5. The Marble House Meeting

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 many years a boarding house (still called "Marble House"), but it was torn down in the 1940s or 50s to make room for the building that stands there today. The Marble House Meeting will be the name of the reunion of all the descendants—the relative strangers—when they gather in New York City next June, starting with a cocktail reception at The Met. In this episode host Taylor Mali talks about the new plans and urges his cousins to RSVP. If you'd like to see what Marble House looked like in 1936, click here to see a famous photo taken by Berenice Abbott.The founding sponsor of Relative Strangers is FamilyTreeChart.com. Use promo code METROPOLITAN to get 10% off your first order. Please follow the podcast on Instagram at RelativeStrangersPodcast, where Taylor is generally a little less dramatic.