This is the text of one of a series of educational brochures offered free to visitors at the Robert Green Ingersoll Museum. The complete set of five brochures is available by mail. Ordering information is available here.
After Robert Green Ingersoll left Peoria, he lived in Washington, D.C. and New York City to enjoy the most successful period of his public life. Neither residence stands today.
His New York brownstone was razed in the 1920s to make room for the Gramercy Park Hotel. Ingersoll's admirers placed a tablet honoring Ingersoll upon the hotel when it opened. In later years, this tablet was vandalized and had to be removed. (The Robert Green Ingersoll Memorial Committee placed a new plaque on the exterior of New York's Gramercy Park Hotel in 1988.)
The house where Ingersoll died - his brother-in-law's mansion in Dobbs Ferry-on-Hudson, New York - is now a condominium and bears no memorial.
Of all the homes of Ingersoll, none is standing and open to the public except the humble frame house in which he was born in Dresden, New York, on August 11, 1833.
This house has been restored three times since Ingersoll's death. It was purchased by the Ingersoll family in 1920. In 1921, it was restored by a distinguished committee whose members included Thomas Edison, Luther Burbank, Edgar Lee Masters, Carrie Chapman Catt and others. Two thousand people attended the dedication on August 11, 1921. Thereafter the house served Dresden for several years as a community center and public library.
After several years the operating committee ran out of funds. The house fell into disrepair until it was restored again in 1954 by a distinguished committee led by freethinker Joseph Lewis. At the second dedication, on August 14, 1954, Lewis read a statement by Thomas Alva Edison: "I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man, and in my opinion no finer personality ever existed." The house operated as an Ingersoll museum into the mid-1960s. Then funds ran out again. The museum collection was scattered and the house began to deteriorate.
The birthplace came very close to being demolished, and was briefly owned by the Village of Dresden. In 1987, it was acquired by the Robert Green Ingersoll Memorial Committee and the present restoration began.
The Ingersoll birthplace was built in three sections, two of which were erected elsewhere and only later moved to the current site.
One small gabled wing was built circa 1800 in Hopeton, a failed settlement two miles north of Dresden, New York. The wing was presumably moved by sledge. The large, main wing was built on Charles Street, south and east of the current museum location. It was built as a parsonage by members of the congregation that hired John Ingersoll. Construction depended upon donated labor and materials, which were sometimes of indifferent quality. Workers restoring the house found second-hand barn beams, warped and twisted studs, and other cast-offs which volunteers had no doubt been "eager" to donate to the church. The rear lean-to, now home to the Museum's Local History Room, was constructed after the first two wings had been united at the house's present location. It housed a well and served as a kitchen area.
Restoration of the birthplace began in 1987. The first step was to stabilize the structure, which had deteriorated badly. Cables and turnbuckles inside the walls enabled the original framing members to be strengthened. Wherever possible, original materials have been restored or shored up so as to permit their continued use. Where this was not possible, replicas have been carefully crafted.
The Birthplace opened to the public in 1993. It is open each Summer and Fall to preserve the memory of America's 19th century "infidel orator" - in so many ways, a voice of compassion and reform decades ahead of his time.
Restoration was funded by grants from the James Hervey Johnson Charitable Educational Trust, the New York State Department of Parks and Recreation, and supporters of the Robert Green Ingersoll Memorial Committee.
CFI SUMMIT
OCTOBER 24-27 2013
TACOMA, WASHINGTON
Joint Conference of the Council for Secular Humanism, Center for Inquiry, and Committee for Skeptical Inquiry
The transnational secular humanist magazine
Renew your FREE INQUIRY subscription