Bulloch Hall and Mittie's Wedding

Lyrics

[Intro]
If you’ll step this way, into the front double parlor.
Mind the threshold.
The floors are original heart pine.
It’s December again, just like it was then.

[Verse 1]
Her father, Major James Stephens Bulloch, built this house in 1840.
He wouldn't live to see this day.
But the family gathered here.
They brought in pine boughs from the woods along Vickery Creek.
Can you smell them?
The air was cold, you know.
No central heat in 1853.
Just the fireplaces, roaring against the Georgia chill.

[Chorus]
And in this room, right where you're standing,
Martha Bulloch, they called her Mittie, just eighteen years old,
married Theodore Roosevelt, Senior.
He was twenty-two, up from the city.
December 22, 1853.
A promise made in the winter quiet.

[Verse 2]
The light would have been failing.
Dusk through these tall windows.
And the scent of the wedding cake... almond and sugar.
We still have the recipe.
We still bake it for special occasions.
We don’t have the names of the hands that baked the first one.
The enslaved cooks in the detached kitchen.
Their work is here, but their names are gone from the book.

[Chorus]
Here in this room, right where you're standing,
Martha 'Mittie' Bulloch, just eighteen,
married Theodore Roosevelt, Senior.
He was twenty-two, a world away from New York.
December 22, 1853.
A life beginning in the winter quiet.

[Bridge]
Her brother Irvine was just a boy then.
He’d later serve on the CSS Alabama, a world away.
And the son she would have, Teddy, the president…
his story starts right here.
Before the war, before the Rough Riders, before the White House.
Just a young man and a young woman, holding hands in the cold.

[Outro]
The house is quiet now.
We keep the doors open.
We tell the story.
Stand here for a moment.
You can almost feel it.
The beginning of something.
Thank you for coming to Bulloch Hall.
Please watch your step on the way out.