In 2003, the Oyster Bay Historical Society obtained a significant collection of letters from Luis Francke to Jane Bush de Lamoutte documenting their courtship from 1907 until their marriage in London in 1911. These letters help introduce the lives of a far-from-garden-variety family from Long Island's Gold Coast and form the basis of the Society's winter exhibition -- Dearest Jane ... Love L: Jane Bush de Lamoutte Francke and her love letters from Habana.

The exhibition of letters and photographs documenting the unusual journey of an important Oyster Bay family opens at the Earle-Wightman House Museum on Saturday, February 7, 2009. It includes a special Valentine's Day reception from 4:00-6:00 pm on February 14, and closes Sunday, April 26, 2009. Selected photos from the exhibit are playing in the slideshow below; a representative letter sent from the Lusitania by Luis Francke to Jane Bush is available in PDF format.

Interviews with Jane Francke's grand-daughter Ellen Curtis, the letters' donor, provided the Society with valuable background information. Jane Bush was a rural Indiana girl educated in Paris and married, at the age of 18, to Alexander de Lamoutte in her sister's apartment on West 39th Street in New York. Sometime after the birth of her second child, she separated from Mr. de Lamoutte and soon began her courtship by mail with Luis Francke whose family served in Sweden's Embassy in Havana, and who operated a sugar plantation and refinery in Matanzas.

After their wedding, the Franckes established a home on their Long Island estate Glenby in Upper Brookville, where she maintained a magnificent garden and could indulge her love of ornithology. On her husband's death in 1938, she moved across her estate to Fernwood, a cottage where she made her home until her death in 1953. During these years, she became extensively involved with the Garden Club of America and with the early development of the American conservation movement, traveling with Louis Bromfield and Henry Wallace to promote conservation activities under the aegis of the US Department of the Interior.

Today, volunteers at the Jane B. Francke Bird Sanctuary, on the grounds of her former estate, maintain the legacy of her commitment to open space on Long Island and throughout the country.

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