Partial transcript of a tape recorded interview made August 1979 at 6 Trout Pond Lane, Chatham, Massachusetts. M is Martha (Josselyn) DeVoe; H is Howard DeVoe.

H: We're talking about my grandfather, Edgar Josselyn, and we're looking at the old scrapbooks here of his work that he did when he was on the Rotch Travelling Scholarship in 1887, I think it was. . . He was the fourth holder of the Rotch Travelling Scholarship in 1887. Mom, you were going to say something --

M: Well, he applied for the scholarship, and I think French was a requirement for getting it, and he taught it to himself.

H: That's amazing.

M: And spoke like a Frenchman - they all said he spoke just exactly like a Frenchman when he got there.

H: Were you going to tell me a story about --

M: Yes. And as part of getting the scholarship was the idea that he was to study in Paris, but it didn't necessarily mean that he got in the Beaux-Arts School -- that was another affair -- you had to apply to the Beaux-Arts School, and to be accepted there you had to pass a number of examinations to get in. And the person who was examining them for some reason didn't like my father, didn't like the looks or something, and sprang a mathematical question on him that was almost impossible to solve, and somehow my father figured it out and did it. And the rest of those that were -- it was an oral thing -- the others were sitting around and they said they didn't have any idea how they could have done it. But he got it, and he was accepted. And put into a -- well, the whole story is in that book, but that's something that isn't in the book.

H: Thought he was in an atelier.

M: Yes, but it tells what atelier he was in and who he studied under and all. He had to be accepted into Beaux-Arts School. I suppose he would have gone to another school, but this was the school he wanted to go to, and finally he was accepted.

H: That's great. Well now let's look at the scrapbooks.