Blennerhassett Island

— Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park —

Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

1. Top of the Two Blennerhassett Island Benches

The inscription is on polished granite benches that face each other across the gravel walkway from the mansion to the Blennerhassett graves.

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Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

2. First Bench, on the left

Although Blennerhassett and his wife put in a great deal of hard work and dedication into building such a magnificent home, they fled their home after he became entangled in the Aaron Burr's expedition plans. Blennerhassett opened his island to Burr to hold base there while trying to expand his plan and gave Burr large amounts of money.

In 1806, Harmon Blennerhassett and Aaron Burr were accused of working together and planning a scheme to have the westernmost parts of the United States secede from the Union. However, when rumors crossed the ears of the Federalists, they began to seize Blennerhassett’s estate and property on grounds of treason. Blennerhassett fled to Lexington, Kentucky, but he was arrested, and eventually, released.

Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

3. Second Bench, on the right

Like mournful echo from the silent tomb
That pines away upon the midnight air,
Whilst the pale moon breaks out with fitful gloom,
Fond memory turns, with sad but welcome care
To scenes of desolation and despair,
Once bright with all that beauty could bestow,
That peace could shed, or youthful fancy know.

To the fair Isle reverts the pleasing dream,
Again thou risest in thy green attire,
Fresh as at first thy blooming graces seem,
Thy groves, thy

Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

4. The Benches Face Each Other Across the Path

The two gravestones are enclosed by the low hedge.

fields their wonted sweets respite,
Again thou’rt all my heart could c’er desire
Oh! why dear Isle art thou not still my own?
Thy charms could then for all my griefs atone.

The stranger that descends Ohio’s stream,
Charm’d with the beauteous prospects that arise,
Marks the soft Isles that ’neath the glist’ning beam
Dance in the wave and mingle with the skies,
Sees also One that now in ruin lies,
Which erst, like fairy queen tow’red o’er the rest,
In every native charm by culture dress’d

There rose the seat where once, in pride of life
My eye could mark the queen of rivers flow,
In summer’s calmness or in winter’s strife,
Swol’n with the rains or baffling with the snow,
Never again my heart such joy shall know:
Havoc and Ruin and rampant War have past
Over that Isle with their destroying blast.

The black’ning fire has swept throughout her halls
The winds fly, whistling thro’ them, and the wave
No more in spring-flood o’er the sand-beach crawls.
But furious drowns in one o’erwhelming grave
The hallow’d haunts it water’d as a slave:
Drive on destructive flood and ne’er again
On that devoted Isle let man remain.

Too many blissful moments there I’ve known,
Too many hopes have there met their decay,
Too many feelings now forever gone
To wish that thou would’st e’er

Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

5. Grave of Margaret Agnew Blennerhassett

“Sacred to the memory of Margaret Agnew Blennerhassett, born in England, 1771, died New York City, 1842. West Virginia’s first poet and a heroine of the Ohio Valley frontier.”

again display
The joyful colouring of thy prime array
Buried with thee let them remain a blot,
With thee their sweets, their bitterness forgot.

And oh! That I could wholly wipe away
The memory of the ills that work’d thy fall
The memory of that all-eventful day
When I return’d and found my own fair hall
Held by the infuriate populace in thrall,
My own fireside blockaded by a band
That once found food and shelter at my hand!

My children (Ah a mother’s pangs forbear,
Nor strike again that arrow thro’ my soul)
Clasping the ruffians in suppliant prayer
To free their mother from unjust controul,
While with false crimes and imputations foul,
The wretches — vilest refuse of the earth
Mock-jurisdiction held around my hearth!

Sweet Isle! Methinks I see thy bosom torn,
Again behold the ruthless rabble throng
That wrought destruction taste must ever mourn
Alas I see thee now — shall see thee long
Yet ne’er shall bitter feeling urge the wrong
That to a mob would give the censure due
To those who arm’d the plunder-greedy crew.

Tyrants of Liberty (name so ador’d
By crowds to lawless demagogues a prey,
Who, cheated by the ever-echoing word,
Feel not their liberties are filch’d away,
Themselves the tools of base Ambition’s sway,)
’Twas yours to loose “the dogs of war,”

Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

6. Grave of Harman Blennerhassett, Jr.

“Sacred to the memory of Harman Blenner­has­sett, Jr., fourth child of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett. Born on Blennerhassett Island, 1803, died in New York City, 1854. Stranger, remember this man who was an artist, his family’s historian, and a devoted son.”

and cry
“On — On the Traitors! Strike for Liberty.”

Thy shores are warm’d with bounteous suns in vain,
Columbia! Of spite and envy spring,
To blast the beauty of mild nature’s reign:
The European stranger who would fling
O’er tangled woods refinements’ polishing,
May find (expended every plan of taste)
His works by ruffians render’d doubly waste.

Self-dubb’d philosopher — the mob’s delight!
Thy looming Science like thy mammoth’s bones
From quiet earth shall ne’er be dragg’d to light.
Then pray (if thou canst pray) in humble tones,
That trying Death who no distinction owns
From Freedom’s shore may sweep thy coward name,
And save Columbia such blot of shame!

For thee no patriot lyre shall e’er be strung,
Foul stain of Liberty the rabble’s choice!
Not e’en thy bombast from the chair that rung
Shall live in future generations’ voice,
Thy baleful slang no more make fools rejoice
For who would sound the blessings of thy reign,
Confed’rate vile of Atheists and Tom Paine!

Great shad of laurel’d Washington arise!
Methinks I see thy halo’d frowning brow,
indignant see thee turn thy piercing eyes,
Thy voice exclaims — “Where are the heroes now
Who bled for Freedom, that the rabble low
Dare thus uncurb’d, on Freedom’s sacred shore,
Their vengeance on defenceless woman

Unsigned portraits hanging in the mansion

7. Harman Blennerhassett, Sr. (1765-1831),
and Margaret Agnew Blennerhassett (1771-1842)

pour.”

Thine was the soul that knew no base intent
By cringing arts to win the mob’s applause;
Thy purpose on thy country's welfare bent,
In arms thou’rt foremost to maintain her cause,
And having freed establish’d her with laws.
How must thou weep illustrious shade — to see
Thy plans perverted by Democracy!

Freedom no more — wild Anarchy restrains,
With jarring interests the levelling throng,
Busy Ambition every effort strains,
The fangs of tyranny to plant among
The very mob by whom his curse is rung.
Spare — spare me from that phantom of equality
That equals men in knavery and brutality!

Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

8. Blennerhassett Mansion

This is the 1980 replica of the mansion, which burned to the ground in 1811. Through historical and architectural research, the mansion has been recreated at its original site for visitors to see. The gravesite described on this page are behind the mansion and can be reached through the portico visible to the right of the main building.

Photographed By J. J. Prats, August 13, 2022

9. Blennerhassett Mansion Gate Stones

On display at the Blennerhassett Museum in Parkersburg proper. This museum card reads, “These stones are all that remains of the original gate constructed by Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett to their island estate circa 1800.”
A nearby card continues,

The gateway consisted of two tall square-cut pillars of stone between which extended a double wrought iron gate. A flight of cut stone steps stretched from the gate down the island’s bank to the water’s—a distance of over thirty feet. The gate and stairs together formed the formal entrance to the Blennerhassett mansion. For the convenience of their guests, the Blennerhassetts operated a ferry boat, rowed by their slave Moses, that ran across the Ohio from the gate to the Belpre shore.

After the Blennerhassetts fled downriver in December 1806, their estate fell into neglect and then ruin. When a United States Army wife named Lydia Bacon visited the island in 1811, she wrote in her diary that the gateway “was choked by bushes.” Gradually, a number of the fine cut stone were removed by unknown persons to be used in the construction of buildings in the area. Sometime later in the 19th century, what remained of the gate stones were carried over to the site of the right wing building the mansion (which had burned to the ground in 1811) and utilized as steps for a small house that had been built there in 1834. Toward the end of the 1800s, as interest increased in preserving Blennerhassett relics, the gate stones were gathered up once more and stacked against a nearby tree. An iron cage-like barrier was placed around the stones to protect them from being chipped away by souvenir hunters.

Here the gate stones remained until 1984 when they were removed and replaced in storage on the island. (This was necessitated by the start of reconstruction of the Blennerhassett mansion on the site.) In 1990, for their better preservation and in order that the public could view them, these priceless relics were transported to Parkersburg and put on exhibit in the Blennerhassett Museum.

Photographed By J. J. Prats, August 13, 2022

10. Harman Blennerhassett’s Telescope

At the Blennerhassett Museum in Parkersburg proper. The museum card reads,

After buying it in London in 1796, Blennerhassett soon begins using this telescope at his Blennerhassett Island estate where he settled in 1798. He set it up on a specially-built viewing platform atop the roof of his mansion’s center section, the highest place on the island where it could be carried.

When Harman and his family fled downriver in December 1806, due to his involvement in Aaron Burr’s mysterious western expedition, the telescope had to be left behind. It soon was sold, for a fraction of its worth, at one of the 1807 public auctions that dispersed the wealthy Irishman’s property.

The telescope disappeared for nearly a century until surfacing in New York in 1902, when it was donated to the Buffalo History Museum. In 2016 that institution generously sold this rarest of Blennerhassett relics to the Friends of Blennerhassett so it could be exhibited in this museum for the public’s enjoyment and eduction.

Photographed By J. J. Prats, July 11, 2021

11. The Island Belle

State Parks passenger ferry returning from Blennerhassett Island Historical State Park.