A few years ago, I visited the Merchant’s House Museum in New York City for the first time. My cousin and I spend a day in the city together every Sunday. We each choose a fun activity. Mine was visiting this old, ass house that I knew nothing about. As the cold air blew through us, not even just around us, I was nervous that I’d made a terrible choice. It was a frigid day in December, and owing to that, all was supposed to be merry and bright in Manhattan. Yet rather than feeling charmed while walking through the halls of the Merchant’s House, I felt… cold. I mean, it’s quite literally freezing in that place during winter. But despite the Christmas cheer happening all around me, the historic townhouse felt gloomy. It seemed to be trying desperately to hold onto a time that’s skeletal in how far behind us it is as a period.
The house reminded me of a neighbor I had who dressed in velvet gowns and styled her hair in a way that hadn’t been in fashion since the 1930’s. Rather than appearing as an enthusiast of a bygone era or an elderly eccentric, there was something about her insistence on this manner of dress that reminded me of death.
The Tredwell Family and Their Merchant’s House Legacy
Seabury and Eliza Tredwell bought their home—then located in what was a quiet, tranquil suburb of the city—in 1835. If the name Seabury makes your ears perk up in a Manchurian Candidate-style flash because you’ve watched Hamilton one too many times, you’re correct in your intuition. Seabury’s mother was half-siblings with that Samuel Seabury—the first Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America.
The Tredwell family was wealthy, Seabury having built his fortune in the hardware business. The world they inhabited was one of gentility and status. One gets the sense that Gertrude Tredwell may have been a “whoops” baby. Fifteen years into their marriage, Seabury and Eliza had already produced seven children. It wasn’t until Seabury retired, in his mid-fifties, that Gertrude was born. I don’t know many people who take that road purposefully after retirement—and at that age.
Gertrude Tredwell: The So-Called “Ghost Bride” of the Merchant’s House
Beyond being the youngest Tredwell, I knew everything I needed to know about society at that time when I first heard someone refer to her as the “ghost bride.” I conjured up some romantic, tragic image à la Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride. But the nickname had nothing to do with Gothic romance. It simply meant that Gertrude had never married—so, naturally, the story goes, she just paced around her house until death, depressed because she’d never found a husband.
I don’t know how she truly felt about never marrying, though I’ll touch on that later. I couldn’t find a lot of information on how she was as a young woman. I did find some information related to her schooling. Being a teacher myself, I loved getting a glimpse into her life as a student.
Of the six Tredwell sisters, all received a private-school education befitting their class. You know how it went—women of the time were taught how not to be pushy, opinionated nuisances, and instead how to be marketable as marriage material. Social graces, I believe it’s called. The Tredwell sisters would have learned some rudimentary academics—geography, literature, the classics—but the greater goal was refinement. They were…good girls. But not in the way that the rest of us ovulating folks are.
Education at Mrs. Okill’s School for Young Ladies
There were a number of respectable schools where wealthy families could send their daughters before they became baby factories. The Tredwells chose Mrs. Okill’s School, which operated as both a boarding and day school. Her school boasted an impressive roster of pupils, including Elizabeth Hamilton Schuyler, granddaughter of Alexander Hamilton. For the record, 19th-century New York apparently only had ten families and they keep resurfacing in every story I read and plan on writing. Nobody except them lived in New York.
While Mrs. Okill may have taught her students the proper comportment of society women, she herself had a rather improper beginning: she was—gasp—illegitimate. But her father happened to be the man who invented the invisible ink used by George Washington and his spy ring during the Revolutionary War, which is pretty cool. [See? Everybody is connected to everybody!]
As for the relationship between Mrs. Okill and young Gertrude? If we go by one surviving comment from the teacher, it might not have been a warm one:
“Dear Gertrude,” it begins, “I regret to say that your writing is carelessly done.”
At eighteen, Gertrude left Mrs. Okill’s dusty ass school and began studying under a Mrs. Gibbons instead. I’m not saying it was because of that nasty comment, but… it’s fun to draw conclusions sometimes. Her sisters, meanwhile, finished their education at Mrs. Okill’s.
A Forbidden Love: Gertrude Tredwell and Dr. Luis Walton
It’s not as if Gertrude never had prospects. There was Luis Walton, a doctor—though not a wealthy one. His name appears in several spellings, but the Merchant’s House Museum archives spell it L-U-I-S, so I’ll do the same.
Still, he seems to have been a kind and compassionate man. His friend and colleague Edward Livingston Trudeau wrote that Walton was a great comfort to him during his battle with tuberculosis, often helping to care for Trudeau’s wife and children while he recovered in the Adirondacks. Walton also served as an attending physician at hospitals for the poor.
But… fuck him, said Gertrude’s father. Because worst of all—he was Catholic. Yuck. What would the respectable Episcopalian Tredwells have in common with this Irish Catholic man and his family? Nothing! After all, the Tredwells believed God died on the cross—and the Catholics, apparently, believed He died on a dirtier, worse cross. Seabury forbade the marriage.
Legend says Gertrude never loved anyone again after Luis. And honestly, that doesn’t seem like such a bold claim. She never married, nor—so far as I can tell—did she ever date again.
This is where my mind starts asking questions and inventing stories about their relationship. How did they spend their time? Did they have inside jokes? Did Luis finger Gertrude under her 50 layers of skirts? Was it ardent love on both sides? Was she infatuated, and he was more casual?
Apparently, he was the only man who took any interest in her. Owing to her reclusive nature in her later years, is this because she was a peculiar person?
The Merchant’s House Freezes in Time
As the decades passed, New York City moved uptown, and the once-elegant Bond Street neighborhood turned industrial. There’s something unbearably sad about the world changing around the remaining Tredwell sisters while they stayed frozen in time, shuttered inside their home like relics themselves. The Merchant’s House Museum—filled with dance cards, gowns, and fine furnishings—became a mausoleum of memory.
What did they do with all that time? How did they feel watching the world modernize around them? Occasionally, the sisters were seen taking carriage rides. Mostly, they stayed indoors. One by one, they died off, until in 1909, at the age of sixty-nine, Gertrude Tredwell was the last one left.
She kept the house exactly as it had always been, refusing to part with the memories. Gertrude was born in a four-poster bed surrounded by a large, bustling family—and in 1933, she died in that same bed, surrounded by none of them.
The True Haunting of the Merchant’s House Museum
What’s most haunting about her story isn’t that people occasionally claim to see Gertrude Tredwell’s ghost at the Merchant’s House Museum. It’s that she spent so many years living like one—alone in a house filled with the ghosts of her past.
When she finally passed, an old playbill from the late 19th century was found in the pocket of a coat—apparently never removed since the night its wearer returned home.