Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Campbell House-St. Louis, MO




As promised, here are the pictures I took of the inside of the Campbell House in St. Louis. I was fascinated with the story behind this house. The people that lived in this house, had thirteen children. They were very wealthy and had running water in their house. The water came from the river(is it the Missouri ?) and as a result, 10 of their 13 children died from either lead poisoning from the pipes or from the river. At the time, none of this would have been know...so they never really knew why their children were dyeing. The three remaining boys lived in the house after the death of their parents and NEVER changed anything. They loved their mother so much that they didn't want anything changed. This house is one of the few houses that has all of it's original furniture. One of the boys died 2 years after his parents and of the remaining 2, one of them had a bipolar disorder of some kind. Apparently they now know that it was due to the lead in the water that their mother drank while pregnant. Of course, he lived the longest and the house was willed to I think Harvard when he died. There was a lawsuit, because people in St. Louis wanted to preserve this house and when the furniture was auctioned off they all came...bought the furniture and put it back in the house. The house is restored to perfection! The museum has a website if you google it and want to read more about.

See you later,

Val

3 comments:

  1. Just found your blog and enjoyed reading about the house....your sampler in previous posts is really nice. I'll return. Pat

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  2. What a story! Thank you for sharing the pictures. At first I thought that first one was of miniatures. It sounds so interesting!

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  3. Wow what a story and what a house!! Thanks for sharing.
    hugz:)

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