Gilded Age Travel: The Mill Family, Friends & Servants

During the 2025 holiday season, the mansion was decorated with a travel theme to recognize the importance of travel to the Mills family, their servants, and friends.  Rooms featured specific countries where family or friends traveled as well as countries reflecting the origins of collections within the house.  Ruth and Ogden Mills traveled to Europe nearly every spring.  They often went to visit family, but they also traveled to see landmarks, museums, and the natural beauty of other lands.  Technological advancements during the Gilded Age created the ability for wealthy Americans to travel for leisure purposes and as the era progressed, more middle class families also began to travel for vacations. 

World Map, Circa 1900

Mills Family Travel

The Mills family had many reasons to travel including leisure, business, and visiting family. Every spring they boarded a large ocean liner to Europe and they stayed in a luxurious first class cabin.  The trip from New York to Southampton took approximately one week.  They traveled on many ships that were part of the Cunard & White Star Lines including the RMS Mauretania, Lusitania, Teutonic & Olympic.  Ruth's sister Elizabeth had been living in Europe since her 1880 marriage to William George Cavendish-Bentinck, and Ogden's sister Elisabeth was married to Whitelaw Reid who was the US Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1905-1912.  

RMS Mauretania

Ruth and Ogden Mills had even more reason to travel to Europe when their daughter Beatrice married the 8th Earl of Granard and settled in England and Ireland.  The couple spent most of their time in London, but also went to his family's ancestral home, Castle Forbes in County Longford, Ireland.  After the death of her mother Ruth Mills, the Countess and her family traveled across the ocean to Staatsburgh each autumn to visit their father and grandfather.  Below we see images of the family traveling on a ship across the ocean in the early 1920s.  The first photo depicts Countess Granard (Beatrice Mills) and her daughter Eileen.  The second photo shows the Earl with his children Arthur, Moira, John & Eileen (l-r).

In addition to large ocean liners, domestic travel had been revolutionized by the railroad.  Railroads had a big impact during the Gilded Age because they enriched railroad owners, and were constantly expanding across the country like a large spiderweb.  Much of the Mills family wealth came from Ogden's father, D.O. Mills' partial ownership of the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, which served as the only link from the Comstock Lode to the Central Pacific.  The Mills family frequently traveled to their estate in California, Millbrae, and used the railroad to make the trip across the country.  The newspapers reported that they spent Christmas 1916 in California, and the trip from the east coast to the west coast would have taken about one week on the train.  The family would take a train from New York to Chicago and then another from Chicago to San Francisco.  Before the completion of the Trans Continental Railroad in 1869, the same journey to California from New York would have taken several months and involved a sea journey to Panama or around South America.

The San Francisco Examiner, December 9, 1916, p.3

Print depicting the Virginia & Truckee Railroad, displayed in Staatsburgh's research library

Trip to Norway, 1900

Ruth aboard a ship with traveling to Norway, 1900

Although Ruth and Ogden Mills took countless trips overseas, we only have photo documentation from a trip to Norway in 1900.  Thanks to several photos that were saved in a family photo album, we are able to get a glimpse into the trip, what they wore, and who they traveled with on the journey.  We appreciate the family sharing this treasure trove of photos with the site.

Ruth Mills, Norway 1900

Evelyn Burden, Philip Lydig, Ogden Mills and Ruth Mills (l-r), Burden and Lydig were friends of Ruth & Ogden Mills joined them on this trip to Norway.

This page from the family photo album shows the travel party riding in a carriage through the countryside and visiting Hardanger Fjord.  The fifth longest fjord in the world and the second longest in Norway, Hardanger Fjord, located in Western Norway, was known for spectacular views of glaciers and grand waterfalls.

Servant Travel

When the Mills family traveled, they also needed to bring several of their servants with them.  For example, Mrs. Mills usually brought her lady's maid as well as maids for her two daughters.  Frederick Thompson, the butler, very frequently traveled to Europe with Mr. Mills for business purposes.  This ship manifest from August 1905 shows Mrs. Mills and her two daughters traveling from Southampton to New York with three maids and Mr. Thompson.

Ship manifest from the Kaiser Wilhelm II, August 8, 1905

When Frederick Thompson applied for his passport in 1919 and 1921, his application included a letter from Ogden Mills detailing why Thompson was needed to travel with him.  Mills owned property in England and France and mentioned that he needed Mr. Thompson to attend to business affairs associated with his properties and his Paris home.

Frederick Thompson, 1919 Passport Application Photo

While wealthy Americans did the bulk of international travel during the Gilded Age, middle class Americans also started traveling for leisure.  The Millses' servants most frequently traveled with them, but by the 1920s some Mills employees were taking family vacations.  This 1924 passport application for Lomas O. Stephenson, Staatsburgh's farm superintendent, reveals that he applied for a passport so his family could travel to Jamaica in January 1924.  Stephenson was rare among Staatsburgh employees because he had a college degree from the Massachusetts Agricultural College. His position at Staatsburgh was a skilled one because he needed to employ all of the most modern farming techniques to provide the best outcomes for Staatsburgh's farm.

Lomas O. and Harriet Stephenson 1924 Passport Photo

Stephenson's passport application indicating that his family was traveling to Jamaica for vacation.

Travel Beyond Europe

While we don't have firsthand accounts of Ruth and Ogden Mills traveling beyond Europe, we know that several of their friends and family did visit more distant continents and countries.  Ogden's uncle Heber Bishop (1840-1902) was an art collector who was known for his extraordinary collection of jade from China and other parts of the world.  Bishop was able to amass a superb collection of Asian art - jade masterpieces, Japanese ironwork and textiles, and other objects--mostly through dealers.  However, he also travelled to China and Japan in 1892.  His art collecting travels also brought him to Istanbul and Mexico.  His wealth came first from sugar refining, and he traveled to Cuba for the business.  

Heber Bishop in jade, 1898, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jade figure of Bodhisattva, 18th-19th century China, Donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Heber Bishop

Another amazing sojourn by a friend of the Mills family occurred when Winfield Scott Hoyt (1854-1930) traveled to the Nile by yacht.  Hoyt was a frequent guest at Staatsburgh and his name appeared in the guestbook many times.  He even had a room assigned to him at Staatsburgh, which we know because his name appears on the servant's call box.  Hoyt also had a family connection to Ruth Mills because his uncle, Lydig Hoyt, married Ruth's aunt, Geraldine Livingston and they lived very close by at The Point.

1888 photo of the Vanderbilt party cruising the Nile; Hoyt is the man in the top right of the photo.

Winfield Scott Hoyt, named after his grandfather, General Winfield Scott, was also a close friend and associate of William K. Vanderbilt.  In 1887, Hoyt accompanied William and Alva Vanderbilt, their children, and others on a lengthy cruise that included a foray along the Nile River.  In addition to traveling on luxury ocean liners, many wealthy Gilded Age Americans owned or chartered yachts to travel in more private luxury, to ports around the world.  The Vanderbilts owned a luxury yacht, the Alva, which took a twelve month cruise to Eastern waters including the Mediterranean, Adriatic, and Aegean Seas.  For the portion of this cruise on the Nile, which took about three weeks, they chartered a steamer, Prince Abbas.  

The New York Times, July 1, 1887, p.8.

Because travel was revolutionized during the Gilded Age, it became easier to visit far reaching parts of the world.  Journeys that would have taken months now only took a week and wealthy families with large amounts of funds and leisure time could spend months or even a year traveling the globe. Journalist Nelly Bly published a book in 1890, Around the World in Seventy-Two Days detailing her trip around the world.  At the time this trip was done in world record time, but it was soon beaten by many others.  The publication of the book served to increase American's fascination with world travel and appealed to Americans of all social status and class.

Round the World with Nelly Bly board game, 1890, Image: The New York Historical Society