The Virtual Dime Museum

The Bedford Black Sheep

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:11:00 +0000

This post is essentially a précis of a few future posts about a Hicks cousin - yes, another one. His story involves a notorious Brooklyn gang, the New York vaudeville and burlesque scene in the 1910s, and some side trips to upstate New York and Omaha, Nebraska, too.

Garrett Wilson was my grandmother Grace Hicks' second cousin. The picture of him here is a detail from a photograph showing Garry with Grace and her siblings and their goat cart, taken in 1896. Garry was 14 at the time; my grandmother was 7. Garrett was born in 1882, the son of Franklin P. and Hannah (Van Duyne) Wilson. He was named for his grandfather Garrett Van Duyne, who died in 1858 at the age of 31 (my great grandfather, Charles Garrett Hicks, was named for him, too).

Hannah (Van Duyne) Wilson died when Garrett was only 3, in 1885. His father married again in 1889, to Isabelle Tichenor, and had another son, Franklin P. Wilson, junior, born about 1892. Garrett lived with his Van Duyne grandmother from about 1892 to 1900; I'm not sure if he was sent away because of family problems, but I suspect that.

In the summer of 1902, when he was first arrested, he was 20 years old. He was a natty young man "wearing clothing of expensive material, cut in the latest fashion, and having the appearance of being very well connected." He was charged with check fraud and tip selling at the Brighton Beach racetrack. But that was only part of what he had been up to. His step-grandmother explained to a persistent Brooklyn Eagle reporter that Garrett had told them that he was part of a group of disaffected young middle-class men known as the Bedford Gang.

This was news to me. Then I found his obituary - he died in 1916, at the age of 33 - which omitted the criminal career and spoke only of his 12 years in vaudeville and burlesque theater. I didn't know about that, either - until yesterday.

Fulton and Bedford, 1942 [NYPL]

I'll tell you about the Bedford Gang in a soon-to-come post. I'm not sure when, because I have plenty of research to do. A preliminary search in the papers shows that they were quite notorious in Brooklyn in the late 1890s and early 1900s.

About 1905, Garrett joined a burlesque troupe, which I want to write about, too. He became quite a well-known part of the vaudeville and burlesque world in Brooklyn and New York.

******
In the months to come, I am also going to write about another Hicks I discovered recently - Charles Hewlett Hicks, a brother of my gg grandfather Daniel Losee Hicks. He was one of the original 49ers and was in California by about 1851. I've been able to find out a fair amount about his life there, and it is quite a story.

I see a book in all of this: the Gold Street Murder, the Gold Rush, vaudeville, gangs, arsenical tragedies, brawling photographers, divorce and scandal* - all in one reasonably small family group. I've been thinking about this and working on it for a while. And every time I find another startling story, I think: you really have to do this.

I have another book project going, too - also having to do with New York history.** So I'm struggling with the problem of how to balance blogging and freelancing with that. If I don't post as much on some of my other blogs, well - that's why!

So what I write here will be the shorter version (partly because a blog is no place to write long chapters and also because, yes, I would like to have an audience for a future book!). As I work on all this, I'll post short, interesting glimpses of the past that I find - like the last post about Emily Speakers.

*I won't link all the stories, but the links will take you to a few of the main ones.

**I'll just tell you that it has to do with women's history and hasn't really been done before - I think. That's all I want to say for now!

Whoever Harbors Her

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:20:00 +0000

East New York in 1857 [NYPL Digital Gallery]

I found this story when I was looking up something about my Losee ancestors in an 1852 Jamaica Long Island Farmer, over at the fabulous Old Fulton NY Postcards. And I couldn't stop wondering about Emily and her family - and what the story was, and whatever happened to her:

NOTICE:

LEFT HOME on the 19th inst., my daughter Emily, 13 years old, small of her age, dark complexion, hair short and black eyes, had on a calico bonnet, green shawl, light blue frock, brown apron, blue quilted petticoat, black stockings, and heavy shoes just mended. Whoever harbors her after this notice will be prosecuted according to law. Any one returning her will confer a great favor and the thanks of her parents.
-- ISAAC G. SPEAKERS, East New-York, March 22d, 1852. -- Long Island Farmer (Jamaica, NY)

According to the 1850 census* - the only one I found Emily in - she had been born in New Jersey, like her parents and siblings - in 1839. Isaac and Cornelia (Van Riper) Speakers were from New Jersey,** but were in Flatbush, Brooklyn by 1850. They soon moved on to East New York, as we know from Isaac's notice. And of course, something happened there. Something or someone that caused 13 year old Emily to leave home - either voluntarily or not, we don't know.

Bigger version of map here

East New York is a neighborhood in eastern Brooklyn, bordered by Cypress Hills Cemetery in the north, Jamaica Bay on the south, Queens to the east and railroad tracks running parallel to Sinderen Avenue in the west. It grew out of a town called Broadway Junction which developed in the 1850s at the point where the Brooklyn and Jamaica Plank Road (the future Fulton Street) and several train lines met at a hilly point between Brooklyn and Queens. In 1843 one guide book describes East New York as a part of Flatbush with

400 residents, 50 dwelling houses, 2 Dutch Reformed churches, 3 taverns, 3 stores, 1 large clock manufactory propelled be steam, a suspender and boot web manufactory; besides several other kinds of mechanic work shops. [A Gazetteer of the State of New-York; J. Disturnell, Albany, 1843, p. 150]

In other words, not a large place where people disappear into the urban sprawl and bustle.

In the map (above right), East New York is the pink area directly above Jamaica Bay. But no map can tell us what happened to Emily - or where she went, and why. As with so many of the Victorian New Yorkers I write about here, I have to end by saying: I don't know what happened next. But I'll keep looking. Isaac's description of her was so vivid. You can just picture her - small, dark-haired, wearing that green shawl and calico bonnet.Walking in those heavy, newly mended shoes down a road like those in the picture at the top of this post: lined with small wooden houses, in sight and hearing of Jamaica Bay and all those railroad tracks and newly built avenues. Maybe she is stepping onto a steam train headed west into downtown Brooklyn. Maybe after that, she will take a ferry across the river to New York. How quickly she disappears. And Isaac did not put a notice in the paper again - not in the Long Island Farmer. Nothing in the Brooklyn or New York papers, either.

And - as I have said before also - if I do find out any more, I'll let you know.

* Source: 1850 US Federal Census (Population Schedule), Flatbush, Kings, NY, Dwelling 290, Family 310, Isaac J. Speakers household, page 84.

**"Cornnelia [sic] Van Riper [married] to Isaac G. Speakers both of Manchester 12-4-1845"- from the Paterson Intelligencer, transcribed here at VANRIPER-L archives at Rootsweb.

The False Mother-in-Law

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:51:00 +0000

Detail from 1928 photo Fulton/St. Felix [NYPL]

Many thanks first of all to Apple at Apple's Tree for the heads-up about the newly indexed 1875 New York State Census over at FamilySearch. If you have any New York ancestors you'll want to have a look at this, too. I couldn't resist going straight over there and start looking up ancestors. I immediately ran into a couple of mysterious new people in the household of my gg grandparents, Daniel Losee Hicks and his wife Mary Ann Barnett Hicks.

Mary Ann, also called Polly, was an intrepid young woman from the East End of London who came to America at age 13 (in 1848). She was 40 years old in this census, listed as born in England. And she was. She is in the 1841 UK census in Shadwell, Middlesex, along with her brother and sisters, and parents Joseph and Mary.

In 1875 Dan and Mary were still living together (something that would change by the 1880 census) and running a shoe business at 1620 Fulton Street, Brooklyn.

Here's the 1875 entry for the Hicks family in the 25th Ward of Brooklyn. I love that this census tells you what your ancestors' house was made of and how much it was worth. You can see that 1620 Fulton was a brick building worth $6500. It probably looked a lot like the building in the 1928 photo detail on your left, taken at Fulton Avenue and St. Felix Street, Brooklyn.

Daniel's and Mary's information is correct. So is that of three of their children - Charles, my great grandfather, born in February 1856, Minnie, and Mary (who renamed herself Mae in the 1890s and became the wife of the notorious broker Charles W. Morgan). The fourth child, 8 year old Benjamin - who on earth is he? At first I thought I'd discovered a new Hicks child and was quite excited. Then I realized that is probably Daniel Losee junior, who was exactly 8 years old in 1875, lived until 1939, and isn't elsewhere on the census.

And then there's mysterious Martha Chamberlain, 60 years old and born in New Hampshire, in the "clothing retail" business. Relation to the head of the house? "Mother in Law." But this just can't be right. Daniel's mother-in-law was Mary Barnett, born about 1806 in England. She came to New York in 1848, but I haven't traced her past the 1850 census.

Maybe I will try tracing Mary Barnett a little further. Not that I think she and Martha are related, but all this has reminded me about her - the real mother-in-law.

The Christmas-Tree Ride

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 19:40:00 +0000

Every December, starting in 1887 (and continuing at least through the next decade), Durland's Riding Academy at Columbus Circle and 59th St.* in New York held a "Christmas-Tree Ride." Wealthy riders gathered inside the arena and showed off their equestrian skills in honor of the season.

In 1894 the New York Times reported that Durland's was decorated with "flags and bunting of many colors, a profusion of wreaths of holly and evergreen, and Christmas trees...at the north end of the arena." There were red, blue and white lamps hung everywhere, too.

Durland's, undecorated

The evening typically began with "the grand entrée," led by the grand-sounding Baron Vietinghoff. There was vaulting, jeu de barre and the intriguing-sounding "umbrella and pumpkin races" which "elicited much laughter." Racing with carriages was also a featured part of the evening - you can see that there was a lot of room at Durland's for that.

Accompanying all of this was music, presumably from an orchestra. One hopes that they were situated well away from the carriages, the vaulting - and the umbrella and pumpkin races, too.

Source: "Christmas-Tree Ride," New York Times, December 27, 1894.

*Durland's moved to West 66th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Circle in 1901.

The Mysteries of Mary Lupton, Part 2: Some Notes

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:34:00 +0000

East 14th St. at 3rd Ave. [NYPL]

What I have for you as a follow-up to the story of Mary Lupton's amnesia is really a series of notes for a longer piece. The people in the Lupton case are both fascinating and elusive (like so many so-called ordinary Victorians). In other words, I can tell you a little bit more - what I know so far.

Mary Frances Smith was born about 1866 in New York City, on East 14th Street between 2nd and 3rd, according to one of her uncles. She was the daughter of Patrick Henry and Catherine/Kate (Plunkett) Smith, according to her marriage license. You can imagine what it is like trying to find a particular Smith family in the US Census - especially in New York City. Pretty much impossible. In fact, the only reason I found a slight trace of Patrick Henry later in his life was because he identified himself as a plumber, and moved to Boston - after having moved a few other places, too.

But that is getting ahead of the story.

Mary Frances, known in her family as Mamie, lived with both parents - and probably some siblings - until about 1879, when Patrick Henry left his family. He told a reporter in 1891 that he went west for health reasons, but the truth is probably that he just abandoned his family, plain and simple (or, as was suggested in one news story in 1898, because he had killed someone and had to leave New York in a hurry).

Meanwhile, Mary and her mother moved in with Mary's uncle, a fish dealer named William Cartwright. When her mother died, Mary stayed on with the Cartwrights until about 1884 or so, when she left or was thrown out of the house; she may have been staying out at night and being a bit wild, since she was known to have done that as a young married woman. She moved to a boarding house, probably also in Manhattan, and it was there that she met a salesman named Edward Fanning Lupton*.

Mary and Edward probably would not have got married were it not for Edward's lawyer, Max Eller. Eller seems to have arbitrated several of their quarrels and then in October 1886 became so sick of this that he called them both into his Manhattan office. Mary and Edward arrived to find that Eller had invited a minister, too. Eller insisted that they resolve their differences by getting married right there and then.

This peculiar solution proved to be a huge mistake. Soon after their daughter Florence was born in 1887, the Luptons separated. They were divorced in 1888, and Mary left with their servant but without their baby, Florence.

Kansas City, MO [NYPL]

Lupton then apparently took Florence to Kansas City. Mary went to Kansas City in 1890 - I don't know why it took her two years - and "stole" Florence. They went back to New York, where Mary sued Edward for alimony. She won $4 a week plus $50 legal fees. Edward and Mary both complained of cruel treatment. She said he was neglectful and abusive, striking her, calling her names and withholding food; Edward said that she was bad-tempered and stayed out late at night, telling him it was none of his business where she was going. Eller represented Edward in the divorce action. He must have regretted having insisted on their marrying.

At some point after returning to New York, Mary was unable to care for Florence, who was sent to board with a Dr. Fontaine and his family. I don't know why Florence could not live with one of Mary's many aunts and uncles in the city, but she didn't. Mary Lupton still owed the Fontaines three years' board for Florence when her amnesia made the newspapers in 1898. This suggests that Mary did not receive the fortune that she seemed about to inherit seven years before, when her long lost father came back into her life.

Tremont St., Boston [NYPL]

In May 1891, Patrick Henry Smith turned up in New York and put an advertisement in the papers for his daughter, one Mary Lupton, wife of Edward. He claimed that he had inherited a fortune from a relative named Eugene Smith and had no relative in the world to share it with. He said that he had two plumber's shops in Boston, one on Tremont Street, and one on Shawmat.

Smith was not a typical Victorian patriarch. Smith, like comedian Jack Benny, insisted that he was only 39 years old - which would have made him only 14 years older than his daughter Mary. As one reporter put it, "he is at least 50, and incoherent." He claimed to be related to the Smiths of Smithtown, Long Island - even though according to the few records I found, he was born in Ireland. And Smith berated the reporters who came to talk to him, insisting that he would not talk - then sat down and rambled for over an hour. I have only just begun trying to find out more about Patrick Henry, and what I do know is so strange and disjointed that I'd better save it for the book chapter. In any case, Smith seems to have faded away again. He may have died in Boston in 1896, still claiming - if this is indeed him - to be 39. Mary either got no money, or spent what little she did receive.

I'm still trying to trace Mary (and Florence) in the years between 1891 and 1898. And also to figure out whether Patrick Henry Smith indeed had to leave New York City in the 1870s because he had murdered someone. But this is certainly more background information than I had been expecting to find with regard to Mary Lupton's bout of amnesia while Christmas shopping in New York in 1898.

*Lupton was born about 1851, and grew up in Williamsburgh. He is also a very distant cousin of mine; we share an ancestor, Rev. Edward Bulkeley (ca 1540-1619/20) of Odell, Bedfordshire, from whom several Long Island and New England families descend. Lupton descends from Edward's daughter Dorcas, through his James line; I descend from Dorcas' sister Martha, through Elizabeth (Moore) Hicks, born about 1679.

The Mysteries of Mary Lupton, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 17:44:00 +0000

NYPL Digital Gallery

I always enjoy combining history with genealogy, and trying to track down the people in a particular long-ago news story. This story takes place in the winter of 1898 in New York City, and it "served to bring out an odd tale of the seamy side of life," as the New York Times man put it, delicately.

It all began when a woman living at the Hotel Metropole (at 147 West 43rd St., near Times Square) contacted the police and asked for their help. She told them that she had forgotten her name and where she lived. She asked if anyone had come to them looking for a missing woman.

The police took her to St. Vincent's Hospital (at 11th St and 7th Ave.) and there a man showed up with his 11 year old daughter, saying that they were her husband and child. But no one seems to have taken his name and he went off with the little girl again. If this sounds confusing, that's because it was. It will get more confusing, believe me.

A second man went to the police that evening and said that he was her husband. He said her name was Mary Smith, daughter of a man named P.H. Smith who "was concerned in a murder here [in New York] several years ago, and had to leave the city." He also mentioned a Dr. Fontaine who lived at 109 East 40th St. The police went to talk to Dr. Fontaine who said the woman's name was Mary Lupton, and that for 4 years her daughter Florence had been boarded with him and his family.

NYPL

Soon after this the phone rang at Police Headquarters at 3am and a woman asked (again) if anyone had been inquiring for a missing woman. The phone operator put her through to "Roundsman Brady in the Bureau of Information." She asked Brady if "anyone had inquired for a woman thirty-two years old, with dark hair and blue eyes, who wears a sealskin jacket, red waist, black cloth skirt, and a black velvet hat trimmed with ostrich feathers."

Well, no, said Brady, they hadn't. Mary (for of course it was her) told him that she'd been describing herself. She said she didn't know her name or address. She would like to know them. Brady told her she'd better come down in person. She did. She was "richly dressed" and had quite a bit of jewelry on. Brady questioned her and said she seemed quite normal (though nervous) in all respects except for not knowing her name and home address.

Mary said she'd gone Christmas shopping on 23rd Street. She took a "cable car" to get there and as she was wandering around a store she simply forgot who she was. She said "I walked in the streets for hours, looking in vain for a familiar face to tell me who I was." Then she started crying and admitted to having taken some cocaine that day, for her nerves - it was then a legal medicinal substance. Brady called St. Vincent's. They sent an ambulance and a Dr. Maloney.

Normal College, NYC [NYPL]

Dr. Maloney talked to her for awhile. She recalled at last that her maiden name was Smith. She said her husband was a Wall Street broker. She'd gone to school on West 27th St. and at Normal College (later known as Hunter College). Dr. Maloney gave her "an opiate" (not more cocaine, one hopes) and she got some sleep.

The next morning the man with the young girl visited again and she recognized them. She said she would go home with them although she still did not recall her name. The driver of the carriage they hired later said that they went to an address at 6th Ave. and 37th St.

Mary's husband told the police some interesting things about Mary's "life of recklessness." He said he met her in a boarding house in New York in 1886. She said she had been thrown out of her wealthy uncle Mr. Cartwright's home because of her bad behavior. They married her in 1887, had a child named Florence, and separated shortly after that. He and Florence went to Kansas City; then I guess they divorce, because Mary then sued him for alimony. She got the alimony. Then they reconciled, but that soon failed and she took the baby and went away. He said that Mary "kept up anything but a proper life." It was at this point that she boarded Florence with the Fontaines. The husband also mentioned another uncle of Mary's called John Branigan of 235 East 22nd Street. No one at that address had ever heard of Mary.

Finally, the police went back to talk to the Fontaines. Mrs. Fontaine was home; the doctor was not. Mrs. Fontaine said no child had ever lived with them and anyone who said so "must be crazy." And a jeweler, Mr. Gay, who lived near the address given for Mary's uncle Mr. Cartwright, said he'd never heard of any Smiths or Cartwrights in the neighborhood.

*****
There's a lot to work with in this mysterious story of possible murder, secrets, recklessness, amnesia, disappearing uncles and multiple husbands. And of course I'm just giving you the short version here; in a book chapter there will be plenty of scene-setting and background about places and people.

This will be a two-part story, as far as the blog-post version goes. In the next post, I'll let you know what I found out about Mary Smith Lupton and the secrets of her life. I can't wait to start looking into it. I think this is going to prove most interesting.

Source: "Forgot Name and Address," New York Times, December 18, 1898.

The Ghost Who Paid No Rent

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:05:00 +0000

In the summer of 1901 people began to notice a ghostly woman in the windows of a vacant house at 92nd Street and Fort Hamilton Parkway in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn. The house had been the home of a wealthy man named Christensen who had died two years before. The photo on the left is a 1928 shot of the corner of 92nd and Fort Hamilton. I am hoping that the house on the right is the Christensen mansion, because it looks just the way a haunted house should look.

The neighbors told police that the Fort Hamilton ghost appeared about three times a week, sometimes dressed all in white, sometimes all in black. She stood at one of the windows with a lamp in her hand, moaned loudly for awhile, then disappeared. People started watching the house every night. Children made detours on their way to and from school in order to avoid going near it. And people started remembering "the ghost of old Drury, supposed to have haunted the old Town Hall." There was a lot of excitement, in other words. Eventually there were about 200 people gathering around the old house every night to wait for the moaning, sobbing woman with the lamp in her hand, dressed in black or white.

Finally, a police detective named Martin White had had enough and decided - accompanied by "a hundred men and boys" - to break right into the haunted mansion and confront the ghost. They searched the empty house and found nothing. But just as they were about to give up, White saw a woman's foot sticking out of the side of the fireplace. He dragged her out of it and, pulling a sheet off of her head, discovered a very real woman - quite frightened, too, as you can imagine. She was a squatter - I do not think there was such a word in 1891 but that's what she was - named Mrs. John Barrett, a "trim" woman, about 35 years old. She told White that "the ghost business was merely a sham to keep people from entering the house."

The Brooklyn Eagle article ends there - but to me, that is just the beginning of the mystery. Who was she? Why was she living alone in an empty house - that she had broken into? Most Victorian women were not squatters. And for heaven's sake, what happened to her after White pulled her out of the fireplace?

******

I will probably write some short posts in the next few weeks, related to my NaNoWriMo endeavors in November - the mystery set in New York and Brooklyn in the 1890s that I've had in my head for, well, a long time now. It's been totally revamped as far as plot, though - and there are some dark corners of NYC history I need to do a bit of research on. To be continued...

******

"The Ghost Was A Woman Who Did Not Pay Rent," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Aug. 29, 1901, p. 3.

Shanty Restaurants and New York Shantytowns

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 15:05:00 +0000

Billboard, May 30, 1942

The Shanty restaurants were a chain of diners, as far as I can tell (there isn't much information about them) that were popular in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s.There were 18 Shanty restaurants in the city by the late 1940s. They were all below 53rd Street, which may be part of the reason I never had heard of them from my parents, who were living uptown then, near Columbia.

Over on eBay you can buy a 1949 Shanty menu (and paper napkin) which features "Egg Dishes," "Hamburgers," and "Griddle Cakes" - which makes me think that it was more of a generic diner, albeit one with a slightly southern touch. Most restaurants with the word "Shanty" in the name tend to be seafood places or serve country food.

The Shanty restaurants specialized in diner-type breakfasts, and also served sandwiches, salads, ice cream and doughnuts. The 1949 menu (which is great fun to look at, over on eBay) shows that a full breakfast of two eggs, bacon, toast and coffee "with Pure Cream" was only 55 cents. If you wanted to move on to things like ice cream sundaes, they were a quarter.

In 1939 The New Yorker published this anecdote about The Shanty:

A Southern gentleman stopping in New York got into the habit of having an occasional breakfast in one of the Shanty restaurants, because it served corn muffins that reminded him of home. Last Sunday he ordered a rounded southern breakfast, winding up with instructions about plenty of syrup for the muffins. The girl set his order before him with "O.K. Tobacco Road.*" [ "From Dixie," Dec. 9 1939]

NYPL Digital Gallery

The word shanty had two meanings: it could be a sea song or chant sung by ship's crews to pass the time while working; or it meant a shed or shack. There were many shanties in New York, long before the restaurant chain. The Old Shanty - which is hardly a true shanty - stood on Delancey Street. The picture on the right shows it in 1861; it is the small building in the righthand side, and was a "News Depot."

There were shantytowns in New York City at the end of the 19th century. They were mostly the homes of poor Irish and German immigrants. An early settlement at 1st Avenue and 40th Street was called Dutch Hill (i.e. Deutsch or German, as in the Dutch grocery) was what one historian calls "a well-known squatter colony, where [people] tended their cows, pigs, goats and fowl, and worked in near-by quarries and manure heaps." Another Civil War era shantytown was located west of Sixth Avenue between 40th and 80th Streets.

from Darkness and Daylight; or Lights and Shadows of NY Life (1892)

As the city grew northward, the shantytowns moved farther north too, ahead of new buildings and increasing urbanization. In the 1880s, there was a shantytown between 65th and 85th Streets near Central Park. By the late 1890s, they centered around 90th Street; there is a photograph of this last settlement in Old New York In Early Photographs by Mary Black (Dover 1976, p. 199). Black notes that it would vanish by the early 1900, replaced by "row houses and mansions."

Yet as late as the Depression, in the early 1930s, many people who had lost their jobs and homes lived in shacks in Central Park. The area was called "Shanty Village" or "Forgotten Man's Gulch," according to Louise Chipley Slavicek in her book New York City's Central Park (2009, p. 97).

The Shanty seems like a strange name for a chain of downtown restaurants specializing in cheery breakfasts, when you look at the pictures of real New York shanties, uptown.

*The waitress was referring to the 1932 novel (and/or the 1933 play based on the novel) by Erskine Caldwell, which was about sharecroppers in Georgia. The phrase also can refer to the tobacco-growing regions of North Carolina.

Additional Sources

Campbell, Helen. Darkness and Daylight; or Lights and Shadows of New York Life (Kessinger 2005, 1st pub. 1892, p 418)
Erst, Robert. Immigrant Life in New York City, 1825-1863 (Syracuse UP 1994, p. 40).
Husband, Julie and Jim O'Loughlin. Daily Life in the Industrial United States, 1870-1900 (Greenwood 2004, p. 32)

Behind the Curtain: Finding My 18th Century Theatrical Ancestors

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 20:14:00 +0000

Wikipedia

Meet my 7th great grandfather, the 18th century actor Johann Friedrich Schoenemann, whose rather jolly picture is on the right. I would like to think that the ladies in the balcony behind him are his wife, Anna Rachel Weigler, and his daughter (my 6th great grandmother) Elisabeth, who were both actresses - but unfortunately they have not been identified.

I discovered my acting ancestors on my copy of a hand-drawn family tree (literally drawn as a tree with the names in little medallions) from about 1900. The tree listed my great great grandmother, Juliane Livonius (born in 1840), her parents and grandparents, and so on. One of Juliane's great grandmothers was Henriette Caroline Charlotte (Loewen) Rudow. Henriette's parents were listed as Loewen and Schoenemann - no first names. I received the tree from a relative back in the 1970s, and for 30 years Henriette's ancestry ended there.

The relevant detail of the tree is below left - the scan is horrible, since my copy is a 1970s Xerox (remember Xerox?). Henriette is at top left and her parents "Hofsecretarius Loewen" and "Loewen - Schoenemann" are at middle and bottom right ( "Ilsabe Maria Rudow - Hansen," bottom left, is Henriette's MIL, so please disregard).

Family tree detail

Last summer I was looking around on Google Books and searched Henriette's full name, just for fun. And there was a mention of a Henriette Caroline Charlotte Loewen-Rudow. Yes, I thought, that's her!

She was in a book that mentioned her mother - a Madame Loewen - and acting. And then, as I started looking at the German text, I noticed an actor called Johann Friedrich Schoenemann who was mentioned in conjunction with Madame Loewen and her poet-theatre critic husband and thought: I wonder...? And then another 19th century German book mentioned the name of Henriette's husband - the same name as the one on my family tree: Friedrich Ulrich Aemilius Rudow.* And just like that, thanks to Google Books, I had found some lost - and really interesting - ancestors.

Johann Friedrich Schoenemann was born in Crossen an den Oder, Prussia (now Krosno Odrzanskie, Poland) on October 21, 1704. He seems to have been from a reasonably well-off family; he was studying medicine when he ran away to join a traveling Harlequin troupe in 1725 at age 21. Five years later he joined the theatrical troupe of Caroline Neuber, and specialized in comic parts. He married one of Neuber's leading actresses, Anna Rachel Weigler and in 1740 the two broke off from Neuber to start their own company. Schoenemann was not considered to be a great actor, but he was very good at spotting talent and hired several actors who would go on to great careers on the German stage.

By the 1750s Schoenemann lost interest in acting (as he had done with regards to medical school) and started a brief career in horse trading, of all things. Having failed at this, he and his family went to Schwerin, Mecklenburg, where he became a minor court retainer - hence the "Hofsecretarius" or Court Secretary designation on my family tree. He died in 1782 in Schwerin.

Loewen's Hamburg National Theater

Johann and Anna Rachel had two sons and one daughter, Elisabeth (in some sources, Eleanora) Lucia Dorothea Schoenemann, born in 1732; she is the "Loewen -Schoenemann" of the tree. Elisabeth, like her mother, was considered a good actress. She met her husband, theater critic and poet Johann Friedrich Loewen through her father. Loewen himself deserves a separate post - he wrote the first history of the German theatre and established (briefly) the first national theatre in Germany, in Berlin, in 1767.

Loewen and Elisabeth married in 1757, and at that time Elisabeth retired from acting. However, she returned to the stage, briefly, 9 years later in 1766 as Madame Loewen. When Johann Friedrich Loewen established (briefly) a German National Theater in Hamburg the following year, Elisabeth returned to the stage (as Madame Loewen) for a short time - and she was pregnant with my 5th great grandmother Henriette (born in July 1767) by then.

Prince Louis, Loewen's employer

The Loewens and Schoenemanns finally settled in Schwerin, Mecklenburg. Loewen had already been working, in addition to his writing and theatrical endeavors, as the private secretary of Prince Louis of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. J.F. Loewen moved with his family to Rostock in 1769, and died there 2 years later. He continued to write poetry until the end of his life - his works include "Die Walpurgisnacht," in which a certain Dr. Faustus appears on the witches' mountain, the Blocksberg. This is thought to have given Goethe inspiration for his own Faust: A Tragedy (1808).

I suspect that the Schoenemann-Loewen contingent were deliberately left off of the official family tree precisely because they were actors and thus slightly disreputable. The rest of the family (traced back to the 16th century in northern Germany) were clergymen, merchants, government officials and lawyers. Friedrich U.A. Rudow, the lawyer/mayor who married Henriette Loewen, was exceedingly respectable. The Schoenemanns and Loewens were by far the most famous people in the family** - but not quite respectable enough to join it entirely, at least on the official family tree.

I'm regarding this post as a placeholder for further research, so please read it as an interesting piece, rather than a definitive treatment. There's a lot I left out, of course - but I'm reading and making notes, slowly. And I may move the Schoenemanns and Loewens to a sub-blog or separate section of Virtual that will be strictly genealogical in nature - I'll let you know when and if I do.

Johann Friedrich Schoenemann (1704-1782) = Anna Rachel Weigler (abt 1705-1770)
Elisabeth Lucia Dorothea Schoenemann (1732- ) = Johann Friedrich Loewen (1727-1771)
Henriette Caroline Charlotte Loewen (1767-1820) = Friedrich Ulrich Aemilius Rudow (1759-1831)
Juliane Rudow (1791-1841) = Joachim Christian Livonius (1776 - 1852)
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Livonius (1808-1868) = Louisa Friederike Lisette Muller (1813-1868)
Juliane Livonius (1840- ca 1924, NYC ), my great great grandmother

*Friedrich Ulrich Aemilius Rudow (1759-1831) was a lawyer/politician whose lengthy bio I found on GoogleBooks in an 1833 book published in Mecklenburg. This biography mentions that he married Henriette Caroline Charlotte Loewen, and that their eldest daughter Juliane married a man named Livonius (these last two were my 4th great grandparents).

**There are many mentions of Schoenemann, Loewen and Elisabeth Schoenemann ("Madame Loewen") in books about German theater; in addition, J.F. Loewen published several books, and Schoenemann wrote at least one book. And in 1895 Hans Devrient published a biography of Johann Friedrich Schoenemann (which I intend to read all the way through one of these days; one of my New Year's resolutions is to get my German reading skills back up to speed).

New Mown Hay Face With Montague Curls

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 00:09:00 +0000

Brooklyn Public Library

Any lady in the last quarter of the 19th century who wished to have a beautiful complexion and curly bangs (which were especially fashionable in the 1870s) had only to look to one cosmetics manufacturer for all her skin and hair care needs: one R.M. Hunter of Philadelphia. The 1880s trade card shown above, from P. Jackson's Botanic Drug Store in Brooklyn, extolls two of Hunter's products: Invisible Powder, and Quince Bandoline Powder, guaranteed to work wonders upon women's faces and women's hair.

Advertisement from Scribner's Magazine (1889)

Hunter's Invisible was a face powder sold in the late 1880s and 1890s. The advertising copy tells the usual story: it is completely natural, it is the best cosmetic of all time, and so on. Best of all, the ingredients were "happily blended." This is very good to know. And it's also good to know that with Hunter's Invisible you could have a "New Mown Hay Face" - according to the tin below (which is for sale at goantiques.com, by the way).

1897 Hunter's Invisible tin

Mr. Hunter also made Pure Quince Bandoline Powder, which sold for 10 cents a packet. Bandoline was a sticky, scented hair fixative made from quince, Irish moss or gum tragacanth. It was the Victorian equivalent of styling gel, in other words. In 1880 the New York Times ran an article entitled "The Mystery of Bandoline"* which stated that:

The preparation is a viscous fluid used for the purpose of gumming to the forehead[s] of the women of fashion the flat devices of hair which are known as Montague curls...In rural New-England, they were called 'spit-curls,' - not a nice name, as the candid reader will admit, but sufficiently expressive of a style of hair-dressing which prevailed before bandoline was invented.

1879 drawing from a French catalogue

According to The Dictionary of Fashion History by Valerie Cumming and C.W. Cunningham Berg, 2010, p. 134), they were arranged in crescent-shaped bangs over the forehead. The lady at the left seems to be wearing them. It must have taken a lot of bandoline to hold all those curls.

The Times added that some ladies made their own bandoline by pouring water over quince seeds. Hunter's Bandoline Powder seems to have been made of ground up dried quince seeds (others were made of gum tragacanth). When reconstituted with water, it became "half a pint of Elegant Bandoline" - enough for a whole household of fashion-forward late Victorian ladies.

*Which is a wonderful name for a lost Victorian sensation/romance novel, don't you think? Written by Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth. Or possibly Ouida. There would be a tragic, weepy heroine with many perfect Montague curls and a pearly complexion, married by mistake to the wrong groom who shows up in place of his twin brother, after which she runs away and becomes a famous opera singer.

A Terrible Descent: Augustus Hicks, June 1891

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:03:00 +0000

Tenement air shaft [NYPL Digital Gallery]

Note: I've been working on this one for about a week, and I'm going to post it as it is. It remains - as do all my extended Hicks and true crime posts - a work-in-progress. If and when it makes it into The Book, it will have more background, more New York history and (I hope) more answers than mysteries to share.

It was the evening of Tuesday, June 9th, 1891. Picture an Old Law tenement building on Third Avenue at East 100th Street - 1805 Third Avenue, no longer there. It was probably five or six stories high, and had few windows. The building, one of several crammed together, has 3 foot indentations at the middle of each side - space for an air shaft which allows light and air to penetrate the dark center.

Augustus T. Hicks was my great grandfather Charles Hicks' first cousin. Augustus and his wife Carrie lived in one of the dark narrow flats at 1805. He was in his early 40s and had been married for ten years. Augustus was described as a photographer by the New York Times and in the New York Evening Telegram as a "clerk" - but in any case he was out of work, and had been for at least two months. He and Carrie were starving. One newspaper noted that "the life of himself and his wife, both deserving people, had long been a hard and most wretched one."

Augustus was the only child of Brooklyn photographer Lemuel S. Hicks and his first wife, Lydia Newell, herself a photographer, which had ended in an acrimonious divorce in 1863. Lemuel married a second time in 1868, to Jane Anderson, and they had several children. Lemuel and Jane and their children are listed in the official 19th century Hicks genealogy. Lydia and Augustus were omitted; perhaps they were an embarrassment to that old Long Island family, descended from John Hicks, who emigrated in the 1630s.*

In the 1870 census Lydia and Augustus were recorded as living in Brooklyn, both working as photographers. In the late 1870s, still in Brooklyn, Augustus was juggling two careers: he was a photographer and also sold shoes (see notes below). He married Carrie C. Barton there in 1881. They were in Brooklyn as late as 1889. They were in Manhattan by about 1890, where their fortunes must have declined.

Tenement room, early 20th c. [NYPL]

By June 1891, Augustus had been out of work for two months and felt absolutely desperate. He and Carrie had no food and no money. Enough to bring anyone to the point of despair. Then add in the darkness that seems to have haunted this particular branch of the Hicks family. Consider Lemuel and his brothers Andrew and Daniel (my great great grandfather), all prone to fits of rage.Andrew's daughter Sarah (Augustus' cousin) had committed suicide in 1887, four years before, at the age of 24. Daniel and another brother, Hiram, had drinking problems that were severe enough to warrant alarm. Augustus drank, too: since he had lost his job, the Times said, he had been "drinking to excess."

The New York Evening Telegram tells what happened next, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, June 10th

All...evening he acted in an insane manner, walking about the house with a clothes basket on his head and a teakettle in his hand. He muttered incoherently and from time to time he would take a drink from the kettle. His queer actions alarmed the neighbors and they advised the distracted wife to notify the police. She declined to do so and tried to quiet her husband.

Presbyterian Hospital

This state of affairs continued until half past three o'clock in the morning, when Hicks started downstairs. At last Mrs. Hicks, now thoroughly alarmed, sent for the police. When Hicks heard them coming he rushed upstairs to the second floor, barricaded the room, and when entrance was forced he jumped out of the window, down a very narrow air shaft. In his descent he struck the cornices of the windows opposite, crushing his face and head. His right arm and leg were crushed and his recovery is impossible. He was removed to the Presbyterian Hospital.**

Augustus was not expected to live, the papers all said. But he did. I cannot imagine how, considering the trauma and injuries he must have sustained. I do not (yet) know what happened to him until 1905, when the New York State Census shows him in Brooklyn, a resident of the Kings County Alms House on Clarkson Street. In 1910, he was a widower living in the German Evangelical Home in Bushwick. He seems to have died in 1911 (see notes below).

German Evang. Home for the Aged [NYPL]

A paragraph in a long-forgotten newspaper article can evoke a scene so vividly that you are transported back into a moment that - but for some long-ago reporter - would have disappeared. A little window that you never knew was there. Ever since I found the Telegram article, I have been thinking of Augustus and Carrie. Of how they arrived at that June night at 1805 Third Avenue - and of what happened to the afterwards.

*Ironically, John Hicks' wife Herodias Long was a Colonial version of Lydia - she divorced John in Rhode Island (he countered by divorcing her in New York, where he'd gone with his son Thomas, ancestor of the Long Island Hickses) and was the heroine of many scandals.

** In 1891, Presbyterian Hospital was located at Fourth Avenue between 70th and 71st Streets, as is shown in the picture above.

SOURCES

"It Is Suicides' Day; August Hicks' Desperate Attempt To Kill Himself," New York Evening Telegram, June 10, 1891, p. 6.
"City and Suburban News," New York Times, June 11, 1891, n.p.
"News Items," Lowell [Mass.] Daily Courier, June 13, 1891, p. 5.

For more on Old Law tenements check out:

Tenement Museum at 108 Orchard Street on the Lower East Side
Living Together: Dumbbell Tenements at Columbia University Digital Knowledge Ventures
Ephemeral New York on Old Law tenements

Augustus Hicks in the records (all directories are Lain's Brooklyn Directories unless noted):

1860 US Census, pop. schedule, Brooklyn Ward 14 District 10, Kings, NY, P.O. Williamsburgh:
Augustus T. Hicks age 11 b NY living with parents Samuel [sic Lemuel] S. age 31 Photographer b NY and Lydia A. age 30 b NY.

1870 US Census, pop. schedule, Williamsburgh Ward 14, Kings, NY, dwelling 761, family 2074, Roll M593_955, page 258A, image 519, FHL film # 552454. [August Hicks age 20, Book Keeper, b NY, living with his mother Lydia age 35 [sic - she was about 40], Photographer, b NY $3000 pers.]

1875, 1892 NY State census: as yet not found. To be researched further.
1880, 1900 US census: as yet not found. To be researched further.

1879: Augustus Hicks, photographer, 195 Grand St., res. 391 Herkimer St., Brooklyn. A separate listing in the 1879 Lain's shows him as A.T. Hicks, res. 391 Herkimer, in the business of "shoes" at 1710 Fulton. Many members of this particular Hicks family were in the shoe business including my gg grandparents and my great grandfather - all at various Fulton Street addresses: 1590, 1620, 1710 and 1720. My grandmother was born in 1889 above the family shoe store at 1590 Fulton.

1881: Augustus "F" Hicks marries Carrie C. Barton, Brooklyn, NY certificate # . No other marriage record found and since Augustus was married in 1891, am going on assumption that Carrie was the Mrs. Hicks of the article. Other scenarios are of course possible. Note that a Caroline Hicks age 55 (born ca 1845) died in Manhattan 4 May 1900 certificate #15497, which might be this Carrie.

1889: Augustus Hicks, photographer at 478 Myrtle St., Brooklyn

1905 NY State Census, pop. schedule, Brooklyn Assembly District 14, ED 14, image 43, FHL film #1930276, Kings County Alms House, Clarkson St. [August Hicks, Inmate W M 59y, US citizen, former occ. Photographer]

1910 US Census, pop. schedule, Brooklyn Ward 28, Kings, NY, Roll T624_982, page 7A, ED 0915, image 434, FHL film # 1374995, German Evangelical Home for the Aged [Augustus T. Hicks, Inmate W M widowed 65y, b NY, parents b NY]

1911: Augustus J [sic?] Hicks age 67 dies Brooklyn, NY April 22, 1911 [b ca 1844] certificate #8516; undoubtedly the Augustus J. Hicks buried at Greenwood Cemetery Apr. 25, 1911. However, have not been able to place the Hickses in same lot (29725/134) in our family, so perhaps not correct Augustus. Having said this, have only identified one Augustus born in mid to late 1840s in Brooklyn area. To be researched further.

The Dutch Grocery

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 17:25:00 +0000

NYPL Digital Gallery

This old Dutch building, dating from the 17th century, housed a grocery in the 19th. It has the "step gable" typical of traditional Dutch and German architecture. It looks altogether like a tidy place.

But a Victorian New Yorker, hearing the term "Dutch grocery," would picture not this charming place, but a shabby emporium, like the one Henry James wrote of in The Bostonians (1885-6). James' character New Yorker Basil Ransom lives on the Upper East Side, well away from Fifth Avenue. And it was not a fancy place at all, as this passage tells us:

Old house in Delft

...The two sides of the shop were protected by an immense pent-house shed, which projected over a greasy pavement and was supported by wooden posts fixed in the curbstone. Beneath it, on the dislocated flags, barrels and baskets were freely and picturesquely grouped; an open cellarway yawned beneath the feet of those who might gaze too fondly on the savoury wares displayed in the window; a strong odor of smoked fish, combined with a fragrance of molasses, hung about the spot; the pavement, towards the gutters, was fringed with dirty panniers, heaped with potatoes, carrots and onions...The establishment was of the kind know to New Yorkers as a Dutch grocery; a red-faced, yellow-haired, bare-armed vendors might have been observed to lounge in the doorway.

NYPL Digital Gallery (prob. dates from 1850-75 period)

Nineteenth-century New York "Dutch groceries" mainly were run by German shopkeepers - Dutch being used in the same sense as "Pennsylvania Dutch" - as a corruption of Deutsch, or German. The Brooklyn Eagle in 1872, for example, mentions a Dutch grocery's "Teutonic storekeeper" ("Hydrophobia," Mar. 8 1872 p. 4). The earliest references to Dutch groceries seem to date from the 1850s - which also marked the beginning of a rise in German immigration to New York.

The Dutch grocer and his store were often the targets of racist jokes. The cartoon on the left shows a Dutch grocer, and pokes fun at his accent and lack of comprehension. It may refer to the failure of the Croton Reservoir which stood at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street ) where the New York Public Library stands today) in October 1855: "Visiting there during the past week, we found it shorter by several feet than usual. Housekeepers should be careful about fires just now, and the police, if not too busy in politics, should look out for incendiaries" ("Short of Water," New York Times, Oct. 22, 1855, n.p.).

In the Brooklyn Eagle of 1854, a reader referred to "the...Dutch grocery way of doing business" - meaning, charging 25 cents for 24 cents' worth of goods (Aug. 10, 1855, p. 2). And as late as the 1890s, the Eagle ran so-called "funny" series called "The Gowanusians" which featured an Irish housewife and her run-ins with a "Dutch" (German) grocer (see, for example, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Apr 22, 1894, p. 4 and Jul. 2, 1893 p.4).

In addition, the Dutch grocery was a symbol of a "low" and dangerous area. In Putnam's Monthly (vol. 4, 1854, p. 51) in a story entitled "Hard Up," a description of "horrid" Elizabeth Street in lower Manhattan includes "a Dutch grocery...loom[ing] at either corner, where at night a red, unwholesome light glares out upon the dark street, and shrieks and blasphemies, and cries of murder echo along the street." And in 1856, $3000 worth of "saddles and shoes, teaspoons and overcoats, silk dresses and sleighbells, cart-wheels and ear-rings" - were found stowed away in trunks (behind the counter, it is implied) in a Dutch grocery at the corner of Mott and East Houston Streets* "kept by a German named William Randeau."(New York Times, Mar. 29, 1856, n.p.) Randeau had fled, so the police arrested his hapless clerk - who was also German.

*Just a few blocks from the tenement at 441 East Houston where my grandfather was born into a German immigrant family in 1893 - none of them had a grocery, though.

Orangeine

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 01:57:00 +0000

UCLA Library

Orangeine sounds like the Victorian equivalent of Tang (and what a strange terrible thought that is!) but it wasn't a beverage, and didn't actually contain anything remotely related to an orange.

It was a medicine for headaches and - you guessed it - a slew of other ailments, a miracle cure according to the letters printed in ads in the late 1890s and early 1900s. You also will not be surprised to learn that it was full of ineffectual, even dangerous, things.

Orangeine was made by the Orangeine Chemical Company in Chicago. The main ingredient was acetanilide which was used as an analgesic prior to the development of aspirin; it was similar to acetaminophen. But unfortunately this particular analgesic was made with aniline - a toxic chemical primarily used for making dyes. According to the 1912 edition of Nostrums and Quackery*, Orangeine also contained caffeine and sodium bicarbonate. Interestingly enough, acetaminophen and caffeine are used to counteract migraines today.

Some of the advertising was directed at women, insofar as Orangeine could be used, it was hinted delicately, to combat menstrual pain. The ad on the left is from an 1899 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle, and offers "Wonderful Orangeine" for the relief of "Pain, Depression, Exhaustion, "Blues," Headache, Neuralgia, Women's Pains, and CURES THEIR CAUSE." It was called "Blessed Orangeine" and "Heavenly Orangeine,"and women were said to rely on it to help them over "Hard Places." The women pictured in the ad are actress and interior designer Elsie de Wolfe on the left, and stage actress Hope Ross on the right.

Orangeine was sold in powder form; as an 1899 ad put it, the powder was "easily carried, taken anywhere WITHOUT TEASPOON OR "SLOPPY LIQUID."

Samuel Hopkins Adams wrote in The Great American Fraud (1905) of several deaths resulting from taking Orangeine. Some women died from taking orangeine powders; some survived, but grew pale and anemic from protracted use.** He noted that

The wickedness of the fraud lies in this: That whereas the nostrum, by virtue of its acetanilid content, thins the blood, depresses the heart, and finally undermines the whole system, it claims to strengthen the heart and produce better blood. Thus far in the patent medicine field I have not encountered so direct and specific an inversion of the facts.

Finally, why was it called Orangeine? Oranges were a delicious and expensive treat back in the late 19th century; a particular high point of a child's Christmas stocking was the orange in the toe. For my grandmother, growing up in Brooklyn in the 1890s, that Christmas orange was the only one she got all year. Oranges were also associated with warm, sunny climates and good health. All of these associations would be pleasant and positive - and sell plenty of headache powders.

It was ironic that Orangeine was not, in fact, very good for you at all.

*Nostrums and Quackery (American Medical Association Press: Chicago, 1912), p. 497.

**Thanks to the Museum of Quackery for the Samuel Hopkins Adams extracts; you can read more details about Orangeine-associated deaths over there.

Note: Madame Talbot has some framed, bright-orange packets of Orangeine in her wonderful Quack Medicine Curio Exhibit.

Belden's Miniature New York

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Fri, 06 May 2011 16:45:00 +0000

In 1845-6, Ezekiel Porter Belden and his 150 assistants built a carved wooden model of New York and Brooklyn - featuring every building, every street and landmark, even (in the words of one reviewer) "every shanty" - as far north as 32nd Street.

In Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford UP, 2000, p. 672) , Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace note that the model was twenty feet long and twenty four feet wide with 200,000 tiny buildings over 2 million windows and 150,000 chimneys.

The Model was topped with an 15 foot high Oriental canopy decorated with "gold and brilliant colors." It was"supported by twelve elaborately carved columns...and is mounted with pinnacles forming compartments"* at the top. And in those compartments were nearly a hundred oil paintings of "the leading business establishments and places of note in the city" - all commissioned by the industrious Mr. Belden. It cost $20,000 to build - an incredible sum of money in the 1840s.

Belden's 1849 guidebook New-York: Past, Present and Future (1849) is dedicated to his Carved Model. There are many pages of descriptions of the carvings, and more pages after that with reprinted newspaper reviews (all most complimentary, of course). The Model stood on a huge wooden platform, and included a depiction of the harbor complete with steamers, tow-boats and all "customed shipping."

In Belden's book you can read in great detail about what is in the Model - the description itself is a kind of virtual walking tour, and great fun to read. Belden not only includes the big attractions - the Battery, Castle Garden, Broadway, Barnum's American Museum, City Hall, Washington Market, the Tombs - but also the telegraph wires, the Novelty Works ("an extensive manufactory of steam engines and other machinery" near the East River), and the United States Revenue Boarding Office. I was glad to see that he included the Floating Church, too. The New York Sun pointed out that "every inhabitant of New York will be enabled to recognize his own dwelling."

Broadway and Canal St, 1836 (NYPL)

Ezekiel Porter Belden, of an old Connecticut family (the Porter-Belden House is in Wethersfield), also wrote a book about Yale, and - according to one of the newspaper reviews Belden includes - was "the proprietor of the Model of New Haven" - so this wasn't his first miniature city.

The Model City was built at Belden's rooms in the Granite Building, 360 Broadway. In July 1846 Belden rented the "large hall of the Minerva Rooms, Broadway" for his Model, and opened it to the public on the 4th. The Minerva Rooms were at 406 Broadway (at Canal Street), and were usually a venue for entertainers.

Can you imagine what fun it would be to see this? Another place I want to go in that time machine, certainly. And I'd like to know what happened to the Miniature New York, too. Did it survive? And if so - where is it?

*All quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from New-York: Past Present and Future (1849) by Ezekiel Porter Belden.

The Champagne Pavilion

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:56:00 +0000

from Popular Places of Resort Around N.Y. (1881)

This is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to visit in a time machine - the Champagne Pavilion at West Brighton Beach, Coney Island, in 1881. Ten cents for a glass or a "cocktail," which you could sip while you lounged in this elegant pavilion. They need more seating, but otherwise I like this very much.

The guidebook that features this ad says that other delights of West Brighton included fountains of "pure water," the Grand Plaza which was lit with electric light "of 25,000 candle power" in the evening, a Camera Obscura, restaurants and amusements of all kinds. I think I'll just sit in the pavilion quietly, though, sipping my cocktail, and watching everything. And since I always like to know these things, I found an 1889 recipe for champagne cocktails. This is from The Steward's Handbook and Guide to Party Catering by a man with two old Long Island names (which is why I chose his recipe), Jessup Whitehead*:

Champagne Cocktail - A large lemonade glass half filled with shaved ice, 2 drops each orange, lemon and gentian** essences; 1 tablespoon each orange-flower water and syrup; well shaken; 1 glass champagne added.

*Probably not a relation, though - I have a possible Whitehead ancestor, and at one time thought there were Jessups back in one of my ancestral lines, but have since learned otherwise. I do have a distant cousin called Whitehead Hicks, who was Mayor of New York from 1766 to 1776 - so perhaps Jessup is a very, very distant cousin.

** Gentian is a flowering plant, whose roots are sometimes used in bitters. Apparently the old soft drink Moxie was flavored with gentian root bitters - it is still being sold in parts of the US (New England and Pennsylvania). I don't know if it still has gentian root bitters in it, though.

Dr. Kahn's Grand Museum

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 15:19:00 +0000

from the journal New York Medical and Eclectic, 1879

Dr. Joseph Kahn opened an anatomical museum in London in 1851, which featured a "Mechanical Venus" - a large model of the female body, and depicted, as other anatomical museums of the Victorian period did, both the healthy human body and the physical consequences of venereal disease. He also seems to have been interested in sideshow attractions: in 1856 it was reported that "Dr. Kahn of London" was interested in exhibiting "The Boy with the Real Tail" although neither boy nor tail was said to have been found, in the end.

Kahn was originally endorsed by the British medical journal the Lancet in the early 1850s, but they denounced him severely once they began to receive letters of complaint later in the decade. Kahn was involved in several lawsuits from the 1850s until he disappeared about 1864 (Dr. A.W. Bates, in the excellent article cited below, suggests that Kahn returned to his native Germany). He seems to have left the contents of his museum behind, and they were taken up his business partner Mr. Jordan. Jordan sold dubious patent medicines for "secret diseases" under the name Perry and Co.,and had become partners in the museum with Kahn.

In 1870, Jordan moved the museum's contents to New York and opened Kahn's Grand Museum in New York at 698 Broadway. It was by then not merely an anatomical museum but a "Magnificent Palace of Wonders." The wonders now include Science and Art as well as anatomy. Kahn's Grand Museum was open in New York at least as late as 1879 when this splendid illustrated advertisement appeared in the New York Medical and Eclectic. In 1884 Lewis Jordan of 51 East 10th Street - also known as Joseph Jacques, Lewis J. Kahn, Lewis J. Jordan and Dr. Ricord* - was arrested in New York for "treating three patients under a diploma illegally and fraudulently obtained." Jordan was practicing as "Dr. Jacques" with a degree issued by the Eclectic Medical College. He was believed to be the original Dr. Kahn of London by the Times, and they state that there Kahn was convicted "for obtaining money by 'trick, unprofessional conduct, and malpractice.'" Jordan's residence at 51 East 10th was said to be "simply a side show for a Broadway museum, where he answers to the four names given above."

*Ricord was the name of Napoleon's physician; see, for example, "Napoleon's Doctor Ricord," New York Times, Nov. 17, 1889.

SOURCES

Bates, A.W. "Dr. Kahn's Museum: Obscene Anatomy in Victorian London," JSRM Vol 99 No. 12 (2006), pp 618-24. The definitive history of Kahn and his museum - well worth a read. [link]

"A Museum Doctor With Four Names," New York Times, Mar. 22, 1884.

"The Boy With A Real Tale," New York Times [reprinted from the Dublin Medical Press], Jan. 23, 1856.

Rosenman, Ellen Bayuk. Unauthorized Pleasures: Accounts of Victorian Erotic Experience (Cornell UP, 2003), pp 34-7.

Dr Kahn's and other Anatomical Museums here at showhistory.

*****

Many thanks to Annie Barnes at the absolutely wonderful Hibbitt Family History Blog for the Ancestor Approved Award! I couldn't possibly choose 10 out of the many incredible genealogy blogs that I read and subscribe to so I say to all of my dear genealogist friends: please feel free to take this one. I am supposed to list 10 surprising, humbling and/ or enlightening aspects of my research too - but alas, I am not doing too much genealogical research right now. Instead, I'm mostly blogging over at my pop culture blogs...and working on an off-line writing project (don't want to say too much about it but suffice it to say, it is quite time-absorbing!). Instead, I promise to come back and tell you about my Best Genealogical Find of 2010 which involves an old hand-drawn family tree (literally, a tree picture with ancestors written in), some vagabond 18th century Germans and some Frakturlicious Google Books.

The Pocket Physician

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 19:46:00 +0000

The National Druggist, 1888

Before Vick's Vapo Rub (which was first sold in 1905 under the name Vick's Magic Croup Salve) there was another topical rub made with menthol, with a far more poetic name: Mentholine, the "Pocket Physician."

Mentholine, seen here in an 1888 advertisement, was marketed as a "Japanese Headache Cure." Japanese menthol is a perennial mint; eCauldron notes that the essential oil derived from this plant is used as a candy and drink flavoring. And the oil and leaves are also still used as remedies for pain, sore throats and - yes - headaches.

Scribner's Magazine, 1888

Mentholine and only Mentholine was the genuine article; it was first brought out by Dundas Dick and Co. in 1883 and became extremely popular. This led, of course, to cheap imitations, many of which were made with more wax, powder and grease than actual menthol. An 1884 article in the Canadian Pharmaceutical Journal outlined the ways in which a consumer could test how greasy the cones were, which involved heating bits on the stove and sound quite tiresome.

Therefore it would save time (and possibly getting burnt, in which case you would surely want the fully mentholated cones) if the consumer, headache-stricken or not, would merely "beware of imitations in fancy boxes." Menthol is still used as a topical treatment for pain, including headache pain - so these probably did work well, unlike many Victorian analgesics.

Mother Shipton in Brooklyn

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 23:34:00 +0000

Cover of Mother Shipton, worse for wear

In the mid-1890s, Amelia M. Hazen kept a boarding house at 302 Schermerhorn Street in Brooklyn. Amelia was also known in the city as a fortune teller called Madame de Garry. As Madame de Garry, she ran a "fortune telling establishment for women" at 139 Willoughby Street. She was also the author of a volume entitled Mother Shipton's Gipsy Fortune Teller (the link will take you to a digitized copy at Internet Archive). Internet Archive lists the author as A. Wehman (presumably a relative of the publisher Henry Wehman). The title is supposed to suggest a far more famous book entitled Mother Shipton's Fortune Teller (1860). The original Mother Shipton was an English prophetess called Ursula Southill (1488-1561) whose prophecies were first published in 1641. She was famous for having predicted, among other things, that the end of the world would come in 1881.

As for Amelia Hazen, the Brooklyn Eagle described her as being famous for her predictions also:

[Mrs. Hazen is] a seeress, [who] knows what is going to happen in Mrs. Smith's kitchen next Monday and how many hired girls Mrs. Jones will have in 1897 and warns Maggie Murphy to beware of a large, dark man who will meet her on Navy street disguised with a diamond pin and green whiskers, and [who] does other useful things for cash.*

William Hazen was Amelia's estranged husband. He was a gentleman who was "a dealer in forbidden and abhorrent things to drink." Elsewhere he is called "Vermouth manufacturer" with offices in Manhattan and Brooklyn (perhaps the vermouth was of a particularly poor and abhorrent quality).

The original Mother Shipton

William Hazen is listed in the 1880 US census as a resident of Jacksonville, Florida. He was a merchant, age 23 (born in Indiana) and had been married in 1880 to 22 year old Flora (Paretts**) Hazen (born in Georgia). He married Amy/Amelia M. (Grady) Dzialyuski - perhaps bigamously - in 1888, when he was 31 and she was about 34 years old.

Amelia told the Brooklyn Supreme Court that she had given William $1700 she had made selling a saloon, but that this "had never been returned to her." Furthermore, he had deserted her in 1895 and taken up with another woman. She had seen him in August 1895 on the Elevated with another woman. When William noticed Amelia, she said, "he ran away down the stairs." She added that he was "earning great wealth" - the Sun quoted her as saying he earned $5000 a year. She also said that he had struck her and "mangled" her finger, and stolen jewelry from her that was worth $800.

Mr. Hazen retaliated by telling the court that Amelia drank (especially beer) and gambled. Even worse, she was a bigamist - she was still married to a man named "Djaynski" who was "in the South somewhere" - and had a son with him, who was the source of the trouble between them.

Mr. Hazen's lawyer said that Amelia had abandoned William in Jacksonville in 1890 after two years of marriage. The $800 worth of jewelry was not stolen, either - it was supposed to pay for her to move to Cincinnati (it is not clear whether she actually went there). William and Amelia must have reconciled around 1892, because in that year they moved to New York together. As for the physical abuse, said William's lawyer, the injury to Amelia's finger came about because her finger got caught in William's coat sleeve.

Judge Osborne, after hearing all this, "reserved decision" - clearly, he did not quite know what to make of all of this. And as so often happens with interesting Eagle stories, there is no follow up. In addition, I was surprised not to find Madame De Garry advertising in the papers. But I am adding her to my New York and Brooklyn Victorian Fortune Teller/Clairvoyant database (this is offline, by the way). When (or if) I find out anything more about her, I will post an update.

*"Other useful things" - I think that the Eagle is hinting that Mrs. Hazen also provided shadier services as well as telling fortunes - perhaps having to do with treating "female complaints" or running a matrimonial bureau, both of which were sidelines for other fortune tellers/clairvoyants of the period.

**Percetti, not Paretts, in the WorldConnect database; there is a 24 year old Eugene Percetti in the Hazen household in 1880, perhaps a brother.

Sources and Links to Sources

"A Fortune Teller's Mistake," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 7, 1896, p. 18.
"A Fortune Teller's Ill Fortune," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Dec. 12, 1896, p. 12.
"The Troubles of the Hazens," New York Sun, Dec. 8, 1896, p. 11. [Cites Justice Van Wyck, not Osborne; states Hazen's salary according to him as $5000 a year; he said it was $10 a week which is $480 a year].
"New Corporations," New York Times, Nov. 17, 1894. [the new William H. Hazen Company will sell "vermouth cordials and other like commodities" in NYC and has a capital of $10,000]

William Henry Hazen at WorldConnect: William Henry Hazen was born in Indiana in 1857, lived in Jacksonville, Florida in the 1880s, and was a "chemist' in Brooklyn, NY in the 1890s. According to this record, Amelia was born Amy Grady; William had also married a Minnie Bryan in between Flora (who died in 1885) and Amy/Amelia.

The Hazen marriage at FamilySearch's Florida Marriages 1837-1974: William H. Hazen and Amy M. Dzialyuski were married April 22, 1888 in Duval County, Florida.

Amelia Hazen in the 1880 US census for Jacksonville, Florida: she was then Amie Dzialynski, born in Maine ca 1854; husband John was a 32 year old cigar manufacturer, born in Florida to Russian-born parents; their son Ernest was born in Florida about 1877, and is the stepson referred to in the 1896 Brooklyn divorce proceedings.)

William H. Hazen in the 1880 US census for Jacksonville, Florida (born in Indiana in 1857; his wife Flora's relative Eugene Percetti, and a Frank T Fernandez living in the same household, worked in a cigar factory - perhaps owned by Amelia's husband?)

Don't Forget To Write: Planning For the New Year

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 16:41:00 +0000

NYPL Digital Gallery (detail)

The January Carnival of Genealogy's theme is this: My genealogy research/writing plan for 2011. And that is exactly what I need to make, a plan for future reference.

In 2011 I am going to try and balance my need for a variety of projects with the need to focus on one or two. This sounds contradictory, I know. But I am interested in many things, and like switching from, say, 1950s advertising to true crime in Victorian Brooklyn to writing about chocolate fountains and duct tape wallets (two of my recent freelance-writing subjects). As some of you probably know, I juggle 3 blogs, I freelance-write to make money, and have a non-fiction and a fiction writing project in varying stages of on-the-go. Oh, and am actively doing genealogical research when I can fit it in. But of course, I can't do everything! So I am just going to list everything and make sure I prioritize things (which means letting some things go a bit) in 2011:

1. The blogs: one post a week per blog, ideally. That's three posts a week. I used to update all three every day, a couple of years ago, so this is way better. Kitchen Retro may get updated more often, though, as it is my most popular blog and the easiest to write. The blogs will recede a little bit, though, I think.

2. The freelancing: enough to generate some income but not so much that I don't have time for anything else. I'll keep an eye on this. This can recede as necessary, like the blogs.

3. The non-fiction project: Yes, here's where it connects to the COG topic. Actually I have at least 3 ideas for non fiction book projects but I am going to commit to the one about my Victorian Brooklyn family and their exploits. To do: print out the relevant posts from this blog and outline what else needs to be done to expand these. And write about the people I haven't written about yet. Two quite sensational gentlemen, to be exact. I wasn't entirely comfortable writing about them here. But I will include them in the book.

4. The fiction project: The only way I'm going to do this is by keeping it low key and fun and not talking too much about it. Working on it a couple of times a week for now, as I've been doing this month. It does connect up with working on #3 and #5, though. So much fun, I can't tell you. Shhhh! -- that's all I have to say about that...

5. The genealogical research: I'd like to keep digging deeper into the Victorian Brooklyn ancestors' lives (see #3). I want to solve some puzzles in my Barnett line this year; I know what steps to take next, I just need to do them. There are some German ancestors I recently discovered - 18th century actors and writers - and I want to post about them. Also there is something quite interesting developing re one of my English ancestors-in-law. And I also resolve to get all my research organized on RootsMagic (which I am learning my way around, right now).

One last thing: I will absolutely cut this list way down as time goes on. This is a hopelessly ambitious lot of things to do, I know. Not realistic. But it is good to see it all written out, anyway.

And I wish you all a spectacularly Happy New Year, and am looking forward to reading about your plans, too!

The Christmas Chignon

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:05:00 +0000

NYPL Digital Gallery

May I present to you the Christmas Chignon - which makes your hair look exactly like a Christmas plum pudding, right down to the sprig of holly, which appears to be burning.

It is from Punch (December 28, 1867) and pokes fun at the elaborate chignon styles that women were wearing in the late 1860s. The term comes from the French "chignon de cou," or nape of the neck, and chignon hairstyles were originally worn in ancient Greece, at which time they were quite simple. In the 1860s they were anything but that, according to a (fictitious) irritated letter writer with the suitable name of Crabwood Sowerby:

The modern chignon, even if natural, is an excess of hair arrnaged in a grotesque form...The modern and artificial chignon is...justifiable by no rule of taste, except by the necessity of concealing a large wen, or other excrescence. [Punch, March 17, 1866, p. 118]

They were usually made of false hair, since the fashion was to have a huge chignon (big as a Christmas pudding, in fact), as this 1874 comic piece suggests:

The Tomkinses, for example, have a brother who means well, and who is old enough to know better; but he is always making unhappy remarks. In the middle of dinner he will call across the table - "Oh, Eliza, I took that chig. of yours to the hairdresser. He says it's all right, and you shall have it back to-morrow."

Library of Congress

Young Mr. Arundel, whom Eliza admires so much - in fact, she is quietly setting her chignon at him - looks aghast, both on account of the delicate nature of the communication, and also at finding that the adorable chignon is false. Poor Eliza is so overcome that she can say nothing. [Eneas Sweetland Dallas, "Putting One's Foot In It," Once A Week, Jan. 31, 1874, p. 105].

The 1866 Punch cartoon on the right is entitled "A hint for the horticultural society. Great show of 'chignons.' Medal awarded to the finest grown specimen."

As for real Christmas puddings, the ones that did not reside at the napes of ladies' necks, we will look at them in another post.

Book Review: Kingdom Under Glass

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 16:32:00 +0000

Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure and One Man's Quest to Preserve the World's Greatest Animals
Jay Kirk
New York: Henry Holt, 2010; 387 pp.

Carl Akeley (1864-1926) was a noted taxidermist, sculptor and at the end of his life, a conservationist who is remembered chiefly for his contribution to American natural history museums. A wing of the Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, is named in his honor.

Kingdom Under Glass is written as what might be described as a biographical novel - that is to say, it is the story of Akeley's life written (mainly from his perspective) as an imaginative work that is rooted in historic fact and an incredible amount of research (I particularly enjoyed reading the meticulous notes at the end of the book). The writing style often resembles that of a rather florid Victorian adventure novel. This generally works well, though it took me awhile to get used to this.

We follow Akeley through his early years in Brooklyn through his rise to fame as an innovative taxidermist, and through his several trips to Africa. Before Akeley, animal exhibits in museums were stuffed with sawdust and shown in unimaginative rows. Akeley was the first taxidermist to recreate animals in such a way as to make them seem alive (he used his skills as a sculptor, using plaster and clay, to do this). It was also his idea to show animals in exhibits that meticulously recreated their natural habitats, and posed together in lifelike groups.

By the end of his life, Akeley was no longer interested in killing examples of species as a way of preserving knowledge about them, but in conserving them. Akeley worked to establish a preserve for gorillas in what was then known as the Belgian Congo. In 1925, King Albert I of Belgium later established the Albert (later Virunga) National Park, in large part due to Akeley's influence.

Carl Akeley (Wikipedia)

I was very interested in the story of Akeley's first wife Delia Julia Akeley (1875-1970). Delia, nicknamed Mickie, was as fascinating and compelling than Carl himself. She had been Akeley's assistant in taxidermy for many years, since meeting him when she was a teenager, and became a skilled naturalist, too. After the Akeleys' divorce in 1923, she became the first woman to lead a museum expedition in Africa. She led safaris there in 1924-5 and 1929-30 under the aegis of the Brooklyn Museum.

Mickie, alas, all but disappears from Kingdom Under Glass, under a shadow of what seems to be impending madness, after the Akeleys' 1923 divorce. I understand that this book is written primarily from Akeley's viewpoint (although there are sections told through the eyes of other people, including Theodore Rooselvelt, a safari partner of Akeley's, and Mickie herself). Still, I would have liked to have heard more about Mickie's later life. After all, Victorian novels usually contained a final chapter telling the reader what happened to all the characters. A final chapter of that sort - or a Cast of Characters at the beginning - would have been welcome. I also would have liked to have seen photographs of Akeley, the other people, and the places mentioned in the book.

Overall, I enjoyed reading Kingdom Under Glass. It is an exciting and informative book, exhaustively researched, and written in an innovative manner. It illuminates the life of an unusual and important figure in the history not only of taxidermy, but of the rise of museums, the conservation movement, and the study of African wildlife.

Note: I was provided with a copy of this book by Henry Holt and Co., but as always, the review and all the opinions in it are mine alone.

The Brooklyn Midnight Assassin

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:56:00 +0000

In May 1867, William T. Skidmore, my great great great uncle, was an ex- police officer, widower of Susannah (Hicks) Skidmore and the father of four children.

On the night of May 21, 1867, he shot English inventor* William Bishop Carr with an air gun, at the corner of Gold and Johnson Streets in Brooklyn. He was observed killing Carr, was caught and sent to the Raymond Street Jail. He committed suicide while incarcerated, on June 19, 1867.

During his time in prison, my great great grandparents, Daniel and Mary Hicks, started a campaign to have the body of Daniel's late sister, Skidmore's wife Susannah, exhumed, because they suspected that Skidmore had poisoned her with some dubious punch.They were aided in their detective work by Daniel's brother Lemuel, who wrote a series of letters to the Williamsburgh Times about the matter (I will be locating these in the future, of course).

I was inspired to revisit this topic here because I was looking at fultonhistory.com this week - what an amazing resource it is, too, full of scanned historic newspapers from New York State. I found some illustrations in the National Police Gazette, of William Skidmore and of the murder scene as imagined by the Gazette's artist, who has called Skidmore the "Brooklyn Midnight Assassin." Both illustrations appeared on the front page of the June 1, 1867 edition of the Gazette.

I am continuing to research this case with an eye to writing at least a book chapter (if not a book) someday about it. I intend to try and solve the mystery of Aunt Susannah's death, if possible - if not in a non-fiction milieu, then perhaps in a mystery novel.

I know I've posted the links before, but just for good measure, here they are again:

The Gold Street Murder:

Part 1: The Meanest Sort of Snake
Part 2: An Extraordinary Disclosure of Vice
Part 3: Like a Shadow Along the Air

I've just reread these three posts and realize that I have plenty of work to do - I can see that I have left a lot of interesting details out. But since this blog is a research log of sorts, and a place where I like to think about future projects, I will use them as first drafts.

*Carr was the inventor of the "Return Ball" - a small rubber ball on an elastic string, attached to a wooden paddle (they were still being made when I was a child in the 1960s, I remember playing with one). Mark Twain commented on how popular the toy was and that it had made Carr a wealthy man, but that "the fates favored him only to deceive":

But behold, an ex-policeman waylaid the favorite of fortune in the streets of Brooklyn at dead of night a week ago, and shot him to death with an air-gun. Riches will still take wings and fly away, and so also life - and nothing can assist them in their flight better than an ex-policeman.

-- Mark Twain, "Street Livelihoods," The Daily Alta California, San Francisco, June 2, 1867.

The Jenny Lind Sewing Stand

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:24:00 +0000

Here is a charming Christmas (or New Year's) present suggestion from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of December 7, 1850, when the Swedish singer Jenny Lind was at the height of her popularity. That September, during her American tour, she had given two concerts at Castle Garden, New York, under the aegis of P.T. Barnum. So anything with her name attached to it was all the rage.

Jenny Lind in 1850 (Wikipedia)

Father Christmas and Young New Year are dressed rather like a Brooklyn father and son doing a spot of shopping at John Blackwell's Atlantic Street emporium - I like the little top hat on the New Year especially. Blackwell also had a store across the river in Manhattan, at 31-33 Attorney Street; and if you wrote him a note, he would make sure the stand was delivered to the lucky lady in question - no need to carry it through the streets like Father Christmas and Co.

The sewing stand consisted of a table with drawer(s) for storage, and sometimes (as in the Jenny Lind) a bag underneath for holding fabric. At Burchard Galleries, there is a lovely Dutch sewing stand from the first half of the 19th century, that looks a bit like the Jenny Lind.

More Jenny Lind inspired entities - including my 3rd great uncle's saloon - right over here.

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: Marzipan in New York

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:18:00 +0000

NYPL Digital Gallery

My German great grandparents and their family adored marzipan at Christmas - it wouldn't have been a proper holiday without it. Marzipan is an almond paste confection that is molded and tinted to look like fruits, vegetables, and little animals (pigs are a favorite for some reason). The old English word for this candy is Marchpane or "March bread" which is what the German can be roughly translated to mean, although there is quite a bit of dispute about the origins of both the name and the almond paste.

A 1903 Times article suggested that every Christmas stocking in New York should contain a lucky marzipan pig (Glucksschwein) and perhaps a few marzipan potatoes. There was a German saying "Ich hab schwein gehabt" meaning literally, I have a pig - which meant, I'm lucky. This may originally have been a farm expression, a place where having a pig was a really good thing (especially in the winter).

Wikipedia

Since there were a great many German immigrants in New York City by the end of the 19th century, there was quite a call for marzipan there around Christmas time. The novelist Catherine Owen wrote in Gentle Breadwinners (1888, p. 45):

"Marzipan! What is that?"

"Oh, a favorite German goody. I know of Germans in New York who send to Hamburg for it, and others who get it at the German bakeries, but sugar being cheaper than almonds it is apt to have too large a proportion, and to be like plaster."*

And not only German New Yorkers liked their marzipan. The New York Times reported in 1903 that marzipan "is becoming better known each year":

Wikipedia

The best of it is imported and appears in forms that are works of art in a small way - in the shape of fruits and vegetables, tiny cabbages, cauliflowers, peas, strawberries, cherries, all sorts and kind of things, including the more solid foods - bread and rolls, sides of beef, ham, the German sausage, and the lucky pig in all sizes and conditions.

The fruits and vegetables were the most expensive - $1 to $1.50 a pound in 1903; you could also buy a round marzipan cake with designs impressed on them "put up in round boxes." And not only German bakeries and delicatessens sold it but department stores, too. The Times also noted that one favorite German recipe using marzipan was a "delicious tart" with a marzipan crust, filled with raspberry or lemon cream and topped with marzipan crust and decorated with - you guessed it - marzipan fruits. Enough, in other words, to delight even the greatest almond-paste enthusiast.

*But of course, Great Grandfather would have taken care to go to the very best German bakery, which would not sell marziplaster! My great grandmother, who was a formidable lady, would have made sure he did. Back in the 1920s when he was doing this, he may have gone to the Vienna Model Bakery at Broadway between 10th and 11th Streets. This sounds Austrian, but it probably had German pastries as well. It sold "chocolate, tea, ice cream, Vienna ices and soda waters" in addition to baked goods, according to Picture History. My image is from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery, though - link under the image.

Source: "A German Holiday Delicacy," New York Times, December 13, 1903.

This is for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories meme created by Thomas and Jasia in 2007, and now hosted through Geneabloggers.

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: The Christmas Tree

noreply@blogger.com (Lidian) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:38:00 +0000

I've used this image before, I think - but it's so much fun! From LOC.

This is for the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories meme created by Thomas and Jasia in 2007, and now hosted through Geneabloggers:

We always had a real tree when I was growing up. My mother's parents always had had a real one, too. My maternal grandfather was of German descent and as you probably know, the Christmas tree originated in Germany (and was brought to England - and popularized there - by Prince Albert, in 1840). You simply had to have a real, alive tree. My great grandfather was always very correct, a little bit stern and serious. Everything had to be just so. You'd never know that he had jumped ship in New York Harbor on New Year's Day 1886, when he was only 17, running off from the ship and from his old life in Hamburg. I wonder if he thought about that at Christmas - for it took about 2 weeks to cross the Atlantic. He must have left home right before Christmas, and spent it at sea.

As far as I know, though, he never talked about it. He did go into New York, from Queens, to get lots of Christmas goodies every year. I'm not sure where he got the family tree, but Ozone Park, where they lived, was still fairly rural. So it was probably not too difficult. What was difficult was getting the tree into a stand. My grandfather hated doing it, and I expect my great grandfather did too. A family tradition!

My mother was horrified by fake trees - a tree simply had to be real, you see. And I always agreed with her. Still do, in a way. And yet - and yet. I like our little artificial tree. It is easy, doesn't shed, the cats don't slurp at piney tree water from a metal holder that wiggles no matter how much you try and fix it...Still, I don't know what she would think of ours nowadays. Artificial, yes - but real enough as a symbol, when we put everything on it that we've collected as a family over the years. And the cats settle down underneath it so happily - they love cozy spaces, and this is just perfect for them. I am sure they think that it is just for them.