SINCE THE DEATH OF HER HUSBAND, Louis, in 1886, Nina Sturgis Dousman had endeavored to raise and educate the couple’s five children and ensure they would retain the place in society that she and Louis had established for them. It had not been easy. The years following had brought periods of happiness as well as devastating losses. By the mid-1890s, life had settled into a pattern: winters in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and summers at Villa Louis, the family’s estate in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Sitting in a rocker under the spreading leaves of the big maple as the young people rested and chatted on the veranda steps, Nina could look at her efforts with pride and regret.
The Dousman children were the heirs of a fine estate in Prairie du Chien that their grandfather, Hercules L. Dousman, had begun to create as soon as he arrived in the 1820s as a clerk for the American Fur Company. He had foreseen the economic possibilities of territorial Wisconsin and invested wisely in real estate, transportation, and stocks and bonds. On several lots in the old Main Village, Hercules had constructed the Brick House on the Mound and filled it with fine furnishings and art for his new bride, Jane Fisher Rolette. Nina still treasured these pieces and hoped her children would want them to be part of their lives when they married and established their own homes.1
In 1871, a stylish house designed by E. Townsend Mix was built to replace the dated house on the mound. It radiated rich colors, chosen by Chicago interior decorator John J. McGrath in 1885. In the newly decorated spaces, Nina had carefully arranged the furniture she had chosen with Louis for their first home in Saint Louis and brought to Prairie du Chien. Blue and gold wallpaper brought warmth to the family portraits that filled the walls of the parlor. A few pieces from her Manhattan apartment, sprinkled about, reflected the new styles. Nina had made a comfortable home for her children, and from his portrait painted by Eastman Johnson, Louis looked down on the activities with a slight smile.
Violet and Virginia, the two eldest daughters, had been enrolled in private schools for young women, most recently the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Manhattanville, New York, where the family had lived for a time. Besides studying academic subjects, they obtained instruction in drawing, music, dancing, and French, which equipped them with the finishing touches expected of young ladies in the 1890s. Young Louis was finishing his instruction at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and plans were being made for him to attend Yale University. Judith, ten years younger than Violet, was being trained as a lady and had numerous
