Camping in Morocco

Our caravan ready to start from camp. El Fondak, Morocco, May 1891

On their extended wedding trip to Spain and Morocco, Emily & James Sibley Watson began the travel adventures that became a shared pleasure of their married life. In family letters and in a later paper, Camping in Morocco, that she presented to the Wednesday Club in 1910 with accompanying images from her album of the trip (now in the collection of George Eastman Museum), Emily described travelling from Tangier to Tetouan, Morocco, and from Tetouan to Ceuta, Spain's outpost in North Africa.

For Emily, transatlantic travel was hardly a novelty. When her parents sailed to Europe in 1865, and her father Hiram Sibley went on to St. Petersburg to negotiate Western Union business with the Russian government, ten-year-old Emily accompanied them and attended private school in Berlin and Paris. By 1891, when Emily and her husband James set off for Morocco, she had lived in and toured Europe at least three, and perhaps four times, visiting with family and friends in 1873 and in 1883-1884.

For a woman of her wealth and station, as a member of Rochester’s most affluent family, this was not surprising, and was consistent with travels of other Rochesterians of comparable status, notably the Ellwangers, artist George Haushalter, and Rochesterian man-about-town J. Sherlock Andrews. Her participation in a camping trip in Morocco—while hardly “roughing it” as she traveled with an entourage of servants—was exceptional for a genteel, married woman from Rochester approaching middle age, giving us a new perspective on the “spine” and adventure seeking of this otherwise modest and private woman.

James Sibley Watson, only son of Hiram Sibley’s partner Don Alonzo Watson, was likewise born to privilege.  He had traveled widely, was a member of the Genesee Valley Hunt, and enjoyed sailing and big game hunting.  The Morocco trip provided him opportunities for hunting boars and game birds as well as shooting photographs.