Library - Kitty Rogers and Frank Pietsch
As mentioned before, Henry and Cremora had a young daughter, Florence, who was 18 years old when she moved into this house. Florence was an only child and her father doted on her as we will see during our tour. He gave her the nickname "Kitty" and everyone in town, and even the newspapers called her that. So if you don't mind we will mostly call her Kitty on our tour today.
Kitty was engaged in this room to a gentleman named Frank Pietsch. At the time, diamond engagement rings were a brand new idea. A popular fad was to use the diamond in the ring to carve the couple's initials in glass on the night they were engaged. This was typically done in a mirror, or in Hearthstone's case, a window.
If you look closely you can see the initials - FTR (for Florence Talbot Rogers) and FHP (for Franklin Hesing Pietsch) on the left side of the window as well as the date (May 15, 1889).
This practice was very common and many middle and upper class homes featured windows like this. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the windows do not survive. It is marvelous that after more than 140 years the initials are still here.
It is easy to imagine the young couple standing in front of the window with Frank watching Kitty carve their initials: The perfect start of their lives together.
But, as we will see later in the tour, it did NOT end well.