(c) 2014 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Rosamund Dixey

1887 - 1948

BiographyGave Tanglewood; married Mr. Brooks & Andrew Hepburn.

William Sturgis was born 25 February 1782, the son of William Sturgis and Hannah Mills. He was a prominent Boston merchant and co-founder of Bryant and Sturgis, and made his fortune in the China Trade. He married Elizabeth Marston Davis and they had six children, among them two daughters, Ellen (1812-1848) and Caroline (1819-1888). Caroline Sturgis married William Aspinwall Tappan, son of Lewis Tappan, a noted abolitionist, and Susanna Aspinwall; they had two children, Ellen Sturgis Tappan and Mary Aspinwall Tappan. Caroline Sturgis Tappan and her sister, Ellen Sturgis Hooper, were minor Transcendentalist poets whose work was occasionally published in the Dial. They counted among their acquaintances William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, and Henry David Thoreau. The sisters, especially Caroline, were also friendly with Margaret Fuller and regularly attended her celebrated "conversations," begun in 1839.

The Tappans lived in Boston and summered in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. In 1936, Mary Aspinwall Tappan and her niece, Rosamond Sturgis Dixey Brooks (Caroline Sturgis Tappan's granddaughter), gave the family's summer estate, Tanglewood, to the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
https://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss112.html#list-ser1 I.S. 12/12/2017

During the 1887-1888 winter season, 147 Beacon was the home of Caroline (Sturgis) Tappan, the wife of William Aspinwall Tappan. Her primary residence was at their home, Tanglewood, in Lenox. She had lived at 17 Marlborough during the previous season. Her son-in-law and daughter, Richard Cowell Dixey and Ellen Sturgis (Tappan) Dixey, lived at 179 Commonwealth, and Mrs. Tappan probably was living in Boston because of the birth of their granddaughter, Rosamond Sturgis Dixey, in June of 1887. Caroline Tappan died in October of 1888 in Lenox. Tanglewood was inherited by William and Caroline Tappan’s two daughters: Ellen (Tappan) Dixey and Mary Aspinwall Tappan, who never married. In 1937, Mary Aspinwall Tappan and Rosamond (Dixey) Brooks (who married Gorham Brooks in June of 1913) donated the property to the Boston Symphony.
https://backbayhouses.org/303-berkeley/ I.S. 12/12/2017

Mrs. Gorham Brooks ((Hepburn) and Miss Mary Aspinwall Tappan
In 1936, the final piece of the Tanglewood Festival fell into place through a gift from Mrs. Rosamund Dixey Brooks Hepburn (1887-1948) and Mary Aspinall Tappan (1851-1941). They gave the Boston Symphony Orchestra their summer home, Tanglewood, including 200 magnificent acres overlooking the Stockbridge Bowl.

Mrs. Brooks (later Mrs. Hepburn) was the granddaughter of William Aspinallwall and Caroline Sturgis Tappan and Mary Aspinall Tappan was a daughter (Mrs. Brook Hepburn’s aunt). The Tappan family spanned the 19th century history of Lenox as a resort and added a certain creative pixie dust to Tanglewood. The grandmother/mother was Caroline Sturgis Aspinwall (1819-1888). She was part of a Boston family that had made its fortune in the China trade. She married William Aspinwall Tappan, son of noted abolitionist, Louis Tappan.

They first came to the Berkshires to visit their Boston friends, the Wards, and would rent High Wood before building their own home. When they came to the Berkshires they were a locus point for intellectual conversation, drawing, and musical performances. Caroline Tappan was part of the literary renaissance sweeping the country in the early 19th century and was a contributor to the Dial and a friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Ellery Channing, Henry James, Henry David Thoreau. Notably, this circle also included Nathaniel Hawthorne, to whom they let the little red cottage on the drive to High Wood 1850-1851. It was Hawthorne who coined the name Tanglewood.

The Tale of Tanglewood Scene of the Berkshire Music Festivals by M.A. DeWolfe Howe, The Vanguard Press, New York, 1946

Hawthorne’s Lenox, The Tanglewood Circle, by Cornelia Brooke Gilder with Julia Conklin Peters, The History Press 2008

Tanglewood/Boston Symphony Orchestra website

https://lenoxhistory.org/tag/tappan/ I.S. 12/12/2017

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Last Updated8/7/24

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