Sounds like the kind of book only a Longwood junkie would go for, and that's true enough. But Randall's work is also a fascinating window into a vastly different time, when class divisions were sharp, yet workers felt only gratitude toward their immensely wealthy employer, and when holiday entertainment and gift-giving - everyday life, too - seemed an uncomplicated affair.
In the retelling, at least.
Randall drew upon newspaper accounts of Longwood's fabled Christmas parties for the children of employees; records kept by the estate's owners, Pierre S. and Alice B. du Pont; archives at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, site of the first du Pont powder works; and about 100 oral histories that Longwood began compiling decades ago.
Some were recorded in 1974 by Randall himself, as a student in the Longwood graduate program at the University of Delaware. And some can still be recounted by the people themselves.
Isaac "Ike" Evans Jr., for one.
His father worked at Longwood from 1919 to 1957 as orchard manager and assistant farm manager, and the family lived in a farmhouse on the 1,000-plus-acre estate. Now 86, Evans fondly recalls racing through the fields and woods with friends, making the rounds with his dad in a Longwood pickup truck (a blue Chevy), and many other adventures during a childhood spent at Longwood.
"It was wonderful," says Evans, who lives at the Friends Home, an assisted-living facility in Kennett.
Most wonderful were the Christmas parties, which the du Ponts hosted for more than two decades and which Randall chronicles in detail.
