Friends of Babbie's : Zella de Milhau

In 1920, Rosella "Zella" de Milhau sponsored a pageant Babbie produced with the people of the Shinnecock Nation to raise money for an emergency fund on the reservation, and in 1939, Zella de Milhau she helped create the costumes for a second pageant. Always unconventional, also in August 1920, she was sworn in as a motorcycle policewoman in Southampton. A friend of the irrepressible Zella once said, “[She] came to Shinnecock to be with friends and to make life merry for others in her own absurd and lovable way. . .” 

De Milhau originally came to Shinnecock Hills in 1896, to study at William Merritt Chase's Summer Art School. In 1924, she represented Southampton as a judge for the Boston Terrier Club of Philadelphia.  She had a lodge in Montauk, a house in New York City, and an eccentric cottage in the Art Village, called "Laffalot," a two-story cottage built 1891, by architect Katherine Budd, which she shared with Mollie Lawton, where she worked primarily in printmaking. 

Bird Houses, Southampton

About Laffalot, the Autumn 1912 issue of Southampton Magazine, wrote, “This bare little hut under her magic ownership has grown from time to time by repeated accretions, like the native rambling vines on the neighboring hillsides, until the resultant structure is one of the most picturesque and pleasing hereabout and is as integral a part of the landscape as the brambles, bayberry bushes and furze of the fields beyond.”

Sand Spit, Shinnecock Hills, N. Y.

Lawton, an Engllishwoman of Lawton Hall, was an author and playwright. She wrote a thinly-disguised autobiography about her life with De Milhau called "Thank God for Laughter," under the pen name Mel Erskine, in 1936. Before the war, Vanity reported that Lawton's red Chow, was a champion in England, and at the 1914 Southampton Kennel Club. 

The two served together in the English Ambulance Corp in the south of France in 1914-1916, receiving five decorations and citations, including the gold Medaille de la Reconnaisance and the Croix de Guerre with stars, from the French government, for their "bravery and devotion to duty." The two had turned their own car into an ambulance. Later, the Town of Southampton would donate an ambulance to their unit.

Hampton Dunes

6 August 1920 | Ironwood Daily Globe (MI)

10 September 1919 | Tampa Bay Times

Friends of Babbie's: Emily Nichols Hatch

Hatch in her studio w/ "Rosemary Enters" 

Goldenrod by the Sea, Belle Harbor, NY | 1904

Emily Nichols Hatch was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1871. She studied at the Artists and Artisans Institute, and the Shinnecock Summer School of Art on Long Island with Charles Hawthorne, Walter Shirlaw and William Merritt Chase. 

She made several trips to Europe and had a studio in Paris. She was listed as portrait painter, wood-block printer, lecturer, teacher, and writer. In 1912, she was the recipient of the Macmillan Portrait Prize from the Woman's Art Club of New York. She was a member of the Pen and Brush Club, and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, where she served as President from 1921 through 1925. Elizabeth Cady Stanton served as President from 1928 to 1930. 

LHW Photo, Orchard at 49 N Main

Around 1917, Lizbeth Halsey White notes in her scrapbook: "The old mulberry tree in the orchard and the swing. Emily [Nichols] Hatch painted a picture of this which has hung in several exhibits. Babbie, Manda, Jo, Ibby, and Boo." 

On 6 July 1922, her work, "Rosemary Enters" [Portrait of a Woman] was included in an exhibit of paintings by the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors at Memorial Hall. Additional work included Edith Stowe Phelps’ group “Mother and Children;” Hilda Belcher’s “Aunt Jennifer’s China”; Christine Hefler’s “French Woman,” and Lucy Taggart’s “Janet.” 

Rosemary Enters | 1914

The Southampton Press covered the opening saying, "There are portraits and child studies, landscapes, flowers, etc., all beautifully executive." On July 1, 1922, Babbie resigned her position as the Secretary of the Committee Building in Ithaca to study in New York City. It's extremely likely that she was at the art opening, sponsored by Samuel Parrish, which also included a musical program. 

In 1940, Hatch became the Director of the Art Center in Tarrytown, New York. Hatch died in 1959, and her papers are in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. 

Dora on the Beach at Belle Harbor | c 1900

Portrait of a Child | c 1952

A Dip in the Ocean | 1906

Prout's Neck Beach, Maine | 1920

Coastal View | 1920

Untitled Water Color