| Rosalie Stier Calvert | |
|---|---|
| Born | Rosalie Stier 1778 Antwerp, Belgium |
| Died | 13th March 1821 Riverdale Park, Maryland |
| Spouse | George Calvert |
Rosalie Stier Calvert (1778 - 13 March 1821) was a plantation owner and correspondent in Nineteenth century Maryland. A collection of her letters, titled Mistress of Riversdale, The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1991. The letters range in date from 1795 to 1821, and illuminate the life of Stier's plantation household during the events leading up to and during the War of 1812.[1]
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Rosalie-Eugénie Stier was the daughter of a wealthy Belgian burgher, Henri-Joseph Stier (1743–1821) and his wife Marie-Louise Peeters. The Stier family fled Belgium in 1794 as a French army invaded their home of Antwerp.[2] Once in America, the family's fortunes would be salvaged from the disasters of European war. Rosalie Calvert would go on to be one of the richest women in America, amassing a large fortune, much of which she managed herself, and she would accumulate one of the largest art collections in the country.
Rosalie Calvert lived at the Riversdale plantation, also known as the Calvert Mansion, a five-part, large-scale late Georgian mansion with superior Federal interior, built between 1801 and 1807. Also known as Baltimore House, Calvert Mansion or Riversdale Mansion, it is located at 4811 Riverdale Road in Riverdale Park, Maryland. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1997.
Once the manor house and centerpiece of a 739-acre (2.99 km2) plantation, Riversdale was built for Belgian émigré Henri Joseph Stier, who lived in the Brice House in Annapolis, Maryland immediately prior to building Riversdale. Stier planned the house in 1801 to resemble his Belgian residence, the Chateau du Mick. Four years later, Stier returned to Belgium, leaving the unfinished Riversdale to be completed by his daughter, Rosalie Stier Calvert and her husband, George Calvert, the son of Benedict Swingate Calvert, who was a natural son of Charles Calvert, 5th Baron Baltimore.
Rosalie and George Calvert had a large family, though three of their children died in infancy or in childhood. Their son Charles Benedict Calvert established the Maryland Agricultural College, now the University of Maryland, College Park, on part of the Riversdale property. Another son, George Henry Calvert (January 2, 1803 - May 24, 1889) was a noted editor, essayist, dramatist, poet, and biographer.[3]
She died on March 13, 1821, according to her physician, "of a general dropsy affecting the whole system".[6]
Rosalie Calvert was an indefatigable correspondent and a collection of her letters, titled Mistress of Riversdale, The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, was published by the Johns Hopkins University Press in 1991, edited by Margaret Law Challcott. The letters range in date from 1795 to 1821, and illuminate the life of Stier's plantation household during the events leading up to and during the War of 1812.[1]