Springfield, Illinois, A Century Ago cousin Lydia, a Mr. Curran and Mr. Goodell,18 to "the ice cream saloon." A feature of social life in Springfield which met with Mary's enthusiastic approval was the soiree frangaise. She attended her first such meeting on Tuesday evening, May 17th, at the home of Julia Ridgely.18 She found it "perfectly delightful" and discovered that she could converse in French with much greater ease than she had expected. "They will," commented Mary, "be very improving I think—Talking french seems to do away with all the stiffness—Everyone is perfectly free and easy." On Tuesday, July 5th, she attended a soiree frangaise at Mrs. Huntington's,20 "the last we are to have for the present as Mr. Anglade21 is going away to spend some time." In one letter Mary noted that she had gone with her relatives to a May party held at the fair grounds in Springfield. "It was," she wrote, "very much like a picnic except having a queen" and maids of honor. "They led the queen in grand estate to the throne where she was crowned and wreathed with flowers. After the coronation the boys and girls made very fine speeches—at least I expect they were fine—I did not hear them." The Mattesons were on good terms with Governor William 18 Roswell E. Goodell married Governor Matteson's eldest daughter, Mary Jane. He was a merchant of Ottawa in La Salle County and in 1854 was secretary of the Illinois Senate. See Sterling, op. cit., p. 509, and the Illinois & Missouri State Directory i8$4-ss, p. 18. 19 Julia Ridgely, who later married John H. Rea, was the daughter of Nicholas H. Ridgely, at that time the president of Clark's Exchange Bank of Springfield. Nicholas was born on April 27,1800, on his father's tobacco plantation near Baltimore, Maryland. He was in the mercantile business in Baltimore until 1828, when he went to St. Louis as clerk in the branch of the United States Bank. In 1835 he was appointed cashier of the State Bank of Illinois and later organized Clark's Exchange Bank and in 1866 the Ridgely National Bank. His home in Springfield, "Cottage Garden," was one of the show places of that town. See John Carroll Power, History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois (Springfield: Edwin A. Wilson & Co., 1876), pp. 616-617, and Paul Angle, op. cit., pp. 176-177. 20 Mr. George L. Huntington, who was one of the owners of Huntington and Campbell's planing mill, had one of the best houses in Springfield, constructed at a cost of $15,000. See J. C. Power, History of Springfield, Illinois, p. 66, and Paul M. Angle, op. cit., pp. 165 and 191. 21 Apparently a Frenchman, who, from Mary's comment, would seem to have been the director of the soirees. 78