Relative Strangers

Over a year after the event, Taylor Mali finally describes what The Marble House Meeting was actually like, from champagne at The Met to coffee in the cemetery, all in the company of cousins he'd never met before and may never see again. This is a short and imperfect episode, and this should not be the first one you listen to if you haven't heard any before. The founding sponsor of Relat...

In this episode, which is the first to have been recorded after the singularly wonderful and marvelously successful Marble House Meeting at the end of June, Taylor has a proper conversation with Kate McCabe , the retired educator, amateur historian, and self-described "Morristown Girl" who knows more about the family of James Colles than anyone who—unlike her—actually shares some of his...

One hundred sixty-one years ago today—on July 1, 1863, which was a Wednesday— Frances Colles Johnston , the 37-year-old wife of John Taylor Johnston , took advantage of the sudden quiet in her father's summer house in Morristown, NJ, and dashed off a letter to her baby brother George Wetmore Colles who was fighting for the Union Army in The Civil War. In this episode of Relative Strangers , T...

This episode is built around a 40-year-old recording of Eva Mali Noyes and her brother Henry "Harry" Mali conducted in 1984 by David and Rosemary Coffin. The recording was discovered by Cousin Amy Stewart Webb (1955) in a box of her mother's belongings, and the complete unedited recording can be accessed here . Cousin Taylor Mali (1965) had the audio restored (thanks to artificial i...

With about 10 weeks to go before 100 distant cousins get together in New York City for the first time in over a century, Taylor Mali takes a closer look at three female ancestors that all the relative strangers share, Frances Colles, Rachel Ogden Wetmore , and Adrienne Cuvelier . Also included at the end of this episode are voice memos sent in from Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Caroline Dubois, Kate M...

This episode begins with the most SHOCKING, PRURIENT, and SCANDALOUS installment of "The Scullion's Hearth," Taylor Mali's entirely fictional (although completely plausible) account of what life might have been like in Marble House as seen through the eyes of housemaid named Bridget (beautifully read by New York City actress  Megan McQuillan )! Also included are some updates on...

Taylor talks with his second cousin Sarah Elder (1947) about how to be a lady and the tribal nature of most of the world. They talk about privilege and whether you can hide it, the paucity of motherly love, and the "poor cousins" who had to attend The Chapin School. What do you have the strength to endure out of kindness alone? Taylor recites entirely too many poems in the course of the...

Taylor Mali interviews distant cousin B. A. Van Sise , a charmingly nerdy photographer and polymath and one of the closest living relatives of Walt Whitman. THERE IS ONE WELL-PLACED SWEAR WORD EARLY IN THE EPISODE. There's also news of The Marble House Meeting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and audio clips of Broadway actor Michael Crane reading selections from Taylor's grandfather&ap...

Host Taylor Mali reveals all he knows about his great-great-uncle Colles Johnston , the only one of the Johnston kids to have died without marrying or having children of his own; as a result, Colles will have no descendants representing his branch of the family at The Marble House Meeting in June of 2024, which starts with a cocktail reception at The Metropolitan Museum of Art . This episode start...

Marble House was the name given to the white marble townhouse built by John Taylor Johnston (with railroad money) at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 8th St. in the 1860s. He lived there with his wife Frances Colles Johnston and their five children— Emily, Colles, John Herbert, Frances , and Eva —until they all died or got married and moved out. After the last family member moved out, it was for man...

Every family has secrets, and you eventually realize that most of them are not being kept from the world but from OTHER SIDES OF THE FAMILY! In this episode, cousin Taylor Mali talks about some of those secrets. For example, did you know that John Taylor Johnston's father owned an enslaved person in New York City in the early 1800s?! Or that his mother slept with a man who was not his father!...

On this episode of  Relative Strangers host  Taylor Mali (1965) speaks with third cousin Robert Whitman Easton (1945), whom he has yet to meet in person, about pretentiousness, family resentment over perceived inequity in the settlement of estates, the problem with attics, and whether you can keep a husband around by having another baby. Discuss legacy admissions, secret scholarships, and the odds...

John Taylor Johnston , one of host Taylor Mali's great-great-grandfathers, was one of those 19th-century railroad tycoons whom Malcolm Gladwell has noted were all born in New York City within about a decade of one another. He may not have been an Astor, Vanderbilt, or Carnegie, but he made enough money to be able to make a lasting contribution to the cultural life of New York City that endure...

In this first episode, host Taylor introduces John Taylor Johnston and Frances Colles , the patriarch and matriarch of the family, at least this branch of it. If you ever watched The Gilded Age on HBO, then you'd understand why Taylor's wife Rachel calls that show "the documentary about Taylor's family." This episode will give you an overview of the couple at the heart of...

Poet and "longtime New Yorker" Taylor Mali introduces himself and some of the themes of the podcast: Family, Privilege, Poetry, and Secrets. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and follow us on Instagram @RelativeStrangersPodcast for a little less drama. The founding sponsor of Relative Strangers is FamilyTreeChart.com. Use promo code METROPOLITAN to get 10% off your first o...