Marshall Pringle DeBruhl Kate R Calhoun.

Marshall Pringle DeBruhl (1853 - 1915) - Find A Grave Memorial

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(Original obituary was rewritten to conform to Findagrave Rules by Record ... Marshal P DeBruhl, State Code Commissioner, died Tuesday at the home of his ...

Kate R Calhoun DeBruhl (1862 - 1890) - Find A Grave Memorial

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After an illness of several months, Mrs Kate DeBruhl, the beloved wife of Marshall P DeBruhl, Esq, of the Abbeville Bar, died this morning at quarter past one ...

Levasta Reese

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ID: I4413 Name: Lavasta Reese Surname: Reese Given Name: Lavasta Sex: F Birth: 5 Mar 1878 in Bull Creek, Madison Co., NC Death: 1957 in Asheville, NC Burial: Oak Ridge Cemetery _UID: 7A43E0A8EC9E1E4F850EB8E6856611EE57D0 Note: per IGI surname Chambers - see below son Harold's obit on Ancestry says Reese Ancestry of Lavasta: He was the son of Edmund Palmer one of the first settlers in Madison County. A Revolutionary War soldier. Edmund Palmer birth 1747 Wife Mary Brittain birth 1749 Lewis Palmer birth 1791 Wife Polly Roberts 1793 ? John Washington Chambers 1801 Wife Thirzah Palmer 1815 Elisha Reese 1834 Margaret Wife Serena Chambers 1842 William Leroi DeBruhl 1870 Wife Levasta Reese 1878 Arthur Marvin DeBruhl 1897 Wife Janie Wright 1900           Norman Hoyle DeBruhl 1932 Wife Joann Wooten DeBruhl 1933 Change Date: 9 Jul 2011 at 01:00:00 Ancestry Hints for Lavasta Reese     2 possible matches found on Ancestry.com Father: Elisha Reese b: 1834 in NC Mother: Margaret Serena Chambers Marriage 1 William Leroy DeBruhl b: 5 Jan 1870 in Madison Co., NC Children Arthur Marvin DeBruhl b: 8 Aug 1897 in Madison County, NC

Von Bruhl family crest

The von Brühl family

Coat of arms of the von Brühl family
Ethnicity	German
Current region	Germany, United States, Sweden, Denmark, France, United Kingdom
Place of origin	Free State of Saxony, Holy Roman Empire
Distinctions	Imperial Count (European nobility)

Ben DeFelice CIA

The Boston Globe

Ben DeFelice, 79; Providence native who aided, comforted CIA relatives
By Adam Bernstein, Washington Post  |  April 10, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Ben DeFelice, the Providence native who spent two
decades handling one of the Central Intelligence Agency's most
delicate assignments -- consoling relatives of CIA employees who were
missing, captured, or killed in the line of duty -- died of cancer
Monday at Virginia Hospital Center-Arlington. The resident of Fairfax,
Va., was 79.

Mr. DeFelice was involved in the case of Richard Fecteau of Lynn, a
retired assistant athletic director at Boston University, who was shot
down in 1952 while working for the CIA and was held by China until
1971.

As chief of the casualty-affairs branch and then deputy director of
personnel, Mr. DeFelice helped create a system to look after the
financial interests of employees who were detained or missing while on
assignment for the CIA.

He was also the agency's liaison with those agents' families and used
frequent phone calls and personal visits to smooth over relations with
relatives who viewed the CIA with distrust.

Working with the Red Cross and the State Department, he helped get
food packages to captive CIA employees and arrange for family visits.

He served 20 years as chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Prisoners,
composed largely of CIA employees with operational experience. "But
its real purpose, as devised by DeFelice, was to set up an ongoing
forum that would ensure that the men were not forgotten," Ted Gup
wrote in his book "The Book of Honor: Covert Lives and Classified
Deaths at the CIA."

CIA Director George Tenet said in a statement that Mr. DeFelice "set
the highest standards in care and compassion. Over a long career, Ben
pioneered major benefit programs -- including retirement and medical
insurance -- that reflect a profound concern for the men and women who
serve their country in intelligence."

Mr. DeFelice persuaded the agency to provide retirement, health, and
life insurance benefits to US citizens working on contract for the
agency. He also got the authority to invest the salaries of missing
and captured employees instead of keeping the money in standard
accounts that would accrue far less interest. In figuring salary
adjustments, he also calculated career promotions that the employees
might have received had they remained operational.

Mr. DeFelice played a role in several well-publicized espionage cases.
He handled the personal affairs of Francis Gary Powers when the
Russians shot down his U-2 surveillance plane in 1960 and held him for
two years. Powers was released in exchange for jailed Soviet operative
Rudolf Abel.

Mr. DeFelice was also involved in the case of Hugh Redmond, a CIA
officer who was arrested in China in 1951 for supporting
anticommunists. Redmond died in jail in 1970; Chinese authorities
claimed he had killed himself with a razor.

Mr. DeFelice saw a better outcome in the matter of John Downey and
Fecteau, two CIA employees whom the Chinese government shot down over
Manchuria in 1952 during the Korean War. For two years, their fate was
unknown, and the CIA declared them dead.

Then in 1954, the Chinese tried them for espionage and gave Fecteau a
20-year sentence and Downey a life term. In a prelude to President
Richard Nixon's historic 1972 visit to China, Fecteau was released in
1971. Downey was freed in 1973.

Fecteau, now 76, said Mr. DeFelice "was a very warm and friendly guy,
down to earth. He never acted like a bureaucrat."

Fecteau said Mr. DeFelice took care to comfort his mother. "His
assurances kept up her faith and courage," he said. "He would walk in,
like my mother said, like a next-door neighbor. He never acted
officious to her."

Downey, 73, a retired Superior Court judge in New Haven, said Mr.
DeFelice also had a special rapport with his mother, who at first did
not think the CIA was doing enough to secure her son's release.

"When Ben was first assigned to the case, he thought she was the
biggest pain in the neck, and she was relentless in trying to keep our
name before government officials," Downey said. "He grew to love her,
and she was fond of him and had a very warm and loving relationship as
the years rolled by."

Benedetto DeFelice was the youngest of four children born to Italian
immigrants. During his Army service in World War II, he played trumpet
in a band that performed at military functions in southern Italy.

He was a 1949 graduate of Georgetown University's foreign service
school and a 1954 graduate of Georgetown's law school, where he was
fourth in his class. He began working for the CIA in 1953, became
chief of the casualty-affairs branch in the mid-1950s, and was deputy
director of personnel from 1973 to 1983.

He retired in 1987 as director of information services. He processed
freedom of information requests and balanced them against the CIA's
security needs. He also met with historians to review the agency's
process of declassifying documents for the public.

His decorations included the Career Intelligence Medal and two awards
of the Distinguished Intelligence Medal. In September 1997, when the
CIA celebrated its 50th anniversary, Mr. DeFelice was named a
trailblazer, one of 50 officers who made defining contributions to the
agency.

At the time of the ceremony, The Washington Post reported that he
often attended funeral services and handed a family member a letter of
condolence from the CIA's director. He would read the letter in the
presence of a CIA officer and then spirit it back to the office
because of security concerns.

Medals were also handled that way, because, he said, "we didn't want
to impose an unnecessary burden on the widow."

He leaves his wife of 57 years, Alma Gregory DeFelice of Fairfax;
three children, Peter G. of Washington, Mary A. of Fairfax and Paul A.
of Lake Ridge, Va.; two brothers; and three grandchildren.

Alma DeFelice

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ALMA GREGORY DeFELICE

On September 1, 2006, wife of the late Benedetto DeFelice; mother of
Gregory, Mary, Paul and the late Philip; grandmother of Christopher,
Nicholas and Rebecca; sister of Myrtle Davis and the late Roy and Paul
Gregory; daughter of the late Bolden and Mamie (DeBruhl) Gregory.
Originally from Union, SC, she was a long time resident of Arlington,
VA and most recently a resident of Springfield, VA. On Monday, October
16, the family will receive friends from 4 to 7 p.m. at MURPHY'S
FUNERAL HOME, 4510 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA. A memorial service is
planned for 1 p.m. on Tuesday, October 17 at the Fort Myer Chapel,
followed by interment at Arlington National Cemetery and a reception
at the Fort Myer Officers' Club.
Published in The Washington Post on Oct. 18 2006


Alma's hobby was researching family history.  Her mother was Mamie DeBruhl from
the South Carolina branch of the DeBruhl family.  Alma attended the DeBruhl family reunion
held in Mars Hill, NC each year and shared her research with the family members.
She traveled with her husband Ben DeFelice and would do research while Ben was tending to
CIA business.  One of her travels landed them in Nassau, The Bahamas, on a whim she stopped
off at the library/historic society and started doing research.  Her research uncovered a veritable
treasure trove of DeBruhl family history,  Michael Samuel DeBruhl Jr was living in the Bahamas during the American Revolution and was appointed after the Revolution to settle a court case which resulted in all the court records and affidavits were securely stored away from the war in the colonies and preserved.  This find by Alma unlocked the early history of the DeBruhl family history starting with the landing of the family of Michael Samuel DeBruhl and Margaret Pring DeBruhl in 1749 in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  And their migration to New York and thence to the Carolina's.  Alma was a real good friend and distant cousin.   Norman DeBruhl.
 

Catherine The Great Art Collection

The Beginning of a “Great” Collection

By the end of the eighteenth century the Hermitage was already one of Europe’s finest museums. Catherine the Great had acquired not only a wide variety of classical works, but also paintings by contemporary western artists. Catherine defined the trends in collecting, which set high standards that have been impossible to ignore ever since. In addition, her interest in the Enlightenment Movement in the 18^th century bridged the gap between Eastern and Western Europe. Though Catherine’s relationship with the great philosopher Voltaire began as a publicity move, the two quickly became close friends. Catherine knew her letters to Voltaire were actually a message sent directly to the intelligentsia living in Europe.

Catherine began building her collection just one year after she reached the throne. Catherine saw herself foremost as an intellectual, so she judged the paintings she purchased not for their visual beauty or artistic technique, but for their intellectual and narrative content. Her first sizable purchase was in 1773, when she purchased a collection of 225 paintings from an art dealer in Berlin. The collection was originally destined for King Frederick II of Prussia. Among the 225 paintings, there were only five masterpieces – three Rembrandts, a Franz Hals and a Rubens. In 1769 Catherine scooped up the famous Dresden collection belonging to the late Count Heinrich von Brühl.  The collection included four Rembrandts, a Caravaggio and five works by Rubens. In 1771 Catherine purchased the famous collection of Pierre Crozat, which included eight Rembrandts, four by Veronese, twelve by Rubens, seven by Van Dyck and several by Raphael, Titian and Tintoretto.

Perhaps Catherine’s greatest conquest was England’s famed Walpole Collection. In 1778 the empress received news that the spendthrift grandson and heir of Sir Robert Walpole wanted to sell the family’s entire collection. The collection represented the finest and most famous private art collection in England, among the finest in the world. Sir Robert Walpole had dedicated nearly forty years of his life to building a collection of almost two hundred paintings, which included Rembrandt’s Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac, fifteen works by Van Dyck and thirteen by Rubens. The Walpole Collection confirmed Catherine’s reputation as Europe’s foremost collector of art. During her reign her collection grew to almost four thousand paintings, making her the greatest collector and patron of art in the history of Europe

Scots of Harden

The Scots of Harden


Hugh Scott, the son of Mr Walter Scott and Lady Diana, eleventh Baron of Harden, was born in 1758.
He was elected member of Parliament for Berwickshire in 1780-an honor which lost him a fine estate.
( See vol 1  404) He married in 1795 Harriet, daughter of Hans Maurice Count de Bruhl Saxon Ambassador at the British Court.  Sir Walter Scott, then a young man, was introduced to the lady shortly after marriage, and she gave him great assistance in his translations from the German.
He used to say that she was the first woman of real fashion that took him up, that she used the privilege of her sex and station in the truest spirit of kindness, set him right as to a thousand little
trifles which no one else could have ventured to notice, and, in short, did for him what no one but an
elegant woman can do for a young man whose early days have been spent in narrow and provincial
circles.  She continued through life his attached friend, and the letters which he wrote to her
( the last of them from Naples 1832) show how cordially he reciprocated her esteem and regard.
 Of Harden himself, Sir Walter wrote to the Duke of Buccleuch in 1817, I have known Harden long,
and most intimately- a more respectable man, either fir feeling, or talent, or knowledge of human life,
is rarely to be met with.