MacCallum House in Russia

Beth's email 6/14/2010

The royal who stopped with her coach for a rest and tea at Vera's russian house (the large one and not the lake one) could have been any royal woman. It could have been the Czar's mother, Maria and she died ten years after her son Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
. . .or his wife, Alexandra who died with him in 1918 by assassination.
. . .or just a royal princess of some kind but not one of the children as they would have been too young to travel like that. I don't remember Jill saying exactly which one, she may have, but she did say that it was a woman.

This most likely was the only for sure connection with the royals - at least the only thing that Jill remembers that her mother definitely told her.

Jill did not say that the house was the Summer Palace and in fact I believe she told us that it was not. I remembered that she laughed when we asked her. (But maybe it had been the home of someone very close to the royal family in the past). She did say that her grandfather, William McCallum, lived in the large house but did not own or buy it; that it was arranged by someone else in Russia that they lived there.

Jill said that once a friend came from England or Scotland to visit him and could not believe how fine was the manner in which the McCallum family lived because they were both making about the same amount of money but that it went much farther in Russia.

All this may be on video or at least in our handwritten notes.

~Beth

Jeanne's reply 6/14/2010

I do recall this. However, I also recall that Charlotte interrupted her to tell her that house was full of pictures of the royals on the walls, so It much have belonged to the royals.

~Jeanne