James Lawrence Breese, Jr., Inventor

July 10, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Uncategorized 4 Comments Tags: Breese Burner, Genealogy, James Lawrence Breese Jr, NC4, Santa fe

Jim Breese

James Lawrence Breese, Jr., (1884-1959) my wife’s eighth cousin twice removed, was the son of James Lawrence Breese and Francis Tileston Potter. He was Princeton ’09. He married Marjorie Howard Gorges (1894-1974); they had four children, Anne, Frances Potter (1916-1998), Mary NC, (1919-199), and James Lawrence (1927-2009).

Marjorie Howard Gorges

James was a classmate of Franklin Delano Roosevelt at Groton. Roosevelt was the Assistant Navy Secretary, which helped get James on the historic flight. In 1919 he was engineering officer and co-pilot in the NC4, the plane which made the first transatlantic flight from New York to Lisbon (Lindbergh made the first solo flight).

Lt. James Breese

James Breese NC4 Crew The NC4 Crew

The transatlantic capability of the NC-4 was the result of developments in aviation that began before World War I. In 1908, Glenn Curtiss had experimented unsuccessfully with floats on the airframe of an early June Bug craft, but his first successful takeoff from water was not carried out until 1911, with an A-1 airplane fitted with a central pontoon. In January 1912, he first flew his first hulled “hydro-aeroplane”, which led to an introduction with the retired English naval officer John Cyril Porte who was looking for a partner to produce an aircraft with him to attempt win the prize of the newspaper the Daily Mail for the first transatlantic flight between the British Isles and North America – not necessarily nonstop, but using just one airplane. (e.g. changing airplanes in Iceland or the Azores was not allowed.)

Emmitt Clayton Bedell, a chief designer for Curtiss, improved the hull by incorporating the Bedell Step, the innovative hydroplane “step” in the hull allowed for breaking clear of the water at takeoff. Porte and Curtiss were joined by Lt. John H. Towers of the U.S. Navy as a test pilot. This Curtiss Model H America flying boat of 1914 was a larger aircraft with two engines and two pusher propellers. The members of the team hoped to claim the prize for a transatlantic flight

Development of this project ceased with the outbreak of World War I in Europe later that year. Porte, now back in the Royal Navy‘s flight arm the RNAS, commissioned more flying boats to be built by the Curtiss Company. These could be used for long-range antisubmarine warfare patrols. Porte modified these aircraft, and he developed them into his own set of Felixstowe flying boats with more powerful engines, longer ranges, better hulls and better handling characteristics. He shared this design with the Curtiss Company, which built these improved models under license, selling them to the U.S. Government.

This culminated in a set of four identical aircraft, the NC-1, NC-2, NC-3 and the NC-4, the U.S. Navy‘s first series of four medium-sized Curtiss NC floatplanes made for the Navy by the Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Company. The NC-4 made its first test flight on 30 April 1919.^[2]

World War I had ended in November 1918, before the completion of the four Curtiss NCs. Then in 1919, with several of the new floatplanes in its possession, the officers in charge of the U.S. Navy decided to demonstrate the capability of the seaplanes with a transatlantic flight. However it was necessary to schedule refueling and repair stops that were also for crewmen’s meals and sleep and rest breaks — since these Curtiss NCs were quite slow in flight. For example, the flight between Newfoundland and the Azores required many hours of night flight because it could not be completed in one day.

The U.S. Navy’s transatlantic flight expedition began on 8 May 1919. The NC-4 started out in the company of two other Curtiss NCs, the NC-1 and the NC-3 (with the NC-2 having been cannibalized for spare parts to repair the NC-1 before this group of planes had even left New York City). The three aircraft left from Naval Air Station Rockaway, with intermediate stops at the Chatham Naval Air Station, Massachusetts, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, before flying on to Trepassey, Newfoundland, on 15 May. Eight U.S. Navy warships were stationed along the northern East Coast of the United States and Atlantic Canada to help the Curtiss NCs in navigation and to rescue their crewmen in case of any emergency.^[3]

The “base ship”, or the flagship for all of the Navy ships that had been assigned to support the flight of the Curtiss NCs, was the former minelayer USS Aroostook (CM-3), which the Navy had converted into a seaplane tender just before the flight of the Curtiss NCs. With a displacement of just over 3,000 tons, the Aroostook was larger than the Navy’s destroyers that had been assigned to support the transatlantic flight in 1919. Before the Curtiss NCs took off from New York City, the Aroostook had been sent to Trepassey, Newfoundland, to await their arrival there, and then provide refueling, relubrication, and maintenance work on the NC-1, NC-3 and NC-4. Next, she steamed across the Atlantic meet the group when they arrived in England.

On 16 May, the three Curtiss NCs departed on the longest leg of their journey, from Newfoundland to the Azores Islands in the mid-Atlantic. Twenty-two more Navy ships, mostly destroyers, were stationed at about 50-mile (80 km) spacings along this route.^[4] These “station ships” were brightly illuminated during the nighttime. Their sailors blazed their searchlights into the sky, and they also fired bright star shells into the sky to help the aviators to stay on their planned flight path.^[5]

After flying all through the night and most of the next day, the NC-4 reached the town of Horta on Faial Island in the Azores on the following afternoon, having flown about 1,200 miles (1,920 km). It had taken the crewmen 15 hours, 18 minutes, to fly this leg. The NCs encountered thick fog banks along the route. Both the NC-1 and the NC-3 were forced to land on the open Atlantic Ocean because the poor visibility and loss of a visual horizon made flying extremely dangerous. NC-1 was damaged landing in the rough seas and could not become airborne again. NC-3 had mechanical problems.

The crewmen of the NC-1, including future Admiral Marc Mitscher, were rescued by the Greek cargo ship SS Ionia. This ship took the NC-1 in tow, but it sank three days later and was lost in deep water.

The pilots of the NC-3, including future Admiral Jack Towers, taxied their floatplane some 200 nautical miles to reach the Azores, where it was taken in tow by a U.S. Navy ship.

US Navy warships “strung out like a string of pearls” along the NC’s flight path (3rd leg)

Three days after arriving in the Azores, on 20 May, the NC-4 took off again bound for Lisbon, but it suffered mechanical problems, and its pilots had to land again at Ponta Delgada, São Miguel Island, Azores, having flown only about 150 miles (240 km). After several days of delays for spare parts and repairs, the NC-4 took off again on 27 May. Once again there were station ships of the Navy to help with navigation, especially at night. There were 13 warships arranged along the route between the Azores and Lisbon.^[4] The NC-4 had no more serious problems, and it landed in Lisbon harbor after a flight of nine hours, 43 minutes. Thus, the NC-4 become the first aircraft of any kind to fly across the Atlantic Ocean – or any of the other oceans. By flying from Massachusetts and Halifax to Lisbon, the NC-4 also flew from mainland-to-mainland of North America and Europe. Note: the seaplanes were hauled ashore for maintenance work on their engines.

The part of this flight just from Newfoundland to Lisbon had taken a total time 10 days and 22 hours, but with the actual flight time totaling just 26 hours and 46 minutes.

Jim is second from left

NC4 award

James named a daughter Mary NC.

His father had gotten James interested in automobiles After leaving the military, James took a job in a company that tried to build steam cars. One was built, but it was too expensive. However, in this model there was an oil burner with automatic controls to heat a boiler for steam power.

James said he studied the candle flame to see how a flame could be the right temperature to vaporize enough grease to power the flame without creating smoke. He adopted the principle to the oil burner. Jim adopted it to home furnaces; it was the first thermostatically controlled heater.

James first visited Santa Fe when he was flying a tri-motored Ford plane to Winslo, Arizona. Headwinds delayed him and he was running out of gas. Someone remembered that there was a town called Santa Fe nearby. He saw and arrow on a roof and followed it to a landing strip. As he taxied down the runway the engine quit; he had run out of gas. He liked the town and bought property on Upper Canyon Rd., where he built a house.

Jim developed and tested the units in Santa Fe, but the manufacturing was farmed out to factories around the world. By 1954 he had sold three million units, many to the US Army to heat troops during wartime, then throughout the US and Europe.

Breese Burner Factory, Upper Canyon Rd., Santa Fe (later Santa Fe Prep)

Jim in WWII Civil Air Patrol

James and Marjorie were divorced. James married a nurse, Irene Rich (Anna Josefa Irine Sobczyk, 1902-1989) in 1940.

Irene Rich (Anna Josefa Irine Sobcyzk)

Florence Wagner

Florence Welch Wagner

They were divorced in 1948; he then married the journalist Florence Welch (1883-1971), the widow of Robert Wagner, founder of Rob Wagner’s Script. She had had Ray Bradbury’s early works published and directed a film with Will Rogers. She survived James. He died April 1, 1959 in San Diego.

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James Lawrence Breese, Bon Vivant

July 4, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Uncategorized 3 Comments Tags: Genealogy, James Lawrence Breese, Stanford White, The Carbon Studio, The Carbonites, The Girl in the Pie, The Orchard

James Lawrence Breese

James Lawrence Breese (1851-1934) was the son of Josiah Salisbury Breese and Augusta Eloise Lawrence. He was the brother of the two Breese sisters who married into the British aristocracy, and also the seventh cousin three times removed of my wife.

As a Lawrence he was related to my wife. He was also a descendant of the Sidney Breese who epitaph is found in Trinity Churchyard on Wall Street.

The Firm

The young James

James studies engineering at Rensselaer. James inherited some money, and founded the brokerage firm of Breese and Smith. He did well for himself. One case disclosed that between 1909 and 1916, he made $2,000,000. ($50,000,000 in 2015 dollars). His firm mostly stayed out of the papers, which is a good sign. He got into trouble in other ways.

The Carbon Studio

James took up amateur photography and specialized in the difficult technique of carbon prints.

carbon print is a photographic print with an image consisting of pigmented gelatin, rather than of silver or other metallic particles suspended in a uniform layer of gelatin, as in typical black-and-white prints, or of chromogenic dyes, as in typical photographic color prints.

The process can produce images of very high quality which are exceptionally resistant to fading and other deterioration. It was developed in the mid-19th century in response to concerns about the fading of early types of silver-based black-and-white prints, which was already becoming apparent within a relatively few years of their introduction.

James was the first amateur photographer to work in color.

James was the nephew of Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor and painter, who also brought Daguerre’s process to America. James worked with Rudolf Eickemeyer, who became a member of Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo Secession and the Linked Ring. James and Stieglitz were the only two Americans invited to the photo exhibition in Vienna in 1893 and James won first prize.

James built a luxurious studio at his house at 5 East 16^th Street.

The Carbon Studio

There he did society portraits.

May Handy

May Handy

Yvette Guilbert

He liked to photograph beautiful women and could be very persuasive.

Ruth St. Denis with clothes

Ruth St. Denis (whose real name was Ruthie Dennis) was one of leading figures in American modern dance. She and her husband, Ted Shawn, started one of first modern dance touring companies (Denishawn). She was born in 1878 or 1880 in New Jersey and lived till 1968. In 1939 she wrote an autobiography entitled, An Unfinished Life.

“On the night of the Opera Club I met the man who was to be the first of a long line of distinguished photographers who have honored me with their art. He was James Lawrence Breese, Stanford’s running partner in the various exploits which made them so famous at this time — more than that, he was an excellent amateur photographer. He asked me to come to his studio on West Sixteenth Street. I went eagerly, with one object and only one in mind. I knew the value of beautiful photographs and I also knew that I could not possibly afford them at this time. Breese had, for that period, very advanced apparatus for taking art pictures. Also he had, to my great joy, some hats and fichus and veils, with which his lady sitters adorned themselves. He said I looked like an early Gainsborough, and he arranged a beautiful wine-colored Gainsborough hat on my head and a fichu around my shoulders. I was enchanted with myself.
He asked me to come a second time, and on this occasion he stopped his restless pacing up and down the room and inquired in a charming, caressing voice if I would pose in the nude. He made it all very artistic and plausible. I had, he was sure, a beautiful body with long lines which he was anxious to capture. I was in a flutter of indecision for a moment or two, but vanity won out and I very chastely stepped out of my clothes.”

But James really liked to take erotic photograph of young girls.

At the Carbon Studio James held recitals and also held his famous and later infamous parties, the ”One of 1001 Nights,” which began at midnight every Wednesday. There he invited his friends, Dana Gibson, Louis Saint Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Nicola, and especially his best friend, Stanford “Stanny” White, who liked underage girls.

James enjoyed costume parties.

James Lawrence Breese party

James painted by Eliot Gregory

One nearly ended in disaster.

Perhaps the most celebrated of the “1001 Nights” costume parties took place on December 17, 1896. It involved a pyrotechnic mishap that captured the attention of the press and the public at large. In the words of a society columnist of the day:

“The host received his guests in the costume of an Arab sheik. He is a man of commanding presence, with a dark beard and looked the part very well, indeed. Mrs. Breese, made up as a Spanish dancing girl, helped him to welcome the guests.

“They were a gay and a picturesque horde who invaded the studio as the clock struck twelve. James J. Van Alen and Hermann Oelrichs impersonated Dutch burghers; Winthrop Chanler and Miss Wilmerding posed as members of the Salvation Army and rattled their tambourines incessantly; James Gerard, Jr. was a handsome Hungarian hussar: Craig Wadsworth and Willie Tiffany were court jesters; Miss ‘Birdie’ Fair wore the ruff of Folly; Cooper Hewitt and Whitney Warren were turbaned Turks; Creighton Webb’s well-known legs were displayed to advantage beneath a long Spanish cloak; Dickie Peters was as proud of his appearance in a suit of pajamas and a high hat as if he had uttered an epigram …”

The presence of so many costumed guests provided Breese with an opportunity to take individuals aside and pose them for a portrait. Here we see a signed print of Miss Emily Hoffman in all her regal splendor.

On this particular December night, the cold winter wind may have been blowing outside, but within the sanctum of the Breese studio, a good time was being had by all. Then things began to go awry. The gaiety had kicked into high gear when Mrs. Clinch Smith, wearing a loud plaid calico dress and a huge hat, unrecognizable in cork “black face,” commanded center stage with her spirited version of a “cakewalk.” Mrs. Cadwalader, wearing loose, loud checked trousers, big shoes, and a red necktie, took the part of Sambo. The two otherwise reserved and proper ladies brought down the house to the accompaniment of a group of “genuine negro banjo players.”

Somewhere along the way a mischievous guest began tossing lit matches in a negligent manner. Suddenly Mrs. George B. de Forest, who was dressed in a light and gauzy Oriental costume, began to scream as flames lept from her attire. No water being readily available, a quick thinking guest seized a champagne bottle from an ice bucket, knocked off its neck against the wall, and sprayed the contents onto the flaming dress. Several other champagne bottles were similarly employed.

Sobbing and trembling, with her charred skirts clinging to her body, Mrs. de Forest was led to Mrs. Breese’s apartments to “recover her composure.”

Then came the most famous party of them all.

The Girl in the Pie

At the approach of dawn, four negroes entered, bearing a huge pie, which they placed on the table. A faint stir was observed beneath the crust just as the orchestra struck up the air of the nursery jingle:
“Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
Four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”
The pie was burst asunder, and from inside there emerged the beautiful figure of a young girl, clad in black gauze draperies. She turned her pretty childish face upon the astonished guests, and poised as a bird about to fly, while two dozen canaries, released by her hand, flew about the room.
Then, when the tableau was complete, a man forced his way to the side of the table and with a smile assisted the child tothe floor. The man was Stanford White.

The young girl, a model, then 15 years old, lived with her mother, but on the night of the banquet she disappeared, and remained in hiding for two years. Efforts of the police to find her were unsuccessful.

Another version. Stanford White is the man on the right with a knife

At last she returned, to tell a story of revolting mistreatment and desertion by the man who met his death at the hands of Harry Thaw.
“When I was lifted from the pie to a seat at the table I found myself queen of the revel,” she said. “It was dazzling at first,” she said, “but in the end it became a sad queendom.
“Mr. White was kind for a time, but when he went to Europe he instructed his clerks to get rid of me with as little trouble as possible. I never saw him again.”
Turned into the street to live as she might, this girl, not yet 18, finally married, but her husband, when he learned of her part in the “pie” banquet, brooded over the affair, and deserted his girl wife without attempting to avenge her wrongs. She died soon afterward.

Some say she committed suicide.

That is one version, fueled by the animosity of Joseph Pulitzer.

A few months after the Pie Girl Dinner, in an attack on the New York high society that refused to admit its publisher, Joseph Pulitzer’s World blasted the “bacchanalian revels in New York fashionable studios” and men who corrupted young girls for their pleasure. This opinion was contradicted by one of the participants, Edward Simmons, who wrote that the whole affair was “very moral and dignified.”

Simmons of course had legal reasons to make this claim. The whole gang cleared out of town and made themselves scarce after the affair became public.

Some claim that James Breese led Stanny astray. But Stanny didn’t take much leading. He met his end when the jealous Harry Thaw killed him on the rooftop of Madison Square Garden.

The Automobilist

Another way James Breese sought thrills was through the new sport of automobile racing.

The White Mountain Race

At the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race, James Breese walking on the Jericho Turnpike Course

James Breese, William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., and other participants of the 1904 Daytona-Ormond Beach Automobile Races.

James Breese at the 1904 Eagle Rock Hill Climb held in Edison, New Jersey.

James Breese at the 1905 Daytona-Ormond Automobile Races.

On August 9, 1904 at 2 PM James Breese arrived at St. Louis for the World’s Fair. He had driven his forty horsepower touring car from Buffalo to St. Louis in 36 hours, averaging 25 mph. His Son James Breese Jr, his valet, and a machinist accompanied him. The others in the race arrived a day later.

His daughter Frances remembers:

Of me, he was known to say, “Frances is the best of my boys,” and he liked to show me off. As soon as I was tall enough to sit behind the wheel of a car, he put me in the driver’s seat and taught me to shift gears and manipulate the hand throttle.

James also used his engineering knowledge to experiment with the manufacture of planes.

The Penguin was a non-flying trainer.

The Houses

James built a house, The Breeses. in Tuxedo Park in 1887. It was designed by Robert Henderson Robertson.

The Breeses

However, his antics were not altogether welcome in Tuxedo Park and in 1900 he decided to move to Southampton.

Stanford White’s last commission was to redo The Orchard, James Breese’s estate in Southampton. There was an existing 1858 house, which White added onto to give it a Mount Vernony feeling outside. but inside was over the top.

The Orchard, 151 Hill Street, Southampton

Garden Facade

Frog Fountain by Janet Scudder

In 1916 James and the electrical engineer Glenn Marston installed hundreds of hand-made lights in the garden, one of the first in the world to be so illuminated.

The Orchard Hall

The Hall

The Orchard Room 2

The Living Room

The Orchard Dining Room

The Dining Room

The Music Room

The Conservatory

The Grounds Today

He also had a triplex moved into an apartment in the Hotel des Artistes in Manhattan.

The living room is 60 feet by 30 feet. Its furniture includes some enormous pieces of old English silver. Venetian columns of red, blue, and gold lend indescribable richness to the walls. Mr. Breese finds comfort on a divan covered with old Spanish brocade. One of his many fancies is to have his fire screen decorated with live smilax, fresh every day, all year ’round.

The Denouement

James and his wife Frances Tileston Potter (1858-1917) had four children Sydney, James, Robert, and Frances. Mrs. Breese was the niece of the Bishop Potter of the Christian saloon.

Frances Tileston Potter (1858-1917)

After she died, at age 64 he married the Southern belle Grace Lucile Momand (1894-1946), 23. They married in 1919; she divorced him in 1927 and immediately became the second of the three wives of Harry Payne Bingham.

Grace Lucile Momand

Mrs James Lawrence Breese

Grace as Mrs. Breese

Grace on left

Grace (left) and Marion Tiffany (Mrs Martin Saportas)

James’s daughter Frances reminisces:

In 1935 [actually, 1934] he lost his last fortune, and “The Orchard”, our summer home in Southampton, was sold to Charles Merrill. Papa took an around the world trip by steamer, became a short wave radio enthusiast, and on his return built a two-bedroom house that he called “Breese In” on Hill Street, next to his former home. He did much of his own cooking, and old Mrs. Raccosta, who had been with our family for many years, cleaned house for him. Even though Papa was in his late seventies, the change in circumstances did not phase him. He was still attractive to women, and, when he could no longer drive a car, he acquired a beautiful young companion-housekeeper-chauffeur and toured the country with her. When he died at the age of eighty, she committed suicide.

James with grandchildren

Frances Tileston Breese “Tanty” – daughter (1893-1985)

Frances wrote this poem:

Tanty, his youngest child

How well do I remember
The year of ninety-three
when Father and my Mother
Had just created Me.

T’was from my painted iron crib
while blowing bubbles in my bib
I used to look with wonder on
The costumes that my Pa would don.

For fancy dress at every party
Was much the vogue if you were “arty”
In the eighties and the nineties
And the naughty nineteen oughties

Then later, when a little tot,
(You may believe I was, or not)
I used to watch and have much fun
When Jimmy made his horses run.

For trotting then was much the fad
And moving slow was not for Dad.
Give him action, give him speed,
He likes them fast… yes Sir, indeed.

In horses, women, games and sport
Slow movers never were his sort.
(Of course all this is merely heresay,
But rumors sometimes reach the nursray.)

So, by the time I could count ten
I’d heard a thing or two. For instance when
A little fairy flitting by
Told me the tale about the Pie.

She said no crows came out that night.
Instead, a vision of delight;
A fancy from the brain of him
Who all my friends call Uncle Jim.

But in the fear that I might tell
Too much, it would be well
Only to mention with a word
Some of the the things that I have heard.

About his prowess and his skill;
The birds he’s shot, the fish he’s killed,
The boats he’s sailed, the cars he’s driven,
And his immense success with women.

So if you lesser men are spurned
Because as yet you haven’t learned
To charm the birds from off the trees,
You’d best tune in on Jimmy Breese.

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Anne Parsons Breese, Lady Alistair Innes Ker

July 3, 2015 in Lawrence Family No Comments Tags: Alistair Robert Innes Ker, Anne Parsons Breese, Genealogy

Anne Parsons Breese (1889-1959) was the daughter of William Lawrence Breese and Mar Louise parsons. And therefore the eighth cousin, twice removed of my wife. Anne moved to England when her widowed mother married Henry Vincent Higgins, the impresario of Covent Garden.

Like her sister Eloise, Anne married (October 10, 1907) into British aristocracy: Alistair Robert Innes Ker, the younger brother of the childless Duke of Roxburghe. Alistair was not wealthy, and according to the papers neither was Anne.

The wedding is the culmination of a genuine love match. Lord Alistair, though belonging to one of the noblest families of England, is by no means wealthy. The bride is not wealthy either, and the young people will have to live quietly, but, it is said, the Duchess of Roxburghe, who was Miss May Goelet of New York, will give them a small but completely furnished house in Mayfair.

In October 1908 Anne gave birth to a son, the heir presumptive of the title of the Duke of Roxburghe.

However on September 7, 1913 the Duchess gave birth to George Innes Ker, who became the ninth Duke, Anne professed relief. She

is in no way disgruntled, being among the first to proffer congratulations and declaring frankly she considers the Goelet millions really necessary to maintain such a palatial residence as Floors Castle.

Floors Castle

Her husband, Lieut. Col. Lord Alistair Robert Innes Ker, seems to have been a career military man. He received both the King’s and Queen’s medal for his service in the Boer War, and received the Distinguished Service Order in November 19144. He retired from the army in 1930 and died in 1936, only 55 years old.

Alistair Robert Innes Ker

Their son, Alistair James, was killed in action in Normandy on July 6, 1944 when his tank burst into flames. His body was never recovered, and he is commemorated in the Bayeux Memorial.

Anne lived until 1959. Her other children, David Charles (1910-1957) and Eloise (1915-1996), survived her.

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Eloise Breese, Countess of Ancaster

July 1, 2015 in Lawrence Family, Uncategorized No Comments Tags: Countess of Ancaster, Covent Garden, Drummond Castle, Eloise Breese, Genealogy, Gilbert Heatcote Drummond Willoughby, Grimsthorpe Castle, Henry Vincent Higgins, Normanton Park

Eloise Lawrence Breese

Among the far twigs of the family tree is Eloise Lawrence Breese (1890-1953), my wife’s eighth cousin twice removed.

After her father, William Lawrence Breese (1854-1888) died, her mother, the former Mary Louise Parsons, in 1893 married Henry Vincent Higgins, a solicitor and manager of Covent Gardens. They moved to London, where Eloise studied signing under Signor Allenesi.

William Lawrence Breese

Mary Louise Parsons

Henry Vincent Higgins

Like many American heiresses, Eloise was married off to a titled European, Gilbert Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby (1867-1951). He was twenty-three years her senior. In this case both were wealthy.

Gilbert Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby

The marriage was a major social event; the account sounds as if it had been written by Saki, so I have highlighted the more interesting tidbits.

When Eloise Breese, the charming daughter of the late William Lawrence Breese, of New York, married Lord Willoughby de Eresby [pronounced Dursby] of London, it was considered a most desirable match, as the young Lord was the heir of the wealthy Earl of Ancaster. The Earl of Ancaster died on Christmas Eve in 1910, and his eldest son, Lord Willoughby, succeeded to the title and an American girl became the Countess of Ancaster. Lord Ancaster also succeeded to three magnificent country seats: Grimsthorpe Castle, in Lincolnshire; Normanton Park near Stamford, and Drummond Castle, in Perthshire, Scotland.

Grimsthorpe Castle

Normanton Park

Drummond Castle

Lord Willoughby and Eloise Breese were married on December 5, 1905, at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster. The ceremony drew a large and distinguished gathering, and was one of the brightest ever seen. The church was crowded with a fashionable throng that included nearly all the prominent members of the American Colony and Royalty, to name a few, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, Princess Patricia of Connaught, Ambassador Whitelaw Reid, Miss Reid, Prince Francis of Teck and the Ladies Dartmouth and Cheylesmore. A detachment of the Lincolnshire Yeomanry lined the aisles.

Seldom has been seen a more beautiful dress than that worn by the bride. It was made of ivory satin, with full Court train of Brussels lace chiffon. The bridesmaids, looked remarkably pretty in lavender gowns trimmed with sable, and picture hats.

Lord Willoughby de Eresby used to be known as a dashing young fellow and fond of a frolic, but represented the Horncastle Divison of Lincolnshire in the House of Commons as a Conservative.

The title of Lord Ancaster has only existed in the family for about a quarter of a century, the father having succeeded to the title in 1898. The Dukedom of Ancaster came into existence in 1715. It became extinct in 1809 with the death of Brownlow de Eresby, to be revived again in 1892 when Baron Willoughby was so signally honored.

The present Earl of Ancaster is descended from Gilbert Heathcote, who was a Court jeweler and Lord Mayor of London in the reign of Queen Anne. The Ancaster estates formerly belonging to the Dukes of Ancaster, the Drummond estates, formerly belonging to the Earldom of Perth, and the Willoughby de Eresby have all come into the possession of the present Earl of Ancaster’s family through marriage within the last hundred years, and there is no Peer of the British realm whose properties, especially the Drummond estates, have been more frequently claimed by people hailing from America.

Among them have been a Mrs. Bond of New York, who claims to be the daughter of Frederick Burrell Drummond, who she alleges came to America in 1836 and married in New York. While the Peerage and works of reference make no mention of his death, and leave it to be supposed that he disappeared in the United States, it is a fact that if he had survived his mother, he would have inherited the Willoughby de Eresby Peerage as well as the Drummond estates in lieu of his sister Annabella, who married Sir Gilbert Heathcote, 1^st Lord Aveland, and grandfather of Lord Ancaster.

One of the other claimants has been the daughter of the late Earl of Perth. She resided for many years in Brooklyn. Lord Drummond died in St. Luke’s Hospital after having earned his living for a time in New York as ticket chopper on the elevated railroad and as a reporter of one of the leading metropolitan daily newspapers.

The Earl and Lady Ancaster reside, when in London, in Chesterfield Gardens, but their favorite residence is Drummond Castle, their Scotch estate, the whole of great architectural beauty. It is situated in a park of some 75,000 acres, richly wooded. The southeastern tower dates back to the time of Henry III.

Drummond Castle stands about three miles southwest of Creif, and the castle gates are reached through grand old avenues, which are stated to be without equal in the United Kingdom. The oldest part of the castle dates from 1491, when it was built by the 1^st Lord Drummond, a nobleman whose ancestors descended from the ancient Kings of Hungary; came to Scotland with Prince Edward Ætheling of England, when they fled from the latter country after the death of King Harold and the Battle of Hastings, in 1066.

The castle is still surrounded by the world famed Drummond Gardens, laid out by John, 2^nd Earl of Perth, in the middle of the 17^th century.

There are few abodes in the United Kingdom more replete with historic memories, for the House of Drummond furnished several women to the Scotch Royal House, including, Annabella, Queen of Scotland, the last known of all, being that of Margaret Drummond, mistress of King James IV.

It was rumored she was poisoned at Drummond Castle along with her two sisters, in order to enable her husband to marry Princess Margaret of England. Mary, Queen of Scots was a frequent visitor to Drummond Castle, and her son, King James I of England, likewise often stayed there, and the Jacobite Pretender slept there on the eve of the fateful Battle of Culloden.

Eloise Breese was the eldest daughter of William Lawrence Breese and Mary Louise Parsons. Several years after the death of her father, her mother married Henry Victor Higgins, an English solicitor. She was his second wife, his first being a daughter of the Earl of Winchelsea and Nottingham. The Higgins’ reside at present in London.

At the wedding of Eloise to the Earl, the stepfather gave the bride away. The bridesmaids were the Ladies Alice Willoughby and Dorothy Onslow, the then Gladys Fellowes and Miss Anne Breese, the latter having married Lord Alastair Innes-Ker in 1907.

The bride was also attended by four children, the Ladies Blanche and Diana Somerset, daughters of the Duke of Beaufort, and the Misses Moyra Goff and Peggie Cavendish.

The Countess is a keen angler and ranks high among the most expert women salmon fishers. She is an enthusiastic sportswoman and has taken great interest in yachting and automobiling. Prior to her marriage she was a flag member of the New York Yacht Club, as well as member of the Seawannaka Corinthian Yacht Club. She is handsome, of classic type, and very witty and cultivated.

Willoughby was a Conservative politician

In 1910 the old Earl died and she became Countess of Ancaster.

Eloise and the infant James

Her brother, William Lawrence Breese, who had become a naturalized British subject in 1914, joined the British army and died in France on 1915.

Eloise’s son James Heathcote Drummond Willoughby (1907-1983), my wife’s ninth cousin once removed, was the last holder of the earldom; on his death the title became extinct. His son and heir Timothy Gilbert had been s lost at sea in 1963.

James Heathcote Drummond Willoughby

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Eloise Lawrence Breese, Bachelorette

July 1, 2015 in Lawrence Family No Comments Tags: Eloise Lawrence Breese, Genealogy, Mrs. Grannis

There were two Eloise Breeses, an aunt and a niece, and they were conflated both by the newspapers and by researches on the internet. I think I have disentangled them.

Eloise Lawrence Breese (1857-1921), usually known as E. L. Breese, was the daughter of Josiah Salisbury Breese (1812-1865) and Augusta Eloise Lawrence (1828-1907). Eloise was the seventh cousin three times removed of my wife.

She had a 9 bedroom house, Nundao, in Tuxedo Park. This

summer cottage in Tuxedo Park faces Tuxedo Lake and is directly across from her brother James Lawrence Breese’s large Tudor Style home that fronted the lake. James was as engineer befriended Stanford White, yet his true passion was photography. It is believed James introduced Eloise to the Architectural firm of Mckim, Mead & White to design her summer cottage in 1889 and Mead and Taft constructed it. The 2 1/2 story cottage has an interesting combination of roof styles, including a Queen Anne Tower.

In Tuxedo Park her French car made on the news in June, 1904. Her chauffeur drove her and five friends around the countryside. They were driving up a hill when a boy, Joseph Mutzs, came over the hill on his bicycle and started making wide swerves. The driver tried to avoid him, but they collided and the boy was killed. The chauffeur took the body to the police. The police chief

told Miss Breese to leave at once, as the friends of the Italian boy might get excited when they heard of the accident and, in spite of the fact that it was the lad’s own fault, make some kind of demonstration. Miss Breese took the advice.

She was known as a bachelorette. She was the only female member of the New York Yacht Club. Her steam yacht, the Elsa, had a swan shaped prow, like the boat in Lohengrin, because Eloise was also a devotee of the opera. She sailed the Elsa to Newport to participate in the July 30, 1901 harbor fete in honor of the North Atlantic squadron. Admiral Higginson’s fleet was assembled in the harbor and a full day of activities—including a exhibition of the submarine torpedo boat Holland—was planned.

Her box was number 45 at the old Metropolitan Opera. Old Met

(I was there once, for a Go0d Friday performance of Parzifal (1966?) with James Ramsey. We had seats with les dieux (it has a ruder name); I could see some of the stage, and could also see the light bulb in the chalice when it was raised. But the music was great.)

Her town house was at 35 East Twenty-Second Street. There she had a long-standing conflict with a neighbor at No 33.

The unmarried Eloise-she preferred that the press referred to her as Miss E. L. Breese-inherited her mother’s unconventional Independence and was a true socialite that entertained lavishly, often arranging concerts in her Tuxedo Park ballroom. Her fashions of the time were also rather scandalous as she preferred off the shoulder evening gowns with plunging necklines, the french fashion was shocking to most Victorian minds.

Mrs. Elizabeth B. Grannis, a self-appointed combatant against sin. Mrs. Grannis was president of the Woman’s Social Purity League as well as president of the National League for the Protection of Purity. In December 1894 her search for sin would place her squarely in the social territory of Eloise Breese.

The Evening World reported on December 1, 1894 that Mrs. Grannis lately “has been engaged in seeing for herself just how wicked New York really is.” Having visited (escorted by her brother, Dr. Bartlett) “nearly all the dance and concert halls, theatres, joints, missions and dives in this city,” she turned her focus to the Metropolitan Opera and its wealthy patrons.

Mrs. Grannis took an Evening World reporter in tow and explained the Purity League’s plans to abolish the décolleté dress. “What we want to do is to call public attention to the evil, and by this means to shame people into dressing differently.” She admitted,when the reporter said that judging from the Metropolitan audience “Mrs. Grannis’s idea cannot be said to have borne much fruit,” that it would take time. She blamed the absence of social purity on two forces. “One reason is the décolleté dress; the other and greater is the round dance.”

Mrs. Grannis approved of “a modest square dance like the lanciers or the minuet,” but waltzing “and every other form of round dance is, per se, sinful.”

The equally strong-minded Eloise Breese disagreed. And the two women would make their differences known repeatedly. While the social reformer railed against the high fashion of the young socialite and her wealthy friends, Eloise frequently complained to authorities about “smells” coming from the Grannis home.

In 1902 Eloise L. Breese had had enough of her pious next-door neighbor and she purchased the Grannis house “with the understanding that it was to be pulled down,” said The Sun. But she had second thoughts and once the social reformer had moved out “the temple of social reform and universal peace has been turned into a boarding house,” reported the newspaper later.

The rooms where Mrs. Grannis had held meetings of other virtuous women and church leaders were now decorated by Eloise “in the highest form of boarding-house art with bows and arrows of primitive peoples and the heads of savages in war paint.”

But she wasn’t done yet.

In May 1903 Eloise sued Elizabeth Grannis for $249 saying that “when she moved out, [she] took with her a bathtub and the chandeliers.”

Mrs. Grannis appeared baffled and unruffled. “How silly,” she told reporters. “Think of going to court for just one little bathtub. It is my personal, individual tub. Of course I took it with me. I told them I was going to, but offered to sell it to them with the chandeliers.”

The reformer complained that the Breese family had always been a problem. “What a flibberty-gibberty commotion it is. I lived beside the Breeses eighteen years and never met them, but they were forever sending in to complain of smells they thought they smelled and to see if there wasn’t a fire or a leak or something in my house.”

The town house does not survive, but the carriage house that Eloise built exists in a glorified state.

150 East 22nd Street

She married late, in 1907 when she was fifty, to Adam Gorman Norrie, a widower.

Her nephew, William Lawrence Breese, had become a naturalized British subject and died in battle in 1915. She gave an ambulance in his memory.

She made an important bequest to the Metropolitan Museum:

Upon her death on January 28, 1921 she added significantly to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art by bequeathing two important paintings, one by Rousseau and another by Corot (his “The Wheelwright’s Yard on the Bank of the Seine”). Even more importantly, she left the museum the incomparable 17^th century Audenarde tapestries representing the history of the Sabines.

The Wheelwright’s Yard on the Bank of the Seine

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Mary Bowne Lawrence

June 24, 2015 in Lawrence Family No Comments Tags: Genealogy, Mary Bowne Lawrence

Mary Bowne Lawrence (left)

and Anna Louise Lawrence (right)

Mary Bowne Lawrence (1830-1898), the second cousin four times removed of my wife, married Henry Augustine Bogert (1827-1905). Mary was close to her sister Anna Louise (1834-1908).

On July 19, 1870 she wrote this letter to Anna:

Dear Anna,

God has taken my beautiful baby – Frank died this morning at 4 o’clock. He was sick only two nights and one day, commenced on Saturday night with a slight diarrhea which seemed checked Sunday morning, but returned Sunday afternoon…I thought the disease controlled, but his head became affected last night he suffered greatly with his head until death released him.

I need not tell you how great the shock, you have gone through the same trouble dear, and know that death never comes to us thus, in our children without bitter pain, even while we own God’s love and wisdom in all his doings.

I felt so safe about little Frank because he had so good a wet nurse. He had grown so beautiful and seemed so well I scarcely dreaded the summer, but this intense heat and teething were too much for him.

I feel that everything was done that could be, for Mrs. Pettit and Maggie and I watched him carefully, but God willed it, and just one year from the time of his last summer’s sickness, God took him to Himself.

I have four darlings now in Heaven. How blessed to know them safe. I do not think I am a very good manager with children, so God takes some of them to bring up for me and in Heaven they will be mine forever. I wondered how I should manage with three babies next winter. God has answered the doubt for me, tho not quite in the way I would have chosen.

It is so hard to look forward to bringing more children into the world only to see them die.

The other children are well, and I hope your little ones are too.

You sent me a little note of your safe arrival. Do, if you can, write me some particulars and why you staid at Worcester instead of Centre Harbor.

Dear Anna, life has many trials for all of us; let us not receive them in a bitter spirit, but as Christians walk humbly with God receiving all things from His hands, remembering that in another world we shall see clearly the reasons for much that now appears mysterious.

May God give you Grace, dear, to bear and forbear until this life shall merge into the better one above.

Your loving sister,

Mary

Frank (July 11, 1869 – July 19, 1870) was Mary’s ninth child.

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Fallen Pastors

June 24, 2015 in priesthood, Protestantism, sexual abuse No Comments Tags: Tullian Tchividjian

Rod Dreher asks about the failures of pastors, the most recent spectacular flameout being Billy Graham’s grandson, Tullian Tchividjian, the pastor of Coral Gables Presbyterian Church. Why?

In addition to fallen human nature, pastors have special vulnerabilities.

Some men are attracted to the priesthood or ministry because they are narcissists and enjoy being the center of attention. Narcissists do no care how they hurt other people. Such minister are attracted to megachurches and the media, and Americans in particular like narcissists, as the cult of celebrity demonstrates. Protestants, who center their attention on the preacher, are vulnerable to a cult of personality, perhaps more so than Catholics (except in regard to recent popes, some of whom have encouraged a cult of personality).

Ministers and priests, narcissists or not, often feel that other men regard them as feminized or effeminate. To prove their masculinity, they may engage in sexual conquests.

Even sincere, well-intentioned men are vulnerable to transference. Freud recognized this phenomenon, and psychiatrists are especially vulnerable to it. Ministers and priests are dealing with hurting, emotionally charged women. They can easily fall into, if not love, lust.

Transference has been described as unconscious feelings that are transposed onto another significant individual. In the strictest sense, this occurs only in therapy settings, but in a more general sense it occurs throughout life. The experience of transference might be thought of as a means used by the brain to make sense of current experience by seeing the past in the present and limiting the input of new information. Freud noticed the unusually and sometimes irrationally intense feelings that developed between patients and their analysts. He initially conceptualized the transference as the patient’s attempt to repress childhood experiences. Later he observed that feelings of love not only occurred in the past outside the therapy session, but also during the analysis itself toward the analyst.

Sexualized transference is any transference in which the patient’s fantasies about the analyst contain elements that are primarily reverential, romantic, intimate, sensual, or sexual. As early as 1915, Freud addressed this phenomenon in his paper, “Observation on Transference Love.” He described transference love as occurring when the patient openly announces love for the therapist.

At the time Freud wrote about “transference love,” the field of psychoanalysis was under attack by the public. Some of these attacks centered on reports of sexual experiences between analysts and their patients. Freud struggled with whether transference came from the real relationship between the patient and therapist or if it was entirely unreal (i.e., displaced feelings from other relationships).

Cautious pastors guard against this phenomenon. Billy Graham made it policy never to be alone with a woman. A married friend, who used to be a minister, taught at a Catholic seminary and warned his students never to touch a women during counseling, even to console her. Priests have to be alone with women in a confessional or counseling setting, and this is dangerous. He told them always to remember that the guardian angels of both priest and penitent wee in the room with them. The students laughed at him. See the newspapers for the results of their disregarding his advice.

Then there are the priests who go after adolescent boys.

Richard Sipe thinks that the priesthood attracts homosexuals who are immature and stuck in adolescence. Such priests may be older, but they are attracted to adolescent boys of their own emotional level.

The battle against spiritual entropy is endless.

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Green River, Utah, and the Fibonacci Numbers

June 23, 2015 in Southwest No Comments Tags: Andrew Rogers, Fibonacci Series, Green River Utah, Hervert Steiner

While I was hiking in Utah, I ate at the Tamarisk Restaurant in Green River. On the wall by the men’s room was an explanation of the Fibonacci series and a photograph of a sculpture. I was, to say the least, curious.

The Fibonacci Sequence is the series of numbers:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, …

The next number is found by adding up the two numbers before it.

The 2 is found by adding the two numbers before it (1+1)
Similarly, the 3 is found by adding the two numbers before it (1+2),
And the 5 is (2+3),
and so on!

Here is the sculpture:

And here is an explanation:

Here in Green River, Utah we had the world renowned Australian artist Andrew Roger put together a sculpture he calls the “Golden Ratio”. It is one of three in the world. It is a pyramid of blocks created according to the mathematical rule of the golden ratio. According to Wikipedia, “In mathematics and the arts, two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio of the sum of the quantities to the larger quantity is equal to the ratio of the larger quantity to the smaller one.”

Golden Ratio in Math

This ratio, is also known as the divine proportion, golden mean, or golden section, is a number often encountered when taking the ratios of distances in simple geometric figures such as the pentagon. The fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio are intimately interconnected. Both are found in nature, for instance, a slice through a Nautilus shell reveals golden spiral construction principle, the length of the bones in a human finger, the number of pedals of a flower, the seemingly random sequence of sunflower seed, or the way the pine cone spines spiral on a closed pine cone.

Why the golden ratio? The golden ratio and/or fibonacci sequence is used in art and architecture all the time. These mathematical rules have a subtle aesthetic that makes most nature, art and architecture pleasing to the eye, so much so that we can’t explain it but we like it.

The sculpture can be seen from the railroad, highway and from numerous places from in town. It is an impressive structure made up of 53 blocks of enormous size (which are also based on the this ratio), two of which are black and a gold leafed block to cap the top.

Why in Green River, which has seen better days?

For 89-year-old retired Seattle school teacher and railroad buff Herbert Steiner, part of his legacy will be for financing a piece of land art called “Ratio.”

“I did it for love,” Steiner said of financing the $145,292 sculpture that sits next to Interstate 70 in Green River. “I am a writer myself, but I am not Ernest Hemingway. I was able to find one of the greatest world-famous sculptors to build it there. It was a chance at immortality. It is going to be there until God knows when. No one will remember me, but this is something that I leave that will be immortal.”

Renowned Australian artist Andrew Rogers donated his skills to designing the sculpture, which is 44 feet high and 42 feet wide and topped by a golden square.

“The Ratio” is based on the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical concept of universal significance similar to the Golden Ratio of science and mathematics. This sequence is found in numerous patterns in nature and has been used by architects of the Parthenon, the Acropolis and Egyptian tombs.

Steiner cites his love for the Green River’s open spaces as another reason for financing the sculpture. He views “The Ratio” as a metaphor for the land around the town.

“I had a feeling of aloneness walking the land,” he said. “You could walk in four directions and there were no fences. Nobody was going to shoot you. It was unbelievable land. I love the land and that feeling of aloneness and solitude.”

Green River Mayor Pat Brady, who is also the math teacher at the town’s high school, uses the sculpture, which was assembled on a hill within sight of much of the town, to help teach mathematics to his students.

Steiner first rode an Amtrak train to the remote town of Thompson, east of Green River, 27 years ago when he was 62. Rogers is 62 and made his first trip to Utah to help with the sculpture’s installation.

Soon after taking that train trip to Thompson in the early 1980s, Steiner discovered that the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad had sold the line to Southern Pacific. That railroad’s land division was selling surplus property in Green River and Thompson at highly discounted rates.

“I bought all the land I could get, at $400 an acre,” said Steiner, who is now totally blind and lives in a Seattle apartment. “I got it cheap. The sculpture is on 100 acres that cost between $6,000 and $7,000.”

He sold some of the land to Utah State Parks for a golf course and another piece to Green River City for a sewage treatment plant. The only place where he lost money is a homestead co-op he put together in Thompson. He provided water, power and a road for 63 lots but failed to sell a single one.

One of the key players in getting the structure built was Salt Lake real estate lawyer Scott Jenkins, whom Steiner also called when looking for help with the land deals in the 1980s.

In Rogers, Steiner and Jenkins found a world-renowned artist who has conceived 350 sculptures and created the land art forms he calls “geoglyphs” in 13 countries over 13 years involving over 6,700 people. “The Ratio” is the latest of 48 large-scale stone structures Rogers has erected on all seven continents.

The structures, part of Rogers’ “Rhythms of Life” project, are found in deserts, fjords, gorges and national parks. He said these connected drawings on the surface of the earth refer to the physical building blocks of history and civilization.

“It is a group of structures in time that weave together our conduct and thoughts with the environment,” wrote the artist.

Rogers said Jenkins found him through his website and television documentaries. He took no compensation for the massive work because he feels his “Rhythms of Life” project gives him an opportunity to put out messages about values he feels are important.

He calls his works optimistic symbols of life and regeneration, of human striving and introspection. Robert Smithson, creator of the Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake, was one of Rogers’ inspirations.

The fact that the site is near ancient American Indian picture glyphs and also that Rogers owned a fossil collected near Green River, even though he had not visited Utah before, also held great appeal to him.

“Ratio” was built using white cement powder imported from Canada. According to Steiner, it consists of a solid foundation of black dyed concrete on which are assembled 53 concrete blocks, each weighing 4 1/2 tons. Each block is 39-by-39-by-68 inches and is stabilized by hidden tongue-and-groove construction with two-inch rebar through the centers of the blocks. The center column consists of 13 blocks reaching 42 feet high with a gold-leafed block capping the column.

As for Steiner, he said he would love to see the sculpture for himself but imagines it as something that deals with the remoteness of the land, generating feelings of aloneness and solitude.

The Southwest is full of mysteries, and the explanation for this one could be the start of a Tony Hillerman novel.

Here is the Fibonacci spiral, and some examples from nature:

God is a mathematician.

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Our Troubled Relations, the Churchills

June 23, 2015 in Jeromes-Churchills No Comments Tags: Arabella Churchill, Genealogy, Ian Haggis MacLeod, Nicholas Jake Brarto

The young Winston

My wife is related by marriage to Winston Churchill (first cousin once removed of the wife of the great-grandfather of my wife), through Jennny Jerome.

Jeanette Jerome (1854 – 1921)
mother of Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill

Leonard Walter Jerome (1817 – 1891)
father of Jeanette Jerome

Isaac Jerome (1786 – 1866)
father of Leonard Walter Jerome

Thomas Atwater Jerome (1810 – 1896)
son of Isaac Jerome

Gertrude Jerome (1853 – 1883)
daughter of Thomas Atwater Jerome

James Henry Alexandre (1848 – 1912)
husband of Gertrude Jerome

Mary Elizabeth Alexandre (1894 – 1970)
daughter of James Henry Alexandre

The Jeromes were extremely prolific, so my wife shares that distinction with several thousand other Americans.

I could say many things about Winston (especially about Operation Keelhaul), but here I would like to point point that being a member of a famous and aristocratic family is no guarantee of a sane or decent or happy life.

Winston’s son Randolph (1911-1968) married as his second wife Jane Osborne. Their daughter was Arabella Churchill (1949-2007), the first cousin, three times removed, of the wife of the great-grandfather of my wife.

Arabella Churchill

by Hag, bromide print, March 1976

Her life was not especially happy. Wikipedia summarizes:

She went to Fritham School for Girls, where she was Head Girl, and then Ladymede school, near Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. She worked at Lepra, the charity for leprosy sufferers, and then briefly at London Weekend Television.

In 1954 she had appeared on the cover of Life as part of a feature on possible future spouses of Prince Charles. In 1967 she was ‘Debutante of the Year,’ met the Kennedys and Martin Luther King in America, and was romantically linked with Crown Prince (now King) Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden in 1970. In 1971 she was invited to represent Britain at the Norfolk International Azalea Festival in Virginia, established in 1953 after NATO’s Allied command was established there. Each year a NATO country is honoured, and invited to send a beautiful “Azalea Queen” as its ambassador.

Churchill refused to go, indicating in a letter she believed in the goals of the peace movement, and was horrified by the Vietnam War. Chased through London by a surprised press, she left instead for rural Somerset, where she helped lead the first full-scale incarnation of the Glastonbury Festival with Andrew Kerr, Thomas Crimble, Michael Eavis and many others.

During the 1970s she embraced the alternative culture of the time, which included living for a time in a squat^\but later worked and lived on a farm. She granted a rare interview to Rolling Stone magazine. In 1979 Churchill and Kerr were again in charge of the festival, and from then on her administration continued alongside Eavis and Kerr, along with the founding and leading of the charity Children’s World and work as a fundraiser.

In 1972 she married Jim Barton, and in 1973 had a son, Nicholas Jake. In 1987 she met her second husband, a juggler, Haggis McLeod, and in 1988 they had a daughter, Jessica.

She embraced Tibetan Buddhism through the teachings of Sogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.^[4]

On Thursday 20 December 2007, Churchill died at St Edmund’s Cottages, Bove Town, Glastonbury, Somerset, aged 58. She had suffered a short illness due to pancreatic cancer, for which she had refused chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Arrangements following her death respected her Buddhist faith, and included a parade and simple farewell on the final evening of the Glastonbury Festival in June 2008. Festival organiser Michael Eavis, paying tribute to Churchill after her death, said “Her energy, vitality and great sense of morality and social responsibility have given her a place in our festival history second to none.”

James Barton was a schoolteacher. The son Jake has had a troubled life. The Daily Mail goes on about the family troubles:

Churchill it was worth everything to fly to Australia to be at her son Jake Barton’s wedding. It was the moment for which Sir Winston Churchill’s favourite grandchild had long been waiting — the day that Jake, 33, whom she had cheerfully hauled as a baby through squats and hippie communes, was finally settling down. Arabella remembers waving goodbye to him and “my beautiful new daughter-in-law” Kim as she and her husband drove away from the ocean-side resort of Byron Bay towards Brisbane airport.

“The thought of more air travel and jet lag appalled me, but we love Jake and Kim dearly, so Haggis (her second husband, a juggler) and I really felt we had to be at their wedding,” she wrote afterwards in a website diary. Perhaps the next piece of family news would be about a baby, her own first grandchild?

When important news came, though, it was anything but joyous. Jake’s beachside home had been raided by New South Wales police and he was in custody accused of running a £5 million drugs ring. Today, seven months after that happiest of wedding days, Jake is held in Sydney’s Parklea prison and Arabella Churchill’s brief dynastic contentment has turned to anguish. Next month, Sir Winston’s great-grandson goes on trial and faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

“There is nothing I can say about this,” says Arabella, 57, who, as a teenager, would sit and talk with her grandfather, holding the great wartime leader’s hand. “Nothing at all.”

Worst of all, for a woman who has devoted much of her life to helping thousands through her Children’s World charity (which provides entertainment for children from all backgrounds) is the certain knowledge that, in this grave moment of crisis, her own child is beyond her help.

Australian police allege that Jake Barton ran a major drugs syndicate. They say they seized 250,000 Ecstasy tablets and all the paraphernalia of a large-scale drug-producing operating, including 30lb of MDMA, the powder used to make Ecstasy tablets, and two pill presses. So large is the drugs ring police claim to have smashed that a shortage of Ecstasy supplies in Sydney has been noticed and prices have shot up. The problem of being a Churchill is that the name always attracts attention, but no one in Australia knew that Jake was a scion of that remarkable — and, at times, remarkably troubled — family. Jake kept his dynastic connections to himself.

Jake’s arrest is an unimaginable twist in a saga of disappointment that for decades has pursued the descendants of Britain’s most lionised leader. Ever in the shadow of Sir Winston, whatever they have done never seems to be enough for them to feel they live up to him.In particular, the great man’s son Randolph — Arabella’s father — was one of the most famously unpleasant figures in mid-20th century public life. A man of huge political ambition and enormous alcohol consumption, he stood six times for Parliament without success, each failure making him more generally unpleasant. When he had surgery for a benign tumour, Evelyn Waugh remarked that the surgeon had removed “the only part of Randolph that was not malignant”. Arabella’s half-brother, Winston, 66, did become an MP but was a politician of only modest achievement. If he did achieve any kind of status it was only, according to Soraya Khashoggi, former wife of billionaire Adnan, in bed. But on one occasion at least, being a Churchill certainly helped him out of a little difficulty. Soraya tells how once, during their five-year affair, they were driving along a freeway in America when she started to remove her clothes. She told him: “The faster you go, the more I’ll take off. “In no time at all, Winston was doing 100 miles an hour and I had nothing on — which was when we heard the police siren.” The punishment? Just a ticking off after the officer examined his driver’s licence and satisfied himself he really had stopped Winston Spencer Churchill.

It was the same Winston who created a furore in 1995 by selling the Chartwell Papers, his grandfather’s archive, to the nation for £12.5 million, paid for with National Lottery money. Some historians and many of his fellow MPs were outraged because they believed many of the documents should have been the property of the state.

As for Arabella, her early years — post-war years when her grandfather was the hero of the free world — were embellished with Churchillian glamour. In America, she met the Kennedys and Martin Luther King. Jackie Onassis, she recalled, took “an almost aunt-like interest” in her. On the eve of her wedding in 1972, she bumped into the former American First Lady at the hairdressers. As Arabella has recalled: “She said, ‘Darling, I’ve heard about the wedding. May I go to Tiffany and get you a little box or something?’ I said: ‘No, no, I have a wedding list at a shop called Kitchens’ — and she went and bought the rest of the stuff. “My brother Winston thought I’d gone mad, but I couldn’t think what I’d do with a silver box. I was more interested in having a bread board.”

The Churchill girl who had been Deb of the Year in 1967 and whose lunch date with the then Crown Prince (now King) Carl Gustav of Sweden excited the Swedish media to speculate on her as a future Queen, was marrying a bearded, Scots-born teacher, Jim Barton.Arabella had been under an intense media spotlight after declining to be the Azalea Queen at the annual celebration of one of her grandfather’s greatest monuments, Nato. She wrote a pithy letter to the organisers in Norfolk, Virginia, saying that a military organisation using force of arms to impose its view “alarmed and disillusioned” her. In her exasperation about the way the world was going, Arabella was eschewing the conventional gilded Churchillian path through life. She was determined to be herself. One day she just wasn’t around any more: she’d slipped away to join a group of hippies. At Glastonbury, as she and others were founding the music festival in which she is still involved, she met Barton, whose father was a headmaster in Bournemouth.

Enter Jake, born in 1973, not at Blenheim Palace, seat of the Dukes of Marlborough, where his illustrious great-grandfather was born, but on a sheep farm in Wales which Arabella and Jim were running. Barely a year later, Jim Barton had left and his mother was on her own. An extraordinary, not to say eccentric childhood followed, as Arabella, wracked by periods of depression so familiar among the Churchills, drank, took Valium and consulted a clinical psychologist. By the time Jake was three, his mother had moved into a squat in London’s Maida Vale. Ever the organiser, she set up a restaurant in the rooms downstairs, cooking “cheap, wholesome food for my friends”. Her friends? These were 200 other fellow-squatters in the run-down neighbourhood. When she learned that the then Greater London Council was evicting her and Jake from the squat, she burst into tears. “Oh Christ, I’m homeless again,” she sobbed. “What am I going to do now?”

For Jake it was a totally un-Churchillian start in life, but some normality arrived when Arabella’s mother June (Randolph’s second wife, who was to commit suicide at 58 while suffering from cancer) bought her a house in Kensington. Before long she had let the upper part of the house and was living downstairs with Jake, but spending increasing amounts of time among the hippies in and around Glastonbury. Eventually she moved to the town, sending Jake to St Dunstan’s mixed secondary school just behind Glastonbury High Street. He was “a bit of a character, a comedian, but with a wise air about him — the kids looked up to him,” recalls one of his contemporaries. “I didn’t know until afterwards that he was a member of the Churchill family.”

By now — again through the Glastonbury festival — Arabella had met her second husband, Ian ‘Haggis’ McLeod, a juggler of some renown and 14 years her junior. They have a daughter, Jessica, 17, who is also being educated locally.For Arabella Churchill, life continues to be rather bohemian, based round the New Age mecca of Glastonbury, in a somewhat dilapidated semi with beautiful views over the hills. But with Haggis and Jess, Gracie the dog and cats Rumple and Badger, her Children’s World charity and the Glastonbury festival in which she organises three big performance fields for children, life of late was “absolutely lovely” for Arabella.

But then came the news about Jake. “It was,” says a family friend, “the most disastrous news she has ever had. “She is speechless with despair. She doesn’t know what to think. Deaths in the family, for whatever reason, you come to expect. But not this, not Jake. He’s such a lovely boy, and he’s always worked hard for a living.” Jake, however, has always been a young man without a settled career. At 19, he teamed up with his father, Jim Barton, to form a film company. Three years later, having made no impression on the film world, the company was dissolved. He went to Australia and — encouraged long-distance by Arabella — did a fish-farming course at Launceston University in Tasmania. At the same time, by now in his late 20s, he took out Australian citizenship. After this he moved to Indonesia to work as a pearl farmer. Then he returned to Eastern Australia, surfed, sailed and met Kim.

And then, last June, the New South Wales Special Crimes Unit burst in. Jake is charged, together with his associate, New Zealand-born Rees Gerard Woodgate, 42, with supplying a commercial quantity of Ecstasy. The shock waves have reverberated through the widespread Churchill family whose talents through the generations have encompassed everything from soldiering to literature. The family has always had a melancholic side — Sir Winston called it his “black dog” — but is never short of instant, often dark humour.

“Well, we’ve done everything else — so what about drug dealing?” quipped one peripheral family figure yesterday, before adding hastily: “But I cannot believe that Jake has done these things. It must be a terrible mistake.”

The Australian court, however, on December 20, 2007, had a different opinion:

The great-grandson of Sir Winston Churchill has been sentenced to three years’ jail for being part of a multi-million dollar party drug syndicate.

Nicholas Jake Barton, 33, had pleaded guilty in the Downing Centre District Court in Sydney to knowingly taking part in supplying a commercial quantity of a prohibited drug.The judge said it was brought to his attention that Barton was a relative of Sir Winston Churchill.

“The fact that the offender descends from a hero of the 20th century does not affect the penalty I must impose,” Justice C.D. Charteris said. Barton, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and silver tie, did not not react when the sentence was read.

Justice Charteris said he had to take into account the deterrent value of the sentence to the offender and the community, but Barton’s early admission of guilt, added to the fact the Crown did not have a strong case, meant that he considered Barton to have good prospects for rehabilitation. Barton was arrested in June during police raids in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, following a three-month investigation.

About 250,000 tablets, 18kg of MDMA – the powder used to make the drug – and two industrial pill presses were confiscated by police. The tablets had a street value of $12.5 million and the powder was worth $2.5 million.

Barton admitted that he had sublet a property in South Coogee to a co-defendent, Reese Gerard Woodgate, 42, a New Zealander, who also pleaded guilty. Barton said he then found out Woodgate was involved in the “neferious business” of the manufacturer and distribution of drugs, according to the agreed facts, read out by Justice Charteris. “To my [eternal] regret I did not take any action to stop this,” Barton said in a statement read out by the judge. In the statement, Barton said he regretted bringing disgrace and shame upon his family because of the crime.

Barton was given a 20-month non-parole period in court today, and will be eligible for release next February as he has been in custody since June 2006. Judge Charteris said he was satisfied that Barton had shown remorse and the reason for the short non-parole period was that his mother – Arabella Spencer Churchill, granddaughter of Sir Winston and daughter of his son, Randolph – was terminally ill in the UK with pancreatic cancer and had a life expectancy of between four and five months.

She elected not to have chemotherapy and the judge hoped that Barton would have time to visit her after serving his sentence.

But that was not to be.

Arabella Churchill, charity worker, co-founder of the Glastonbury festival and granddaughter of Sir Winston, died of cancer early yesterday [20 December 2007] – the same day that her son was jailed in Australia for his part in a multi-million pound drug racket.

My son, who for some reason seems to have heard of this case, says that Jake was framed.

Arabella’s second husband fourteen years her junior) was colorful: Ian “Haggis” MacLeod.

Haggis and Charlie are a comedy juggling act formed in 1984 by Haggis McLeod and Charlie Dancey. They learned their skills together at the Walcot Village Hall juggling workshop in Bath, England. Their first performance was a busking show that took place on the waterfront of Bristol Docks. Haggis and Charlie performed regularly on the streets of Bath in their early years together. They have been seen almost every year at Glastonbury Festival and became something of a tradition at the Winchester Hat Fair.

They were also involved in a successful world record attempt on 26 June 1994 when 826 people, juggling at least three objects each, kept 2,478 objects in the air, at Glastonbury Festival.^[1]

For a brief time the duo became a trio, when Pippa Tee joined the act, which was renamed Haggis & Chips (short for Haggis & Charlie & Pippa).

Here he is in 2012 doing his routine in Hawaii.

Arabella and Haggis’s daughter Jennifer has managed to stay out of the news.

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William van Orsdel, a Young Casualty of War

June 12, 2015 in van Orsdels No Comments Tags: Civil War, William van Orsdel

William G. van Orsdel (1844-1864), the brother of Josiah and the son of Ralph Lashiel van Orsdel and Margaret Fitz Randolph (of the Randolphs of Virginia) was my wife’s first cousin, four time removed.

The historical records revive old sadnesses. Disease was a big killer in the Civil War; There was little attempt at sanitation, and farm boys had had little exposure to infectious diseases.

William G. Van Orsdel, who gallantly yielded up his young life for the sacred cause of American liberty. When the rebellion opened with its gigantic power, young Van Orsdel was only nineteen years of age, and therefore too young to be compelled to enter the service. But from the very opening of the struggle he was desirous to have a part in the defense of his country from the onslaught of her foes. He felt, as he often expressed himself, that it was the duty of every one to go, who could be spared from his family.

He volunteered and went with the Pennsylvania militia to Chambersburg. He then entered the service under General Sherman, and died after a brief illness, near Atlanta, Ga., on June 23, 1864, a little upwards of twenty years of age. He was a brave, heroic boy, and never flinched in the hour of danger, but was always on hand, ready for duty, whether that was life or death, it was all the same to him. Thus was this noble boy cut down in the bloom of his early manhood. Sad indeed was the parting scene when he took leave of “the loved ones at home,” and bade them “good-bye”—as it proved—for the last time on earth! But sadder yet, and more crushing the blow, was the announcement of his untimely death! But the stricken parents, though they deeply mourn the loss of their boy, have the blessed consolation that they gave him for the glorious cause of Liberty and that he died for his country and his God.

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Josiah Alexander van Orsdel, Judge and Strict Constructionist

June 12, 2015 in Genealogy, Uncategorized, van Orsdels No Comments Tags: Genealogy, Josiah van Orsdel, Lynching, Minimum Wage, New Deal, Polygraph, Wyoming

Josiah Alexander van Orsdel

Josiah Alexander van Orsdel (1860-1937), was, like my wife, descended from Cornelius van Orsdel, a Dutchman who as a child came to Virginia shortly after 1760. Cornelius fought for the Americans during the Revolutionary war and received a grant in Pennsylvania, where Josiah was born. Josiah is my wife’s first cousin, four times removed. He spelled his name with one l, unlike his descendants who usually used two l‘s. We gave one of children van Orsdell as his third name; it seemed a shame to have a Dutch name die out. Van Orsdel means “of the valley of the bear.”

Josiah was born in New Bedford, Pennsylvania and went to Westminster College. He followed the advice to Go West and moved Nebraska to where he ran a mill. He was a county and practicing attorney in Laramie, Wyoming beginning in 1892; he was elected to the Wyoming State House of Representatives in 1894, and was appointed State attorney general 1898-1905. He was US attorney in Wyoming 1906-1907, Because of his legal work and his work for the Republican party, Teddy Roosevelt appointed him to the US Court of Appeals, where he served until his death.

Wyoming Attorney General

Josiah was the Attorney General of Wyoming from 1898 to 1905 and then became U. S. Attorney there.

Women’s Suffrage

The Western states were the first to give women the right to vote. They did this to counterbalance the large numbers of disorderly, violent young men who were attracted by the frontier. Van Orsdel explained:

Wyoming has had female suffrage ever since 1868, when it was first given a territorial government. When it became a State, the right of the sex to the franchise was incorporated into the constitution. From the earliest period of equal suffrage, with us, women have voted with the same degree of intelligence that the men have displayed, and now that the experimental stage has long since passed, the universal verdict is that the principle is not only correct, but that in its practical operation it has been a great success.

One special good feature is that it makes all the parties put up men for office whose records and private character are clean. It cannot be out pf the question to nominate and elect a candidate who notoriously was of bad or profligate habits, for the women would go to the polls and vote solidly against him.

Van Ordel would have been disappointed by the support that women voters gave to J. F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton; he apparently had not noticed the attraction of some women to the exciting bad boy.

Lynch Law

Perhaps van Orsdel hoped that women voters would help lessen the tendency of men to take the law into their own violent hands.

Crime-control partisans in Wyoming particularly scorned the appellate process, arguing that the state supreme court commonly reversed convictions and granted new trials to murderers and stays of execution to those who had received death sentences. Following a spate of lynchings in 1902 and 1903, the attorney general, J. A. van Orsdel, agreed that the law should be amended to hasten the appeals process in death penalty cases but noted that this was the responsibility of the legislature, not the scapegoated judiciary. Reviewing the courts’ recent record, Van Orsel also pointed out that popular perceptions of reversals in homicide cases were erroneous:

“Juries and trial courts have not been lax in the performance of their duties. In other words, conviction of murderers has been the popular thing in Wyoming for some time past. There has been no disposition on the part of the Supreme Court to reverse any of these convictions. The Supreme Court of Wyoming has never reversed a capital case since statehood, and only one during the territorial period.”

But the courts indeed were reluctant to execute people.

The Territory and State of Wyoming executed ten men between 1869 and 1911, all on homicide convictions. Long dry spells on the gallows twice coincided with spasms of lynching for homicide. The gallows was inactive from 1875 through 1993; lynchers killed four men on homicide charges between 1979 and 1884. The gallows was also dormant from 1895 through 1902; mobbers assassinated four persons accused of murder in 1902 and 1903.

Jim Gorman fell in love with his sister-in-law Maggie. The offended brother Tom drove Jim away. Jim came back and put a hatchet in his brother’s head in April 1902. Maggie was also arrested on suspicion of helping to plan the murder. She claimed she had nothing to do with it; Jim claimed self-defense. Edward Enterline was his attorney.

The jury found Jim guilty of manslaughter, Jim Gorman requested a new trial. He was found guilty of murder in the first degree and was sentenced to death.

Joseph Walters had fallen in love with a widow. When she refused him he shot and killed her and shot himself, but he survived. He was tried for murder, found guilty, and sentenced to hang. Enterline represented him and appealed the verdict.

Enterline wrote Josiah van Orsdel, the attorney general, in July, 1902 about the case:

I am pleased to stipulate with you for further time. My client is not anxious to be hanged during this hot weather.

The Wyoming Supreme Court took up the case on April 14, 1903.

Jim Gorman and Joseph Walters cellmates in the Big Horn County Jail in Basin, Wyoming. Gorman had been scheduled to be hanged June 16, 1903. The citizens of the area were indignant that he was not hanged, and started muttering about Judge Lynch.

For their protection, Sheriff Fenton took Gorman and Walters to a canyon to escape the mob. Gorman bolted and escaped. But there was no cover, and he was captured. Gorman and Walters were back in the jail, and the citizens were in the bars.

The sheriff was in another town with a posse to arrest a criminal when he was confronted by a masked mob. He wired for the militia.

On July 20, 1903 the only officials at the Big Horn County jail were Earl Price, deputy sheriff, and George Mead, the jailer. The mob attacked the jail, shooting through the windows , wounding Mead and killing Price. They battered down the door of the jail, but could not get the cell door open to hang the two killers. They shot Gorman and Walters through the jail door, killing them. The Chief Justice on the Wyoming Supreme Court was in town that night for a Freemasonic meeting, and was asked to try to calm the mob. He decided it would not avail.

No one was ever convicted.

Court of Appeals

Because of his extensive legal work and his support of the Republican Party, Teddy Roosevelt appointed van Orsdel to the Court of Appeals.

Van Orsdel’s decisions on the Court of Appeals show that he was a strict constructionist of the Constitution, and did not favor one interest over another. He made some important and some amusing decisions.

The Lie Detector and Admissible Evidence

Josiah’s best known decision was in the case of Frye It is a complicated case because there is an inaccurate legal legend surrounding it. Jim Fisher separated myth from reality in his essay The Polygraph and the Frye Case.Here is an analysis of van Orsdel’s decision:

In what some consider a maddeningly terse two-page opinion, Associate Justice Van Orsdel showed his understanding of the theory behind the science. He abstracted that lying causes a rise in blood pressure, which corresponds to the mental struggle between fear and control of fear. Whereas truth flows without conflict, deception requires effort, manifest in a rise in systolic pressure distinguished from the normal fear of the test situation. Acknowledging the defense attorneys’ argument that expert testimony is required when the subject matter is beyond ordinary experience, the court took a different approach to experts’ use of such technology: Somewhere in this twilight zone [between experimental and demonstrable stages of discovery] the evidential force of the principle must be recognized, and while courts will go a long way in admitting expert testimony deduced from a well-recognized scientific principle or discovery, the thing from which the deduction is made must be sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance in the particular field in which it belongs [Ref. 14, p 1014]. Thus, the exclusion of Marston’s lie detector was affirmed. The court reasoned that, since the apparatus had not yet achieved standing, the testimony from which it was derived must be excluded.

Free Speech, Boycotts, and Picketing

The second important case concerned the AFL and Samuel Gompers. The union was in a dispute with Buck’s Stove and Range Stove Company. The AFL published the name of the company in its We Do Not Patronize column, thereby engaging in a boycott. The lower court held this was an illegal secondary boycott, and sentenced and fined Gompers and others for contempt of court, and gave an injunction against even mentioning the boycott or the injunction against it.

On November 2, 1909, the Court of Appeals partially upheld and partially modified the lower courts’ decisions.

Van Orsdel’s concurring decision focused on the question of free speech.

Again, we do not assume that it will be contended that a citizen has not perfect freedom to deal with whom he pleases, and withhold his patronage for any reason that he may deem proper, whether the reason be one originating in his own conscience, or through the advice of a neighbor, or through the reading of an article in the paper. Neither would it be unlawful for such citizen to advise another not to deal with a person with whom he has concluded –not to continue his patronage. If this advice may extend to one it may extend to a hundred; and the thing done will not be actionable so long as it is an expression of honest opinion and not slanderous, however much the intercourse between this citizen and his neighbor may operate to injure the person against whom the advice is directed.

No one doubts. I think, the right of the members of the American Federation of Labor to refuse to patronize employers whom it regards as unfair to labor. It may procure and keep a list of such employers not only for the use of its members, but as notice to their friends that the employers whose name appear therein are regarded as unfair.

I conceive it to be the privilege of one man, or a number of men, to individually conclude not to patronize a certain person or corporation. It is also the right of these men to agree together, and to advise others, not to extend patronage. That advice may be given by direct communication or through the medium of the press, so long as it is not in the nature of coercion or a threat.

As Samuel Gompers said, it was hard to see why van Orsdel ruled against the AFL members even in part. The Railway Clerk agreed with Gompers, but thought that progress had been made.

Another issue involving free speech was brought to the court when suffragettes were arrested for picketing the White House. The police arrested and jailed 20 picketers from the National Women’s Party who had unfurled banners demanding the vote for women.

The Justices, including van Orsdel, questioned the D.C. corporation counsel

whether he would arrest men for carrying a banner bearing some of “Billy” Sunday’s phrases.

Van Orsdel decided for the picketers and declared the arrests were illegal. This also established the right to peaceful picketing in labor disputes in the District of Columbia.

The Case of the Canadian Bride

Clyde Williamson, bookkeeper with Potomac Electric, who lived with his mother, wanted an annulment of his marriage with his wife Mabel. The lower court denied his request, and he appealed

The facts were:

The Williamsons became acquainted through a matrimonial agency paper, the advertisement being inserted by the young woman, a waitress in a Canadian hotel. A correspondence was conducted with ardor, 100 letters being exchanged between April and November 1906.

The engagement of the couple followed, and Williamson urged his bride-to-be to come to Washington from her home, a village in Canada. For the journey he sent her $21. She failed to appear at the appointed time, but wrote to Williamson, explaining that she had appropriated some of the money to “assist her sister in a runaway from her father’s house.”

Twenty dollars more was sent, and she made the journey to Washington. Within two hours after her arrival here they were married.

This was in April. The relationship soured. Williamson claimed that in a short time

He began to learn what Socrates enjoyed with Xantippe.

They separated by June. She then sued him for maintenance. He then asked for an annulment of the marriage on the grounds of fraud, because she had “represented herself as having a loving and congenial disposition.”

She claimed

I did not marry Clyde’s family. I married Clyde. My unfortunate temperamental qualities that so pained and shocked him after he had practically married me by mail are entirely based on my alleged mistreatment of his mother.

She didn’t want a divorce because her relations in Canada thought she was happily married, and she didn’t want to hear the “I told you so’s”

Van Orsdel denied the annulment and said:

It appears from his story that she does not possess that mild temperament which he expected to find in a helpmate selected from the bargain counter of a matrimonial bureau. However, it is well settled that mere misrepresentations as to social position, rank, fortune, manners, and disposition furnish no grounds for declaring a marriage contract void. Such misrepresentations are tolerated on the grounds of public policy. The law wisely requires that persons who act on representations of this character shall bear the consequences and I can find no reason for the abrupt termination on this romantic venture.

An Administrator of Oaths

Calvin Coolidge encouraged everyone to vote. Here we have a picture of Coolidge swearing to van Orsdel that his employment precludes his return to his home district to vote and that therefore he is voting by absentee ballot.

Streetcars

Josiah did not favor business interests over the ordinary citizen. A rider was injured when he fell of the platform of a streetcar as it turned a corner and he sued the company. The streetcar company argued that it had posted a sign warning not to stand on the platform. Josiah decided against the company on these grounds:

The street railway cannot deliberately permit and create a custom of hauling passengers on the platforms of the cars and escape liability for accidents.

Neither can they escape the obligation imposed by the custom by posting a notice warning passengers: It is dangerous to ride on the platform. The custom this established is equivalent to an invitation to passengers to occupy and ride upon the platforms, and the mere posting of such a notice will not relieve the company from liability.

It is the custom not only to permit passengers to ride upon the platforms but to permit cars to be so crowded as to compel passengers to ride there.

It also sounds like it was written by someone who rode the Washington, D. C. streetcars.

Minimum Wage

The Children’s Hospital of the District of Columbia vs. Jesse Adkins et al.

Congress passed a law that women must be paid a minimum wage on the grounds that a sufficient salary would protect them from temptations to immorality. The Hospital maintained that it could not afford to pay the wage, and that Congress had no authority to set wages. The Court of Appeals upheld the law, but Josiah dissented on two grounds:

One: if women were equal to men (and he was a firm supporter of the vote for women) why were they singled out for protection?

Two: A minimum wage interferes with freedom of contract; if the government can establish a minimum wage, it can establish a maximum wage.

No greater calamity could befall the wage earners of the country than to have the legislative power to fix wages upheld. Take from the citizen the right to freely contract and sell his labor for the highest wage which his individual skill and efficiency will command, and the laborer would be reduced to an automaton – a mere creature of the state.

It will logically, if persisted in, end in social disorder and revolution.

Welfare Act of 1935

The Welfare Act of 1935 provided for the resettlement of people in new towns, such as Greenbelt. Franklin Township, where one of the new towns was to be located, sued to stop the construction. The case was FRANKLIN TP. IN SOMERSET COUNTY, N.J., et al. v. TUGWELL, Administrator Resettlement Administration, et al.

Van Orsdel ruled against the government on these rounds:

The Act was an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power.
It is axiomatic in constitutional law that Congress cannot delegate the law-making power with which it is vested by the Constitution.
The Constitution did not grant the federal government power over housing.

The Constitution will likewise be scanned in vain for a power conferred upon the federal government to regulate “housing” or to “resettle” population. Those words are not explicit there, nor do we think they are implicit in any power which that instrument confers on Congress; and, unless the power exists, any effort by Congress to assert it at once transcends the scope and limitations of section 8 of article 1 and violates the Tenth Amendment.

The Social Life of the van Orsdels

Josiah married Kate Barnum (1868-1951) of Beatrice, Nebraska, on July 28, 1891, in Blue Springs, Nebraska.

314 East 21st St, Cheyenne

In the spring of 1899 Josiah bought the house at 314 East 21^st Street, Cheyenne, Wyoming, and lived there until 1906.

The Norwood, 1868 Columbia Road NW

When Josiah moved to Washington he took an apartment at 1868 Columbia Rd NW, in Adams Morgan.

1854 Wyoming Ave., Washington, D.C.

In 1912 he moved to this house on Wyoming Ave, with eighteen rooms and four baths.

1306 Washington St, Beatrice

The van Orsdels kept a house in Beatrice, Nebraska, and returned to it most summers.

The Ball Player

May 21, 1910 was a quiet day in court. The Washington Bar Association et al. boarded a ship and went on a picnic.

Following breakfast, which was served immediately upon landing, the legal lights engaged in athletic games. There was the usual ball game, and it lasted the usual length of time, some five or six innings, which required one hour and thirty minutes to play. Sides were chosen from the ‘fat’ and ‘lean’ members of the fraternity, and when the game came to a halt to allow the party to partake of the feast of shad the figures rested 14 to 13 in favor of the lean aggregation.

It was some game. The figures multiplied rapidly, and the day was so warm that new faces appeared on both teams every inning. There was one who stuck it out, though. He was the unfortunate umpire. James A. Toomey essayed the role of arbitrator, and got away with it. One of the features of this interesting contest was a home run by Justice Van Orsdel and at a time when the bases were crowded to capacity. It was the hit that broke up the game.

SAR, DAR, CAR

Josiah was active in the Sons of the American Revolution: President of the D.C. Society from 1924 to 1925, National Vice President General from 1925 to 1927, and President General from 1930 to 1931 and again from 1931 to 1932, filling the vacancy caused by the death of his successor.

In 1935 he explained his view of the Constitution to the SAR:

The primary object of government in this country was not to govern the citizen, but to protect him from arbitrary power, and above all to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

His wife Kate was active in the Children of the American Revolution.

Mrs. Josiah van Orsdel

Kate With a child of the American Revolution

Kate with the Coolidges

Josiah died on August 7, 1937 at his niece’s home, The Cabin in the Pines, in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; Roosevelt filled the vacancy with a judge more sympathetic to the New Deal.

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Dr. Markoe and the Terrorists of the Early Twentieth Century

June 6, 2015 in Schieffelins No Comments Tags: Dr. Markoe, Eric Muenter, Genealogy, J. P. Morgan, terrorism, Thomas Simpkins

William Jay Schieffelin Jr. married Annette Markoe (1897-1997). She was the daughter of Dr. James Wright Markoe, the personal physician and friend of J. P. Morgan. Morgan and Markoe were both members of St. George’s Church, where William Jay Schieffelin was a vestryman, As a project closely associated with the church. Morgan gave money to found the Lying-in Hospital, Markoe’s project (his specialty was obstetrics). Morgan, who died in 1913, left Markoe an annuity of $25,000 a years ($600,000 in 2015 dollars)

James Wright Markoe

Dr. James Wright Markoe (1862-1920), William Jay Schieffelin Jr.’s father in law, was involved in two events that show that the troubles we are now experiencing with terrorists (then German, now Islamicists) and mass murderers are not unprecedented. Nor have the legal and political issues involved in those earlier cases ever been satisfactorily resolved.

The Pacifist Terrorist

In 1915 Dr. Markoe was summoned to the house of J. P. Morgan, Jr., who had been wounded by an assailant. It was the culmination of a one-man (as far as we know) terrorist campaign.

Eric Muenter at Harvard

Eric Muenter (1875-1915) had moved with his family from Lower Saxony to Chicago when he was 18. He got his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1899 and taught at a private school. He married Leone Krembs in He went to Harvard to work on his Ph.D and taught German at Radcliffe. In 1906 while his wife was pregnant with their second child, he slowly poisoned her with arsenic. She was a Christian Scientist and did not summon a doctor, a although she felt unwell She died ten days after giving birth, He suddenly departed from Cambridge, taking his two children and his wife’s casket which he would cremate. But the police were suspicious and had kept some tissue from the autopsy, which revealed arsenic poising. They put out a notice for his arrest, but he had vanished.

Mrs. Muenter

He had deposited the two children with relatives in Chicago and seems to have gone to Mexico There he shaved his beard and took a new name, Frank Holt. He spoke English with a German accent, but claimed to have been born in the German-speaking area of Texas. He moved to Fort Worth and studies for B.A. at Polytechnic (now Texas Wesleyan). He impressed everyone with his brilliance and married Leone Sensabaugh, who graduated the same year he did, 1909. Her father was the socially-prominent minister of the Fifth Street Methodist Church.

Frank Holt – Eric Muenter as Polytechnic Graduate

In 1910 he was an instructor at the University of Oklahoma. Then he moved to Vanderbilt University in 1911-12, then Henry & Emory College, and then to Cornell. One of his colleagues from Harvard spotted him at a conference and informed the head of the department at Cornell that Frank Holt was really Erich Muenter, but no one informed the police. Muenter-Holt accepted a position in Dallas and his wife moved there to set up house.

After the war began in August 1914, Muenter-Holt brooded over the mounting casualty lists. He decided the need to do something dramatic to get the attention of the United States and force it to realize the folly and horror of war. He went to New York and rented a house under the name of Patton, There he assembled a bomb factory, buying 150 lbs. of dynamite under the name of Hendricks.

On July 2, 1915, he took a train to Washington and entered the Capitol building. Security was non-existent. He wanted to place a bomb in the Senate Chamber but it was locked. He placed the bomb in the ante-room and timed it to go off at 11:23 p.m. to avoid causalities. He went to Union Station and waited for the midnight rain to New York. He heard the bomb go off.

Senate Antechamber

He wrote, under the name of Pearce, to the Washington papers:

We stand for PEACE AND GOOD WILL to all men, and yet, while our European brethren are madly setting out to kill one another we edge em on and furnish them more effective means of murder. Is it right? We get rich by exportation of explosives, but ought we to enrich ourselves when it means the untold suffering and death of millions of our brethren and their widows and orphans?

By the way, don’t put this on the Germans or on Bryan. I am an old-fashioned American with a conscience, if it is not a sin to have a conscience). We are within the international law when we make this blood money but are we also within the moral law, the law of Peace, or of Love, or of Christ, or whatever else a Christian nation may call it? Are we within reason? Our children have to live after us. Europe helped and encouraged the Balkans in their bestial ware, and she reaped the whirlwinds. Can’t we learn wisdom? Is it right to supply an insane asylum with explosives? Or give them to children? We even prevent our own children to kill and maim themselves at the rate of 200 dead and 5,000 maimed on the glorious Fourth. How much more should we not hesitate to furnish strangers, and they mad? Will our explosives not become boomerangs? If we are willing to disregard our ideals for a dollar, will they hesitate some day when they get a chance? A prostitute sells out for a dollar. Fi! Columbia too?

Wilson said in his Decoration Day speech that the war developed national spirit. Good! Now let peace make for national spirit. Let all real Americans say: “We will not be a party to this wholesale murder!” Would that not be national spirit? Better than one based on the murder of our fellow-man.

“I, too, have had to use explosives (for the last time I trust). It is the export kind, and ought to make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for war and blood money. This explosion is the exclamation point to my appeal for peace.”

He had written letters to the newspaper denouncing J. P. Morgan, Jr.’s financing of the Allies in the war.

J. P. Morgan, Jr.

Muenter took the early train to Glen Cove, Long Island on July 4, 2015. J. P. Morgan, Jr., and his family were having breakfast with the British ambassador. J P Mprgan estate

Matinecock Point

Presenting his business card to the butler, he asked to be directed to Morgan. The butler refused but upon being confronted with two pistols pulled from Holt’s pockets deceived him by leading him to the distant library. Morgan and his family were, in fact, breakfasting at the other end of the mansion with the British ambassador. Soon realizing he had been deceived Holt began a search, with the butler at gunpoint, room to room. Upon their approach to the dining area, the butler shouted out a warning and the family scrambled for cover.

Muenter, realizing that the he had been fooled by the butler, had started back to the main staircase. Along the way, he heard voices from a small side room. He entered to find Morgan’s younger children at play. He pointed a pistol at them. “Where is Mr. Morgan?” he asked. The children didn’t answer. Muenter demanded they follow him. Finding the main hallway deserted, he started up the main staircase, the children following a few steps behind. As Muenter reached the second floor landing, a loaded revolver in each hand, he yelled out “Now, Mr. Morgan, I have you!” Seeing the pistols, Mrs. Morgan heroically tried to place herself between Muenter and her husband. Morgan pushed her aside, and lunged at Muenter. Muenter fired two rounds into Morgan before he was smashed to the ground by the 220-lb bulk of the millionaire. He pulled the trigger two more times, but the gun misfired both times. Morgan landed with the weight of his body squarely on Muenter They struggled for a moment until Morgan twisted the revolver from Muenter’s hand. Morgan had landed in such a way that he had accidently pinned Muenter’s left hand, holding the second revolver, to the floor in such a way that Muenter was unable to fire it. Morgan’s wife, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice and Miss McCabe pried the second revolver from Muenter’s grasp.

After taking away his guns and tying him up for the police, another servant noticed the dynamite sticking out of Holt’s pocket. The dynamite was immediately placed in a pail of water. “

Dr. Markoe and the police were summoned. Morgan survived. But Muenter did not live long.

Muenter explained his plan to the police:

I have a well-trained mind and I studied for a long time as to what would be the proper course for me to pursue before I decided to take the matter up with Mr. Morgan personally… I wanted to go to every manufacturer personally, and persuade him to stop this traffic. It was physically impossible for me to do this, but Mr. Morgan, with his great influence could do what was impossible for me, and so I decided to apply to him.” He explained that it had been his intention to take Morgan’s wife and children hostage. Muenter intended to seal them into a room while he forced Morgan to do his bidding to stop munitions shipments to Europe. He had planned to cut a small hole with his pocketknife in the doorway of the room he placed the Morgan family in, through which he intended to pass food during what even he perceived would have been a lengthy siege.

Muenter was questioned by the police:

MacDonald next asked Muenter whether or not he thought he had a legal right to take action against Morgan. Muenter responded that it had “…nothing to do with legal right. My dear sir, this is war, you are mistaken.” “But we are not at war.” “You are wrong. We are at war. We are actually at war, we are killing thousands of people every day.” “But we haven’t declared war,” MacDonald reminded him. “Yes, we are doing it underhandedly,” Muenter replied. “Do you think that you, single-handed, could arrest the whole trend of an age?” “No, but Mr. Morgan could.”

Muenter with his guns and dynamite

Police quickly suspected that Holt and Muenter were the same person.

Muenter’s wife received a letter from her husband. Among other things he wrote

Second: The steamer leaving New York for Liverpool on July 3 should sink, God willing, on 7th; I think it is the Philadelphia or the Saxonia, but am not quite sure, as according to schedule these two left on 3d.

England-bound ships were radioed; In July 7, the Minnehaha, a Morgan-owned ship transporting explosives, had an explosion and caught fire.

S. S. Minnehaha

Muenter, realizing that his plan had failed, tried to commit suicide by opening an artery with the metal band around a pencil eraser. He was stopped and was put on suicide watch. A guard was stationed outside the open door so he could rush in and stop any suicide attempt. The guard heard another noise and left for a moment to investigate. Muenter rushed out the open door, climbed up some bars, and dove head first onto a concrete floor twenty feet below, killing himself instantly.

He had left a suicide note for his wife

To my dears: I must write once more. The more I think about it, the more I see the uselessness of living under circumstances such as these. Bring up the dear babies in the love of God and man. God bless you, my sweet. Affectionately, -Frank PS — All please pardon me for all the heartaches I have brought you. Pray with me that the slaughter will stop. My heart breaks. Good-bye.

(Many thanks to David Russell, The Day Morgan was Shot.)

________________________________________________

The Homicidal Lunatic

This was not to Dr. Markoe’s last brush with the mentally erratic.

Thomas Simpkin, a London-born printer, had left England and moved to Canada. He enlisted in the Canadian Army in 1914, but soon deserted and joined his wife in the United States. He became increasingly erratic and was hospitalized. He escaped and made his way home to Duluth. He was institutionalized again and escaped again.

He drifted down to Virginia, took a job under his wife’s maiden name, and felt one of his spells coming on in Williamsburg, Va. He had himself voluntarily hospitalized, and was classified as harmless. He escaped and went to New York.

William Jay Schieffelin, Jr. and his wife Annette were on the West Coast.

St. George’s Church

On April 19, 1920, his father- and mother-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. (Annette) Markoe, arrived at St. George’s for the 11 A.M. Sunday morning service. Mrs. Markoe went up into the gallery, while Dr. Markoe stayed on the ground floor. The famous Armenian tenor was singing at the service

Simpkin liked to go to church services. He heard the sound of the bells at St. George’s and entered the doors. An usher directed the shabbily dressed man to a pew.

Rev. Karl Reiland

The rector, Dr. Karl Reiland, chose to preach on Ephesians iv, 18:

Ignorance of God through a darkened understanding and blindness of heart

The rector dwelt particularly upon the necessity of church members extending good fellowship of the real, warm-hearted sort to newcomers; to strangers who seemed to be friendless. He asked his members to go out of their way to be hospitable to men and women of lonely hearts or distressed minds. He reminded them that such approaches might mean the difference between discouragement and fresh hope. He said that there was nothing more important in the practice of the Christian religion than the proffer to poor or rich or warm-hearted churchly hospitality.

The organist and choir began the offertory anthem. The Armenian tenor, George Bagdasarian, began the anthem Seek ye the Lord.

George Bagdasarian

The usual usher was away, so Dr. Markoe assisted Herbert Satterrlee, J. P. Morgan’s brother in law, and passed the plate. As he arrived at Simpkin’s pew, Simpkin took a revolver out of his pocket and shot Markoe in the head over the left eye.

The rector, Dr. Reiland, recounted:

Suddenly I heard a shot. I thought maybe it was an automobile at first. Then I thought it might be some Bolshevik who had come into the church to get somebody. There was a second shot, bang, like that, and then I heard the collection plate fall. It made a noise like crashing glass. The third shot I thought was a bomb.

Simpkin in lower right corner

Simpkin was running out of the church and shot at the sexton who was blocking his way.

I jumped up and looked down the aisle and saw the door open and a man run out. Then I realized that someone had been shot. Safford, the organist, stopped playing for an instant. I motioned him to continue and the little boys and girls in the choir to keep on singing. I ordered my four assistants to remain behind and continue the service. Bagdasarian was a trump. He kept right on singing.

Then I threw my Bible into the pulpit and leaped the chancel rail and started down the center aisle after the man.

I shouted to several ushers ta the head of the aisle “Get that man!” They told me several men were after him.

Simpkin ran toward the Stuyvesant Square Park. Several young men saw him coming with the others in pursuit and blocked his way. Simpkin turned to face his pursuers.

Dr. George Brewer, a medical officer in Would War I and a friend of Markoe’s, grappled Simpkin and pinned his gun arm to his side. Simpkin fired it, giving Brewer a flesh wound in the leg. Simpkin was subdued and taken to jail.

George Earl Warren was seated two pews back of Simpkin’s. He jumped into the aisle and caught Markoe before he touched the floor. As they carried Markoe out, he whispered, “I’ll be all right.” But when they arrived at the emergency room of the Lying-In Hospital, he was dead.

At the funeral in St. George’s there was a heavy police presence; no one was allowed near the church without a card of invitation. J. P. Morgan, Jr. attended.

Simpkin claimed he had come to America to kill J. P. Morgan, Sr., but then learned that he was already dead. He had no idea who Markoe was. Simpkin was also a Spiritualist and said that the spirits often spoke to him and they told him to shoot Markoe.

Simpkin was committed and died in the asylum at Matteawan four years later.

Alienists,a s psychiatrists weer the called, pointed out the problems the legal system created in dealing with the insane before they committed a serious crime.

At that time if a person was declared insane in one state, he was not automatically considered insane in other states. If he escaped to another state, the process had to begin all over again.

A Dr. Brill

said there are many persons of the same type as Simpkin at large, as they can readily conceal their dementia.

“The trouble is that we cannot keep them in the asylum always,” said Dr. Brill, “because relatives and friends who visit the place talk to the victims superficially and imagine them to be entirely cured. The take the case to the courts, and the jury, not knowing any better, orders the person to be released.

A Dr. Heyman said that

“men if the paranoiac type usually are adroit and plausible until they commit some overt act, and then, for perhaps the first time, their insanity is made known to the lay mind.”

_________________________________________________

A few months later, Morgan was again targeted.

The Wall Street bombing occurred at 12:01 pm on September 16, 1920, in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. The blast killed 30 people immediately, and another eight died later of wounds sustained in the blast. There were 143 seriously injured, and the total number of injured was in the hundreds. The bombing was never solved, although investigators and historians believe the Wall Street bombing was carried out by Galleanists (Italian anarchists), a group responsible for a series of bombings the previous year. The attack was related to postwar social unrest, labor struggles and anti-capitalist agitation in the United States.

The New York assistant district attorney noted that the timing, location, and method of delivery all pointed to Wall Street and J.P. Morgan as the targets of the bomb, suggesting in turn that it was planted by radical opponents of capitalism such as Bolsheviks, anarchists, communists, or militant socialists.

Men were knocked off their feet, including a young stockbroker named Joseph P. Kennedy. There was carnage. A woman’s head was discovered stuck to the concrete wall of a building, with a hat still on it. The head of the horse was found not far from the blast, but its hooves turned up blocks away in every direction. Morgan himself was on vacation across the Atlantic, but his son Junius was injured, and Morgan’s chief clerk, Thomas Joyce, was killed.

Our current problems with terrorism had their precedent in the early twentieth century. The United States had a large immigrant population. An element of the German population was more loyal to the Kaiser than to the United States, The Irish hated the English. Italians had an anarchist element. Russian Jews had a Bolshevik element.

Today the only immigrant population that harbors disloyal elements is the Moslem (perhaps 2% of the population) and only a miniscule fraction of them are disloyal.

The problem of the mentally ill remains with us. It is even harder today than it was then to commit someone involuntarily. Paranoid schizophrenics can be intelligent and conceal their illness. Often an erratic person will give only moderate signs before engaging in mass murder. It is harder to buy dynamite, but it is easy for a mentally ill person to get a gun, or a whole arsenal.

As to Muenter: he gave no clue as to why he murdered his first wife, and his plan to have Morgan end the war was deeply irrational. But how rational were the government officials and generals and financiers who kept the slaughter going year after year?

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The Annals of Newberry XVI

June 4, 2015 in Newberry, Quakers No Comments Tags: Newberry, Quakers, Zachary Dicks

David Jones of Ohio commented on Justice’s O’Neall’s description of the prophecy that causes the Quakers to move from South Carolina to Ohio. Jones that said of Zachary Dicks

During the year 1803 the minister made a visit to Wrighstboro monthly meeting in Georgia, and integral part of Bush River quarterly meeting. He there told the Friends of a terrific internecine war not far in the future, during which may men like those in the Apocalypse would flee to the mountains and call om those mountains to hide them. With reference to the time of fulfillment, he said that the child was then born that would see it, intimating the time, not as immediate, but not as far off. He also advised them to leave there, which they did. Forty-eight years after came the predicted war.

Friend Dicks must have been at this time rather elderly, for I am informed that not long before the Revolution he had been at Guilford, North Carolina, and foretold that war. Pointing to the walls of the meeting house he said that the floors and walls would be stained with human blood. This was literally fulfilled, for, after the bloody battle of Guilford, the Friends carried the wounded soldiers, both British and American, into the house and performed for them the part of the good Samaritan; the stains of whose blood, though faded, were on its walls many years afterwards.

To those who are skeptical as to Z. Dicks’ prophetical attainments, I will only say that he was at least a “good guesser.”

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William Jay Schieffelin, Jr. Carrier of Tradition

June 3, 2015 in Schieffelin No Comments Tags: Genealogy, William Jay Schieffelin Jr.

William Jay Schieffelin Jr. (1891-1985) was the son of William Jay Schieffelin (1866-1955) and Maria Louisa Vanderbilt Shephard (1870-1948). He was therefore my wife’s fifth cousin once removed.

He married Annette Markoe (1897-1997) on May 4, 1918 (when he was on active duty) and had two children, Ann Louise and William Jay. He followed in his father’s footsteps.

Mr. Schieffelin went to Miss Chapin’s, the Bovee School and the Groton School and graduated from Yale in 1914. At Yale, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi and stroked the junior class crew.

From 1914 to 1916, he served as a trooper in Squadron A of the New York Cavalry. He later served as a first lieutenant in the 12th New York Infantry on the Mexican border and as a captain in the 12th Field Artillery with the American Expeditionary Force in France.

He was always known as Captain and treasured his military heritage. He was the great great nephew of Col. William Jay.

Here he stands at the grave of Old Fred (d. 1883), the horse who carried Col. Jay at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg.

“I used to look at this grave 80 years ago…I’d ride over here with my papa…We’d spend the night with Colonel Jay.

He joined the company in 1914, was president from 1922 to 1952, chairman from 1952 to 1962 and honorary chairman from 1962 until his death.

Mr. Schieffelin served as president of the National Wholesale Druggists’ Association, chairman of the Yale Alumni Fund and a member of the executive committee of St. Luke’s Hospital. He was chairman of the tax committee of the New York Chamber of Commerce, a director of the Y.M.C.A. of New York City and a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was a founding member and vice president of the National Association of Beverage Importers.

William Jay Schieffelin Sr or Jr

He died May 1, 1985 and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

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Will the Last Woman Leaving Please Extinguish the Sanctuary Lamp?

June 2, 2015 in Men in church No Comments Tags: women's departure from church

A 2009 survey showed the usual difference between men and women in matters of religion.

But the gap seems to be lessening- not that men are becoming more religious, but that women, especially young women, are becoming less.

According to the Washington Post

Over the last four decades, the number of 12th-grade girls who reported never attending church has surged 125 percent. The increase among their male peers was 83 percent. In the late 1970s, 12th-grade boys were 50 percent more likely than girls to say they never go to church, Twenge said. By 2010, that difference had dwindled to 22 percent.

Boys graduating high school in the late 1970s were twice as likely than their female classmates to assert religion was not an important aspect of their lives, according to Twenge’s calculations. By 2010, they were only 39 percent more likely than girls to express disinterest.

Similar trends are visible in Germany and other countries.

From my new book:

Christof Wolf has analyzed the difference between German men and women in terms of religious observance, age, cohort, and population of place of residence. In older cohorts, the differences between men and women are substantial as the members of that cohort age. But in the youngest cohort, the difference between male and female observance disappears in the cities. As a result “the pews, which the women leave behind empty in the Church, are not filled by men. The defeminization of the church is not a ‘re-masculinization.’ It is much more a general detachment from the Church.” In Italy too the historical gap between the sexes is closing. Sandro Magister notes the decline in church attendance among young Italians: “The collapse is so clear that it also wipes out the differences in religious practice between men and women – the latter of whom tend much more to be practicing – typical of previous generations. Among the youngest, very few of the women go to church, on a par with the men.” As attendance at mass approaches zero, the male and female rates are converging.

I suspect the same dynamics are driving the departure of women as drove the departure of men.

Jean Twenge theorizes:

if religion is perceived as a dominating force that restricts freedom and enforces social rules, this will be linked with a decline in religious involvement.

Men left because churches told them to behave and be more like women. This meant giving up male hobbies like homicide and gang rape, but also, in many cases, dancing, sports, fireworks, whistling, etc.

Women, as they move into formerly male-dominated milieus, pick up masculine attitudes, and do not want to be “like women,” that is, stereotypically feminine, any more than men do.

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