Our spirited young ladies delivering the violet messages are actually dressed for the wedding of an E. Hoover. The one at right is Albtertina Traver who was a vice president and officer of DCHS for many years. The Travers are a family that go long back in Rhinebeck – with JE Traver Farm being located on Violet Hill Road and from whose property George Saltford bought a tract of land and jumpstarted the violet industry. Today, a member of the Traver clan, John Traver, is an owner of Samuels Sweet Shop!
Below: A 1934 Centennial Parade held in Rhinebeck included a float on the violet industry.
If you were on this spot at the turn of the last century, especially in advance of Easter, you would have seen trucks overloaded with violets that were headed to the Rhinecliff train station.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, violets were the flower of choice, especially for the well to do.
The profile below of William Saltford is by his grandson Herb. In 1872 William emigrated from England to be head gardener at William Kelly’s Ellerslie Estate in Rhinebeck. He turned his attention to broader commercial markets and became a great success. Among his most notable successes was his importation of an English violet that became nothing less than a national craze. At Easter, the height of shipping season, millions of blooms were sent around the country. Eventually they fell out of fashion, though Eleanor Roosevely tried to revive them, wearing violet corsages including at FDR inaugurations. Violets are often found cropping up around Rhinebeck to this day even though the last greenhouse closed in 1979.
