Nice house, but I'd rather have the $70 Million...

I've been sorting through my grandmother's collection of old postcards and I found this one of The Homestead in Blairstown, New Jersey.  As I mentioned in a previous post, this was the creaky old mansion my great-great-grandparents, John D. and Melissa Gregory Vail, shared with their cousin, robber baron John Insley Blair. 

I once sat next to a woman on a plane who was from Blairstown, and when I mentioned the family connection, she said, "We don't think too highly of Blair.  He foreclosed on most of the townspeople's farms to build his railroad."

(Ah. So that would explain the "robber" part of robber baron.  But did I mention that we didn't get the money?)