Hiram’s Corners differed from other wealthy suburban watering holes in that its grandees were homegrown. It sometimes seemed that all the large landholders in the town were related. The Wainwrights’ presence went back to Sterling’s great-aunt Aurelia, a big-bosomed Cincinnati matron with a lorgnette and sensible shoes who had married her way east when she was younger and lither. Adelbert Binns, whom she’d wed in 1905, had made good as John D. Rockefeller’s chief fixer at Standard Oil and had been handsomely rewarded in the process. Binns belonged to another notable Cincinnati tribe; he’d put down roots here on the advice of old Senator Hiram Handspring, who had likewise married into the family. Over the years his son Bobby Binns, and Bobby’s son Beebe, a noted conservationist, nationally recognized orchid grower, and devotee of the Middlesex woods, had acquired more than eight thousand acres on the slopes of Bald Mountain, reputedly one of the largest private holdings in the state outside the Adirondacks.
