early settlers in Maryland.  They had considerable land.  But they 
unadvisedly took the wrong side during the Revolutionary War.  Things were very difficult then, 
when that happened to you.
	KEC:	Did they lose Oxon Hill then?  Because they were—
0:31:45.0	Associations with the Episcopal Church
	EAR:	Well, it was so mismanaged.  I think that the same thing was happening up there 
that was happening in Virginia.  I think that the farming part, particularly after you had lost the 
labor, became very difficult.  The last owner of Oxon Hill was a clergyman, Walter Dulaney 
Addison.  He founded a church in—what is that part of Washington called—Georgetown.  He 
founded St. John’s Church in Georgetown.  
	KEC:	What denomination?
	EAR:	Episcopal.
	KEC:	I was going to ask.  You are an Episcopalian.  The ancestors though—  You had 
strong Quaker ties and then John Kerr Branch attended Centenary Methodist.
	EAR:	His father was Methodist.
	KEC:	Where did the Episcopalian influence come in?  Was it just a choice by an 
ancestor at some point in time?
	EAR:	Well, I hate to tell you about Episcopalians.
	KEC:	I’m one also so it will be okay.
	EAR:	They used to say that the Methodists are the Baptists that learned how to read, 
and the Presbyterians are the Methodists that moved to town, and then the Episcopalians (laughs) 
wanted to get into society.  (laughter)
	KEC:	Well, you kind of don’t know what came first, the cart or the horse.  By-and-
large, Episcopal churches [congregations] are very educated.
	EAR:	You see what happened is, in Virginia while it was a British Colony; the Church 
of England was dominant.  If you didn’t go you were fined.  They kept a record of who went 
there.  
	KEC:	You were fined if you didn’t attend.  
	EAR:	You were recusant, whatever that means.  But there were some Baptists and 
Methodists, kind of underground, meeting in barns and all.  Then the Revolution came.  The 
Episcopalians claim, like the Catholics, that they go all of the way back to Rome.  In order to do 
that, you have to have a bishop.  Of course there was no bishop here and England refused to do 
anything about it.  But they found an Episcopalian bishop in Scotland and he carried the torch to a 
bishop.  That got the Episcopalian religion going here.  Now another thing is originally the 
Church of England had a hundred churches throughout Virginia.
	KEC:	That is a lot of churches.
	EAR:	Well, they were small.  St. John’s was the one here in Richmond.  For instance, 
Middlesex County had three of them and only one survived of the three.
	KEC:	And other churches became Episcopal Churches, didn’t they?
	EAR:	What?
	KEC:	Didn’t the other churches go from being the Church of England to—
	EAR:	No.  One of the buildings is now a Baptist church and the other one was 
destroyed or burned.  Something happened to it.  There is only one Episcopal Church now in 
Middlesex County, where there had been three hundred; I mean there had been three Church of 
England.
	KEC:	The Episcopal Church broke with the Church of England.
	EAR:	Well they had to.
	KEC:	Right.  I’ve always thought there still remained some ties.
	EAR:	There is.  There is.  They still go over to the big meeting and all.  I think they are 
quite similar in the service and all that.  Anyway, this Walter Dulaney Addison, that was the last 
one, became a very prominent clergyman.  He helped to revive the denomination.  
	KEC:	It would seem as though, you have ancestors from, on both sides of the family 
that took floundering institutions and built them to something greater.
	EAR:	Somebody wrote a book about him, which I’ve got, describing the situation.
	KEC:	Do you know the title of the book?
	EAR:	Yes, I’ve got it. It’s—I’d get somebody to go look for it but with this crew I’m 
not sure we’d get anywhere at all.
(laughter)
	KEC:	That is okay.  Is it the kind of thing that one could find doing a library search?
	EAR:	Probably not.
	KEC:	Because it is scarce enough?
	EAR:	Well, because it has no connection to Virginia or Richmond.  I think he was 
probably the two generations before my great-grandfather, who is the one who moved to 
Richmond.
00:38:05.2	Influence of places outside of Richmond and interest in architecture
	KEC:	Your ongoing connection to New York State—being raised in Virginia, which 
has very southern traditions, also manners—did the time you spent in New York State influence 
you?  Did it alter the way you thought about Richmond?
	EAR:	It probably has, yes.  Certainly it—  So many people here that have gone to 
school here in Virginia—they’ve gone to college at VMI or the University of Virginia—they’ve 
just never, never left the state.  The only chance they have to learn anything is usually when they 
served in the Army or Navy.  It is right funny, when we came back from the Pacific to San 
Francisco, I met a professor’s wife on a train that was coming through to Washington.  For a 
while trains did that.  You didn’t have to go to Chicago and change.  You stayed in the same car 
all of the time.  I had an upper berth and there was this woman in the lower birth, who was the 
wife of a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.  She spent four days trying to get 
me to go live in California.  That, that was going to be the wave of the future.  That I could break 
away now; no reason why I shouldn’t do it.  I wasn’t married.  It is kind of interesting, many 
people did move and change.
	KEC:	Following the war?
	EAR:	At that time—particularly people who had never left their hometowns before—
they learned what California was like and all.  I remember when we stopped in San Diego, on the 
way out on the ship, the Cathedral looked like a railroad station and the railroad station looked 
like a cathedral.  (laughter)
	KEC:	I’m not sure what that tells us about the value system going on in their 
architecture.
	EAR:	You know I took a year of architecture at the University of Virginia.  I was 
interested in architecture; essentially examining what was happening in San Diego.  
	KEC:	Have you ever thought—did you ever think about retiring from Branch and 
Company and pursuing your architecture interest?
	EAR:	No, I scrubbed architecture because I didn’t think I had any talent for it.
	KEC:	Have you since changed your mind?  You obviously have an extensive 
knowledge.
	EAR:	I’m not a creative architect.  I am an appreciative one, I guess.  I think it was 
lucky that I dropped it because I don’t think I would have done much.  
	KEC:	You mentioned that this model of the house [6410 Three Chopt Road] had been 
created, by the same gentleman that did the Tiffany windows, from plans of this house.
	EAR:	Yes.
	KEC:	May I borrow those plans?
	EAR:	I’m sorry.  I don’t know where they are.  I think even Emile couldn’t find them 
now.  They weren’t in terribly good shape. I think that so often plans are used by carpenters and 
builders; things get scratched and things happen.  I unfortunately don’t have them.
	KEC:	Do you know the architect’s name?
	EAR:	Yes, which I can never remember but I’ve got it written down.  (Mr. Rennolds 
looks in pocket notebook)  He built it for his own use.  Somebody very knowledgeable when we 
bought this house said, “Don’t buy a stucco house because you don’t know what is under it.”  We 
figured that an architect for his own use would have been a different ballgame than others.  
Charles K. Bryant, B-r-y-a-n-t.  He built two houses on Monument Avenue.  
	KEC:	And this was in 1950?
	EAR:	This house was built in 1910.
	KEC:	Really, roughly the same time that your grandparents were building their house.
	EAR:	Yes, that house was built in 1917, quite a bit the same time.
	KEC:	It seems as though Richmond was embracing new styles of architecture at that 
point in time.  
	EAR:	That architect had built two or three Tudor houses.  One of them was in Newport, 
which I had seen.  The people were using different designs.  In any event, he was building that 
other one at about the same time, the wing on the little cottage in Pawling.
	KEC:	Oh, okay.  You mean Grandfather Branch was—
	EAR:	Yes.  
0:44:34.8	The Rennolds family:  Father E.A. Rennolds’ employment
	KEC:	The Rennolds family.  What kind of work did Robert Gordon, your grandfather, 
do?  
	EAR:	He ran a stove company.
	KEC:	You are reminding me of things, the Richmond Stoveworks.
	EAR:	Yes, the Richmond Stove Company. 
	KEC:	Your father though went into the brokerage business as his primary—
	EAR:	Well of course he married into it, you might say, the brokerage business.  But 
also the stove business was declining.  In an effort to keep it going, they merged with another 
one, the Southern Stove Company.  But the business was being ruined by the electric company—
they practically gave you a stove just so you’d use electricity—or gas company, because their gas 
stoves were wood burning or coal.  They became obsolete for that reason.
	KEC:	So there really wasn’t a position for your father to stay—
	EAR:	No.
	KEC:	—with the stove company.  Did he have a natural aptitude for the banking 
business?
	EAR:	Who?
	KEC:	Your father.  
0:46:14.0  	Depression of the 1930s
	EAR:	Well, I think he, he (pause)—  The only trouble is that the depression came 
along, which made things very difficult.  Actually, the man that ran the combination of Southern 
and Richmond died.  My father went in to struggle with it.  He made some supplies for the war; 
made some money during the war.  But then it ended up being liquidated so he, you might say, he 
went back to that business, in the thirties.  You know it’s hard—  I don’t know how much you’ve 
heard about the depression but it was very bad situation for an awful lot of people.
	KEC:	I am mostly familiar with the depression from the agricultural standpoint, how 
it—
	EAR:	That was (unintelligible)  The Branch family bank survived.  But several banks in 
Richmond did not.  So they were lucky that way.
	KEC:	I have a feeling that it was more than luck though.
	EAR:	Well, they had to be well managed but there is a lot of luck in it to.
	KEC:	What you are probably saying is that a lot of good institutions failed.
	EAR:	Yes.
0:48:11.3   	First Merchants Bank, state legislation regarding banking
	KEC:	Have you been involved with First & Merchants Bank?
	EAR:	Yes, I was a director of it for quite a while.
	KEC:	First & Merchants was purchased by Sovran?
	EAR:	What’s that?
	KEC:	Was it purchased by Sovran?
	EAR:	Well it actually was, but there was another.  You have to understand, it was 
purchased so many times I’m having trouble remembering.  Sovran was involved, but I don’t 
know if that was the first one or not.
	KEC:	So you were on the Board of Directors but you didn’t ever spend time there as an 
officer.
	EAR:	No, except for board meetings.  When (unintelligible) we went into that big of a 
bank, we stayed on the board for a year.  But then that was that.  I think that ran out of Norfolk, 
the headquarters which was Norfolk.  
	KEC:	That was the bank that had purchased First & Merchants?
	EAR:	They very extravagantly used to send an airplane up to bring the Richmond 
people down.  That is rather ridiculous because you can drive down there in an hour and a half.  
By the time you’d gone to the airport and then driven from the airport at the other end, you hadn’t 
saved any time. 
	KEC:	Were buy-outs like that difficult?  I just have no knowledge as to what transpires.
	EAR:	Well you exchange your stock for the stock of the other company.  If it is doing 
well, you make a lot of money off of it.  The Bank of America is what eventually happened, 
which is the second biggest bank in the country now.
	KEC:	I was wondering is there—I mean is it strictly a financial transaction that governs 
it or—  I know some of these institutions have had such long identities and are such a part of 
Richmond.
	EAR:	Well, of course, every bank in Richmond was taken over; didn’t any of them last. 
And, do you know why they didn’t last?  Because a hundred years ago the Legislature, governed 
by people in small towns, had a rule that you could only be a bank in whatever town you were in.  
	KEC:	What year was—  So this stayed on the books in Virginia until the thirties or 
forties?
	EAR:	Well, the banks, like the Merchant’s Bank, tried to get it changed.  So did other 
banks, State Planters and Bank of Virginia.  But the legislature was controlled by people from 
small towns.  What happened is that North Carolina didn’t have those rules.  If you had a bank in 
North Carolina you could go anywhere in North Carolina.  So that’s why the banks became large 
in North Carolina and they ended up buying the Richmond ones.  It was a very tragic thing for 
Richmond.
	KEC:	Are there other aspects that you have encountered, with the banking business or 
the brokerage, that the Legislature has really hampered you?
	EAR:	Yes.  Well for instance, they changed the law a little bit.  I think you could either 
put something in five miles away from the town or something like that.  But it was too late.
	KEC:	Does there continue to be a strong lobby?  Is there a lobby group or organization?
	EAR:	I’m sure there is, yes.  There are a lot of problems with the control by small, 
Southern situations.
	KEC:	What I am hearing you say is that that has probably affected Richmond greatly 
over time.
	EAR:	I think so.
	KEC:	The experience that just—
	EAR:	You lose the headquarters of a bank, you’ve lost something.
0:52:52.3	Selection of Richmond as the location for the Federal Reserve Bank 
	KEC:	That reminds me, I read that your grandfather, John Kerr, was instrumental in 
persuading the Federal Reserve Bank to be chosen—in Richmond.
	EAR:	Yes.  A group went up there to do that.  The question now is, “Are they going to 
leave it here now that there are no banks here to deal with?”  
	KEC:	That is a concern.  Do you have any idea what is involved in those kinds of 
negotiations, or not negotiations but just influencing?
	EAR:	It is a political thing.  Baltimore wanted it—I don’t know—several other towns 
wanted it and the fact that Richmond had the headquarters of four or five banks had a—  You 
know one reason for the Federal Reserve is (chuckles) that it is very hard to get a check cashed 
outside your town.  One of the features of the Federal Reserve was to transfer money easily from 
one town to another.
	KEC:	And that is really a thing of the past now, isn’t it?
	EAR:	Yes.  The Bank of America has got branches everywhere.  So, you can write a 
check that way easily.  That was a function, an early function of the regionalism of America.
0:54:22.5	American’s spending/investment habits
	KEC:	As a broker and an investment advisor, do you have any concerns about our 
cashless society, like the debit cards?
	EAR:	I think it has done a lot of damage and a lot of people have overextended 
themselves.  It is so easy to do it.  If you couldn’t—  If you [charged] as much as one would do, 
somebody else will give you another one.  I know people who have, say maybe, ten or fifteen and 
ended up in serious trouble.  But, it certainly is a great convenience.
	KEC:	I was thinking more of—  As I’ve observed my children and other’s children— A 
lot of my conscientiousness with finances comes because I looked at a can of groceries and it was 
stamped, in my early years, with the price of the item.  Everything had a price on it.  Usually you 
took cash out of your wallet to pay for it.  Now we just pick up the items, they’re scanned, and 
there is a transaction by wire.
	EAR:	That’s right.  It has certainly changed things.
	KEC:	Do you see a difference in attitude in the people that come to Davenport?  I doubt 
that you are dealing with clients daily at this point in your life, but I would think you would be 
aware about what is going on in the company, as far as people’s investment habits or—
	EAR:	There is a lot of change there.  But, the credit situation is almost international 
now.  When I first went to Europe, you had to have a letter of credit.  We had a connection with J. 
P. Morgan.  If you had a J. P. Morgan letter of credit that was considered a plus.  You would take 
it with you and somebody in Paris would give you some francs on the basis of that Morgan letter 
of credit.
	KEC:	But it still required quite a bit of planning in advance.  So that you had all of your 
documents when you arrived at the other location.
	EAR:	Yes.
(lengthy pause)
0:57:26.2 	Blythe Branch’s Richmond activities
	KEC:	The Richmond Symphony, we talked about the founding of the symphony and I 
am curious—  I had picked up the book We Happy WASPs, John Zeugner, your son-in-law, had 
mentioned it and said that he thought there might be a correction, that there was something 
incorrect in the book.  I’ll have to ask him what he was referring to.
	EAR:	Who told you that?
	KEC:	John, your son-in-law.
	EAR:	Oh Zeugner.  Where is he?  He was coming here this afternoon and he could 
answer that.
	KEC:	One of the things that I noted, because I only read the section of the book that 
was about the Branch’s, it talked about, I believe it would be, a great-uncle of yours.  I want to 
say Beulah, Blythe?
	EAR:	Blythe.
	KEC:	Okay.  That he had returned from Paris and founded the Richmond Symphony.  
Was that the first symphony that was founded back in the thirties?
	EAR:	It is one of many.  It didn’t succeed.  I think it lasted three years.
	KEC:	When I read that I wondered if that was an accurate statement.  That he had been 
active in—
	EAR:	He was also the second president of the Virginia Museum [of Fine Arts].
	KEC:	Very active then in cultural organizations.  Now you have been active at the 
Virginia Museum.
059:03.0	Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
	EAR:	I was on their board for quite a while.  
	KEC:	And you spent time on that board with Sydney Lewis?  Correct?
	EAR:	Yes.  You know my sister lives next door to him.  
	KEC:	There on Monument Avenue?   I believe it was John who had mentioned that you 
had traveled with Mr. Lewis to interview potential museum directors or—
	EAR:	I was on a committee to pick a new head for the museum.  Mr. Lewis was then 
pretty active in Best Products and had his own plane.  It surely is a nice way to go.  You just drive 
up to the airport and the thing is waiting there for you—waits until you get there—and then you 
go off.  You know the Lewises used to go to New York every-other weekend.  They would go 
down to SoHo and other places where their kind of art was.  They always stayed in the same 
hotel; whose name I’ll think of in a minute, on Madison Avenue.  One time we were interviewing 
somebody from the Metropolitan Museum and Mr. Lewis took the group to lunch at the hotel 
where he stayed when he was in New York.   Of course they knew him and all that.  But we were 
able to interview three people in one day.  In one day because we had the plane.  One of them, I 
think, was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which is very hard to get to on commercial flights.  But 
with this thing, we got in and said “Chapel Hill” and we went to Chapel Hill.
	KEC:	So these individuals you were interviewing weren’t even in the same town or 
necessarily in the same state.
1:01:35.2	Experience with the Gottwalds of Ethel Corporation
	EAR:	Yes.  We went out once to Cincinnati; and that was very interesting too.  
Cincinnati’s hard to get to.  You have to change two or three times, but not with this thing.  It’s 
very funny I—  Occasionally, the Gottwalds were interested in the museum and—they have a 
private plane too—we went once or twice on their plane.  I was coming back from New York 
once on a commercial plane, the last plane used to come in, leave about ten o’clock.  Mr. 
Gottwald was on the plane.  I said, “Why in the world are you on this plane?  You’ve got your 
own plane.”  He said, “We have a rule that if there is any adequate commercial flight we had to 
take it.”  They had a division up the Mississippi.   What’s the town, capital of Mississippi called?
	ARG:	Jackson.
	EAR:	No, it’s not Jackson.  Capital of Louisiana, I mean.
	ARG:	New Orleans.
	DWR:	Shreveport.
	EAR:	No, it’s not New Orleans
	ARG:	Baton Rouge.
	EAR:	Baton Rouge, it’s at the river.  Well in order get home you’d have to take a plane 
to New Orleans, and then take one to Atlanta, and then, if you were very lucky, you got home.  
So this, I mean, Ethyl saved those flights for people that really didn’t have another decent way to 
do it.  I felt that was very, very foreseeing for Mr. Gottwald, that way.  I had an experience with 
him; I was on the board of Tredegar Company.  We negotiated with Mr. Gottwald buying the 
Tredegar property downtown here in Richmond.   He was just, well he is just unbelievably bright. 
(chuckles)  He would bring stuff up and he’d run with it.  One thing they wanted is that Tredegar 
had access to two railroads, the Atlantic Coast Line and the C & O.  Mr. Gottwald only had 
access to one, the Southern Company.  He said the Southern Company was sticking him because 
they were the only one.  He just was fascinated with the idea of getting in on two more railroads.
	KEC:	Were they already situated at the top of the hill at that time?  At the top of 
Gamble’s Hill.
	EAR:	No.
	KEC:	They were in another location.
	EAR:	They were down at the bottom of the hill.  The company was called Albemarle 
Paper before it was called Ethyl.  They were going to put a paper plant, now, right there where 
that museum is of the Confederacy. 
	KEC:	So they had plans to demolish the buildings.
	EAR:	I don’t know what they were going to do.  There was going to be a paper plant.  
The smell would have been awful in downtown Richmond.  There was a chemical that the paper 
was—I think they cure it now but for a long while there was—.
	KEC:	I think when you go to West Point you know when you are arriving!
	EAR:	That’s right.  That is nowhere near as bad as it used to be.  That was our way of 
going to Urbanna, through West Point.  Where do you go when you go through West Point?
	KEC:	I believe we were in the Irvington area.  We did a National Register [of Historic 
Places] nomination recently, Northumberland County, Kilmarnock, right outside of Kilmarnock.  
One of King Carter’s homes in that area.
	EAR:	Whose home?
	KEC:	One of King Carter—
	EAR:	Oh, oh the Corotoman, where the river hits the Rappahanock.
	KEC:	Sir, I don’t know.  There are no rivers that come close to Clifton.  This was 
supposedly a hunting lodge that was [owned by] a Carter descendent.
	EAR:	And was it in Irvington?
	KEC:	Well the closest is Kilmarnock.  Now Irvington is—
	EAR:	Kilmarnock.  Well the Corotoman was, oh very close there.  In fact, you know 
that church there was built so that the Carter’s could go to it.  Have you seen it?
	KEC:	unh-uh.  I’ll need to look at that.  
	EAR:	There is a wonderful church there.
	KEC:	And it is located in Irvington or—
	EAR:	Where, where is that?
	DWR:	Weems
	EAR:	What?
	DWR:	Weems
	EAR:	Weems, I don’t know.  But this church is a family church.  The Carters are all 
buried there too.  There is a river that comes into the Corotoman, into the Rappahannock.  His 
house was right there.  You know he had, I think, a hundred thousand acres and he had a thousand 
slaves.  He was a big deal.  
	KEC:	Definitely.  What took us down that path?
	DWR:	West Point
1:07:44.8	Floundering businesses in Richmond, early- to mid-1900s
	KEC:	West Point and the paper mill.  We were talking about Tredegar and the 
Gottwalds.  When you state that you were on the Board of Directors of Tredegar Corporation, 
what was Tredegar at that point in time?  I associate it with the—
	EAR:	Going downhill (chuckles).  They used to make, curiously enough now—  The 
big battleships had three, was it three inch guns?  What do you call them, David?  (pause)  But 
anyway, Tredegar was making the projectiles that you would use to test the guns, not to shoot at 
anybody.  That was a very profitable thing for them.  They also made horseshoes.  You can see 
what happened to the horseshoe business.
	KEC:	Exactly.  What year approximately did Gottwald then—  
	EAR:	What is that?
	KEC:	What year did Tredegar go out of business?  The Gottwalds purchased the 
property.
	EAR:	Tredegar actually transferred what little business they had to Chesterfield County 
and kept on going.
	KEC:	So there is still a Tredegar Corporation?
	EAR:	 No, it is gone now.  In fact the Gottwalds are using the name Tredegar for one of 
their subsidiaries.  It is entirely different.  You know it’s a valley in Wales; where the name came 
from originally.
	KEC:	Which was appropriate for the—  I assume the founder was from Wales.  We 
know the workers were.
	EAR:	I don’t know if he was or not.  He has a Scottish name, Anderson.  I don’t know 
where he came from.  His descendent was president of the company and a contemporary of mine.  
That’s the reason I became a director of it.  
	KEC:	And it was, no doubt, a challenge to deal with a floundering company.
	EAR:	Well, they were looking for something to make, using their expertise.  The same 
thing as the stove people had been through.  You know there are a lot of businesses that disappear 
in Richmond.  One of them was the wholesalers.  That was a very important part of our business, 
of Richmond business.  
	KEC:	Particularly before the Civil War.
	EAR:	Or after it.
	KEC:	So they continued to flourish.
	EAR:	Oh yes.  For instance, my wife’s family was wholesale hardware.  
	KEC:	The Pinders?
	EAR:	Yes.  That was a business that declined too because the big stores don’t use 
wholesalers.  They go directly to the manufacturer.  But as long as you have a lot of small 
companies—there was one in Urbanna for instance, one in Tappahannock, and so on—they sold 
those stores these things.    
	KEC:	So there is still a need for the wholesaler, but on a smaller scale.
	EAR:	You meet a need for the wholesale function.  The people at Walmart go directly 
to the manufacturer.  And the little hardware store is gone too.  There used to be three very close 
to this house.  They’re all gone.  
	KEC:	The National Trust for Historic Preservation put the entire state of Vermont on 
their Ten Most Endangered Places list.  It is because of the number of Wall Mart stores that are 
planned for that state and how it will change the dynamics of the state.
	EAR:	Of course the same thing has happened in a lot of places—there were a couple of 
very important department stores in Richmond, which a lot of people—threw a lot of people out 
of business.  Thalhimer’s and Miller and Rhoads you’ve probably heard of.  That was happening 
all through business.  But there was a period in there when the owners made some money.
	KEC:	You mean—
1:12: 31.0	Richmond residential expansion in early 1900s
EAR:	It was from the Civil War up until 1900 I’d say, thirty or forty years in there.  You could 
tell because most of the Fan District was built at that time.  It took a vibrant economy to build the 
Fan District for people who worked in the factories and worked in the companies; that kind of 
evidence of it.
	KEC:	Have you studied very much about Lewis Ginter and his expanding Richmond, 
the streetcar suburbs?
	EAR:	I know a little bit about it, yes.  He had seen something like Ginter Park 
somewhere and he wanted to reproduce it.  However he made one terrible mistake.
	KEC:	And, that is?
	EAR:	He said, “That nobody wanted to get into a buggy and ride toward the sun in the 
afternoon.”  So he put his north, where you didn’t have to do that.  But the fashionable part of 
Richmond was west.
	KEC:	To go north you needed to cross an area that was very depressed—
1:13:57.6	Pinder family homes in Richmond and Urbanna
	EAR:	Yes, that probably had something to do with it too.  My wife’s family lived on 
Hermitage Road.  My wife told me that her father was very careful about how he went to work in 
Richmond.  He didn’t want to go through that crummy part.  He went down the Boulevard or 
some way that was less crummy.
	KEC:	Their home was on Hermitage?  Do you recall—
	EAR:	What is that?
	KEC:	Your mother’s home—your mother’s home, family home, was on Hermitage? 
[4100 Hermitage Road]
	EAR:	Yes, my wife’s. 
	KEC:	The Pinder home.
	EAR:	Mother-in-law.  It was on Hermitage Road.  The corner of, what’s that—
	ARG:	Bellevue.
	EAR:	Bellevue.  It is a big house there.
	KEC:	Is it still there?
	EAR:	Yes.  She made six apartments, illegally.
	KEC:	Oh, this is the home you were telling me about.  When it was sold, the next 
owner tried to get city permission to have legal apartments.
	EAR:	Yes.  Mother Pinder had been breaking the law since 1935. (laughter)  But she 
did the same thing down in Urbanna.  She had a big house there.  She made that into six 
apartments.  She said that she did it because when she got old she wanted somebody else in the 
house—if she got sick or something—because she was a widow living on her own.
	KEC:	Had she been widowed young or just had an extended—
	EAR:	Well, she was widowed at the time that I was married to her daughter.  Then she 
lived to be one-hundred and three.  She was a widow quite awhile.  [Mrs. Pinder died at age one-
hundred and seven at her home in Urbanna, Middlesex County, Virginia]
	SRG:	(unintelligible) in the late 1960s.
	KEC:	My goodness.
	EAR:	She had come from a farm family in Louisa County.  She was the tenth child in 
that family.  She loved everything outside; had a wonderful garden that she worked on practically 
until she was one-hundred.	
1:16:29.7	Mary Anne Pinder’s early life
	KEC:	Do you think your wife’s love of sports came from her mother’s interest in the 
outdoors?
	EAR:	I think it came more from her brothers.  One was head of, was the pitcher for the 
University of Virginia baseball team.  Another one was on the football team.  
	KEC:	Where did your wife go to school?
	EAR:	Does anybody remember the name of it?
	SRG:	St. Catherine’s first and then—
	EAR:	St. Catherine’s.  And then where did she go?
	SRG:	Bennington in New York.
	EAR:	No, it wasn’t Bennington.
	SRG:	Bennett.  Excuse me.
	EAR:	She went to a two-year college, Bennett, basically because of the music situation.  
She had a scholarship, a music scholarship, there.  It is near Poughkeepsie; doesn’t exist now.
	KEC:	A small liberal arts school with a music emphasis.  And then she came back to 
Richmond?
	EAR:	When the war came she went into the WAVES.  She was six years younger than 
I.  She didn’t have to go in, she volunteered.  She was very sporty.  Her brother had learned to fly 
a plane and she wanted to learn to fly one too.  I think took one or two lessons, didn’t keep on.
	KEC:	I know that at the time of her death the article indicated that she belonged to a 
flight association, a women’s flight association.
	EAR:	She was interested in a lot of things and very active.
	KEC:	What was her next passion, following her music?
	EAR:	I don’t know.  Probably her children or—she was in a garden club and did lots 
there.  
	KEC:	We were going to limit our interview today and—
	EAR:	Eliminate it
	KEC:	(laughing)  Now seems to be a good time unless there is something you want to 
talk about.
	EAR:	No, nothing particular.
	KEC:	Nothing in particular.  Then we will pick up again— 
	EAR:	Shall we make another engagement?
	KEC:	Yes, I would love that.
	EAR:	I don’t know what happened to Bucci [Rennolds Zuegner]?  She was supposed to 
be here.  Something must have happened.  (Mr. Rennolds studies his pocket calendar)  This is 
June, isn’t it?  Oh, it has come fast, hasn’t it?  I just hate for the longest day to be gone.  It is all 
declining now.  There is absolutely no hope.  (laughter)  
BREAK at 1:19:44.4  	Recording resumes when Mr. Rennolds begins to read aloud from a  
book on the Fitzhughs. [William Fitzhugh and his Chesapeake world, 1676-1701; the Fitzhugh 
letters and other documents]
  	EAR:	“Well there seems to have been a church near his home and was frequently, 
perhaps most of the time without a clergyman.  Several times Fitzhugh begged English assistance 
in procuring a sober and learned man for his parish.  One of the two men…”  
(text read aloud for several pages)
	KEC:	I have always found it interesting how diligent the first colonists were in 
maintaining the social customs that they were familiar with from England, in very primitive 
conditions, at least during the initial days.  Of course, they sent for it all.  Can you imagine 
making a shopping list like [the one] you read to us earlier?  Mr. Rennolds, did you read to your 
children as they were growing up?  You are marvelous.
1:21:54.5	Life in the Rennolds’ household when the children were young
	EAR:	Some, some.  We read some, not enough.  
	KEC:	Anne tells me though that you did instill in her a love of reading.
	EAR:	In who?
	KEC:	Your daughter Anne.
	EAR:	Well her mother did, probably more than me.
	KEC:	Actually Edmund mentioned his memory of going to your office and seeing the 
breadth of literary works on the wall.  I think he must have been referring to a time when he was 
young.
	ARG:	Have you seen his library?  I was looking at it today.  It has all of  art books.  
He’s got things about Greece and things about Italy, of course, and things about France.  It just 
makes you want to go to these places, when you pick up those books.  He developed a curiosity.  
	KEC:	I think that what I am encountering, Sir, is one of your characteristics that your 
children have mentioned.  And that is that you are very modest.   When I—
	EAR:	No ego.  Is that it?
	KEC:	When I ask about some things, you are inclined to direct the conversation to 
some of the others that are in your life.  (Mr. Rennolds returns to studying the Fitzhugh book.)
	SRG:	I don’t really remember my mother reading to us to any extent.  She was 
involved and she was gone (unintelligible).   Both of them carried us around; took us wherever 
they went.  When mother would go play tennis, we all went with her.  And the (unintelligible) 
they carpooled, I remember that.  It was fun.
	KEC:	Edmund had mentioned that you had a governess for a period of time.
	SRG:	We had a Czechoslovakian lady that lived in Richmond already.  She came to 
live with us.  It wasn’t very successful because she was extremely strict.  The idea was that she 
would teach us music and take care of us (unintelligible)
	KEC:	That would have been a very helpful thing.
	SRG:	But she was too old and being brought up strictly in Europe—  Her mother had 
studied with Liszt and so was extremely musical herself.
	KEC:	It would have been quite the opportunity, had it worked out.
	SRG:	Yes, we still had—  I can remember sitting around and having lunch with her and 
she’d talk mythology to us and (unintelligible).  We’d go for walks with her.  We did a lot of 
stuff.  
	KEC:	The intent.  A very good intent was obviously there.
	SRG:	Yes, well the musical thing.  My mother had seen this woman at concerts and 
they talked.  That is where she got the idea.
	KEC:	Was it customary for families to have governesses as you were growing up?
	SRG:	Not necessarily.
	EAR:	A few.  We have a letter my grandparent’s wrote in 1920, from Paris.  They said, 
“We are going to pick up a governess for the grandchildren,” and they brought one back.  She 
was very seasick on the boat.
	KEC:	Did you, growing up in the Rennolds family, did you have a governess? 
	EAR:	Yes.  We did.  They were picking the governess up for us.
	KEC:	Oh, I was thinking the Branch grand—
	EAR:	Well the Branch family.  But they didn’t have anybody that needed a governess.  
There were probably a dozen families in Richmond that did that.   I, of course, had a governess; 
we had a series of governesses.  They never stayed very long.  We had one until my brother John 
was probably six years old.  He was ten years younger than I am.  I was sixteen.  Being conscious 
of the governess until I was sixteen, I really learned quite a lot of French.  I can speak French 
because of that and read it too.
	KEC:	The experience of growing up with a governess in the house was then a positive 
one for you.
	EAR:	Oh yes.  My grandmother Branch had a French maid, a personal maid, which 
people sometimes had too.  You know it took a long time to get dressed.  Clothes were very 
complicated and difficult, hard to do it without a maid if you were in society, you might say.
	KEC:	And these homes required—I assume that there were individuals hired for 
specific tasks.  Of course you had the kitchen staff and the gardeners and that.  Just the social 
obligations evidently did require—
	EAR:	Then also, we had a seamstress that came in once a week and just sewed or 
repaired anything that had to be done; holes in socks, for instance, holes in sweaters.  Now days 
you just throw it away and buy another one.  But then they would—  The seamstress, of course, 
was in various houses.  She always knew the gossipers; so-and-so is doing so-and-so.  She’d been 
in that house the week before and heard the family talking.  Then we also had a furnace man.
	KEC:	His responsibility was—
	EAR:	When you had a coal-burning furnace somebody had to get it started in the 
morning and dampen it down in the afternoon.  I think the same man did it to most of the houses 
on our block.
	KEC:	Okay, so he would go from house to house as opposed to needing to stay and 
stoke it, as they did for very large buildings.
	EAR:	Yes, that is right.  It’s kind of hard to conceive of what you had to go through in 
a household.  For instance, our—this is really weird—our refrigerator had a door in the back.  
Somebody brought a big cake of ice, put it in that door, and had no way of getting in the house 
except that one door into the refrigerator.
	KEC:	A door that opened onto the back porch?
	EAR:	Yes, onto the back porch.  Then you’d chip away at that to get that ice out, on the 
inside side.  My father, because he had been in the stove business, could keep our furnace going if 
for some reason the man didn’t turn up.  There was one time that there was a big storm and the 
electricity was off for a while.  The gas was also off.  We had a little stove that they used to make 
to go in cabooses.  That was quite a bit of the business, the stove for cabooses.  We had one—I 
believe they used it for laundry or something—so we cooked meals for everybody on the block.  
That was the only thing that had a fire.
	KEC:	When I looked at the Richmond Stove Works [Stove Company] catalog, I was 
amazed at all the models that they had.  So you even manufactured stoves for cabooses.  Okay,  
the governess lived in your home with you as did a what, a maid?
	EAR:	No, the maids came in the morning.  
	KEC:	They would come and go.
	EAR:	They didn’t live with us.
	SRG:	You had a live-in cook probably.
	EAR:	What
	SRG:	You had a live-in cook, didn’t you?
	EAR:	I don’t think so.
	SRG:	Growing up.  She would come in days.
	KEC:	Having not experienced that myself, it would seem strange to have non-members 
of the family in the house all of the time.
	EAR:	Well, there was a back section for them.
	KEC:	So, there were just, there were understood rules.  There were conventions, that by 
and large they did their work in one area of the house and then—
	EAR:	When this house was built, they expected to have a maid.  The door between that 
section and this has got a lock on our side.  That is the only thing that I noticed.
	KEC:	But you were saying, here, at this house, you did have a maid that was with you 
for a long, long period of time.
	SRG:	We had a maid that would come at seven in the morning and stay until seven at 
night, after she had done the dishes.
	EAR:	For a while we had two.
	SRG:	We had her for twenty years.  We went through several others before her.
	KEC:	She just really fit into the family.
	SRG:	There was another one, just a little over a year later.  All of a sudden they had 
two children.  So, they had some help with them.
	KEC:	That seems like a very long day.  
	SRG:	The one Margaret that came in every day, she would be here physically when we 
came home from school.  There would be someone here so Mom could be out playing tennis, or 
doing some things with the other kids, or what have you.  And she’d make breakfast and make 
dinner.  She was (unintelligible)   
	KEC:	We started recording again when Mr. Rennolds started with the Fitzhughs.
	EAR:	Well Master David, what are you up to?
	DWR:	Nothing. (laughter)
	SRG:	Do you know how to rewind this? (referring to the video camera)
END OF TAPE:  1:33:03.0




Interview: Edmund Addison Rennolds, Jr. 

36